Right then, how do I sum up the last four weeks? I really am going to try and sum it up rather than go through every detail or I’d be here for another four weeks writing it!
It’s been a really interesting time and I feel like I’ve been sent back to school! If you read the little prayer bits at the end of my last blog you will know that I had been struggling with worries about why I was here...Why me? What do I know about anything that would be of use? What am I doing here? How can I actually help here...I just know how to draw bricks and stuff and enjoy laughing! I have regularly had to bring my worries to God and say “Help me!” Each time I prayed about these things and handed them over to God, they went...unfortunately another worry would come and take it’s place. It was a real lesson in trusting that if God sends you somewhere, he wants you in that place at that time! So, I kept praying and confessed all my worries and doubts and asked God to help me get through it so I could be the person he wants me to be here. God surpassed all my expectations and has gone and done it in his wonderful way again - the past month has been one immense lesson for me! Through conversations with people and time spent in various activities I feel like I have learnt so much about community development and the challenges involved, making me feel like it’s okay that I’m not an expert already...God is able to teach me what I need to know! I’ve also been seeing how all the skills I have learnt through architecture and university (and all the time before!) have actually been really important - the way I have learnt to weigh up the different positions and take an overview and then form an opinion of my own (some may just say I’m opinionated!), or to think around problems and spot the issues that may arise. They may not be drawing bricks, but they’re skills that many crits at uni or site meetings with builders, quantity surveyors and engineers have taught me!
I was also really encouraged and touched by something a friend here said to me. I was just chatting to him one day over a cup of chai tea at his desk and he said “What’s your secret? How do you do it? You just fit right in and get on with everyone. You adjust so well! Tell me your secret...” Please don’t get me wrong here - I’m not writing all this to blow my own trumpet, rather to share with you the way God knows our deepest worries and fears and then reaches right into our daily life and sends something along to rescue us from them and heal us! It was exactly what I needed to hear and the encouragement I was in desperate need of...from a totally unexpected source who had no idea how I had been feeling. The very way I am and the things I really enjoy, the way I love to talk to people and find out what life is like for them and what they are up to, the way I love to laugh and mess around has made me able to fit right into a community totally different to what I am used to, with people whose lives are poles apart from the mancunian lifestyle! Maybe God did know what he was doing when he asked me to set off to Kenya! Bwana asifiwe as they say round these parts!
All these lessons have been learnt as I’ve been getting on with the “research” (I don’t know what else to call it) I’m doing on behalf of Dignity. This has meant carrying on spending time with the line ministry leaders getting to understand their overall aims and visions as well as the day to day out working of these things. It’s taken quite a while to work my way around the 12 line ministries, partly because it’s hard to plan ahead with people (I keep having to remember I’m in Kimilili not Manchester!) and partly because people love to talk about what they are doing! Many long and interesting conversations have ensued, leading to more and more questions and before you know it the day has vanished! Each conversation has been valuable though and I hope it’s also been of help to those I’ve been talking with, not just to me!! I’ve now got the task of summing all this up in a document that can be of use to Dignity...I have begun, but I’m so far behind where my conversations are up to I’m feeling a little like I’m drowning under notebooks! (Jon - if you’re reading this, don’t worry...it is on its way!!)
Amidst all this, I have also begun to get out into the community a few times. I have 6 weeks left here in Kimilili (I can’t believe how quick it’s going!) and during that time I am hoping to become a regular village type person getting out and about with all the different line ministries even more and seeing them in action, seeing all the practical out workings of the theory and planning that takes place at headquarters. We had a really interesting day when we took a group of visitors from a university in Nairobi out to a local unit to see what’s happening on the ground. We met with the people who are working in their own communities and listened to them telling us all the many little and large things they are doing for their friends and neighbours, things that are beginning to change the communities they are living in. These range from very simple things, like visiting an old man who can’t get out and about any more, to bigger things like clubbing together to provide an item of furniture or clothing for those who have nothing. The love of God and the practical outworking of this, along with the bringing together of the people, achieved by the IcFEM structure, has given the communities a collective strength greater than the sum of all the parts. By the time we returned home at the end of the day, even some of the IcFEM staff from headquarters were shocked and encouraged by the amount of things going on out in the community!
I also got to join some of the kids IcFEM is helping when when I joined the monthly trip to mobile doctors clinic. At the clinic the doctors assess whether club feet, hair lips, cleft palettes and other such conditions can be successfully corrected through surgery. They then register those who can be helped for operations in Kijabe Hospital near Nairobi. IcFEM have built up a good relationship with these doctors over the last ten years and are able to bring people who wouldn’t normally know about or be able to access the help available and have also agreed reduced costs for the surgery for those that they bring. It was a really interesting day where I got to meet lots of amazing kids just getting on with life despite the difficulties they have. Two of them really stuck in my mind...Hallan, who due to bilateral club feet has never been able to walk. He sat on my knee in the car and every time we went round a corner or slowed down a little abruptly I could feel his poorly feet squeezing against my leg. Some kids can walk on club feet, but it can be painful and difficult and Hallan has always been to scared to try. The other kid who melted my heart was Walter who had a condition that made his elbows and knees unable to bend. I tickled his feet and he broke out into a huge laugh that spread right across his whole face (if a laugh can do that!) and then he kept sticking his feet out in my direction again to get me to tickle them. I don’t know who ended up laughing more...me or him!
We recently returned to Kabuyefwe for the launching of the new local unit, the elections for which I attended last month. The whole day was quite long and a prime example of Kenyan speech making! However, it was great to see the huge and wonderfully colourful crowd gathered, including many members of the community, district chiefs and officers, councillors and lots of IcFEM staff all with the common aim of seeking to improve the life of those struggling “at the bottom of the pile”, so to speak. I have to say the highlight of the day, other to the celebratory party atmosphere, had to be a genius little kid. We were all busy watching the scouts give a performance of marching in a very well ordered manner when, out of nowhere, a random little boy decided he’d join the parade! So, about 5 metres behind the rest of them, gloriously out of step and valiantly trying to imitate the scouts, this brave kid marched along until the end of the performance followed by the laughter of all present!!
Apart from all these things, I’ve also been spending some days helping the others girls with projects they’ve been up to. This has involved a day teaching art at Dreamlands school and more painting of various things...rooms, signs and banners! We also fitted in lots of fun at the weekends with trips to the not-so-local swimming pool, rigging up the projector we borrowed to watch 24 on a large screen (we scared ourselves stupid and did lots of girly screaming!), playing table tennis table on one of the dining room tables with a makeshift net, visiting friends and joining Kibingei local unit for their day of prayer and fasting!
In the last two weeks I’ve had a trip to Kisumu airport (crossing the equator on route) to send Gemma off on her way home and a trip to Kitale airport to see Jo and Jo off...two sad and tearful moments. I have to keep reminding myself that it was a couple of sad days weighed up against 3 months of fun, games and great fellowship!! I feel a little like Jonah when God gave him a shady plant for a while then he took it away again. Jonah moaned about it until God explained that he had blessed him with the plant for a while but it was still his to take away at the right moment! So, although I’m missing them all lots now, I’m very grateful that I have three ace new friends who I’ve had the privilege of sharing the last 3 months with...if you happen to be reading this Jo, Jo or Gemma....thank you so much for being your fantastic selves! Kimilili and I miss you!
All is not lost though...just as the others were leaving, Cathy arrived to spend a month here so things are well!
Oh, one more thing...Jo and I returned to the see the family we built the house for one last time. We really felt that the father needed encouragement. He had always be in the background of what was going on and seemed very detached. So, we invite Laurence to come along with us - his role at IcFEM is to work with men, fathers and husbands (ok, they’re all men, but in different roles!) He spent a lot of time talking with Edward who shared with him how nobody in his family, as far back as he could remember, had ever been a success. This was obviously weighing him down and preventing him from seeing anything successful in his or his children’s futures. Laurence spent time encouraging him to see himself as God sees him and not to be tied by the things of the past, but to look forward! We also discussed ways in which the family could start a small business to help them make some money to live off until they are able to plant their land again (it is currently leased out to a neighbour). The treasurer of the local unit joined us and is going to help them as they get started and encourage them along the way, as well as providing a sort of check up that things are going ok! While we were there, the kids returned from school looking very smart. They promptly got their school books out and showed us their new writing and drawing skills! By the time we left, Edward was standing taller and gathered his children around him to wave us off...something I’ve never seen him do before. Both Jo and I left feeling like we had played the part God had laid out for us in the life of this family and now handed on the baton to the local unit who can continue to care for and support the family while they get back on their feet!
Now, I know you may not believe this, but I think I have just about finished...! I’ve tried really hard to be succinct and I think I’ve managed to tell you what’s been going on in about half the amount of talking as I normally do! I’ve been trying to learn kiswahili while I’ve been here so I’ll finish by leaving you with my favourite sentence...
U me nona matako... You have a fat bottom!
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Thank God for:
- the lessons he is teaching me and the timely encouragement he provides.
- great conversations with many IcFEM folks.
- continued growth of the Sikuku family.
- Jo, Jo, Gemma and Cathy and all the good friends I’m making here.
Please pray for:
- the coming together of plans to get out and about in the community.
- me to find my Bible which I have stupidly lost!
- me to get an extension to my visa without further difficulties - I tried to extend it when I was in Kisumu but it became clear that it was not going to be a simple process.
