Police Escort & Sunrises

I traveled on the night bus to Nairobi on Monday night. It’s an eight hour bus ride that’s usually a ride from…you know what. Thankfully, I didn’t get much sleep the night before and the roads have gotten much better en route to Nairobi, that I was able to sleep most of the way (which is so unlike me).

There is one section of the trip that requires a police escort for the buses at night. Apparently, there are thugs/thieves that wait on the side of the road for those poor buses to chug up the hill, where they then make a roadblock, force the people out of the bus or fight their way on to the bus and rob everyone of their valuables (i.e. money, cell phones).

So we waited at the police check before the dangerous section. We were the first bus to be pulled over and the police told our drive that we wouldn’t get a police escort until there were 15 buses to convoy. So we were told that we would have to wait….and the driver said it would take up to about 2 hours to collect that amount of buses. The passengers on our bus (and a few that ended up coming up behind us) started getting angry and shouting. Now this was after only 10 minutes of waiting. People were suggesting the strong men on the bus should go and confront the police…demand that they take those buses that were waiting NOW, even if there were only a few. There were a few people who even recommended sending the mzungu (white person – and that would be ME) out to talk to the police. They thought since I was a white girl, I may have better luck at swaying the police officers. Thanks for sending me out to the lions!!

After much arguing and shouting from passengers of the buses waiting, we got the police escort. There were about 12 buses in the convoy. And as we approached the area of the thugs/thieves, I realized the police escort wouldn’t have done much good for our bus anyway. All these different bus companies went zooming by us as we approached “the hill” and yes, we were the last bus, chugging up the hill, the rest of the convoy far ahead.

As we approached the top of the hill, there were about half a dozen boys that came out of the darkness onto the side of the road. I heard a lady say, “oh no…” softly. The man across the isle from me clutched the arm rest, all of us staring out the window. Excitement, seriously, came over me….I like adventures….ones where no one gets hurt obviously….but there’s something about the risk. Sick, I know!

And as we approached these boys, the only sound you could hear was the sound of the engine of the bus, fighting to get up the hill. The once angry, shouting passengers were quiet. Then we drove by the boys…and they threw a couple things at the bus. Yep, that was it. We heard a couple of ping-ping sounds off the side of the bus but we kept on going. There was relief from everyone as we kept chugging along the road. After that, it was lights out for me. I fell asleep for most of the trip…not a care in the world.

I was to pick up our intern, Andrea at the airport for 6:30 on Tuesday morning. I got to the airport and saw that her airplane was going to be arriving a half an hour earlier. I was happy about that; it meant I could get home faster. But after 8:00am, the plane landing and the entire luggage being collected and still no Andrea, I got a little worried. I called Daniel and he called Andrea’s home. Andrea wasn’t getting in to Nairobi until the next morning. She had given us the wrong date of her arrival in to Kenya. So I went and got a hotel room back in the city and spent the day sitting in a park or in my hotel room, reading a good book that I bought at a book store by the hotel.

In the evening, I wanted to take a shower because at the hotel, in the evenings and in the early mornings, the water is hot, whereas during the day, it’s cold. I went to take a shower but there was no water….nothing! So I went down to the front desk and they said that there was a problem with the water and that it wouldn’t be fixed or ready until about 3:00 in the morning. I had been on a bus all night, all over the place during the day and desperately wanted to be clean. So one of the staff members said that he would have water heated for me and brought to my room in a basin.

About 40 minutes later, he knocked on my door and I opened it just a bit. There he was with a bucket full of warm water. I put my hand through the door to grab the bucket and then he said, “Its okay, I can bring it in for you.” Then I replied, “No it’s okay, I can take it from you. I can carry it just fine.” He tried to insist on carrying it for me; I then said firmly, “I don’t want you in my room. Just give me the bucket.” Maybe he realized at that moment, I wasn’t giving in or that I was thinking the wrong thing and all he wanted to do was be a gentleman and carry the bucket in. Either way, there was no way I was letting a man in to my room, especially being by myself.

It was hard to sleep that night. Being in a hotel room, hearing people walk by your room at all hours of the night, having some European guy outside your hotel room talking on his cell phone, etc. made for a bit of a crabby Meredith when I woke up for 4:45am.

I got in a taxi outside the hotel (the same taxi driver I used when I was in Nairobi picking up my cousin Sarah and also Sean – we both remembered each other. “You’re back again!” he said when he saw me) and headed for the airport…this time knowing Andrea was going to be there.

As we drove out of the centre of Nairobi and towards the outskirts of this massive city, I spent some time talking to God.

And then I noticed it…the sky. It was absolutely gorgeous. It was the most beautiful sunrise I had ever seen (and I’ve seen so many in Kenya). The sky was covered in red, orange, yellow, purple and blue, the sun’s rising rays, shining between the colors. It was as if I was looking at a rainbow. It was so beautiful, it gave me goose bumps and tears welled up in my eyes. I was completely in awe of it and then I heard, “This is for you, Meredith.”

I forgot the rest of the drive to the airport; I just stared at the sunrise for as long as I could, mesmerized by its beauty, thankful that I got to experience it’s beauty. I wondered how many other people were staring at this same sunrise and appreciating what they were seeing. I wish I had had my camera to take a picture of it, but a picture wouldn’t have even captured an eighth of the beauty. Maybe it was just a moment of beauty to be shared between God and me.

Intern Fun....

The interns have been here for almost two weeks now. Our interns are: Nate, Andrew, Ina (ee-na) and Lauren S. They are a pretty cool bunch. It’s great to go from moments of serious, in-depth talks to moments of uncontrollable laughter. We’ve become a very tight, united family; I really appreciate it.

On Tuesday, we went to Graceway Academy. It’s a free pre-school for children who live in the slums of Tuwaini (two-wa-nee). It’s funded by our friends Africa Connect, from the US. In Kenya, Early Childhood Development (ECD) classes, such as nursery, junior kindergarten and senior kindergarten are not covered by the government. Therefore, this makes grade one a huge challenge for them, most of them not even attending school without the ECD classes under their belt. This school gives the children the foundation and opportunity to carry on to grade one and through primary school.

In the morning, I was thinking of what we could do at Graceway. After girl’s cell time, I suggest we make crafts with the children, remembering that we had a big bin filled with stuff. So Lauren R and I went through the bins and found stickers, glitter glue, crayons, pencils, sticker boards, etc. So we got together a bunch of stuff and took it to Graceway with us.

The children were outside on the school property playing when we arrived and when they saw us, they started SCREAMING. They were so excited; they came running out of the gate and bombarded us all. We each had about 20 plus children around us each; fighting to hold our hands, give us hugs or just to touch our arms.

Lauren and I got the crafts all ready as everyone played with the children. After getting the children settled back in their classrooms, I took the team to each of the rooms and introduced the team to them. Then we split up in to groups and helped the children with the crafts. We made little bookmarks for them, full of stickers and glitter glue. By the end of the hour and half, there was just as much glitter on the children’s faces as there was on their stickers. Success!!!! :-)

When we were getting ready to leave, one of the little girls came over to me, grabbed my hand and in Swahili said, “Mary, are you coming tomorrow?” I said, “No, I’m sorry. We can’t come tomorrow.” She looked sad and then said, “When?” I told her, “We’ll come again soon!” She got all excited, hugged my waist and said, “Thank you for coming today.”

We, the team, all left there having so much fun. Helping these children make crafts, doing little games with them in the playground, spending time on the ground with them, hugging them…such small things that a made a huge difference in the children that day. We got just as much out of it as they did….we all benefited from it.

On Wednesday, we introduced the team to our girls, our EX-street girls. We played volleyball with them for awhile, which was quite fun and funny. :-) Later, I had Lillian sitting beside me reading from her English book to me. I looked up at her in amazement. She was trying, really trying.

Lillian had been one of the original girls in our home when it opened. She ran away when the others did. About a month ago, she found Anne, our social worker and pleaded to come back. We prayed about and talked about it and decided that we would give her another try. She’s been there for almost a month now and the transformation in her is incredible. With a different group of girls in the home now, rather then her close friends from the street that she was originally with, she’s a totally different person. She’s quite, humble, respectful and determined. We set strict guidelines on her due to this being her second chance in the home and she’s abided by each one. The first week she was there, she apologized to Daniel, Anne and I for running away. She said that she was so sorry and that she won’t be doing it again. She wanted to stay in the home and get her life straightened out.

And as I watched her on Wednesday, playing volleyball, helping me read a Swahili text book and my helping her read an English text book, I asked God, I begged God to please have her stay, to please make it work this time. This project is my heart; these girls have my heart. It’s the motherly love and protection I feel.

Anyway, that's all for now.

Widows & Grandmothers...

In a few weeks, the TI team will be teaming up with the Foster Group to do massive distribution of food to four areas: Maili Saba (my-lee), Kiminini, Shimo La Tewa (tay-wa) and Kolongolo. So on Tuesday, we began doing our assessments on widows and grandmothers in Maili Saba.

When we arrived at the central point where all these widows and grandmothers were to meet, we were welcomed with singing and shouting by the women. I was attacked immediately by little old women who continually hugged me, shook my hand and said Asante sana (thank you very much) in my ear. I must have hugged at least 40 women.

There were streams and streams of little children, staring at the white people. Some would turn away at the very moment of eye contact, while others would stare and when I smiled at them, came running to greet me by shaking my hand.

It took us about 4 hours to go through the assessments and pictures of over 80 widows and grandmothers. As we listened to some of the stories, I was saddened by the condition some of them looked to be in. There was one little boy who sat down with his grandmother and sibling with big tears rolling down his cheeks. I was told he had a headache.

I called him over to sit next to me on my bench. He was a little hesitant at first but after me saying, it’s okay to come here in Swahili a few times, he came and sat next to me. I felt his forehead and he was on fire. Thankfully, I had some headache/fever medication in my purse. We got water and I handed him a pill and gave him water to drink. Then I just wrapped my arms around him and hugged him. When it came time for him to leave and get the family photo taken, he didn’t want to leave. He preferred to stay seated beside me, my arms wrapped around him, him snuggled up against me.

I thoroughly enjoyed the day, meeting all of these amazing women, grandmothers who are raising their grandchildren, fighting to keep the family going, to find food to put on the table. It’s a life that most of us can never imagine having to live. And we found just a small few in a small community that day. There are so many more out there.

We visited Shimo La Tewa on Wednesday and did the same thing, doing assessments on over 40 widows and grandmothers. There was this one sweet little girl; she may have had a cute little dress on but you couldn’t tell because over the dress, she wore a Finding Nemo housecoat. I thought she was the cutest thing and she thought she was the coolest thing with her little housecoat on; it tied tightly around her waist.

I could seriously go on and on about all the little children I met over those two days of assessments but I’ll refrain….for now.

I have so much to write….but I’ll leave it…again, for now.

Ezekiel & Me...

I was at HBF (our children’s home) on Saturday. I spent most of my day with a 3.5 month old in my arms. His name is Ezekiel. He is the son of the director to the home.

I was the first visitor to hold Ezekiel when he was born (after hospital staff and his mother). He was just a few hours old. His skin was so light that they jokingly called him mzungu (for white person/European here). It was a joke that he could totally pass for my son…half white/half Kenyan. I was definitely willing at that moment to take him home with me.

Three and a half months later and he’s changed to a beautiful shade of brown with these beautiful big brown eyes. He can no longer be mistaken for an mzungu. His mother says that Ezekiel and I have a special bond. She says he knows me well. She calls me his second mother. When he’s fussy, I take him and unless he’s hungry, I can calm him down. I sing to him, I pat his bottom, I rock him, I cuddle to him, I kiss him. On Saturday, I had him smiling and talking up a storm (well more like baby gurgling sounds but I’ll take what I can get). I engaged in eye contact and baby gurgling conversation with him. Every time he smiled that toothless, gum-filled smile, it made me smile more.

The children were laughing at my interaction with Ezekiel, seeing an adult pretend to understand the language of a 3.5 month old. But the more I showed my interest in what he was moving on about or gurgling about, the more he would smile, kick his feet and gurgle.

It’s an amazing thing to see; to see the smile of a baby, of a child.

It’s moments like this when I ache to be a mom; to be able to hold a child of my own. I can’t wait for morning sickness (yes seriously!), baby kicks, back pains, discomfort, hours of labor…all for the life of a child. To me, the nine months is worth it all. To see my husband, hold his baby for the first time…to see him have gurgling conversations with our baby. On Saturday as I held Ezekiel, I ached for all of that even more.

I remember having a conversation with a family member, before I knew Kenya was were I was going to be. We were talking about wanting children some day and she said to me, “Meredith, I know you will have children some day. They may or may not be yours in flesh but you will forever be surrounded by children and you will be called Mom.” Four years later, I was in Kenya, surrounded by children and many called me, and still call me, Mom.

Children mean so much to me. I wouldn’t be here if they didn’t. To see the transformation of a malnourished, sad being to a healthy, happy child is amazing and so wonderful to be a part of. It’s amazing to see what God does in these children.

There are over 2 million orphans in Kenya alone. I wish my arms were long enough to hug them all, but since they aren’t, I’ll hug as many of them, individually, whenever I can. I may not be a “mom” yet, but I have the love in me…why not give it out to the children who need it.