Journals

#4

This afternoon I left Mayfield at 12:30 and flew commercial air into Lokichoggio. It is a Turkana place but because it is right on the Sudanese border, it is dominated by NGO’s. You know how in movies there are places where rakish people gather in transient camps and the strange atmosphere that is depicted? That is so right on! I’ve never experienced it before, but Loki is it to a tee.

We (the mechanic, Wilson, and I) are staying in a lovely compound owned by 747 which is a flight company that rents aircraft to various NGO’s who need to fly stuff places. Other people, like us, stay here as well, since this is a very non-town town and there is no such thing as a regular hotel. There are many of these types of compounds around the “city” run by various organizations for their own people and who keep rooms for others as well. This one is really pretty. It has Turkana shaped houses (round huts with thatched roofs) but the walls aren’t mud, they are stone. I like having my own little hut with a toilet and shower and sink! The stone walls have been whitewashed and the floor is concrete. They even provided a can of Doom! although it is now empty. (Doom! is the best bug killer I’ve ever seen!) The ground in the compound has been groomed and raked completely bare to avoid hiding places for snakes. It has electricity and a central outdoor eating area with a TV and a pool table. But the difference between Mayfield and here is pretty apparent. This is the land of the adventuring non-profit person, as well as the bush pilot, the young and old who are willing to live in such a place in order to have the excitement of flying in and out of remote places often landing on dirt airstrips such as we will tomorrow.

It is quite hot here, but Wilson keeps assuring me that it is nothing compared to Sudan! I am enjoying my last night of electricity by using the fan the host graciously provided. J

Gotta run! The electricity just went out, and I don’t want to completely run my battery down. I wonder if they have generator? Just as I typed that sentence the lights came back on, so I guess the answer is YES.

I have spent the last 10 minutes stomping on ants, bugs, crickets, etc. It seems regardless of how many ants I kill, more just keep coming. One of them is trying to carry a bug I smashed, and is making pretty good progress! So, I’m going to give up on them. I’ve tied up all the holes in my mosquito net and it looks cute, like it has little bustles decorating it.

Love to all!

Nancy

#3

Today we visited “The School under the Trees” located in very rural Uganda.

The school serves 217 students in Baby Class, Nursery, Top Class, and Primary 1-6 with no classrooms. There is one fairly small incomplete building with a roof that they run to stand in during heavy rains. I wouldn’t want to squeeze over 200 kids in there! There are several very nice shade trees which are used for classrooms. Children sit on the dirt, or on boards (not benches). School wasn’t in session so I can’t really imagine how they can make it work with that many kids in the outside with such a large range of ages. Probably it doesn’t work very well!

The other schools we have visited in our 6 done yesterday and today were pretty good in comparison to Kibera school standards. All were made of bricks, not mud, and had nice large rooms with only one grade per room. I was very pleased to see the progress made at Bethel Primary, where they have finished a new building, a new ‘kitchen’ and added their water tank, as well as have begun work on a new 2 story building. They have grown in enrollment from 180 when I visited in April last year to 458 starting on May 21! What amazing growth! The school at First Presbyterian has also completed the building they had only begun last year and increased enrollment. Every school was in process of adding more classrooms.
There is an educator, Scott, who has been staying in Lookout House since February, getting a feel for the Ugandan Christian school situation, and volunteering with several schools. Previously he was in South Africa helping to organize the administration of an orphanage. Our team has enjoyed getting to know him a bit at dinner, and has been profiting from him in better understanding the needs of the school leadership and teachers here. He has agreed to help the team for the teacher training next week, which will be great, since there will be around 90 teachers attending! I am bringing Lynnette from Kibera to help, and Michael Nsamba, who traveled from Uganda to to attend Session One training in Kibera, Nairobi (December) will also be able to help. That makes 3 from my team and 3 additional, so still only 6 rovers for a lot of groups! I know it will work out, and am really thankful for the extra help.

Tonight, as we were driving into the compound, Rashid asked us to come over to his house. He has been building this house for 4 years, and wasn’t living in it last year. It is a huge stone 2-story, with amazingly large rooms and a killer view of Lake Victoria. Although not completely finished, they are living in the bottom floor, and on the top floor he has 1400 chicks, a new entrepreneurial endeavor. He plans to have them free-range on his property.

We enjoyed tea and a fruit none of us had ever even heard of much less eaten, the mpafu. I really am not sure how to describe it. It looks like an olive, feels like a grape, is soft inside with crispy skin, is eaten sprinkled with salt (I think it might have been cooked), and has green flesh. I’ve never tasked anything similar. It was a real privilege to be invited to his home for tea and treats.

Well, a rooster crows quite early in the morning, so it’s off to bed now.

Nan

#2

Wow! What a day! I felt sorry for the two volunteers that are working with us on this trip. I'm sure about mid-morning they had serious questions about the "leader"!

It started off with us catching the matatu to Kibera with no one slated to meet us to take us on to St. Catherine's school. We did not think this would be a problem, because we had walked back from the school to the matatu stage several times, and it wasn't difficult. So, we got off and made the walk down the street that edges Kibera to the CORRECT dirt street corner to turn. So far so good.

Then things went downhill. Literally. For an hour and a half we walked around Kibera searching for the school. We were so close (in the right slum!) but so far away. Whitney (a production major friend of Elizabeth's who also just graduated on Saturday) and her mom, Janie (from Nebraska) saw parts of Kibera that few white people ever see. I only saw them under the guidance of Pastor James when we walked the entire slum visiting schools in March. HOWEVER, today, we were walking the 3 foot dirt pathways on our own. For an hour and a half! You should realize that Kibera is an absolute warren of little alleys and pathways. It is called the "place of 1000 streets" though I'm quite sure there are many more than that. In fact, a Kenyan told me that even people who live there can't find their way around on a regular basis!

BUT ... God is good all the time. All the time, God is good. (An African saying) As we were going up another narrow pathway, after slipping and sliding through many areas of yukky mud and "flying latrine" bags, after Whitney getting her thumb cut on a rusty tin roof, after being led by about 20 small children to the grassy hill area where we thought we wanted to go (but turns out we didn't), which is rather notorious for muggings, the Lord sent a solution to our problems.

A nice man was coming down a path as we were going up it. I was in the lead, and as we approached we said hello, and he asked me how I was. I decided since he actually said "Hello" first, instead of the standard "How are you?", he might speak English, so I said, "Really, really lost!" So we started talking to try to figure out if he knew where we were heading. He didn't know the school's name, but when I asked if he knew Pastor James Onyango he did. Then he said, "You are FAR from there. Let me show you the way." It turns out he was also a pastor, and meets with the pastor prayer group at James' church. The really wonderful thing is how the Lord directed him to us.

Pastor William was going to visit a friend, and as he was going decided to take a path he rarely uses. That is where he found us. We arrived at the school safe and sound at 10:00 to find them being led in prayer by Pastor John Bennet, a wonderful older man who speaks good English and has received training at a Bible school. I guess they had been praying for us for QUITE a while that we not get mugged, and would arrive safely. Which, of course, is why God led Pastor William to take the right path to meet us.

Then once we got there, the electricity went out! Now do you begin to see a pattern? I love it when things are so obvious!

I had stayed up quite late last night working and praying to find a way to make the worldview stuff more understandable to the teachers. Many of you were praying for me, and I got a great email from my dad that helped. He read my journal and responsed with, "I was reading last night about some African theologians who are trying to work with the cultural and pre-Christian religious views and how an "African theology" can take all this into account. What you are doing is difficult and the source of great consternation for a lot of Africans right now. That made me think I should quit trying to figure out their culture and worldview, and quit trying to teach them about the messed up worldviews that reign in the West, and just concentrate on what a BIBLICAL worldview is. So I reworked my presentation to just explain what that means, and how we find it playing out in everyday life.

When I arrived and couldn't use the computer, I started in talking, maybe you would call it preaching. Anyway, the prayers were answered, and I was able to get across to them very clearly what it means to look at life and see the revelation of God about himself, about us, about creation, about the moral order of our world, and about purpose. Many of the sights I saw on the long trek looking for St. Catherine's became instant examples. It was glorious! They really got it! Then, of course, the electricity came back on, and I was able to reteach the concepts using the Powerpoint.We then worked on integrating the Biblical worldview into the academic lesson plan. Since they now understood the concepts, they picked this up very quickly, and did a really good job. YEAH!!

Thanks to you all for your prayers. God bless you!

Nancy

#1

We got to bed after midnight (actually, about 1:00 am) last night, and were up by 6:30 to get ready to leave for Kibera. Today was hot, but not too bad, a good introduction to Kibera for our team. Since we needed to haul a lot of things to the site, we had a van from Mayfield take us directly to St. Catherine. This was probably good, since Kibera is a shocker, and having to take a matatu and then walk the mile or so all at first sight would likely have been a bit much. However, they did great as we walked out and caught a matatu home.

Although I emailed with Pastor James about the need for lunch, amounts I would pay, number of workers and pay, etc., I neglected to ask him to make the arrangements. So yesterday, when the Committee of Teachers realized the lunch arrangement had not been made, they decided to be responsible as a group and undertook to be sure things were ready to go this morning. The Committee worked last night until 8:00 pm to arrange for lunch, get provisions on the promise to pay, and prepare the facility. They decided on a budget and a menu, as well as a schedule. I am so proud of them, and they were rightly proud of themselves! They did an excellent job. I love to see people taking initiative. They were very careful to make sure I understood they had worked together to come up with the costs, and would account for every expenditure, and be quite transparent to the teachers about all financial transactions. I think it is a good thing that Pastor James did not make the arrangements, and allowed them to do so.

One of our teachers was at the doctor this morning and told me she would be late again on tomorrow because she is ill. She will receive results of her tests tomorrow. Please pray for her. Another needing prayer is a sister. She lost her husband in November before our training in December last year. She was pressured to be taken on by her late husband’s brother (wife inheritance), and refused. Because of this she has been disowned and is not getting any help. She has young children. For the Children’s Sake Foundation is going to provide her a loan to finish off a building she is adding to her school, which she hopes will help her to generate enough income to provide for her and her children. Our brother believes he has lost his job, and has already lost the housing associated with the position. It seems the Assistant Director had taken in 50,000 KSH and it went missing. Three teachers besides the Assistant Director were present on the day it went missing, so the Director has decided they are all in cahoots and stole the money. I was told the Assistant Director is the same tribe as the director, so he isn’t suspected. He has a wife and a young son, who are currently living with her brother in the rural area while he is hoping to get the director to keep him on in his job. Although teaching positions are a dime a dozen here, ones that pay enough to feed a wife and son, and provide housing are truly scarce.

I have to rework my lessons for tomorrow. The parts I did today on teaching went quite well, but I am just not getting the Biblical Worldview stuff across in a meaningful way. Frustratingly, I realize that the material is simply inappropriate for their cultural situation, but I don’t understand the tribal cultures and values well enough to make the needed connections for them. Tonight at dinner I discussed the problem with some people who had lived in Kenya for 40 years. They felt it was almost impossible to categorize their worldview, that it is made up of belief in a spirit world that is not pantheistic (?!), in ancestor reverence that is called keeping the 5th Commandment, part of Western modern thinking – too complicated. If it is too complicated for them, you know it is too complicated for me! So, IRONICALLY, I am teaching a course entitled Making the Connections – Biblical Worldview Integration, and I’m not doing a good job of helping them Make the Connections! Please pray for me.

More tomorrow,

Nancy