Random Updates

It has been a while since I have written here on this blog so I'll post a little of this and a little of that to catch you all up to speed on some recent developments of these past few days.

We are just about finished (re)working out an agreement with Terry, our project manager here on the ground for how all of our various projects will be run in our absence and what kind of reporting/communication should take place. It is very hard to partner with someone else to realize your visions at all, let alone from half way around the world. We are fortunate beyond words to be working with her. She has made many of these dreams possible. This new agreement will hopefully make these things even better. After hours and hours of meetings, I think that we have things fairly well ironed out.

On Saturday we tried to take Senya for a camel ride on the beach. She did not like it. Not one little bit. For the time being, she prefers her little yellow floaty inner-tube. That's fine with me. I am not sure which one of us loves our swimming time more.

Today we visited a few of the schools where we have finished gathering Data. We wanted to thank the teachers and exchange contact information. We are excited that there seems to be a genuine enthusiasm to work together again in the future.

This evening Lindsay, Senya, and I went out to dinner with 2 other people we met here who are working in the schools to implement a health and reading intervention that was designed by a Harvard professor. We had a wonderful time together and it's a shame that we didn't get to meet them earlier. It was very refreshing to spend an evening with a couple of people who are working hard because they believe that they can make a positive difference in this crazy world.

WARNING: The rest of this post is a little on the heavy side (it contains descriptions of violence).

We had a surreal and strange experience at one of the schools today. We happened to be there during the time that the corporal punishments were being administered. Kids were forced to kneel in the dirt and hold up their hands to be violently and repeatedly beaten with a wooden stick. They had to hold their hands out in anticipation and then, after the painful beating, turn their hands over to receive the same treatment on the back of their hands and knuckles. The agony in the student's faces was heart wrenching. The brutality of seeing them literally dragged through the dirt for their turn to be beaten was repulsing. The fact that over 100 kids were in line to receive this treatment was mind boggling (as it turns out, these were the kids who were late to return to school after lunch).

It was difficult for me to overlook this situation. As someone who cares very deeply about human rights, it didn't sit well with me but I did what i thought was best and I bit my tongue. I thought that saying anything to the headmaster might be counterproductive. We are literally on our way out the door and we are leaving with an open invitation to return and implement an intervention that could be life-saving. We want to come back here and work to bring lasting, positive change. That means working within a system that is obviously flawed. If we make enemies in that system, our chances of succeeding in helping these kids diminishes.

The lines that we walk in order to do this work are mind numbing. Choosing our battles and trying to weigh potential future outcomes against one another is so confusing. Will the end results be the greater good for which we strive? We are constantly faced with situations like this and we often agonize over our decisions, but in the end we often just have to hope that we made the right call.

Remember how a few years ago Lindsay and I talked a lot about how riding the matatus every day was a harrowing experience? Each and every one of the HUNDREDS of miles we have traveled on matatus was passed in the hope that we wouldn't wind up careening into the afterlife. Well on Friday, on our way back from Kwale, we saw one of the vans we had ridden many times (literally one of the exact, same vans) shattered and crumpled into a charred mass that hardly resembled a vehicle. It had flown off the road (apparently at a tremendous speed) and into a ditch, rolling many times and finally coming to a rest in the precise location where we park our car when we visit the Pamoja center! I couldn't believe the fact that it was in that location... if this had happened the day before, it would have landed on our car. If this had happened 2 years ago, we could have been on it. Everyone except the police were already gone when we passed, so I didn't stop, but I'll have to check with my Pamoja friends tomorrow to see what happened. The wreck was so horrific looking, I can't imagine what happened to the people inside.

So, as the title of this post indicates... random. I know. That's a snapshot of our past few days though.

We are wrapping up here and sifting through all that has happened over this past month. There has been a lot that is confusing, some that is discouraging, and some that is very good. Recently we have had some big doses of confusing and discouraging, but over all I would say that the scales tip heavily toward the "very good."