Oh dear, I thought I’d done badly last time I wrote my blog leaving it four weeks, but it seems time is just flying by so so fast that this time five weeks have gone by in the blink of an eye and I’ve not been in touch. So anyway, how have you been? I’ve been well and have continued to love Kimilili life. This last week I’ve been full of a cold which seems somewhat ironic when I’m living somewhere so hot! (I know you don’t only get colds in cold countries in case you’re wondering...) I’m well on the mend now but have had to take it a bit slower than my normal speed this week due to feeling rubbish. That’s no bad thing really, I think part of the reason I got the cold in the first place was because I was shattered due to being constantly on the go! (Oh, saying I’m well but I have a cold has reminded me of my friend Kennedy who recently when asked how he was said “I’m well, I have typhoid, but I’m well!” I’m pleased to say he now is actually well and fully recovered, but that’s definitely a sentence I’ve never heard before!)
When I last wrote I had been enjoying lots of conversations with different IcFEM staff and was hoping to get out and about into the community as much as possible to see what is actually happening on the ground. I’m happy to say that since then I’ve hardly been at home. My weeks have been jam packed with various excursions to communities with different line ministry staff on pretty much every form of transport. Love it!
Meeting the many people involved with the work of IcFEM has been so very interesting as I’ve had a chance to see how the theory that I’ve heard a lot about is actually taking shape in reality. I’ve met with both successes and struggles. Each community is doing amazing work in different ways to others depending on the people involved and the needs of their village. The IcFEM structure consists of a local unit with a co-ordinator and a board of between 3 and 5 people for each line ministry to help plan and undertake work in their area. Within each local unit is a minimum of 40 villages each with an IcFEM fellowship. At fellowship level there is a assistant co-ordinator for each line ministry who may be assisted by 3 or 4 facilitators. This structure helps communities assess needs among themselves and then come together to address these needs.
When in Naitiri a few weeks ago, I met the Relief & Welfare board members who had managed to raise 68,000 shillings (about £600) to buy school uniforms for orphans. They had raised this money by sharing their vision with each assistant co-ordinator who then shared it with the members of their fellowships and villages. In response, many people gave a small amount which, when added up, was more than enough to buy school uniforms for 82 orphans in their communities and they are still helping more children. Alongside this, the assistant co-ordinators and facilitators in each village fellowship have taken time to visit these children on a regular basis to encourage them and support them. This is such an important and life changing achievement because many orphans live with their grandparents who are unable to afford the uniform necessary for the children to attend school. For these 82 children the uniform, support and encouragement the IcFEM fellowships in their area are providing is the difference between staying at home and being able to attend school and gain an education.
In another local unit, those involved in the Education line ministry realised that a number of fellowships were struggling to meet regularly and encourage one another. They decided to take some time visiting each village group and helping them understand the benefits of fellowship and refreshing the vision of IcFEM with them. As a result, the fellowships in their area are now meeting together regularly and a number of projects are springing up. A small library has been started by the local unit and is proving popular with many people who now have increased access to books, something not normally affordable or available. Other villages have agreed between them to sponsor a child through secondary school or have begun small nursery schools.
When we are stuck in a rut in life we often give up and can see no way out for ourselves. From what I have seen, this is particularly true for many people who are living in a cycle of poverty. There is a mentality that unless someone comes to help me I can never change my life and the situation I am in. This leads to people waiting for a hand out to arrive and seeing it as the one and only solution to their problems. What IcFEM encourages, and is so fantastic to see in action, as in Naitiri, is for a community to unite and work together to own the challenges of all its members and to change the situation now, rather than continuing waiting for a hand out that may never come. When you are one person on your own struggling to make ends meet, it is hard to see how the 50 shillings (about 45p) you could just about spare would make any difference worth making and if it was me, I would probably decide to hang onto the 50 shillings to help pay for tomorrows food. However, when there are about 1000 people working together, if each puts in their 50 shillings that’s 50,000 shillings which it is easy to imagine making an impact. This may seem obvious, but for many communities there is not the unity or structure in place for something like this to happen. Where IcFEM are working with communities, they help put in place a structure and encourage people to respect biblical values which (among many many others) include love for others, honesty, accountability, responsibility and unity.
Unity within communities is so important for any meaningful development to be able to happen. If communities are divided, jealousy and selfishness can work against any progress as people who are moving forward are pulled back again by those who are not. This is hard to imagine when you are used to western society where we are essentially independent and able to get on with out own lives saving some money for a rainy day or buying luxuries for ourselves as and when our salaries or credit cards allow. However, life in an African village is obviously so very, very different. It’s still something I struggle to really get my head round as I have never been an African living in a village, but I have seen the difference it makes when people work together compared to when they don’t! I have also heard many african friends say that it is hard for one person or family in a village to succeed without the encouragement and support of their village.
Now for something that I know is much easier to get to grips with...one way of helping bring unity to a community is through sport, especially football of course! The Sports & Recreation team at IcFEM have begun to establish football teams at village and local unit level to take part in a tournament that will provide a showcase for people’s talent (hopefully leading to the selection of a team that can be registered in the Kenyan premier league) as well as an opportunity for social interaction and strengthening of friendships between villages, families and individuals. For many Kenyans, tribal decent is very important and differences between tribes have even recently been the cause of violent clashes leading to many deaths and displacement of people. Anything that helps build friendships between members of different tribes helps people see beyond tribal divisions and to see each other as friends and, for those who hold to Christian beliefs, part of the body of Christ. If we see our neighbour as a friend rather than a member of a different tribe, and therefore potential enemy, it will help us stay separated from any tribal uprisings that may be stirred up. I hope I’ve made some sense there and you can see the potential difference that something as simple as organising a football tournament may actually make in the future.
(I have to confess my brain is feeling a bit slow today so I’m not sure if I’m a bit all over the show with what I’m writing...add to that the slightly random mixed up variety of things I have been taking part in and it’s making it quite hard to bring everything together in a coherent manner!)
I’ve had the privilege of spending quite a few days out and about with the Formation Team over the last month. This group of guys work so hard going into new communities that IcFEM is currently not working with and helping explain to them their vision and goals. They start by meeting with the provincial administration to ensure that they are officially welcome in an area before they begin anything. Working through the existing structures in place of Division and District officers, village chiefs and village elders they begin to reach the community members and explain what they are about! Once they have been given the go ahead to work in an area the team calls christians in the community together and encourages them to start fellowshipping on a regular basis in their villages. Fellowship is built around a christian agenda but is not linked to one denomination. This is so key as many communities have a number of churches within them that until now may not have worked together. People are encouraged to meet and welcome one another, worship together, share a word from the bible and then seek to undertake some work together. It’s as simple as that to start. There’s no great secret, just a gradual growing of community through a common bond of Christianity. It is worth remembering that a high percentage of the population are at least nominally Christian in Kenya so will be happy to be involved in Christian activities. My experience of being a Christian has taught me that whatever stage we are at when we come to God he will then help us to grow in our faith as we walk with him. So, whether the people coming to the fellowships are strong in their faith or simply call themselves Christians, I am sure that as they begin to fellowship together and study the word of God, then God will work in and through each and every one of them.
As communities are beginning to meet together regularly and starting to do simple little things, maybe giving a chicken to a family in great need, the Formation Team continues to work with them. They help explain and share the IcFEM vision, aims and manner of working through local units and fellowships. Members of fellowships are invited to take up responsibility for line ministries in their village and, as the number of villages involved grows, the time comes for the launching of a new local unit in the area. Prior to this some leadership training takes places to help people understand the responsibilities that come with a position of leadership. This is of course based on Biblical principles and encourages Christian values, which are core to IcFEM and, even if you are not a Christian, are sound ethics and morals encouraging accountability, respect and fairness. The need for guidance on leadership has been recognised over time as many of the people involved have not previously held positions of leadership. Leadership is often linked with power which can lead to jealousy and division among people if mishandled.
The final role of the Formation Team at this stage is the process of electing those people who will form the Local Unit committee and finally the grand opening day, or launch. You may remember that I had been to a launch when I last wrote so I won’t go through what happens again, but there have been two more local units launched in the last month which I have been along to. It’s been an intense time for the Formation Team as they have been working to get four local units up and running all at once! It’s been a great opportunity for me to get involved though as they have been out and about regularly and working through the different stages of formation. I’ve loved it and have been whizzing here there and everywhere with them on piki piki’s (motorbikes - don’t worry mum, I’m fully kitted out with a helmet and they’re not very fast as they only have little engines!). It’s been great seeing the excitement and receptiveness of people to the work of IcFEM.
It is often the case that some of the initial excitement dies down after the launch and some people fall away from the fellowships and the work the community is seeking to begin, but this is to be expected. One of the most incredible things about IcFEM is that all those in the community are working on a voluntary basis. It amazes me every time I meet someone who is going all out and working really hard to help those around them in some way for absolutely nothing. Each person you talk to has a different story, different reasons, different ways of sustaining themselves and their family, but each is committed to what they are doing and sees the great value in the fellowships they are a part of and the work of IcFEM. Despite being told that there is no money to pay people who are involved, some people still join in the work initially in the hope that they will become an employee of the mission or will in fact get paid. However, as time goes by one of two things happen. They will either fall away from the work as their real motive was money which they are now finding they are not being given, or they see the impact the mission is having and begin to understand that this is of greater import than money and become committed members. Either way, when a unit has been established for a while, you tend to find a core group of people who are there because they believe that fellowshipping and working together for the good of their community is worthwhile and important.
In an ideal world, maybe IcFEM would be able to help support the many volunteers financially in some way. However, the magnitude of the task in hand and the minimal resources of the mission means that they are unable to do so. If they chose to pay all those working with them, they would have to drastically cut down the amount of people who are involved and therefore the impact and development in peoples lives and communities. It is a challenge for those involved but many have seen God’s faithfulness and provision in their lives as they chose to work for him, something we are not used to trusting in back home where we trust in ourselves instead!
Aside from getting out and about in the community I’ve also been tackling a few odd jobs around headquarters and Dreamlands school. One of these was sorting out the library at the school. When Jo Finlay was here last October, she and a couple of others spent time painting a super-ace mural on the walls. During Gemma’s stay she had managed to unpack a large number of books from the boxes that had been shipped over in on a container but neither had had time to sort them out. Sadly, the shelves that had been made for the library had been placed around the outside of the room, covering up the colourful walls and hiding the mural. The books were roughly organised as Gemma had tried to put them in some order as she’d unpacked but, not quite knowing what she was going to find in the boxes, had been unable to really sort them out. So, Cathy and I spent a couple of days taking all the books off the shelves, moving the shelves and putting the books back in a more sorted way. It was quite good fun for someone who is as geeky as me! We also managed to move a load of stuff out of the library that really shouldn’t be in a library meaning it is now a much more spacious and useable room whose lovely fab walls can now be seen again! Hurray!
A slightly random job I’ve been doing is another administration task! Each member of IcFEM is issued with an ID card containing their name, fellowship and registration number. These are currently filled in by hand and then signed by the deputy director before being painstakingly cut out, laminated and issued. There are now 14 local units each with a minimum of 1000 members and numbers increase daily. As you can imagine, making the registration cards takes up huge amounts of times for both the administrators and the deputy director. I was sure there was a way of producing the cards much quicker if the information was entered into a database. This would also have the added benefit of a database of members being built up rather than the current system involving lots of bits of paper with extra names added on on bits of paper stuck to the bottom or something! So, I spent some time teaching myself how to do a simple mail merge on excel and word and setting up a template that could be used to make the cards. I was very happy when I got it working and now both the administrator and the deputy director won’t have to spend painstaking hours filling in cards by hand, freeing them up to be getting on with some of their other huge piles of work! Woohoo - I love it when things work out!
One of the most lovely things that has happened during this last period of my time in Kimilili is that a number of people have come and asked for my advice about stuff. Now, I do worry a little if people are asking me for guidance...I struggle to look after myself in a sensible manner most of the time...but somewhere along the line people have decided that I am good at helping plan things strategically! I don’t think I necessarily am, but I judge myself against many people I have worked with back home who are used to working in this manner. For many people here it is a bit of a foreign concept. It’s a different way of working so to have someone to talk through issues with can be helpful. Most of the time I have just let people talk through their questions and problems and then pretty much bounced them back at them, but I think even this simple process can help us work out the answer for ourselves! It’s meant so much to me whenever anyone has asked for my help. It is something that wouldn’t have happened if I had only been here for a short time or hadn’t been spending time finding out what everyone is up to for the report I’m writing for Dignity.
The other week I was helping out building a second house - I couldn’t join in for the whole time as I had other plans for some of the week, but it was great to get stuck into something so hands on again. As I knew I wasn’t there for the whole time I think I overdid it slightly for the time I was there and ended up aching all over after excessive digging with a jembe! This time it was a for a little old lady who had a one room house with an old thatched roof that was so worn out it rained inside as well as out. She was a really joyous lady despite her leaky roof and it was such a pleasure to be able to do something for her. One of the really great things about the week was the people who turned up to help. There was a group of us from IcFEM who were joined by members of the community from a number of different church denominations. Someone commented that it was great to see members of different churches working together...and I’m inclined to agree!
We had lots of fun at the IcFEM headquarters and Dreamlands school and hospital sports day! There was netball, volleyball and football games with teams from headquarters playing against a school and hospital staff team as well as kids teams. I set off intending to join in the football game (preferring it to netball and being totally incapable at volleyball!) but when I got there I discovered there was a large groups of kids sat around with nothing to do...so instead of playing football I ended up organising games for the kids! It was of course loads of fun and I had Kayleigh (who was here for a couple of weeks) as a very capable right hand woman. A number of games from holiday club made an appearance, including of course “Ugali” as we renamed british bulldogs at holiday club! Once again, I shouted myself hoarse (Finlay - I needed you as another loud person!) and ran around far too much in the sun and almost collapsed from the heat (slight exaggeration...but it was very hot and I ran a lot...) but all in all, I had a great day! I think the kids enjoyed it too...ha ha! My favourite moment was a game of duck, duck, goose. Generally, if you start a game but then sneak out if yourself it tends to come to a sudden halt and all the kids give up and follow you to make you start another game. However, I got duck, duck, goose going and played for a while but then went to get my water bottle. As I was drinking I realised that the game was carrying on just fine without me so took advantage of the break and just sat and watched for a while. The kids carried on for about 10 minutes before they finally called it a day and I was so chuffed that they were obviously enjoying it so much they didn’t need me to entertain them! It was only when someone thanked me later on for entertaining the girls that I realised that the whole time there had only been girls playing games...of course all the boys were watching the football!!
Oh, I was absolutely over the moon when I tried to extend my visa again and this time had absolutely no difficulty. The immigration officer was really friendly and we ended up having quite a laugh while she filled in the paper work, totally the opposite of my first attempt to extend my visa. Huge thanks to all of you who prayed about this for me! It was a real answer to prayer.
Well, I’m thinking I should probably call it a day there really. There are so many little things that happen every day that I could probably write for ever, but then I’d never get chance to do anything so would have nothing to write about...hmm! I feel like this time I’ve told you a lot about what’s been going on, but not necessarily how I am...if you know me well, you will know that the fact I’ve talked about everything so much means I’ve been enjoying it all! I was a little worried that once Jo 1, Jo 2 and Gemma had gone I’d be really sad and lonely and time would start to drag, but I have to say, although I’ve missed them all loads, God has graciously surrounded me with other friends who have been looking out for me and keeping me smiling and laughing! (I do miss the English sense of humour though!) I’ve not had chance to be bored or lonely and any spare time I’ve had I’ve spent trying to finish off the report I’m writing. The problem I’m having is that as fast as I write about something, another thing happens that I want to include! Ha ha! I’m beginning to accept that I probably won’t actually be able to finish it properly until I leave here.
I can’t believe I only have 11 Kimilili sleeps left, although it will be less by the time I am able to post this on the internet. I’m so, so sad that I have to leave here, but on the other hand very excited about getting back to Zambia. It’s going to be hard saying goodbye to all my IcFEM friends - I’m particularly rubbish at saying goodbye and have a bad habit of crying my eyes out so I’m sort of dreading my last day. Everyone has started asking when I leave now as they know it’s soon and, despite my best efforts at ignoring the fact that it’s going to happen, it’s beginning to feel very real. I’ve still got a fair few things I need to finish off before I do leave so next week is going to be hectic I reckon, especially after my cold-induced-slow-week this week!
All in all, I can say that my time here has been fantastic! Obviously it’s had some difficult days, some challenges and sad moments, but generally I have laughed and laughed, learnt so much about so many things and just felt right at home thanks to the warm welcome I’ve received from many folks who are now great friends. No doubt I’ll tell you about my last few days when I next write which will probably will be when I’m in Zambia...what an odd thought! It so doesn’t feel like I’ll be back in Zambia in two weeks time. Huh! I’ve got a long bus journey and a night in Nairobi on Wednesday 29th and a flight to Lusaka the following day, so all being well, Zambia here I come! Yey!!
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Thank God for:
- the chance to be involved in so many and varied things.
- my Bible being found and my visa extension being granted!
- his gentle care, surrounding me with such fantastic friends.
Please pray for:
- a productive last week and a half in Kimilili and the finalising off all the bits and bobs I need to finish off.
- me not to be too much of a mess when I say goodbye to everyone here and safe travel from Kimilili to Lusaka.
- a smooth transition from my work here to the work awaiting me in Zambia. I am sure that God has has shown me all the things here for many reasons and that some of these will become clear when I move onto the next stage of this trip...exciting...
