When Dreams Become Reality

Wow. What a fantastic day.

We started the morning by visiting the new Micro-Finance group that we co-founded with Terry last year. This was especially exciting because Micro-Finance has been a personal dream of mine for years. Last year we did all of the planning and laid the groundwork while we were here in Kenya. We returned home with the goal of eventually raising the start-up costs, but we thought it might be a while. People's generosity and eagerness proved us wrong and we found ourselves finalizing the plans with Terry via email and then sending the money overseas.

Even with complete confidence in a partner's character and ability to implement projects, there is somewhat of a disconnect when a dream is realized in your absence.

Terry has been giving us reports since the start of the project, but not until today when we were actually able to meet the participants face to face and hear them tell their own stories did the reality of this project sink in. These 20 women have all been profoundly impacted by this project. They have started or improved various small businesses that provide enough of a cash flow that they can provide the essentials for their families. The difference that this makes is monumental.

Today was a big breakthrough for Senya too. Thus far in the trip, she has been having a marvelous time, but that time has been spent almost entirely in our arms. While completely happy whenever she is being held by either Lindsay or me, she has been exhibiting a fair amount of stranger anxiety if anyone else tries to hold her. In her defense, she has spent most of her life in a quiet log cabin in the woods of Pennsylvania with only her parents around. The people we have been meeting in the villages look, sound, and act in a way that is different than what she has come to know as normal.

This morning when she saw Terry, she broke into one of her big smiles that she reserves for people that she loves. That smile marked a change of heart for Senya. She was outgoing and happy to interact with people all day long. It was adorable to watch her make some new friends. Here's a picture of Senya participating in the Micro-Finance meeting.

The next milestone of the day was returning to one of the schools we visited earlier this week and actually conducting the research. When we arrived, they were ready for us. The guidance teacher had previously collected all of the consent forms and sorted through them to see which ones had been properly completed by parents who would agree to let their child participate in the study. He had all of those corresponding students seated at desks and waiting to fill out their assent forms and then complete the surveys. These technicalities are a departure from how things are normally done here, but they are absolutely essential for Lindsay's grant, research credit, and IRB approval. We were so grateful for the help of this teacher.

The students were fantastic. This was our first time having anyone from our target demographic actually complete the questionnaire. We were a bit nervous about it because it asks very in-depth questions and it is 8 pages long! We were all holding our breath, but the students remained engaged and every one of them completed the entire project in about an hour and a half. This was our first big batch of data collection and it seemed to be a success!

During the time that we spent at the school today, Lindsay and I were both struck with the same impression. Up to this point, this project has been so much work. We agonized over the forms and refined the questions. We have read studies and publications about research findings for similar interventions. We have spent hours on end theorizing about what might work where other efforts have failed. We have tried our best to be thorough, but up until now, this has been an issue to us. Today it became the lives of those specific individuals.

Watching actual students check the boxes and turn the pages of the questionnaire... seeing hundreds of gleeful children frolicking about the school yard... hearing the laughter of kids playing games... the humanity of this whole thing found its way into our hearts this afternoon. The ideas of human rights and social justice were embodied by smiling kids.