Collin and Lindsay in Kenya (with Senya)

It takes a village...

2011-02-05T16:49:00.002+03:00

... for us to visit villages in the Kwale district that is.

We are home from our best trip yet and we are thinking back over everything that happened and how none of it would be possible by ourselves.

Long before this trip even started, it was a group effort. Lindsay's advisor, Dr. Orsega-Smith, has been so supportive of our interest in health issues in Kenya. Dr. Orsega-Smith knew about this travel/research grant opportunity through the Institute for Global Research at the University of Delaware and encouraged Lindsay to apply for it. All through the duration of Lindsay's experience at school, in fact, studying Health Promotion at the University has given Lindsay the practical tools and skills that we needed to enhance our development work in a strategic, methodical way. Because we do everything as a team, this means that our goals here have benefited from her education and the resources that have come along with it.

Lindsay was then awarded this grant that covered all of her travel expenses, and every expense on the ground (rental car, housing, food, etc...) but it didn't cover airfare for Senya and me. Our little family has been going through some difficult financial times recently so we weren't sure what we were going to do. We mentioned this once around a few loving friends and family members and they immediately put that worry aside. They decided to help us raise the money. In a span of 2 weeks some of our very generous friends and family members had done a whirlwind of baking, cooking, pitching our cause at church, and staging fund raisers that raised enough money to cover every cent that wasn't included in the grant. Some people went way above and beyond with their generosity in time, AND money (you know who you are). All of our expenses for this whole trip were covered. Astounding.

Lindsay's parents took it upon themselves to send Senya to Africa in style and comfort. They bought her a suitcase full of cute, comfortable warm weather clothes, and an incredible supply of diapers, wipes, food, first aid stuff, sun-screen, and just about anything you can imagine a baby needing on a month long trip. We used and appreciated every single thing they sent and can't imagine what this trip would have been like without that. They also thought of lots thoughtful, practical details like a handful of small bills to tip people to help us with luggage (we had a lot... traveling for a month, carrying research supplies, delivering goods from people at home to friends and charities there... this wasn't a classic Collin and Lindsay trip with 2 backpacks).

Our friends in Kenya took fantastic care of us while we were there. Terry and Paul made us delicious vegetarian food to welcome us back. The Nicolles, who introduced us to Terry in the first place, made sure to write to us to make us feel welcome and even gave us some tips about places to get out into nature while visiting the coast. Our entire month and all of our work there wouldn't have even been possible without the constant help from people there on the ground, primarily Terry and Paul.

While we were in Kenya, our dear friends and family kept in touch with us in a number of ways. It is difficult to describe how much this means when you are living in such a different setting, but wow. It was so nice to get pictures of people we love back here enjoying the snow, phone calls just to touch base, emails to fill us in on the daily happenings, facebook messages to encourage us when things were tough, and blog comments/emails from people communicating with us about our work. Keeping in touch like this wouldn't have even been possible in the recent past (I didn't hear one thing from one person at home the first time I visited Africa) but it really works wonders to enhance your time away from home. It just ties it back in to other parts of life that mean so much to us and reminds us how interconnected the important things in life really are.

Also while we were in Kenya so many people offered to take care of stuff back here for us. Nathan came to check on the house for us and take care of Lindsay's plant. Ian stopped by to check on things for us and his help. My property managers, Chris and Lil kept things with the rentals ship-shape. Shane took care of some essential business dealings while we were gone. I actually gave him power of attorney over real estate, financial, and business transactions. It's pretty special to have a baby brother who can be trusted with things on this level. My parents did a great number of things for us. Perhaps most significantly, they adopted our beloved Zuri while we were gone and took wonderful care of her. We really wouldn't ever leave if we weren't 100% confident that she was safe and happy. They would send us frequent updates about her well being and enjoyment of things like fresh snowfall and warm fires.

When we got back to the airport in New York, my parents were waiting for us with a balloon for Senya, a cart for our luggage, and food for us. They drove us home to a house that had been fully prepped and made to feel like a home again. Nathan had cleared the driveway. Ian and Laura had cooked a huge batch of some of our favorite food. My parents had stocked the fridge with foods that we love. They had built a fire, and turned on the heat to make sure that we wouldn't freeze on our first night back from the tropics. Our dear friend Jessica had left a delicious batch of home-made cookies on the porch for us.

All of these things mean the world to us and really, that is just the beginning of it. Our friends and families love us and support us in such an incredible way. I can't imagine doing what we do without having such an amazing team of people making things possible for us at every turn.

Thank you all for everything. We love you so much. Thank you for helping to make our dreams come true.

Returning to winter

2011-02-02T23:54:00.003+03:00

We will be leaving here tomorrow afternoon. We spent months preparing for this trip. In truth, we have arranged our entire lives around the work here to an incredible degree. It is a strange thing to have sacrificed so deeply and poured so much of ourselves into something and then leave it without any concrete plans to return.

Coming here requires a lot of time and money, both of which are scarce these days. People have been asking us when we will return and it is difficult to know how to answer. This is our fifth time here. Each time we have left without knowing the future, and each time we have found ourselves back here. I have to imagine that it will be the same way again, but without knowing the details of timing, funding, or the practicalities of our own lives, it is difficult to answer that question with any measure of confidence. "I'm sure we'll be back before long. We always come back to Kenya" is the way that I have been replying.

This month here has been busy and we have worked very hard, but it has also been exactly what our little family needed in a lot of ways. It was time that we could spend together, away from the stress and busyness that has been so present for the past several months. Sure there were stressful and confusing elements, but there was also a tremendous amount of laughter, and a great sense of accomplishment. Most importantly, it was all experienced together. It was a time to focus on a common goal. It was a time to live in the present. It was a time to talk about what we need to see in our lives when we are back at home.

So tomorrow we'll be leaving the summer time and we'll be heading back to the icy cold winter. We'll be leaving the life of being together 24/7 and we'll go back to work, school, business and the other countless things that take us in separate directions. However, we will be returning with a fresh sense of identity as a family and, hopefully, a refreshed sense of ability to tackle the challenges before us and not only survive them, but complete them with excellence.

We'll also be returning to family and friends and we know that those reunions will be filled with joy.

As far as the research and the projects here are concerned, like I said, we always come back to Kenya.

We are leaving the already established projects in the very capable hands of our partner and project manager, Terry Awendo. We will maintain consistent communication and we will be heavily involved in the facilitation of these dreams from afar. These projects are ever evolving and we look forward to that happening even while we are on a different continent. I think we'll always have one foot in both places.

In terms of the new HIV/AIDS research, we are also very excited about that. Time and funding both hold a voting seat on the board of that future, but we are confident that all of this work will not be in vain. We are optimistic that we will have a role in a brighter, healthier future for this place that we love so dearly.

More random updates

2011-02-01T21:36:00.005+03:00

I know that at this point in the trip you may be expecting a concise wrap-up of the month's events or some conclusions about the trip here. The thing is, we have been so frantically trying to get everything finished that I feel a bit scattered. So, here are more disjointed stories from the day.

I got a terrible flat tire early this morning. I must have hit something really nasty because there was about a 3" rip in the tire. I wasn't really prepared for this type of event. Turns out my spare was flat (thanks rental car company) and I didn't have any money on me at all. Not even one shilling. I was, in fact, so unprepared that I didn't even have shoes with me. Barefoot. Broke. Broken down. I had to rely completely on the kindness of strangers to get me to a place to fill my spare and then back to put it on. An hour or so later I had bummed several rides and found some friendly guys to help me and I was back on the road.

I visited Pamoja Nursery School today to distribute the items that some kind souls from VCF sent over here with us. The students and the teachers were so grateful for the much needed supplies. Witnessing that was very special.

I spent some time with a woman from our micro-finance group today. I wanted to observe her business in action and hear a first hand account of how things are going. I sat with her as she made chapatis to sell in the village and listened to her tell her story. The small loan that she received was just enough to bump her business up a level to where she was able to buy school uniforms for her kids and send another child back to school. Also, for the first time in years, she has enough money to give them lunch when they return home for the lunch break. Her gratitude business of selling food in the village is finally covering her basic expenses. I stopped back by her shop about 8 hours later just as she was starting to sell the dinner foods that she had prepared during the day. I bought a delicious dinner of chapatis and beans in a coconut sauce complete with some sweet breads for dessert. The whole dinner for Lindsay and me together cost a total of 50 shillings (that is 62 cents).

Lindsay and Terry went out to lunch today. Lindsay wanted to thank Terry for all of her help with the study and just spend some time relaxing and talking rather than working. They had a great time together and I had the privilege of having a special little date with Senya. We went to Hollywood (one of my local favs in the busy town of Ukunda) for lunch and then went to the beach. The beach where we went has lots of giant baobab trees that grow almost up to the water's edge. Incredible. Senya was mesmerized by the beautiful water, crashing waves, and strong ocean breeze. That girl laughs and smiles a lot these days and I just adore moments like this.

I love that this restaurant is called "Hollywood."

Look at these trees!

I just love her joyful little spirit.

Tiny Senya. Giant tree.

We went to our final school for the final focus groups this evening. Turns out there was a scheduling mix up and they weren't anticipating us (this was the second week in a row at this school). They can't fit us in before we leave, so we are officially done collecting data. It was a bit of a bummer, but Lindsay has enough data for her study so it's no big deal. Also, we came here expecting this to happen a lot and we had a surprisingly low number of incidents like this. Because we have been working at a breakneck speed for so long, the realization that we were finished with the research didn't strike us until a few hours later and we both had a good laugh about the anticlimactic ending.

We leave the day after tomorrow to head home to a cold, snowy winter. It is hard to believe that our time here is almost over.

P.S. I talked to my friends at Pamoja about the matatu crash that I mentioned yesterday. 3 people died on sight and the rest of the passengers were rushed to the hospital with serious injuries. So sad.

Random Updates

2011-01-31T22:03:00.004+03:00

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."

A new literacy class

2011-01-27T20:44:00.006+03:00

Today we visited the newest of 3 literacy classes that have been started since the last time we were here. It is located in a rural area called Mwachome which is a farming community quite a distance from the main road.

Thankfully, our friend Sayidi offered to ride with us and show us the way. Without him in the car telling me where to go, I never would have made it. I probably would have turned around at the point where I literally had to drive through the play-yard of the local school, or maybe the part where I had to weave through a cluster of mud huts like so many cones on a drivers ed course taking care not to brush into any, or perhaps one of the many places where the route looked more like a dried up stream bed. There were no other car tracks and the crowd of laughing children running behind our car was a testament to the fact that 4 wheeled traffic is rare indeed in this area.

Here is a picture of Sayidi talking to some of the local kids. It gives you an idea of the setting.

Our new literacy teacher is named Ainea and she is fantastic. She runs 3 classes and they each meet 3 times per week. She told us that this is her favorite class because the women here are very dedicated students. They are working hard and grasping the concepts quickly.

Senya is continuing to adapt very well and has even started to pick up on some of the local customs.

Sometimes important steps aren't great blog material

2011-01-26T22:42:00.004+03:00

I had a financial meeting that lasted for HOURS today. It was the kind of meeting that people don't want to read about on a weblog, but it was definitely needed and productive.

Communicating across continents and different first languages can be a little tricky when you think about how involved some of these projects really are. We really wanted to set aside some time during this trip to go through the budgets line by line and discuss in painful detail things like expectations, reporting, transparency, etc... Like I said, not something for a blog, but very necessary.

We had our first real focus groups today. Mine, with the boys, was excellent. It was much like yesterday in that the students in my class didn't mind discussing this subject matter one little bit. Unfortunately for Lindsay, there is a cultural expectation on girls here to keep quiet about these kinds of things. She said that getting people to talk was actually a lot of work. She still got a lot of good information, it just wasn't quite the same setting as my classroom. I am eager to go back through the recordings and compare the data we are gathering.

Taking an opportunity

2011-01-25T22:46:00.002+03:00

Today we were supposed to start holding focus groups. Something was miscommunicated, however, because when we arrived, all of the students that had filled out questionnaires last week were in exams and a large group of students we had never seen were waiting to speak with us about HIV/AIDS.

We explained to the guidance and counseling teacher, Mr. Shikuku, that, because these students had not been given consent forms to take to their parents, we would not be able to hold the focus groups and they could not be a part of the study. He apologized for the confusion and asked us if we would be willing to stay and talk to the students about HIV/AIDS even though they were not eligible to participate in the study. They were expecting guest speakers today (that would be us) and he didn't want to disappoint them.

We were already there and we didn't have any conflicting plans for the remainder of the day because we had been planning on doing the focus groups. We decided to stay and speak to the students and it turned out to be a great experience for all of us.

The majority of the students are Islamic and the subject matter is somewhat sensitive. We had been advised by teachers at this school last week that, due to religious beliefs, the girls would not speak openly about issues of sexuality in a mixed group so we broke into groups of guys and girls.

I was placed with a group of about 50 male students and was asked to lead the class. I told the teacher that this is not what we had been planning, so I didn't have a lesson prepared. He told me that after observing the administration of the questionnaire and the ensuing question and answer session last week, he really wanted me to lead a class for this group of students too. He said that if we could do more questions and answers like we did last week, that would be great. These students hadn't been a part of that time and could really benefit from something similar.

OK then. Time to lead a class.

We spent the entire hour talking about HIV/AIDS and sexuality. Some of the questions that the students asked highlighted the fact that people living in an area afflicted with AIDS live with a very different reality than others. "How long after someone dies of AIDS do you have to wait before you can wash the body without risking infection?" "Can I get AIDS from sharing a bathroom with family members with AIDS?" There were questions about transmission. There were questions about prevention. There were questions about cures, myths, and rumors about AIDS.

It is can be a sobering subject, but I am also of the belief that life not should be lived without laughter. There were lots of questions about condom use and sex and it would really be a wasted opportunity to not throw some jokes into the mix. I figured a bit of a joke here and there was a safe bet for a group of 50 guys in their teens and 20s and it turns out I was right. The students didn't mind the jokes one bit and they would chime right in with some of their own. There were a few times that we were all howling with laughter to the point that I thought we might get shut down, but we never did. In fact, a few of the teachers came to hang around the periphery to see what was going on and I saw that they were laughing too. The levity that this created really seemed to put the students at ease and foster a very open environment. After the laughter, I would always try to make sure that I had fully addressed the most recent question and this usually led to much more serious follow up questions.

Mr. Shikuku told me afterwards that he had never heard his students be so open before and that he thought that the class went very, very well. The headmaster of the school, Mr Zani (a very serious man who runs a tight ship) told me that he had asked some of the students about their time with the researchers and he said that he had been getting excellent reports. He said that he is grateful for what we have done in the school and we are welcome any time. We exchanged contact information and he asked me to keep him informed of our progress with the study and any plans to come back.

Lindsay's time with the girls was also very successful. They all enjoyed their time together so much that they asked for consent forms to take to their parents so that they can participate in the study. Lindsay scheduled a focus group and a teacher interview for next week.

So, what started out as a bit of a bust turned out to be a very productive afternoon.

Not big news but still worth noting:

I fed monkeys out of my hand the other day.
I caught an old world chameleon last week.
I love the geckos living in our little house here.
It is strange to me that January is the dead of summer here and we are in it rather than the icy cold we grew up expecting to correlate with this month.
I haven't worn socks in weeks because I am always barefoot or wearing flip flops.
My flip flops sport the colors of the flag and say "Kenya Power." They cost less than $1.00.
We ate 1kg (2.2 lbs) of spinach for dinner tonight. I made sukuma with it and it was delicious.
We eat a pineapple every day.
If you ever get the chance to try Chips Masala (french fries covered in a spicy indian sauce) your mouth will believe in God.

When things don't go according to plan

2011-01-25T01:05:00.003+03:00

Sometimes life requires flexibility. Sometimes life requires holding your ground. Today it required both of those things.

We visited our 7th and final school to administer the questionnaire today. We had been there about a week and a half ago to explain the study and drop off the consent forms. When we arrived, it took a long time to assemble the students. When we collected the consent forms we started to see an issue arising. About half of the students in the room didn't have their forms and we couldn't let them participate in the study without the signatures of their guardians explicitly giving their permission to do so. After much discussion with the deputy head teacher, we decided that we would break for lunch, the students who had forgotten their forms would fetch them from home, and we would reconvene in a few hours.

Lindsay and I returned a few hours later as planned, but Terry wasn't feeling well and couldn't join us. We have done the questionnaire on our own a few other times and it went fine, but today was different.

We had been advised by several people that English is the official language of instruction and that our materials should be in english, so that is what we brought with us. When the english has been too tricky for particular questions, Terry steps in and translates. At the rural school today almost nobody could understand our english (thick with our american accents).

The Deputy Head Teacher (who shouldn't have been there to begin with but kept popping back in) was quick to offer to translate. This was very kind, however, the IRB protocol clearly states that Lindsay, Terry, and I are the ONLY ones allowed to conduct the research. Lindsay tried to kindly explain this to the Deputy, but he was quite zealous about his participation and just grabbed the questionnaire and started to run through the questions. He was also hovering over students' papers and enthusiastically prompting them to answer in specific ways.

Lindsay tried to stop him and reason with him a few more times but he wouldn't hear it. She then tried to find me to back her up (I had taken a very bored Senya out for a walk) and she couldn't find me. At this point she was faced with a difficult task. She could not in good conscience let him continue on to the questions that go into detail of the students' sexual history. The ethics of having a school administrator forcefully extract that kind of personal info... no way. She had to put her foot down and, as she explained it, channel the persona of the wonderful Liz Lemon and "SHUT IT DOWN."

She was polite but insistent.

Senya and I returned from our walk just in time to see Lindsay resolutely gathering up the papers and seeing the students out the door.

Almost done with the questionnaires

2011-01-21T23:31:00.003+03:00

We administered the questionnaire in the 6th school today. I don't have a total count at the moment, but we are getting very close to our goal of 300 participants. We would surely have reached 300+ if one of our schools hadn't cancelled our meeting today. Not a big deal. We are only half way through our time here, so we will be sure to get the data that we need.

The next phase of the study will be the focus groups and teacher interviews. We are so excited about that phase of the project because we will get qualitative data that just can't be gathered by a predesigned questionnaire. If the question and answer times are any indication of what the focus groups will be like, we are going to be in great shape. The openness of the students has been surprising and will translate to excellent data.

We also plan to start on the teacher interviews next week and we are really looking forward to that as well. All of the headmasters and teachers have been incredibly helpful and accommodating. It will be excellent to get a chance to sit down and talk to them one on one with specific questions to cover.

It has been a bit of a surreal experience to be here during this month. We knew that we would be coming here for this trip even before Senya was born. Now that everything is actually taking place, it has been even better than we could have dreamed. This is, by far, our best trip here. For one thing, we have a specific project that is going very well and will, hopefully, result in an intervention that will help literally thousands of people. Secondly, as I wrote about last time, it is just an incredibly special experience to be here, in this place that we love, with Senya. Finally, we feel like we have our life back. We have been so busy and stressed out over the past several months, it has been wonderful to spend all day every day this month working together on a shared goal and then hanging out together in the free time. This time has been perfect for our little family.

Senya's Magical World

2011-01-19T20:59:00.004+03:00

Today we administered the HIV/AIDS questionnaires in 2 more schools. It was a long day, but a very productive one. However that is not what this post is about. My last few posts have been a bit long winded and heavy, so today I wanted to dial it back a bit and share a snippet of the joy that our family has been experiencing here.

This past year has been quite a ride for our family. The birth of Senya and her first seven months with us have been surreal. My eyes have been opened to a beauty, and my heart to a love, the kind of which I never knew existed. However, in other ways, this past year has been more difficult than I care to communicate on this blog. We have experienced many kinds of loss and gone through tremendous upheaval that has resulted in stress that we never dreamed we would experience.

Coming here to a place that we love and spending all day every day together has been just the kind of healing we needed.

Being here with Senya is an absolute dream. This has been a special place to Lindsay and me for many years, but to come here with Senya has been such a wonderful experience. She loves the warm weather. She wears a onsie all the time and revels in the freedom of it. She squeals at the monkeys. She rides wherever she wants in the car (they don't enforce car-seat laws here and we aren't exactly driving on busy interstates). She has mastered the art of sitting up on her own. She kicks her little feet and babbles in delight when she sees the beach. She has recently started standing up in one of the seats of the car or in her car-seat (when we are parked) and absolutely howling with laughter. We aren't sure exactly what she finds so hilarious about the situation but her zeal is contagious and we all wind up just looking at each other and laughing until we are in pain. It is adorable.

Today was her 7 month birthday and she see was so happy all day, it melted my heart. We took a few hours this evening after our work was finished just to have fun together and celebrate life.

We went to a restaurant that serves dinner on the beach. We went out just as the full moon was rising. The white sand, the balmy breeze, the lapping waves, and the silver moonlight were the stuff of fairy tales.

Afterward Lindsay and I wanted to go out for ice cream. We picked our flavors and went out to a table in the moonlight (I love that everything is outdoors here). I was holding Sen on my lap while I ate mine with a spoon. I didn't realize until she opened her mouth expectantly and then watched in confusion as I bypassed her and fed myself that the little spoon looked just like the one we have been using to feed her and the ice cream looked a lot like baby food. It was so cute that Lindsay and I caved immediately. I took Senya back into the shop to get a tiny bowl of pineapple sorbet for her. When we went back to our table, she was thrilled with this new arrangement and showed us by shaking her arms and exclaiming her delight between each bite.

It was a pretty good day in the middle of a pretty good month.

The questions we are asked these days.

2011-01-18T21:27:00.002+03:00

Today we administered the questionnaire at Golini Secondary School. That school is a personal favorite of mine. I really like the head master and the guidance teacher. The location of the school (on the edge of a tall ridge overlooking the coastal plane and the ocean) is really hard to beat. There are lots of coconut trees that provide shade and there is a perpetual breeze that is a wonderful respite from the relentless January heat.

Today was the first time that I administered the questionnaire. There are a lot of questions (8 pages worth) and the subject matter is pretty intense. I was a little bit nervous at the thought of standing in front of 40 students and asking them to divulge that sort of information. Writing the questionnaire in the weeks before we came was one thing, but actually reading those questions to a room full of students... wow.

The study is about HIV/AIDS. Our goal is to design an intervention that successfully communicates the life saving information that the current curriculums fail to deliver. If we are going to find out where those curriculums are failing, we need to ask some pretty detailed questions about what students know and what they don't know.

There are lots of reasons why the current efforts are failing (perhaps a topic for an entire blog post in the future). One main reason is simple. This stuff isn't easy to talk about. The classes are mixed gender, mixed age, mixed religion groups of students. Talking openly about sexual behavior in a setting like that can be uncomfortable for the teachers and the students.

Seeing the young, innocent faces of the students in the front row really took us aback the first day. Lindsay and I exchanged glances and I could tell we were both thinking "Gosh, look at these little kids! Should we really be talking about this stuff in front of them?"

We discussed it on the drive home and we had both gone through a similar thought process. We felt like blushing and making excuses at first and then we remembered the stats... the 12 year olds getting AIDS, the 13 year olds getting pregnant. If they are old enough to be facing those issues, they are certainly old enough to be taught about safety and prevention.

So back to the questionnaire:

Our questions are bold and really go after sensitive information. We make a few things very clear to the students so that they feel comfortable answering such questions. We assure them that the questionnaires are anonymous and that their answers will be kept confidential. We also tell them that they are free to ask any questions at all without being afraid or embarrassed.

Some of the questions we get are heartbreaking. In response to the early question "have you ever had sex before?" one little boy (about 12 years old) raised his hand and asked Lindsay if it counts if you have been raped. Wow.

From there, the questions started to get more detailed. It is tricky because we want to be open and answer everything. After all, the end goal is to provide information that empower people to make healthier choices. However, we don't want to give answers that will skew the results of the study and thus cripple the resulting intervention. What we have resorted to doing is holding a question and answer session at the end to address issues that go beyond understanding the questionnaire.

After everyone had finished with the questionnaires this evening, I collected them and then asked if anyone had any questions. Silence. I suggested that perhaps some of the questions had made them wonder about something. More silence. I asked if maybe they have heard conflicting things from friends and teachers. After a little prodding, one boy timidly raised his hand. "Is it true that using condoms can help prevent HIV/AIDS?"

As soon as one question had been asked and I answered it honestly without expressing disapproval or judgement (and perhaps throwing in a bit of a joke to lighten the mood), the floodgates opened.

"Isn't it true that condoms are have microscopic holes that let HIV/AIDS infection through?"

"If you have HIV/AIDS, won't the condom burst?"

"Is there a way to protect yourself from infection if someone you have already had sex with finds out that they are infected?"

"Is it true that if you have AIDS and you have sex with a virgin, you will be cured?"

I have read about misconceptions and false beliefs about HIV/AIDS in Kenya, but to hear questions like that with my own ears really drove something home for me. This isn't just something you read about. This isn't overblown in the news for shock value. These are real questions with easy answers and the information needs to be made available in a format that it will reach the people who need to have it.

The questions just kept coming. A teacher stepped in to tell us that it was 6:30 and that we were already an hour past school closing time. We needed to wrap up so that students could walk home before dark. There were many many more questions and I couldn't just walk away leaving them unanswered. We promised to return next week to continue the discussions.

Choosing your focus

2011-01-17T22:00:00.003+03:00

We have some days like this every time we come to Kenya. Probably everyone goes through this in one form or another in their life, but it really stands out to me when we are here.

The need here can be overwhelming. When I walk from our cottage to go buy fruits and vegetables, I pass by a village where large families live in mud huts with thatched roofs, no electricity, and no running water. Right outside the door are piles of trash that will never be collected by a municipal trash service. On the corner, a man with spina bifida drags himself through the dirt to beg from passers by. When I reach the markets, I quickly duck into the stall of my trusted fruit seller who knows what I want and treats me well. I don't dare walk past the other shops because I just don't want to deal with the desperate calls to please just take a moment and look in their shop... consider promoting their business so that they can afford school fees and food for their kids.

On the way to where we work we drive past several villages without electricity or enough water to keep the crops healthy through this dry season. We pass a school with 900+ students and 13 teachers (all crammed into rooms rooms without lights or running water... rooms that would house about 1/10th of that number at home). We pass a "school for the mentally challenged" and an underfunded hospital.

I can tend to be overwhelmed a bit when I look around and then realize that this is KENYA, one of the most developed and affluent countries in the region. At least there ARE schools and hospitals. At least this isn't Somalia. Seriously, have you read about that place recently?

There is just so much that we can't even begin to address. One thing that is challenging in this kind of work is simply being exposed to all of that need and feeling like what you are doing isn't even a drop in the bucket.

In order to combat this feeling, we have adopted a few strategies.

#1. Define a Focus:

If your goal is "to do good" you run a great risk of either burning out or spreading your resources so thin that they won't make a lasting difference. Our high level goal here is to implement projects that improve the lives of Digo people living in the rural Kwale district. Beyond that, we define a few specific target areas. "We want to promote Chidigo Literacy," ... "We want to assist single women in starting a business to support their families," ... "We want to increase HIV/AIDS awareness among primary school children." Once those criteria are in place we move on to the next step.

#2. Set out with measurable goals and objectives:

Whatever we do, we like to be able to build evaluation into the process so that we can step back and say "is this working? Did _____ happen in _____ [amount of time]?" If the answer is yes, then it is working. If no, then we have some reevaluation to do. We try to do that to stay objective enough to run the numbers and see if our ROI is making sense. However, in order to keep a human face on these efforts, to communicate the heart of what we are trying to do, and to encourage ourselves during the tough times, we go to step 3.

#3. Remember the individual stories:

It is encouraging when your criteria are all met, you implement a program, and then you come back to evaluate it and it is operating like you hoped. It really is. When you see 20 women succeeding with their small businesses, it is an amazing feeling. However, after a day where you had to say "no" to a group of women asking you to help them start a new project in a neighboring tribe, you didn't have medicine for a sick boy with one of the mothers in the literacy class, and you didn't have any food to give the teacher's son who is obviously malnourished, it is easy to feel overwhelmed by that whole "drop in the bucket" feeling.

That's when we have to sit back and remember that 2 years ago we visited Fatuma at her house and she was completely broken. She simply couldn't provide for her 2 small children. She was in tears because she honestly didn't know what she would do to keep them alive. This year, our visit with her was in the context of the new Micro-Finance group where she is a successful participant. Her business is doing well and sustaining itself. Her kids are healthy.

Maybe these are drops in a bucket, but a brighter future for these cute kids... these drops are quite worth while.

Finishing out a good week

2011-01-14T22:06:00.002+03:00

The research project is going well. We have visited 8 schools and had 7 agree to participate in the study (we are waiting to hear back from the 8th one). That will be our entire sample. Things are going much more smoothly than we anticipated. We are so excited.

We had initially intended to take weekends off to rest, but one of the boarding schools in our sample has such a busy program that they can't fit us in during the week, but they really want to participate. They asked if we could come tomorrow, so tomorrow it is.

A light-hearted aside:

Living somewhere so different from home is really fun. There are so many details that are just a common part of every day life here but they really stand out to me. Some of those things that I enjoy are:

Thatched roofs.
Mangos.
The ability to send money from one person to another with cell phones.
Dumptrucks that look like they are from a WWII movie.
When people say "salaam alaikum."
Red dirt roads.
Warm blue ocean water.
Monkeys.
Produce stands selling local, organic goods for pennies.
Internet access anywhere there is cell service.
Change that can be used to buy more than a gumball or 12 minutes at a parking meter.
The fact that there are elephants in the woods.
Tea-Time

Of course there are things that I don't like too, but the good far outweighs the bad.

When Dreams Become Reality

2011-01-13T21:56:00.005+03:00

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.

Rolling along

2011-01-12T20:56:00.004+03:00

We are making great progress in the research project. We visited three more schools today. Things couldn't have gone more smoothly. All of the head teachers were very receptive and eager to participate in the study. We have now visited a total of five schools to meet with the administration, explain the project in detail, and drop off consent forms. We will visit 2 or 3 more schools and then we will have all of our participants!

Tomorrow we return to the first school we visited. We are very excited to actually be conducting the research for the first time (rather than simply explaining the protocol).

In the spirit of full disclosure, I have to confess a personal bias before I say this next part. I really like Lindsay. A lot. Actually, I have a bit of a crush on her. That aside, I think that I can still say with some degree of objectivity, that she is an incredible student and researcher. She is amazingly well organized. She planned for this project in great detail. Her cross cultural communication skills are outstanding. Her attitude in facing monumental challenges is inspiring. I am very fortunate to be here working with her on this project.

Now for 2 fun little side notes.

1. When we rented this little car in Mombassa, I doubt they had ANY idea what we would be doing with it. Every day, we wind our way farther and farther into the interior of this beautiful but rugged landscape. There are good roads in this part of Kenya, but the villages where we are working are located a good distance away from them. To call the tiny little red dirt tracks that we follow "roads" would be a stretch by just about anyone's standards. I honestly cannot believe the terrain that we are covering. I often drive about 1 mph as I precariously pick and choose the best path over the rutted and washed out paths, but I am still amazed that we haven't gotten completely stuck yet.

2. It is really wonderful to be living and working within minutes of a beach that is a picture perfect paradise. We are so close that we can swing by and take a quick dip after we are done working for the day but before it is dark. Can it get any better than that? Yes it can! The beach where we like to go has the cutest infestation on earth. These little guys are everywhere.

Our first day of research

2011-01-11T22:24:00.005+03:00

Today was our first full day of research. It was a great day and we accomplished a lot.

We started out the day by driving for miles back the winding red dirt roads that typify the Kwale district. We passed through the lush jungle and the green farmland. We were so far out into the villages, I was imagining a little one room school house with about 30 kids in it, but came to a clearing and pulled up to a school with 476 students!

The students greeted us warmly and we got the impression that it isn't every day that this school receives visitors from another country. The range of shouted greetings, shy smiles, stolen glances, and even the curious hand reaching out to touch senya's soft white skin all hinted at the unique nature of our visit.

Although Terry has spoken with the headmasters of each school to arrange for our study, we are still expected to meet in person upon our arrival. We spent a couple of hours explaining the purpose of the research, going over the consent forms and questionnaires, and discussing our hopes for the outcomes of this study. Our vision was strongly supported by the headmaster and the teachers and we were granted full access to the facilities and any assistance we may require.

The teachers gathered the older students who will be participants and we spent a couple of hours sitting under a thatched pavilion explaining the study and passing out forms. The students must now take the forms home to their parents/guardians and return with signatures that grant permission for their participation. We are scheduled to go back on Thursday to do the questionnaires, interviews, and focus groups. After our reception today, we are looking forward to our return.

We had a short break in the afternoon before going to a second school to repeat the process.

In non-research-related-but-still-exciting-news, I (Collin) used the afternoon break to visit my friends, Idi and Sayidi, the grounds keepers at Pamoja. It was a scorchingly hot day and Lindsay had developed a craving for Madafu, coconut milk found inside of green coconuts. I knew that Idi and Sayidi posses a coveted skill that could help us acquire such a treasure. I wanted to get Madafu for Lindsay and I wanted to learn how to scale the tall, swaying coconut trees.

Idi went first. He kicked off his flip flops and virtually sprinted to the top of the tree. It looked so natural and easy. He used his feet to walk up the tree while using his hands to pull himself toward it so that his feet would stick. When he came down, I asked for a few pointers, took off my boots, and went for it. I thought I might get about 10 feet or so before deciding that I was good enough at my new talent, but the feeling of climbing the tall, swaying, trunk was so invigorating, I just couldn't call it quits until I reached the top. The view of the green countryside rolling down to the turquoise ocean seemed to magnetically pull me upwards.

When I reached the top I realized 3 things that were all slightly embarrassing.

In my eagerness to start my climb, I had forgotten to bring a knife with me, so I couldn't cut any coconuts down.
I was exhausted! Idi had made it look so easy, but apparently, I am not in shape like he is.
When you look 40+ feet down from the top of a leaning coconut tree and see absolutely nothing between you and the hard ground, you tend to question the untested grip of your bare feet on the bark of the swaying tree.

I climbed back down in partial victory. Idi and Sayidi were both very encouraging and told me that it was an excellent first climb. Idi was then kind enough to scamper back up and chop down a few choice coconuts.

After the whole ordeal, I was resolved to hone my skills later this month. Lindsay was grateful that I wasn't dead. Senya was happy to try Madafu.

Starting a month of research

2011-01-10T21:52:00.003+03:00

It is good to be back in Kenya. It truly feels like a second home.

Our trip here was great. All of the flights were smooth. All of our connections were easy. All of our bags arrived with us. All of our reservations (flights, cars, hotel, house, etc...) were ready upon our arrival. We had no trouble with customs, visas, or any other legal technicalities. We had a day-long layover in istanbul that was marvelous, and a day and a half in Nairobi that was very restful. This is our first international trip with Senya and it couldn't possibly be going any better.

Being here with Senya has been a very special experience. This place feels like a part of us, and it has been magical to share it with her. She loves the warm weather (no more bundling up like Ralphie from A Christmas Story). She is enthralled by the leaves on the banana trees and the vibrant flowers everywhere. We took her swimming in the ocean (as warm as bath water this time of year) for the first time and she never stopped laughing and squealing with delight.

After making our our epic journey here, taking care of all of the practicalities of living somewhere else for a month, and resting up for a bit, we were ready to dive into a month of intense work.

We drove up to Kwale (ohhh how nice it is to have a car here!!!) to meet with Terry and Paul, our partners and project managers here on the ground in Kenya. It was so good to see them. Of course we always keep in touch, but there is nothing like meeting face to face and getting to be introduced to new babies for the first time. Their son, David has grown into a very cute little boy and their daughter, Pendo is a beautiful baby. It is cute to imagine Senya having familiar friends and playmates here as she grows up.

We spent the day plotting the course of the next month. Every day promises to be packed to capacity. For example, tomorrow we will meet at Pamoja Center in the morning and then spend the day visiting primary schools in several villages distributing and explaining consent and ascent forms for students to participate in our HIV/AIDS study.

We are hoping to have about 300+ participants. Our 50 lb. suitcase filled with nothing but forms and questionnaires speaks to the volume of data we are hoping to gather. After the forms are distributed, we will return to conduct interviews, focus groups, and have students fill out questionnaires.

Amid our busy research schedule, we are planning times to visit all of the previously established projects. We are excited to hear reports of progress made, see new projects that were nothing more than dreams the last time we were here, and visit with the wonderful people who manage and participate in these projects. We can't wait for this aspect of the trip to unfold.

This promises to be a busy month, but we will try to update this blog periodically so that our friends and family members back home can keep up to speed with what we are doing here.

Thank you for reading and for helping to make these dreams a reality.

In Closing

2009-06-20T23:06:00.001+03:00

When I was a child, my world was smaller. My family, my friends, and the things that mattered to me felt contained and readily accessible.

It's not that simple anymore. People I love are now spread across the world, and a few have even moved on past this world. All the pieces of my heart can never be collected and put together all at once in the same place ever again while I am here on this earth.

Yet, as the current of time brings loss and separation, it also brings reunions, beginnings, accomplishments, victories, revelations, friendships, ideas, and life.

Collin and I have had such a wonderful time here in Kwale this past month. This place and some of the people here have become so much a part of our heart. We will miss Terry, Paul, and their son David so much. Without them here making a difference day by day, we wouldn't be able to have a hand in any of these projects. My life is so much richer because of them.

During those moments when I wonder what difference my life is making, I often reflect on the things that are happening here in Kwale. The children who get two meals a day at Pamoja, the infants who are being cared for while their mothers finish school, the women who make soap, the carpentry class, the sewing class, the micro-finance group. I feel so thankful and honored that I have been able to play a small part in helping and supporting these projects.

Collin and I have considered moving here at some point in our life. We know that the timing has to be right, though. We feel that our involvement from the U.S. has made a bigger impact than if we would have lived here for the past few years. This is partly because we are connected to a church of people who have remained committed to supporting the programs and projects here in Digoland. One of our major hesitations about moving here is that we don't want people to forget Digoland. Or us. I don't want to become those people that show up every ten years and nobody knows who they are or what they are really doing, anyway. I don't have anyone specific in mind, but you know...those people who eventually just become a "pray for Collin and Lindsay" prayer card buried somewhere underneath pictures and to-do lists on your refrigerator.

Anyway, all this to say, today we had to say goodbye to Terry, Paul, and Dave. It is sad to leave them for another year at least. I treasured our time here so much this month. It went very quickly for us because we packed as much as we could into these three weeks in Kwale.

It was a really great day with our friends. We discussed some business: future directions we'd like to try to take with some of the projects, the financial breakdown of each of the major projects in which we are involved, and the long-term and short-term goals of the projects. Then we went out for a fabulous Italian dinner and had a lot of fun spending our last evening together.

Tomorrow we will pack our bags, return our motorbike, and tie up all other loose ends here. Our shuttle to the airport will be arriving at 6:00 am on Monday to take us to the airport. We look forward to seeing our friends and family at home.

We thank all of you loyal blog readers! It was energizing to know that so many of you were following along with what was going on here over the past few weeks. We truly appreciate all of your support.

Although we are wrapping up this blog for now, we know that we will return home and what has been done here is just a beginning. We invite anyone who would like to be involved on any level to contact us. There is tremendous opportunity to make an impact here.

Aging Well (collin)

2009-06-19T22:50:00.009+03:00

We spent today in the village of Golini. This has to be one of the most beautiful places on earth. It is located high up above the coastal plains on the very top of a ridge. The rolling land is lush and green with a dense cover of coconut and mango trees. This creates a deep shade while maintaining an open, grove-like feeling below. There are sweeping views of the countryside over the edge of the ridge and a fresh breeze is constantly blowing.

We went to visit 2 families in the region, the Mwalonya family and the Mwaveku family. Historically, there have been 4 Christian families in the Digo tribe. The families that we visited today were 2 of the 4. We simply wanted to pay our respects to them and spend some time together.

We spent the first part of the day with Shadrack Mwalonya and his family. Shadrack (the guy we saw in the market the other day and recognized from our first trip here) is a kind and jovial fellow with a face that looks like his years have simply served to add to his wisdom and joy.

We sat on his porch overlooking the valley and shared a meal as he alternated between recounting his family history and cracking everyone up with his good humor. We ate sima (a thick paste made of maize flour), Sukuma (greens cut up and boiled in a sauce), and mangos. It is customary here to share from one dish and use only your right hand to eat (no utensils). Being a left handed American who is used to eating with a fork, this was a little tricky to master, but I have honed my skills to the point where I am no longer the comedic entertainment at a meal.

After lunch, we walked to the home of Jonathan Mwaveku. Jonathan is 77 years old. That alone is remarkable here. Add to that the fact that he is married to the same women he fell in love with in his youth, and he is truly one of a kind.

When we arrived, he greeted us warmly and welcomed us into his hut. We sat talking for a while and I was deeply moved by this man's true joy. He is nearly blind, his health is failing, and his life contains none of the comforts an American would expect for a man of this age. Yet, when he spoke of his faith, his life, and his marriage, his words reflected pure gratitude for everything he has enjoyed.

About 20 minutes into our visit, we heard a noise that sounded something like a baby crying. It was weaker yet slightly more desperate sounding. He held up a finger to communicate that something more important had arisen, and he stood and shuffled to the other room. Shadrack told us that his wife had awoken and was calling him.

As it turns out, Jonathan's wife is quite ill and has been for 4 years now. Throughout that entire time, he has stayed by her side and waited on her in every way possible. She has been bedridden for the past 2 years, and has suffered multiple strokes. At this point, she is so frail, she can barely turn her head on the pillow. She is so frail... just so frail... she can't weigh more than 75 pounds. She is so weak, she can barely talk.

Jonathan sat next to her bed and talked to her. His undying love was etched in every line on his face. His care is so tender.

When she fell back to sleep Jonathan told us that they have been so blessed and so happy. He said that it won't be long now. He knows that their time here on earth is ending and he is happy for what is next. He said when we hear that they have passed on, please celebrate for them. Please rejoice that they will be living together with God.

When it was time for us to leave, he walked us out. He held each of our hands and thanked us for visiting. I looked back as we left and he was still standing there. He looked thin and small in the forest and I know his eyes could no longer see us, but he stood gazing in our direction with a contented smile... the perfect picture of peace and happiness.

Sharing Our Faith (lindsay)

2009-06-18T22:41:00.000+03:00

When the professional Digo dancers came to pull one of us into the dancing yesterday, I knew what I had to do. I handed Collin the video camera and bravely marched forth into the circle. I then proceeded to shake it like a polaroid picture.

So, this morning, we remembered that one of us was supposed to give an encouraging word to the Christian Union at Golini secondary school this afternoon. I promptly reminded Collin of the dancing scenario and mentioned that nothing says "thank you" like deciding to be the one to deliver a Biblical teaching to a group of high school students.

Collin and I shared the same major as undergraduates, so I have seen him give presentations to groups several times. I have also read papers that Collin has written, and I have heard him articulate his opinions on politics, social issues, etc. I know that he is intelligent and quite capable of communicating information. I knew that he could do well sharing something from his faith, but I was curious to see what he would say.

Collin spoke about love and how the rules of the universe have been put in place for our own good--because God loves us. He talked about how God gives us a code of living, and when we break the code it hurts us. Just like a parent makes rules for the good of the child, God gives us parameters within which we live more fulfilling lives. He spoke about taking care of ourselves, too. We need to love ourselves in order to be able to love others well. He differentiated between self-gratifying behavior and true love of one's self. True love of one's self is to accept God's love. To see ourselves as He sees us. With unconditional love.

Today was unique in that we were specifically asked to share a Christian message with a group people. Usually here (in Kwale, and also on this blog), we try to focus on the concept of love as portrayed through the development work that we do here rather than use this blog or our time here as a platform for espousing our faith. This is, in part, because of the complex interplay of faith, social responsibility, development work.

Terry is our bridge between the Digo community and our church in the US. We defer to her on issues pertaining to faith and sharing it with people. She has relationships with many of the people in the Digo community. Everyone knows that she is a Christian and that we are too.

The three of us look at it like this: we try to live in a way that people will know we are Christians by our love. We also believe that true religion is caring for widows and orphans. We also believe that we only love God because He first loved us. We believe that people will only want to turn to God if they know His love. And how will they know it if we don't show them? We must show them, not just tell them.

So for us, we don't do a lot of preaching. We don't do overt evangelism. We don't try to convert people to our religion. Why? Because people don't want or need a new religion here in Digoland. They've got plenty of religion. There is the Islamic religion, there is the Kenyan Christian religion, and there is African Tribal religion. Most Digo people subscribe to one or more of the above. So, if it's religion people are selling, no one needs it. In fact, an attempt to spread religion often leads to a swift rejection due to the animosity between religious groups here.

People here do need love, however. And love to them means food when they would otherwise be starving. Love means education and empowerment for vulnerable members of society (specifically divorced women, widows, and children). Love means showing understanding, compassion, and assistance to young girls who get pregnant and have their families disown them. Love means being responsible with our resources and not thinking that money solves everything. Love means deferring to the community as our guide for how we can partner with them to make their lives better. Love means being open about our faith in Jesus as the quintessential example of what true love is, but not making people feel indebted to convert in exchange for things that we believe are basic human rights. Love is accepting others as they are, as Jesus accepts us as we are.

So, Collin's message is one that sounds simple, yet, we will spend our lives trying to learn and practice it more and more each day.

Digo Dancing and the Medicine Man (collin)

2009-06-17T20:29:00.006+03:00

Today was a fascinating day from a cultural perspective. We went up to the village of Vuga this morning to see a group of traditional Digo Singers and Dancers perform. The rhythms and melodies were awe inspiring. I was so glad that we could witness this event.

At 2 different points, the dancers pulled Lindsay into the action. She was a great sport about it and tried her best to follow along. I was immeasurably grateful that Lindsay sacrificed herself and handed me the video camera... a justification for an excused absence from the jumping and shaking (if you don't know, I have a strange phobia. Dancing to fast music scares the life out of me). Here's a little clip of Linds joining in the fun. (Lindsay writing here: If you have trouble spotting me, I'm the awkward white girl pursing her lips together in a concentrated effort to shake the beads on my shawl in tempo. Oh, the things we do for the people we love.)

After the dancing, we went to visit the Chief again. He had arranged a visit to a traditional Digo Medicine Man for us. Medicine men (also sometimes called witch doctors) are such a central part of this culture, he felt that it would be essential for us to witness this first hand if we really want to understand the Digo People.

We learned a lot of fundamental beliefs that many Digo people hold and practice (regardless of religious affiliations... Christians... Muslims... you name it).

The Medicine Man was very welcoming and hospitable. He spent a couple of hours with us explaining the various aspects of what he does. His story is a fascinating one.

He was born here (near vuga) and lived here until he was 12. At that point he developed some sort of condition in his eyes that the doctors couldn't heal. He also began to manifest what sounded to me like psychological imbalances (he called it madness). He would often run away into the forest in his sleep and bring various types of herbs back home because he dreamt that they would cure him. This caused his grandfather who was also a medicine man (this profession / calling is always passed down through the family) to realize that he was special and would one day be a great medicine man. The grandfather began to train him to carry on the family legacy. Before his training was complete, his madness caused him to run away to Tanzania. He left at the age of 12, not knowing anyone, and spent 16 years away from his home country. When he returned, he felt that he was ready to take up his calling.

He spent the next several years learning all kinds of cures, herbal remedies, methods for communicating with ancestors, and ways of dealing with evil spirits. He opened a business and now he has become the most powerful and respected medicine man in the region.

He told us that his power comes directly from God. He said he works with everyone because God says in his scriptures (the Bible and the Koran) that He helps those who try to help themselves. He said that at times he also consults with spirits if the occasion calls for it, but his main job is to liaise with God.

He deals in everything from cures for cholera, to curses of death placed on ex-spouses. He said his clients range from school children suffering from an ailment, to medical researchers looking for new cures from plants found in the jungle, to pastors who want a bigger congregation to fill the pews in their churches. He has a remedy, or information, or a ritual for everyone.

Apparently, it is exceedingly common for people to consult the medicine man. If you are bitten by a poisonous snake, he has a cure. If you have heart trouble, he has a remedy. If you need to place a curse on an ex- lover, he can do it for you. If you have been cursed, he can remove it.

Some of the remedies involve herbs and plants collected from sacred parts of the jungle. Some are more spiritual in nature. We spent a long time sitting in his office (a small mud hut on his compound). We sat on the floor surrounded by countless charms and curiosities of all types. Everything has a specific purpose, but to us it looked so haphazard and other-worldly that it created an incredible atmosphere.

There were candles, bottles of potions, old coins, a dried bird wrapped in goat skin, paintings, tufts of hair, nuts, shells... Every inch of the hut was filled.

There was one particularly interesting painting hanging over his head (see pic). When I asked what it was he replied in a mater of fact tone "A demon. I use it to cure the possessed."

We were very grateful for his willingness to talk to us and his transparency. We learned so much about the views and values of people here.

One other thing we learned... This is quite a lucrative line of work. He is visited by so many people so frequently that his business is booming and he is making FAR more than any income I have ever heard of around here. He said that on a busy day he will make about 10,000 shillings. To put that in perspective, the soapmaking group we visited last week makes 350 shillings for a hard day's work and then split it 15 ways. The guard at our compound (in a wealthy, westernized town) works a 12 hour shift for 100 shillings. I'll be honest. On the way out of his compound I cast a jealous eye on his shiny new motorcycle.

So, that is the story of our day of cultural education. Some of the things discussed in this post may bring up questions about our role here in terms of our faith and its relation to the complex clash / combination of religious beliefs in this area. We plan on writing a post dedicated to to this issue. It is a big subject though, so we'll tackle that at a later date.

Rain (lindsay)

2009-06-16T22:50:00.000+03:00

Today it rained almost all day. Usually, a rain storm happens once or twice in a day, but today it was pouring almost all day. We road our bike up to Kwale in the rain, and we walked through Kwale in the rain.

I have a slight allergy to rain, and sometimes I break into hives when rain drops hit my skin. It's strange, but also kind of neat like a science experiment. I took two Benadryl and that made my hives disappear, but now I'm pretty groggy. Forgive me if there are typos or if this post isn't quite as coherent as usual.

Our rainy walk in the mud lead us to the Literacy Center. We were going to meet with Gideon M'betsa (the manager of the office), but he had just left prior to our arrival. He had a family emergency and had to leave. We did manage to buy a tri-lingual dictionary (Chidigo, Kiswahili, and English), so the trip was productive in that sense.

We then went to meet the women from the women's group (the Tuesday group that made the soap last week) at the Pamoja Center. We were given our soap in it's finished state: cured and packaged. We were supposed to meet the women's group to see them perform some traditional Digo dancing and singing, but there was a mix-up with the timing and most of them left before we arrived. Appointments and scheduling are handled so differently here than in the U.S. You learn to roll with it. Flexibility and resilience are pretty crucial skills.

Today's dancing and singing was rescheduled for tomorrow morning instead. It will be a different group of women (people who do this professionally for a living). I'm excited to see this part of the culture and film it.

Tomorrow we will also be visiting the chief again, and he will go with us to meet a medicine man. We will talk with the medicine man about his role in the community and what he does. I am very curious about this because it is a huge part of Digo culture. Rather than fight, people go to their medicine men for advice and assistance. By assistance, I mean that it is common for people to pay their respective medicine men to put curses on the people with whom they are fighting.

Collin and I were discussing the correlation between power themes and belief in the supernatural. I saw some laundry hanging on a fence to dry today, but it was pouring rain all day. I thought: Wow. To not even be able to control when your clothes will be dry and clean--how powerless you would feel when it rains for days at a time some months.

Likewise, with sickness--when we are mildly ill, it is probable that the medicine we need will be available at our physician's office. It is not usually this way for people in the Digo community. Access to money and medicine is much more limited. How powerless I would have felt if I couldn't have gotten an antibiotic this past week to cure my strep throat.

In a lot of ways, the average person in the Digo community doesn't have control over these types of things. When you can't control your life on a basic level such as having food, health, and dry clothes, it is no wonder that people turn to the supernatural realm for help. Where else do you turn when your resources run out, and you have no other human recourse for help?

Anyway, after our rainy excursion around Kwale, we landed back at Terry's house for a while. We hung out with the infants for a while, and then drove home when the rain lessened. The bike worked well today, so that was great news.

Now we are back at our cottage, and our internet is working as is our electricity. This is also good news. My health has fully returned (thanks for your prayers, emails, and encouragements), and I am excited to make the most of our last week here in Kwale.

It has been a while

2009-06-15T17:39:00.002+03:00

Sorry it has been a few days since we posted anything. The main reason for our disappearance is that the internet here has been down for about 3 days. There have been a few times when we had a VERY slow connection, but never enough to post anything. When I say slow, I mean I tried for 3 hours to log into my email. The page was almost loaded when the connection dropped.

So, let me catch everyone up on the past few days.

The main thing is that Lindsay is feeling a LOT better. She said that she feels like her health is back to about 90%. Getting her healed up was the main focus of our weekend. Her new antibiotics (imported from india) seem to have really knocked this thing out. She has been resting a lot and I have been doing whatever I can to help her feel better.

After a couple days of rest and recovery, Linds felt ready to head back out.

We rode the bike up to Kwale today. When I say "rode the bike," I really mean hobbled along. The engine stalled 3 times while we were driving at high speeds. The third time it stalled, there just so happened to be a matatu passing a truck in front of us. They were barreling straight toward us in our lane while driving around 70 mph or so. Keep in mind that we were stalled but still moving fairly quickly. Our only option to avoid a head on collision was to make a sudden turn and veer off the road.

I may or may not have shouted something very unchristianlike at the matatu driver as we flew into the ditch. To those who might be worried that I offended someone, you can rest assured that they didn't hear anything as they roared past with the engine revved up and the radio blaring.

After this, I couldn't even get the bike started again. I had to remove a hose, drain the carburetor, and make a few adjustments to the fuel supply. This solved the stalling issue, but shortly after we were back on the road the chain popped off of the rear sprocket. This was easy enough to fix, but then it happened again... and again... and again... actually it happened 7 times. I realized that this was happening because the person who put the rear wheel back on the bike yesterday (oh yeah, we had another tire blow out while riding into the center of town yesterday) didn't put it back on correctly and the chain was too loose.

We limped the bike back to the fundi (expert) who "fixed" the bike yesterday and had him correct this mistake. Since then, we've been OK, but we are beginning to count down the days that we must rely on this fabulous machine. Did I mention that the gear shift lever is broken, the clutch sticks badly, the brakes are shaky, the lights are sporadic and the electronic starter works about 1 in 8 tries? You have to realize that I say all of this with a sense of humor, because having our own bike (even this bike) is FAR better than having to take the matatu everywhere.

When we finally made it to Kwale, we visited the vocational training center again. I would like to revisit my previous discussion of how amazing this place is. There are dozens of people being trained here. These are hard working people who will soon have jobs in their new trade. Without the training center, this would not be an option. The samples of things that they have produced as training exercises are high-quality, beautifully crafted products. These workers will be great assets to their communities.

The instructor of the sewing class thought it would be nice if he and the class could make us jackets. Lindsay and I loved this idea. We picked up some fabric when we went to mombassa. Today we dropped the material off and had our measurements taken. I will be very proud to sport the Pamoja Vocational fashion back in the U.S.

We then went to Terry and Paul's house and spent the rest of the day hanging out, talking about the various programs, and playing with the kids who live at the Infant Care Center (conveniently located next to Terry's house).

Having been here for 2 weeks now with all of these projects in full swing, I am happier than ever to be associated with everything going on here. I can't wait to bring information back home to anyone who would like to be involved with future projects. We have some great ideas brewing.

Update on Linds's health

2009-06-12T19:28:00.002+03:00

I ended the last post by saying that Linds wasn't feeling tip-top. She took a dose of levaquin and went to bed last night hoping to wake up feeling better.

Instead, things had gotten worse over night. Her sore throat was really bad, she had a pretty high fever and a rash had spread over much of her body. All of these symptoms met the criteria for Scarlet Fever.

We went to the hospital here in town to figure out what was going on. The doctor told us that it was probably a combination 2 things. First, she has strepp (sore throat and fever). Second, she was having an allergic reaction to the levaquin. He took her off of the levaquin and prescribed her a different antibiotic that would take care of the strepp without giving her an allergic reaction.

When we got back to our house here, we called our trusty doctor from the U.S. He has coached us through several trips, physical injuries, diseases, physical training regimens, etc... He is such a great doctor. He is very thorough and incredibly knowledgeable, so we feel entirely confident after talking to him about something like this. He told us that he agreed with everything we had been told in the hospital here and that if we were in the U.S. he would have done everything just the same.

We feel relieved and thankful that it isn't something much worse. We are glad to have a weekend for Linds to rest and recoup. Thanks to everyone for praying, sending encouraging emails, etc...

Mombassa Day (collin)

2009-06-11T22:50:00.001+03:00

Today we got up early to travel to Mombassa and spend the day in the city. This was a really exciting thing to do because there are several things I have always wanted to check out in Mombassa, but I have never had enough time there. I LOVED the city. I'll talk a bit more about it in a minute, but first I'll discuss the business that took us into town.

We went to the city to pick up a few things for Pamoja Children's Center, the Infant Care Center, and the Vocational Training Center. The Kwale market is wonderful, but there are certain things that you just can't buy there. We found everything were looking for, in the markets in Mombassa, so that was great.

Also, while we were in the city, we were able to get together with the pastor of a vineyard church in Mombassa. His name is Gary Sampson. I felt very privileged to get to spend some time with him. He moved to Kenya from South Africa several years ago (about 13 years ago I think) and started his church in Mombassa 8 years ago. His church is in a posh neighborhood on the coast and targets well educated, upper class people from the city. It is a western style church (music, teaching style, service structure etc...).

Our purpose in meeting with him was to explore the possibility of having our church partner with his church in some way as we continue to work with the Digo People. His vision for his church and his goals are different enough from our goals for our work with the Digo People that I doubt our church will really do very much with him (also, mombassa is a couple of hours away by car and a world away in terms of culture). However, it was nice to spend some time with a kind person who has relocated to Kenya and is very successful in what they set out to do. Plus, you never know what will happen in the future. Terry was with us at the meeting and we talked at great length about her community development projects and all of the positive work that she is doing the region. He invited her to come to his church sometime and said that at some point she can speak to his congregation about what she is doing. Maybe there will be some caring people who take an interest in her work. Having some semi-local people from an upscale area notice this work and take an interest in it might wind up being a good thing.

Now a few words about the city of Mombassa. First of all, just getting there from the south-coast is a total adventure. We took the matatus so that we wouldn't have to worry about our bike getting stolen in the city (it isn't the most crime free place in the world :) Getting on a matatu in the first place is quite an experience for an American. As you approach the city however, the experience changes. The number of people in the beat up old van went from around 15 to about 25. The streets went from hectic to something almost unrecognizable as a road. There are SO MANY people hauling stuff to and from the city, that the road is a sea of people, bikes, and carts all loaded beyond belief with wares of every type.

The matatu dropped us off at the ferry (mombassa is on an island) and we boarded on foot... along with literally thousands of other people. I have never been in a crowd quite like that before. It was like a standing room only concert, but rather than standing, everyone is jostling and rushing for a spot on the boat before it pulls out.

The city itself is incredibly beautiful. It is a very international city (a port city) with people from all over the world. Historically, there was a tremendous arabic influence there, so the architecture and the culture has a definite middle eastern flavor. There are beautifully ornate mosques all throughout the city. In some parts of town, there are parks and plazas with beautiful flowers and benches in the shade of palm trees. In "Old City," many of the streets are too narrow for cars. The markets spill out of the old stone buildings onto the sidewalks and roadways so that there is barely enough room to walk between the rows upon rows of vibrant fabrics and luscious fruits. Many of the women are in full burqas and the men wear long, flowing white robes. Everywhere, there are pungent aromas ranging from freshly fried samosas to the leather of custom made shoes for sale by the hundreds. All of the smells are nicely wrapped in the warm salty air that comes rolling in from the postcard-like blue waters of the indian ocean. Of course, in the mix with everything else is the hustle and bustle, the noise, and the... other smells, that are so often associated with a city in a developing nation. The combination of it all was intoxicating. If you ever have a chance to visit this fabulous city, take it.

In other news, Linds isn't feeling tip-top. We think that she got a stress fracture in her foot. She got some wicked blisters from a pair of ill fitting shoes and a 7 mile walk and then spent the entire next day compensating for the blisters and walking in such a way that put a lot of pressure on a different part of her foot. The outside of her foot is now swollen and black and blue. We have had stress fractures before (marathon training and backpacking can do that to you) so we know it will get better soon, but it still hurts for the time being. In addition to the foot pain, she has a sore throat. It is nothing life threatening and she has still been able to have a fabulous time, but it would be nice if she could feel better soon.

Kwale Market Day

2009-06-10T22:27:00.001+03:00

Kwale Market Day happens every Wednesday. Vendors set up their booths and sell fabrics, fruits, vegetables, dried fish, clothes, jewelry, dishes, shoes, books...lots of stuff. Today we met Terry at her house in Kwale town. Kwale town is actually Kwale. People refer to this area the Kwale District, and that encompasses the area at large where we are for this month (kind of like a State). Kwale town is it's own thing, though, and it is very cool. In fact, I hope to stay in Kwale town or in one of the more rural areas next time we come here. We stay in Diani (about 45 minutes by motorbike from Kwale town) because we have needed reliable internet for Collin's job. Diani is fantastic, too, but it is more like a city with how busy it is and the international feel.

So Market Day is pretty awesome. Going with Terry was even more awesome. We didn't get the special American prices that we usually get in Diani. I bought a conga (a piece of fabric that you wrap around like a skirt), Terry bought some clothes for the infants, and Collin bought 4 big, wooden spoons for cooking.

As we were walking and talking, Terry was discussing ChiDigo literacy with us. She was explaining that the government's role has not been as great as people had hoped. The government teacher that was assigned to teach literacy evades his duties, and when Terry complained to the government office she wasn't given any support. She has no recourse through the government, so she feels that it needs to be yet another grassroots project. We asked if there was anyone reliable who had been trained in literacy work that we could employ if we could find a way to do that. She told us that one of the Pamoja nursery school teachers, Madam Asha, was trained by BTL (Bible Translation and Literacy---the organization responsible for transcribing the Chidigo language) to teach literacy. Awesome! This is great news for our Global Outreach Team. We have been really frustrated by the lack of literacy efforts here after the transcription project was completed. This could be a really great lead for how to get literacy classes going again. Madam Asha is a dedicated and trained teacher. We asked Terry if she thought Madam Asha would be interested in teaching a literacy class (if we could offer a stipend), and she told us that she would.

Then Collin spotted someone that we met in 2002 during our very first visit to Kwale: Shadrack Mwalonya. He is the cousin of Joseph Mwalonya, a friend of ours who is currently studying Theology in Nairobi. They are Digo, and they are Christians. The coincidence of these two characteristics are uncommon in this area. Most Digos practice Islam and traditional religious beliefs. Therefore, when we met Shadrack and Joseph, it was very special for all of us to share the same faith.

So, there was Shadrack, having a cup of --?-- (not-coffee, not tea, but a delicious hot drink), and we joined him for a while and talked. He treated Collin and me to a cup of --?--(not-coffee, not tea, but a delicious hot drink), and we both enjoyed it very much. We thought it was going to be coffee, because that's what it looked like. The local name for it escapes me, but it tasted like spice and ginger. It definitely wasn't Chai Masala or any kind of tea that I've had here yet either. Terry stuck with her drink of choice, Chai Masala. So, it was fun. These are the types of moments that really sink in...sitting under a thatched roof pagoda in the midst of a market being served a beverage that remains a mystery to me, talking with friends that we met here through the years. I love moments when my surroundings are so different than my home in the US, yet everything feels so familiar, so poignant, so right.

After our coffee shop rendezvous with Shadrack, Collin, Terry, and I went back to her place for lunch. Her husband Paul met us there, and we shared a wonderful meal of mataha, salad, and fried potatoes. This is the best place to be a vegan, by the way. So many foods are vegan, and they aren't even substitutes! I love not-dogs, boca-burgers, and chicken-less chicken, but sometimes I forget that there are so many non-substitues foods to eat in this world! I am loving the Chapatis (fried bread), beans and rice, freshest fruit ever, veggies, pilau (spiced fried rice), chips masala (french fry type potatoes slathered in this amazing sauce), and lots of other stuff. Plus the teas, coffee, and mystery beverages are also all delightful!

Then the three of us went to the Pamoja Center to meet with several village elders. They are the local governing body that reports to the chief. We asked them to meet with us to enlighten us about Digo values, Digo history, Digo culture in general. It was a great time. They spoke for a couple of hours, and Terry translated. Terry took notes, and we filmed it. The three of us are going to review the footage and notes more thoroughly, but the basics that I gleaned were very informative.

Now we are back at the cottage, and Collin is cooking dinner for us. He is making lentils and rice. He learned this recipe and how to cook it from Sayidi and Idi, two guys who work at Pamoja and prepare the food for the children every day (among many other things that they do to keep the center running).

Soap-making and micro-financing

2009-06-09T21:03:00.004+03:00

Today we spent the day in a village with a group of women who have started a soap-making business using funds from a micro-financed loan. Truthfully I thought it was going to be a bit of a boring day, but I was proven completely wrong.

First off, soap making is a fascinating process. This specific soap is concocted of lye, coconut oil, and the leaves of a tree that is used for medicinal purposes. I forget the name of the tree, but the name literally translates to "forty something cures." The soap is used to cure skin conditions, bruises, scrapes, and just about any small problem you can imagine. The process took several hours from start to finish.

There are 15 women in the group. Most of the women are primarily subsistence farmers. This business provides them with enough cash to purchase clothes etc... (basically anything they can't grow on a small farm). The women meet once per week to make soap together and discuss any important financial issues facing the group.

The group was initially given a small loan that provided the start-up costs they needed. Thus far, they have been successful in business and they have been diligent about saving and making the required payments. They are even approaching the point where they can consider making a small loan to another group of women much like their own.

I have read a good deal about micro-financing and I have always been fascinated by it. There are so many things that set it apart from charity. These differences make micro-financing a MUCH more successful method for providing help to people in need. Some of the details are:

required repayment with interest
multi-level approvals for different loans
a group structure that

uses social ties bind people together in a common cause

creates a shared responsibility to stick to the original plan, use the money for the intended purpose, and help the project succeed

Seeing these dynamics first hand was very eye opening. We were there for a detailed discussion about how they would enforce repayment from everyone in the group, what could be held as collateral, and how they could make a plan to save more. It was very cool.

This is something that we can discuss in detail with anyone who is interested, but there is definitely potential for people to invest in this sort of thing here. I would strongly encourage people to pursue this if you are interested in making a HUGE difference in a lot of lives with a relatively small investment (some blog readers asked us before we came to keep them informed of ways they could invest here).

After working for the better part of a day, the group produces 50 bars of soap. If they sell all of the soap in a week, they make about $5.00 profit. Yes you read that correctly... $5.00. The entire group splits $5.00 once per week. This is actually enough money to make a substantial difference in the life of a subsistence farmer, but still... $5.00... per week... for the whole group!!!

On a side note, Lindsay and I purchased all 50 bars of soap that the group made today. We are planning to sell the soap when we get home and send the proceeds to the group. If you would like a nice bar of soap (one that can not only clean but also cure anything :) let us know.

A few pictures

2009-06-08T22:21:00.011+03:00

Here are some pictures of people we have met recently. Most of these pictures were taken on the farm that Lindsay described in the last post.

A Day on the Farm

2009-06-08T21:40:00.005+03:00

We had a change of pace over the weekend. We celebrated our anniversary on saturday. On sunday, Collin spent the day looking for the non-existant vineyard church in shimoni. Apparently we received bad intel that led us to believe that such a church exists, because after a couple of hours of riding the bike around and asking countless locals in the very small village of shimoni, we are quite certain that no such church exists.

Today we went up to Vuga, met Terry at Pamoja, and set off walking deep into the rolling green hills. It was so fun to be inside the lush green hills that we always see as we drive through town on our motorbike. It is so beautiful and serene: the red dirt, the banana trees, the contoured maize fields that extend as far as your eye can see. The air smells so good from charcoal burning and various foods cooking. There is something so freeing to go farther back into the remote beauty of Kwale. The homes are made of mud and branches from the coconut palms. The coconut palms are made into shingles and the roofs are thatched. The walls are made with such precision and construction that it is difficult for me to believe the bricks are made of mud.

We walked for several miles today to get to the home of Terry's friend. I don't think we ever made introductions, so I don't know her name. She and her family live on a farm that is 5 hectares. The farm is very productive. They have mango trees, orange trees, banana trees, corn, beans, cassava, cabbage, and probably a lot more that I didn't recognize. It is impressive, especially considering that all the labor is done by hand. They plow, weed, water, and harvest by hand.

Also, it's an organic, vegan farm! They compost the garden with the inedible debris from the fruits and vegetables. That is how they fertilize. No pesticides. No cow manure. The family maintains it, and they are subsistence farmers. This means they rely on it for food and not as much for income. Actually, they really would like some cows at some point to help with the plowing, but for now, they spend their all day, every day managing the farm.

When I write about their family, you may be picturing a family of 5, 6, or maybe 7. In fact the family members that we met today were the first wife (of two) and her husband, their 11 children (of 16 when totaled from both marriages), their daughters-in-law and and 7 grandchildren. There are several other houses on the farm where other family members live. Of course, most of the children are too young to help as of yet, but the proximity of adult family members on the property makes managing the farm possible.

I asked some questions about land ownership. Within the Digo culture there is land ownership, but that is separate from the Kenyan government. This farm, for example, was passed on to the husband of this family from his father. The family that we met today has been living there for 25 years, and his father's family lived there before that.

The Kenyan government, however, by default owns any land that has not been legally purchased. This family does not have a deed, a title, and whatever else is necessary to ensure that the government will not sell their land to someone else.

In fact, there is a case where this happened a few years ago. A woman from Europe decided to start an orphanage. She purchased some land and had a building built. This all sounds lovely, but in fact it was quite detrimental for several reasons. It displaced the families that had been living there for generations. We met one of the families that was displaced because of this. They were landless and homeless at the drop of a hat after living on that land for generations.

Also, orphanages are not what the community wants here in Digoland. The institutionalized method of raising a lot of kids in a home until they are 18 is discouraged by Digo culture.

The community in this region feels that it is much healthier for orphaned children to be placed in the homes of relatives. This makes more sense given the nature of how extended families often live nearby, if not on the same shared land. Also, when kids who have been raised in an orphanage turn 18, they are no longer under the care and provision of the orphanage. Often these people have a very difficult time adjusting. The community does not really feel that they are Digo anymore because they have been raised in an institution where the cultural norms and expectations are much different. It makes transition to adulthood very challenging. This information is per Terry and several women that we interviewed last year.

How can we avoid mistakes like this? This is an ongoing question that I think we must never decide has been finally answered. We must remain students and have the humility to realize that the members of the community are the main stakeholders, the experts, and the beneficiaries (or victims) of any development action that outsiders facilitate. In order to make projects sustainable, the community members must own the vision. It must be from them, of them, and by them to a large degree.

We try to learn by observation, soliciting the views and needs expressed by the community, and deferring to Terry (who is the Community Development Specialist from Kenya). Though Terry is from Nairobi which is very different from Digo culture, she has spent the past 9 years living in Digo culture. She speaks Swahili, ChiDigo, and English fluently. She has a very good rapport with the community. She has had much success with her development efforts, and she has learned what often works and what usually doesn't.

Today was about learning. We got to see more into the farming culture here in Digoland. Collin and I wanted to further understand Digo culture in this region, and this trip has several days geared towards that. Today was one of those days, and we really enjoyed it.

So Honored

2009-06-06T14:43:00.003+03:00

Today is our 6th anniversary. It is hard to believe how fortunate we are to have each other in this life. We are going to take the day and celebrate together.

We wanted to leave you with this video that we put together of the feeding program at pamoja children's center.

Many of you who are reading this blog have contributed directly to this program. If you purchased "meals for a nursery school in kenya" in the VCF christmas catalogue this year, then sit back and enjoy seeing your gift in action. Even if you didn't pay directly into this program through the christmas catalogue, if you tithe at VCF, then this is made possible by you as well. VCF is a generous donor to the projects here.

We also appreciate various friends and family members who have donated to these projects and/or contributed to our trip in one way or another. Even apart from financial contributions, many of you have encouraged and supported us in this journey. Friends at work, professors who trained us, pastors who guide us, our parents who raised us and continue to love us (and watch our dog while we are gone), people who stand beside us through life as we discover how we can show true love on this earth in way that represents what we believe--we thank you.

This heart warming event takes place twice per day every single day. We can't begin to express how honored we are to be here witnessing this. We hope that this video can help you feel connected to the miracles you are creating every day.

Primary School Day

2009-06-05T23:01:00.000+03:00

We visited Vuga Primary school today to interview the head teacher about community issues. He said that poverty was the main obstacle that his students face. They don't have enough money to eat well, so they come to school very hungry. This makes it very difficult for them to focus or learn. Also, the school has a shortage of desks, so the children sit three to a desk, rather than two. Collin and I were thinking that this year for the Christmas Catalog, one item could be purchasing a desk to be built by the Pamoja Vocational Center Carpentry class. This would support the Vocational Center while providing a need for the Vuga Primary school. The cost of one desk is 2500 Kenyan Shillings, or US $33.00.

We returned to the Pamoja Center and had lunch with the children. We had beans and rice and cooked cabbage. I was so hungry by the time it came, and I loved every bite. We ate with our hands because that is normal in the village (people jokingly call that "the Digo spoon"). In the Digo Islamic belief system, humility is important. So, eating with your hands is a humble way to eat, and that brings you closer to God. That explanation is per Terry.

Then we visited another primary school to conduct interviews with the head teacher and other important figures to solicit information about the community issues that interfere with children's education. This Deputy Officer (maybe this is like a principal?) said that a big problem for them is teenage pregnancy. We met with two girls who were several months pregnant. They gave us their stories. I was moved by their honesty and willingness to share with us what had happened with to them. I honestly am still processing much of what they shared, and it seems inappropriate to share too much detail on the blog.

We were informed that sexual abuse is not uncommon. The Kenyan government does not get involved unless the village (local elders and chief) present the issue. The village elders and the chief will not present it to the Kenyan government unless witnesses come forward. Family members and neighbors (potential witnesses who often DO have incriminating testimonies) do not want to testify due to the shame that it will cause the family of the offender.

Terry will be admitting the infants of these two girls to Jameelah's Vineyard this fall after they are born, and the girls will be supported to finish school through the Pamoja girls' program. The facility that Terry is currently renting for Jameelah's Vineyard is approved for up to 9 infants. Currently, there are two. Of course, increasing the number of infants admitted means that more materials are needed (cribs, highchairs, and especially diapers). Hiring more house moms will also be necessary. All this costs money.

We are hoping over the next couple of weeks that we can have wisdom and clarity about how we can best get involved and involve others in addressing some of these issues. We are so thankful that VCF as a whole and various individuals have been supporting some of the programs here. Even though there is more need than we can fill, it is good to do what we can. That bit that we do, we want to do in the most beneficial way for the community and ideally in a way that can be sustainable.

WOW! What a day. (collin)

2009-06-04T19:44:00.007+03:00

Today was a huge day. We had some truly fantastic experiences.

We started out our day by visiting the Vocational Training Center. I have been excited about this day for an entire year now, and let me tell you, I was not disappointed.

The center is the location used for the sewing program that Lindsay and I planned with Terry last year and that VCF (our church, Vineyard Christian Fellowship) is sponsoring. Here is a super quick refresher for new readers. It is a 2 year vocational training program with government certified teachers. There are 30 students. Participants will graduate with a certificate and with job placements. VCF is funding the first batch of students through the first 2 years but the tuition is considered a loan of sorts. When those first students graduate, they will be certified to teach, and they will repay the "loan" by teaching the next batch of students.

It is hard to put into words what it felt like to visit. We had spent so much time planning with Terry last year, but nothing was up and running by the time we left. To walk into a center filled with students all working and being taught a valuable skill that they will be able to use to support themselves was just so moving.

We were introduced to all of the students. Everyone is so grateful for the program. Hearing this expressed and seeing all of these people working so hard was just really cool. When you contrast this with their previous lives, and the lives of so many others in the villages, you just see how much this means to them.

Here are a few pictures from the sewing program.

Here is a short video of one woman talking a bit about the program. (sorry for the bad audio. It was not a good environment for capturing sound and we haven't done any real post production. This is just from the camera).

Next we went to Pamoja Children's Center. We spent a fair amount of time there on our last trip, so it was wonderful to be back. It is just such a beautiful and serene location. The kids there are so exuberant, the teachers are wonderful, and the program is amazing.

This year they have 69 kids (19 more than previous years) who attend every day. One thing that the program does is feed the kids twice per day. Due to increased enrollment and an inflexible budget, it looked like they were not going to be able to feed all of these kids. They were trying to figure out how to send 19 of the kids home. Obviously, this isn't something that anyone would want to do, so they were dreading it. THEN, they received a substantial boost of money that was just enough to allow them to keep all of the kids enrolled and feed everyone each day. This money came from "The Alternative Christmas Catalogue" at VCF. Several individuals purchased meals for these kids at christmas time as a gift for someone else. That gift has allowed all of these kids to receive food that, otherwise, they would not.

We left the Children's Center and walked to a nearby village to meet with the chief of the whole area (he is the head chief over 28 villages). I don't usually stress out about much, but I was pretty nervous about this meeting. We didn't know we would be invited to meet him until partway through the day, so I was totally unprepared. I was just wearing a band tee shirt and ripped cargo pants and I had nothing prepared to say to him. When we were invited inside, I took a deep breath and stepped through the door.

The meeting was actually one of the most positive interactions I have ever had in a Digo Village. At first the introductions and the conversation were very formal. We started out by thanking him for the honor to meet with him and for welcoming us into his village. He was very gracious and thanked us for coming. After the nervous beginning, it didn't take long for things to unfold. Terry was with us and she has a very good rapport with the chief. He actually sits on the board of a couple of her projects (one of them being... OUR project, Jameelah's Vineyard, that assists women and infants). He said that, if we are with Terry, then we are free to come and go as we please. He said that she is one of the most valuable members of the community because of everything she does. He told us that anything we wanted to do in a partnership with her would have his blessing. He actually offered to write us a letter granting us official permission to pass through the villages and film anything we want (that is NOT a common thing here).

Before long we were laughing and talking about many things. We had told him in our introduction that we are from the U.S. but apparently he missed it. He asked us where we are from and we said "We are from the U.S." Not many people from the U.S. visit this part of kenya. Upon hearing that, he almost jumped up and he said "The U.S..!?!?!? OBAMA!?!?!? You my friends are KENYAN. You can do ANYTHING you want while you are here. WELCOME!!! Be free!!!"

After this meeting, we were feeling pretty fantastic. We were riding our motorcycle back down out of the hills to town just taking everything in. We were on one of the rare stretches of that road that is fully paved, straight, and relatively free of holes. I had eased the bike up to about 55 MPH when... the back tire blew out.

I have been riding a motorcycle for years, but I have never experienced anything like that in my life before. All at once, the back of the bike was sliding and swerving and pitching all over the road. To make matters worse, it has just started to rain, so the road was slippery. In case you are wondering, this was an absolutely terrifying experience at 55 MPH. Here is a recap of what was going through my head.

"We are going FAST and I can't control this thing. We are going to DIE!!! OK, we are slowing down a bit... we might not die now, but this is going to HURT... I might rather die. OK... we might get by with just a few broken bones. Wait... I stopped us. How on earth did I do that? How are we not dead?"

And this is what was going through Lindsay's head, and directly into my ear at full volume "AAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!"

Incidentally, my dad and I had just taken the PA Motorcycle Safety course about 2 weeks before this trip. They didn't teach you to go through that macabre thought process in that situation, but somehow I recalled exactly how they DID teach us to handle the bike. I was able to do what I had to do to avoid a really bad crash.

We called the guy who we rented the bike from. He was incredibly apologetic and came rushing out (that's a relative term... we were pretty far away) to meet us and to pay someone to fix it. Lindsay made some friends with several residents of the Matuga village on the premise that they thought her shrieking was funny (once they realized that we were okay). They also were very impressed with my driving skills as they witnessed the whole event.

After 3.5 hours and a HUGE monsoon-like thunderstorm, were were back in Diani, safe and sound.

So, I can safely say that this was a day packed full of excitement.

Blog Updates

2009-06-04T00:02:00.005+03:00

Please note that we posted 2 "real" stories today, so don't just read this update and then stop. We just wanted to mention a couple of changes we made the blog.

We have added links to subscribe to RSS feeds. If you know what those are, you're nerdy enough to appreciate them. If you don't know what they are you need to repent of your ignorance and start taking advantage of the awesome stuff that nerds create for you.
We removed the "word verification" security feature on the comments. Sorry for the hassle this created before. We didn't realize we had this feature enabled. Leaving a comment is no longer like a stressful pass / fail exam.

Part 2: Back on the road (the informative part)

2009-06-03T23:51:00.002+03:00

When we arrived at in Kwale, it was a quite a reunion! We were so happy to see Terry again! She and Paul are such wonderful friends. We got to spend the day with Terry, Paul, their 15 month old son Dave, and two babies from the infant care center, Riziki and Swahip. Riziki is also called Jameelah, and Swahip is also called the Notorious B.I.G.

I didn't realize this until we arrived, but Terry's home is adjacent to the infant center. The two buildings are so close that they basically form one unit. She spends her days with the infants more often than not, when she is not managing the Vocational Center or the activities at Pamoja.

For those of you who don't know or need a refresher, here is a quick explanation:

We met Terry on our second trip here. We instantly had a profound respect for her incredible work ethic and the results that her projects generate. She is Kenyan, she has a degree in community development, she has lived and worked in the Kwale district for 10 years, and she speaks swahili, chadigo, and english. These are all qualities that work in concert with her kind heart, charasmatic personality, and vision to help the digo people. We could not ask for a better partner to help us accomplish our goals.

Terry and Paul run several impressive and successful projects out of 3 centers.

"Pamoja Center" houses a children's nursery school for orphans and disadvantaged children in the community. The kids receive an education superior to the public schools as well as 2 cooked meals every day (many of these kids would not have access to food otherwise). The center also houses micro-financing programs that assist women in starting their own self-sustaining businesses.
"The Vocational Training Center" offers a two-year certification program in sewing (sponsored by VCF). The certification is governmentally approved and the women are placed into jobs at the end of the program. There are also carpentry classes at this center. These are sustainable, community-led efforts to develop life skills for members of the Digo community, particularly in the village of Vuga.
"The Infant Center" is house for babies born to VERY young mothers (14-15 years old). The goal of the house is to provide long term care to the infants while the mothers go back to finish school. This program is unique because the mothers do not have to GIVE their baby to an orphanage or put them up for adoption. Rather, the infants are given proper care and nutrition while the mothers finish school AND come to the center to visit their child and learn how to care them. Eventually, once the mothers are ready and willing, they will resume the responsibility of raising the child. So far, this program is working beautifully. The case of Swahip, illustrates this well. When he arrived at the center, he was severely malnourished and his mother did not know how to care for him at all (she is 15 years old). Over the next few months, Swahip started gaining weight and moving around like a little kid should. He started to grow hair (he had none before) and eventually became a perfectly healthy baby. Now he is learning to walk and he is constantly smiling and laughing, almost as though he is showing his appreciation for all of the care, attention, and affection. His mother is back in school and doing well. She comes to visit at the center and is developing a close relationship with him while she receives instruction on how to properly raise a child.

We spent the day discussing the details of these projects, talking about our lives, revisiting the past year's major events, and hammering out our vision for what we hope to accomplish in the next 3 weeks.

Part 1: Back on the road (the funny part)

2009-06-03T23:42:00.002+03:00

We traveled to Kwale today in style, thanks to the Timber Wolf 150cc motorbike that we rented for the next three weeks. Collin did a great job driving us there. He kept his cool the entire ride and got us there safely. This is impressive for a few reasons:

The road has pot holes that would be more accurately described as craters.
In town, the ditches along the roadways are used as public burning stations to dispose of garbage. The result is a dilapidated road clouded with thick smoke and dust.
It is not uncommon for people (as well as monkeys, cows, chickens, goats, and the occasional mongoose!) to make a mad dash across the road. When you are in the town near where we are staying, it is a constant hazard that one of the hundreds of matatus, motorcycles , cars, or trucks churning out black exhaust will swerve wildly out of the already weaving and leapfrogging traffic to miss one of the dashing pedestrians.
You drive on the opposite side of the road from the US. When you are in town, this just adds to the chaos. When you are not in town it doesn't matter because you rarely stay on one side of the road for more than a few seconds due the mandatory snake like maneuvers required if you want to avoid fusing your vertebrae together in one of the above mentioned pot holes.

At one point Collin whipped his helmeted head around and shouted, "Something flew off!"

I pushed up my plastic face shield and shouted back, "Something from our back pack?" afraid that my bag had come unzipped.

"NO! Like a piece of the bike just flew off!"

It was under control, though, after the initial swerve when he twisted around on his seat in utter disbelief. Apparently the part wasn't indispensable. We stopped and put it in our backpack to try to reattach it later.

Honestly (pronounce the "h" for a Kenyan accent), it was was luxury compared to the matatus. We started our journey right from our driveway without having to walk or stand in the hot sun and wait for an undetermined amount of time for a Matatu to arrive. When we were at the big junction in town, we just cruised on through without becoming the subject of a literal tug of war (with our bodies being used rather than a rope) between 5-6 hawkers who are paid to recruit passengers at the busy corner. We weren't smashed inside of the sauna-like van to sit on laps AND have our laps sat upon while we waited for 15 minutes, baking in the hot sun and body oder while the hawkers squabble over additional passengers.

I felt triumphant every time we passed one chugging along the road, people's limbs and other body parts spilling out from the windows. Once I actually rode a matatu bent at a 90 degree angle with my rear end sticking out one of the windows. It was the only way to fit (mostly) inside before the driver started flying down the road. That was one of my more indelicate moments, and it was much to my chagrin, at the time. Oh, well. It builds character, as my mom would say. Just like all those hair cuts she gave me until I was eleven. Anyway, really, I feel these things do develop your character and, if you let it, your sense of humor.

People say that this sort of experience teaches you a lesson. Well... we earned our PhDs in whatever lesson that was last year. We are replacing the B.O. with fresh air, and the close proximity to strangers' armpits with truly awe inspiring views of the countryside. The fact that we made that exchange AND we are saving money brings us both unspeakable joy.

Ready, Set...

2009-06-02T20:18:00.003+03:00

Here is a good reason to make a trip like this a minimum of a few weeks. We had emailed 4 people we want to meet earlier in the week and heard nothing back by this morning. We had called and texted, but not received a reply. That is one cultural difference that greatly impacts the planning, timing, and execution of a trip here. When people have pay-as-you-go internet and phone service with spotty coverage, it can take a while to solidify plans. Add this to the different cultural value placed on planning and punctuality, and it can sometimes feel insurmountable to an American.

We were finally able to talk with Terry (the amazing project manager we are fortunate to have working on this end) today and arranged to get started with our work tomorrow. We are looking forward to beginning our work with her in the village. We will be excited to write about our experiences in Kwale as our time doing the work there begins tomorrow.

Some really great news: Collin negotiated a motorcycle rental for less money than it would cost us to take the matatu all month! We are SO excited about this. If you have ANY idea what the matatu riding experience is like, you would understand our elation. The price that Collin negotiated is less than 1/6 of what we had read about in our guidebooks and seen advertised here. This would not be possible if it were not the low season here. You can negotiate amazing deals during this time of the year.

The downside to the fact that it is the low season is that we are some of the only westerners in town, so we get hit up to buy things any time we step outside of our cottage compound. We spent a good portion of the day walking through Diani. It was nice to do some walking after traveling for over 30 hours to get here. Walking in Diani is also a way for me to exercise my confrontational skills and boundary-setting. When shop-keepers here ask westerners to come to see their shop (this happened about 150 times today, seriously), we find that it is best to just nip it in the bud right then and there. No "maybe." No "some other day." If a westerner gives any slight inclination that he or she is remotely interested--or could be ever--they might as well have just promised to buy something. This is a generalization, but I have seen it to be true in my past experiences. And let's not forget the Kenyan Proverb, "To ask is to promise." Sometimes expressing interest is misinterpreted and misleading.

I made this error on my first trip to Kenya, and I was accused of breaking my promise when I didn't buy something from each person's shop to whom I had said, "Maybe later." I felt so horrible and guilty that I felt compelled to buy something small from about 10 different shops. The problem is, the shops in a tourist town such as Diani sell similar souvenirs from shop to shop. And no matter how guilty I felt, I knew that I didn't need or want pictures of elephants drawn on banana leaves, wooden animal carvings, and face masks. (An aside: sorry to all of you who got that stuff for birthdays and Christmases during college. I really tried to give only the best stuff as gifts. It was a tough time financially, I'm sure you can appreciate that.) Anyway, the experience left me feeling angry because that is what happens when I do something that I don't really want to do out of a sense of guilt or obligation.

So, now, I walk down the street and respond according to my life experience. When people call out to me or walk up to me on the street, I am friendly but firm. There is always a back and forth conversation first that goes something like this:

Seller: Jambo!

Me: Jambo!

Seller: Habari?

Me: Mizuri. Habari?

Seller: Mizuri. From England?

Me: No.

Seller: From Germany?

Me: No.

Seller: Where are you from?

Me: From the US.

Seller: Oh, America. How is America?

Me: America is fine.

Seller: How about you come look in my shop?

Me: I am not doing any shopping.

Seller: But looking is free.

Me: No, thank you.

Seller: Maybe later, then?

Me: No, not later. Not ever. I am not here to shop. I am here to work.

Seller: Maybe some other time then.

Me: No. I am not shopping. Thanks, anyway!

Seller: TOMORROW!

Me: No, thank you.

And then after I give a big smile to express the non-personal nature of the rejection, I pick up the pace and walk as quickly as possible to make a get away. But, that latter part went awry at one point and I slid on some loose gravel at break-neck speed and completely wiped out. I had a huge scrape down my leg and gravel particles sticking to my skin and pants. I felt pretty dumb.

And some version of this conversation happens over a hundred times a day in the span of a few miles, if we are walking on the main road in Diani. I am not exaggerating, either. It's complicated because it's a tourist town, so most white people are here to vacation and bring back a bunch of souvenirs. But we are not here for that, and it is really difficult to prove that. I feel much more adjusted to it this year, though. It doesn't even phase me now. I think I have said "No" so many times now, that I realize that the worst that can happen is that people will just keep following me for a while trying to persuade me, but I can just be firm in my answer. I don't have to be rude, just steadily set my boundary. I never used to be able to do this, so has actually been like therapy for me. I guess that is what happens when you exercise something; you get stronger. I am stronger now, and I feel that I can handle the culturally different and somewhat trying situations here with much more confidence and poise than last year...that is, when I don't lose my motor skills and tumble over sideways.

A second home

2009-06-01T23:01:00.003+03:00

We arrived last night at about 1:00 in the morning. The final hours of the trip were spent driving down long, dark roads through maize fields and lush jungle. We were both lulled to sleep by the uninterrupted stretch of darkness with no other vehicles or lights of any kind.

Waking up as the car turned onto the little side road where we stay was a feeling reminiscent of childhood road-trips. You are jolted awake in a car as it turns into the driveway... you climb out of the vehicle into a place where everything feels familiar but clouded by total exhaustion... and you stumble through the dark and into the house to find your bed.

When we woke up this morning, it was almost as though we had never left over this past year. We awoke in the same bed, in the same house that we rented last year. The same bugs and birds were singing outside. The same smells of a recent rain mixed with the aroma and smoke of a cooking fire somewhere nearby drifted in the window.

We were pleasantly surprised to find that a good night's sleep cured the aches from 30 hours of travel. We got up and spent the day taking care of the necessary details and sorting out a few complexities. We changed some money, paid for the house that we are renting, stocked up on some groceries, got together with a techie friend we met last year to set up a wireless network for us here, got a cell phone to replace the one that mysteriously disappeared on the trip here, and tracked down a bag that didn't make a connection in europe and then didn't clear customs when it was forwarded to Kenya.

Everything seems to be in place now and we are ready to start working. We can't wait to visit our friends and the projects that have been started since we were last here.

We'll keep you up to speed as we meet with people and have news to post.

Heading Back To Kenya

2009-05-26T03:47:00.002+03:00

It has been almost one full year since we came home from Kenya. It is hard to believe it has been so long. The memories are so vivid and fresh, it seems like we were just there.

Everything recently fell into place for us to plan a return trip. We purchased our tickets a few days ago, and we are getting ready to leave. We will fly out this coming saturday (may 30th) and spend 22 days in the Kwale district.

We are very excited for this trip. Last year, we spent so much time meeting with people, conducting interviews, trying to learn about the felt needs of the community, observing, theorizing, and planning. Over this past year, many of those plans have come to life and are now fully functioning projects. We are really looking forward to seeing things in that phase.

We have kept in close touch with Terry over this past year. She is truly an amazing person to have as a partner for this kind of work. She has spent this year pouring her heart and soul into the different projects and making last year's plans and dreams a reality. We are so grateful to her and we can't wait to see her again.

We will be updating this blog while we are in Kenya. Feel free to pass the link along to anyone you think might be interested. Keeping this blog was a great way for us to feel connected to everyone back home last year. Comments on this blog and emails sent to our regular email accounts are welcomed. Here is the link to the blog. (copy and paste it into an email to tell people where to find it).

http://collinandlindsayinkenya.blogspot.com/

Thanks to everyone for your incredible help and support. We are honored to be in this role and are confident that this trip will be great. We are looking forward to keeping everyone up to speed on what we are doing.

Wrapping Up in the Kwale District

2008-05-26T22:29:00.002+03:00

Over the last couple of days, we've spent time in final meetings with several of our contacts here. After much dialogue with Terry and some people from back home, we have a lot of good leads to discuss when we get home. We are still not sure about the final details of what our future involvement will be here in Digoland. I hope that you've enjoyed being part of this exciting beginning, and I hope that you will remain interested and involved in some way as we go forward.

Tomorrow is our final day in this region, and we will spend it with Terry in a small Digo village. We will be visiting with girls who are potential participants in a future project.

Wednesday we start our journey back home, via Nairobi where we will have two important meetings. We will be meeting with Noah Gitau who will be explaining the role of the Association of Vineyard Churches in East Africa as it pertains to our involvement here.

We will also be meeting with Joseph Mwalonya, a Digo Christian that we met and befriended during our first trip to Kwale in July 2002. He is currently attending Pan African Christian University for his BA in Theology. Our church recently decided to help sponsor him through school.

After these meetings, we will be flying home!

Now that we are leaving the coast, we are not sure whether we will have internet during our last few days here. So, thank you for reading our blog during this month of May, and thank you for all your support.

It has been quite an amazing month, and we look forward to what the lasting results will be.

With all the challenges in full consideration, I can still honestly say that this has been a rewarding and wonderful month for us in Kenya. We really have appreciated our time here, and we thank you once more for helping us make this happen!

Doing what's necessary (collin)

2008-05-23T00:28:00.000+03:00

Today we traveled back to Kwale to meet with another group of young mothers who could be potential participants in some of the projects we are thinking of starting. We interviewed each of the girls about their individual situations. We are starting to see a much better picture of the felt needs here in the community and some interesting trends are emerging.

A quick overview of the projects we are considering:

We are thinking of piloting a new relief project that targets very young teen mothers and their babies. The project would include a home for the babies, schooling / vocational training for the mothers, and jobs for marginalized digo women in the village. If it all plays out well, this project could make a drastic difference in 3 generations of Digo villagers at one time.

When we sat down to figure out what all would be involved in bringing this project to life, we were a little bit shocked at how much it looked like it was going to cost. I knew that the figures we came up with were well beyond our reach at the current time. This was somewhat discouraging to me because I really didn't want to put a ton of time and energy into planning a project and then never see it get off the ground due to lack of funding.

I would rather start small and help just a few people than aim for the stars and wind up helping nobody.

The need that we wanted to target is dire. How could we ignore something so essential? The idea just seemed too perfect to let it go so we have continued to meet with different groups in the villages to discuss their needs and see what we may be able to do.

As I said, we have seen some interesting trends emerging from our focus groups and interviews. We are finding that, while there there is definitely a need for a home like we had envisioned, this represents a much smaller percentage of our current demographic than we had initially projected. In addition to this small group, there is presently a larger number of capable mothers who wish to remain the primary caregiver for their child(ren), but they are in desperate need of assistance with vocational training.

So... there is certainly nothing set in stone yet, but it is looking like we might realistically be able to start the brand new project that sounded so wonderful (the home). However, this would start out on a small enough level that funding would be much more attainable. Due to the fact that the home would be on a smaller scale than we originally thought, this would free us up to be able to partner with an existing project to aid some of the other mothers in receiving vocational training. A portion of the profits from the training program could be invested back into the projects, and over time they could become self supporting.

It could be possible to see new growth in the projects coming from within. Ideally, this would lead to Digo people running, growing, and ultimately funding relief projects for other Digo people. This kind of exponential growth is theoretically boundless when a vision is embraced by the community.

In closing, I will leave you with an appropriately inspiring quote from St. Francis of Assisi that Lindsay read to me today.

"Start by doing what is necessary, and then what is possible, and suddenly you are doing the impossible."

Back in the saddle (collin)

2008-05-22T07:47:00.002+03:00

Thank you all for your kind thoughts, prayers, and emails. I am feeling MUCH better and we are getting ready to head back up to Kwale to keep working through the details of the potential project.

My illness has mostly passed now. I still don't know for sure what it was or how I got it, but I have not been that sick in as long as I can remember. Over time I suppose I have come to take my general good health for granted, but now I feel truly thankful for every minute that I am not violently throwing up.

After I wrote about being so busy the other day, we received several emails from people telling us that we needed to "take a sabbath" in order to keep ourselves from burning out. As funny as this may sound, the past 2 days of being sick has forced us both to stay in and rest up. We feel restored and excited to be heading back out to do what we came here to accomplish.

Stress

2008-05-21T00:10:00.002+03:00

Today we had planned on visiting Pamoja center to meet with the women’s group there to discuss our project and gain their insight. When we awoke, however, Collin informed me that he had spent most of the night sick in the bathroom vomiting. True to form, he protested when I suggested that we call Terry to cancel; so, we set out to go to Pamoja. As we walked down the lane from our cottage to the main road, Collin stopped mid-sentence to vomit in the bushes. At that point, I made the executive decision to call Terry to tell her we couldn’t make it today. Terry was, of course, completely understanding and supportive of our decision to stay back and rest today.

So here we are, back at the cottage, and Collin is asleep. I am here with some time to reflect on what this month has meant for me so far. For the first two weeks, I was elated and driven by the emotional high of all that we were learning and experiencing. Then something shifted and my undaunted enthusiasm plummeted. For two and a half days I remained in downward spiral of negativity. I felt over-stimulated, overwhelmed, over-tired, and I felt like the source of my energy was just over. Discontinued. El fin.

That horrible spell of oppression has been lifted. Thank you all for your encouraging words, your prayers, and for sharing the vision that we have for this community so far from home.

I have many reasons to which I can attribute the sense of struggle and oppression. There are some practical challenges. It is difficult to wear a long skirt and a short sleeve shirt in humid tropical heat. It is invasive and trying to not have control over our own transportation. It is difficult to have people asking for money or aggressively yelling at us to buy something from their shops as we walk on the road. It is overwhelming to feel and see so much need and know that we are limited in what we can do. It is even more complicated to know how to truly help and not exacerbate matters, even with good intent. How do we avoid enabling dependency on handouts and funding? How do we overcome the widely held belief that all white people are rich? How do we know who to trust, and how do we know that the funding that we give will be distributed appropriately?

We Americans call the feelings conjured by complex issues such as these, “stress.” It’s a culturally assigned name for physical/emotional/psychological effects that are caused by the feelings of powerlessness, inability to control things out of our reach, a sense of fear, anxiety, and a sense that our circumstances are overwhelming us. Isn’t it interesting that there is something so real, so tangible, so validated by our culture that is completely invisible? It seems contradictory to so much of what our culture believes. There is no blood test that will show you are stress positive. As far as I know, there is no pathogen or bacteria or virus from which stress originates. But yet, it is real. It does have real physical effects. High blood pressure, heart disease, insomnia, depression, and a host of other maladies that seem to be consequences of people under too much stress.

I am convinced that stress is part of the human condition. Stress is here in Digoland, back at home, and probably across the universe. What is it? That is what I want to know. We know what it feels like. We know many of the causes from our own lives. We experience many of its direct physical repercussions. But what is stress? How is it that we as humans all experience this seemingly universal entity that is invisible, elusive in treating, and difficult to conquer?

How do we combat it? I try to balance my life and eat well, exercise regularly, sleep enough, and invest some time in experiences that are restorative. I pray. I try to improve my ability to overcome challenges by reading my Bible and applying it. I spend time meditating. When I slack in one area of combating stress for even a day or two, it seems that it is right there crouching at my doorstep ready to devour me. And sometimes, even when I am trying to be proactive about making peace in my life, it feels that the external factors of stress are pushing on me from every side.

Here are some verses that have helped me in my pursuit to understand what stress is, its effects, and how what cures there are for stress, according to the Bible:

“Many are the plans in a man’s heart, but it is the Lord’s purpose that prevails.” Proverbs 19:21

“A man’s spirit will sustain him in sickness, but a crushed spirit who can bear?” Proverbs 17: 14

“For the foolishness of God is wiser than man’s wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than man’s strength.” 1 Corinthians 1:25

“For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen in eternal. “ 2 Corinthians 4:17-18

“To keep me from becoming conceited because of these surpassingly great revelations, there was given me a thorn in my flesh, a messenger of Satan, to torment me. Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me. But He said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness. Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me.” 2 Corinthians 12: 7-9

“Let your gentleness be evident to all. The Lord is near. Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.” Philippians 4: 5-7

“Anxiety in the heart of man causes depression, but a good word makes it glad.” Proverbs 12:25

UPDATE:
The above was written several hours ago. After a day spent sleeping between bouts of nausea, Collin is feeling much better. He hasn't thrown up in several hours. He is still feeling very sick, but we are confident that he is on the mend. Thanks for your prayers and emails!

Getting Focused.... and a little exhausted (collin)

2008-05-19T19:03:00.000+03:00

Today we met with Terry again. She had arranged a meeting with several young, single, Digo mothers. We spent a few hours getting to know these women and talking to them about the issues that they face. Essentially, this was a focus group for our project.

We heard all of the stories behind each situation. It was incredible to hear about some of the things that these girls have faced in their lives. Some have been thrown out of their families and forced to find another place to live. Some have been kicked out of school. Some have been abused in ways that are difficult to comprehend. All of them have been left by the father of their child(ren) and forced into a marginalized existence here.

We met with the group all together, and we met with each woman individually. We wanted to hear about each of their specific struggles and hopes in an individual setting so that they would not be influenced by other girls' answers.

We learned a lot about this demographic in Digo villages. We have a much better picture now of the group that we will be trying to serve. Of course, this was just the beginning of our interviews and research. We will spend this entire week meeting with young mothers, school teachers, village elders, and community members. We are hoping that at the end of this week, we will have more of a clear direction about the specifics of the project, what needs to happen still, and who, specifically will participate in it.

On an personal note:
Linds and I are starting to feel rather worn. We know that our time here is extremely limited and once it is over, we won't be able to do what we came here to accomplish. Because of that we have been keeping a breakneck pace. The difficulties of daily life here are feeling more frustrating and tiring than when we first got here. The owner of our cottage killed himself a few nights ago (a few doors down from us). That has cast a strange pall over the place where we are staying. Also, as funny as it was to ride the Matatus when we first arrived, that has become an exercise in patience. (WARNING, this next part is ethnocentric, but I'm just being honest) Spending a couple of hours per day crammed into a van next to, on top of, and underneath of countless unbathed strangers is... trying... for an American. Today the guy next to me got in a fight with the guy behind him. The yelling and screaming escalated to pushing and hitting and ended with one man being pushed out of the van and left on the side of the road with everyone in the van shouting at him as we sped off. Lack of sleep, long days, and stomach sickness from unfamiliar food doesn't help in dealing with this sort of thing. If you are the praying type, your prayers would be very appreciated.

Digo Literacy

2008-05-19T09:07:00.003+03:00

One thing that we wanted to do while visiting the Kwale District was visit the Digo Literacy Center and survey all of the projects connected with Digo literacy. This project is very dear to us for several reasons.

It was through sponsoring the literacy efforts here that we learned about the Digo people in the first place. Over the past 7 years we have seen the Chidigo language be transcribed for the first time in history. The New testament, cultural stories, books on medicinal plants and folk remedies, as well as children's stories have all been published and are being used to teach literacy in the tribe's mother tongue. Having a written language gives a people group power that cannot be possessed by any other means. Written communications, recording of history, and governmental representation are now becoming possible in a new way here. Thus far, we would consider the project to be a great success.

Yesterday we traveled 3 hours in each direction to visit Gideon Mbetsa, the head of the Digo Language Project, at his home in Kinango. The trip was especially grueling because of the fact that it is the rainy season and the narrow dirt roads have been washed out and become rather deadly. We decided that, with our limited time here, it would be best to get all of the information we wanted to gather about the literacy project in one long day.

We learned a lot about the literacy efforts here. Some of it was encouraging. Some of it was frustrating. All of it was difficult to interpret.

There has been a mass exodus of staff in the project. One of the literacy workers retired. One has been fired. 2 of the translators / trainers have moved on to another Project. Joseph Mwalonya, the other translator / literacy workers, has left the project to be trained as a pastor. This is excellent news because he is such a wonderful person. He is so gentle and sweet. I could not imagine a better candidate to be the first Digo pastor. However, since he has left the project, this leaves Gideon Mbetsa as the only employee and overseer of the project. Essentially he IS the literacy project. He cracked a rib in a motorcycle accident over a month ago and has not been teaching any literacy classes since then. The center has been closed and will remain that way for at least another month. He also told us yesterday that he wishes to leave the project to attend bible college in about a year and a half from now.

Over the past 2 weeks we have passed the literacy center about a dozen times or more and it has never once been open. No classes. No teachers. No visitors. Given what we learned yesterday, it all makes sense now.

He told us that when it is operational, there are general literacy classes 3 times per week. There are teacher training sessions. Also, he said, there are materials in development to be used in primary schools. All of this sounds excellent, but unfortunately that is on hold for now and we were unable to observe or verify any of it.

One bit of good news is that we were able to change our tickets to leave from Nairobi rather than Dar Es Salaam. Joseph is currently located in Nairobi. We are hoping to visit him to talk about the state of the project when he left. We will try to learn all that we can from him. We are looking forward to seeing him.

Getting to know the American Missionaries

2008-05-16T20:50:00.005+03:00

The past two days have been dedicated to spending time with the wonderful missionary families that we have gotten to know here. The Grossman and the Rains families have been so helpful, informative, and kind to us during our time here in Kenya. One of our objectives set forth by the GO Team was to get to know and encourage the missionaries who are currently working in the area here. Achieving this goal has been a joy for us on this trip.

Yesterday we drove through Shimba Hills National Park (right outside of Kwale) with the Grossman family. Today we went to Tiwi beach with the Rains and the Grossmans. It was a lot of fun. They have told us again and again that it is so great to have fellow Christians, fellow Americans, which are two rare characteristics here in Diani. Many of their friends and relatives have opted not to visit them this term due to the political unrest that Kenya was experiencing this past winter. You can imagine that they have been longing for a sense of familiarity; I feel that we have been able to bring that to them in some measure during our time here.

Over the past two days, we have discussed our project ideas with the Rains and Grossmans. They have a wealth of experience working with the Digo people, and they have been open with us in sharing what they have learned in their time here. They offer a unique point of view for us because they are Americans who understand American expectations and ideals, but they also have their hearts and energy invested in working with the Digo people.

A bit about these families:

Mark and Melissa Rains are a young, married couple who have three boys--Joshua, Andrew, and Elias-- who are 5, 3, and 1, respectively. The Rains have worked with the Digo people for 5 consecutive years. All three of their boys have grown up here and call this home.

Mark and MJ Grossman are in their early 40s and have lived in Kenya for 16 years as missionaries. They have worked with the Digo people for 8 years. MJ has given birth to all three of her children here in Kenya. Jane is her oldest, and she is 11. Josiah is 9, and their surprise third child is James who is almost 2.

A meeting and a cancellation

2008-05-14T20:45:00.003+03:00

Today we met with Terry for several hours to discuss more detailed ideas of how to get the young mother and infant program going. The meeting was good (exhausting, but productive), but it is now apparent that we will need more money than we initially thought. If you would like to see the full cost break-down, or if you are interested in supporting this project, please email us: palkovitz (at) gmail (dot) com (type that like a normal email address… we are avoiding spambots). Also, if you have any questions / comments, we would love to hear your thoughts. You can use email or the comments section and we will try to reply to you ASAP.

All members of the Go Team will be receiving a break down of expenses, so look for it in your inboxes!

Prior to attending today’s meeting, several people offered some valuable feedback about the program. During our time with Terry we addressed some of the questions that we had.

Some of the issues that we addressed were:

1) How do we select the mothers?
2) How do we make sure that the mother’s will want their babies after the duration of the program?
3) How do we prevent this project from becoming something that enables irresponsible behavior in teenagers?
4) How do we address the developmental/attachment needs of the babies?
5) How will money securely be transferred and allocated?

Answer to 1:
There is a much greater need here than we would even attempt to fill at this point, so we will need to come up with a list of criteria that mothers will have to meet to be considered for admission into the program.
These criteria would be part of a legal agreement that the mothers will sign upon enrollment into the program.
Additionally, in the upcoming months, before the official program is started, Terry will begin holding meetings at Pamoja with mothers/expectant mothers. This way Terry will gain a better assessment of who in the community would be ideal candidates (based on who attends regularly, general character evaluations, and an expressed interest).

Answer to 2:
This will be one of the criterion in the legal agreement that the mothers sign upon enrollment.

Answer to 3:
In addition to choosing mothers initially who have shown in some way that they would be ideal candidates for the program, we will also be involved with the mothers as part of this mothers/infants project.
We will emphasize and require regular visitation hours and involvement with their infants.
We will build in a monthly cost for each young mother to either return to school, or receive vocational training (another requirement of the program).
We will also try to implement some classes with the women on general sex education, healthcare, etc.

Answer to 4:
Initially, there will be one Digo mama (live-in care giver) for every 3 infants. The total number of infants will be 9 to start. The same Digo mama will be assigned 3 infants for the duration of her care giving. We will ask the Digo mamas to commit to a certain amount of time prior to accepting this role. The Digo mamas will receive free room and board as well as a monthly allowance.
Additionally, each young mother will be required to interact with her infant on a regular basis. These interactions would increase in frequency and duration as the young mother prepares to transition to becoming the full time caregiver.

Answer to 5:
This project will be registered with the ministry of social services, and a permit will be secured. A board of directors will be established, a Kenyan bank account will be opened in the name of the project. Receipts will be provided for all expenses.

In other news:
Thursday’s presentation of “True Love Waits” was canceled. The head of the school here in Diani was excited for the material to be introduced, but apparently the American woman who funds the school did not approve of the content of the material. I am still foggy on the details of why this American woman objected—I don’t know if it was because it advocated for abstinence, or if it was because it explained “safe sex” practices as part of the material, too—but at any rate, she did not approve of the presentation.

Melissa will be forging ahead in this area, however. She will be pursuing different schools from now until October; after October, the Diani school will no longer be funded by this particular American woman, so Melissa and the head of this school will revisit the possibility of introducing the program there.

AIDS / Sex education in digo schools (lindsay)

2008-05-12T21:42:00.000+03:00

This Thursday Melissa, Anne (two missionaries here; one American, one Kenyan) and I will introduce a curriculum called “True Love Waits” into one of the Digo populated secondary schools in Diani. It’s a course that advocates for abstinence from sex until marriage. It also contains sex education and information about sexually transmitted diseases. It was designed by someone from Uganda, so it is more forthright than the American version that I had in my Christian junior high school. This is needed here where many people have HIV/AIDS and don’t realize the implications of sleeping with multiple partners throughout the course of their lives.

Melissa, Anne, and I met today to plan and prepare our presentation for Thursday. Melissa was explaining that the statistics on the HIV/AIDS rate here in Kenya are difficult to gather. The Kenyan government and the public try to hide the severity of the epidemic. Some people say that 1 in 10 Digo people are infected with HIV/AIDS, but others say the actual rate is close to 1 in 4. The figures are difficult to gather because there is such a social stigma associated with the disease. People do not want to get tested because they don’t want anyone to discover that they are HIV/AIDS positive. Additionally, because the Digo people are a separate entity in many ways from the greater part of Kenyan society, I expect that conducting research on their specific demographic would not be of much interest to the Kenyan government or public.

As I consider the HIV/AIDS epidemic among the Digo people—especially as we stand on the brink of establishing our first development project—I am reminded more than ever that Culture is integrated. Each social issue is impossible to understand in isolation from the many different types of causes that compromise that issue. This same principle applies to solutions. For years I thought that if anti-retrovirals were made available to infected populations, the HIV/AIDS problem would be greatly improved. Here I am experiencing quite a different reality. I was shocked to find out that anti-retrovirals are actually free and widely available here to anyone who is infected. Melissa was explaining to me that she has a good friend who is HIV/AIDS positive, but this friend refuses to take the anti-retrovirals because of the shame associated with admitting that she is infected.

Another common problem with HIV/AIDS treatment here is that if people do take the anti-retrovirals, they stop taking them once they start to feel better. This exacerbates the situation because their bodies will then build a resistance to the anti-retrovirals.

This situation illustrates that need is more than just material. The need here is holistic. The solutions must also be examined and implemented from a holistic perspective. As we seek God for how we can love people here in a practical way, we need His guidance to understand and discern this holistic nature of the issues here.

Truly helping people takes time, patience, humility, respect, objectivity (or at least recognizing our biases and limitations) and ultimately, love. I find the process of analyzing the different factors that contribute to social outcomes absolutely fascinating. If there wasn’t such a need for work to be done, I could spend a life time just studying the Digo culture and trying to understand how all the different elements of society, religion, and culture tie together to produce outcomes. But I feel that too many anthropologists get caught in the rat race of academia that they do not apply their intelligence and knowledge.

Sadly, I think that it is too easy for me to do this as a Christian, too. I decided early on in undergraduate school that I didn’t want to be an armchair anthropologist. Even more importantly, I am learning that I don’t want to be an armchair Christian. What is the use of my knowledge is I don’t apply it to good use? What is the use of my faith, if I do not practice it by showing people love in a tangible way? Of course, I am here in Kenya, surrounded by need and inspiring people. I want to keep this conviction long after I return home from this month. It has only been a week, but I am learning so much.

Time marches on (Collin)

2008-05-11T09:49:00.004+03:00

A side note about the political turmoil here.

When we bought our tickets to come here, we chose a route through Tanzania and then overland through the countryside to get here. One of reasons for this round about itinerary was to avoid passing through Nairobi and Mombassa. During the post election crisis, those were 2 of the main hotspots for violence here. With roads being blocked off, busses being flipped over and burned, and people being hacked up with machetes, we didn't think that traveling through those areas would be a wise idea if we could avoid that.

Since arriving, I have been keeping an eye out for signs of the disturbance. I have been asking people about what it was like and what the current situation is. Invariably, people laugh a little bit as you would when someone reminds you of something embarrassing you said when you were a child. The response is always something along the lines of "The fighting is over. Kibaki and Odinga work together now. They share power and everything is good now. There is peace." It is a blemish of the past that is being covered as quickly as possible.

The quick dismissal almost borders on denial. The cottage we are staying is is about 200 yards down a dirt road that is just off of the main (paved) road through town. At the junction of these 2 streets there are piles of burned rubble. A hotel, a restaurant, and several businesses were burned down in the riots following the election. These riots were global news. I read about this specific incident on the BBC website, yet when I ask people about it here, the answer is "those buildings burned, but now they are rebuilt." No mention of riots, unrest, violence, or even intentionality. One man I talked to said that they were burned as a protest, but he was quick to add "but it is OK now."

I know that we are in the south of the country where there was relatively little conflict, so it is probably easier for people to sweep it under the rug here, but the fact is, it DID happen and there are still hundreds of thousands of refugees who were made homeless just a few months ago as well as thousands of people mourning the loss of loved ones.

It seems to be part of people's identity here that Kenya is the peaceful African country and very few are willing to let that go. A comment that one man in Kwale made seemed to sum it all up. "At least we are not like Somalia, Rwanda, Uganda, and Congo. There is always fighting and killing there. What happened here was a small matter and it is over now."

A very exciting opportunity

2008-05-10T20:02:00.005+03:00

Today we went back to Pamoja to meet with Terry again. We spent a good deal of time discussing our hopes and goals to see if there is some way for her to guide us or help us.

Let me give a brief background on who Terry is. She is the manager / director of Pamoja. Pamoja is a relief project that provides food and education to extremely poor children as well as micro-financed loans and business training to women in need. Terry's vision and values are so closely aligned with ours, it is incredible. Talking with her is much like conversing with an applied anthropology professor who cares very deeply about the people being reached. Her knowledge and insight into the management of community based relief efforts is astounding. Her years of experience, her drive to make a sustainable difference for those in need, and her compassion for those around her all contribute to her being an incredible leader of this kind of thing.

As I was saying, we were discussing potential relief projects. We were asking her for insight into the felt needs of the community and we were testing the waters to see if it might be possible to partner with her in some new efforts.

Before we knew it, we were discussing preliminary plans for a joint effort that will serve one of the most un-reached demographics of people in need here.

She told us that a huge problem in this culture is early teen pregnancy. It is very common for girls who are 12-14 to get pregnant and have to drop out of school once they give birth to their child. Terry told us that the MAJORITY of babies born in this situation die because their young mothers have no knowledge of how to care for a child and no resources to raise a baby. She said that many of these babies are abandoned to die because the mothers feel that they simply have no choice in the matter. These mothers are still children themselves when they find themselves in this situation. They only will realize the severity and tragedy of their loss once they have matured.

Adoption is uncommon here. Terry told us that in this culture EVERY mother wants their child back at some point. Even if they are unable to raise a baby at first, they want their children back by the time they are able to support them. Family is everything to Digo people. She said that mothers who do give their children up for long term adoption or place their kids in an orphanage wind up suffering terrible guilt ridden depressions when they cannot be reunited with their children.

Terry has a vision to start a home where young teenage mothers can take their children to be cared for until their situation is improved enough to responsibly raise a child. During this initial period while the mothers are finding their feet, the babies would be nurtured and cared for by a staff of Digo women. While the babies are in the home, their mothers will be able to have as much or as little interaction with them as desired. Once these teenage mothers are able to finish school and get a job or get married in order to support their children, they would be free to take the children back to raise them in a secure environment.

Terry has dreamt of something like this for a long time but she said that she didn't know how it would be achieved or what funds would support the project.

This is something that we could very realistically support. We were talking about the specifics of the costs involved, and there is a good likelihood that we will be able to fund this. Terry said that she will do the research over the next few days to come up with some final figures by Wednesday.

Another day of learning (Lindsay)

2008-05-10T00:46:00.000+03:00

Today’s meeting with Terry went beautifully! We were able to discuss the basics of our vision for what we want to accomplish here in Digoland, and we asked many of our questions. She is a perfect resource for exactly what we want to know. She is a missionary from Nairobi, and she has spent the past 8 years working with the Digo. She is the founder and director of Pamoja, a nursery school and development program for women.

She has a wealth of wisdom from her years of working here with the Digo people. She was explaining to us the challenges and issues that she often faces in her work. An important key to having an effective program, she said, is to sell the vision to the Digo people. This was interesting to me. She works with the community to understand what their felt needs are, but then she really tries to pull the community together to share a sense of responsibility and desire to make the program work. She said that many missionaries overlook the importance of getting the community to take the project into their own hands. She said that many times she has seen missionaries run successful projects while they are physically present, but when they leave, the projects collapse. She was explaining that this is often due to a lack of involvement and shared responsibility from the community.

It was really great to visit with Terry. We got to meet her 2 month old baby boy, David Peter. He was adorable! She is currently on maternity leave, but she still works several hours each day from home. While Terry is on leave, a Digo woman is managing the daily work at Pamoja. Terry said that this is a wonderful sign that the community is starting to own the vision. She hopes that this woman’s involvement continues.

Time flew today while we were talking with Terry, and we decided to get together again tomorrow. Tomorrow will be especially exciting because we will be visiting Pamoja and other projects that are similar to what we want to do in Digoland. In fact, there is a new program in its beginning phases. The initial funding to buy land and build a facility was donated to Terry. The program will be geared towards training and equipping adults with different practical skills (computer training, English lessons, baking, sewing, etc.) so that they can get jobs. The building is already standing, waiting for the next steps. We will learn more about this and other projects tomorrow.

After our time with Terry, we rushed off to have dinner with the Grossman and Rains families (both American missionary families). Our rushing was only an attitude, however, because you just can’t rush things here in the Kwale district. No matter how much of a hurry you are in, the matatus are not going to leave until they have sold more than the caravan’s capacity. When we went to pick up gelato as our contribution to this evening’s menu, it took about 40 minutes for the person to scoop it for us. After living in American for my whole life, and especially after holding a full time job for the past 4 years, it is engrained in me to rush, rush, rush. It seems that there is not enough time in each day for all that I want to do, so I find myself racing through life at break-neck speed more often than not. I have wanted to kick this habit of rushing, and it looks like this is the place to do it.

We did make it to the Grossman’s in time for dinner, and we had a wonderful evening with both families. Each couple has three kids, and they are all under the age of 11. It was really fun to be in a house full of laughter, home cooked food, and English conversation.

Some things that I am learning about myself…

I put a lot of confidence and stress on my plans. I plan and schedule my life. I have a Day Runner calendar/planner that I use to govern my life. I write everything down that I have to do, and I often even write things down in retrospect if I didn’t know that I was going to do them, just to document that I did them. Who plans their life even in the past? Apparently, I do. Being here in the Kwale district for a month is going to challenge me in that area of my life. It’s not bad to plan, but it is good for me to see that life can still succeed without trying to plan every detail.

So much is out of my control here. I don’t have my own car, for one thing. That is a huge difference. The matatus are adventurous and interesting to an extent, but when you are in a hurry there is nothing you can do to make them move faster. Also, there is NO personal space. For those of you who know that I have sharing issues, this is God’s way of forcing me into shock therapy in this respect. These are some American tenets that are being purged from my being: individualism and independence.

Another thing that makes me feel out of my element is that I don’t speak the language. I can’t understand what people are saying. People often talk to us and then talk amongst each other and laugh, and I wonder…what are they saying? This is one area that I feel excited to change. I think that I may start taking Swahili lessons with a personal tutor. It is $5.00 US per hour.

Our lack of knowledge about the details of how much things should cost is also a challenge. We get on the matatu and get charged a different rate for the same ride from day to day. I know that today we got the special American rate for a ride that cost about 20 shillings less per person yesterday. We are learning, though. It’s like becoming a child all over again. There is so much that I don’t know.

So, these challenges are strengthening me in ways that I probably wouldn’t experience in my daily life at home. It’s humbling to be so ignorant and so aware that I can’t control things.

Practicing the following will keep me busy for the month (and the rest of my life):

Ephesians 4:2
“Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love.”

I want to end this entry with a note of thanks to all of you across the oceans who are thinking of us, praying for us, supporting us as we are here. It is encouraging to know that we are not alone. Many of you did (or are doing) something specific that is enabling us to be here for this month, and we really appreciate it. This trip is something that is bigger than just Collin and me. You are participants in making this happen. So, thank you, and stay tuned for more.

Great news and a fun story

2008-05-08T15:57:00.001+03:00

Today was a fantastic day. We woke up and the sun was shining brightly, the sky was an uninterrupted expanse of blue, and there was a pleasant wind blowing. The songbirds all around our cottage celebrated the beautiful weather.

Lindsay went with M.J. Grossmann this morning (girls' day out) to visit a house church in a nearby digo village. Lindsay was able to visit Mwanasiti, a Christian Digo woman who came to our cottage and cooked us lunch last time we were here. They had a wonderful day, but because I wasn't there, I won't write about it.

I decided to head back up into the hills and villages around Kwale to try to track down some contacts we made last time we were in Kenya. These people manage a non profit called Pamoja (togetherness) that serves Digo women and children in need. From what we know about this project, we have been thinking that it could serve as an excellent blueprint for us to start something similar. At the very least, I wanted to visit and observe what goes on there.

I hadn't been able to communicate much at all with the people who run Pamoja, but I figured I would strike out and hope for the best. I didn't know if I had any real chance of successfully locating them in thousands of square miles of land and hundreds of thousands of people when I don't speak the language, but I figured I could benefit from getting to know the area better whether I found them or not.

I hiked out to the main road and started the hectic Mutatu journey into the hills. As foreign as it is to me, I really enjoy this adventure. For one thing, I love to experience life wherever I am as the local people live it, but beyond that, there is a shared sense of belonging as 23 people pile into a small van and speed down an impossibly bumpy road. It is as though everyone knows, "We are all going somewhere and this is how we get there. Might as well enjoy the ride." Just when you think you have shared enough apologetic smiles to cover the many cramped collisions you have had while settling in as the vehicle slams around corners, the van will skid to a halt and 5 or 6 more people will cram in. This process repeats itself indefinitely as people clamber in and out on the way to their destination.

As I mentioned, I didn't know where I was going, but I vaguely remembered hearing that the project was located in Vuga, a village near Kwale. I had asked to be let out of the bus at Vuga and after about a 45 minute ride, we pulled off the road in the jungle and the driver pointed at me and shouted "Vuga!" I somehow managed to make it out of the van past all of the other passengers. As the matatu sped off and left me standing there on the side of the road I began to wonder just where I was and what I had signed up for. I resolved to make the most of it and explore the area.

I climbed a path up an embankment next to the road and just as I got over the bluff, there in front of me was a brightly colored sign that proclaimed "Pamoja!"

I could scarcely believe this was happening to me. I excitedly followed the trail that wound through a maize patch and under a stand of coconut palms. I neared a thatched building with the sound of many small voices singing something in unison. As I rounded the corner, the singing stopped. About 30 little children and 2 teachers stared at me quizzically.

I suddenly realized how odd it must be for me to come bursting out of the jungle and into their classroom unannounced. I said one of the only things I know in Swahili / Chidigo. "Jambo."

"JAAAMMMBOOO" A chorus of cheerful voices replied excitedly. Apparently my interruption of their lesson had been forgiven.

After establishing that I was indeed visiting the exact program I had set out to find, I was led through the gardens until we met an english-speaking caretaker named Sayidi.

Sayidi turned out to be a very kind man. He told me that Terry (the contact I met two years ago who manages Pamoja) was not working today, but he offered to show me around and answer all of my questions.

What I saw there was inspiring beyond words. There are currently 55 Digo children enrolled in Pamoja. The program is a daycare / school that caters to poor children who would otherwise never be able to afford to attend school. Every day, these kids receive a nutritious meal and an education for FREE! Sayidi tends a 1 acre garden that grows food that helps to feed the children. He said that, all told, the average cost of feeding these 55 kids for one day is a total of 100 shillings ($1.69)!!!

We spent about an hour or so discussing all of the details of running a project like this. As we walked around the property and he explained everything to me, countless possibilities began to form in my mind. What once seemed like an amorphous dream began to crystalize as a tangible possibility.

We scheduled another meeting for tomorrow when Lindsay and Terry can both be there. I can hardly wait. I have so many things that I am excited to ask. This is EXACTLY the kind of thing that we were hoping would happen on this trip.

OK, now for a fun story.

When I left Pamoja I started to walk towards Kwale. It was really hot out at this point and the road was long and steep. The matatu had dropped me off in the middle of nowhere, so I thought I might be in for quite a walk. After about 15 minutes of walking in solitude, a huge truck loaded with sand came lumbering up the hill behind me. I stepped off the road to let it pass and looked up to smile at the guys who were riding atop the sand in the back of the truck. They waved down to me and signaled that I should climb on. No need to ask twice!

I climbed up into the back of the truck and was greeted by 2 friendly guys about my age. They were grinning from ear to ear and signaled that I should follow them to the front of the load (this truck was like a huge dump truck except it didn't dump... it had to be unloaded manually).

I spent the next 45 minutes in an exhilarated state of happiness. The breeze was wonderful and suddenly the sun no longer felt hot. It was pure freedom. Riding high up with a totally unobstructed view gave me a new perspective on this landscape. I have always known that it is beautiful here, but being out in the open and watching the lush green hills and valleys roll by was truly awe inspiring.

The workers in the back and I talked as much as we could without all sharing the same first language. As it turned out, they were all Digos. One guy named Muhdi knew a lot of English and we chatted for a long time and exchanged contact information.

When we arrived in Kwale the driver stopped the truck to let me climb down. I thanked them for the ride, and we parted ways.

I bought a huge bottle of water and was walking around town enjoying my cold drink when I spotted the truck again. They were unloading the sand with shovels at a site where a building is being built. I walked up to the truck and when they saw me the workers smiled and waved. I climbed back up into the truck to watch them unload (it is so different than an American truck that just dumps whatever it is carrying in a matter of seconds). I saw that they were pouring sweat so I tossed them the my water. They gratefully shared it amongst themselves. After this little break, they jokingly gestured toward a shovel and we all had a laugh but then I figured, "hey why not?" I took off my shirt and grabbed the shovel.

It was exhausting work , but we had a fine time and before too long, we had finished.

They asked where I was staying and they offered me a ride back to the neighboring town. Rather than cram back into a Matatu after working up a sweat like that, I gladly accepted. We climbed back into the truck and went bouncing down the dirt road.

The ride back down out of the hills was rather eventful. We broke down and had to repair the truck, then once we got going again, we got pulled over by police who were wielding machine guns. I watched as the driver discretely slipped some bills into the policeman's hand and shortly thereafter, we were on our way. I asked Muhdi what had taken place and he laughed and said that we got pulled over for having passengers in the back of the truck. When I expressed feelings of guilt for my part in the crime (I had no idea it was against the law here... you see it all the time) he laughed again and told me that it happens every single day. He said "we carry the whole crew back here every day. We just give him a few shillings and he lest us pass. Is no problem."

When we got down from the hills the truck pulled over at a little thatched pavilion. I asked what we were doing and Muhdi said "LUNCH!" We all went into the little roadside "restaurant" and sat on logs on the ground. They served up boiled cassava and broth. Delicious. They refused to let me pay for mine and insisted that they owed me a lunch for helping them.

I would say the ONLY downside of this day is the stinging sunburn I got from spending the afternoon in the back of a truck with no shirt on, but even that is just a reminder of this great day.

For the future:

Please pray that our meeting at pamoja is good tomorrow.

Please pray that we can gather good information about other initiatives that would be beneficial.

Back in Kwale

2008-05-08T00:44:00.003+03:00

Today was a great day. I decided that when I got out of bed and got to drink a cup of coffee for the first time since last Friday morning. For all of you serious coffee drinkers out there, you understand the joy that a cup of delicious Kenyan coffee brought my soul (espresso roast, by the way). I was able to drink a cup of coffee today because Mark Grossman took us grocery shopping yesterday. It felt so nice to get our kitchen cottage stocked up with food. Besides missing family, friends, and my dog, I feel pretty much at home here in Diani, Kenya.(It’s true, I admit it… I love my dog. I am officially one of those people who misses their dog when they go away. I didn’t know that would ever be me, but alas, it is).

So, today’s highlight was that we went into Kwale town for the first time since we arrived. In order to get to Kwale town from our little cottage, we had to take 3 matatus to get there. (For those of you who don’t know…Matatus are like caravan mini-vans that pack way more people in them than seats).

Taking a matatu is quite an experience. The stops for matatus are chaotic because each different matatu driver fiercely competes for passengers. Several times today, a matatu worker grabbed one of our bags from us and put it on his matatu so that we would have to choose to ride with him to get our bags back. No problem. Nothing got stolen, and we got a ride.

A few times today I felt like a total American klutz/ethnocentric jerk. And it was always accidental, of course, but that didn’t make it feel any better. At one point I took a seat that was towards the front of the matatu, and then felt bad because there were open seats in the back that I probably should’ve taken. I felt a little selfish, but I get a little claustrophobic--- it’s just my instinct to position myself nearest to a fast escape. Then with it being so cramped and crowded, there were several incidents when I hit someone in the head with a stray limb, dangling in some direction trying to stay within the confines of the matatu. At one point, Collin’s leg fell out the door, while he was crouched on the side of the seats on the floor. No problem. He just pulled his leg back in and scrunched in tighter ball on the floor. Meanwhile, the matatu flies on at an unfathomable speed.

As each new matatu ride drew us farther from the hectic pace of Diani, the crowds and the traffic faded away. We moved our way past the rural villages of the Kwale district. It was fantastic to be back to the red dirt, the cool breezes of the shimba hills, and the colorful fabrics that the Digo women wear. Just as I remembered, there was a faint smell of something burning in the distance...some kind of wood, maybe? And the trees and hills are so verdant and lush that it feels like another world. Instantly upon arriving to Kwale town, I remember how much I love this place.

Once we arrived in Kwale town, we navigated (when I say “we” in the instances of navigation, I really mean Collin) our way to the literacy center. This is the new office of Bible Translation and Literacy. We were happy that we found the building after not being here for 2 years. Last time we were here, it was just a plot of land with good intentions and a building permit. It was really exciting to see the building complete. No one was there when we showed up, so next time we will call someone from BTL first to arrange a visit.

After that, we walked around Kwale town, through the market and talked with people while we looked at their merchandise. We had some really positive interactions with people…laughing, smiling, and talking…that helped to erase the sting of my former blunders on the matatu. In talking to one of the women we met in town, we learned that she knows the family of Joseph Mwalonya, (the Digo man who worked as a translator on the New Testament and who we are now sponsoring through bible school to become a pastor)!

We returned to our cottage in time for Collin to start work in the evening, and it has been a pleasant night. I am enjoying cooking here in our cottage. It’s been fun to really settle in and feel at home here.

Some future plans:

Tomorrow I am going in to Kwale again with MJ Grossman and Melissa Rains, two women who are missionaries. We are going to do some ministry/service with the women. I do not know what we are doing, but I will report back afterwards with an update.

We are still formulating our month’s schedule as we are contacting people here in Kenya and setting up times to meet. We plan to visit existing projects similar to things that we would like to initiate. Gideon M’betsa (a leader in the literacy projects) and Teresa Awendo (leader of Pamoja, women and children’s training and care facility) are two people who we plan to meet sometime soon for this purpose.

A safe arrival

2008-05-05T23:54:00.002+03:00

We have arrived safely to our destination in Diani, Kenya. It was a really long trip, but all of our prayers were answered. We arrived safely, purchased a visa, got through customs, got our bags, found the right busses, crossed the border, and arrived here safely to find a wonderful cottage (with working internet) awaiting us. Thank you so much for all of your prayers!

The bus ride was long, hot, and very crowded, but we were happy just to arrive alive. There were times that we were certain we would roll over as we skidded and bounced around corners of the dirt roads at incredible speeds. At one point, we passed a tank truck that had just flipped over and spilled its load of oil. There were people crowding around the scene with buckets, bottles, and all sorts of other containers that could be used to scoop up some of the spilled fuel for free. Along the way, we passed other rusting skeletons of vehicles that had apparently gone careening off of the roadway to become testaments to fast driving on these roads.

Soon after arriving in Diani, we met the Grossmann family for dinner. They are a very kind missionary family we met last time we were over here. It was wonderful to see them and to catch up on all the news since our last visit. They were incredibly hospitable and we look forward to partnering with them this coming month. They have offered to help us in any way we might need.

Prayer requests for the near future:

• Please pray that we get rested up from the long trip.

• Please pray that we make the right contacts and form plans that will be very fruitful.

• Please pray for clarity as we try to learn how we can best serve the digo people.

Leaving for Kenya

2008-04-30T18:32:00.000+03:00

Hello and welcome to our blog. We will try to maintain this blog as a way to keep you all informed while we are visiting the Digo People.

We will be leaving the U.S. Early on Saturday morning (May 3rd). We will be traveling to Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania via London and Dubai. This 24 hour flight will be the first leg of our trip. We will spend the night in the city and take a bus to the Kwale District early the next morning. The bus trip will take 8-10 hours including the border crossing.

During our time in the Kwale district, we will be based out of Diani, Kenya. This is a small coastal town in southern Kenya. We have rented a small cottage (with internet!!!) for the month of May. The Grossmann family (a wonderful missionary family living in Diani) has graciously offered to meet us upon arrival, take us shopping for supplies, and help us settle in. It seems as though everything is lined up.

Prayer points:

• Please pray for safety in our travels.

• Please pray that our bags make all of the transfers and we receive them without any difficulty.

• Please pray that we get through customs and are able to purchase the proper visas without any difficulty.

• Please pray for our crossing into Kenya (border crossings can be a little tricky).

• Please pray that the internet in our cottage is reliable. This is essential for Collin to maintain his work responsibilities back in the States.

• Please pray that we will be rested enough after our travels that we can dive right into the work that we want to do.