KENYA JOURNAL
Before I begin this journal, there are some things I need to write about our preparation for this trip. Since I was a teenager, I’ve wanted to one day go to Africa on a mission trip. I just didn’t ever think I was ready or knew enough about the Bible to be of any help to anyone. But, when I saw the announcement in our church bulletin that our church would be going to Kenya, something told me to go to the meeting and at least hear what all it was about.
So, at this first Kenya meeting, I found out we’d be partnering with Light Ministries and this would be the first time Light Ministries would be doing a medical mission in Kenya. That’s when I knew this trip was the one I was supposed to go on (because I am a RN). I found out the trip cost $3,000 and knew I couldn’t afford that. I spoke with my missions’ pastor and he told me it was acceptable to send out letters for donations. I prayed over the letters before I mailed them and told God that if he wanted me to go on this trip, that I was trusting him to touch the hearts of those who were going to receive these letters and allow me to raise all the funds I would need through donations. Within just a few weeks, I’d received greater than $3,000! I was positive God was paving the way for me! Our church decided to go to a game reserve for a safari while we were in Africa so I elected to pay for that. Although I’d received enough money through donations to cover that cost, I thought that was a fun thing and not really part of the mission trip, so everything that I raised over the $3,000 was invested in the ministries in Kenya. I am so glad we got to go to the game reserve. Not only so I could see some of God’s beautiful creatures in their natural habitat, but also because we needed the physical, mental and emotional rest that this day brought us.
In November, we still hadn’t received many medical supplies and didn’t really know what we’d need over there anyway. Brooke, one of the other nurses going from Rock Creek, submitted applications to three different ministries that donate medical supplies and medications for mission trips. We’d hoped to get approved by at least one…we got approved by all three! And, one of the ministries sent a letter that they’d received an extra donation and had been praying over which church they should send it to. God told them to send it to us! Every day when Brooke got home there were boxes and boxes stacked up on her front porch! I went over to her house about a week before we were to leave for Kenya and we began sorting through all of the boxes. I could not believe how many donations we’d received and we began praying that God would show us exactly what to take because we knew there was no way we could take it all. Brooke told me she’d gotten to select some things that she thought we’d need when submitting the applications. So, she’d seen “erythromycin pledgelets” on the list. She knew erythromycin was an antibiotic and she assumed the pledgelets must be something like alcohol prep pads that we use in the hospital…the small squares we use to wipe off someone’s arm before we give them an injection. So, she ordered 500. When they came in, there were 500 jars of 60 wipes!!! We knew God must know why we’d need all those, but we had no idea what it would be! In America, those pledgelets are used for acne…why would the people in Kenya care if they had acne and would we really see that many people with acne that bad? So we prayed over them and decided to take 6 bags of 12 jars. And, actually, we ended up packing 27 more jars right before we left just because we had some extra space for them….and we used them all!
Our missions’ pastor had told us that we were not going to do any injections while we were over there since this was our first trip to Africa and HIV/AIDS is so prevalent there. We were a little disappointed with that decision, but knew he probably was correct and we should just see what it was like this first trip. BUT, God had different plans and several bottles of injectable Rocephin, an antibiotic were donated to us. We knew there was probably a reason we’d received it, so we took it just in case.
As we started packing our seven duffel bags we jokingly talked about how these bags had better be magic bags because there was NO WAY they were going to hold all the supplies we had. We prayed that what God wanted to get to Kenya would get to Kenya. As we packed, we realized the joke was on us because they were, indeed, “magic bags.” We were amazed at how much stuff we fit into them and we didn’t have to leave much behind at all. In fact, the things we did leave behind were things that we had an enormous amount of, so we took at least half with us and left the other part behind. I could feel God’s hand moving over this trip in a big way! As we all began to get to know each other a little better, I realized that each of us had a characteristic that seemed to contribute to making our team whole…Mark: he’s the dad or grandpa that likes to joke around and keep the mood light. Gail: she’s the center…like the grandmother of a large family who holds everything together…she also says the most heart-felt prayers I’ve ever heard and she knows just what to pray and when to pray for it! Brooke has extreme organizational skills and remembers everything! I wish my memory was half that good! If I couldn’t remember what med to use for what skin disorder, Brooke could! Danni is the free-spirit, fun-loving girl next door who reminds you to just have fun and laugh! Mike is the intelligent, logical thinker that keeps us all calm when we start to panic! Greg is the compassionate man who helps us see things the way God wants us to see them. And as for me…I really don’t know. I think I was just the observer…a sponge. I tried to learn something from each of these people on my team and become a better Christian from what I learned and saw. I don’t know that I brought anything to the team, but I think that I got to show my compassion to the people of Kenya and I think a lot of them actually saw it.
Day 1…February 6, 2011
We are almost to Amsterdam and as we all complain about the horrible breakfast on our flight and our lack of sleep due to the small amount of space we have, I can’t help but think of how ungrateful we must all sound. People in Kenya….what do they have? How much space do they live in? What are they eating for breakfast? Is there anything to eat? I bet the majority of those people would be so happy to be where we are now.
I just found out it costs $10K to upgrade to a first-class seat on this flight! $10,000!!! You get a seat that folds out into a bed, but still……what would $10K do in Kenya?
I’m already feeling pretty drained. I took an Ambien, and three hours later, I still wasn’t sleeping…So, I took another half of an Ambien. Now, I’m a walking zombie! ;-) I miss my husband a lot already and can’t wait to text him when I get to Amsterdam.
This is my prayer this morning, “Oh Lord, I pray that you would forgive us for our ungrateful nature and I thank you for opening my eyes to this. Thank you, God, for your protection, mercy, and love. Continue to protect us as we travel this week and as we serve for your glory. Help keep us going when we are tired. Please comfort our loved ones who are back home. Thank you, God, for providing me with the opportunity to come on this trip and for providing me with the means to make it possible. Please help me know what you want me to say and do while I’m in Kenya. Thank you so much for all your wonderful blessings and for showing me things I normally wouldn’t see and things I’d normally take for granted. I love you so much, God. Amen.”
Day 2, February 7, 2011
We arrived in Nairobi tonight. Getting our VISAs and going through customs was seriously a breeze! God is so good! We have seven extra bags full of medical supplies and not one of them was searched! The temperature is perfect!!! It reminds me of flying into West Palm Beach at night at the beginning of the summer. The air feels humid, but there’s a good breeze, so it’s nice. There are lots of palm trees and bougainvilleas, too. My mom hates those plants because of their thorns, but they are so beautiful to me! Zachary and Pastor Harrison picked us up. We also got to meet Pastor Harrison’s wife, Christine. She works at the airport and rode with us to the Hampton House Guest House. I couldn’t get used to the fact that they drive on the left side of the road and the driver sits on the right side of the car! Once, Christine was sitting in the front passenger seat while we were driving and she turned around and I was thinking to myself, “Oh my gosh! She needs to turn back around and put her hands back on the wheel! We are going to wreck!!!!” Then it hit me that she wasn’t the driver! In my defense, I was very tired!
I felt scared as we drove to the Hampton House. When we got there, it was gated…I know that’s a good thing, but it made me realize that we must be in a dangerous area for it to need a gate. Our room was OK. Sort of like a really old college dorm. There was a bunk bed – I slept on the top and Brooke took the bottom bunk and there was a twin bed that Dani slept in. I fell asleep quickly, only to be awakened by a bunch of dogs barking! It’s strange – we heard lots of dogs in Kenya, but rarely actually saw any. I think it was at this point that the “jet lag” and pure exhaustion began catching up with me. I tossed and turned all night. I didn’t want Dani and Brooke to hear me, but I cried my eyes out that night into my pillow. Finally, I began texting my husband and that made me feel a little better. I guess that’s what 26 hours of travelling will do to you! Daylight came too early and we had to get up and get back on the road!
Day 3…Tuesday, February 8, 2011
We ate breakfast at the Java House in Nairobi. It was pretty good…I didn’t eat much, but had an espresso to try and wake up a little. Their coffee is so good! I didn’t even need any cream because the flavor was so wonderful! I think this is when we started calling Grober “Daddy” because he would get the ticket from the waitress and pay for our meals.
After breakfast, I started getting really nauseated! We drove to the Nairobi airport and again, made it through security with no problems! We’d been told that a lot of flights were being cancelled, so Gail led us in prayer, and thankfully, ours was not cancelled. However, it was a very turbulent flight from Nairobi to Kisumu and my nausea only got worse. I’d never truly understood what it meant to “feel green” or “look green” until now! Luckily, the flight was only about 45 minutes. When we landed in Kisumu it felt as if we’d stepped into a sauna! It had heated up a lot outside since we left Nairobi. Bernard, our driver, met us at the airport and took us to eat lunch at the Imperial Hotel restaurant in Kisumu. The restaurant was situated around a swimming pool outside and I had to refrain from jumping in! It was so tempting because I was so hot and nauseated! I tried to eat a grilled cheese sandwich just to keep up my strength, but I could only choke down about half of it. Grober ordered “tilapia” and the sight of it made me even more nauseated! I’ve never seen tilapia like that! It was a whole fish with some sort of horns and teeth that appeared to be sautéed. After lunch we had to drive all the way to Kakamega – I think that was about a 3 hour drive. The roads are terrible there! Some are nice, smooth highways, but inevitably that smooth highway runs out too soon and you feel as though you are on a backroad in south Arkansas that was created way back in the day and the driver is doing at least 50mph over and around bumps and potholes while dodging on-coming traffic that is also swerving around all the potholes! Of course, about ¾ of the way into the drive, I needed to use the restroom. I’d made the driver aware of this once and he told me we were very close….about 40 minutes later, we still weren’t there. Luckily, Greg Kirksey has a daughter and realized I reeeeaaally needed to go so he asked if we could pull over and we did. He told me that he’d once waited so long to stop when his daughter needed to use the restroom that she started crying. It had made him feel so bad that he’d promised to never do that again! Oddly enough, we stopped at “The Crying Stone!” It really is beautiful! It’s a tall stone with another smaller stone balanced on top of it that has water slowly flowing from the top. Brooke and Dani walked up the hill with me and kept a look-out while I squatted behind a bush and tried to hide from all the kids walking down the road. Later on in the week, Dani asked a native if there were many snakes in the area and they replied, “Ohhhh yes….many poisonous snakes….especially in the area around the crying stone!” Thank God they stayed away that day! We finally made it to our hotel in Kakamega. It wasn’t too terrible. I had a room to myself. The toilet was in the shower, the hot water was a “widow-maker” (more on that later), and the mosquito net had a few holes in it. I was right next door to the office, so people were usually gathered right outside my window until around midnight, and then they were back again at 4 am. I know it seems as if I’m complaining…I’m really not…just stating facts and painting a picture. But, I’m not going to lie, I’d much rather stay at the Hyatt any day! I took a shower and by the time I was done with that, I was so physically spent that I started crying at the drop of a hat. I went to find Grober just to let him know that I was going to rest and would miss dinner and I kept telling myself, “I’m not going to cry…not going to cry…not going to let Mike see me cry….” As soon as I saw him, a faucet turned on in my eyes and I could barely talk! He told me I needed to rest and that the reason I was so emotional was because of my lack of sleep. Honestly, I wasn’t sure. I started thinking that maybe I was just homesick. Maybe I wasn’t cut out for this and shouldn’t have come. Maybe I should just call my husband and tell him to book me a flight home and never show my face at The Church at Rock Creek again….So I prayed. I knew God had called me to do this, so I knew I had to give it a chance. I called my husband and my mom and had two very short, very expensive conversations! But, I got some more of my crying out and let them reassure me, then took a Phenergan for my nausea and an Ambien to sleep and hit the sack. Brooke told me not to take both, but I really wanted to make sure I slept!
Side note: A widow-maker is a type of hot water system. All Grober told me was to flip the switch on the wall, give it about 5 minutes to heat up, and then turn on the shower. The lower you have the water pressure, the hotter the water will be. With my thick hair, this made my showers last about 30 minutes! On the first day, I almost reached up and adjusted the shower head, but something told me not to … to just leave it the way it was. Three days later when I was asking Grober why it’s called a “widow-maker” he explained to me that there’s a coil in the shower head that heats up the water and if you touch the showerhead while the water is running, you will get shocked! Thank God I didn’t adjust the shower head that first night! Mike has now decided that he might better start explaining the widow-maker a little more to people who don’t normally travel outside the U.S.
Wednesday, February 9, 2011:
I woke up at 4:00 am when all the workers began gathering around my room, but at least I’d gotten in about 6 hours of sleep. I still felt nauseated, but the crying had stopped. I laid in bed until around 6am, and at 7:00 I went to breakfast and tried to eat a bowl of their version of cornflakes. But, they rarely serve anything cold over there, so with my nausea and the warm milk, I decided to just skip breakfast. After breakfast we took a short drive to the Light Feeding Station. Along the way, I discovered that the people of this town were just as poor as all the other little villages we’d driven through along the way. There were little shacks standing along the sides of the road where people were selling all sorts of things like furniture, sheets, clothing, eggs and meat! I began to notice, even at the feeding station, that the tall, cement fences had broken glass or razor wire in the top to prevent people from climbing over…. A little unsettling. When we pulled through the gate, all 150 children were waiting on us and singing! What a beautiful sound! Light Ministries had recently donated money to the feeding station to build a new kitchen, so we got to see the ribbon cutting for that. They showed us the old kitchen, outside, in a small one-room shack. There were holes in the ground with burning coals that they sat the big pots on top of. They also showed us a spot right outside the new kitchen/dining hall where there will soon be a water pump so the children can wash their hands and clean up before they eat. The children did many dances and sang many songs to welcome us. They got Brooke, Gail, and a few others up there to dance with them. Brooke has absolutely no rhythm so she hated that! (not that I can talk!) After the programs, we split the children up into 3 groups. They rotated through a class, then a craft room, then the medical clinic. We had 3 RNs and 1 APN who specialized in dermatology…such a blessing because we ran into lots of skin problems! The most common problems we saw that day were eye infections and colds. We administered de-worming meds to all the children as well. We’d stored all our meds and supplies in the sewing room and while I was looking for something, Rebeccah, the head mistress (I guess that’s what you’d call her), came and gave me a bracelet. She also gave Brooke one that day and since Brooke already had one exactly the same as the one Rebeccah gave her, I traded bracelets with Brooke. So, now I had a beaded bracelet that said “Kenya” on it. I love it and I hope it lasts forever. After we assessed all the children and the workers there, we headed back to our hotel, Sayai Guest House, for lunch. Lunch was sakuma wiki, ugali, a sort of cold-slaw salad, chicken and rice. This was my first time trying all of this since I’d been sick the night before. The sakuma wiki tasted sort-of like turnip greens, only more bitter and they were a little gritty…probably didn’t get washed well enough. The ugali was a grits-type of food all mashed together that had no taste but served as a good source of carbohydrates. You put the sakuma wiki on top of the ugali…..the first day this was OK. By the second time I had to eat it…ugh! I decided not to eat anymore of those two! A lot of people liked the cold slaw, but I’m just not a fan of cold slaw period, so I couldn’t eat it. The chicken barely had any meat on it, but had plenty of feathers! Therefore, I couldn’t stomach it either! Thank God for rice and salt! After lunch, we went back to the feeding station. The pastors had told Rebeccah to tell a few people in the community who needed medical attention to come there that afternoon. They told her only 35 could come…there were 48 on the list when we got back, but several of those 48 had their sibling, mother, grandfather, or children with them as well…I didn’t mind at all and would have stayed right there seeing people all week if I’d needed to. These people were much sicker than the kids we’d seen earlier. I’m assuming that must have something to do with their level of nutrition. There are a few people who stand out to me from this group. Although many of these diseases we couldn’t treat, simply because we didn’t have the material to do so, the placebo effect of just giving them some Tylenol probably helps them a lot. One lady told me she had been diagnosed with diabetes. We had absolutely nothing to help with the treatment of that…it broke my heart to have to tell her that. A little boy, probably 5 years old, came up with his mother and she said he’d been coughing, having a runny nose and a fever. I took his temp under his arm and it was around 101 degrees. When you take an under-arm temp, you add one degree to get a more accurate core body temp. So, this meant his temp was actually probably around 102 degrees. He was the first patient on this trip to receive an antibiotic injection. I cleaned his little arm off with some alcohol and pinched up his tiny muscle while his mom held his arm still. As the needle went in, I could feel that his skin was much tougher than most patients I’d given shots to. So was his muscle…sort of a rougher feeling. Probably because there was less fat in his arm. He screamed at the top of his lungs and tried to pull away but luckily his momma had a pretty good grip on him and I got all the medicine in! Another lady brought her 18-month old baby to us and told me she’d been running fever and sweating and had a runny nose. I took the baby’s temp under her arm and it was 104.1.….which meant this baby had a temp of 105.1!!! I’d never seen a body temp that high and it hit me that if we didn’t do something ASAP, this baby would probably start having seizures soon and possibly even die within the next few hours. I gave the baby a dose of infant Tylenol and Brooke gave her an injection of Rocephin, the antibiotic we brought, in her leg. We also removed her socks and applied an ice pack (wrapped in a towel) to her abdomen to start cooling her down. Greg texted his wife and daughter about this incident and they both replied, “God must have big plans for that baby.” I agree with them! I also remember seeing Brooke getting ready to administer an antibiotic injection to a little boy who was wearing a uniform from the feeding station. He looked to be around 8 years old. He stared off in the distance as she got ready to give him the injection and he never made a sound! He was so good and such a tough little boy. After she was done, we all clapped for him and told him how “big” he was! He just smiled. One thing I noticed about these children was they are not like American children. When you tell them to take some medicine, they just do it…no complaining or whining or back-talking. They just take it. There was only one little girl who made a face and pursed her lips as I was getting ready to give her some cough medicine. But, as soon as her teacher said something to her in Swahili, the little girl opened up and took it! Danni told us she’d had one patient who had recently been diagnosed with TB but couldn’t afford the medications so he was coming to us to see if we could treat him. Unfortunately, we couldn’t. She also had a patient who she was quite certain had a worm coming out of his eye…which actually could be possible. When I worked for the retina clinic in Little Rock, I’d seen a girl once who had a worm in her eye. It had long been dead though. I’d learned that after you accidentally ingest the worm or larva, they sometimes travel up your blood vessels and end up at your eye. They attempt to “swim” through the vitreous in your eye toward your pupil because they see the light and are attempting to find a way out. Danni didn’t know at the time that I’d been an ophthalmology nurse so she didn’t show the patient to me. But, again, there wasn’t anything we could have done for him anyway. He needs surgery to remove the worm.
Although all of these patients made me realize how blessed we are in America to have such easy access to medical care, there was still one other patient that my heart cried out for even more. During our afternoon medical clinic, we’d kept all of our supplies and meds in a room where they normally made uniforms for the children. Jeff Moser, the minister from Bellevue Baptist in Memphis, was in this room acting as our pharmacist. I’d just gone in there to get something, and when I returned to the place where I’d been assessing patients, an old man sat in front of me holding a cane. He was very thin and by the distant expression on his face, I immediately knew he was blind. He didn’t know any English so an African lady translated for each of us. She told me, “He is blind and would like for you to give him his sight back.” My heart broke into pieces right then and there and I felt a burning sensation in my chest as I held in my tears. I looked closely at his eyes and noted that he seemed to have a film over them…it looked as if he had cataracts, but it also looked milky like an infection. The whites of his eyes were not white, they were bright red. I asked if his eyes were causing him any pain and the translator told me “No.” I figured if he had an infection, he’d probably have some pain… We’d seen several children that morning who had eye infections and I knew we were low on drops. We’d already discussed this and decided that if we saw any more eye infections, we’d just have to give one dose of drops and that was it…we couldn’t send a bottle of drops with anyone because we were down to one last bottle…I just didn’t have the heart to do it. I went to our supply room and picked up the last bottle of eye drops and just stared at it. I had to give myself a little pep-talk just to get back out there. I put the drops in his eyes, knowing they might not help, and stuck the bottle in my pocket. He just sat there….waiting. Something told me to just give him the bottle. But I knew if I did, we wouldn’t be able to treat anyone else with eye infections. The feeling was so overwhelming, though, so I put the bottle in his hands and told the translator to tell him to put one drop in each eye every day until the bottle was empty. The man nodded his head and smiled, then the translator helped him to his feet and led him away. I noticed he could barely stand up and his feet were so dirty and swollen from walking around barefoot. I ran back to our supply room and a flood of tears came out my eyes. I wanted to cry out in desperation but I didn’t want anyone to hear. Not that I was embarrassed, I just didn’t want the African people to wonder what in the world was wrong with me. They don’t know how underprivileged they are. They’re happy. And I didn’t want to put a damper on their spirits. As I wept for that man, God spoke to my heart and told me to pull myself together. He said to me, “This is how it is all over the world. You see it now, as I see it. There are some things you can do nothing about. And there are some things you will not understand.” I prayed for that man and still do. I cannot give him his sight back, but God can. And those drops I gave him may have worked a miracle. I should mention here, that a few minutes later I saw Dani using some eye drops! I asked her where they came from and she said, “They were on the table. This is our last bottle.” I knew I’d already taken “the last bottle” so I knew then that God had provided just what we needed. I still wish I’d done more for that man. I told the other nurses that I wished I’d washed his feet before he left and we decided that if we ever get the opportunity to do this again, we will take basins and soap and wash the feet of every patient we see after we treat them.
At the end of this long day, after all the people there had been tended to, I stood by our van and reflected on all we’d seen that day. As I looked over to my left, kids at the feeding station were running and playing and laughing. As I looked to my right, there were four boys on the other side of the fence just watching with yearning eyes. Grober walked up and I said to him, “I hate to say this, but life is so unfair.” He replied, “Life is unfair…but if it weren’t, you wouldn’t be here.”
After dinner we went to the conference room where Pastor Greg Kirksey preached. He told the story of how his first wife lost her life to breast cancer. It was an extremely sad story, but I was glad that I got to learn how he healed after that event. Again, I had to fight back tears.
Thursday, February 10, 2011:
Remember on day one when I asked, “What would $10,000 do in Kenya?” Well, today I found out!
Today we went to another feeding/teaching station. It is called Bread of Life Feeding Stations and was about 30 minutes away from our hotel. We were packed in our van like sardines in a can! There were 12 of us packed in there. Juliette, wife to one of the pastors rode with us. She and her husband are the overseers of this feeding station. Juliette insisted on sitting in the floor of the van. Finally, Phyllis forced Juliette up into a seat made her stay there!
This feeding station isn’t funded as well as the first one we went to. It’s also newer, which is probably why it isn’t funded as well. This was reflected in the buildings on the property, the clothing the children wore, and in their health. There is no well or pump at this feeding station. There are two cooks, who walk to a river to get water…drinking water. According to Juliette, this water makes the children sick. But, unfortunately, they have to choose between dehydration or possible illness from the contaminated water. And, guess how much a well costs? $10,000!
Since that time, though, I learned that a couple from our church have some money that they’ve been wanting to do something with…thanks to God and this couple, this feeding station will soon have a well!
Again, the children put on a program for us. One little girl performed a sort-of poem where she said she needed to get a book, but in order to get a book she needed to find a job, but in order to get a job, she would need a book…it was really cute, but also sad because it was true and so many children cannot afford to be educated and therefore cannot get a good-paying job.
After the program, we set up another medical clinic. We administered de-worming pills to all 180 children plus the workers and volunteers. At this clinic, we didn’t see all the eye infections. Almost every child complained of a tummy ache, though. This was most likely because they had worms. And almost every child had a fungus on their scalp or bumps on their skin…this is what all those erythromycin pledgelets were for!!! We scrubbed their scalps with betadine, then wiped them down with the erythromycin pledgelets, then applied anti-fungal cream. We also saw a lot of kids with coughs and runny noses. Luckily, we had been blessed with plenty of cough medicine!
We saw the children in 3 groups. So while one group was in the medical clinic the other two groups were doing other activities. When the adults brought the second group in, Joseph was carrying one little boy around the age of 3. The little boy was screaming and crying and you could tell he just didn’t feel good. We got the teacher to sit in a chair and hold the little boy. He was scared to death of me because he’d never seen a white person. The closer I got to him, the louder he screamed! He had abscesses all over his head, some sticking up an inch off his scalp. He also had a low-grade fever, a cough, and a runny nose. I got Katie, the nurse practitioner, to take a look at his head and she suggested that we give him Rocephin. I knew that was going to be a tough job with him already so scared. I gave him some Tylenol for his fever and some cough medicine for his cold. It took three adults to hold him down. I cleaned his little leg and injected the antibiotic and boy did he scream then! However, about an hour later, I saw the same little boy running around playing and laughing! I knew we’d helped him and I just smiled and thanked God when I saw him feeling better!
Another toddler was brought to me. The teacher told me that they really couldn’t tell me what was wrong with him…he had no complaints, but he just seemed to not feel well for a couple of weeks, then he’d start feeling better for a few days, but inevitably, he’d start feeling bad again. It was just a vicious cycle. I took his temperature under his arm and he was actually hypothermic. His skin felt cool to the touch. This was a first! And odd…it was extremely hot there and no one’s skin had felt cool. I tried taking his temperature under his tongue but he was crying so much he wouldn’t leave it in his mouth. The temperature I got that time was 97.5, but I’m not sure that was even accurate since it was only in his mouth a few seconds and not actually under his tongue. So, I really felt that the first temperature I took under his arm was probably the one that was accurate... I assessed his body and couldn’t find any rashes, cuts, scrapes, abscesses, fungus, bites, or anything that looked abnormal. So, I asked his teacher if he was HIV positive and she said she didn’t know. Because I couldn’t find anything that I could treat, I couldn’t do anything for him…except pray. A few minutes later the teacher returned and told me she’d contacted someone and found out that the little boy is HIV positive.
On the way back to the hotel for lunch, Juliette told us that 120 of those 180 children are orphans. She said that some of them have grandparents or another family member who lets them sleep at their home but those family members cannot afford to feed or take care of the children. Juliette and her husband have also built a one-room building where some of the orphans can sleep. She told us that the majority of those orphans have either lost their parents to HIV or they were left in the bush by their parents when they were younger because their parents couldn’t afford to feed them or take care of them. In Kenya, if you find a child who has been left out in the bush and you take it to the police station, the police just tell you that the child is now your responsibility. Maybe I should go looking around in the bush of Kenya! J
After lunch we took a pretty long drive to the boys’ orphanage, named Family Life. We had to drive a pretty good way down dirt roads. We went through several small, very poor communities along the way. We saw lots of children walking up and down the road. They would all wave and yell, “Mzungu!” as we drove by. (Mzungu means white man). We saw two little girls who had jumped into the bushes on the side of the road trying to hide from us…they looked so cute, though! And they did a pretty good job at blending in with their surroundings. We also saw a lot of clay huts with thatched roofs. I later read that these are most commonly built by members of the Kikuyu tribe. One of our drivers, Bernard, was of the Kikuyu tribe, so we learned a few things about that tribe! The country along the way to the orphanage was beautiful! Huge rolling hills lay in the background and lush greenery covered the fields. As we arrived at the orphanage, all the boys ran outside to greet us as and I could tell that this place had much better funding and the boys looked pretty healthy. They, of course, put on a program for us! Some recited scripture. As they got up to introduce themselves they would always say, “Praise God!” We would respond, “Amen!” Then they would say, “Praise God, again!” and we would respond, “Amen!” again. This was very common among all of the Christian Kenyan children. One of the 8th graders there had recently taken a national standardized test and was ranked first in the nation! Another boy, who was 8 years old, had composed 13 songs! He and two of his friends sang one of them for us. I couldn’t understand the language, but it was a beautiful melody. After that, we got a tour of the orphanage. In the dining hall I saw a poster up on the wall with a list of their prayer requests…things like “a modern gate, a dairy cow, a fish pond, books & teaching supplies,” and many more. I took a picture of it. While walking to a separate building we saw some puppies, chickens, a cat and a cow there. They were all very malnourished, but the puppies provided them with companionship. There was a well with a pump and they used it for bathing. The water was treated, but still had too many chemicals in it for them to drink from. Mike Curry later told me that he believes there is a chemical plant near there that has run-off going into the boys’ well. Their drinking water came from a large reservoir they’d set up to catch rain water from the gutters. In the bedroom there were bunk beds lining the walls and some even sticking out into the room (for 53 boys, I believe). Only three beds had mosquito nets over them and some of the beds had metal boxes/suitcases sitting on them. The overseer told us that they didn’t have any storage closets for the boys’ clothes so they had to keep them in the metal boxes. He said they are currently praying for enough money so they can build some cabinets because sometimes the boys trip and fall over the metal boxes and get hurt. Above the door we noticed a large cubby hole in the wall filled with old shoes. When we asked why all the shoes were there, he told us that a lot of the boys prefer not to wear their shoes so they just throw them into the cubby hole. When they are ready to wear shoes, they climb up the bunks and retrieve them! He also showed us a room that had a door on it and had been made into their medical room. It had one set of bunk beds in it with a mosquito net and a bunch of empty shelves. This room also served as an isolation room if any of the boys became ill. The only medical supplies they had in there was a half-empty bottle of hydrogen peroxide and a few alcohol prep pads. I immediately felt that we should stock their shelves. I looked at Brooke and could tell she was thinking the same thing. With tears in our eyes we walked outside and began discussing what we would leave. So we wouldn’t make a scene, she and one of the guys from the Memphis team pulled supplies from our bags and stocked the room for the boys. While they were doing that, we played with the boys outside. The older boys played soccer – barefoot! They were really good! We painted their faces, blew bubbles and took pictures. They, like all Kenyan children, love to look at pictures! Dani shared her family photo album with the boys, which they loved! Each time we took a picture of one of the boys they had to look at it immediately! I think they could’ve spent hours doing that! Gail and Mark got to know one of the older boys pretty well and he ended up sending them a letter later on in the week. They’ve decided to sponsor him. I think it costs about $75/month. I spent a lot of time visiting with Collins, Eugene, and Kevin.
Before we left, I had to use the bathroom….of course! Brooke walked with me to the outhouse where there was a “squatty potty!” I’d never seen one of these before. It looked like a urinal stuck in a hole down in the ground. There were mosquitoes swarming over it, so I opted to make my own “squatty potty” outside behind the building!
On the way back to the hotel, Joseph, our driver (and also the overseer of a girls’ orphanage in Eldoret) stopped at the Nakumatt for us. It’s sort-of like a miniature Wal-Mart Supercenter. I got a Snicker Ice Cream Bar, some freshly popped popcorn and a cold Coke! I felt like I was in Heaven! Some of the other members of the team bought other food products and when we got back to the hotel, we had a picnic on Dani & Brooke’s patio that consisted of Pringles, Ritz crackers, peanut butter, cheese, Fig Newtons, and my popcorn! It was wonderful! We were so sick of sakuma wiki and ugali we could barely stand the thought of it!
All week, while we were out at the feeding stations, Light Ministries and GFE had been putting on a pastors’ conference for all the pastors and their wives that had established churches with the help of Light Ministries and GFE. We’d been approached by some of those pastors and their wives regarding medical problems, so we finally decided to just do a medical clinic for them. This was the last night any of us would be in Kakamega, so it had to be that night. During worship service that night, some of us went to my room and Katie’s room and started pulling out supplies and meds that we could take upstairs to the conference for our clinic. At the end of the worship service, Mike Grober announced that we’d be doing a medical clinic. They were sooo happy! They cheered and clapped for us as we walked into the room. The medical clinic went on from about 10:30pm until about 12:30am.
Among those patients, I seemed to have a lot of women complaining of symptoms of urinary tract infections, yeast infections, and menstrual cramps. We also had a lot of complaints of headaches and indigestion. Luckily, we had Cipro to treat the UTIs, Diflucan for the yeast infections, Ibuprofen for the headaches and menstrual cramps, and ranitidine for indigestion. We’d been expecting some of these complaints, so we’d bagged up several small bags of 10-20 counts of ibuprofen, Tylenol, cipro, and ranitidine! We came prepared! We also had a good system going by this time. The nurses would see the patients, and then write a prescription for them, then the patients would carry it over to the pharmacy table, where they’d receive their meds and instructions. Gail and Sam, from Memphis, were our pharmacists! What a wonderful job they did! Poor Gail was so exhausted, but she worked hard all night long! I also came up with a great use for the ABD pads we’d brought. (An ABD pad is a very large absorbent bandage.) I gave some to a lady who complained of terrible menstrual cramps along with some Ziploc gallon-sized bags. She said she had access to hot water, so I told her to wet the pads with hot water, put them in the bag, then lay on it or lay the bag on her lower abdomen – instant heating pad! She was very grateful! As we were packing our supplies before we left, I had wondered what these would be used for. I also ended up giving her some ibuprofen to help with the pain. Naproxen sodium (aka Midol and Aleve) would have been better, so I am going to add that to our list for next time!
Brooke had a pregnant woman come to her and said that she’d been to see the doctor and they’d told her that they couldn’t feel her baby move so they thought her baby was dead and they needed to perform a D&C to clean out her uterus. The woman said she just had a feeling that her baby was alive and that although she hadn’t felt it move lately, she didn’t believe it was dead. At first Brooke thought the woman was in denial, but she remembered something she’d heard in the past. She sent Mike Grober downstairs for some sugar. While he was gone, Brooke used a stethoscope to listen for a fetal heartbeat. Our stethoscopes were the cheap, disposable kind, though, so it wasn’t much help. When Mike returned, Brooke instructed the woman to eat two tablespoons of the sugar. About 15 minutes later, the baby was kicking up a storm! The sugar had made it hyper!
This is also where I met Pastor Fred. This is kind of a funny story! He sat down in front of me and said he had a very large hernia and pointed to his stomach. When I asked if I could see it he looked away and looked humiliated…so, I thought, this must not me in his abdomen…this must be an inguinal hernia. He began to laugh and so did the other African men sitting around us. I asked him if it was in his abdomen and pointed to his stomach and he replied “no.” So I said, “never mind…I don’t need to see it then!” We both laughed at that and moved on. He also said he’d been told he had a prostate problem and that had been hurting him a lot lately. When I asked how long it had been since he urinated, he replied, “A couple of days.” I was shocked! A doctor had told him in the past that he needed surgery to repair both the hernia and the prostate. We didn’t have anything to help him…but because he described symptoms of a burning and frequency, I gave him some Cipro on the off-chance it might just be a UTI. I told him I’d pray for him and talk with Mike Curry in the morning to see if there was anything more we could do. He was very grateful, but I could see that the hope he’d had in his eyes was quickly fading away. I did talk with my pastor and Mike Curry the next day and there just wasn’t any funds there to pay for the surgery. This bothered me a lot, but all I could do was pray.
After the medical clinic concluded, all of us nurses went back to my room to sort through and re-pack the supplies into our duffel bags. We’d been told that we’d just leave all the supplies there the following morning and they’d be divided up by the over-seers. We knew, however, that we needed to pull some stuff to be taken and donated to a medical facility. Like the needles, antibiotics, sterile drapes, scalpels, etc. And we really wanted to send some things with Joseph, our driver. He was also the over-seer of a girls' orphanage in Eldoret. So, we packed up one bag for Joseph’s girls and put in things like first-aid items, fungal cream, de-worming meds and toothbrushes. We filled up a whole bag for him! We then divided up the other supplies and meds and much to our surprise, we still had seven bags full!!! We’d already treated close to 800 people by this time! God was continuing to multiply our supplies! We’d been instructed to hold out 200 de-worming pills to take to Mathera Slums in Nairobi. Again, to our surprise, we found an extra bottle of 500 de-worming pills! We knew it was an extra because we’d inventoried everything before we left Little Rock to show to the people in customs and this bottle was not on our inventory!
By the time we’d finished up with our sorting, it was about 1:30am. We were all so deliriously tired and we could not stop laughing! It was the kind of laughing that makes your abs hurt and makes me cry! Dani was especially delirious, so she was really acting up and cracking us up! Katie had gone back to her room about 45 minutes before this time, so Brooke and Dani headed up to their room, and I headed to the shower! I took the hottest shower I could stand and it was great! Then, I had to re-pack my own suitcase. I decided to leave out most of my dirty clothes and donate them to someone. At 2:30 I crawled into my bed and closed the mosquito net around me…but I couldn’t go to sleep. My mind was swarming with pictures of all I’d encountered that day. I turned on my I-pod and listened to it for a while. I think I finally fell asleep around 3:30.
Friday, February 11, 2011:
As usual, people started gathering outside my window around 4:00! I put in my earplugs and slept off and on until about 7:00. We said our good-byes to our new friends who’d been at the pastors’ conference and I gave my clothes to Christine. She is Pastor Harrison’s wife (who met us at the Nairobi airport). She visits the slums in Nairobi and she told me she would find someone who could use my clothes. After finding Dani and Brooke, I learned that they hadn’t gone to sleep until 5:00am because Dani was so delirious she couldn’t stop talking! She’d begged Brooke not to make her go to “The Rock,” which is what she called the bed! Evidently, everyone in Kenya believes mattresses are supposed to be just as hard as a cement floor!
We set off to Nakuru to stay at the game park. We traveled the holey road again to Kisumu and had lunch at the Imperial Hotel Restaurant again. This time, they had a buffet upstairs so we all ate from it. I can’t remember what I ate, but it was better than what I’d been eating! They had sakuma wiki and ugali but none of us touched it! I tried passion fruit there for the first time. It was actually really good! And so was the pineapple! They also had some kind of soup that was really good…mushroom I think.
After lunch, we got back on the road to the game park. The roads were actually very nice and smooth! We drove through Kenya’s tea country which was absolutely wonderful. The climate changed almost immediately. It was cool and the air was a little wet. You could smell the tea plants as we drove past them. People were selling tea leaves and bottled water on the side of the road and I was tempted to buy some and make me some sweet tea! But, I wasn’t sure how safe the tea leaves would’ve been, so I opted not to do that. The country was beautiful there…rolling hills and bright green plants everywhere you looked! The villages around the tea plantations were in a little better shape than the other villages I’d seen. I assume their economy was better because of the tea.
While driving, we saw a baby baboon cross the road while the mother sat on the side of the road watching! It was so cute! I texted Cale what I’d just seen. We began to pass a lot of eucalyptus trees, which prompted Pastor Greg to start talking about Koala bears and Panda Bears. We had a debate about which one ate bamboo and which one ate eucalyptus. After the debate was over, I got a text back from Cale. I told everyone, “I texted Cale earlier that we saw a bamboo cross the road….” Everyone busted into laughter then Greg told me what I’d just said. He thought it was hilarious and said, “Yeah I bet Cale’s never seen a bamboo cross the road! That’s pretty scary!” So, the joke was on! Anytime we were talking about baboons, we’d substitute bamboo for baboon and we’d all start laughing. Then, it got to the point that even when we weren’t trying to say bamboo, we would by accident, and people would look at us like we were crazy! Then we’d all laugh about that once we’d realize what we’d said. So, from here on out we will probably all call baboons “Bamboos!” Mike Grober even decided that the baby baboons would be called bamboozeenies! You don’t think we were delirious do you?
When we arrived at the game park, the staff gave us each a hot washcloth and some juice. I had the pineapple juice which was wonderfully refreshing. Now, I’d known for some time that I’d be rooming with Phyllis, a 78-year old woman from the Memphis group. Earlier in the week she’d told me that because she snores so loud her roommate in Kakamega could only sleep if she took an Ambien and Phyllis took cough medicine!!! So, since I hadn’t been sleeping much, I’d been praying about this all week. When Phyllis and I walked into our room, the two twin-sized beds were pushed together to make one big bed. I just looked up toward God and thought, “Really? Is this funny to you?” Phyllis turned out to be very sweet!
We watched an African program put on by the hotel staff about circumcision…these people are so proud of their circumcision! They consider it an act that shows you have become a real man. According to Bernard, his tribe performs circumcisions on males when they are 17. It’s a big event and everyone sings songs and dresses up and they take the boy down to the river. He has to put his hands on his head while an elder circumcises him. If the boy makes a single sound during the process, he is disgraced and not considered a man.
After the circumcision program, we all went to dinner…now this was good food! They had a wonderful soup, lots of veggies and meats to choose from, and several desserts as well. Then my group went down to the bar area and had some coffee. When I returned to my room, Phyllis was in her bed wearing long-sleeves and pants and laying on a heating pack that the hotel staff had laid out on our beds! There was no A/C!!! I couldn’t believe it…I was sweating just looking at her! We visited a few minutes then I decided to get ready for bed. The shower was awesome! There was so much water pressure and the water was hot, hot, hot!!! I took about a 20 minute shower and then got in my bed and took an Ambien…just in case. About 4:30am, I woke up to Phyllis snoring! It was almost as loud as my dad’s snoring! I put in my ear plugs and pulled my pillow over my head and slept off and on until 5:45.
Saturday, February 12:
When we woke up, Phyllis asked if she’d been snoring. I told her yes but that it wasn’t too bad and she didn’t start until about 4:30. She said she figured she must have been when she saw the pillow over my head. I later learned that my pastors, Greg and Mike, had woken up at 3:00am and prayed for me to get some good sleep! I was so grateful! That’s when I learned that I seemed to be sleeping better when others were praying for me to get good sleep. I’m not really sure why, but Mike suggested that maybe that’s something God is trying to show me I can’t take care of all by myself.
We met up with our groups and got in the vans and set out for our first safari at 6:30am. It was actually cold outside! The tops of the vans rose up, so we could stand and get a better look at all the animals. We saw a couple of giraffes that seemed to dance with each other. They were so graceful. Odd looking creatures, though. We also saw four lions. We were told that it was very rare to get to see any lions. We’d seen two couples and Dani and Brooke later found out that it was their mating season. The first week is called the “honeymoon week” because they mate 360 times in that first week! Everyone got a kick out of that! Around 9:00 we went back to the game lodge and had breakfast. This was by far the best meal I ate the entire time I was in Kenya! They had a buffet again and I ate a waffle, a boiled egg, some bacon, and some sort of cheesy vegetable casserole and drank Passion Fruit Juice with it! Yum! Until this meal, I’d probably been eating about 500-700 calories per day…well, except for our picnic on Brooke and Dani’s balcony!
After breakfast we went out for another safari. Brooke and Dani stayed behind and got massages. I started to get one as well because my shoulders were aching so badly, but I really wanted to see more animals and decided I could get a massage when I got back home! I was so glad I decided to go on the second safari because we saw lots of animals that we hadn’t seen on the morning safari. We saw marble storks (ugliest creature I’ve ever seen), rhinos, warthogs, jackals, hyenas, and a hippo! We also drove to the top of a mountain and got to look down on the game park and the lake. It was stunning! While we were up there, some girls were sitting at a picnic table fixing their lunch when, all of a sudden, a baboon runs out of the woods, jumps up on their table, grabs all their food and takes off back into the woods! On our way back to the lodge, we stopped to get a closer look at some baboons on the side of the road. One of them saw some food through the windshield of the van behind us, so he jumped on top of the van and tried to climb in with them. Luckily they swatted him away and then the driver pulled forward a little and hit the brakes so the baboon jumped off the van! The screams that came out of that van!!! Luckily, someone on our team got a picture of it.
This time when we got back to the lodge the staff had cold wash cloths waiting on us! We ate lunch and got back on the road headed for Nairobi. We stopped at a souvenir shop in Nakuru where nothing was priced/tagged and we had to negotiate a deal with the owner. That was tough, but I think I got a good deal on my stuff!
When we arrived in Nairobi, we ate dinner at The Java House, which is where we’d eaten breakfast Tuesday morning. I spotted a “Chicken Burger” on the menu and wondered if it would be like a fried chicken sandwich here…so I asked my group, “What do you think a chicken burger is?” Dani replied, “You know! A chicken burger is a vegetarian burger!” I looked at her like she was crazy and said, “What?!” About that time it donned on her what she’d said and we all just started rolling laughing….I guess Dani was delirious again! Well, I ended up ordering the chicken burger and it was similar to our chicken sandwich, only there was no breading on it and it was drier. After dinner we headed to our hotel. We ended up staying at the Hilton because the Hampton House was over-booked or something…and I didn’t complain! As we pulled up there was a gate and guards and they walked around the van with a mirror that they held underneath the edge searching for bombs. We were later told that was because there was a big bank right beside the hotel. The Nairobi Hilton was not as nice as our Hiltons, but it was still pretty nice and it had A/C! I had my own room but again, didn’t sleep well. For the first few hours, I woke up every 30 minutes! I think I did finally manage to get in a couple of hours of straight sleep.
Sunday, February 13:
We went to church this morning at a church Pastor Harrison had started. As we were getting close to the church, I asked Bernard if we were in the slums now. He said this wasn’t the slums…it was middle-class people. I couldn’t believe it! If the slums were worse than this, what would they be like? There were open sewers everywhere and people everywhere! Tons of people! We stopped at the church and went in. The church was basically a shack with a tin roof that had holes in it. But it did have a cement floor and plastic chairs. Gail gave her testimony and Mike preached about fear. He referenced the Israelites and how they were afraid to believe God when it came time for them to take The Promised Land and talked about how that ended up getting them nowhere except stuck in the desert for 40 years. So his point was are we going to trust God and be with him? Or are we going to be so afraid of what God is leading us to that we end up dying in the desert without him? The way these people worshipped was awesome! You could feel the Holy Spirit filling up that room. I think it’s because that’s all they have to depend on…and they draw on the Holy Spirit so much. We were told that one little boy there was a prophet. He actually came forward and told a lady in the back in a blue dress to stand up that God had spoken to him about her. He told her God knew what she was going through and although she was scared, God wanted her to know that he was always with her and he would bring her through this. The lady had the biggest smile on her face when she sat back down. Before we left, Christine asked us if we could give her any de-worming pills for the Sunday School classes at their churches. She told Brooke there were over 200 children, so Brooke took out our last bottle of de-worming pills and gave Christine 300 of them. That left us 200 to take with us to the slums on Monday.
After the church service, we went to lunch at a hotel. We all ordered chicken and chips…except Bernard. He ordered sakuma wiki and ugali! Yuck! My chicken was pretty puny. There was hardly anything but skin and bones. But the “chips” aka French fries were really good! At lunch, we got to hear about how Bernard got his wife to marry him. This is a Kikuyu tradition. In Kenya, you cannot let your parents ever see you hold hands, hug, kiss, or anything like that until after you are married. One night his wife tied a string around her finger and threw the other end out the window. In the middle of the night, Bernard snuck up, found the end of the string outside, and pulled it to wake her up. She then snuck out the window and left with Bernard. He then had to hide her in his room for 3 days. He wasn’t allowed to tell anyone what he’d done, but had to tell his mother that he had a visitor so his mother would be bring extra food to his room. After three days, he brought her out of his room and told his parents what they’d done. His father, then, had to go get two elders in the tribe and the three of them had to go to the girl’s parents’ home and sing songs until her parents let them in. At this point in time, the girl is referred to as a “goat” for some reason. After they were let in, Bernard’s father told the girl’s father that his “goat” was safe and at his home and to stop looking for her. Then, her father had to come up with a dowry for Bernard to pay him. The dowry is determined based on the girl’s education and all of the Kenyan tribes have this dowry tradition. A few days after that, Bernard’s family and friends went with him and the girl back to her parents’ house. They bring a butchered goat, fruit, beer and other gifts and have a celebration. The girl is wrapped in sheets along with several other girls who are the same size as she is, then Bernard has to pick out which one is his soon-to-be bride. The girls are not allowed to speak. Bernard said his fiancée had told him ahead of time that she would wiggle her toes so he would know which one was her! This is something that the women enjoy doing for fun. After all of this, they were finally married! I can’t remember exactly what her dowry was, but it was something like 2 cows and 6 goats. Pastor Harrison said he didn’t have to do any of that, but did have to go to Christine’s house and tell her father that there was something in his home that he liked and wanted to have. Christine’s father approved of him and gave him a dowry. He still owes his father-in-law three cows, I believe.
After lunch, we went back to the church for a little bit, then we were led down the street and around the corner to do an Open Air. This is where people from the church go out into the center of a neighborhood and set up speakers and start playing music and singing to draw up a crowd. Once there is a large crowd, the pastor will deliver a message and then they will have a sort of benediction. When we got there, there were a ton of kids already gathered around dancing in the street. We all got out there with them and danced. After about 10 minutes of this, I had one toddler on each side of me and each of them was holding my hand. They were so cute! Another girl walked up and stood beside me. She was older, maybe 8-10 years old. She was wearing a pink sweater that had holes in both shoulders. She kept staring at me, but when I’d look at her and smile, she’d shyly look down, embarrassed that I’d caught her looking at me. She finally asked me if I could speak Swahili. I told her no and she seemed to be very surprised by that. So, she asked again, “You really can’t speak Swahili?” I said, “Well, I know a few words, like Jambo!” (Jambo means hello). She laughed. So, I asked her if she could teach me Swahili and she nodded yes. I’d thought that we’d have time after the open air where we could visit and maybe she would be able to teach me a few words…I was wrong. I asked what her name was and it sounded like she said “Ronboy.” I knew I probably wasn’t understanding correctly. When I told her what my name was, she looked at me with a puzzled look on her face. At the time, I wasn’t sure why. Later, I learned that Crystal means Christian in Swahili. I asked her if I could take her picture and she said yes. The music stopped and Pastor Greg gave a sermon about playing Hide & Seek with God. She kept brushing her hand against my arm. I’m not sure if she was just checking out my white skin or what…a lot of the kids over there will do that. They pick at your skin to see if the white will come off. The little girl then looked up at me and whispered, “I like you.” I replied, “I like you, too.” I wrapped my arm around her shoulder and we listened as Bishop Ben gave a short sermon in Swahili. All of the children began raising both hands high up to the sky. She said, “Do your hands like this.” So I put my hands up and asked, “What is he saying?” She replied, “He says to put your hands up like this if you are a Christian.” Then, several adults started walking up closer to where Bishop Ben was standing. I asked the little girl what they were doing and she said, “They’ve all just asked Jesus to come into their hearts.” There were probably 30-40 people who’d gone up there. They all prayed, and then all of a sudden Mike Grober was yelling for me to come on! “We’re leaving!” Everyone else was ahead of me and they were all moving very fast. I didn’t know what was going on. I said goodbye to the little girl and took off. I still don’t know why everything seemed so rushed. We had to cross over an open sewer and before I turned the corner I looked on the other side of the sewer and the little girl was running after us, waving! I waved back and said, “God bless you! I’ll pray for you!” Right around that corner the van was waiting for us and just as I was about to get in I turned around and she was standing right in front of me. She had tears in her eyes and said to me, “Please don’t ever forget me! Remember me always! I love you very much!” I told her I loved her, too and took off my watch and handed it to her. I told her I was giving it to her so she’d have something to remember me by and I asked her if she’d keep it forever and she said, “Yes.” It was just a cheap watch from Wal-Mart, but it’s the only thing I had on me…All of this happened very quickly – within just a matter of seconds. Everyone was saying that we had to go so I got in the van and we drove away. I looked all around, but didn’t see her again. It was at this time that I realized she was the girl from my dream. All of a sudden, the images from my dream started coming back to me. I began telling everyone in the van about her and Bernard told me her name was Wamboi and that her name was a Kikuyu name. He didn’t know her; he just recognized what I was trying to say when I was saying her name was “Ronboy.” He said that the name didn’t mean anything, but that their names are passed down from relatives. When I got home, though, I looked up her name online and it means “singer.”
I was pretty quiet on the drive back to the Hilton and wanted more than anything to turn around and find Wamboi. The rain was making a horrible mess on the streets and we drove by a large building that had the worst smell I’d ever encountered. It was a public restroom! I also got to see where the old U.S. Embassy was. The one that was bombed back in the 90s. There’s a memorial there now. When we finally got back to the hotel, Dani, Brooke, and I all got Café Mocha from the coffee shop and went to the gift shop to buy some souvenirs. We showered and then all met in the hotel restaurant for dinner. By this point, we were all exhausted. Brooke and I split a pizza and Dani had a fruit bowl with ice cream! It looked amazing! At dinner, I told Bishop Ben and his wife, Mary, about Wamboi. They told me that was extremely rare for a child to tell a white person that they loved them and that she must have truly felt a connection to me. They told me to e-mail them her picture when I got back home and they would look for her so maybe I could sponsor her or something. I’ve prayed for her every day since I met her and I wonder if she still remembers me…I still believe that she’s the little girl from my dreams, and although I may not adopt her, I think God led us to each other for some reason and I think he is responsible for connecting our hearts that day out on the dusty streets in Nairobi.
Bishop Ben also told me that Pastor Fred had to go to the doctor that day because he still was having problems urinating. The doctor was supposed to give them an estimate for the cost of surgery, so I told him to let me know what it was as soon as he found out.
Monday, February 14:
Last night I shared a room with Hannah Hamilton from the Memphis group. I was completely exhausted and got a really good sleep! We ate breakfast in the coffee shop downstairs and then drove to the Mathera Slums. You haven’t seen poverty until you’ve seen this place. And, I’ve been told there’s a slum in Nairobi that’s actually even worse than this one. There are all these tin and wood shacks joined together and people wearing rags for clothes. It stinks and there are open sewers everywhere! We were led to three different shacks that were the newest of the feeding /teaching stations. They’re just getting them up and running so there’s not much to them and there’s not a lot of food to go around. When we walked in the second building, I walked around to the front of the class and a group of boys started reaching out to touch me. I said to them, “God bless you.” One little boy looked at me with piercing eyes and said, “No! God does not bless me!” I was really caught off guard because the children here were not like that…they were all so kind and thankful and happy and when you told them “God bless you,” they always replied “Thank you!” or smiled. So I looked at the little boy and said, “God loves you!” And he replied, “God does not love me! You go! You go! You go!” He just kept shouting that over and over and I kept saying, “God does love you.” A little later all the children gathered in one room and I took his picture. You can see how angry he is in the picture. However, when I turned the camera around and showed him the picture of himself, he smiled. I’m not sure if it made him happy to see the picture or if it made him happy to see how mean he looked in the picture. He kept giving evil looks to Brooke and she just kept blowing him kisses! Shortly after that, the children went back to their own classrooms and we began dividing up the de-worming pills. We knew we had 200, but we also knew there were a lot more than 200 people there. So we all joined hands and prayed over the pills. We prayed that everyone that God wanted to get one of these pills would get one. We then divided them up and put them into gloves so we could each carry some around. We started passing them out and as we walked from classroom to classroom we kept encountering more and more people on the streets who we felt compelled to give a pill to. When we got to the room with the angry little boy, I handed him a pill and he pretended to throw it. He wouldn’t take it. The teacher was coming around the classroom making sure all the children understood they were supposed to chew up their pill, so I told him that the little boy wouldn’t take his. He instructed the boy to take it, and he did. I told the teacher that the boy seemed very angry and he replied, “He will feel better after he gets some food.” It didn’t really seem like the little boy would feel better after getting food though…this seemed like a deeper problem…he had an angry heart. But, I don’t know what it feels like to starve, so I can’t say for sure how one acts when they rarely get to eat.
After we administered pills to all the children, we all looked at each other and realized our gloves were still almost full! We poured all the pills back into the bottle and it looked as if it had just as many pills in it as it had before we started! Again, God was multiplying things for those people in Kenya! We sang and played with the children, then we had to leave so they could eat lunch and we could get back to the hotel and get ready to head home. When we got back in the van I told Bernard about the little boy and showed him his picture and Bernard said, “he is demon possessed. There are many here who are.” As we drove out of the slums, I prayed for that little boy and continue to do so.
We drove through a very nice neighborhood that Bernard said would be our neighborhood if we lived in Nairobi…I highly doubt that. The homes there were at least 10,000 square feet and this was the same street where all the embassies were. We got to drive by the new U.S. Embassy on this street. We also passed a pretty nice hospital that Bernard said was a Children’s’ Hospital. We ate lunch at the Java house again…it was good, though. I had a bowl of soup and a half of a ham sandwich. Mark bought all of us a rose because it was Valentine’s Day! He is so sweet!
We got back to the hotel, cleaned up and packed up. Several months beforehand, Dani’s church had hosted the Deraja Children’s’ Choir from Kenya and some of the children had stayed at Dani’s house. Their chaperone, Dan, lived in Nairobi, so he came by for a visit before we left. It was great to meet him. We discovered that his brother, Joseph, is Bishop Ben’s associate pastor! What a small world! I stopped by the gift shop one more time and got to talking with one of the employees, Samuel. He is the one who told me what my name meant in Swahili. I told him that we were so thankful that everyone had been so kind and welcoming and that I was surprised at how happy everyone was, despite their poverty. He told me that they are always happy to see the white people because they know the white people will teach them something and help them and that they are raised to be happy and not to show their problems on their faces…
I ran into Mike Curry and asked about Pastor Fred. He said that the doctor had told them he did need surgery, but it was going to cost $2,500 U.S. dollars. I told him that after I got home, I’d discuss it with my husband and see if there was anything we could do to help.
It started raining again so we left the hotel a little earlier than planned because we knew traffic would be bad in the rain…and it was! It took us forever to get to the airport. While we were stuck in traffic, two ladies walked up with babies on their backs at two different times. They were begging for money, but Bernard told us not to give them anything. He said they were liars and that they go and “rent” the babies then go around collecting money and later take the babies back and pay their “rent.” It was still sad though.
When we got to the airport, we said our goodbyes to Bernard and George, the drivers, and then endured the longest flights of our lives! I wanted to get home and see my family, but I wanted to stay and serve these people who were so appreciative.
Saturday, February 19, 2011
When I got home, I told Cale about Pastor Fred. I knew we couldn’t afford to pay for the surgery by ourselves, but I wanted to do something. I e-mailed Mike Curry and told him I wanted to make a donation but I couldn’t pay for it all and I asked if he had any ideas about how I could raise the money. He wrote me back and said that because he didn’t have any medical knowledge he wasn’t sure how much help he would be to me, so he was turning this over to me and for me to do whatever I felt God leading me to do… At first I was like, “What?! That’s it? What am I supposed to do?” So I prayed…really hard. Then I e-mailed all the members on my mission team and put a post on my Facebook page requesting help if anyone felt God telling them to help with this. I know that sometimes, some people are out there just waiting for an opportunity to serve and when an opportunity presents s itself, they want to be a part of it. Cale and I decided to donate $500. It would make things tight for the next month, but it would be worth it! Then, I got an email from a lady who went to Kenya with us and she donated $100…then, I got a message on Facebook, and a friend from high school was donating $100…then, I got an e-mail from a man who went with the Memphis team to Kenya and he had somehow heard about all this. He told me that whatever I didn’t raise, he’d pay! We all mailed our checks to Mike Curry and I e-mailed Bishop Ben to let him know the money was on its’ way! He e-mailed me back and said he’d already heard and had set up the surgery for the following day (which was today). I haven’t heard anything yet but I am still praying for him!
I’ve also e-mailed Wamboi’s picture to Christine, Bishop Ben, and Mary. Bishop Ben has promised me they’re going to do everything they can to find her. I haven’t heard anything yet, but I am continuing to pray for her, too.
Now, I feel God telling me to find the man who was blind and check up on him. I have no idea how I’m going to do that, but I’ll find a way!
Sunday, February 20:
Bishop Ben e-mailed me today and said “Behold! What a joy he has! Even through his surgery pains, Pastor Fred is feeling much better and wanted me to tell you how grateful he is to all who contributed.”
I’ve e-mailed Rebeccah about the blind man with the cane to see if she knows who he is…still waiting to hear back. I also remembered a picture we took when we were almost to Kakamega. It was in front of a sign at the crossing of the equator. It just so happens it was an advertisement for an eye hospital! I e-mailed them today.
Tuesday, February 22, 2011:
The eye hospital’s CFO e-mailed me back! A cataract surgery with artificial lens implantation is only $115 for both eyes! If I can find that man with the cane, I will pay for him to have the surgery. Also, this hospital would like to partner with us on future medical missions! I’ve forwarded his e-mail to Grober and Curry! I think this could be a wonderful opportunity! Still waiting to hear back from Rebeccah…
Still no word on Wamboi either…still praying about all of these things!
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