Table of Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Epilogue

Appendix

Acknowledgements

Donations

About the author

a time for every

PURPOSE under

heaven

One Woman’s Trip to Africa – My Story

Chris Loehmer Kincaid

LIFE SENTENCE Publishing

To children living in poverty throughout the world.

All they asked was that we should continue to remember the poor,

the very thing I had been eager to do all along.

(Galatians 2:10)

Introduction

In August 2006, I fulfilled a lifelong dream by going on a mission trip to a third-world country. I traveled with fourteen others to Kenya as part of the last Life Missions team to travel to Africa. Our goal was to educate the Kenyans about disease prevention and share the Word of Christ.

Each morning one of our team members led devotions. The day I was scheduled to lead, we had just left the Bush, the land past the end of the road, near the tiny village of Mosiro. We had held seminars and medical clinics for the Maasai warriors, a people whose lives have not changed much in two thousand years, except many of them were now dying from AIDS.

I had left my prepared devotion and my Bible back at our base of operations in Nairobi, but somehow now, at the edge of nowhere, my chosen passage seemed inappropriate. I had just washed in fresh water for the first time in five days, using two pitchers full, but it was the best shower I had ever taken. How could my life ever be the same? And in just an hour, how could I share with my team members a meaningful devotion?

I borrowed my daughter’s Bible and opened it to Ecclesiastes 3. Every line portrayed what we had witnessed since arriving in Africa. Even in the middle of nowhere, in what has been called the Dark Continent, our Heavenly Father shed His light on me.

Chapter 1

To everything there is a season

(Ecclesiastes 3:1a, NKJV)

Five fifteen in the morning. I rubbed my weary eyes and looked at my portable alarm clock again. Five fifteen, the time I woke up every morning. The clock in my head kept me from ever needing to set an alarm. I rolled over in the twin-size bed. The clock in my head should have been set to Central Standard Time. Just because I had been in bed for close to six hours didn’t mean my body should think that it was time to get up.

Yet, there I was, wide awake that first morning in Africa. I glanced around the dim room, acclimating myself to my surroundings while my two teenage roommates slept soundly. How had I gotten here? It felt like a dream, and perhaps it was – a dream which had started years before.

AN ODD START

“Mom, can you sign this?” My son Nick wanted to go somewhere with someone from church. I agreed and signed the consent form without asking any questions. He was fifteen at the time and a sophomore in high school.

All parents have done it, and all our children know we have. It’s not that we don’t care about what you are doing. We just can’t fit that information into our heads along with the other 25,000 pieces of information we are required to carry around to get through a single day. And if you, as our son or daughter, have a good track record around the house with no history of trouble, when you bring home a consent form, we sign it and ask how much money you need.

Good thing I only had two children. I don’t know how anyone can manage more than that. We nailed a huge calendar to the kitchen wall with everyone’s schedule written on it. I kept it color coded so I could see from across the room who was busy on any particular day or night. You would think that with such a system I would remember where Nick was going that Saturday in mid-November.

I guess I knew he would attend the Power of One concert in Green Bay with our church’s youth group, but that doesn’t mean I knew anything else about it. When he got back to church after midnight and called for a ride, I went to pick him up. As usual, Nick didn’t elaborate on the day’s events; he just told me he had a good time. The only visual evidence he had of the event was a black t-shirt, which he wore as a nightshirt for eight years.

One day after the first of the year, a flyer for Lifest came in the mail addressed to Nick. This Christian music festival was sponsored by Life Promotions, the same organization that put on the Power of One concerts. Life Promotions sends speakers and bands into schools across the country to share positive messages with youth during the day, and then they return for an evening assembly when they are allowed to share the message of the love of Jesus Christ. Once a year, in nearby Oshkosh, they host a huge music festival open to youth and their families from throughout the upper Midwest.

Nick seemed to know all about Lifest and wanted to go.

Maybe I wasn’t the most diligent parent. I had found, though, that I am able to do a web search to get some information about what my children are up to. I looked up Lifest on the Internet, read everything I could find, and decided this could turn out to be a nice weekend getaway.

I discussed it with my husband Himey, explaining that I thought we could take the pickup and our camper. He agreed that it sounded good, but had no desire to spend three hot, sticky days living out of our decrepit, pop-up camper surrounded by hot, sticky strangers.

I would have to undertake this adventure without him.

We ordered our tickets and reserved a campsite. On July 11, 2002, Nick and I loaded my daughter Val and her friend Jacquelyn into Himey’s old, red, extended-cab Mazda. With the ancient, pop-up camper in tow, we headed to our destination: Sunnyview Fairgrounds in Oshkosh, Wisconsin.

Who would have ever thought that we would have such a good time? It was four days with over a hundred musicians, comedians, and speakers on six different stages. The beautiful, moving music and messages from speakers and musicians pulled at my heart and left tears in my eyes. They reminded me again and again of the love that Jesus Christ has for each of us.

The girls and other young people enjoyed different acts – the head-banging and fingernails-on-a-chalkboard noise that they call music. I couldn’t understand the words, but between songs the performers shared their stories of how Christ came into their lives and how God doesn’t mind good, clean fun. The female performers stressed the importance of abstinence until marriage. For me, it was a lesson in reverse stereotyping.

Val and Jacquelyn were goofy middle-schoolers, but it was such a family-friendly atmosphere I felt comfortable letting them take off on their own. We didn’t see much of Nick. He had other friends with whom he hung out.

For all the fun I had that weekend, it never crossed my mind that this would lead me to Africa. I’d only traveled as far as a fairground one hundred miles from home.

A CHANGE OF FOCUS

We continued our yearly trek to Lifest. After the first year, Nick had outgrown the music festival, but Val thrived on it. The collection of teenage girls she invited each year grew, and by 2005, we took nine of them. I borrowed not only my sister’s larger pop-up camper, but also someone else’s full-size van. Driving this large, strange vehicle and towing someone else’s trailer while ten girls sang, yelled, and giggled all around me left me frazzled by the time we arrived at the fairgrounds.

That year I seemed to reach my limit. I was cranky because ours was the messiest campsite, and I was stressed because I never saw the teenagers I was responsible for that weekend. In past years, we had spent some quality time together talking about our day and the bands we had seen or the speakers we had heard, sharing something inspirational. We were family, if only for a couple days, so I thought we should act like one.

Instead, I spent my days alone in the shade of a small tree, listening to music on the family stage. Later, after the last band had finished playing for the night, I crawled into the camper. The girls all survived with no injuries or arrests, so I don’t know what my problem was. Why couldn’t I relax?

In retrospect, I did have the usual good time. I listened to the bands I wanted to and heard my favorite, The Newsboys, at the Grandstand.

I wasn’t always by myself. Deb and Lisa, friends from church who had attended in the past, were there, but they had opted out of camping and were staying in a hotel. The speakers were as awesome as ever, and the performers were great. I ran into the girls occasionally, so it wasn’t as if they were avoiding me.

At the time, however, I felt alone in the crowd. In my sleeping bag at night, I wondered why I had even come to Lifest that year. A voice in my head started talking to me, nudging me, but in my stressed-out state, I didn’t hear what it was saying.

I don’t think I am overly religious, but I know what I believe – that Jesus Christ is my Savior and is by my side every day. And just because I don’t see Him doesn’t mean He isn’t there. That’s what faith is – believing what you don’t see, and sometimes listening with more than just your ears.

That weekend in July of 2005, it all came into focus, and my life would be changed forever. And it started with a baked potato.

THE BAKED POTATO

One afternoon, I wandered the grounds in search of something different to eat. With an estimated 20,000 people attending Lifest at some point that year, food vendors served everything from Dippin’ Dots to Krispy Kremes to pizza to ribs. If you got tired of typical fast food, you could look around and find any other kind of meal you had a taste for.

I stumbled upon a booth selling baked potatoes and thought, “That sounds good. Something healthy for a change.”

Oblivious to my surroundings, I ordered a potato with broccoli and cheese and paid for it. I waited for more than several minutes, forcing myself to not check my watch. With teenagers manning the stand, I figured I should be patient with them. I started getting hungry, and if I hadn’t already given them my money, I might have walked away.

Finally, an older man came up from behind the counter and asked if he could help me. I told him that I had already ordered, but wondered what was taking so long. He talked to a youth behind him and reported to me that no one had put in my request, but that it would be ready in just a minute.

“While you’re waiting, why don’t you take a brochure?” He offered me a pamphlet.

It was for Life Missions, a group within Life Promotions, which hosted mission trips to India, South America, and Africa. The baked potato booth was a fundraiser for future trips.

“Wow, this is cool,” I said, glancing at the information. “I’ve always wanted to go on a mission trip, but I’m too old now.”

The man, who was in his sixties, laughed. “I’ve just been on one of these trips. You’re never too old.”

My potato came out just then. I thanked the man, and he insisted I take the brochure with me. Not thinking too much more about it at the time, I tucked it in my backpack.

THE SEMINAR

One of my favorite things about Lifest had always been the speakers. Twice a day on Friday and Saturday, they shut everything down and six to eight different speakers throughout the grounds gave hour-long seminars on various subjects. Most of the talks were geared towards youth, on topics such as abstinence, self-esteem, and healthy choices. A few speakers appealed to an older crowd and discussed keeping love in your marriage or ministering to others. Jay Bakker spoke one year about what it was like being the child of mega-televangelists Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker and how he survived the insanity of their downfall.

I can’t remember the name of the speaker I enjoyed the most that fateful year, but I can recall the details of his talk. He spoke about God having a plan for each of us. We may not see it at the time, but the most benign event that occurred years ago might turn out to be the catalyst that leads to something bigger. One tiny incident that you were barely aware of, you discover years later changed the life of a total stranger.

The speaker said that throughout our lives God presents us with choices. Each choice leads to another choice and then another. This series of decisions takes us to where we are in our lives. If God sees us going in the wrong direction, He will present us with more decisions, in the hope that we can figure it out and arrive at the best place possible.

Some nonbelievers ask how a Christian can believe in a God who lets bad things happen to good people. Sometimes we bring these bad things on ourselves. God gave us free will, so often when events turn disastrous, it is because we made the wrong choice at some point. We might not see it at the time, but if we look back on a long series of decisions, we realize how they caused us to be at this place in our lives.

We wonder how we can get out of the mess we have made. We can’t get out of it on our own. That’s where most people run into trouble. We need to turn it over to God and say to Him, “I made a big mistake this time, things are awful in my life, and only You, Lord, can fix them.”

And if God doesn’t fix the problem, maybe it doesn’t need fixing. We have to trust Him to always make the right decision. And when He decides you should go on a mission trip, you should just agree.

THE HAND OF GOD

The last major event every year at Lifest was Sunday morning worship. Bob Lenz, the founder of Life Promotions, gave a stirring message, followed by another inspirational speaker and lots of music. Music to sing to. Sure, they are all Christian songs, but not necessarily the ones our parents and grandparents sang in church.

Along with the rest of my generation, I was raised on rock and roll: the ballads of Bread, America, and Don McLean, and tearjerkers like Seasons in the Sun and The Blind Man in the Bleachers. Saturday nights, when the weather was right, way up in northern Wisconsin, my sister and I could pick up WLS out of Chicago on our AM radio. We thought that by hearing music coming out of Chicago, we were somehow on the cutting edge. And we sang to everything we could. It might be twenty years since I heard some of those songs, but I still remember all the lyrics.

On Sunday mornings, though, when I couldn’t listen to the radio because I had to go to church, I would sing along with Dad. For many of the old hymns, he would sing harmony, which would drive Mom nuts. She would give him dirty looks over the tops of our heads , and he would give her his half smile and shrug.

Unlike my dad, I never could sing. But somewhere along the way, I decided that if I sang loud, the people around me would have to sing even louder to drown me out.

And that’s how it was at Lifest. I would sing along, off key, to most of the songs as if I was Amy Grant, my voice cracking on the high notes. It didn’t matter if I knew the words or not because they were printed on the Jumbotron, a large-screen television used at concerts and ball games.

On this particular warm, Sunday morning, I was alone in the crowd, singing quietly for a change. Unlike the many strangers around me, their arms raised in praise over their heads and their faces turned skyward, I was looking down. God had entrusted me with a daughter, a beautiful fifteen-year-old, and for that weekend, nine other young ladies. I had failed them all. I had turned them loose on the fairgrounds and shirked my parental duties. Christian atmosphere or not, anything could have happened to them, and perhaps something had happened to them for all that I knew.

With my head shaking slightly from side to side and my eyes closed, I felt inadequate. God had given me so much in my life. He had given me His only Son to be my personal Savior. What had I ever given back? What had I ever done in my life to make me worthy of so much as a passing gesture from the Almighty?

Suddenly, I felt fingers under my chin, a warm, strong hand lifting my head heavenward. I heard a voice saying, “Look at me, let me see your beautiful face, my precious child.”

A chill ran down my spine. I opened my eyes and looked around. My head turned up toward the brilliant blue sky. I couldn’t see anyone there, but I know that the hand of God reached down and touched me that day. His voice spoke to me, reminding me how much He loves me.

I don’t have to do anything to pay God back for all He has given me. There is no way I could ever come close. He paid the ultimate price by sending His Son to save me.

In the end, however, as it states in Romans 14, the day will come when I will be asked to give an account of myself to God. How will He judge me? Had I ever done anything to earn His praise? If I went to a third-world country and helped those stricken by poverty and illness, maybe, I thought, God would cup my head in His hand and smile on me again.

The Grounds at Lifest

Chapter 2

A time for every purpose under heaven

(Ecclesiastes 3:1b, NKJV)

HOME FOR NOW

Mom, I got this at a booth that was selling baked potatoes,” Val announced.

We had arrived home late Sunday evening from Lifest 2005. The parents picked up their girls, and the borrowed, ten-passenger van found its way home. The next day, as I cleaned my sister’s camper inside and out, Val handed me a pamphlet and said, “They are taking a mission trip to Africa next summer and I want to go.”

“Hang on a second,” I told her as I reached for my backpack and pulled out the same brochure.

“See,” she beamed. “It’s meant to be.”

She had been on a mission trip to Mexico earlier that summer with her church’s youth group. In fact, many of the same girls we had taken to Lifest had gone on that trip as well. It had been a good experience for her, but they had stayed in a hotel on the beach, which wasn’t exactly my idea of mission work. They worked with numerous disadvantaged children, though, and helped at a local church and soup kitchen. They experienced things they would never see in our sheltered Midwestern town.

I knew when she came home from Mexico that she wanted to take another such trip. We talked about the trip to Kenya. She went online and researched more. I must admit, I probably looked into it as much as she did, reading everything I could find on the Internet about past mission trips that Life Promotions sponsored.

Val beat me to it when she emailed Jen Bell, the woman in charge of the trip to Kenya the next year. Before I knew it, Val had her application filled out and asked for my signature.

“Mom, I think you really should come with us, too.”

How had she gotten it into her head that this was something that I even remotely wanted to do? She didn’t know what was on my bucket list.

Whether you have it in writing or only in your head, everyone has a bucket list. You know what I am talking about – the list of all the things you want to do before you kick the bucket. At one time, I had written my list down: ride in a semi-truck, ride in an airplane, own a horse, speak a second language fluently. The list went on and on. I think I was too scared to write it down, but I know that the one thing I always wanted to do was change the world.

How does one begin to change the world? How many of our presidents or other world leaders have changed the world – for the better, anyway? How is it possible for any one individual to begin to attempt such a lofty goal? But that had always been mine.

In my teen angst, I wrote in my journal most nights about the injustice in the world, the poverty, the selfishness, the senselessness. And I always thought, “What if I could do something about it?” But those were the dreams of a sixteen-year-old girl. I was now in my forties. And as I had already told the man in the baked potato booth, I was too old.

People have told me of times when God has spoken to their hearts or laid something on their minds. I may be dense, but when God sends me a message, He has to smack me upside the head for me to get it. How many more signs did He have to send me that He wanted me to go to Africa?

Val persisted. She had her heart and mind set on this trip, and she had decided that I should go along. God must have figured out that if I wouldn’t listen to Him, I would at least listen to my own fifteen-year-old daughter.

She went to the Power of One concert that November and introduced herself to Jen Bell, who told her more about the trip. Val came home with that information and her last plea that I go with her.

I called Jen’s husband, Dave, at the Life Promotions office the next day with my list of questions. Yes, our $250 deposit would be refunded if we backed out. Yes, a lot of parents went with their teenagers, and it always proved to be a rewarding experience. Yes, the application deadline wasn’t until April 15, but they only had a couple of openings left for the July 2006 trip.

He also informed me that this would be the last group which Life Promotions was sending into the international mission field. The board of directors had decided that resources would be better used within the boundaries of our own country. With this change, the Bells had made the commitment to remain in Kenya as full-time missionaries. Dave was excited about this trip and confident it would be life changing for everyone involved.

We mailed our applications two days later, both of them, Val’s and mine. The next step was to get the two letters of recommendation.

LETTERS OF RECOMMENDATION

One of those difficult things we all have to do at some point in our lives is to ask people we know to write a letter to an individual or an organization telling them that we are wonderful. I know I hate it when people ask me to do that. You want to say something original, yet be truthful and endearing without being sappy.

Since we were going on a short-term mission trip, instead of picking people who only knew our work ethic, we tried to choose people who also knew us from church or from volunteer venues. I chose one of the doctors I work with who had been on a mission trip, as well as one of the women with whom I had taught Sunday School.

One of Val’s references was a woman from my church who led our youth group. Her other choice was the youth leader from the church she attended.

Just to clarify, I have belonged to a conservative Lutheran church my entire life. Sometimes I wish it were more contemporary, but so many of the members are like family that I can’t imagine going anywhere else. Val, on the other hand, like many young people, found a church which had a live band leading their worship. She attended their Wednesday night youth group without fail. I sometimes joined her on Sundays at the nondenominational services.

Jen Bell, from Life Promotions, got both of my letters and one of Val’s in a timely fashion. Val’s second letter, however, seemed to be missing in action. She checked with the woman who had written it, and she assured Val that it had been mailed. A few days later, Jen emailed Val that the sealed envelope had arrived empty, no letter inside.

We decided to switch to plan B, and I asked a different woman from my church to write Val a recommendation. They had worked together at Vacation Bible School and she had taught Val in Sunday School years before. It was a Friday, December 2, to be exact, and this woman took time out of her busy day to type the letter that morning. I picked it up at her house and mailed it that afternoon.

The following Monday, Val met me at the door when I got home from work. Jen had called to say that she had received the last letter, our paperwork was all in order, and we had been accepted as members of the team. We were going to Africa.

But as seems to happen, that wasn’t all there was to it. Later that week, I thanked the woman again who had written the last-minute letter for Val. She said that the letter had come back to her, undeliverable. Stamped address unknown, the envelope had the same exact address which was on the rest of the letters.

So whose letter did Jen get? We never did find out.

AUNT HELEN

Notification came on December 5 that we would be included in the trip to Kenya the following August, but we waited to tell anyone except, of course, my husband. The next day, we weren’t busy at work, and everyone was finished by five o’clock. It was quiet, and I thought I would spend a few minutes cleaning my cupboards before I left for the day.

My private line rang. Being after hours, this probably meant it was a personal call.

“Hello?” I answered.

“Chris,” my mom was out of breath and emotional. “It’s Aunt Helen.”

“What is it?” I prompted her.

“I called for the ambulance, but I think she’s already gone.”

“I’ll be right there.” I threw my stuff back in the cupboard, grabbed my purse, and ran out the door. Aunt Helen’s apartment was five minutes away.

My mom’s older sister Helen had always been like a second mother to me, another grandma to my children. She had been there for me when I was going through my divorce and had been indispensable to both my mom and me when my dad’s Alzheimer’s was progressing. Her life had not been easy, though. In addition to her husband, she had buried two sons.

On the morning of December 6, she had talked about changing her health insurance plan. She had lunch with her son. Later that day, she was taking pictures off her walls in preparation for some painting to be done in her apartment. She sat down in her recliner and went to sleep. She never woke up.

Aunt Helen had a son who lived in Alaska, and she had traveled there several times. He and his wife had taken her on trips to Hawaii and Europe. She was an inspiration to me. If she could travel to all these places when she was in her sixties and seventies, I could certainly go to Africa in my forties.

For years, my mom and Aunt Helen had been involved in Ladies Aid at church. One of their undertakings was sewing quilts for World Relief. At the end of September, they would lay all the colorful quilts across the church pews for the congregation to enjoy before packing them in boxes for their long journey to third-world countries.

At Aunt Helen’s funeral, Pastor talked of her purpose in life, raising her family, cooking at the school, and caring for her husband and one of her sons when they became ill. And in later years, making the quilts had been her mission.

My breath caught in my chest as Pastor presented my cousin with one of these quilts. Tears rolled down my cheeks.

I regretted the fact that I hadn’t told her about our trip. But now, from her eternal home in heaven, not only did she know about the trip, she would be with us on the entire journey.

ANOTHER LETTER CRISIS

After Life Missions accepted us, they emailed a plethora of information, including how to send out letters seeking donations. Asking people for money was uncomfortable, but it turned out to be the most lucrative way to raise funds. The initial estimate we were given was that the trip to Africa would cost approximately $2700 for each of us.

We made a list of 140 people we were willing to send donation letters to and, within a week, emailed their names and addresses to Life Promotions, where volunteers would address the envelopes, stamp them, and mail them back to us along with sponsor letters. All we had to do was put our personal note on the letter, stuff it in the envelope, and mail it.

A week later, Life Promotions sent us a message that they had not received our list. I promptly sent it again. I was anxious to get the letters out. December 31 was approaching, and people might want to make the tax-deductible donation before the end of the year for income tax purposes. Finally, a package arrived.

I ripped it open and paged through the pile of envelopes, not recognizing a single name. Only a few of their sponsor letters were included. I called Life Promotions.

They couldn’t tell me what had happened, but asked me to mail the envelopes back to them with a list of the correct names and addresses. I did that immediately, but by then it was December 30. I told them just to send the letters and return envelopes. We would start addressing our own envelopes so they would be ready to be mailed as soon as the rest of the supplies arrived.

We had missed the end-of-the-year deadline, but as it happened, the price of postage was going up on January 8 that year. I was getting nervous. Granted, postage would only increase by two cents, but that added up to two and a half dollars for all the letters we were sending out. To me, that seemed like a huge waste of money when we were asking for money in return. What would our potential sponsors think?

I had become irrational.

On Saturday, January 7, the package arrived with lots of envelopes, lots of letters, and for some reason – two-cent stamps. I had a house full of helpers. My friend from Minnesota, her husband, my son, my son’s friend, and Val’s boyfriend had all been enlisted. They stuffed and licked envelopes while Val and I added our personal notes and addressed the rest of the envelopes.

I sent my husband to town to mail the first batch and buy more 37 cent stamps. This was before the United States Post Office came out with the Liberty stamp. In 2006, you got what you bought in USPS stamps. Himey came home with several books of stamps. They were 39 cent stamps.

My blood pressure shot up. Himey could tell by the look on my face that I was about to explode. “It was the only kind of stamps they were selling,” he tried to explain.

Just before I blew up, God grabbed me, but He didn’t say a word. He didn’t have to. I calmed down. Two cents per letter didn’t matter. What mattered was that Val and I had family and friends who supported us and cared about me even if I lost control at times.

Maybe God had been testing me, or maybe Satan was trying to undermine this trip. Maybe I had let myself get worked up over nothing. Whatever the case, the letters were mailed. And God went out with them and blessed the many people who sent back their donations.

MORE PRESSURE

The initial estimate for the trip turned out to be a tad low. Dave Bell worked to find reasonable flights to Kenya to stay within the planned budget, but unfortunately, airfare came close to an additional $1,000 per person. The total for Val and me combined rose to $7,520. Life Promotions needed it all by June 29, a month before we left.

I am blessed to know so many kind and caring people who were able to make contributions of any size. In addition to the wonderful monetary gifts, individuals and businesses came forward with supplies for us to deliver to the needy in Kenya. The contributions ranged from children’s vitamins, Band-Aids, and other medical supplies, to school supplies and vegetable seeds.

As the donations and supplies came in, the pressure started to build. Not that we wouldn’t have the money we needed when the time came, but I was afraid that I would let these people down, and more importantly, that I would let the people in Kenya down.

In preparation for the trip, Jen and Dave Bell, our leaders, held several meetings for the team at the Life Promotions office in Appleton. This gave us a chance to meet some of the other people we would be traveling with. We discovered what would be expected of us, learned about the culture of the people we would be working with, and gathered supplies to take along. They gave us a dress code – loose-fitting, knee-length skirts for the females and button-front shirts and khakis for the males. Jewelry was discouraged, and we were reminded that even the poorest American was wealthy by Kenyan standards. Modesty in all aspects was strongly recommended.

At the last meeting with the Bells, Jen told us that in the weeks prior to departing, many things could go wrong. For past participants, it was as if Satan worked to get them to second-guess themselves and the mission trip entirely.

My cousin, my sister-in-law, and my father-in-law were all having medical problems. What if something happened to one of my loved ones while I was gone? I had spent so little time with Nick the past two years since he had graduated from high school. How fair was it that I was taking off with Val and leaving him home? How fair was it that my husband had traveled very little?

Val was having so many problems with her boyfriend that she worried the trip to Africa would strain their relationship to the point of breaking. She considered backing out. As Jen had predicted, both of us began to question the decision to travel halfway around the world.

The Monday before we were to leave on our mission trip to Kenya, Val and I both had the day off work to do some last-minute shopping. As we walked through the parking lot of our favorite store carrying bags full of discounted clothes, my heart dropped. The car had a flat tire. I knew there was a gas station a few blocks away, so I took a chance and started slowly driving in that direction. Just around the corner, though, like a mirage rising in the desert, a Tires Plus appeared.

The man at the counter said they were busy, but they would get to my car as soon as they could. He asked me to sign the usual agreement, which granted them permission to work on my vehicle, and informed me that their standard charge for fixing a flat was $18.95. The last time I had a flat tire fixed, it had cost half that much, but I didn’t say a word. I signed the paperwork.

Val and I patiently waited. I had so much to do to prepare for the trip; I didn’t have time for this. After what seemed like hours, but in reality was only 45 minutes, the mechanic called me. He showed me some frightening piece of nondescript metal that had been in my tire.

I was slightly impressed and asked for the bill.

“No charge,” he replied.

“Are you sure?”

“Yea, sorry it took so long, so it’s on us.”

If God could show up at Tires Plus, surely He would follow us to Kenya.

The Church I Was Raised In

Chapter 3

A time to mourn, and a time to dance

(Ecclesiastes 3:4b, NKJV)

THE HEART COMPOUND

At 5:27 a.m., I was sure I wasn’t going to get anymore sleep. Finally, I was in Africa, and my mind reeled. I quietly rolled out of bed, grabbed my journal from the nightstand, and padded to the bathroom. The light was blinding, but my eyes adjusted quickly.

After a twenty-four hour journey, we had arrived in Nairobi at 9:30 the night before. We had waited for our luggage, cleared customs, and loaded the bus, which would become our second home during our two-week stay in Kenya.

Our team consisted of seven adults and eight teenagers. Jen and Dave Bell, along with their son Nate, were our team leaders. Cathy and Jon had come with two of their children, Carson and Sarah. Geoff, his son Brandon, Michelle, who had been on this trip in the past, and three teenage girls, Kari, Brea, and Amanda filled out our team along with Val and myself.

Vickie was our hostess and the founder of HEART (Health Education Africa Resource Team), the organization we were working through. She was a community health nurse by occupation who had traveled to Kenya with her husband many years before. Having fallen in love with the country and its people, she returned to Africa when her husband passed away. She felt called to address the pressing medical needs, the AIDS crisis in particular, so she established HEART. We would witness in the coming days the many programs which Vickie had started.

The beautiful HEART compound in a northern suburb of Nairobi would be home base for us in Kenya. A European businessman had built the compound to accommodate his associates for business as well as for leisure. His vision had been to offer his partners a comfortable place to regroup before and after safaris into the wilds of Kenya.

Unfortunately, he passed away before he was able to take full advantage of the facilities. His family sold the estate to two HEART board members in 2003 for a reasonable price. For years, the HEART organization had rented the lodge from them for one dollar a year.

As I wrote in my journal that first morning, it didn’t take long to get cold on the tile floor of the bathroom. I rose to my feet and stretched. Before leaving the room, I flipped on a switch on a tank mounted to the wall.

The HEART compound came with running water, a luxury throughout much of Africa. We were reminded to conserve the clean water as much as we could. We had been requested to take only military showers, turning off the water while we shampooed our hair or soaped our bodies. To save energy, each bathroom had its own small, hot-water heater, which needed to be turned on or off according to use. In twenty minutes, I would have hot water for a refreshing, although quick, shower.

Instead of waiting there, I stole out of the chilly bathroom and back to the bedroom. I stepped into my shoes, slipped from the room, and was out on the balcony without rousing my roommates, Kari and Amanda. Val was fast asleep in the room she shared next door with Michelle and Sarah. In the dim predawn light, I clutched the handrail as I made my way down the stairs. I hadn’t yet seen the HEART center in the sunlight, but I could already picture its beauty.

The compound consisted of four core buildings. The main lodge held a dining room, two large offices, and seven bedrooms all with attached bathrooms. The two beautiful homes on the grounds housed Vickie Winkler and other fulltime missionaries. The last of the chief buildings contained a large commercial kitchen, laundry facilities, tons of storage, and accommodations for the staff.

Not only were the buildings homey and spacious, the grounds were meticulously kept. The landscaping and the gardens were breathtakingly beautiful. It was the winter season south of the equator, but flowers bloomed in vibrant yellows, pinks, and oranges.

As sunrays peered over the horizon, roosters crowed on the other side of the eight-foot fence which surrounded the property. Returning to my room, I heard a dog bark in the distance. Though few residents could afford the luxury of owning a pet, stray dogs roamed the city of Nairobi, its suburbs, and its slums. Beyond that fence was a world filled with dirt, crime, poverty, and an incredible amount of sorrow.

Would I make a difference here? Would I be able to squelch that sorrow for any of the people I would meet? Was I strong enough to meet their sorrow head on?

I’d worked in the medical field as a certified medical assistant for almost twenty years. I’d seen babies born in a bright, sterile hospital and the elderly struggling for their last breaths in a low-ceilinged, malodorous nursing home. I’d held the hands of women having miscarriages and shared the news of a potentially life-ending diagnosis. In my personal life, I had watched my father succumb to Alzheimer’s disease. I had been with my sister when her Lord and Savior called her home after a six-year battle with cancer.

What would Kenya throw at me that would top all of that? I would soon find out.

BUS TRIP TO BRYDGES

Kenyans have a saying, Americans have clocks, Africans have time. We were warned from the start that time was relative. If something was scheduled for nine in the morning, it might happen at nine or ten or eleven. In the journal I kept, I tried to record what time we did things, but in general, I only had a good guess. I eventually stopped wearing my watch, as did the rest of the team, because of the frustration.

Meals also just kind of happened. We rarely ate lunch, but once we stopped concentrating on the time, we never missed it. To announce that the evening meal was ready, one of the HEART staff would ring an old bell outside of the dining room.

After breakfast that first morning, we unpacked the donated supplies which we had brought from America. We filled the three long tables in the dining room with everything from multivitamins to coloring books to children’s t-shirts to antibiotics. All of these supplies would be distributed to the people we would be working with.

When we had finished sorting these supplies, Michelle, Cathy, and I were ready for our next task. However, it was time for the teenagers to play soccer on the small lawn and for Jon and Geoff to visit. Jen would spend much of her time the next two weeks telling us to relax, but for me this trip was not about relaxing. I wanted to change the world. I had to get started on accomplishing that goal.

By late morning, it was finally time to do something, so our team boarded the bus for the first of many drives. The ride to Brydges Orphanage in the village of Ngong, west of Nairobi, was tenuous at best. The streets were busy and filled with potholes large enough to swallow compact cars, yet the drivers wove in and out of traffic at harrowing speeds. The road into the orphanage was unbelievably narrow, and no one had any idea how our twenty-passenger vehicle reached its destination, much less turned around. If we put our hands out of the windows, we could have touched some of the buildings we passed. Not that we wanted to.

Most of the buildings were dreary, decayed, and appeared deserted. Then we would see children playing in front of one of these sheds or clothes hanging on a line. People actually live like this? It would be a question in my mind many more times throughout the trip.

When we arrived, Jen and Dave jumped from the bus and told us to wait as there wasn’t time for all of us to get out. Some of the boys and girls came out into the yard and waved shyly at us, their dark faces filled with toothy smiles, their hair shorn close to their scalps. Their clothes were dirty and worn, hanging from their thin frames. One of the women from the orphanage came into the yard and shooed them back inside. She boarded the bus, introduced herself, and invited us inside. Jen had come up behind her and gestured to say, “No, do not get off the bus.”

We politely declined the woman’s invitation to come into the orphanage.

Soon another woman got on the bus, introduced herself, and graciously asked us to get off and meet the children. Again, Jen motioned behind her back for us to stay on the bus.

Lastly, Dave came out, climbed on the bus and announced, “Let’s go in for just a minute.”

Time is relative.

BRYDGES ORPHANAGE

Most of the orphans were in school that afternoon, but the handful of children who remained behind showed us around. A girl named Nancy reached for Val. Kari and Amanda had children hanging from each of their arms. The rest of the team likewise were discovered and adopted by the orphans.

Would one choose me?

“My name is Dennis.” A small, shy boy took my hand, his voice barely a whisper. “I am eight years old.” His dark skin glistened in the midday sun, but his smile shone even more. “Let me show you my room.”

Each small bedroom had at least three bunk beds and not enough space for anything else. But each child still showed off their space, some explaining that they shared their bed with one or two others.

Besides the bedrooms, the main building held a large room used as a dining room and all-purpose room, a small kitchen area, and a small room that was set up as a store. In the store, the children sold the various crafts which they had made by hand. There were beautiful necklaces and beaded bracelets, carved figures of elephants, hippos and birds, braided potholders, and crocheted baskets.

There were several outer buildings, one housing a small library. A few of the children grabbed books and insisted they would read to us.

All of the other rooms were bare, with only the most basic of necessities. How did they live in those kinds of conditions and remain so joyful? We would find out before our journey back to America.

After 45 minutes, Dave and Jen were anxious to get back on the road and herded us into the bus. The orphans hated to see us go and only the promise that we would see them in a few days allowed us to depart as easily as we did. Later in the week, we would spend the day at the park with them, so they could soak up fresh air and friendship.

VCT

At our next stop, we began to see why Nairobi had so many orphans and needed orphanages such as Brydges.

In Kenya, many people will talk about the importance of knowing their status. This, of course, refers to whether or not they are HIV positive. Unlike in America, Kenyans can’t just walk into a medical clinic and ask for a blood test. There are not enough medical centers or hospitals, and the staff at those facilities is overwhelmed with sick patients. Plus, no one has insurance that will cover the cost of such a test.

Instead, clinics are set up to only deal with the AIDS crisis. One such place is the VCT, which stands for Volunteer Counseling and Testing. At these clinics, not only can a person have their HIV status checked, they can also get the necessary counseling and education based on those results.

Much stigma is attached to being HIV positive or having AIDS. When AIDS first burst onto the scene in the late 1980s, people panicked and saw it as the disease that would end mankind, or at least eradicate those individuals who lived a certain lifestyle. In America, in the twenty-first century, a great deal of that fear is gone.

Because treatments are available in many parts of the world, AIDS, though still a serious disease, doesn’t carry the death sentence it used to. In third-world countries, however, that is not the case. Without access to proper education, HIV continues to spread.

At the Ngong VCT we visited our first day in Kenya, we toured the tiny cramped rooms where they tested and counseled. When funds are available, the VCT supplies the antiretroviral drugs which slow the AIDS progression. Despite all of these efforts, HIV continues to spread throughout the slums of Nairobi and much of the third world, leaving in its wake thousands of orphans.

Jane, an energetic and cheerful woman who runs the clinic, explained the process and answered our questions. I wish I could say that I remembered it all. My mind was on overload from the orphanage. All that I retained from the visit to that testing center was seeing the interesting posters on the walls, pictures of friendly condoms with smiling faces.

YOUTH CENTER

After our tour of the VCT, Jane showed us the new youth center which was in the same building. She then asked to speak to Jen and Dave in private for just a minute. They told our team to visit with the teenage boys in the center, and they would be right back. We all looked at each other, but it was only a second before Nate jumped in and asked the boys what they were doing.

The youth center was a room perhaps thirty-by-thirty-foot square with a cement floor. Sheets lined the ceiling and most of the walls. In the center of the room was an area which could be set up as a boxing ring. Posts were anchored securely into holes in the floors and ropes held them square. There was also a pool table, a dartboard, a mancala game next to the window, and a small room with a TV/VCR and movies. A boom box played Christian rock music. Ten or twelve youth sat or stood scattered throughout the room. Most were teenage boys who were playing cards at plastic tables with plastic chairs, the kind you might have on your deck.

It didn’t take them long to teach Nate, Brandon, and Carson how to play their card game. They called it Kenyan poker, even though there was no gambling involved. It was very similar to our card game Uno, where certain cards were wild or meant skip or reverse. The teenagers on our team played it every chance they got for the rest of the trip.

Val and Sarah joined the game after watching a few hands. They both shuffled the cards using the riffle technique, as opposed to the easier and more common overhand. In Kenya they must only know how to shuffle by overhand, because the boys at the youth center were fascinated by the way our girls shuffled cards. Or were they simply fascinated by the American girls?

These youth playing cards and shooting pool could have been in a basement in America. They moved to the music on the boom box and laughed with each other. Easily entertained, the teenagers were having a good time. I wondered, though, what their home life was like. Like the orphans, did they have a home life at all?

ELJOY SCHOOL

More laughter and music greeted several of our team members the next day.

Deep within the Mathare Slum, Eljoy School is a small, cement-block building with only three classrooms, each as bare as the next. Taped on the walls were hand-drawn pictures of shapes, cars, buildings, and fruit and other foods, along with the alphabet. The desks were long, wooden benches next to thin tables. No books were available.

The girls wore white-and-red-checkered dresses. The boys wore shirts in the same print with navy shorts. All of the children had bright red, pullover sweaters, which some tied around their waists. If the uniforms hadn’t been so ill fitting, they might have been owned by youngsters at an upscale boarding school. These cheerful children couldn’t have been farther away from such a place, but they were just as happy where they were.

Each of the classes shared songs, skits, and poems with the visiting Americans. They were full of life and love and had no clue about what they were missing in the rest of the world. In one classroom, Jon and Val shared Bible stories. In return, the students laughed and danced for them.

Their angelic voices sang, Head, shoulders, knees and toes, knees and toes, knees and toes, as their hands moved through the various body parts. When they could no longer sing because of their laughter, their voices reflecting a British accent, they continued to dance around their crowded classroom.

It appeared as though they knew no sadness, that grief couldn’t possibly be hovering around their doorsteps. Yet as our team worked its way farther into the slums, we discovered unimaginable sorrow.

Children of Eljoy School

Chapter 4

A time to tear and a time to sew

(Ecclesiastes 3:7a, NKJV)

MORNING DEVOTION

It was Tuesday morning, and we had been in Kenya 36 hours. We sat in the HEART dining room, waiting to eat our breakfast. Carson, the youngest team member at fourteen years old, had been assigned devotions that day. He apologized before he began, saying that he wasn’t good at leading devotions, so he had written a poem instead.

Sometimes I wonder, God,

Where have you gone?

Are you here?

Or is this all wrong?

But when I keep on breathing,

And when singing a song,

I think to myself,

“No, this is not wrong.”

The God I know is one of love.

He sent His Son to forgive us all.

He created everything,

Ugliness and all.

Even a place called Kenya.

Now Kenya is a place that is not yet tamed.

The spiders and snakes and the lions, too,

Have a chance of eating you!

But once you get past this dire news,

And of God who is watching over you,

It doesn’t really matter whether you are beaten and battered,

Because God loves all and will use you for the better.

Sometimes we fall,

And sometimes we falter.

But God is always there praying for us.

I don’t know how He finds the time

To think of us and make things right.

I make mistakes nearly every day,

But thankfully God is there with a path headed the right way!

Now that you are bored

Of this short poem,

I say we eat

So we can get goin’!

The adults at the table looked at each other. We shared the same thought, “I would rather read a devotion than write a poem.” But Carson had summed up our experiences so far. Was the world really so big that life in Africa could be so different than it was back home? And our journey had only begun.

WEEP

The day before we only had a taste of what HEART was doing in Kenya. One of Vickie’s first programs in Nairobi was the Women’s Equality Empowerment Program (WEEP). When the AIDS crisis began its march across the globe, many people who discovered they were HIV positive went to bed to die. They believed that there was no treatment for them, and in Africa, this was still common, especially among women.

Often, when a Kenyan woman tests positive for HIV and her husband is still in the picture, he will abandon her even though he probably brought the disease into the home. Since Kenya is a male-dominated country, a husband’s unfaithfulness is common. His wife is his possession. Women take the blame if something goes wrong in the family, never the men.

Most of these women have small children to care for. When their husbands leave them and they go to bed to die, their children have no one to watch over them. Unless the mother has some sort of support system, her sons and daughters may end up as street children, finding gangs, drugs, and prostitution as the means for survival. The lucky ones find their way to orphanages such as Brydges.

Through WEEP, Vickie has given these mothers a chance to work and earn an income. This sense of worth by itself helps them to maintain their health and keep their children at home with them. They have a reason to go on. WEEP also helps to supply them with the antiviral meds they need to live.

The first such project which Vickie started for the WEEP women was making bed nets. Malaria is so prevalent in Africa that up to 36 percent of children born in Kenya die from it before their first birthday. Yet it is such a preventable disease.

Malaria is caused by a parasite and is passed from person to person by the bite of a mosquito. Most Americans know that mosquitoes come out in droves after dark, and they are attracted to stagnant water. Even though we don’t need to worry about malaria, we know we should stay inside from dusk until dawn to avoid getting bitten unless we are covered in clothing or bug spray. We also know that we should avoid those swampy areas mosquitoes love. Unfortunately, many Africans haven’t learned these simple facts.

Using bed nets has proven to be the most effective protection in Kenya and other tropical countries. Since they don’t have screens on their windows and often don’t have doors, those nasty mosquitoes fly right in. The only way to keep them from getting to you is surrounding your bed with a net, ideally one that has been treated with an insecticide.

The WEEP program pays these women to sew bed nets which are then given to neighborhood children. The income provides these mothers with a way to support their own children, while giving other children in the community a chance to avoid exposure to malaria. Various charitable organizations, as well as individuals, are able to make tax-deductible donations toward the purchase of the bed nets.

THE FIRST WEEP WOMEN

The rutted road to the WEEP center was in the same condition as the one to the orphanage. As we drove deeper into the village of Ngong, we saw shops everywhere that were built from scraps of metal and plywood. In front of many of them, the residents were selling everything from shoes to beds to vegetables. People seemed to be everywhere. They walked to some distant destination, leaned in their doorways or simply stood alongside the road, and watched us drive by.

When we arrived at the project, we wound our way through several buildings and then a bare yard. The WEEP women were in a small building of corrugated metal. On one end of the building were their supplies, stacks of netting, and finished bed nets. Several women were hard at work on eight sewing machines at the other end. They seemed to ignore us at first; they continued to sew without looking up. We learned that they wanted to make as many nets in a day as possible, so they didn’t want to stop long enough to share their stories with us.

They eventually did pause from their work to tell us about themselves. Though each beautiful woman was different, each story came back to the same point: they were ready to die when they found out they were HIV positive. They had no hope, no reason to go on. Then they learned about a program that would help them earn an income and provide them with the medication they needed to control their disease. They literally left their death beds and went on to live full, productive lives, giving their children that same motivation.

We heard similar stories the next day. People with no hope are people with no reason to get up in the morning. No matter where you are in life or in this world, you need to have hope for tomorrow.

The WEEP women and many others we would meet while in Africa found their hope beyond the material things in this life. They turned their trust to the One who grants eternal life, Jesus Christ.

THE MATHARE SLUM

On Tuesday morning, Cathy, Michelle, and I chose to go with Vickie to learn about a new WEEP project she had started in Mathare Slum. The rest of the team jumped on the bus with Jen and Dave to visit Eljoy School and other groups who worked in the same slum.

Traffic in Nairobi and all of Kenya that we visited was insane. Having been settled by the British, they drive on the left-hand side of the road. That alone took some getting used to. The day before, while riding the bus home, a truck came straight toward us as it was passing a car. Val screamed. Sitting in the aisle seat at the back of the bus, she had a crystal-clear view of the oncoming traffic. She swore she saw her life flash before her eyes.

Vickie drove a four-wheel-drive Toyota jeep up and down the streets of Nairobi, not letting the traffic faze her a bit. She is truly an amazing woman. A stout woman with platinum blond, short hair, she didn’t allow much to stop her when she was on a mission.

When she told us we were going to a slum, I wondered where we had been the day before. That sure fit my definition of a slum, but little did I know. Driving into Mathare was like entering a different world, something you would only see on the nightly news.

Vickie parked the jeep a few blocks into the slum because the road ended there. Several cement block walls faced us, obviously a building which had never been finished. Metal rebar hung over the scrap heap at its center. Plastic bags lay everywhere. Later we learned that many residents used these bags as their toilets and simply threw them into the street when full because no sanitation system existed.

That explained only some of the odors which hung oppressively in the air.

THE NEWEST WEEP WOMEN

From the Jeep, we walked the distance of a city block down a slight gradient over a packed-dirt path to the new WEEP project. Here the women were making school uniforms for the children of Mathare.

These uniforms are another thing that outsiders cannot comprehend. The children in general wear rags or donated, used clothes sent from the United States or Europe. When they go to school, however, they are required to wear uniforms.

When a family cannot afford food, how can they be expected to purchase school uniforms? In addition to that, parents also pay for their school books. Because of those two costs, a great many boys and girls do not attend school. Additionally, the older children are often expected to work to supplement the family income. Yet Kenya will claim they offer a free education to all school-age children.

Vickie saw this difficulty in acquiring an education as a huge problem. So through HEART, she started a program in Mathare where widows with AIDS could sew school uniforms. They earned an income from the sales, and the families had access to more affordable uniforms.

The building that was set up for their sewing room was medium size. It felt cramped, however, with six sewing machines and eight women. Because none of them had ever sewn before and fabric was expensive, they practiced on paper bags. They lined the walls of the room with these small, perfect clothes made out of brown paper.

The women were proud of their accomplishments, and they were scheduled to receive their first real fabric that week. The first uniforms they would sew would be for their own children. For the first time ever, their children would be able to go to school.

Mary runs this WEEP program. A pastor’s wife and trained social worker, she had felt useless when she first moved into the slum with her husband. There was so much work to do, so much despair. She couldn’t imagine how or where to begin. Once she connected with Vickie, they were able to identify young mothers in need of such a project.

Each woman in the crowded room shared her story. A few spoke in English, but most of them used their native language of Swahili while Mary translated. My heart went out to them and their children. All I wanted to do was help them.

“Excuse me,” I blurted out, unable to stand idly by any longer.

“Yes?” Mary looked at me.

“I want to tell the women that I sew some of my own clothes, and I know how hard it can be. I want them to know that I think what they have done so far is wonderful.” I gestured to the paper shirts and dresses lining the walls. “I am sure they will do fine when they get real fabric.”

Mary nodded and translated for those who didn’t understand English. A few of them smiled, but most of the women glared at me. What had I done wrong? It took a moment for me to realize, but like the women the day before, these young mothers just wanted to get on with their work.

I sighed. Why had Vickie even brought us here? When would we be able to start helping the people we met instead of slowing them down?

THE SCARE OF MY LIFE

We went to Mary’s church which was across the alley from the project’s sewing room. We ate a lunch of peanut butter sandwiches and bananas while Vickie shared the numbers with Mary.

Vickie estimated that within a month of the project being fully operational, the women would each be making the equivalent of thirty dollars a month. Rent usually ran about twenty dollars a month for most of the tiny cement rooms in the slums. I saw the wheels spinning in Mary’s head when she heard the figures. Her eyes grew large and a smile spread across her sweet face. “They can each afford their own place to live with their children,” she said. Clearly, Mary saw this as the answer to many prayers.

About that time, Vickie asked me to run and get the gifts we had brought along. In the back of her Jeep, we had stacked a pile of colorful quilts, quilts which had been shipped from the United States, donated by churches, sewn by women just like my mother and my aunt. We would distribute them to the women. I was anxious to see the bedding find homes in the slum and know where these items, made with such love, would end up.

As Vickie held up her car keys, I looked around for my teammates Michelle and Cathy. I didn’t know where they had disappeared to. I remembered the stern instructions that Jen and Dave had repeated to us at each of our team meetings. “Don’t go anywhere by yourself at any time for any reason.” We had also been told how the slums were filled with crime, and any white person was seen as someone with great wealth, so we were to be extra careful.

I looked at Vickie and took the keys to the Jeep. Surely she knew what she was doing. She wouldn’t possibly tell me to do something that would put me in harm’s way. Besides, I could finally do something to help out, no matter how small it was.

I went out the front door of the church and looked up the gentle slope to where the Jeep was parked. The dirt-packed alley wasn’t filled with people, but there were a few milling about and others walking with determination to their destination. It was the middle of the day and the sun was shining. Certainly I could make it there and back safely.

I took a deep breath, said a quick prayer, and walked to the vehicle as quickly as I could. Because it was an older model, the door on the driver’s side had to be unlocked first to reach the latch to open the back hatch. As I came back around the side of the Jeep to the unlocked hatch, a man was suddenly in my path.

“What are you doing?” he demanded.

I froze. I stared at the quilts which were out of my reach. I thought of the door to the church one very long block away. I held my breath. Tentatively I looked up at the tall man standing so close to me that I could see beads of sweat on his dark forehead. My gaze dropped to my feet. I felt myself getting weak, the world beginning to spin. What had I gotten myself into?

“Oh, you must be with Momma Vickie,” he smiled down at me. “I am sorry if I scared you. Can I help you?”

“No, thank you. I’m fine.” I let out my breath and returned my focus to the goods in the back of the Jeep. The man reached in and without another word loaded them into my arms. “Thank you,” I muttered.

Then I locked the Jeep and strode down to the church without looking back. It wasn’t until I was back inside that it dawned on me that the man had been watching Vickie’s car, keeping it safe. Vickie had known that he would be there and would watch over me as well. Would God keep me as safe for the rest of this trip?

Mathere Slum

Chapter 5

A time to be born and a time to die

(Ecclesiastes 3:2a, NKJV)

DEFINITION OF A SLUM

I must admit that growing up in the rural countryside of northern Wisconsin, I haven’t spent much time in a big city. When I have been to places such as Detroit or Chicago or Denver, it was to nice neighborhoods. Over the years, I have driven through rather questionable areas, though. On the surface, they look the same as other neighborhoods, but much more rundown, dreary, and scary. All you have to do is keep your car doors locked and pray that you don’t break down. Don’t stop driving, and don’t get out of your car.

I always thought it would be sad to live in such a place. We picture drug addicts and criminals residing in the slums, not families with children. But as we all know, families with children do live in our slums for a variety of reasons. Some live there by choice, but most of them not.

In Africa, and many other places in the third world, the word slum takes on a different dimension. It’s not a place that was once a part of the city and was neglected. The slums in Nairobi are big, bad places where the poor and destitute are allowed to settle so that the city proper will not have to deal with them.

Kibera Slum, southwest of the center of Nairobi, is one of the largest slums in the world. Population estimates run as high as 1.5 million people, depending on the time of year. If you do a search for it on Google Earth, you can see a huge area, roughly the size of New York City’s Central Park, filled with structures made of scraps of corrugated metal and pieces of plywood. Even from the grainy satellite shot, you can see the desolation and sense the despair.

Mathare Slum, on the northeast side of Nairobi, isn’t much better. The population averages near a half million and encompasses several areas. The view, however, is much the same. No trees, no roads, just a sea of pitiful buildings, if you can call them buildings. Between those structures, crammed together as they are, are mounds of garbage, human waste, live chickens and goats, and dead ones. Inside those buildings, entire extended families live in rooms that aren’t more than ten feet square with no indoor plumbing and seldom electricity.

This is where we learned about the WEEP women. Did these stoic young mothers actually live like this with their children?

THE SLUM HOMES

To learn more about these brave women and understand the challenges they face daily, Mary wanted to take us to some of their homes. The church Mary’s husband ran and the room filled with the sewing machines the new WEEP women used were on the edge of the slum. Now we headed deeper into Mathare.

The decaying buildings, made of cement block and four to five stories high, were close together with narrow passages between them. Along many of these alleyways, I could have reached my arms out and touched a wall on each side, not that I would have wanted to touch anything as we walked these paths. Clothes were hanging on the balconies to dry, despite the cloud cover.

The first home we visited was at the end of a hallway only wide enough for one person to pass at a time. The cement room was twelve-foot-by-twelve foot square, and the only contents were a Jiko (a compact stove which burns charcoal), a few clothes, a sheet hung to separate the sleeping area, and a blanket on the bare, cement floor. A bare light bulb hung from the ceiling, but with no electricity to the building, it couldn’t chase the darkness from the corners. This home had no indoor plumbing. The woman and her daughter had been living with her brother, his wife, and their four children in the same size apartment before Mary, through the WEEP project, had moved her into this room. The young mother was proud that she had her own place.

Vickie turned to the young woman. “This is so nice. I am so proud of you for getting your own place, but you don’t have a mattress. Tomorrow, you will have one.” Michelle, Cathy, and I exchanged glances. We had no doubt that Vickie would deliver.

Another woman had moved into a similar home where her only furnishings were a borrowed chair and a mattress loaned to her by her neighbor. The mattress wasn’t one with springs such as we have in our homes. This mattress was merely a large piece of yellowed foam.

Her husband had kicked her and their daughter out when he found out she had AIDS. She had been living on the streets when Mary met her.

Both of these women were given one of the quilts we had brought with us. And Vickie told Mary to take WEEP money and buy them each their own mattress.

None of the buildings had running water, but at various places throughout the slum, there were city water spigots. One of those faucets was at the end of one of the alleys adjacent to one of the homes. Standing there in a rusted bucket was a young girl maybe eight or ten years old. She was stark naked, thin as a rail, and shivering. All alone, next to a muddy puddle of water, she washed herself with a grey rag. Could this possibly clean her, either physically or emotionally? Did she have a life beyond this greyness?

Of the many things we saw on this trip, she is one of the pictures I carry in my head. She reminds me that I live in a world far away from hers. What could I, or anyone for that matter, do to help this precious child of God?

THE REAL SLUM

Then Mary said, “Let’s go into the slums. I want to show you one more home.” Once again I was speechless. I looked at Michelle and Cathy. We shared one thought: Aren’t we already in the slums? The next place we visited made the first ones look pretty chic, so I am sure that by some standards we had now reached the actual “slums.”

We turned a corner and the concrete buildings faded away. Sheets of plywood and pieces of corrugated tin, leaning together to form haphazard structures, surrounded us. The sun, momentarily breaking through the clouds, was able to reach its rays down on the landscape, but did little to lighten the atmosphere.

One young mother was new to the WEEP program. Like the other women, she was trying desperately to raise her children while she was battling AIDS. Her home, unbelievably, was smaller than the others, perhaps six feet across and not much wider. She had the customary Jiko stove near the door. There were two worn, tattered chairs with off-white crocheted doilies on the arms and across the backs. A crate turned on its side served as a coffee table, another doily centered in the middle. The only other furnishing in the room was a bare mattress behind a thin sheet.

This home was different because the interior walls were lined in plastic to cover the holes left from piecing sheets of plywood together on the outside. The young mother was proud of her home. She grinned from ear to ear as we exclaimed what a lovely place it was and that she had it fixed up so nice. She was devoted to her children with the unyielding love only a mother can give. She had one concern, though.

Many people who have AIDS also have tuberculosis. The two diseases often go hand in hand, especially for those living in poverty. This woman was in that class. She knew that at night when her coughing was the worst, she shouldn’t be sleeping with her children. However, if they weren’t with her up on the bed, they had to sleep on the floor.

“But Momma Vickie, when my children sleep on the floor, the rats that come through the holes in the walls run right over my children.” She didn’t tell us this so we would feel sorry for her or be shocked, or even that she wanted anything done about it. She wanted to know if it was better for her to cough on her children at night or to let the rats run over them.

We looked at Vickie to see her response. She nodded and said that she understood her concern. She praised the young mother again for keeping her home so clean and for wanting the best for her children. Then she turned to Mary and said, “Find her a new place to live by tomorrow. I will see that you get the money for it.”

ONE LITTLE LAMB

As we walked the narrow passages of the slums, stepping over streams of sewage, a small girl followed us. Her name was Sondra, and her mother was one of the women we had met that day sewing uniforms. This cherub of a child attached herself to Michelle and me as soon as we met her. We continued throughout the day to tell her our names, but the five-year-old insisted on calling us mzungu no matter what we told her.

In Swahili, mzungu literally means “one who travels,” but most Kenyans will call any white person by that name. I suppose it can be taken as a bit of a derogatory term, but Sondra said it with such a grin on her face, all we could do was grin back at her.

She followed us everywhere we went that day. During lunch, I held her in my lap. After eating, I pulled a notebook out of my backpack and drew pictures in it for her. I tried to get her to tell me what I had drawn, such as a giraffe, which would be twiga in Swahili, or a tree, which would be miti. No matter what the picture was, though, after I pointed to it and said its name in Swahili, she would point at me and say mzungu. A big smile would follow.

I wished I could only hold her in my lap forever. I knew that she had a mother who loved her and was working to give her daughter the best life she could. However, the best life in the Mathare Slum is worse than most of us could imagine. Had I been called to Africa to save such a child as Sondra? Would the few hours I spent with her that one day make any difference in her seemingly hopeless life?

Did she know that she had a Savior? With the language barrier, I had no way of knowing. All I could do was pray for her, pray that her precious smile never faded in the poverty surrounding her, and that when her new mzungu friends went home, she would find a friend in Jesus.

MANY LAMBS

As Mary and Vickie led our group through the Mathare Slum, what we witnessed was stunning. We saw a world beyond imagination where garbage was everywhere and filthy water ran in streams along most of the trails between the buildings. An indescribable smell rose from a mixture of rotting food, unwashed bodies, mud, and some other odor I can’t place. A goat or a cow would randomly stand on top of a pile of rubbish, trying to eat what was available.

We learned later in the week that other people who were not destitute chose to live in these conditions. William, an older man who was a driver for HEART, told us that he and his wife lived in Kibera. Because they both had jobs, they could afford better housing, but they wanted something better for their children. They lived where they did to save enough money to send their children to college.

In the United States, if we can’t save enough for our children’s education, we hope they can get grants or scholarships. The rest of the money comes from low-interest student loans. In Kenya, that is not an option. College tuition needs to be paid for up front; no bank is going to give anyone a loan to further their education.

I was ashamed when I had to admit to myself that I could never make that kind of sacrifice. Stepping gingerly through the refuse, I knew I could never live here long term by choice.

As repelled as I was, I wanted to look around to capture all of it, but was afraid to take my eyes off of my feet. What might I be stepping in? What if I slipped and fell? There was certainly not enough hot water in all of Nairobi for me to ever feel clean again. Was I being a snob to think that way? What about all these men, women, and children who knew no other life? Who had never taken a hot shower?

Even though the sun had come out, most of the structures were so close together that its rays didn’t reach us as we trudged along. Suddenly, we walked into a large open courtyard next to a school where children were outside for recess. With no playground equipment and not much to do, they ran around, they chased each other, and they laughed.

Their laughter seemed out of place, but the sound rose above the poverty and decay. They were just youngsters who didn’t know any better. They didn’t know there was a different world out there, a place where the sun did shine and the grass was green, where clean water was plentiful, and three meals a day were taken for granted.

And then they saw us.

If we thought little Sondra was obsessed with us, these school children in their matching brown and white uniforms were enthralled by these pale foreigners. Their voices sang out a chorus of “mzungu, mzungu, mzungu.” They stretched their little hands into the air, their fingers raised in peace signs. They reached out to us, wanting to touch us and be touched by a mzungu. Simply the laying on of our hands made them feel blessed. Michelle, Cathy, and I tried to touch the heads of as many of them as we could, but we were aware that we were holding up Vickie and Mary. There was no way we could personally bless each child. We plowed through them and continued our journey.

I said a silent prayer asking God to be with each of them. His touch could bless them in a way mine never could. I continue to pray for them daily.

HOME BASED CARE WORKERS

While Cathy, Michelle, and I spent the day with Mary and Vickie, Jen and Dave led the rest of the team to visit other places within Mathare. In addition to Eljoy School, they met the people who worked for Home Based Care.

This group of dedicated individuals consisted of fifteen people who visited an average of a hundred clients three times a week. These clients all have AIDS, and the members of Home Based Care supply them with their ARV medications as well as assist with buying them food and paying their rent. All of the Home Based Care workers live in the slums themselves.

The first client they visited that day was named Gyus. Val shared his story with me that evening. He had been diagnosed with AIDS one and a half years before and was twenty-six years old. He lived with his twenty-year-old brother named Charles and their father. Charles and Gyus both had tuberculosis in addition to AIDS and were on medication. They had lost their mother two years before, and their father, who was in denial that AIDS had infected his family, hadn’t been tested.

Next they visited Eunice, a bedridden mother of two who had known for a year that she had AIDS. Her sons were one year old and six years old. She had not had them tested. Unlike many women in the slums, she did have a husband, but he didn’t have a job. Her dream was to have her own business. Because she gave what little food she had to her children, the week before we arrived, she barely had strength to wake up. The day the HEART team visited, she hadn’t eaten in two days.

No one was home at the next two places they stopped. They found out later that these patients had been taken to the hospital. Some days, the workers went to someone’s home to find that they had died in the night, alone.

The last patient they met was a woman who had been an orphan. When her sister had died, she took in her two children. She rose very early every morning to voluntarily clean her church. She and the woman who shared her apartment were going to be evicted from their home that day because they hadn’t paid their rent.

Many of the others the Home Based Care workers visited that day were behind in their rent. Before the team from America left the slums, Jen and Dave assured them that they would be paying the rent for these people.

In one of the homes a cardboard sign hung which read, God gives us hope and loves us. These people had so very little, yet they possessed more than many Americans did. These victims of AIDS, living in utter poverty, had a faith in their almighty Savior which was worth more than silver or gold. Why did they have to suffer so much while they waited for their heavenly reward?

School Children in Mathere Slum

Chapter 6

A time to weep and a time to laugh

(Ecclesiastes 3:4a, NKJV)

KARI

Wednesday was all about one little boy and one teenage girl. There were no throngs of children in the slums, no crowds of people in the streets, not even a roomful of HIV-positive women. This day was for a four-year-old named Mwazunga and an eighteen-year-old named Kari.

Kari sported beautiful red hair, a sweet smile, and a bubbly personality. She and Val had bonded at the team meetings before the trip. Kari had then flown from our local airport with us to Detroit where we had met up with the rest of the team. I couldn’t help but think of her as another daughter.

She was good natured and had a wonderful sense of humor. Val had taken to calling me Mutti, German for mother, and Kari began referring to me by the same term of endearment. She wanted to become a physical therapist. That fall she planned to head off to the same college I had attended many years before.

Val had broken up with her boyfriend the night before we left home and spent much of the long trip to Kenya crying in the airplane bathroom. When she wasn’t locked away, she sat next to Kari, not yet able to share her story. The new friend picked up on that and didn’t ask too many questions. Instead, she shared her own stories and insights, her own goals for the trip, and her dreams for the future. Most importantly, she was able to make Val laugh, to help her forget about her own despair and to see the big picture.

On our flight from Amsterdam to Nairobi, an eccentric man sat in the window seat of our row. As we flew over the snow-capped Alps, Kari and I leaned over this poor man as much as etiquette allowed with our cameras in hand. He offered to take pictures with Kari’s camera, and she readily accepted. Digital media is a blessing at times like that, as the man snapped shot after shot. Kari caught my eye and mouthed, “Is he ever going to give it back to me?”

He returned the camera on his own when he had to use the facilities. We offered to move to the aisle so that he could get out, but instead, he lifted his thin frame above our heads and walked in stocking feet across the armrests of our seats.

Kari and Val could hardly contain themselves until he was out of earshot. Their laughter, Val’s especially, was music to my ears after she had shed so many tears in recent hours.

MWAZUNGA

While at Lifest the year before, Kari and three of her friends chose to sponsor a child through the organization called Compassion International. Mwazunga lived near Mombasa on the Indian Ocean. He and a social worker had traveled twelve hours by bus to arrive in Nairobi to see Kari. Kari, Val, Nate, and I met him at the Compassion center in Nairobi for this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

His shy smile was the sweetest thing I had ever seen. His dimples in his round, brown cheeks were so cute that there are no words to describe them. He was precious.

Mwazunga didn’t know any English, so the social worker who had ridden with him interpreted for us. He was four years old, but his birthday was the following week. He must have already received an early present because his blue shirt and khaki pants looked brand-new. They were also a few sizes too big. He kept his large jacket on for much of the morning even though the temperature hovered around 70 degrees.

“It is much warmer on the coast,” the social worker explained. “He thinks it is quite cold here.”

The Compassion center where we met him in Nairobi is a comfortable place. Inside, the building is crowded with offices, but outside there is a large yard with room to run and the usual playground equipment.

Kari gave him the presents she had brought, starting with the soccer ball. He was reluctant at first, but after kicking the ball around a little bit, he started to relax around us. We just kept taking his picture. He swung on the swings and slid down the slide. Soon, his dimples came out, and he started to laugh with us.

When he got tired, we stopped to rest at the picnic tables in the shelters on the Compassion grounds. Kari pulled more gifts out of the backpack which she had carried from home to give to him. She presented him with a framed picture of herself and her friends who sponsored him. She showed him the letters and pictures she had received from him. Laying his head on the table, he smiled at us and held Kari’s hand.

PICTURE TAKING

When Dave had dropped us off on his way to run errands, he instructed us to take lots of pictures. In addition to HEART using the pictures to promote their work, Compassion might be able to use some of the images.

Kari bobbed her red hair as she agreed. “Yes, you guys, take lots of pictures of us so I can show my friends back home.”

Here was something I could finally do. Many years before, I had purchased an expensive 35-mm camera which I took everywhere, burning through rolls of film. I had bought several photography books and had taken a class at the store which had sold me the Yashica FX-3. That heavy, bulky camera became a dinosaur with the advent of digital photography. My husband bought me an adequate and easy-to-use digital camera the Christmas before, just to use on this trip.

The small camera had no bells and whistles. After practicing with it for six months, I still couldn’t get a clear picture. Indoors, with the flash turned on, every image seemed to be out of focus.

Kari handed me her camera. “Take lots of pictures with my camera, too.”

Point and shoot. Point and shoot. How hard could it be? Now not only did I have my own camera to worry about, but Kari’s too, along with her high expectations.

Armed with a much more expensive camera, Nate snapped as many pictures that day as I did. In my state of low self-esteem, I was certain that his pictures would turn out much better and I wondered why I bothered.

Maybe, just maybe, I bolstered myself, one of my pictures would be the one: the one picture Kari fell in love with and hung on her dorm wall when she went off to college that fall, the one picture that captured the kindness and compassion of the organization. And if not? All I could do was hope for the best, just so someone took that perfect picture.

It isn’t about me, I admonished myself. It is about Mwazunga.

COMPASSION

What is Compassion all about anyway? It was at Lifest that I first learned about Compassion International. Previously, I had seen their ads in magazines and on the Internet, but never thought much about it until I heard the testimony of various speakers who sponsor children.

The sponsor picks a boy or girl from a third-world country and sends a monthly check to help support that child and his or her family. This begins the relationship. As child and sponsor correspond, they learn about each other and their cultures. The sponsor can mail pictures, postcards, and other flat objects. Compassion hosts various trips to the countries it works with so sponsors may travel to meet their child. As in Kari’s case, Compassion can make special arrangements if sponsors travel on their own to their child’s country.

One year at Lifest, Val and two of her friends talked me into taking the plunge and agreeing to sponsor one of these children. Neela from India was twelve years old at the time. The first few pictures I received of her showed a thin, scared, little girl. But over the years, each picture I received from Compassion showed a more beautiful child maturing into a fine young woman.

She knows that I pray for her. I love her unconditionally, and I will remember her no matter how many miles separate us. We both know that we will probably never meet.

She has turned into a lovely lady because she knows her Savior lives. She has come to realize that He has much more for her, that the desperate poverty she lives in is not all there is to life. She has hope. If I had any part in that, I couldn’t have done it without an organization like Compassion International.

“How is it going?” As Mwazunga and Kari played with Nate and Val, a woman who worked inside the Compassion office in Nairobi came out to see us.

“Can you tell?” I pointed to the little boy about to go down the slide, laughing so hard he could barely breathe. “I think things are going well.”

“Do you have any questions?”

For once in my life, no questions came to mind. All I could picture was Neela, thin and straight as a pole, more scared than happy. What could I do to help her? What could I do to help the thousands of children waiting for sponsors?

If something I share helps one boy or girl living in poverty, it will all be worth it. With her picture in my mind, the questions suddenly rolled out.

“What if there is more than one child in the family? Which one gets a sponsor, and do the siblings get left out?”

“Usually the youngest child is the one to be sponsored so the whole family can stay in the program for the longest time possible. And the entire family benefits from your donations. Each local center is set up differently to best meet the needs of their community, but all children who are in a local program, whether sponsored or not, can participate.”

“How long are the children in the program?”

“Again, it depends on the country and the particular site, but usually until they finish high school, which could be between age 18 and 22.”

“What happens after they are no longer in the program?”

“Compassion has started working with trade schools to help these high school graduates learn a trade. Then they can be productive in their community and gain independence and self-sufficiency.”

Wow, such simple goals. Goals any American child would take for granted. Not so in third-world countries.

YOUR WAY CHINESE RESTAURANT

Before we knew it, Dave returned from running errands. We dreaded that it was time to leave, but Dave had something planned.

As a special treat to Mwazunga, his social worker, and the woman who worked at the Compassion center, Dave took all of us out for lunch that day. We didn’t go to what I would consider a conventional Kenyan restaurant. Instead, we went to a Chinese restaurant named Your Way. Why Dave picked that particular restaurant I am not sure, except that he knew the owner, and the food was excellent.

The owner met us at the door and ushered us to a private room. He changed the radio to the only American music he had, Madonna. Val and I talk in German on occasion, but just a few words, not a whole conversation. So while we were in the Chinese restaurant in Kenya, Africa, with Madonna playing overhead, we were speaking in German. How many continents can you cover at one time?

But this day was not about me or even about my daughter. It was about Kari and her Compassion child Mwazunga. He ate the food, though I am sure he had never had any kind of foreign food before. Living on the coast, his diet consisted of fresh fish and seafood, with a variety of fruit, which grew abundantly in the tropical climate. Anything that was put in front of him, he stabbed with his fork and put in his mouth, looking around the table bashfully.

Even though we were all full, Dave insisted we order ice cream. I don’t know if it had been a long time since I had had ice cream, or if it was really that good, but it was the best ice cream I could remember eating.

What did Mwazunga think of it? His social worker told us the little boy had never had ice cream before. He didn’t know how to eat it. He kept licking off his spoon instead of putting it in his mouth. When he was asked if he liked it, he beamed, his smile going from ear to ear.

Too soon our lunch was over, and it was time to return to the Compassion center. Instead of driving up the long driveway, we dropped them off on the street. Mwazunga waved for a moment and then turned his back on us. Kari was momentarily hurt that he didn’t watch as the bus pulled away. Then she started laughing. As we looked out the window at the small boy with his back to us, the rest of us started laughing as well. He had to pee.

THE REST OF THE TEAM

On the way back to HEART, we stopped at the Nakumatt. The Nakumatt is the African equivalent of Wal-Mart. They sold everything from spices to blankets, chocolate to shoes, frozen foods to sewing machines. And like America, the store was within the walls of a small mall. Other shops included a bookstore, a pharmacy, a shoe store, and a gift shop. I purchased a map of Nairobi from a newspaper kiosk in the middle of the aisle. The bookstore earned my business by selling me a map of Kenya.

While Dave, Kari, Nate, Val, and I were gone, other members of the team had been shopping. The next day we planned to take the orphans from Brydges to a park, and we needed to provide something for them to eat. Along with everything this park offered, we wanted to serve the orphans lunch with a dessert of homemade cookies. When we returned to HEART, the girls started making those cookies.

The kitchen at the HEART compound was a large industrial one, with a huge stove, long stainless steel countertops, and deep, double sinks. It contained a large refrigerator and freezer, but no oven. The girls mixed the cookies in the large kitchen and carried the dough to the other end of the compound to bake them in the oven in Vickie’s quarters.

Prior to spending the day with Kari and her Compassion child, I had been closer to her than the others. It was just as easy to grow fond of Amanda though we had only met. Hailing from the distant state of Delaware, she was petite and cute as a button. She was very silly and an incredibly good sport.

Sara, Carson’s older sister, was more on the serious side, but she was the singer of the group. On our many bus rides around the city, she often led us in song.

Sara and Carson’s parents are Cathy and Jon. Cathy is an obstetrician/gynecologist from Indiana; Jon is a farmer. In addition to the son and daughter they brought on the trip, they had several more children at home. They have been friends with the Bells for years.

Because of that, Carson and Nate were already good friends, but Brandon seemed to fall right into place with them. Brandon and his dad Geoff were from the Madison, Wisconsin area, where Geoff taught at one of the high schools.

The last adult on our team was Michelle. She was from Iowa and had been to HEART in the past. She was married and had an assortment of children of her own. She already planned to return to Kenya with some of them the following year.

That leaves the last team member, Brea. Brea was from the Appleton area and was supposed to have flown with us from Wisconsin, but there had been a mix-up, and she missed the flight. After several phone calls and schedule changes, Dave secured her flight to Nairobi on Wednesday.

She arrived at HEART late in the evening. She was exhausted, not only from the long day and time change, but also from the stress of flying by herself. The eighteen-year-old still had a smile on her face as I led her to our room. She needed sleep because the next day would be a busy one.

Kari and Her Compassion Child

Chapter 7

A time to gain and a time to lose

(Ecclesiastes 3:6a, NKJV)

PBJ NIGHTMARES

Thursday morning dawned, and I was wide awake at five. For once I was thankful to be an early riser and dressed silently so as not to wake my three roommates. Though Brea had been exhausted when she fell into bed the night before, she wasn’t the only one who needed the rest. Amanda and Kari appreciated their twin-size beds at HEART as much as anyone.

I smiled at Brea’s peaceful body in the bed across from mine. Then I slid out the door and down the stairs. This was the day we would take the orphans from Brydges to the park, which meant sandwiches for sixty children had to be made for their lunch before we could leave the HEART compound.

I thought this was something I could do for the team. And you would think that since I made myself a peanut butter and jelly sandwich for lunch at work every day for twenty years, this would be an easy task for me. Wrong. This was Kenya, and nothing was the same as at home.

The night before Jen had told us we would make the sandwiches and slide them back into the bread bags. However, the bread bags didn’t come closed with twist ties or the square plastic thingies with holes in them. No, they were sealed with a piece of tape which could not be reused. Similar to tamper-proof tape, it was useless once ripped. Trust me, I tried.

Having raised a Boy Scout, I tried to live by their motto: be prepared. I tiptoed back to my room and dug out a roll of medical tape I had packed in my suitcase. To avoid losing it, I tied it on the drawstring of my skirt, adding a small scissors to the other drawstring, just in case.

My next problem was the jelly in the big sealed cans. I could not find a can opener anywhere in the kitchen. After searching every nook, cranny, and cupboard, I discovered an antique can opener in the bottom of a junk drawer. It worked so poorly I thought I could do better with my teeth. I managed to cut half the lid off and bent it back enough to reach in with my knife. I anticipated slicing my hand open on the jagged edge, but God watched over me in my time of need. My skin remained intact.

The peanut butter posed the next problem. The day the team had visited Mathare Slum, Dave bought it at a project near the Eljoy School. It was nothing but puréed peanuts. Even at room temperature, the peanut butter had solidified like it was frozen. As I tried to spread it across the bread, it stuck and rolled the bread up on the knife. After wasting three slices, I blotted dime-size dollops of it around on each piece of bread. It simply could not be spread.

I had hoped to have much accomplished by the time the rest of the adults from the team started wandering into the kitchen around six. Instead, I think I might have had one bag of sandwiches ready to go.

Why did I feel like I had to compete? When would I relax and find the real reason I had come to Africa?

PARADISE LOST

From the HEART grounds, it took a half hour to get to Paradise Lost. We arrived well before the children from Brydges Orphanage were scheduled to make their appearance. But since we were in Kenya, the busload of orphans didn’t show up for another hour.

Willie, our driver, parked the bus on the side of the road outside the park’s gate. We clambered to the ground and looked around. A barren landscape met us, with a few trees and lots of dried grass. It didn’t look like the inviting park we had hoped for. This was merely the entrance, so we hoped the terrain would change once inside.

While we waited for the orphans, we found our own ways to be entertained. Our teenagers explored and climbed the trees. Nate had brought along a large slingshot, and with Carson and Brandon, used it to torment some crows. I took pictures of Val, Kari, and Amanda in front of the Paradise Lost sign. Picnic/Camping Site, Stone Age Caves, Waterfalls, the sign read, which made the park sound much better than what we had seen so far.

Michelle had a migraine and was grateful for the time to stay on the bus and rest. Cathy, Jen, Sara, and Brea walked along the road above the neighboring coffee plantation.

Jon, Geoff, and Dave wandered off to explore the plantation. They came back with the story of the entire production of getting the coffee beans from the plant to the factory.

The other discovery we made was our first African choo. This one was porcelain. The traditional Kenyan toilet is a hole in the ground. With the advent of running water, the choo also advanced. Even when the toilet was flushable, however, instead of being raised to a comfortable height for sitting, it was flush with the floor – no pun intended.

I have camped in the wilderness enough to be at ease squatting on the ground to do my business. But there was something about using what appeared to be a toilet buried in the floor which I found unsettling. It was just not quite right.

We would find many more intriguing choos before our trip was over.

OUR FIRST ADVENTURE IN THE PARK

When the orphans from Brydges arrived, it was quite the spectacle. All sixty boys and girls, plus their teachers, were crammed into what was probably a twenty-passenger bus, painted lime green with fantastic hippy designs on all the sides. The children hanging out of the windows provided a wonderful image. Their ride to Paradise Lost Park from Ngong had been twice as long as ours, but you couldn’t tell by their smiling faces.

Our bus and theirs carried us down a steep rocky trail which only had the premise of being a road. At the bottom of the hill, we were surprised to see a small lake where inviting boats bobbed in the clear, blue water. The park, which had appeared barren, dry, and tedious, did indeed have the promised picnic area, waterfalls, and historic cave. Though everything was old, worn, and in need of paint, Paradise Lost hadn’t lost all of its wonder.

After we disembarked from our respective buses, everyone headed to the lake where the boats waited for passengers. Life vests were donned; our team divvied up the children and jumped into the boats.

The boats were constructed like our paddleboats – square, buoyant, and tip-proof. Instead of foot pedals, each four-passenger boat came with a few oars. None of the orphans or their teachers had ever been in a boat before, but it took only a few simple instructions for them to master the art of rowing. Luckily the lake wasn’t very big, or I don’t think some of them would have ever come back to the dock.

Jen, Michelle, and I were the only ones who opted out. Michelle was still nursing her migraine, and Jen held Chris, the youngest orphan. No one knew how old he was, but they estimated around three years old. His size made him look much younger. He had been found abandoned on the streets, severely malnourished. It had only been within the past week that he had started to walk with supporting hands holding him up. His round face held a constant smile. He was a hit with everyone he met.

My fear of the water and inability to swim kept me on dry land. As Val and Kari climbed into separate vessels, they handed me their cameras, fearing they might drop them in the murky water. Once again, I received the familiar instructions to take lots of pictures. I obliged as best I could, juggling both of their cameras along with my own. Whether any of these pictures turned out or not, no one could say that I hadn’t tried.

KENYA, THE WONDER

After everyone had made it back to shore, we headed down the trail to the waterfall and cave. Not even the beauty of the clear lake could have prepared me for the wonder I would find on this walk. I could have been stepping onto a movie set.

The barren landscape turned into a jungle. Vines hung from the cliff above, and green shrubbery lined the path, which was slippery with water dripping from overhead. The trail hugged the bottom of the hillside and went right under a tall-though-meager waterfall. The narrow passageway wound for a few hundred yards before our journey ended in a large cavern. From there several pathways branched off leading to other smaller caves. Many years before, when Great Britain ruled Kenya, the MauMau tribe lived in these caves to hide from their British persecutors.

As we followed the guide through the dimly lit cavern, I noticed that everyone had two orphans attached to them, one hanging on each arm. The boys carried some of the younger children. When the bus had first arrived, I had looked for Dennis, the small boy I had met our first day in Nairobi. I finally spied him entering the cave on someone’s shoulders. Nancy had quickly discovered Val.

Did I have a force field around me that kept children away? At my job in the clinic in America, I gave shots to children such as these, which didn’t make me very popular with the boys and girls in my hometown. Did all children everywhere pick up on that and try to avoid me? No one else seemed to have to seek out a boy or a girl to befriend. Why did I?

I jumped as something touched my hand. A wisp of a girl in a lavender dress slipped her thin fingers into mine.

“What’s your name?” I asked, looking down at her.

“Ruth,” she shyly answered. The satiny dress was a size too big and not appropriate for a day in the park, but I am sure she wanted to wear her very best on this special day.

“My name is Chris,” I said as I squeezed her hand and smiled.

She wordlessly pulled me down the trail behind the others.

When we had arrived at the farthest depths of the cave, our guide recited the history of these caverns and the MauMau people. Then, as seems the customary practice in all the caves I have ever been in, he warned us that he would turn out the lights. We needed to feel the darkness which those before us had lived with in this place.

While many of the others laughed or oohed and aahed, Ruth’s hand tightened on mine as we were immersed in blackness. The darkness pulled at my eyes and weighed on my chest. Val had somehow managed to get next to me and whispered in my ear, “Are you going to be okay?”

Though not afraid of the dark, I am claustrophobic. “I’ll be fine,” I breathed. Though I knew that the cavern was large, the inky black closed in on me. I wrapped both of my arms around Ruth’s thin shoulders. Her skin was cool and dry.

The lights came back on as quickly as they had gone off, and an audible sigh went through the group. I relaxed my grip on the small girl and returned my hand to hers. Compared to her life, mine had been lived mostly in darkness, never seeing this side of the world, being blind to poverty and destitution. How much more had she seen in her short life in the slums and on the streets? Was darkness the least of her worries?

I was thankful that the Christian staff at Brydges had led her from the darkness of sin into a saving relationship with Jesus Christ. I squeezed her hand one more time as we made our way out of the cave and into the sunlight.

THE MEANING OF FRIENDSHIP

I was no stranger to being left out.

One day shortly after I had started the seventh grade, my two best friends said they wanted to talk to me. We had been together since second grade, but now they had decided it was time to move on. They no longer wanted to be friends with me.

I was crushed. What had I done to them? Nothing. They just felt we were growing apart and had little in common anymore. My knees went weak, and I saw black spots in front of my eyes.

I was an awkward, insecure twelve-year-old. What was I going to do? Who would be my friend?

There was a girl named Kathy who was in most of my classes. I hadn’t known her before, but she was quiet and shy like me. She also got good grades like me. Maybe we would click.

Trying not to seem pathetic, I approached her the next day. “Would you be my friend?”

She was relieved, and a smile lit up her face. Evidently, her pals from previous years had left her as well. We remained best friends until we left for separate colleges many years later.

I know many people who began their walk with their Savior in much the same way. On bended knees, in a desperate state, they asked Jesus into their lives. At that moment, they knew their lives were changed forever, that their Redeemer who had gone to the cross for them would never leave them or forsake them. He would never say to them, “I decided to no longer be your friend.”

Jesus came into my life with much less drama.

Having gone to church and read my Bible ever since I was old enough, I knew what God had done for me by sending His one and only Son to die for me. I knew that all I had to do was believe that and I would be saved. It took years, however, for me to develop a rock-solid relationship with Jesus. Having faced rejection in the past, it took me a long time to totally trust Jesus and be able to feel Him daily walking by my side, as more than just a Savior, but as a friend.

Back in seventh grade, I wanted only to have friends who would support me and stand by me. It wasn’t easy for me to build those relationships. It apparently never got easier for me.

Luckily, no matter how alone I felt in the foreign land of Kenya, I was never truly alone. Jesus still walked by my side, even as I walked out of the cave at Paradise Lost, and Ruth dropped my hand so she could run off with the other children.

LUNCH, SONGS, AND A CAMEL

When we left the caves, we trudged back up to the top of the hill for lunch. We served the peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, potato chips, carrot sticks, bananas, cookies, and bottles of soda. By the time all of the children had been served, I had lost my appetite. I made a plate for myself and found a spot on the ground with Val, Nancy, and Ruth. I watched the two orphaned girls inhale their sandwiches and down their bottles of soda.

My stomach turned. I hated to waste food in front of them, but I couldn’t bear to bring the bread to my lips. Maybe it was the memory of making so many sandwiches earlier that day, or maybe it was the thought of that sticky, bland peanut butter lumping up on the bread. Or maybe I was just tired and dehydrated.

I sipped at my orange pop, but I had never been able to tolerate any carbonated beverages. My stomach not only ached, now it literally churned as well. The pain of heartburn crept into my upper chest.

Val and the two girls had finished eating and didn’t wait for me. They sprang up off the ground, and I watched them head to the garbage can with their trash.

It appeared I was alone again. I sighed.

After lunch the youth from our team presented a skit on making the right decisions. I was so proud that Val fit in well with the others her age. It was hard to believe they had only been working together a few days. The eight of them meshed as if they were old friends. Why couldn’t I blend in with the adults as easily? Why did I hang onto my twelve-year-old schoolgirl insecurities?

My thoughts quickly changed as the orphans started singing for us. What beautiful voices they had, as if God had sent His best angels down from heaven. How was it possible that these bright, happy children were orphans, with no parents to hold them at night? And how, I asked God, did I dare feel sorry for myself next to them?

After the entertainment, our large group hiked up another hill for camel rides. That poor camel. The handler made her get down on her knees, and three children or adults piled on her back. She walked a few hundred feet, turned around, walked back, and knelt down to let her riders off. Her sorry, fat knees had to be sore by the time all the children had taken their turn.

A few minutes on the playground, a group picture, and it was time to leave. It had been such a full day, and the orphans had had so much fun. I watched them load into their little hippy bus. All of the team members received hugs from their special children. I waved to the ones who were already hanging out of the windows.

Suddenly a flash of lavender flew off of the bus and into my arms. Ruth, the little lamb, I thought, stroking her thick dark hair. Will I ever see you again?

In the Boats at Paradise Lost

Chapter 8

A time to break down and time to build up

(Ecclesiastes 3:3b, NKJV)

FINAL PREPARATIONS

We were all tired as our bus lumbered back to HEART that afternoon. For once Sara did not lead the others in song. We were quiet, lost in our thoughts. Looking out the dirty windows, I studied the street vendors we passed. Did anyone ever really buy bicycle tires or a new sofa from an open shop along the side of the dusty road?

Willie pulled the bus up to the HEART gate and honked the horn as usual. Out of nowhere, a woman carrying a huge machete walked up to the side of the bus. We shrank back from our windows, curious but not that curious. The woman stopped at the driver’s side window and asked a question in Swahili.

Willie gave her a no-nonsense answer and shooed her away as the gate swung open.

“What was that all about?” Jon asked.

“She wanted a job, and I told her that it was no way to ask for a job by coming up to a window.”

My thought was that it is no way to ask for a job holding a three-foot machete.

Safely inside the compound there was no time to worry about the world on the street outside. The following morning we would be leaving at six for our journey into the Rift Valley, to a magical place called Mosiro where the Maasai tribe lived and died. We would host a medical clinic and give health education seminars.

Before then, however, we needed to pack.

Along with our clothes, toiletries, comfort food, and donated supplies, Val and I had crammed a tent into one of our suitcases when we flew from America. We had to repack this now for the trip to Mosiro. Michelle and I would call this tent our bedroom for five nights while we lived in the middle of nowhere. Val would share a newly purchased tent with Amanda.

Michelle, Cathy, and I went through the many supplies we had brought from home. We organized and packed what we needed to carry into the land past the end of the road. Medications and other necessities for the medical clinic were packed in sturdy boxes and coolers. Jon, Geoff, and Dave arranged for the food we would take – bananas, oranges, and crackers. Blankets were pulled from storage for us to sleep under and over.

As evening settled in, we packed all of this into our twenty-passenger bus. We piled totes, suitcases, and other large objects on the roof and covered them with a huge tarp. The remainder of the supplies, including jugs of drinking water, lined the center aisle of the bus. Bunches of monkey fingers – small bananas that look like monkeys’ fingers – rested on top of the row of fifteen-gallon water bottles.

In addition to the fifteen original team members, four more American volunteers joined us. Kalea was another teenage girl from Wisconsin who fit in with the rest of the youth. Teri, her husband Scott, and another man named Tomas were also added to our group. This made for a rather full bus, but it got fuller before we left Nairobi.

When everything was ready, we ate our last supper as if the staff at HEART was fattening us up for the slaughter, or more likely, because they knew this would be our last meal having any resemblance to our American diets. We had barbequed chicken and steak on the grill, baked potatoes, cooked carrots with peas, and a magnificent dessert. Joyce, one of the women who worked in the kitchen at HEART, made us delicious cream puffs, pies, and other desserts on a daily basis. That night she outdid herself with the chocolate éclairs.

Instead of eating in the dining room, we ate outside on the veranda. It was a beautiful night, not just the weather, but also the fellowship. No one would have guessed this large group of men, women, and teenagers had just met. The fulltime missionaries who resided at the compound joined us. We came from varied walks of life, we had little in common, but we all shared the bond of love for Kenya and her people.

MORE PASSENGERS

I heard a light knock on the door at five o’clock. Friday morning, and I was lying in bed, awake as usual. I had already been in the bathroom, dressed, and was waiting for our wakeup call.

“We’re up!” I hollered to the unseen knocker, knowing it was Nate waking us early so we could board the bus on time.

“Come on, girls,” I urged my roommates. “It’s time to get moving.”

Within a half hour, we sat in the dining room eating breakfast. Usually the kitchen staff rose before us and cooked French toast or omelets, pancakes or waffles. This morning we planned to eat cereal, toast, and fruit. However, we skipped the cereal because the milk had gone bad. At first, we thought the chunks plopping from the carton were because the milk was frozen, but one of the men unsuspectingly drank it and kindly shared the correct information with us.

I brushed my teeth for the last time in a bathroom sink and headed to the bus. Most of us carried only our backpacks onto the bus, because we had loaded our suitcases the night before with the rest of the supplies on the roof of the bus or down its aisles.

We left HEART at 6:05 a.m.

The roads in all of Kenya are horrific and even at that time of the morning, and I held my breath as our driver Willie negotiated the streets of Nairobi. Three lanes in each direction were the norm, whether there were six actual lanes in the road or not. They have these wonderful roundabouts, which are huge and seem to encompass more than three lanes. And I am certain that if I ever drove into one of these intersections I would never get out. No one even slows down as they go careening around those curves, changing lanes without notice. The roundabouts I have encountered in America are sedate and minuscule compared to these.

We were scheduled to pick up more people across town and we arrived at the designated parking lot as the sun came up. Then we remembered that we were in Kenya and on Kenyan time, which meant the people we were meeting didn’t arrive for another half hour. After they were on board, we picked up another person at the Compassion center. Lastly, we stopped at the pharmacy for more medication.

Two of the people who joined us were Kenyan-trained nurses. Andrew and Naphtali were wonderful assets to the trip as they helped at the medical clinic for the Maasai. Andrew was an absolute riot on the long trip. We had no more seats on the bus, so he sat with his back to the front on the lump in the floor where the engine was. His wit and wonderful sense of humor kept us laughing for a good share of the trip.

Finally we were on our way to the massive Rift Valley.

THE GREAT RIFT VALLEY

Our first view of the Great Rift Valley was from a roadside stop overlooking the broad plain. As in any place with tourist potential, a long strip of road had been widened enough for vehicles to park. Various vendors sold cheap souvenirs, bottled water, and everything else imaginable. There was also a choo.

We had thought the porcelain choo at Paradise Lost was rather backward; we soon found out that it was almost state-of-the-art for Africa.

Cathy came back from the restroom at the overlook raving about it, and I had to check it out. She was most impressed because it was flushable. I looked around me. No electricity and no running water were evident.

Inside the tiny room made of scrap lumber was a bucket with a hole in the bottom buried in the floor and hanging over the side of the cliff. Next to it was a pail filled with murky water and a dipper. A sign read, Please flush as needed.

Besides experiencing this unique flushable choo, we also saw our first wildlife. Looking straight down over the cliff, we saw a small herd of hyrax, which are rodent-like creatures. Though they resemble large guinea pigs, they are closely related to the elephant.

But all of that pales next to the view of the Rift Valley. This huge expanse of land so unchanged by time takes your breath away. No pictures can do it justice. Similar to the Grand Canyon in scope, it is impossible to capture in film or words.

The Great Rift Valley was created millennia ago when two tectonic plates shifted, creating a fissure or rift which runs from northern Syria in Southwest Asia to central Mozambique in Southeast Africa. In Kenya, this shift in the earth’s crust created an impressive valley filled with soda lakes and volcanoes. Earthquakes are not uncommon.

Bones estimated to be over two million years old have been found in the Rift Valley of Kenya, causing it to be known as the cradle of humanity. Proponents of evolution will say that these remains are those of ancestors to the human race. I firmly believe, however, in creation as the means that brought mankind to life. But had God chosen this wide plain to be the birthplace of our ancestors, I would not question it, as the valley is beautiful and worthy of humanity’s beginnings.

EWUASO KDONG

Our next stop that day was the Compassion center at Ewuaso Kdong. Earlier in the week, when we had met Kari’s Compassion child, we got a small taste of the organization and what it does for its children. Here in the tiny village of Ewuaso Kdong where three of our team members sponsored children, we actually got into “the guts” of Compassion, some of us more so than others.

Michelle, Amanda, and the Bells met the children they sponsor. To commemorate the visit, they each planted an avocado tree on the grounds of this small, cement-block building, which served as the village’s Compassion center. In future years, the children would not only be able to eat the fruit, but they would also be reminded of this special occasion.

We split up so we could each go to the home of one of the children. Geoff, Cathy, and I went with Michelle to the traditional Maasai home of her little boy.

The homes of the Maasai are usually within a kraal. A kraal is a group of small, family huts surrounded by an enclosure constructed of thorny sticks piled around the perimeter. At night, the family brings their herds of goats or cattle inside the fence for safety and to keep them from wandering off. Extended family and one man’s several wives and children live in the different small huts made of sticks and dung throughout the kraal.

Because these homes don’t have doors, we walked through a narrow opening, turned sharply in one direction and then the next, ducking the whole time as the ceiling was less than five feet high. The tiny room we entered had a small open fire, a few shelves for cooking gear, a bench, and a bed. The four of us sat elbow to elbow on the bench. The entire space was less than twelve feet square.

Our host honored us by draping a beaded necklace around each of our necks. The local villagers, the Maasai, adorned their necks and wrists with wide, colorful bands of beads. To give us these gifts meant they accepted us into their tribe.

The temperature inside this mud hut must have been close to a hundred degrees. Ignoring the heat, our host gave each of us a cup of steaming hot, chai tea. Made with boiled goat’s milk and lots of sugar, the consistency and flavor was similar to melted ice cream. After it cooled off enough to drink, the first sips were lip-smacking good. It didn’t take long, though, for the syrupy sweetness to lose its appeal.

Wanting to be gracious, I drank as much as I could while we sat on the crowded bench, sweating. Four Maasai men and women, Michelle’s child, and two other children filled the rest of the room. Through a translator, we conversed while we sipped our tea.

I feared I might pass out from the unmoving hot air, when Geoff held up his tin cup and asked for a refill. Was he completely daft? Later I would be thankful that we only had chai.

Val, Kari, and Jon joined Amanda in the home of her Compassion girl. In addition to chai tea, the little girl’s mother served them the most common food in the Maasai diet – goat meat stew. Along with the available vegetables, usually potatoes and cabbage, the Maasai use the entire goat, including internal organs.

Val ate the stew with gusto until she felt something stuck between her teeth. It didn’t feel like ordinary meat. The sensation was totally foreign to her. As she rolled more of the substance around in her mouth, visions of high school biology came to mind. This wasn’t part of the meat of the goat. This was part of its intestine. The villi, the tiny hairs inside the gut which aid in absorption, had become lodged in her teeth.

This was not the last unusual food encounter we had over the next several days.

WILDERNESS BUS TRIP

As we converged at the Compassion center at Ewuaso Kdong, we were invited inside for our own plates of stew. The potatoes, carrots, and goat meat I ate had a familiar taste and consistency, similar to what I might eat back home, and I cleaned up my plate. Then it was time to find the choo.

The purpose of the cement-block building behind the center was fairly obvious. Inside, I saw a hole the size of a dinner plate in the middle of the cement floor, by far not the worst accommodations we would encounter. As we had been warned, there was no toilet paper, but a quick search through my backpack saved me.

Before boarding our bus, we noticed a group of women sitting next to blankets spread on the ground. Hearing that we would be there, the women had gathered their beaded work and gourds to sell to us. With the prices reasonable, we could not pass them up. Val bought two gourds, each of which was decorated with four lines of beads converging to form a hanger. I picked up a few bracelets. Geoff made several purchases as well. Dave obtained the rest of their work to send back to the States where it would be resold with the proceeds going to further the work of HEART.

After we climbed back into the bus, he appeared with his arms full of more beaded chains. The locals had given him an extra necklace for each of us.

The road deteriorated after we left Ewuaso Kdong. When we came to a dried-up riverbed, we decided to get out and walk across. By then, it was time for another bathroom break anyway.

The men took the left side of the bus where there was very little cover, while the women headed around to the right side where scrubby brush offered a small bit of privacy. None of us wanted too much privacy, though. We were in the middle of nowhere and had seen magnificent giraffes and herds of zebra. Could their predators be far away?

We continued getting off and on the bus. On another steep hill, we got out and walked up because the overloaded bus couldn’t make it with all of us inside.

To keep our spirits light, Jen passed around snacks she had prepared: granola bars and baggies of trail mix. The rest of us reached into our backpacks to see what we had to share. Only teamwork would get us to our destination and back again.

At one point, the bus broke down. Our amazing driver, Willie, looked at the engine and diagnosed the problem. He told us not to worry, but we prayed. By then it was dark outside and we still had miles to go. Willie, as promised, had the bus running again in moments.

Then the dust came. With the windows closed, the bus turned into an oven. With the windows open, however, dust swirled in and settled mostly on the children in the back of the bus. A brief shower should have settled the dust, but the fine sand continued to surround us. At one of the team meetings, Jen had suggested we bring a bandana on the trip. Now I saw why. Most of us tied them around our faces cowboy-style.

A friend had given me an inflatable, horseshoe-shaped pillow to wrap around my neck while sleeping in the car. Instead, I sat on it as we drove over the heinous bumps. It really helped my bottom and my back.

At times the trip felt surreal, as if we had been kidnapped and were being driven to our end.

We arrived at Mosiro at 9:30 p.m. in the black of an African night. We still had doubts that this was going to turn out right. Where had we been taken? We unloaded the bus in the dark, set up our tents by flashlight, and were led to the outhouse, if you could call it that.

We crawled into our tents and tried to sleep. What had we gotten ourselves into? Did Jen and Dave Bell really know what they were doing?

Then the morning came.

Planting Avocado Trees at Ewuaso Kdong

Chapter 9

A time to cast away stones,

and a time to gather stones

(Ecclesiastes 3:5a, NKJV)

MOSIRO

After fourteen hours on a bus thick with dust inside and out, one stop to eat goat stew and drink boiling hot tea, another stop to relieve ourselves behind some brush, and a walk across a dry riverbed, we had arrived at the place at the end of the road. A place called Mosiro.

I had thought we would stay in the little village which we passed sometime in the night. Instead, the bus had continued bouncing us along for another half hour before we arrived at our final destination, a desolate place surrounded by nothing in the way of civilization.

We had set up our tents in the dark, crawled inside, and tried our best to sleep. But there was music. No, it was not someone’s iPod or other electronic device, and it wasn’t someone talking in his sleep.

It was the Maasai. Each evening at the outskirts of our camp, they lit a fire and spent the night chanting. Later that morning, they told us they came to ward off the lions. “Hmm?” was all I could think to say.

As the chanting faded away and the sun burst onto the distant horizon, I dragged my stiff body out of the tent. Being so close to the equator, both sunrises and sunsets happened instantaneously, throwing the countryside into complete daylight or darkness. I never got used to the lack of dusk and dawn, preferring my sky to work up to its twice-daily change.

With the sudden morning light, the view that greeted me could only be described as magical, a scene far removed from anything I had ever experienced. Somehow on the horrible road over which our bus had bounced, we had crossed into paradise.

Outside my tent door, I viewed an expanse of dry, tan land with sparse grass dotting the ground. A hundred feet away sat a flat-topped termite mound the size of a suburban ranch home. I thought it was a rock outcropping, but I later learned it had been built by termites. A young Maasai boy with a red cloth over his shoulder herded twenty gaunt goats towards our camp. It looked biblical.

The pale blue sky stretched on forever, chasing away the shadows of the night. I inhaled a deep breath of fresh air which seemed to cleanse my lungs from the dust that had accumulated in them on the bus ride.

To the right of me was one large tree towering above the landscape. It stood as a sentinel, marking a gathering place from which the local tribe could amass their strength. Its branches reached to the heavens like hands raised in praise.

A plain, block structure with four small rooms stood behind our campsite. The Maasai had planned to build a school on this site. They put up the storage building, but never proceeded any further than that.

To my left were smaller trees and brush, and a river flowed beyond them. During the few days we camped there, we witnessed the importance of that river. The Maasai used it for everything.

Thinking of the slow-flowing river, I had to go to the bathroom.

The Maasai, like most native tribes around the world, will relieve themselves wherever they are with no fan-fare or facilities or toilet paper. In anticipation of our arrival, they had graciously dug a hole and constructed their version of a porta-potty. They built a small fence, four and a half feet high around the hole and covered that with canvas. I thought it was adequate and it even had a skylight. There was no door, though, so we utilized the buddy system whenever possible. Dave’s technique was to call out in Swahili “howdy” when he approached the choo.

MORNING ROUTINE

Every morning after devotions, we ate oranges, monkey-finger bananas, and cookie-like crackers dotted with peanut butter from the Eljoy project. The adults stood around our small folding table, talking and joking while we enjoyed the simple breakfast. The youth took their plates to the termite mound where they sat while they ate. After eating, we brushed our teeth in the low brush behind our tents, spit on the ground, and rinsed with water from our water bottles.

I shared my tent with Michelle. Each morning, after a trip to the choo, we took turns using the tent as our bathing room. We wiped down with baby wipes we had brought for that reason, and then dressed. I wet my hands from the fresh water in my bottle and ran them through my short hair, naturally thick but more so when caked with dust.

After breakfast that Saturday morning, the entire team met at the termite mound to plot our activities for the next two days. We would be running a medical clinic and giving educational seminars. We each took a section of the health manual to read out loud to the Maasai, teaching about disease prevention. Jen instructed us how to wait for the interpreters to translate, only reading a sentence at a time. Val and Teri chose to give a demonstration on hand washing.

It is amazing that something so simple, something all Americans take for granted, is something that people in third-world countries never learned. Clean, running water is a luxury that few of them have. They have never even had soap.

The wide, muddy river down the hill from our camp provided the Maasai with a continual supply of water. It was the color of the chai tea we drank at Ewuaso Kdong and was filled with floating particles of various sizes and shapes. In spite of this, they used it for everything. Their herds of cattle and goats would wade into the water to drink and often relieved themselves in the river. The Maasai washed their clothes and bathed alongside the livestock. Finally, they would gather large containers of the brown liquid to use at home for cooking and drinking. Is it any wonder the mortality rate for these people was so high?

OUTDOOR AMPHITHEATER – MAASAI STYLE

On the other side of the storage building was a small clearing where Dave and our Maasai interpreters set up a table and speakers. Though the crowd wouldn’t be that big, we had brought a sound system all the way to the Bush and we would use it.

As the men arranged the equipment and performed a modest sound check, Kenyans from Mosiro gathered. A pile of stones, chiseled into block shapes, lay next to the storage building. The Maasai each brought their own rock from the pile to sit on while they listened to the volunteers.

For two days, as each team member shared an assigned lesson, the men and women sat on their stones for hours and listened to what was taught. Each talk took twice as long since everything had to be interpreted. The children were restless, as children always are, but their parents sat frozen, hanging on our every word.

When we weren’t speaking or helping out in the medical clinic or pharmacy, we stood at the back of the small group and listened as well. We didn’t want our team members to feel alone as they spoke. If the Maasai saw us standing, they immediately gave up their rock for us to sit on. They would take us by the hand and force us to take their spot. We were their guests, and they wanted us to be comfortable.

Honestly, I was more comfortable standing than perching on a cold, hard stone six inches off the ground. Not wanting to offend my host, I settled onto the improvised chair when directed to.

The Maasai were gracious, kind hosts with very limited supplies. I wondered what we were here to prove. Our interpreters read from the same health manual that we did except they translated the words into Maa, the language of the Maasai. What was the point of our reading it in English if no one understood us?

Keeping my thoughts to myself, I heard Geoff ask Jen the same question. I hung on her answer.

“They are so impressed that anyone would travel as far as you have just to share this information with them. Watch their faces as you read.”

When it was my turn to read a section on how people became infected with HIV, I did watch their faces. Their eyes widened as they watched my lips move. Their attention never wavered, though they didn’t understand a thing I said. When I paused, and the tall Maasai, wearing a suit coat and tie and standing next to me repeated my words in Maa, many heads turned towards him. Many eyes, however, shone with sheer admiration as they focused on me.

HEALTH MANUALS

In addition to everything else, there were cases of HEART health manuals on the bus. Any of the Maasai could take one with a pen to write notes. None of the older members of the tribe could read, but many of their children had gone to school long enough that they understood the printed words. Those who took a manual carried it with them as if it were a prized possession. Very few of them owned any books.

On the cover of this health manual was Hosea 4:6, My People are Destroyed for Lack of Knowledge. How did God know, thousands of years before, that the people of Africa would die of diseases the rest of the world had been preventing or curing for years?

The first disease covered in the book was AIDS and HIV. This infection plagued Kenya. It marched like a scourge across the country, even across the entire African continent. As I stood in front of this small group, millions of people were already infected, and many of them would die that year.

When AIDS appeared in America in the 1980s, many saw it as the same devastating plague here. Though a stigma remains attached to being HIV positive, we know there are ways to curb the disease and put it into remission. Its victims can live normal lives.

In Kenya, as in other third-world countries, the general population doesn’t know about available medication. They don’t understand what causes the illness to travel from one person to another. It is a simple matter of education.

While we were in the slums of Nairobi, we saw many people living in close conditions, enabling diseases to be transmitted and spread throughout the population. To survive the destitution, many men and women sell their bodies to get a meal or a place to sleep for the night. A few unfaithful individuals can bring HIV into the whole community. AIDS is allowed to run rampant.

As I looked at the Maasai, draped in their bright red blankets, beads around their necks and arms, I couldn’t imagine how AIDS had found them. They seemed sheltered from the world. Yet, as Jen had shared with us, the men of the tribe were not as innocent as they appeared.

As these men traveled the wide savannah in search of grazing land for their cattle, they would be invited to sleep in any of the nearby kraals. We had already witnessed their gracious hospitality; we could easily picture them asking strangers into their homes. What was hard to believe was that they allowed these traveling herdsmen into their wives’ beds. In this male-dominated society, men viewed their women as possessions, and they wanted to share their women with others. When the men arrived in a larger city to sell or trade their cattle, they would commonly seek the company of prostitutes.

We faced a daunting task. Would our two days of education, teaching them how to prevent the transmission of HIV, change the way they had lived for millennia?

THE WORLD’S MOST DEADLY LIFE FORM

We also taught the Maasai about Hepatitis B, tuberculosis, typhoid, and malaria.

Looking across the wide savannah, I could picture the many animals that lived there and killed there. Lions, rhinos, hippos, and crocodiles all have reputations as man killers. Our active imaginations added poisonous snakes to that category. In reality, a much smaller creature claims the title of the one that kills the most people anywhere in any given year.

Two to three million people worldwide die yearly from diseases caused by the bite of the ordinary mosquito. In addition to malaria, this insect causes elephantiasis, yellow fever, dengue fever, and West Nile virus.

People traveling to countries where malaria is prevalent are usually prescribed a simple preventive medication to take daily the entire time they are away, and to take for an additional week after returning home. An immunization against malaria also shows promise.

One of the speakers at Lifest shared a tragic malaria story. A young girl had gone to Africa on a mission trip and had taken the full course of the prescribed anti-malaria medication. After she returned home, she became ill with fever, chills, headaches, and body aches. Initial testing was negative for malaria; this wasn’t questioned because she had taken her medication. As her condition continued to deteriorate, the doctors ran more tests. This time the results showed a rare and drug-resistant strain of malaria. Before enough of the proper treatment could be administered, the previously healthy girl passed away.

“What were we getting ourselves into?” I asked myself at the time. Why would God send us into a country where a simple mosquito bite could kill you?

Sitting on a stone in the shade of the sturdy trees at Mosiro, I studied the dark faces of the Maasai. I thought I knew the answer.

The Termite Mound at Mosiro

Chapter 10

A time to kill and a time to heal

(Ecclesiastes 3:3a, NKJV)

THE PHARMACY

We worked in Mosiro Saturday and Sunday. Having heard via word of mouth that we were there, the Maasai came from all around to the medical clinics we ran.

The first morning I helped Andrew, a nurse from Nairobi, set up the pharmacy. Val, Amanda, Sarah, and Brea joined us in one room of the cement-block building.

The room was crowded with all of our supplies, so when the girls plopped themselves on the dusty, cement floor, the room was indeed full. Undaunted, they asked to be put to work.

Coolers and totes, which had been filled with the medication we brought with us and transported on the roof of the bus, became our desks. We lined what little space remained on the floor with six-ounce plastic bottles filled with pink cough syrup and orange-colored liquid vitamins. We filled three-inch-square manila envelopes with antibiotic tablets such as amoxicillin and erythromycin.

Andrew would write something like Amox 1 qid x7 on one of the envelopes and say, “Fill like this.” The girls looked at me with big question marks on their faces.

I translated the pharmacy jargon into Amoxicillin one tablet four times a day for seven days.

Sarah and Brea wrote the instructions on the envelopes. Val and Amanda counted out 28 white pills from the large bottle of antibiotics and dropped them into their envelopes. I stacked the packets into boxes to be distributed to the patients Cathy would see. When the box was nearly full, Andrew gave the next order, and we started all over again.

Our system seemed to work fine, and I knew the girls appreciated my guidance. Instead of feeling helpful, though, I felt like I was ordering them around. Andrew had a strong, British accent, but he was easy to understand. If I hadn’t been there, he would have readily translated the medical terms for his helpers.

The now-familiar sense of inadequacy crept in again. Here I was, working within my field, dealing with prescriptions and medical instructions. I should have felt right at home, but instead I felt as if I was in the way. What was wrong with me?

God, please dismiss my inadequacies; please let me feel needed, I prayed for the umpteenth time.

THE MEDICAL CLINIC

Michelle, Jen, Kari, and several others set up a table under the large tree and began to take vital signs and medical histories on the men, women, and children who had lined up. They worked with several interpreters, writing down everything about each patient.

When they were finished, each patient received a two-inch-square piece of paper with a number on it and then waited for hours to see the lone doctor we had with us – Cathy, the OB/GYN from Indiana. Having spent her career treating women with their female issues, Cathy welcomed the variety of patients she saw. She and Jon had done mission work in Haiti, so she was comfortable with the new ailments that bombarded her.

While Andrew stayed in the pharmacy, Naphtali worked with Cathy. The biggest problem was that Andrew only spoke English and Swahili, and Naphtali only spoke a little Maa, which meant we still had to have a translator every step of the way. We saw such a blur of patients, though, that language didn’t seem to be much of a barrier.

The most memorable patient was the young man who had been in a knife fight in Nairobi. At the time, nylon sutures had been used to pull together the deep, three-inch-long laceration on his forearm. After that, however, the warrior had done nothing to care for it. He never had the stitches removed, and the entire arm became infected. Cathy asked for the disposable scissors and other instruments that I had brought from my clinic. She opened the wound and drained it, put on a clean dressing, and ordered a shot of penicillin. She asked him to come back the next day to have it checked.

Everyone else was grossed out by the wound and the procedure, yet they couldn’t take their eyes off the man’s arm as Cathy worked on it. On the other hand, I had worked for several years in the outpatient surgery department of my clinic. Those surgeons had stitched up much worse lacerations and had cleaned deeper wounds. I’d assisted with removing entire toes, black with necrotic tissue, using only local anesthesia.

The biggest difference between these clients and the ones I saw in small-town America was their patience and good humor. The Maasai would wait the entire day to be seen and were appreciative of everything we did for them. Of course, their treatment was free, but when you have never seen a doctor before in your entire life, it had to be like having an audience with a king.

Most of the medications we handed out were several different antibiotics, cough syrup, and eye drops. Everyone was given anti-parasite medication, and all of the children received multi-vitamins.

When things got dull, Andrew entertained us, joking in his engaging British accent.

THE TINIEST PATIENTS

Late Saturday afternoon, a young mother brought her tiny baby to see Cathy. The infant was weak and listless, barely able to hold up its round head. Diagnosing her with dehydration caused from infection, Cathy gave her oral antibiotics and ORS – oral rehydration solution, a simple solution of sugars and salts mixed in plain water.

That night, along with listening to the Maasai chanting to keep the lions away, this baby began to cry. She wept most of the night, her mom holding her on a bare, foam mattress in one of the rooms in the block building.

The next morning, Cathy gave her another dose of ORS. If we had been in the States, she would have admitted the little one into the hospital for IV fluids. Out here, at the end of the road, we could only do so much, and then we were left to pray.

Another child of six or seven was nearly as sick. Because he was older, his condition wasn’t life threatening as the baby’s was. Cathy asked Andrew to give him a shot of penicillin. Unlike children in America who routinely get their immunizations whether they like it or not, this little boy had never had a shot before.

He screamed in pain and fear as the needle pierced his bare bottom. His mother froze as he continued to wail. She had never seen anyone get a shot before and didn’t understand what had happened to her son. She trusted that Cathy and Andrew were trying to help her son, but her own fear paralyzed her.

Seeming to come out of nowhere, Jen appeared in the pharmacy. She drew the little boy into her arms, cradled his head with her hand, and gently rocked him. Though he couldn’t understand the words she said, her voice consoled him. He continued crying, tears tracing a trail down his dirty cheeks, as Jen put him back in his mother’s arms, back where he belonged.

As the bombardment of patients continued, a familiar face kept coming through the clinic. It wasn’t his face that was so memorable; it was the 1940s-style, green, canvas hat he wore on his head.

Like most Maasai men, this gentleman had several wives and many children. He brought many of them to the clinic that weekend, carrying a separate slip of paper for each of them. Wrapped in his striped red shuka, he seemed concerned about the welfare of each and every one of them. He listened to the instructions given for each of the patients he brought. At least two of his wives were treated, and some of his sons and daughters.

In the land of the Maasai, it was taken for granted that each man would have several wives. The women were on friendly terms with each other, sharing the same kraal, and working together to keep the family unit running smoothly. They raised all of the children as brothers and sisters. The husband was the head of this household, and though he was gone much of the time, the man was in charge of this group. He would keep them healthy if he could.

FLIES AND OTHER PESTS

Though the sky remained clear, flies settled everywhere, remaining on any surface where they landed, whether it was someone’s food or child. As the mothers sat on the ground with their babies in their laps, flies would light on the faces of the little ones, and no one would brush them away. The insects were drawn to the mattery eyes and runny noses, and the Maasai were so accustomed to the flies that they never even noticed.

After twenty years in health care, one thing I still cannot stomach is seeing children with faces covered in snot. “Wipe their noses,” I wanted to shout to the mothers who seemed to be in complete oblivion.

In Mosiro, however, there was no Kleenex to wipe those snotty noses. The drainage would dry, leaving their faces crusty and sore. A bedtime washing would give no comfort because a soothing bath probably never happened. And if it did, was that muddy river water the best solution?

The men from the tribe handled their nasal congestion differently. With one finger held securely over one nostril, they forced mucus out of the other nostril and onto the ground. This was known back home as a farmer’s blow; I shivered at the practice. I know people in America utilize this system when in dire straits or when necessity demands, but I have always managed to find something to blow my nose on.

In addition to mucus and flies, dogs were the other pests which lurked about the grounds. We had been told before arriving in Kenya that most of the dogs we would see were not pets, so we shouldn’t touch them. The canines were thin, flea-beaten creatures with short, brown fur and long legs. As far as breed goes, they resembled some sort of hound.

When the Maasai men finished eating, they might throw a bone to the skinny, mangy animals, but otherwise they ignored them. A few times, two dogs fought over the meager morsels they were thrown. One of the men might yell at them, but usually the growling and tussling went unnoticed.

THE HERD OF GOATS

While we were in Kenya, 75 shillings was the equivalent of one US dollar. Dave had converted some of our American bills into Kenyan shillings before we left HEART. In my possession were several thousands in shillings, which amounted to thirty dollars. That quantity of currency was difficult to get used to it.

Our first morning in Mosiro, Dave had handed one of the Maasai a roll of Kenyan shillings, thereby purchasing a small herd of white and tan goats. This provided our dinner for the next several days.

Unaware of the time and too busy for hunger, we ate our main meal of the day when the Maasai called us. A group of them spent much of the day preparing this meal, stirring the contents of two large pots which sat over an open fire. A few of them fried a stack of chapati on a cast iron skillet.

Similar to a small, thick tortilla shell and made from water and flour, chapati was the bread in the diet of many people in eastern Africa, India, and other parts of Asia. They commonly broke off pieces of it to use as eating utensils, scooping up their stews with it. Though chewy and not particularly flavorful, the chapati made an impression on Val and me. Cheap and easy to make, it followed us home to our kitchen.

The Maasai insisted that as their guests we would eat first, followed by the women and children of the tribe and the men last. We helped ourselves to a piece of chapati and dished our plates from the two huge kettles. In one of the pots was a mix of cabbage, rice, potatoes, and an occasional carrot. In the other pot, goat meat floated in a bland gravy.

We all tried to push one thought out of our minds. We knew the small herd of goats tied to a tree just beyond our tents got smaller each day for a reason. Val even commented that she didn’t think it was right that they killed each victim in front of the rest of the herd. I assured her that goats had no comprehension of life and death.

One morning, as the Maasai were slaughtering our meal for the day, Nate, Carson, and Brandon joined them. Somewhere along the way, they had learned that consumption of certain raw organs of the freshly killed animals was a delicacy. The belief was that this practice would make you more virile. Being typical boys they had to try it.

Jon took a video of them eating a piece of raw kidney. Nate and Brandon grimaced and gagged, but Carson’s expression was truly priceless.

“That is definitely something I could have gone my entire life without trying,” he exclaimed as he spit the morsel onto the ground, his tongue hanging out, and his entire body convulsing. Both the Maasai men and boys laughed and poked fun at him. When Carson was somewhat composed, he gave the remaining pieces in his hand back to the Maasai youth, who ate it with great delight.

Our Makeshift Pharmacy at Mosiro

Chapter 11

A time to keep and a time to throw away

(Ecclesiastes 3:6b, NKJV)

PUR

At one of our team meetings in Appleton, what felt like a thousand years earlier, Dave had shown us a little packet of chemicals the size of a teabag. It was this wonderful water purifier made by Procter & Gamble named PUR. The directions called for dumping one packet into a couple gallons of polluted water, stirring vigorously for a period of time, and then letting it settle. All the dirt and particles clump together, forming a gelatinous mass which settles to the bottom of the container. The water left behind is pure and crystal clear.

The day Dave demonstrated this for us, he had melted some snow from a snow bank outside the Life Promotions office. After he finished stirring in the packet of chemicals, a tiny clump of matter, which fit in the palm of my hand, had formed on the bottom of the pail. We clustered around the bucket and peered into the bottom of it. The glob we saw looked like dirty, yellow Jell-O, but we were still impressed.

At Mosiro, the PUR packets worked like magic.

The best description of the water from the river is to say it was diluted mud. I can’t recall ever seeing natural water anywhere in the United States that was this dirty and dank, even water from a woodland pond or a stagnant swamp.

In the past, groups from around the world have introduced various filtration systems to purify this polluted water. Results have been mixed. Generally, any sort of filter which these devices incorporated was quickly clogged and useless. The filters could not handle the amount of debris in the water. To include the necessary number of filters to purify an abundance of water was impractical and too costly.

When the first bucket of water was brought up from the river at Mosiro, everyone looked at Dave. Their expressions challenged him as if to say, “Let’s see you make this stuff clean.”

Several packets of PUR were needed to clean each container of water. Each pail had to be stirred for much longer than the instructions called for. The males from our team and many Maasai men and youth happily took their turns at this task throughout our entire stay. To be extra safe, they strained the purified water through cheesecloth into a clean container. The nasty clump of debris that was left in the original bucket was disposed of in a hole away from camp.

The first day, the men in our group, our driver from HEART, and several of the tribesmen made 55 gallons of clean water. About half of our team used it for drinking water. Dave guaranteed it was safe. Those who used it assured the rest of us that the taste wasn’t bad, only slightly like bleach. The other half of our team wouldn’t be swayed. We drank from the large jugs of bottled water which had lined the aisle of our bus the entire trip from Nairobi.

THE HAPPY DANCE

Water was only one of the necessities which was different at Mosiro. Besides having no running water, we had no electricity. We lived in tents, and we ate food which had been cooked over an open fire, but our lives continued as normally as possible.

The medical clinic and the educational seminars kept us busy, but we never felt rushed for time. The Maasai were so laid back that whatever time we did something, they were ready. Our schedule was flexible. We ate and slept and worked. And then we had to relieve ourselves.

From talking to friends, family, and even patients that I have waited on, I’m going to tell you something that you probably already know. Whenever you travel anywhere, even in the best of circumstances, it disrupts your bowels. I don’t care if you are staying at the nicest hotel in London or at your best friend’s apartment in Denver or in a tent in the middle of nowhere, when you are out of your element, your body is suddenly too shy to do its daily duty.

When I used to go camping with my sister Pat, we would both become constipated. We’d stay active all day, hiking, tossing the Frisbee, or sometimes swimming. We included as many fresh fruits and vegetables in our diet as our cooler would accommodate. We drank plenty of water. Yet each vacation in our tent in the woods, we would moan and groan as our bowels came to a screeching halt. On one such camping trip, after Pat had had success, she came out of the outhouse dancing.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

“I am doing the happy dance, because I went poo,” she sang out, still skipping and hopping with glee. The happy dance became the most important reportable event during any of our travels.

Many years and many happy dances later, I took it to Africa. Val instantly knew one morning what had happened when I came back from the choo with a spring in my step and a wiggle in my hips. She had to share it with Kari on the spot. Soon all the girls were wondering if they would be the next one to do the “dance.”

Against my best judgment, I explained it to the rest of the team. Soon everyone was hoping to do the happy dance, rather a challenge when squatting over a hole within a crude, canvas structure without a door and open to the blue sky above.

As you already know, if you have ever traveled outside of the United States and outside of the usual tourist places, your bowels will end up with the opposite problem. Before the trip was over, most of the team was doing that kind of dance all right. It wasn’t the happy one, but at least it waited until we were miles from the wilds of the Bush to occur.

A WALK TO THE RIVER

Before leaving Mosiro, we walked along the river. Late Saturday afternoon, when the clinic had slowed down and the teachings for the day were over, Dave gathered a few of his hardy teammates who were up for a hike.

From where we were camped, the river was past the choo and down the hill. When we were given our first tour of the grounds, one of the Maasai said that our women could bathe privately in the river to the right side and our men towards the left. I know that none of the team from America took them up on their kind offer to use their water.

I do wish that I would have gone to the river more, to take pictures and to reflect. Even though I can’t swim, I have always been drawn to water, from the mighty Lake Superior to the stream that ran through the woods behind my parents’ house. The easy ebb and flow of any body of water is mesmerizing, even hypnotic.

Instead of meditating on this African river, I stayed close to camp. In addition to hearing that the Maasai were keeping lions away at night, we had been told that hippos could be in the river. The Animal Planet television station clearly supports statistics that hippos kill more people than any other mammal in Africa.

I also had a rational fear of poisonous snakes. No one told me to watch out for them, but I wasn’t taking any chances. I didn’t stray from what I had come to consider civilization, until the afternoon that Dave announced we were taking a walk to see the baboons. Instead of going behind the camp where we had been instructed we could bathe, we headed out towards the termite mound.

Hiking in unfamiliar forests in the United States, I retained a general sense of direction which kept me from getting lost. I can feel where north, south, east, and west are. I don’t know if it was being south of the equator or my overall disorientation in Kenya, but I never knew what direction I was going. In the morning, I could watch the sun come up to the left of camp and still not convince myself that that was the east. I couldn’t get it in my head that just because I was closer to the South Pole, the whole world really wasn’t upside down.

Luckily, Dave and one of the Maasai navigated us to this new section of river. We scrambled down the bank and onto a narrow trail with brush on both sides. When we got into the open, we knew we had discovered the baboons.

Their loud and raucous voices met us well before we spied them through the thick foliage on the opposite shore. They grew louder as we scanned the trees trying to photograph them. They knew we were there, and they were not happy about it.

I am pretty sure that Animal Planet did a show on baboons, too. Whether or not the program ranked them as one of the African mammals to avoid, from the noise they were making in the trees, I did not want a close encounter with one of them. We weren’t close enough to see their mouths, but I was certain they had big teeth.

FISH FOR DINNER

On the way back to camp, the boys stopped along a sandy bank to try their hand at fishing. While in Nairobi, Nate had mentioned to Carson and Brandon that we would be camped near a river. Somewhere in the mass of supplies in the storage rooms at HEART, they had discovered fishing gear. These basic poles and line had mysteriously found their way into the crowded bus. The boys were going to take full advantage of this opportunity to test their skills.

They caught a few fish, nondescript creatures that were dark brown, shimmery, and maybe ten inches long. They didn’t look like any fish I had ever hooked in Wisconsin, though I admit that fishing had never been a great pastime of mine. The only reason I held a fishing pole was to have an excuse to sit outside in the summer sun. In college, I was swayed into a fishing boat by a fellow student. I believe he made me throw back the half-dozen pan fish I managed to catch, admonishing me that they were too small.

At Mosiro, there were no bag limits, so later that evening, the boys fried their fish over the open fire. Carson, Nate, and Brandon tentatively tried a bite, perhaps having flashbacks to a certain goat organ. They broke into smiles. Savoring the taste, they smiled and nodded. Here was something pleasing to the palate.

They coaxed the Maasai to try some but were met with staunch resistance. The boys didn’t push it, afraid that there was a tribal taboo about eating things caught in the river. They couldn’t understand why the Kenyans wouldn’t eat the fish which seemed plentiful and easy to catch.

Finally, one of the interpreters explained, “We just don’t like the taste.”

Really? That was a tough answer to swallow. Fish tasted bad to them, and yet raw goat guts were a delicacy. What other cultural differences would we encounter?

PIERCINGS

The Maasai have a distinct culture of their own and are the epitome of the classic African tribe. More pictures of Kenya show these tribesmen than any others. The typical Maasai warrior is tall and thin, and he’ll be photographed in one of two different positions.

One is to lean all of his slight weight onto his walking stick, one bony leg crossed in front of the other. His other move is to jump straight into the air to the boisterous encouragement of his peers. It is a friendly competition to see who can jump the highest.

He will be wrapped in a shuka, a red blanket with stripes or a plaid pattern on it. A sheathed knife will hang from his waist. If he is a fully grown man within the tribe, his hair will be shaved short and naturally dark. If, however, he is a moran, a young warrior who has not yet reached maturity within the tribe, his hair will be dyed red with ocher and may be in long plaits down his back.

Whatever his age, a tribesman’s earlobes will have been stretched and will hang almost halfway to his shoulders. Sometimes a foreigner will look at his ear and think it is completely deformed because there will be a round knot of skin where his ear should be. Then suddenly – flop – the loose skin from his earlobe will let go from where he wrapped it around the top of his ear.

The first time some of our girls saw this happen, they literally jumped, afraid that an entire piece of his head had broken loose.

We found these stretched earlobes fascinating, if not a bit creepy. One of our youth couldn’t help but ask what many of us were thinking, “Do you ever pierce anything else? Such as your noses or eyebrows?”

They looked at us with such disgust that it bordered on horror. Through the interpreter, they told us that they thought it was gross to pierce anything other than their earlobes. But it wasn’t gross to eat raw goat organs.

The women, instead of wearing red striped or plaid shukas, draped themselves with kangas. A kanga is a large piece of brightly colored, patterned fabric. A border runs around the edge of the material with a saying in Swahili along one edge. One such saying might be Mtu ni watu, which literally means “a person is a people,” which is interpreted to mean no man is an island. Kuna kila sababu ya kutoa shukrani means “there is every reason to give thanks.”

The women tie one kanga around their waists, a second on one shoulder, and a third on their other shoulder. Or she might wear a regular dress or t-shirt and skirt underneath with a single kanga tied around her neck.

Like the men, the women pierce and stretch their earlobes, wearing intricate beadwork around the rim of the gaping hole. They may have small sticks or bones driven through the tops of their ears. Their neck and arms are adorned with beads in all of the basic colors. Wide bands of beads woven together with wire are worn on the wrists of both men and women.

The beads on the bands were strung in distinct patterns and colors. We assumed that each pattern meant something different to the tribe, similar to the tartan plaid on the kilts worn by traditional Scottish men which designated the clan they were from. Once again, our team members were wrong. Certain colors may signify certain things, but the Maasai simply chose patterns they liked.

We were reminded of how nonchalant they were and how different from us. They seemed so content with their simple lifestyles. They didn’t think everything to death like Americans tend to do. They lived their lives each day from sunrise to sunset without worrying about tomorrow.

In contrast, worry was all that I seemed to know on this trip. I had learned so much about the culture of the Maasai, but what had I actually done? When would I start to do something for these fascinating and kind people?

Purifying Water

Chapter 12

A time to keep silence and a time to speak

(Ecclesiastes 3:7b, NKJV)

JESUS MOVIE

As we continued living at Mosiro, I was amazed at the things which found their way onto our heavily laden bus. We had packed only the necessities for five days, yet the bus had quickly become full.

Somewhere in the mess of supplies, Dave had managed to bring a movie projector. On Saturday night, several of the men hung a sheet on the outside wall of the block building. Dave fired up the generator and hooked it to the projector. A flickering picture appeared.

The Maasai were stunned. Again, the Americans had presented something magical.

The Jesus Film began playing in Maa, the language of the Maasai. They watched the story of Christ in silence at first, and then began to whisper back and forth, all the while pointing at the screen. Their pastor had told them about their Savior, and suddenly He stood in front of them, larger than life.

As herders of cattle and goats, they related to the shepherds who received the news of the birth of their Savior. The barren landscape of Israel looked like the land where their herds grazed. They nodded as the movie depicted Bible scenes which could have happened anywhere on their plains.

The Jesus Film has been shown in over two hundred countries around the world in the language of the natives of each country since 1979. The film has been translated into eleven hundred languages and shown to millions of people. Many choose to follow Christ after seeing the movie. What a wonderful tool and what a privilege it was to show it to the people of Mosiro.

A breeze wafted through the area and the screen flapped back and forth. Several of our team members panicked. How could we keep the sheet from completely blowing away? Jon and one of the boys tacked the makeshift screen back in place, but their tools were inadequate. As the wind picked up, part of the sheet fell again, and no amount of effort could secure it.

By then, it didn’t really matter. The Maasai had seen enough of the movie. They were satisfied; it was as if they had watched a full-length feature with buttered popcorn. They nodded and laughed.

Their lives weren’t complicated by trying to pay bills or deciding what to wear or finding a babysitter so they could go on a date with their spouse. Like all sinners, they were far from perfect. The list of temptations they faced daily may be much shorter than what most Americans face, but that didn’t mean God overlooked their sin.

But because their lives were simple, they didn’t question what they felt in their hearts. They accepted one basic fact: they knew that their Redeemer lives.

NO BEAVERS IN KENYA

As I stood in the dark that evening, I wondered again what I was doing there. Val, Kari, and the other teenage girls played with the Maasai children, carrying them on their backs and letting them brush their hair. Nate, Carson, and Brandon admired their catch of fish, still trying to coax the Maasai boys to eat it. Jen and Cathy were deep in conversation with Teri and Michelle. Jon, Geoff, and Dave visited with the Maasai leaders. Whether or not they were furthering our mission, they were doing something.

What was I doing? What had I been doing for the last six days since I had stepped off that plane in Nairobi?

During one of the team meetings in preparation for the trip, we filled out a questionnaire that was developed by Dr. Gary Smalley and Dr. John Trent. This personality test pointed out our strengths and weaknesses, how we deal with stress, what we like and dislike in a group dynamic, and what our motto would be when working in a group.

The Lion model in this test is practical, productive, strong-willed, independent, decisive, and a leader. He will take charge and see that the job gets done. The Otter is described as being outgoing, responsive, warm, friendly, talkative, enthusiastic, and compassionate. He wants to have fun, but is happy to work side by side with others. The Golden Retriever, as anyone knows who has ever owned this breed of dog, is easy-going, dependable, loyal, and steady. He wants to be friends with everyone, so he will work hard so everyone is happy. Last, the Beaver is industrious, organized, persistent, and a perfectionist. His number-one priority is to get the job done and get it done right.

Can you guess which animal represented my personality?

At that team meeting, after we had taken that test, Jen looked at our scores and shook her head. “My, we have many beavers here, don’t we?”

At the time, I thought that was a good thing. We were going to be a hard-working crew. We would cut down a lot of trees and build a lot of dams. We would take Kenya by storm and cure the ills of her people and even save them for eternity. My thoughts were grandiose, my expectations high.

Where were the rest of the beavers those nights when everyone was content to sit around laughing and joking and socializing? Was it really necessary to balance the team, and let the otters and golden retrievers come out of our personalities? And where was a lion when we needed it, someone who would step up and take this team over to see that the work got done?

We had drilled Jen and Dave at the team meetings in Appleton and at the morning meetings at HEART before dispersing for the day. What were we going to do each day? What were we going to accomplish? They said we would be working with people in the slums and in the Bush, with orphans and other children in need, but they never clarified what that work would be. Everyone else on the team accepted their answers, but the beaver in me would not allow me to look foolish by asking for more clarification.

I’m not saying Dave and Jen weren’t competent leaders or that they hadn’t adequately prepared us for this trip. They are the most dedicated Christians I have ever met. Their love and compassion for the Kenyans was unparalleled. They knew what each day would bring, and they were ready for it. They also knew they could only prepare us a certain amount; we would need to live it first.

I mostly blamed myself. I should have asked more questions and done more research. I should have realized that this would be the hardest thing I had ever done in my life. I should have known I would be stretched far outside my comfort zone.

Our mission was half over, and if this was all we were going to do, maybe I needed to accept that. But it was more than that. Sometimes I felt as if not only my husband, but God Himself had dropped me off at the airport back home. Why had God pointed me to Africa an entire year earlier and then abandoned me? Maybe God hadn’t really been sending me messages for those months; maybe He hadn’t wanted me to go to Africa at all. Maybe I just wanted to take a vacation in Kenya and tricked myself into thinking this was where God wanted me.

Watching Jen in the light of the campfire and Dave in the light of the movie projector, I saw that they had Kenya engraved in their hearts. They knew the work that had to be done, but they knew the most important work was in the little things, the kind gestures: holding hands with strangers, listening to how they built what they needed, relaxing as if in the home of an old friend. They were building relationships and not dams.

Why wasn’t that enough for me?

AN UNEXPECTED HONOR

As we ate our meager breakfast Sunday morning, a group of twenty warriors, women, and children gathered at the side of the termite mound. A tall man in a suit coat and tie and holding a Bible spoke to them. The year before a pastor had come to the area and told the Maasai about their Savior, Jesus Christ. A group of them committed to take his class. He taught them what it meant to be a Christian. On this day, the first Maasai in Mosiro who had finished the class would be confirmed and become members of God’s house.

The pastor had not yet arrived, however. The man who led them now had only assisted in their education; he was no preacher. He approached us and asked, through an interpreter, to speak to Dave.

Dave obliged and stepped away from the team.

They weren’t sure where the pastor was. One man had left on his bicycle and was pedaling half an hour away to the top of a ridge where he would get cell phone reception to call the pastor and find out when he would arrive. In the meantime, the new confirmands yearned to become members of the body of Christ. They wanted the confirmation service to begin as soon as possible, and they wanted Dave to lead it.

He was stunned. Here he was an outsider, an American, who had only been to their area a few times. His heart belonged with the Maasai. His faith never wavered, but how could he lead these people through this rite of passage?

He returned to Jen, Michelle, Jon, Cathy, Geoff, and me and explained the situation.

“We need to pray on this,” Jen stated and reached for hands to hold.

We formed a quick circle, holding each other’s hands. Jen started the prayer, and each member added their supplication in turn.

As my turn approached, I broke out in a sweat. I couldn’t even listen to the words of the two who spoke ahead of me. What could I pray for? What words could I share that would give anyone guidance? What should I be asking God for? How did everyone else know what to say? Where did their words come from?

“Thank you, God, for being with us on this trip. Stay by our sides in the days to come.” Generic words fell out of my mouth. No one seemed to notice as Michelle shared her prayer.

Dave took a deep breath as our hands dropped back to our sides. He rubbed a hand over his cropped red hair and flashed us a crooked smile. “I know what I have to do.”

Someone in that circle had said the right words, or had God spoken directly to Dave? He strode off to the field of stone seats.

DAVE’S SERMON

The villagers had gathered around the stones where they sat the day before to hear our health teachings. Our youth clustered off to the side and waited for the adults from the team to join them.

The group from the termite mound filed to the front of the assembly. Dressed in a pink, purple, and green shift, 1950s American style, a wizened woman (not more than sixty years old) began to lead them in song. She chanted a few words and they followed with several lines. We couldn’t understand a word they said, but they sang for an hour, standing together under the tree. Their voices never wavered or tired.

Finally, the old woman turned to Dave Bell, put her thin leathery arm on his shoulder, and spoke to her people. When she was finished, she walked into the midst of the crowd.

Standing alone before the Maasai, Dave raised his hands in praise to our God and Savior. He spoke a few lines at a time and waited for the translator to interpret his words into Maa.

He spoke of the love that God has for His people, a love so strong that He was willing to send His Son to save us from our sins. He praised God that the team from Life Promotions had been able to partner with HEART, and that we had been sent to Mosiro. He thanked the Maasai for all they had done for his team, explaining that we had gained as much from them as we had given. He concluded by congratulating the confirmands on their devotion to their Lord and wished them God’s blessings. He assured them that their pastor would arrive at any moment to conclude the rite of confirmation.

A barely audible sigh rippled through the crowd.

As Dave turned to the rest of his team, his shrug was only perceptible to us. He could do no more, say no more. Then we saw the dust in the distance before we heard the rumble of the Jeep’s engine. The pastor had arrived.

CONFIRMATION

Their pastor preached for another hour. The interpreter shared a few nuggets with us, but we waved him off. We were only there to observe; we already felt like intruders during this very special time. This was the day of the Maasai.

Jesus had taken His place on the cross for each and every one of them. Whatever hardships they endured here in the Bush, Jesus had endured more. These Maasai knew it and appreciated it, perhaps more than any American ever could. They understood suffering.

They also understood relationships. They knew that if their Redeemer lived, He lived and breathed right in their midst. Their Savior would always be with them, walking daily at their sides.

Finally, the confirmands formed two rows, those in the front kneeling. The pastor went down the row and individually prayed for each of them. The men, women, and children bowed their heads as he laid his hand on them and blessed them. In silence they switched places, the back row coming to the front and kneeling. The minister continued down the line until each person had received the blessing.

This day was a wonderful experience. Time stood still for us. Americans should experience such a service, after they routinely check their wristwatches during their pastor’s service every Sunday morning. Even on special occasions such as baptisms, weddings, and confirmations, it seems the one administering these rites is on the clock. A good sermon is a quick one seems to be the American consensus.If there is one thing I wish I could take home, it would have to be the patience of the Maasai. It may be more than patience. It is the feeling of being at ease with the way in which they live their lives. There was no clock to watch, no place to go, nothing more important for them to do at that moment than to be in the Lord.

They were God’s children with their home secured in heaven.

Confirmation at Mosiro

Chapter 13

A time to love and a time to hate

(Ecclesiastes 3:8a, NKJV)

RIVER BAPTISM

After the confirmation ceremony, everyone tromped down to the river for the baptism. A herd of forty cattle waded in the water drinking their fill. No amount of urging could hurry them along. As the Maasai lined up from the shore to the top of the sandy bank, the cattle meandered out of the water and back to the plain.

The pastor was unperturbed. He and his aide rolled up their pants’ legs and strode into the water. I don’t know why they bothered. Standing knee-deep in the muddy water, they got their pants soaked and their shirts damp.

One by one the new church members waded in. As instructed by their minister, they knelt in the murky water, crossed their arms over their chests, and took a deep breath. With one fluid movement, he supported them at the back of the neck, held their arms, and dunked them into the muddy river.

At that point, they not only had a strong faith in God, they also put their trust in the hands of their pastor. He didn’t drop a single parishioner as he continued to lower them into the water and pull them back up, baptizing them in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. They sprang up, wiped water from their faces, and splashed back to shore. Each wet face smiled broadly and shone in the sunshine.

One woman didn’t think that she was completely submersed the first time and insisted that he dip her into the water again. Smiling, he obliged.

It was a moving ceremony. From all directions, as the Maasai stood along the shore and up the banks of the river, their chanting filled the air with the same song they had sung before the church service. As the disgruntled cattle turned towards home, their lowing added to the tribal music. The many mzungu who were scattered throughout the crowd snapped pictures with digital cameras. As much as we stood out from the Maasai, not only in skin color but in the clothes we wore and the cameras we held, we felt accepted as part of the tribe.

Lastly, a mother waded in with her infant child. The man of the cloth raised the baby to the heavens in praise. Then he lowered him to the surface of the water and dipped his cupped hand three times into the river and let the water run over the child’s forehead.

Matthew 19:14 sprang to mind. Let the little children come to me resonated through my head. And do not hinder them, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these.

VCT IN THE BUSH

We had been at Mosiro for less than 48 hours. We had experienced so much and met so many people. People we had just met back in Nairobi felt like old friends.

Jane, who ran the VCT in Ngong, had arrived with her tent and volunteers the day before we had. They continued the work they had started in the city, testing for HIV and counseling those with negative and positive results. An impromptu, hushed report that she had shared Sunday morning confirmed that HIV had found its way to Mosiro. The numbers were low, but it was there. All of the Maasai who came to her tent were given support and were educated about stopping the spread of AIDS.

Several of her volunteers were from other countries. One was even from Australia. Why I didn’t spend more time getting to know them, I am not sure. Others from our team visited with them, but I clung to the familiarity of our row of dome tents when I wasn’t in the pharmacy or at the health seminars. I craved down time, peace, and solitude.

As in Ngong, Jane’s daughter Rita worked side by side with her mother. When the foreign volunteers became comfortable running the VCT, Rita stepped away to bond with our youth. It was hard to believe that she had recently graduated from high school. She could goof around and have as much fun as our teenagers, but a depth in her eyes showed that she had seen more than anyone her age should have. As if she hadn’t a care in the world, she laughed while she braided Kari’s and Amanda’s hair into loose cornrows.

After the baptism, the VCT team packed up its tents and other belongings to begin the trek back to Nairobi. Though we hadn’t spent much time with Jane and her volunteers, the camp seemed empty without their presence. Their row of matching blue and orange tents no longer lined the opposite side of the clearing, complementing our mismatched set of tents.

Rita stayed behind. Knowing the Maa language, she was a valuable asset for the remainder of our time in the Rift Valley. Her bubbly personality would help to buoy our youth in the days to come. As it would turn out, we had not seen the worst of what Africa had to offer.

A TOUGH CROWD

On Sunday afternoon, the medical clinic reopened with crowds of Maasai patiently waiting their turn. The educational sessions continued as well.

Leaving the pharmacy well stocked and sufficiently staffed, I stalked the health seminar, keeping track of who from our team was scheduled to speak next. No one had volunteered for the job. Then again, no one seemed to even be around half of the time. I suddenly forgot where I was and convinced myself that we had a tight schedule to stick to.

Amanda opened the TB discussion; Scott followed. Geoff finished the section, and while he was still speaking, I looked around for Jon. He was up next to read the beginning of the Hepatitis B portion. Where was he?

As Geoff read his last paragraphs, Dave and Jon came ambling down the road. I would later learn that they had been to someone’s farm to learn about their irrigation system. At the time, I didn’t want to hear about it. I scolded Jon for not being where he was supposed to be. He laughed good-naturedly and said he had plenty of time.

He picked up his health manual where he had left it behind on a rock, took the microphone from Geoff, and began reading without missing a beat. As angry as I was with him, I had to turn my attention to Scott. He was distraught over something, and his wife Teri tried to comfort him.

“They didn’t even seem to be listening to me,” he moaned. “I’ve been teaching for years and never had a class so despondent.” With the back of his hand, he wiped sweat from his forehead.

“It’s okay,” I tried to assure him. “They are just tired. It’s been a long day for them.”

“They still got something out of it,” Teri added.

I patted his arm. “You did fine, but it’s my turn now.”

Jon handed the mike back to me as I walked up with my handbook. The day before, as I read about HIV, the interpreter stopped me and said that he thought the Maasai needed a break. He asked them to stand up and stretch if they needed to. Most of them took the opportunity to get out a few kinks.

On Sunday afternoon, after many hours of little activity, I asked the interpreter if he thought the people might need a rest. I stretched my arms above my head and encouraged them to do likewise. Unlike the day before when they had welcomed such a break, today they looked at me like I was growing tree branches out of my skull. As I began to read from the health manual, I realized Scott was right; this was a tough crowd. Hopefully, our next presenters would make an impact.

CLEAN WATER

Val and Teri took center stage. Their demonstration was not just about how to wash your hands, but why and when. We take it for granted that you should wash before handling food or after going to the bathroom, but the Maasai have never practiced that kind of cleanliness. During the demonstration, Val sang a song she made up as a way to remind them that they can’t rush through this process. When she had finished and held her hands up to dry, the area people were instructed to come forward to receive their own soap.

They waited in two long lines while Michelle and Kalea handed them a bar of soap. Gratefully they accepted it. A bar of soap. Can you imagine? Never having held a simple bar of soap before, they smiled and nodded in appreciation.

After a late lunch, when the clinic was caught up, and the Maasai had to admit they had been sitting long enough, Dave called everyone to the outdoor amphitheater. He had one more thing to give the Maasai.

Holding the microphone in one hand, he dumped several packets of PUR into a bucket of muddy river water. He began to stir the water with a long spoon and asked the villagers to chant as he timed himself. After five minutes, he carefully poured the water through a clean cloth into a clean bucket. The rank mound which remained impressed even the Maasai. They pointed and nodded their heads. Even they realized that this was something they should not ingest.

Dave announced that the water had to sit a few more minutes, time enough for one more chant. As time ran out, he summoned Brea, Kalea, and Michelle, handing them each a stack of Dixie cups. It was time for the moment of truth. He poured water into the cups, and the volunteers handed them out to the seated Maasai.

We watched with bated breath. Having never drank fresh, clean water before, what would they think of it? Would it be tasteless to them and therefore not appealing? After all of our talks, would they understand the significance of drinking purified water?

Their faces said it all. Their eyes opened wide and even wider smiles showed their white teeth. They held up their empty glasses in a plea for more. More clean water was all they asked for. Could we oblige?

Another line formed. This time not everyone was allowed in. We had an entire case of PUR packets, but without the proper supplies, a clean bucket and clean cloth, the chemicals would be wasted. One responsible adult in each family unit was given the miracle materials, but only after they expressed confidence in using it properly.

Would it make a difference? Would the supply of PUR packets continue to make its way into the Bush so that the Maasai could reap the effects long term? At the time, only God knew the answer.

ONLY PRAYER

Evening settled over our camp. In the morning we would pack up camp and drive to our next stop.

Had we made a difference? Granted, a large number of these people had accepted Christ as their Savior. Eternal life was now guaranteed, but what about their lives here in Mosiro until then? Had we made their physical lives any easier?

Was it possible to make a difference? The question kept running through my head. The culture of these people had sustained them for two thousand years, probably since the time of Christ. How was it possible that disease and changing times could blight them?

Yet, no matter what we did or said, they would likely not change some things. These were so entrenched in their history that naïve white people from America would be sent away if they pushed too hard.

For many cultures around the world, a rite of passage for young men is circumcision. Every few years, the Maasai gathered their teenage boys for the ceremony which would begin their journey to manhood. Once circumcised, the boys were considered moran, young warriors in training. They spent the next eight or ten years bonding together, raising their own herds of cattle, and learning to be leaders within their tribe.

Young women also went through a rite of passage. Theirs, however, includes very little honor or support. Sometime between ages eight and fourteen, these girls are subjected to female circumcision, a barbaric procedure done under non-sterile conditions with no anesthetic. The male-dominated culture demands that this be performed as a way of purifying the females, keeping them clean, and assuring that the man will have more pleasure when he has relations with her. In reality, this surgery, also called female genital mutilation, can cause chronic infections, infertility, increased problems with menstruation, and painful intercourse.

How could a mother, having gone through this herself, subject her daughters to the same suffering? Instead of preventing it, the mother and other adult female relatives are all a part of the practice. It is not the mother’s fault; it is a tribal peer pressure, which only the very strongest can stand against, a pressure we cannot begin to understand.

Various groups, including the World Health Organization, have worked within the countries where female circumcision is practiced to encourage them to end the practice of the procedure. Many of these countries have made it illegal, but it continues in dark, dirty huts around the world. Estimates are that up to 90 percent of the Maasai women in Kenya have been circumcised.

Two nights after we left Mosiro, Jen shared with several of the women on our team that a young girl from the tribe knew that her “procedure” was coming up. A female relative had told Jen in confidence that the girl had chosen to run away rather than undergo the pain. No one knew where she was.

Running away in the wilderness of Kenya is different from running away in Middle America. There are no runaway shelters, no free emergency hotlines to call for help, and if you meet some kind, local, female stranger, she would probably turn you in instead of bucking the deep-seeded tradition. Of course, none of that matters because the wild animals would probably get you first.

Michelle, Cathy, and I looked at each other. All we could do was pray for the girl and keep her in our hearts.

River Baptism at Mosiro

Chapter 14

A time to plant and a time to pluck what is planted

(Ecclesiastes 3:2b, NKJV)

WILLIE

Monday morning came too soon. As if without warning, it was time to pack up camp and load the bus. We hoisted our suitcases, coolers, and Rubbermaid totes onto the roof, tied them down, and wrapped them with a tarp. Once again we lined the aisles with jugs of water and bunches of bananas. After three days in the Bush, it seemed as if our supplies had not dwindled.

We had one last prayer circle and began to say our good-byes to the group of Maasai who had gathered. The elderly woman who had led the singing gave each of us a hug and a blessing and a heart-felt thank-you.

We finally piled into the bus and started our journey back up the road. We watched the little, block building fade into the dust.

As we drove across the rough, open plain, the bus soon over heated, and smoke poured from the engine where Andrew was sitting. We all clambered out of the bus to stretch and walk around. Willie, our amazing driver, assured us it would only take a few minutes to repair.

Willie had worked side by side with us the entire trip. He had mixed many gallons of fresh water and had spent his spare time playing with the young children, making them laugh. With his red driver’s cap always on his head, he had gone fishing with Nate and the others. I can’t remember if he ate any of the fish, but he fit in with us like an old glove. Only Andrew could make us laugh more.

As Willie worked to revive the engine, two Kenyans pedaled up to us on their worn bicycles, large water jugs strapped onto the backs of the bikes. They conversed with us through one of the interpreters, asking what we were doing out in the middle of nowhere. Dave and Jen shared our mission with them and they nodded. They had heard of our arrival.

Shortly after they rode off into the distance, two more Maasai walked up. They had been looking for us because one of them wanted a ride to our next stop, Najile. How in the world had they found us? I wondered as I looked around at the barrenness in every direction. There were no buildings or any sign of life for as far as the eye could see. The slight depression in the ground Willie took for a road was anything but a highway. Yet, it seemed there was no place to hide if the Maasai were searching for you.

As soon as Willie had the bus running again, we invited the man we had met to climb aboard.

After three days of living in the Rift Valley and getting to know the Maasai, I was still surprised by their resilience. Absolutely nothing seemed to faze them. They made friends with everyone they met and laughed at the inconveniences of daily life.

Though he didn’t look it, with his short, stocky build, Willie was surely made of the same stuff as the Maasai. When the bus broke down again as he drove it up another steep hill, he appeared unfazed. We climbed out, confident that our rest would not be for long. This time, however, Willie reported that a hose was cracked. How in the world could he fix that so many miles from any sort of auto parts store?

Jon wanted to know if he could help, but Willie smiled, waved him off, and wandered into the brush at the side of the road. A herdsman walked by guiding his cattle up the hill passing us and the nonoperational bus. He waved good-naturedly, totally unsurprised to see these white people sitting at the side of the road.

With our bus parked halfway up the hill, I could look down into the Rift Valley, across the wide plain below. Maybe the Maasai were so at peace in their surroundings because they were surrounded by such peace. No skyscrapers obstructed the view; no smog filled the sky. The still air hummed faintly with the sound of insects and the gentle lowing of the cattle. There was no need to hurry.

Taking little notice of the beauty around them, Nate, Brandon, and Carson wouldn’t sit idly by. They made up a game where they stacked various stones they found on the side of the road and then threw another rock at the tower to try to topple it. The girls stretched out on larger rocks while Cathy and Jen walked to the top of the hill. I wrote in my journal.

There was no reason to worry; Willie would fix the bus.

He returned triumphantly from the brush with a vine in his hand. He crawled under the bus and repaired the cracked hose with the piece of vegetation. I asked if we could bring him home with us; he would certainly charge much less than my mechanic.

PARADISE ON EARTH

By early afternoon, we arrived at our new destination, Najile.

I don’t know if I was homesick by then or if the desolation of Mosiro had worn on me more than I realized or if it was just plain true, but Najile was paradise, a heaven on earth. When we got off the bus in the yard of Pastor Joseph, we could have been back in Wisconsin. I felt like I had come home.

Here in the arid Rift Valley, Pastor Joseph had started a farm.

For millennia, the Maasai had been semi-nomadic, drifting across the wide savannah with their great herds of cattle, moving from place to place with their extended families to find the best grazing lands. With the advent of game preserves, much of their territory had been taken over. The limited amount of land that they were now able to use became eroded from the overuse placed on it by the herds. Up until the last decade, the Maasai have clung to their traditions even as their herds shrunk in correlation with their lands. They looked down on those who worked the land, believing that tilling the ground to grow crops would leave it useless to their cattle. Their cattle mattered the most to them.

Pastor Joseph, however, on his several fertile acres, was convincing them that they could garden and still keep their herds. He taught them how simple it was to fence off portions of their land to cultivate vegetables and how to collect rainwater to irrigate their plants.

Throughout the grounds, rows of tomatoes and corn and kohlrabi and cabbage flourished. Lush grass grew between each section of vegetables. Pastor Joseph pointed to the far end of the garden where he had erected boxes for honeybees.

Jen touched my arm. “We will have to get him those seeds you brought from Wisconsin.”

I smiled and nodded. It was indeed just like home.

The entire farm was green and thriving, but Pastor Joseph seemed to thrive the most. He was a slight man in his twenties. He shared with us that he was single, but shyly added that he planned to marry soon.

As he pointed out the crops, he talked about the gardens he had built and explained his future plans. His English was stiff at times, but we understood most of what he said, except when his excitement got the best of him and his words tumbled out in a jumble. What a blessing from God he was to the Maasai of the area.

He told us about the sh’guts he planned to acquire to supplement his farm. “The sh’guts can go right here,” he said pointing to a bare spot past his garden.

We wondered what kind of vegetable that was. Surely Jon, the farmer from Indiana, knew what a sh’gut was. We all looked at him for the answer, not wanting to ask Pastor Joseph and embarrass him or ourselves.

Jon shrugged. It finally dawned on someone else. “Do you mean she-goats?”

“Yes, of course.” Pastor Joseph showed his broad smile one more time. “Sh’guts.”

EVENING FELLOWSHIP

Amidst the beauty of the farm, large, black tanks sat filled with rainwater. Clean, clear water. For the first time in days, we had plentiful amounts of water that hadn’t once been the color of mud.

We set our tents up in the patch of grass that had been designated for the future sh’guts. I planned that at bedtime, after I slipped off my dusty shoes and dirty socks, I would walk in this lush grass with bare feet. It seemed eons since I had walked with bare feet, and this grass was irresistible.

After setting up camp, our Najile hosts served us a snack of fresh homemade bread. While eating and relishing it, we drew lots for showers. Michelle and I said we would wait and go last. “Last” turned out to be my bedtime so I went one more night without any water hitting my body. It may be hard to believe, but I had become accustomed to skipping the morning shower. It just felt natural out there in the middle of nowhere.

That evening, as everyone continued taking turns to shower, we ate another meal of goat meat stew with various vegetables. This time, however, instead of chapati, we added bread that was left over from the afternoon.

Pastor Joseph’s home was bare but clean. The cement floor was painted rust-red, and the walls were turquoise, a color we seemed to see a lot in Africa. A framed portrait of the Virgin Mary hung from one wall. On the backs of each of the sofas and chairs in his living room were draped crocheted doilies like the ones we had seen in the homes in the Mathare Slum. Maybe we hadn’t come so far after all.

After supper, we sat in the yard, lit by the light from a generator, and typed our impressions of our journey into Dave’s laptop. He hoped to post them on the HEART blog when we returned to civilization. Someone who lived in the area set up an electric keyboard and others started singing. We listened to stories that the local people shared with us and their dreams of a better life. And what was America like? they wanted to know. It was hard for them to believe that America was much like this farm where we sat in fellowship.

FIRST SHOWER

Tuesday morning dawned early for me as usual, but for the first time in four days, I took a shower. Two weeks before, in the comfort of my house in America’s Midwest, I wouldn’t have considered this a shower. It would have been more like an inconvenience. But in Kenya, the pittance of water I used was like a miracle.

In the bathroom of Pastor Joseph’s home was a sink, a regular toilet, and a shower stall with a showerhead and drain, but no running water. I drew two pitchers of water from the tanks in the yard and brought them inside with me.

I filled a basin on the bathroom floor with water from one of the pitchers and took a sponge bath. My wet washcloth took the layers of Mosiro off my skin much better than the baby wipes had. Then I stuck my whole head into the bucket, thoroughly wetting my short hair. Shampoo followed. Shampoo. Can you imagine? Shampoo worked into my hair, my fingers massaging my scalp, my fingernails loosening whatever was wedged in my roots.

I rinsed my hair first with the now-dirty water. I didn’t want to use one extra drop of the liquid on my hair when it could run over my body instead. The second pitcher of cool water I dribbled on my head, my back, and my arms. Like a spring rain, it refreshed my skin, my very pores.

I thought back to the alley in the Mathare slum and the thin girl who had been bathing from her small bowl of water. Did it feel as good to her? Did it refresh her, give her hope and strength?

Would this current refreshment keep me revitalized for the rest of the trip? I felt brand new, but I was still in this foreign land where it seemed I sometimes didn’t belong.

MY DEVOTION

That morning was my turn to lead devotions. Months before, in anticipation, I had found a Bible passage on orphans and thought it would fit perfectly. Unfortunately, when we were packing for our week away from Nairobi, I hadn’t slipped my bookmarked Bible into my bag. We had to pack light, and the book was large and heavy.

I chastised myself again. What kind of Christian worries about the weight of his Bible?

I had been obsessing about what I could share with my team members. Would that prepared devotion even be applicable now? It wasn’t gritty enough to be compared to what we had experienced.

The others seemed more knowledgeable in the Bible and comfortable sharing their faith. What could I tell them that they didn’t already know or hadn’t already experienced?

The night before, I had pulled out Val’s Bible and was guided to open it to Ecclesiastes 3. Every line from that chapter of the Bible reminded me of something we had witnessed so far on our trip.

For everything there is a season, a time for every purpose under heaven.

We had witnessed birth and death, healing and killing, even sewing and the gathering of stones. We had laughed and cried, mourned and danced. And just the day before, we watched a young Kenyan harvesting crops in the garden, pulling up what had been planted months before, gathering food for himself and his family.

Why again had I doubted myself? God had sent me to Africa during this season of my life for a very good reason, for His reason. And in His time I would discover that reason.

I serve an amazing God. He will never let me down, and more importantly, He loves me so much that in His eyes, I could never let Him down.

Harvesting Turnips at Najile

Chapter 15

A time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing

(Ecclesiastes 3:5b, NKJV)

THE FIRST TO FALL

At dinner the night before, Brandon started to look green around the gills. He had taken his shower so he should have felt more refreshed than the rest of us. I told him maybe he should quit eating and go lie down. He said he was fine, even as a sudden hand to his mouth told me he’d get a second taste of that evening’s goat.

I tracked down Geoff and told him to get his son to bed, but maybe to the choo first.

Sometime in the night, Michelle made her first foray to the bathroom. I lay under my coverings and listened to both her and Brandon traipse back and forth most of the night. I silently prayed for their recovery and also, selfishly, asked that I wouldn’t be the next to fall.

During my devotion, as I described all of the things that God has planned, I said that He even has a time for us to have a stomach bug. Michelle and Brandon vehemently disagreed, but I pointed out that here we were with tanks of fresh water and no jarring bus rides to take that day. If someone had to be sick during the trip, this was the place for it to happen.

The one downside to being sick in Najile was the choo. We were used to the outhouse at Mosiro, and if anyone missed the hole in the ground, there was plenty of sand on all sides to cover up misjudgments. The choo on Pastor Joseph’s farm had a cement floor, and the hole was a twelve-inch-long trapezoid which narrowed to nearly a point on the front end. It was not an easy target to hit when one was sick.

When I had finished my morning inspiration, Cathy handed out anti-nausea meds, Pepto-Bismol, and anything else members had in their private pharmacies which they were willing to share to combat the vomiting and diarrhea that had descended on the team like one of the plagues. We had all been warned, and so we had come prepared with one type of anti-emetic or another. As the store of drugs was distributed, we appeared to be hippies looking for a new high instead of short-term missionaries.

For the time being, I opted out. Feeling fine at the moment, I was more fearful that pink Pepto passing my lips would make me vomit before any form of dysentery hit me. Like every other good mother in the 1960s, mine spoon-fed me Pepto-Bismol at the first complaint of a stomach ache. I could barely choke the chalky liquid down. It came back up so quickly, it never had a chance to act on whatever bug was causing my symptoms. That morning in Najile, I wanted to keep my homemade bread and orange slices inside me for a while.

Having never had the pleasure of the pink stuff, Val was first in line for whatever Cathy had to offer. The other teens wisely and without question took their meds as well. I did, however, keep a personal supply of Imodium tablets handy.

Brandon’s bout of vomiting could easily have been caused by the raw goat kidney he had eaten. Michelle, however, hadn’t eaten anything different than anyone else the entire trip. But, as frequently occurs on trips to any third-world country, bacteria – and worse – will rear its ugly head.

More of us would be hitting the choo before our trip was over. Did I get it? Of course, but not until a few days later, while bouncing along on safari, when the work portion of our trip was over, and we were supposed to be relaxing.

YOUTH GATHERING

That Tuesday morning after my devotion and after breakfast, we wandered over to Pastor Joseph’s church. The building consisted of one large room furnished with benches, a bare altar at the front, and double doors in the back. The walls were dull, grey, cement block, and the floor was the now-familiar cement slab.

Originally, a large meeting of the area tribal leaders had been planned. They had expected one hundred men. We were going to share the disease prevention we had taught at Mosiro. However, something had come up and the leaders suddenly decided to go to a nearby city for their conference. Remember, this was Kenya. It wasn’t as if someone had booked the hotel months in advance and put down a deposit. They could change their minds at the drop of a hat with no repercussions. And they did.

Within days of this change of events, Pastor Joseph and those working with him had spread the word among the area youth, asking them to come and hear our teaching. The turnout was nearly fifty teens ranging in age from twelve to eighteen. With no other buildings in sight, these teenagers came from miles around, walking in pairs and small groups, holding hands, smiling, and laughing. Like youth anywhere in the world, they seemed carefree and comfortable.

How they had even heard about our arrival was a wonder in itself. Then here they came ambling across the wide plains and gentle hills of the Rift Valley.

From somewhere, someone pulled out several kites. With a moderate amount of effort, the kites went airborne to the amazement of the Kenyan teenagers. A few of them knew limited English. With that knowledge and lots of hand gestures, Dave, Jon, and the boys showed them how to keep the kites aloft.

A soccer ball materialized, and the younger youth kicked it around, running after it when it went into the brush. There was no field and no goal, just enough open space to kick and chase.

Rain clouds threatened on the horizon, but it took more than a few drops of rain to bring the young people inside. Finally, everyone had to give in to the rain and go into the church building. That was why they had come after all, to hear what the foreigners had to say.

TEACHING AND SHARING

The aspirations that the Kenyan youth shared could have been the dreams of any boy or girl in America. Some of the young men had plans to attend the university in Nairobi. The young women, too, had goals for their future, a future they hoped would differ from that of their mothers.

We showed the older teenagers a graphic video demonstrating various sexually transmitted diseases and the consequences of contracting them. Jen shared about the importance of abstaining from intercourse until marriage and the dire consequences that result from not obeying God’s law regarding this.

We walked back to Pastor Joseph’s farm for lunch – the same meal we had had for days. But more than eating, we needed a break, an hour to decompress. Despite the laughter within the church, the message had been a grim one. Could these bright boys and girls overcome the odds?

When we had finished lunch, we noticed that several women had shown up, their beaded handwork spread out on shukas on the grass. I dug my last few hundred shillings out of my backpack. I didn’t want to miss out on the opportunity to support these women as well as purchase more bracelets to take home.

Returning to the church, we split up, the boys and our male team members moved to a smaller out-building, while the girls and women stayed in the church. It was time to open up in a way that shouldn’t be shared with the opposite sex at this age. Kari, Val, Amanda, Brea, Sarah, and Kalea each read a question that one of the Maasai girls had written on a piece of paper. Rita from the VCT interpreted for those who didn’t know English.

These young people lived halfway across the world, but they were much like American teens.

“If I don’t have sex with my boyfriend, will he break up with me?”

“Can I get pregnant the first time I have sex?”

“Can you transmit HIV by oral sex?”

I am not pulling your leg. These teens could have been living in the US just as easily as in Kenya.

Jen had assured us that we didn’t have to speak if we weren’t comfortable, but she and Michelle shared their own personal experiences. Having worked as a gynecologist for many years, Cathy explained to them the medical ramifications of their decisions.

Teri sat silently on the bench next to me. I glanced at her and then turned my gaze to the floor. What, I asked myself, could I share? That I had been pregnant when I married my first husband? That he left me seven years later for a much younger woman? That it wasn’t his fault that our marriage failed? That my greatest sin had been marrying a man who I knew wasn’t the one God had chosen for me? That it was fully through the grace of God that I had met my second husband, the man that God had intended for me all along? If I shared my story, would it make a difference in the lives of any of these girls?

Throughout the trip, I had thought that I didn’t fit in with the rest of our team, that I had nothing to contribute, that I was an outsider, that I wasn’t “Christian” enough. Sitting on that wooden bench in that simple church in Najile, I felt more alone than ever. Even my one true friend, Jesus Christ, seemed to be far, far away.

There was nothing I could share, nothing I could do that would make a difference in the lives of these young women.

God, help these young women, I prayed. Help all of the people of Kenya. And God, please forgive me that I have been feeling sorry for myself this entire trip. Forgive me for my selfishness, my self-centeredness. I don’t know why You called me to Africa, but if all I can do is pray for these girls, that is what I will do.

As the girls from our team sat down to wait for the boys to join us, I listened for God’s voice, for His answer to my prayers. Had I finally gotten it right? All I could hear was the wind in the grasses outside.

PURITY

At the end of the day, we passed out the purity necklaces and an accompanying covenant.

The winter before, Jen had given us the supplies needed to make purity necklaces. With simple beads and a ceramic cross, the necklaces were part of a promise to remain pure until marriage.

Val and I had made a dozen necklaces; my Sunday school students made some, too. A card came with each necklace, signed by the person who had made it with a statement that the person who had created the necklace would pray that the recipient would stay pure until marriage. When the African youth received their necklace, they signed the card, vowing that they would abstain from intercourse until married. One of our team members also signed the card as a witness that these youth took this pledge seriously.

Each of the Kenyan young people made a commitment that day, and they couldn’t wait to put on their necklaces. With both smiles and hope on their faces, they chose to do God’s will, to wait for marriage, and to remain faithful to that one partner.

As I looked around the room, praying for each and every one of them, I wondered how they would do it. In their male-dominated culture, how could these girls fend off the advances of older men, men who took it for granted that they could take what they wanted? How could these boys not cave to the pressure that their much-respected elders would place on them, that to be a man they must treat their women like possessions? These youth had dreams of college and yearned for careers beyond herding goats and cattle, yet their fathers were already arranging their marriages to someone they may or may not have ever met. For how long would they remain carefree?

Only God knew.

FINAL NIGHT IN THE BUSH

After the sun set that evening and we had eaten our fill of the usual meal, the boys and girls we had spent the day with entertained us. They gave each of our youth a Kenyan name. Kari was given the Maa name for Red Hair; Amanda was named Girl Who Smiles.

When one of the boys, Frederick, turned to me, I told him to name me old woman. They all laughed. But with a pencil up to his lips, Frederick thought about it for a minute and then wrote an illegible word on the piece of paper he held.

“What does it say?” I asked.

He gestured to the paper and snickered.

Two of the girls, Helen and Jacqueline, glowed under the dim lighting. They wore matching blue t-shirts from a Bible camp. They might have attended the camp earlier that summer or the shirts may have been donated from a local church. Their hair was cropped close to their scalps, their teeth were large and not so straight, but their smiles were still perfect. Their faces were like those of angels, and the purity necklaces dangled from their necks.

Jen caught my attention and whispered to me, “Get a picture of them with their necklaces.”

As I was about to snap the shot, Frederick jumped into the frame. He held up a soccer ball and the goofy look on his face pleaded to make him the center of attention. Typical boy.

Much later, back home, I was able to crop him out of the picture and was fairly pleased by how Helen and Jacqueline looked, the crosses hanging over the tops of their identical shirts. If I hadn’t done one thing right during the entire trip, I had finally snapped the perfect picture, the picture that could sum up what we had tried to do in the African Bush.

But I still saved a copy of the photo with Frederick. Boys who get in the way need to be saved as much as precious girls. And though no one can see it, God is standing there in the picture, too, a strong, loving hand on each child’s shoulder. That same hand had cupped my own face a year before and guided me to Africa.

I still didn’t know why God had sent me to Kenya. It was a long trip for one picture. Even if I didn’t know the answer to the question that had plagued me for two weeks, I had at last found peace. Jesus had never left my side after all.

Final Night in the Bush

Chapter 16

A time of war and a time of peace

(Ecclesiastes 3:8b, NKJV)

MASA MARA

We returned to the HEART compound in Nairobi and took a day to unpack, wash clothes, and wash ourselves in the luxury of military showers. You would think that when I returned home to Wisconsin, the first thing I would do would be to take a long, hot shower. In reality, it took several months before I was comfortable wasting that much water. I tried, but as I reached for the shampoo, an overwhelming desire to turn off the faucet would strike me. Even years later, clean water running down the drain annoys me. Likewise, I turn off the water when I brush my teeth.

Back at HEART, we had one day to regroup before we were off again. This bus ride took us on safari to the Masa Mara, a huge game preserve along the border with Tanzania. After two weeks of mission work, we had earned a vacation. I know that I wasn’t the only one who thought this was necessary.

Part of the ride to the Mara was over the same rough roads as to Mosiro, but instead of turning off, we stayed on the same road to Narok. Narok is a messy, different kind of town which serves as the jumping-off place for tourists heading out on safari, with buses and jeeps gassing up for the last time, and mzungu using the facilities. All of the toilets in the restroom we stopped at were plugged and looked like they had been for a while. I suddenly missed the old choo in the ground at Mosiro.

We arrived at the Mara by mid-afternoon, and wildlife appeared on the horizon. Herds of giraffes and zebras and gazelles. Flocks of various birds. To describe it as pastoral sounds bogus, but that is indeed the best description. The Serengeti stretched to the ends of the earth, and a gentle breeze barely moved the sea of golden grass. Everywhere there was some kind of wild creature.

Our route took us on a relatively straight course to the Fig Tree Camp where we would eat and sleep for the next two days and nights. We ate each meal from a spacious buffet with all sorts of interesting cuisine. Vervet monkeys begged for food from beyond the outdoor patio where we sat.

The accommodations were more than adequate. The first night we slept in cabins, but the second night we moved to canvas tents permanently anchored to platforms. The tents were along the river, but they warned us that if we heard noises in the night, we were not to roam outside. The animals wandering between the buildings would most likely be hippos. Hippos prefer to avoid human contact.

Naturally, when I couldn’t sleep that night and heard noises, I stuck my head outside. I didn’t see anything except the dark shadows of the trees around our tent. We had seen hippos that day on safari, wallowing in the mud of a river on the other end of the game park. They looked docile, almost cuddly. Were they really that dangerous? I’d watched enough Animal Planet to know that I didn’t want to tangle with one.

MISSION WITHIN THE MISSION

Every year, when the teams working at HEART went on safari as a treat at the end of their work, someone from the HEART staff was invited along. Charles Wambetti and his wife Jane were an attractive young couple. While Charles drove the HEART vehicles and helped on the grounds, Jane worked as a teacher at a Nairobi school. Grandma babysat their two-year-old so they could join us. They had never left their little one behind and had never taken any sort of vacation before.

The Wambettis were a beautiful Kenyan couple. Sharing the jeep with Cathy, Michelle, Jen, and me, telling us their stories, they seemed to glow. At first, we thought it was the excitement of the trip. Then Jane shyly shared with us that she had just found out she was pregnant. We couldn’t have been happier for the young couple.

Like most Kenyans, they had never seen the wealth of wildlife their nation is known for. An occasional giraffe might be spotted on the outskirts of a city, but elephants and lions and wildebeest kept a far distance from Nairobi.

We had the privilege of driving into the land of the Maasai where they live side by side with zebras and baboons. However, they make up a very small portion of the population. Nearly forty million people inhabit Kenya, approximately half of them living in urban settings. Those who do live in a rural environment are usually miles away from the game preserves where the large and diverse herds of wild animals live.

I enjoyed watching Charles and Jane marvel at the lions, hyenas, water buffalo, and crocodiles. We marveled as well. I had seen most of these animals in zoos in the States, but they were different creatures here in their natural habitat.

The huge male lion, the simba, king of his domain, sported a shaggy mane and multiple scars across his proud face. Lying in the shade of the acacia tree with his massive paws stretched out in front of him, he surveyed his domain with an air of relaxation. I’d only seen caged lions that paced endlessly or slept out of boredom.

The Mara is also home to the famous wildebeest migration. Millions of the mangy animals canter across the savannah to reach better grazing. Our jeep waited for long periods of time if the herd chose to cross in front of us. The driver would slowly pull forward hoping that the animals would notice and divert their path so we could pass. But the strange-looking wildebeests stayed true to their route, and only the driver’s nerves of steel could propel us through the herd so we could continue.

THE FLIP SIDE

For all the beauty of the Mara, it was easy to remember it was a game park. The animals lived in their natural setting on thousands of acres of land mostly unchanged by man. But as a game park, tourists shared those acres with the wildlife, and tourists didn’t come to see endless brown grasses blowing in the wind. They came to see the animals.

Our group rode in three safari jeeps, each of our drivers stalking whatever wildlife they spotted. When one found something of interest, he called the others on a two-way radio so none of us would miss out. That wouldn’t have been so bad, but there were similar drivers wandering the area. When a driver saw a group of two or more jeeps in the distance, he would head that way, knowing that someone had found a lioness and her cubs or a group of warthogs.

On our first drive into the plain, one of the drivers spotted three cheetahs eating a freshly killed wildebeest. We were the first to arrive, but it wasn’t long before the cheetahs were surrounded by mzungu jockeying to take the best pictures.

It was sad that these beautiful creatures couldn’t live in peace. Laws exist to protect them. Getting out of your vehicle for any reason is illegal. The jeeps are supposed to stay a certain distance from the animals, and only a limited number of vehicles can be stopped in any one place at one time. But with thousands of acres to patrol, the park rangers struggled to catch people who broke the law.

In general, we viewed and photographed a myriad of animals without human interference. It was a full two days.

As we drove back to Fig Tree the second evening, my tummy started to rumble. The rumble turned into a tumble, and I fought having an accident for the last few miles before we reached camp. The jeep had barely come to a full stop when I jumped out and ran for the bathroom.

Luckily, my supply of anti-diarrhea medication was in easy reach when I got back to the tent I shared with Michelle. I had come too far. A stomach bug wasn’t going to stop me now. I dug deeper into my bag for the antibiotics I had brought from home. I would nip this in the bud.

EVENING UNDER THE STARS

Back in Wisconsin, Geoff taught astronomy in a Madison high school. After signing up for this trip, he had been anxious to see the Southern Cross in the sky at night. Like the Big Dipper in the northern hemisphere, the Southern Cross was the constellation most well known and a beacon to anyone travelling after dark.

Each night while we were in the Bush, Geoff had looked up at the heavens in search of the constellation. Each night, however, clouds moved across the sky, ruining any chance for him to satisfy his dream.

That night at Fig Tree, we made our way back to our tents through an opening where several paths converged. The sky above was clear, dotted with millions of stars that were so close you felt you could reach out and grab a handful.

“There it is!” Geoff called out, pointing to the left.

Just above the tree line, four stars lined up to make a distinctive cross lying on its side. After he took a moment to orientate himself, he identified other constellations by name and gave us all an astronomy lesson right in the middle of the path. Strangers, tourists on safari, walked past shaking their heads, confounded as to what the excitement was about. Sadly, I feared that they lacked any dreams of their own.

When we arrived at our quarters, we converged on the Bells’ tent. They gathered us to sit in the darkness in a circle on the floor of their deck.

Jen brought out the dinner rolls she had slipped into her bag at dinner, along with the bottle of grape Nehi she had secured from a waiter. She poured the grape soda into a plastic cup and sat down next to Dave.

She broke one of the rolls in half and lifted it high. “Take. Eat. This is my body. Do this in remembrance of me.”

She next raised the glass of grape soda and said, “Drink of it all of you. This is my blood which was shed for you for the forgiveness of sins.”

She dipped the bread into the glass and handed it to Dave. He ate what she had offered and then took the cup and the dinner roll from her hands. He turned to Brea and said, “The body and blood of Christ offered to you for the forgiveness of all of your sins.”

In similar fashion, the soda and the dinner roll circled our solemn group until it was back to Jen. We were refreshed and strengthened by the body and blood of our Savior.

Tears were shed in silence. A single, deep emotion had descended on the team. In the morning, we would load our belongings into the jeeps for the long drive back to Nairobi. But we would never truly go back.

GOOD-BYES

Monday was our last day in Kenya. We had thought we had some difficult days throughout our African adventure, but we knew the last day would be the worst. Too many good-byes. We would even say our farewells to Jen, Dave, and Nate because they were staying behind to work as fulltime missionaries.

We took one last trip to Brydges Orphanage. The children had prepared a show for us and entertained us with their singing, dancing, and skits. Being the oblivious Americans that we were, we didn’t get it at first, as we watched their presentations. But this wasn’t a play; this was their life story.

In one skit, the young girl had lost her parents to AIDS. An uncle took her in, but he abused her. She ran away and lived on the streets, meeting up with people who pretended to be her friends. Instead, they forced her into prostitution in exchange for a place to live and enough food to keep her physically alive. But was she mentally and emotionally alive? She was dying on the inside. A Christian social worker discovered her, cold and alone in the slums of Nairobi and took her to Brydges.

The stories of the boys were no better, finding nothing but gangs, violence, and drugs when there was no family to take them in.

At the orphanage, however, the boys and girls laughed and played. They looked forward to their futures with bright hope. Brydges had begun a scholarship fund so the orphans graduating from high school would be able to go on to technical schools, learn a trade, and never look back. But with the love surrounding them at Brydges, I was sure this was a part of their lives they wouldn’t want to forget.

Val and I picked out a few necklaces, bracelets, and statues from the selection of items the orphans had made and had for sale in their little store. It was a hard decision. We wanted to buy it all, not only to remember these special children, but to supplement their income in any way we could.

Lastly, Val and the other girls wrote notes for Nancy, Ruth, and some of the other orphans. The children gave them notes in return.

“Thank you for coming to see me.”

“Please come see us again.”

“God bless you.”

When the time came to board the bus, hugs mingled with tears. Again they asked that we come back for a visit. We nodded, knowing the chances of that happening were very slim.

The bus trundled down the narrow dirt road. We waved out the windows for as long as we could.

RETURN TO LIFE AS WE KNOW IT

We had been living in a news vacuum for two weeks. What a wonderful feeling to only have the weight of our small world on our shoulders. By far, Mathare Slum, the WEEP women, the Compassion children, the Maasai of Mosiro and Najile, and the Brydges’ orphans were enough of a burden. Did we need to know about a brush fire in Colorado or a minor earthquake in Peru? No, but some news we did need to hear.

Our entire world had changed on September 11, 2001. Living in the relative safety of northern Wisconsin, things like terrorist attacks were a distant tragedy. I prayed for the victims and the survivors and all of the affected families. I cried that evening when I drove into our yard after work and saw that Nick and Val had lowered our flag to half-mast. I called my friend in Minnesota just to hear her voice. My brother-in-law had been in Washington that morning on his way to the Pentagon. My prayers included a tearful thank-you that God had kept my loved ones out of harm’s way.

Five years after that, I felt safe in Africa. Except for the quilt-fetching incident in the slums, I was confident nothing bad would personally happen to me or the team. While we were in Kenya, however, just days before we were to leave, fourteen suspected terrorists were arrested in the London airport. With the liquids they planned to carry onto their planes, they hoped to construct bombs. Security worldwide went on high alert.

As Dave shared the news with us, our rooms at the HEART compound were strewn with clothes, souvenirs, food, shoes, blankets, and plastic bags. Jen told us we could leave behind certain things we no longer needed, items which they might be able to share with the orphans or the people in the slums. A skirt I had bought at Goodwill specifically for this trip could easily be left behind, along with a fleece throw, some flip-flops, and two t-shirts. The others in my room constructed similar piles.

But what should we pack in our suitcases with their fifty-pound weight limit and what should we take as a carry-on when security was at maximum velocity? Val and I tossed the idea around. We were heading home. Sure, home was twenty-four hours away, but look at what we had lived without in the Bush. We reached an agreement. We would carry nothing on the plane but our passports and enough money to buy water and snacks at the airports in Amsterdam and Detroit.

It was a final leap of faith. People with different morals, a different religion, and a different code of living could declare their own personal war on Europeans and Americans and Christians worldwide. They could threaten us and, unfortunately, kill some of us, but that didn’t mean I had to live in fear. My God was going to take care of me and my loved ones and the entire HEART team. Our plane would touch down in Appleton, Wisconsin, and I would walk off with nothing but the clothes on my back and God’s love in my heart.

Herds on the Masa Mara

Chapter 17

What profit has the worker from that in which he labors? I have seen the God-given task with which the sons of men are to be occupied. He has made everything beautiful in its time. Also He has put eternity in their hearts, except that no one can find out the work that God does from beginning to end

(Ecclesiastes 3:9-11, NKJV).

From the CD player, the Newsboys sang. I sat back in my chair, arms crossed over my chest, my legs stretched out in front of me, ankles crossed. I let the music move me, lost in my thoughts, reflecting on what I had accomplished in Kenya, Africa. Not much, was my immediate reaction.

We were in the dining room at HEART, our team of seven adults and eight teenagers. It was the evening before we left on safari, a few days before we got on the plane to fly home. This was our final night in Nairobi to decompress, to reflect as a team and individually as to what the past two weeks had meant to us.

The song continued. It is you we adore. It is you praises are for. Only you the heavens declare. Only you.

Yes, Lord, I praise You and adore You. I really do, but why did You send me on this mission trip to Africa? What did I do for any of the people here?

Suddenly, I was no longer Chris, the confused and insecure woman from Wisconsin, sitting in that chair in a distant land. I was back home in the clinic where I work.

I come out of Mr. Johnson’s room with tears rimming my eyes. He is there to get his test results, and the news is not good. His wife’s Alzheimer’s is progressing, and their children all live out of the area. What is the poor man going to do?

As I turn to the nurses’ station, Sheila, a co-worker, holds the phone towards me. “It’s your favorite patient, Mrs. Green. She’ll only talk to you.”

“Hello, honey,” I speak into the receiver. “How are you doing?”

“Oh, thank God, Chris. They finally let me talk to you. No one else at that clinic knows what’s going on.” Mrs. Green still suffers the effects of a head injury she’d had years before. “When is my appointment with the specialist?”

“It is next week. Tuesday.” I quickly look up her information on the computer. “At one o’clock. Anyone could have told you that.”

“Yes, but only you really know me.”

I mentally scroll through all the things I need to do yet that morning.

“Oh, Chris,” Mrs. Green’s praise continues. “I just adore you. I’m sorry to bother you.”

“It’s okay, honey. Call any time.”

I found myself back in Kenya, then, as the song on the CD ended. I opened my eyes. Looking around the room, I wasn’t the only one with swirling emotions. Val had cried so hard that she left an actual puddle of tears on the table where she had laid her head.

My daughter and the other young people on our team brought such joy to the children they played with and laughed with. Cathy had healed many of the Maasai out in the Bush. Jon, Geoff, and Michelle had shared themselves with everyone they met. But what had I done?

“So, does anyone have anything to share?” Jen interrupted my thoughts.

“I just don’t feel as if I did enough,” Geoff opened the conversation. “It just seemed like we had too much fun.”

“I agree,” Cathy piped in. “We didn’t work very hard.”

I tried not to gape at her. She was a doctor. She had treated all those people at Mosiro. If she felt this way, no wonder I had felt useless.

Jen and Dave both smiled. They looked at each other and nodded their heads in unison. They had shared that same look with us every morning during the last two weeks, when we asked if we were going to be more productive that particular day. Every morning, they assured us that we would be busy that day. Each evening we crawled into our beds exhausted, but that didn’t mean our busyness had left us satisfied.

If the others on our team didn’t think they had made a difference in the lives of the people in Kenya, how was it possible that I had? Had I really brought Christ to any of them? The bigger question was, did I make a difference in the lives of people anywhere, people I ran into every day? Was I really only here to serve my patients? That seemed like so little. Shouldn’t I be doing more?

Would I ever figure out why God had sent me to Africa?

I know that nothing is better for them than to rejoice, and to do good in their lives, and also that every man should eat and drink and enjoy the good of all his labor—it is the gift of God

(Ecclesiastes 3:12–13, NKJV).

The Plains of Masa Mara

Epilogue

It is a good thing that God knows me better than I know myself. He never gives up on me, even when I give up on myself.

Two years after I returned from Africa, I felt the pull to take another trip, this time to South America. It was not with a Christian organization, but I was still drawn to spend a week volunteering in Ayacucho, Peru. I came home with much the same feeling I had after Kenya.

“God, why did you send me to another foreign country? What am I supposed to be doing?”

I still worked at our clinic in my home town. Every day I helped people like Mrs. Green and Mr. Johnson. Only on rare occasions did I share with any of them my faith in Jesus Christ. I always went back to the belief that they would know I was a Christian by my love, and hopefully, they would want some of what I had. Why didn’t that seem like enough?

God decided it was time to send me to where I really belonged. All along it had indeed been my own home town.

I called Patti, the woman who runs Kinship, a group that matches local mentors with disadvantaged children. Once accepted in the program, mentors commit to spend one hour a week with their kinship kid, baking cookies or going to the movies, taking a walk or playing a game. These are boys and girls from a wide assortment of backgrounds, but they all need extra one-on-one time with a caring adult who can be a positive role model for them. After filling out the paperwork and waiting for background checks on both my husband and myself, Patti called me and said she was ready to match me with a boy or girl from her list.

Jayde came into our lives three years ago.

On our way home after we had dropped her off one night, my husband voiced his frustration.

“She has such a sad home life. Isn’t there more we can do for her?”

God put the words in my mouth.

“A couple hours once a week may not seem like much, but that’s all we get. That’s all I had in Kenya and in Peru. After that couple of hours, all we can do is pray that the next person and the person after that has a couple of hours, too. It will add up. It may seem like it only made a difference today, but it will add up to make a difference in a lifetime.”

The speaker from Lifest all those years before came into my head. We may never know what effect we have on any individual at any given time, but it is all part of God’s plan. It will come together in God’s time. I had finally figured it out.

As my husband turned the car down our road, the Newsboys came on the radio. It is You we adore. Only You praises are for.

God is good.

Appendix

Additional Disease Information

At the health seminars we held at Mosiro, we shared information on all of the diseases which were prevalent in the area. Below is information on the rest of them.

Hepatitis B and tuberculosis, though not common in the United States, are seen throughout our population in this generation. Prior to the production and distribution of the Hepatitis B vaccine, that disease had a greater prevalence in our country. Now, however, thanks to the vaccine, education, and healthier lifestyles, these two diseases and AIDS are manageable in the US.

That is not the case in much of the world.

Hepatitis B passes from one person to another by many of the same means as HIV, via exposure to infected blood and body fluids. The virus that causes Hepatitis B, however, can live outside of the body much longer, making transmission easier. In the United States, the Hepatitis B vaccine is required for school-age children. In 1991, the World Health Organization called for children worldwide to be vaccinated against Hepatitis B. That lofty goal is far from being met at this time.

Hepatitis B causes infection and inflammation of the liver and can occur as an acute or a chronic illness. Chronic Hepatitis B can lead to liver disease or liver cancer. Symptoms may not show up for three months after exposure and may include fever, weakness, vomiting, jaundice, dark urine, and white stools. There is no cure for Hepatitis B, only treatments which relieve symptoms. More severe cases may be treated with Interferon or Epvir, but these medications are expensive and not a viable option for people living in third-world countries such as Kenya.

Tuberculosis is another disease passed directly from one person to the next. Instead of being transmitted by blood, however, it is spread to others through the air. If an infected person coughs or sneezes, the TB germ (Mycobacterioum tuberculosis) may be sprayed to others in the near vicinity where they inhale it. Transmission occurs most often among family members and those who live or work in close contact with the patient.

Symptoms include a cough, fever, steady weight loss, and fatigue. Current treatment in the United States is a course of several medications for a period of at least six months. In places like Kenya, drug availability for that length of time is difficult to obtain. Additionally, as the patient starts to feel better, within a few weeks he or she may stop treatment though the cure is still many months off.

In the early 1900s, TB was common throughout much of the United States and Europe. Huge sanatoriums were built to treat the many patients who contracted the disease. It wasn’t until antibiotic treatment of the disease began in the 1940s that people could be reliably cured. However, drug-resistant strains continue to evolve, making treatment a challenge even in developed countries. Having worked for twenty years in the medical field, however, I have only seen one case of active TB.

Malaria, which was discussed earlier, and Typhoid, are two diseases which we don’t see in the United States, but which are prevalent in third-world countries.

Typhoid is an infection of the intestinal tract caused by the bacteria Salmonella typhi. It is spread by ingestion of contaminated foods or liquids or by direct contact with infected stool. Typhoid is easily controlled by hand washing and proper handling of food. Observing the way of life of the Maasai, it was easy to see why this disease was common among the tribe.

Symptoms may include fever, rash, weakness, body aches, diarrhea, and dehydration. Vaccination is recommended for Americans traveling to places where typhoid occurs, but the treatment, a round of ordinary antibiotics, is readily available and inexpensive in this country. In places such as Kenya, however, up to 20 percent of the patients who contract typhoid fever will die from complications of the disease.

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank the following people for all of their assistance in everything it took to get this book into your hands.

Val for being the Ethel to my Lucy and for always having the courage to follow her dreams.

Nick for always being online when I needed someone to “talk” to and for suggesting things to me that I never would have thought of.

My mom for showing me by example the importance of putting others first and for giving me the genes that have kept me going and have kept me writing at the times when I was ready to quit.

Himey – What can I say? You are my soul mate.

Life Promotions for making this mission trip possible.

Jen and Dave Bell and Vickie Winkler for their dedication to the people of Kenya and for their guidance and leadership.

All of the members of the team which I was a part of. You made the daily mountains we climbed into molehills.

Russ for supporting me with funds and with chocolate for twelve years.

Ron for his constant inspiration and wisdom.

The many patients that I take care of on a daily basis. Every time one of you asks when I am going on another trip, you remind me that I made a difference in Africa, and I make a difference right here.

Denise for promoting me and being my most dedicated blog follower.

Phyllis for being my forever friend.

Doris for being willing to read everything I throw her way.

Tuesday morning Bible study for allowing me the chance to vent and share my stories of faith.

The staff, writers, and everyone else at the Green Lake Christian Writers Conferences for all of their encouragement and knowledge.

Jeremiah, Sheila, and everyone else at Life Sentence Publishing. You turned my lump of clay into a real book.

All of the people who made donations of any kind to my mission trip and the many friends, relatives, co-workers, and total strangers who kept me in their prayers while I was gone and who still remember me.

Since I cannot list all of the people that I know, thank you to everyone else who had any part in the writing or publishing of this book. You are all God’s children.

Finally, I cannot forget to thank and praise God. He is really the One who wrote this book. All I did was keep my fingers on the keyboard. He gave me the words.

Donations

Vickie Winkler continues to live in Nairobi, working with HEART on behalf of women and children affected by poverty in Africa.

Jen and Dave Bell also remain in Kenya. They are currently working for CSI Ministries and run a shelter for babies who have been abandoned.

A portion of the proceeds from the sale of this book will be donated to both of these organizations. If God is calling you to make your own donation to either HEART or CSI Ministries, their contact information is below.

HEART

P.O. Box 631964

Highlands Ranch, CO 80163-1964

http://africaheart.org

CSI Ministries

P.O. Box 841

Muncie, IN 47308

http://csiministries.org

About the author

You may follow Chris on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/ChrisLoehmerKincaid

Her blog address is http://chrisloehmer.blogspot.com/

Chris has been writing since she was in the third grade, and though she has worked in the medical field for over twenty years, she has never lost the desire to put words on paper. However, her family and her faith have always come first, making some days a challenge as she continues to work fulltime, mentor a local Kinship kid, mentor her church’s college students, and remain active as a member of the state society for her career in medical assisting. She lives in northern Wisconsin with her husband, four cats, and one dog. Her two children, Nick and Val, are grown and living on their own. They both share their mother’s passion for Africa.

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A Time for Every Purpose Under Heaven - Chris Loehmer Kincaid

Copyright © 2012

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means – electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission from the author.

All scripture quotations, unless otherwise indicated, are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV®. Copyright ©1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.™ Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide. www.zondervan.com  The “NIV” and “New International Version” are trademarks registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office by Biblica, Inc.™

Scripture quotations noted by (NKJV) Scripture taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

First edition published 2012

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ISBN: 978-1-62245-031-2

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