Return to Kenya

This is now our seventh trip to Kosele - and our third long trip - but the sights and sounds always hit us afresh. Because we had an overnight flight to Nairobi and then the short flight to Kisumu mid-morning we stayed in Kisumu in a guest house on Wednesday night. On Thursday, Mary (the Project Manager) came with the hire car and driver to collect us. The project 's ageing Land Rover has not managed a trip to Kisumu for a long time, and after landing up in a ditch recently, it was being repaired. We did some shopping and Mary stocked up on things for the project and then we set off with a very full Toyota estate car on the two-hour journey. With all the recent rainfall, the last part of the journey on the road uphill from Lake Victoria to Kosele was slower than normal because of the even sorrier state of the road.

 It is always good to see everyone again although we did not see all of the children until about 6pm as they had been competing in an inter-schools sports event. Thursday had passed with mostly catching up with people. So it took most of Friday morning to unpack and sort out our room again.

 This time I hope to get into more walking again so at 4.45pm (the temperature is a bit cooler by then) I set off for Kosele village. This time we have brought our own thermometer and today it was 29 degrees in the shade. Friday is a market day and as a result I met so many neighbours, church members and children on my walk. My very limited Dholuo began to get reactivated and I was able to greet them and find out if they were well.

As I got near the market I met Dorina (an elderly grandmother who cares for her two small granddaughters) returning with an empty basket. She was able to communicate that she had no food. I think she must have gone to the market in the hope that someone would give her something but had given up -until she met me. I had the usual inner struggle that aid is not the answer and what would she do if I had not been there. I know the theory and agree that it is best to avoid dependency. But what would Jesus do and what should we do? Knowing I have money in my purse and I am not going to go to bed hungry makes it easy to buy her some small fish, kale and maize for a meal. What of tomorrow? This is the struggle many of our neighbours face daily.

After leaving the market I met George who repairs shoes - he sits under a tree doing this. I did not go over to greet him as he was talking with several men whom I did not know. A second later, I heard 'Hilda, Hilda' and there was George wanting to talk to me. His English is fairly good. So as well as asking how he had been, I asked him if he was managing to keep off alcohol. He said he hadn't but he wanted to stop again and proceeded to ask me for advice. George had come off alcohol for about a year and starting coming to church but last year he went back to his drinking friends, and stopped coming to church. Yesterday, when I told him it is God's help that he needs, he said that he will come back to church on Sunday. I am praying he will be able to follow through on this.

Soon after this I met Termina, one of our Sunday School teachers and we walked back together. Fortunately her English is good and we were able to chat all the way. However, for the last 5 minutes the wind started up and then there was a downpour of rain and hail– we both got totally drenched! It was well worth it to meet so many people again. I also saw the biggest snake I have seen here but fortunately someone had killed it!

There has been more rain this rainy season than people around here have seen for a long time. The waterlogged ground has resulted in the crops not doing well and although the rainfall pattern has returned to normal now it is not going to be a good harvest. People here have a hand to mouth existence and a poor harvest or an illness in the family can wipe out any savings a family has.

The temperature in the Visitor's Centre only dropped a couple of degrees with the downpour. The second day of the school sports event had also been on - so many of the children also got caught in the downpour on their way home.

In the evening we joined the younger children from the Home who were watching a DVD – Ice Age! - while the oldest six were with Terry learning how to play chess. Unlike our Children’s Home, most homes in the community do not have solar power or any form of electricity, so being able do these kind of things in the evening is a luxury most of our neighbours do not have. Most people would have one paraffin lamp and can't always afford to buy paraffin.

I also reflected on my walk into Kosele and the large number of people I met and spoke with and I began to imagine what it would be like in our community at home. While there, I frequently walked into the centre of Paisley and back without meeting anyone I know, but despite the price of petrol there were increasing numbers of cars. I know I can't make a direct comparison, but walking can mean far more social interaction if more people do it.

After a slowish start this morning – 30 degrees in the shade today – Ian has gone over to the church Men's Group this afternoon. Meanwhile I draft a blog and then chat with Pastor Dorine and catch up on news of how individuals have been getting on. A few disappointments but far more encouragements. Looking forward to seeing everyone in church tomorrow!

Omondi

I first saw Omondi over a year ago, as he shuffled very slowly up to the gate of our compound. His head was down, he looked very disturbed and he was unable to speak. He was dressed in very poor clothes, was dirty, hungry and looked like an old man. The security guard told me that Omondi used to be totally normal, but a few years ago he had become like this. He is well known in the area and people have said that his condition is a result of witchcraft. The guard also said that Omondi was aged around 30! I guessed that he had experienced some sort of nervous breakdown. I discovered that day that his legs were badly swollen and covered with infected sores. So we cleaned his wounds, applied antibiotic powder and found him some clean clothes. We fed him and prayed with him. I remember praying for him to return to his right mind and for his speech to return. Then he shuffled off again. Thus began a series of visits from him. Often we would not see him for long spells and then he would reappear. The sores improved and healed but then would reappear, mostly because of the swelling in his legs. This swelling was partly caused by his habit of standing in the same place for over an hour at a time, in a catatonic manner. One time he found his way to our church, and our pastor, Kennedy, invited him to come forward for prayer - which he did. During his more recent visits to the compound he had been trying to speak to us; he would mumble a word or two. In the last week or two we heard that he has been speaking more. On New Year's Day he came to visit us as he wanted to thank me for treating his legs. At last, they are now totally healed. Even better, Omondi’s whole disposition was changed – his face was bright, he was relaxed and talking away very easily. All the staff and some of the children gathered round as he chatted and laughed with us, and yes - he can even speak English. He told me that his first name is Kenneth, and I told him that that’s a Scottish name – it means “handsome”. Everyone knew his condition in the past and they are all truly amazed at the change in him. Kennedy was able to pray with him again and we thanked God for his mental and physical healing. Please pray that Omondi will also find Jesus as his Lord and Saviour as well as his Healer. Transformation is what we pray for this community - maybe it has begun with Omondi!

still here!

We are fine. Sorry for the long silence – did you think we were lost? (That’s a Kenyan expression!) As the short rainy season nears an end it is getting hotter here again. December and January can be the hottest months of the year. We had another couple of days’ break in Kisumu last month – more or less by ourselves. Since the beginning of August there has been a succession of challenging situations for the management team here, and we’ve tried to be a support to them in these. We are encouraged by the church and by how both Kennedy and Dorine are growing in their leadership and gifting. The Encounter went well - all eight participants were open and all were impacted by God. Kennedy has been doing some leadership training and that has been going really well – we haven’t even been involved in it – it will take less time if they don’t slow things down to translate for us. This is an example of the leaders here taking on more themselves, and we can see our role in the church reducing accordingly. On Wednesday, until Saturday, Dorine and 9 ladies from the church are going to a women’s conference at the Bible college in Bungoma where Kennedy studied. Hilda is planning to go with them – she’s just not sure about the long journey and where she will end up sleeping! The school closed on Friday for the long vacation – until 7th January – with a service and prize-giving. In the Kenyan system, right from the nursery class the children do exams and get ranked from top of the class to the bottom. Three-year-old Salin was back to school last week and, as far as can be told, her eye is healing well and her eyesight is fine. If that is the case it’s a real answer to prayer. She was back at the specialist eye hospital at Sabatia again the previous week, we supposed just for a check-up, but they took her to theatre again and removed stitches and the contact lens that was covering them. She and her mum had to stay a couple of nights there again. Hopefully that is the end of the treatment. Although there have been various instances of terrorist activity and inter-tribal conflicts in various parts of Kenya, this region is quiet. We’re trusting that it stays like this in the lead-up to the presidential and general elections on 4th March 2013. We’re due to come home on 24th January so we’ve now less than 2 months left on this trip. Going on Amazon and looking for Christmas presents for family somehow lacks appeal here - so David’s idea of waiting until we come back and having a late Christmas celebration together seems a much better idea.

Kisumu

Sorry we've been quiet for so long. Did you think we were "lost"? We're just back from a few days' break in Kisumu, 2 hours drive from here - here's some reflections from our time there. Kisumu! Lakeside city on the Equator. Hot, but with a thunderstorm not far away. Milimani area where we're staying has the big houses and offices, all protected behind their walls and gates, on avenues lined with trees with beautiful flowers of many colours. Our guest house double room turns out to be a twin room with no space to swing a cat, but the food is good and we have all we need. The breakfast room is vast, decorated with lots of artificial flowers and those pictures of angelic-looking Chinese babies that you find here in Kenya. Is this a city or just a big town? Towns don't have “international airports” like Kisumu has. Either way it's positively urban and even cosmopolitan compared to our village, Kosele. People here don't look twice when they see a white face – children don't all shout “mzungu, how are you?” and want to shake your hand. There's still a relaxed feel about this place - nothing moves too quickly here. The main roads are populated by boda-bodas (bicycle taxis), piki-pikis (motor-bikes) and tuk-tuks (motorised rickshaws). There aren't too many private cars - many of them will be owned by the Asians who form the business community here. You can buy any car you like here – as long as it’s a Toyota! Bustling colourful market – you can buy second-hand clothes or shoes here for a few bob! Haggle for a better price, as the first price they ask will be the “mzungu price”. Can't blame them for wanting to make a better profit from Europeans. We both know that I can afford it – even their top price is less than we would pay at home. Church is big, polished, middle class. So many people and so many activities on offer, so why does it seem that most people just come in, sit/stand/sing/clap as appropriate, and then get up and go home again? There's nothing wrong with the service but actually we wish we were back in our own little rural church in Kosele. Do we need orphanages? (Apparently so - nowhere else for all these children to go, nowhere else for them to belong.) There's something sad and bleak about this one. Some kind of lethargy. Do they know that God is still here with them? Why is there a white boy here? Hold on, he's not white, but an albino. The facial features and hair type are very African. How does he feel? Do the others accept him? Back home tomorrow! Is it home? Meantime anyway!

A busy month!

August has been a busy month for the church leaders, the Hope & Kindness management and us. After the visit from the national church leaders we were taken up with preparing for and running the first Youth Encounter, and last week, another Farming God’s Way training seminar. Despite it being the school holidays and most of the children in the Home having gone away to visit relatives, it has been a challenging time for the management team here, with various issues to be tackled, and we’ve been trying to support them in this.

So after a busy few weeks we got away at last for a 2-night break in Kisumu, two hours’ drive from here. Two of the children were not going to get a holiday of any type because, in one case there are no known relatives, so we took them along with us. So together with Vivian and Mercy we visited the Impala Sanctuary (a cross between a zoo and a small wildlife reserve) and the Museum, and took the girls shopping. A new experience for them staying in a big hotel, but overall we think they enjoyed the time away. Our only problem was the hotel – we had asked for quiet rooms but where did they put us? – right above the bar, where a karaoke session (mostly populated by students from British universities on a holiday) blared out till midnight. The rotten singing made it even worse!

The news in Kenya has been dominated by two major incidents over the past week. The first arose from a festering dispute between two tribes in Southeast Kenya over land and cattle grazing rights. This escalated into outright armed conflict between the two groups and hit national headlines when one tribe massacred some 80 men, women and children in a revenge attack on their rivals, destroying a whole village. Certainly, disputes over land and cattle are common in some parts of Kenya, but this incident shocked the nation.

A couple of days later, nearer at hand (in the same county as we are), another disaster occurred. Eight girls, locked in a school dormitory at night, perished in a fire. The investigations and recriminations are continuing, but this is having repercussions for our own school here – fire safety has been reviewed and some small changes made. The school exam system is so competitive here, with Standard 8 children being given extra classes early in the morning, at weekends and during holidays to help them revise. The Education authorities have been cracking down on schools giving extra tuition during holidays, and are using this tragedy to enforce their position, because the girls who died should have been at home on holiday. Our own school takes different holidays from the state schools and was due to open today, but this has had to be postponed for another week. TIA !

Ten years on

We’ve had a great weekend here in the church, and I hope Terry doesn’t mind me copying parts of his blog to tell you about it.

This weekend saw the final step in our church becoming part of Elim Gospel Church Kenya. It was a very exciting day and an extremely appropriate time for this development. Exactly ten years ago to the day, Terry and Judi and their children Tom and Ellie spent their first Sunday in Kosele and planted a small church, by starting a Sunday School with the children in the new Children’s Home they were setting up.

The church has been through its share of ups and downs. We’ve experienced a pastor being driven out of the area because of the post-election violence in 2007. We have been widely ridiculed in the community because of our Pentecostalism and we have seen church numbers go up and down depending on the number of Mzungu (European) visitors to the church. Like any church we have been let down by conflict between individual members of the church and conflict between the leaders of the church. The church family is, really, not very different from our own families. Like a good family we have held together through the ups and downs, celebrating together, grieving together and giving together.

In today’s service Pastor Paul, (who had to leave Kosele in 2007 because he came from the wrong tribe), said how delighted he was to be in church at this momentous time. Despite only being the pastor for a short time, Paul was loved by the church members and they were pleased to see him back for this visit. Paul and his colleague Pastor Reuben are members of the national leadership of the Elim Gospel Church in Kenya. (Ours is the only Elim church in Nyanza province.) Becoming part of this movement links our church to a number of others in different parts of the country and to a wider global family of Elim churches with a headquarters in the UK.

In a very moving service, Paul and Reuben anointed our new Pastor Kennedy and co-pastor Dorine, and their leadership team, all by the popular acclaim of the church members. Reuben preached the sermon in the service and coined a completely beautiful phrase. He was extolling the virtues of loving one another through showing each other kindness and creating hope in brothers’ and sisters’ lives. He said that as a result of this “the friendship becomes fatter”. It’s a lovely image and a wonderfully African sentiment.

Kennedy, our new Pastor, reminded the church of its roots in our Home ten years ago. Looking round the church and seeing the happy faces, young, old, men, women, boys and girls I was reminded of a New Testament scripture from 1st Corinthians 3:6-7 which says:

“I planted the seeds, Apollos watered them, but God made them sprout and grow. What matters isn't those who planted or watered, but God who made the plants grow.”

The church today is unrecognisable from that little group ten years ago, and I wonder what it will be like in another 10 years – how will it compare with today’s congregation? We are confident that Kennedy and Dorine will lead it well because it has became clear that God has called and equipped them and set them apart to serve him in this place. We feel privileged to be a part of what God is doing here at this time.

Oink, the goat??

What’s been happening here? Not too much, but enough to keep us too busy to write a blog post for the past couple of weeks. The main thing in the diary has been preparing for and taking part in another 2-day seminar on Farming God’s Way. Those people who have tried the method on their own farms over the past few months have been encouraged by the results – the main problems have been getting enough mulch (grass and leaves to cover the ground and keep down weeds), keeping animals and birds off the growing crops, and water-logging due to lots of rain and poor drainage. These last two issues would of course be problems even if people were doing farming by the traditional methods.

For a couple of city dwellers, we’ve learned a lot about farming through Farming God’s Way. Our role is helping to co-ordinate the seminars, which are delivered almost all in Dholuo now. Last week we weren’t sure how many people to expect but 17 turned up on the first day, mostly from the community but not many from our own church. Hopefully they will all try out the methods and spread the word in their own areas.

We’ve been meeting individually with the church leaders and reviewing the leadership structure in the church. Next weekend we’re expecting a visit from two of the national leaders of Elim Gospel Church Kenya and their wives. They’ll be doing some leadership training and we’ll also discuss the proposal for our little church here to officially join up with the denomination.

Last week one of our oldest church members, Bernard, died. Bernard was brought to church every Sunday in a wheelchair by some of our older boys. We will miss him from the church – his usual place at the front will be empty. Bernard was increasingly frail and bent but he didn’t miss church very often, and liked to greet the church members. When he was younger, he went away to work on the tea plantations near Kericho, and it was there that he came across horses. (Horses are not found at all in this part of Kenya – only donkeys). When we visited him last year, his eyes lit up when he talked about these wonderful creatures!

The Land Rover is back in business after being off the road with electrical problems for a week. A group of us were halfway back from Kisii, our nearest large town, when it broke down. A guy from the petrol station in the nearby village agreed a price to tow us back to our mechanic’s place – but as he only had an old Nissan saloon – about 1200cc I would guess – he didn’t manage to tow us right up the hilly track to the garage. A second vehicle had to be hired to complete the job! Our good friend Douglas came to our rescue with his minibus and transported passengers, shopping, sacks of potatoes, timber etc for the remaining journey back to Kosele, only delayed slightly because the road was still blocked by a bus which had been stuck in the mud all day. Safe home before nightfall! No AA or RAC here but we get by thanks to people’s ingenuity and helpfulness.

We’re now on Facebook (Ian N Hilda McMillan) where we’ve posted some photos. One photo is of our newest residents at Hope & Kindness – two greedy female goats (named Oink and Annabel by Terry’s daughter Ellie, who’s been visiting).