Exploring Kenya…

The last couple days have been eventful… over the weekend I took a drive down south deep into Maasai land. The Maasai people in Kenya, are probably the most well known people group in Kenya. They’re known to be fierce warriors, and learning their customs and traditions, you understand where they get that reputation. I was able to sit, talk, laugh, cook, eat, dance, and even got to attend a wedding and feasted. It was cultural immersion to the extreme. I was invited to stay in there homes, they shared their lives with me even though we didn’t speak the same language. To top it all off, the Great Migration passes right by this village. There were zebras, giraffes, baboons, wildebeasts, antelopes of all sorts, and even a small heard of elephants that dotted the landscape around me. In the evening because of the great migration, the men took shifts  to watch the cattle afraid of lions in the area following the migration. Too bad I didn’t get to see them.

On Monday, I went out to Karen, a Niarobi suburb to a giraffe sancutary. It was cool to see the giraffes up close and to hand feed them. Karen is the place where they filmed the movie “Out of Africa” with Meryl Streep and Robert Redford… and to this day it’s a wealthier suburb with a lot of ex-pats living in the area.

Today, I got to head out with Feed the Children to Kibera, it is the largest slums in Africa with over one million people living in in a place that’s approximately the size of Central Park in NYC. I had the chance to go in a work with some of the orphans that lived in Kibera, to see the conditions that the live in and how they manage to survive. Crime is extremely high in the area, so I didn’t wander too far from where we were… It’s very cramped, with little walking spaces between the shacks. The air smelled of faeces, and garbage. The homes that are built is just piled up on top of garbage, and when a flood hits… it decimates more than half of the houses and the people there just rebuild on top of what was damaged. I was speechless when I first arrived… I felt completely clueless, and hopeless. We got to the “school” and there were hundreds of kids waiting for us to feed and play with them. The workers brought out these huge barrels of food, and we dished out a little bit for each child. To see the smile of their faces because today they got to eat but the emptiness in their eyes broke my heart. I had to excuse myself so that I could gather myself to continue dishing out the food. After everyone had a little to eat, we just played and loved on them. We played games of tag, which turned pretty violent, we tried soccer but that became violent as well and we moved on to dancing… but pretty much everything we did ended up in fighting and all out brawls. There are so many mixed emotions, after going to a place like Kibera… I don’t think it’s even sunk in yet.

2 more days here and I head home. I’m excited to go home, and not be a muzungu anymore… but I’m also sad to leave… once you’ve been to Africa you understand why people love Africa. TIA…

Gambella-Revised

For the latest on Gambella please go to http://GambellaRecovery.com

Mantracker… Nairobi Edition!

Today was an interesting day… had a late start slept in until lunch. In the afternoon I was itching to go out, however everything I wanted to do was more of a full day activity, so I decided to wander the streets of Nairobi and see what happens. Walked into a couple pretty big shopping centres… one was kinda like a Walmart, and the other was a mall with a 3 story department store, and it sold everything, kinda like a Sears. Found the cinema in that mall too… we’ll save that for when I have nothing left to do.

I kept on walking, pulled out my map that I had folded in my pocket… and on the map there is a Shopping centre marked on the map not too far from where I already was. So I thought why not check it out… probably more or less the same as what I’ve seen already.

I arrive and I realize it’s more of a market then a shopping centre, but this one was different, the paths were narrow and everything seem to blend itself into everything else. It’s very crowded, but I thought hey let’s just see what I can find here. Unlike the other markets this one is for the locals… They have shoes, and clothing and underwear, tons of ladies footwear, fruits and veggies, live animals, raw meat… basically a market without the African nick nacks that you would fine in a market that tourist go to. I try to blend in as much as I can looking at the stalls and the products (I was wishing I had brought my camera with me) I noticed someone kinda following me, didn’t think to much of it but made sure I just stayed aware of him. Then I notice that everytime I looked at him he would turn away or turn around. So I picked up my pace a little just to test and see if he was following me.

I walk down one lane and he’s right there behind me. I even backtrack walk right by him and he continues to follow me. Every time I turn to look he looks away. I realize I’m in the middle of the market now, and it’s not that easy just to exit so I come up with a strategy plan… I gotta lose this guy in the market so he doesn’t follow me home. I go down one lane, the second I see a opening, I cut through a stall into the next lane… then I do it again… but going the other direction… now I know he’s following me, he’s right behind me a couple stalls back all the time. I move faster this time using people as my barrier and ducking into stalls and out the other stall… local are staring and wondering what I’m doing but I don’t care, I know I need to lose this dude… I continue this and I stop. I wait for a little bit I don’t see him… I know it’s my chance to leave the market. I make a B line to the exit and I’m back on the main street. The next 45 min walk, I’m constantly looking behind me to make sure he wasn’t still following me, I duck into the “Creamy Inn” (ice cream shop) get myself a ice cream and then into the shopping centre I was in earlier hanging out until I calmed myself down a little, then I walked home… I don’t know if I was just paranoid or if that man was intentionally wanting something from me. Either way, it made my day a lot more interesting and a lot more fun exciting. Tomorrow, I’m just gonna stick with heading to the museum. I read there’s another area that’s pretty cool, more foreigners, a old part of town a pretty cool market, but lots of muggings happen there. Saturday that’s where I’ll go… let’s just keep things calm for the next 2 days though.

Ethiopian Hospital adventures…

Getting a bacterial infection isn’t fun to begin with, now getting that in Awasa Ethiopia… well that’s an adventure. Now I have to warn you about this post it’s not for the faint of heart… so if you get sick easily stop reading now. We get into the beautiful city of Awasa city of lakes… the weather is perfect and the city is just very chill. I got to enjoy it for the first two days here until one night I wake up and it’s Niagra Falls coming out of my butt. I put it off as so I ate something wrong it’ll pass, like the other times I’ve had in Isiolo and Dire Dawa, no big deal. I was wrong… sitting in our staff conference learning about TCD and I hit the wall. I make it to the toilet just in time to see everything I’ve eaten  come back out the way it went in only this time it didn’t taste as good. So I go lie down, and things aren’t getting any better… stuff is coming out from both ends and by this time I’ve lost a ton of fluid and is starting to feel a little dehydrated. Naomi, a GHNI staff and former nurse, highly recommends that I go to the hospital just to be safe and a reluctanly listen and go. We pull up to the hospital, and looking at the building I wanted to go back to my cochroach infested hotel room. The flickering lights and the rusty chairs and hospital beds didn’t give me any hope that I would get the help that I needed from this place. Our Ethiopian Director assures me everything is going to be okay. I sit and the attendent takes my bloodpressure but in walks his buddy, and they start having a conversation while I’m sitting there as the patient. I pass that off, and go see the doctor after… The doctor looks no more than 24 years old, he asks me a couple questions tells me I have to give a stool sample. I looked at him and said do you have a bucket, because when it starts it doesn’t stop. He just stared back. Then then realise that they haven’t taken my temp, so I’m back in the first room. Meanwhile there’s another patient in the room taking off the bandages he had from his severed fingers. They stick a digital thermometer under my armpit… we wait… they check… oops they didn’t turn it on.  So we try again.

Now here’s the interesting part. We go to the Lab to do the stool sample. There’s no Lab tech… so they call her in. I’m expecting them to give me a cup or a bucket for this sample, but to my surprise they hand me a toothpick and a little piece of cardboard. I look at it waiting for more. And she looks at me as if I’m the stupid one. She speaks to me in Amharic like I should understand what to do, meanwhile her friend steps in and they start chatting. I look at Zerihun and he said just get a little bit on the toothpick.  We are directed to the toilets, and I now have no idea how I’m suppose to do this. There are no toilet seats on the toilets it doesn’t flush so there’s still a lot of “stuff” in it, and I’m sure they haven’t been clean in over a year. I turn on the dim flashing floresent light overhead, try to brace myself because there’s no way I can sit on the toilet covered in God knows what. And I’m suppose to take a sample of my stool on a toothpick and a peice of cardboard.

When I release it, it comes and it pours and it doesn’t stop until it’s dry… figure that out. Anyway mission accomplished I hand it to the lab, and I’m expecting to wait about 30 mins for lab results. 10 mins top and she hands the doctor the results and says I have a bacteria infection. I get my meds and all this cost me less than 100 birrs, which is around $10 CAD.

Am I good to go… well 3 days in now, and I’m still sick as ever, nothing changed and I want to go home. I’m suppose to head to Gambella on Wednesday to do an assesment, and I would love to but right now I think I need to think of me, and try to head home. Pray that I can change my flight to come home on the 5th.

Hurso, Ethiopia

After a couple early mornings, we finally land in Dire Dawa, Ethiopia. You can already feel the difference in weather… it’s definitely hotter! Similar to Kenya, we drive out to the village of Hurso,  where we have committed to ild  a school there. We’re told not to take any pictures, and to keep a low profile because we are the first group of foreigners to ever step into this village.

It was a very different atmosphere from Kenya. Not better or worst, just different. We were warmly received by the local church there, and met some of the village people. Heng-Zi, Carolyn and I had the privilege to go carrel children to come to the church compound to play. We found out after that we were specifically told not to leave the compound and go into the village… oops! As the week went on, our relationship with the children of Hurso grew… our love of the people expanded exponentially. I learned a very new and unique way of laying down the foundations of a new school and how hard the people here work to accomplish a common goal. We didn’t get to see the school built to completion, but we left Hurso with a dedication ceremony and a passing of the torch giving the ownership of the school to the village.

This is step one. It was challenging, but a great learning experience. We got to see two very different villages at two very different levels of development.  One, which is at it’s end stages where we were greeted warmly, and had the freedom to help in anyway we can. And the second at the very beginning stages of development, were we felt very confined and restricted, but seeing doors open and relationships built.

There’s so much work that can be done we have all these different methods and theories of how things need to be in place to be able to help people. Yes all this is true, but the one thing we overlook is the human condition. For real transformation to happen in any village there needs to be transformation in the heart first. We can put all our efforts into meeting the basic needs of different tribes, and people but when we meet the needs of the heart, real transformation begins.

Gambella, Kenya

We landed in Kenya a week ago, and have been working the moment we hit the ground. We left early the next morning to a town called Isiolo which is 4 hours north of Nairobi. After we settled into our hotel, we drove out to the village of Gambella where we spend most of our time working with the Borana people group. We had 4 projects: building school dorms for the teachers, working with the students at the school, alternative methods to the agriculture project, and renovating the chicken coops, all happening at the same time. My jobs were to repair a chicken coop which turned out to be more complicated than we expected. And to lay new pipes down to try out a new sprinkler system for the farming project.

When we first arrived in Gambella we were told there was a lot of tension, because of a neighbouring village stealing a couple goats. Over the next couple days we saw a lower turn out of villagers, and a higher turn out of military officials walking around with guns. Nonetheless, we had a great time in Gambella building relationships, and learning about a new culture, we even got Boranan names, mine is Guyo.

The people of North America and the people in Borana is not so different. We all deal with the same difficulties and depravity in the soul. It’s just manifested in a different way dependent on the environment we live in. Tomorrow we fly to Addis and then to Dire Dawa, to start another week.

We’ve been told that internet access is even harder to find there than here in Kenya. I’m loving my time here.

Africa (Kenya/Ethiopia)

Dear Friends and Family,

I’d like to share with you an opportunity I have in being involved in life changing kingdom work. At the beginning of this year, I started a new position as Assistant Director with a non-profit NGO (non-governmental organization) called Global Hope Network International- Canada. GHNI Canada is a start-up NGO with a Swiss-based headquarters that focuses on “bringing help and hope to the hidden and hurting.”

This is a dream come true for me, getting my dream job! Over the past couple of years God has put in my heart a passion to help the poor and those who are marginalized. I wanted to be a voice of reason and to do what Jesus has modeled for us.

This summer is the beginning of my journey in walking out my passion, one step, at a time. From July 9th- August 14th I will be going to Kenya and Ethiopia as a staff member to get first-hand experience with GHNI. Our goal is to implement our holistic transformational approach to community development, where locals will learn practical ways to transform their community, and invite other villages to do the same. In Kenya, we will continue this model in the village of Gambella where we will focus on building a storehouse for their food that they have now grown through techniques we have demonstrated to them. In Ethiopia, we’re excited to begin helping a Somali village called Uruso. There we will be building a school for their children, using their construction techniques.

I’m excited about this trip and the experiences that await me. Though I may be the one physically going on this trip, I hope you see the eternal value in what I will be doing.

Because we are called…