Getting to Churo

There is so much to explain and I will eventually post who all of these people that I tell stories about are, but for now please bear with me.

Paul H. has spent 7 years in Uganda and 13 years in Kenya with our Organisation, and he accompanied us from Nairobi to Kijabe and Churo. After our stay in Churo we dropped him off in Nakuru to catch a matatu (taxi) back home to Kijabe. Paul H. is a MD, but is no longer practicing, he does another job, which I am not sure of the title, in Kenya. Paul H., for the first week, drove our landcruiser. The first day that we were in Nairobi and then the first day in Kijabe it had rained very hard.

Personally, I had been praying for some African rains before we even arrived in Kenya, and I really got what I had requested. Rob and Kristina weren't so chipper as I about the rains, but they managed. When we got to Paul H.'s house, his wonderful wife, Pam, told us that Kenya had just recently gotten out of a two year drought and had been praying for little smatterings of rain. The past couple of days had been a blessing because Kijabe, and most of Kenya, had not seen rain like that in over two years. I was thinking through this the other day and realised that God had used my prayer to bless the Kenyans, and in this I rejoice.

About Kenyan tribes:
There are about 48 tribal family groups in Kenya and we interacted with four of them. That to say, what you read from me will not be a complete picture of the Kenyan people, but with any luck, you will have an accurate snapshot of four tribes: Kikuyu, Samburu, Maasai(the most popular for African photographs) and Pokot.

When we left Kijabe after the massive rainfall, we started out on a three and a half hour ride to Churo, in the east Pokot land. We were nearing the final stretch of our journey to Churo when we were faced with a spot in the road that had two small ponds on either side of a fallen tree. We chose the right, and apparently should have gone left. We got incredibly, award winning stuck in the reddish 'clay-mud' that didn't smell like it was just mud (there are animals on the road all the time, so it most likely wasn't just mud) and murky water. The stuck that I speak of is bottom of my knee (literally that's where I sunk down to) deep puddles with our left front and right back wheels spinning free when we tried to muscle the landcruiser out of the road swamp.

We eventually decided that we needed to get out of the vehicle and push while Paul H. tried to drive out. We tried. We failed, Kristina was splattered by the spittle of the tire she stood behind. We tried piling brush and smaller rocks underneath the two spinning tires to get some traction, but to no avail. All the while a group of Pokot onlookers were quite enjoying their opportunity of daily entertainment: Wazungu (white people in Kiswahili) Stuck In the Mud. After about half an hour of heaving, piling, pushing and sweating, a younger Pokot mechanic, also named Paul, came into the mud with us to help. He became just as dirty as we were, it was amazing to see the love, compassion and righteous work that he gifted to us.

Someone, maybe Paul, came up with the idea of jacking the landcruiser up and putting large rocks beneath the spinners to see how that would go. This took about 25 minutes to do, and we all got much dirtier than we were before. Rob (Mississippian on the team) and Paul were the most instrumental in stacking things, and Kristina, Kathryn and I brought them the big rocks from the road side. We also decided to tie the rope we had in the cruiser to the front grill and had a force pull from the front. I began tying rope to the front and some of the onlookers decided to get involved. I tied five ropes on, and women and men grabbed onto them in preparation for the upheaval. One of the women helped me cut the rope with her machete (which is merely a gardening tool in Kenya). We prepared, had pushers in the back, a pulling crew in the front and Paul H. behind the wheel, and the cruiser came out of the swamp.

The team washed off a bit in a stream, except for me, and then we drove the last 200 yards of the journey to Churo! Paul H. had neglected to tell us that we were in walking distance. I sustained the only injury of the entire ordeal, which I believe I got rather early on. A rock had worked its way into my chaco (a secure sandal brand) and cut the bottom of my big toe. The cut was into my callous and didn't bleed, which I count as a blessing of God. My foot could have been, logically should have been infected or introduced some type of protozoan or bacteria into my blood stream, but instead, I paid a little pain of the cut and then Kathryn cleaning the muck out, and I was healthy.

* The giraffe in the photo by my chacos is Marley, he originally belongs to Karthryn and he was our team mascot, and went nearly everywhere that we traveled.

Journey Map

This is my attempt to give you a physical idea of where our team went, so that when I refer to a place, you will have a vague idea of what I am talking about.

I will describe the places in Kenya and Minah by terms of medical sites we visited, because they dictated our route, but our learning was a majority of non-medical, more cultural and spiritual things. This is not to say that we didn't learn a tremendous amount of medical based things, but God surpassed what the doctors taught us all the more.

From Moline IL, I flew out May 24 and stopped over in Detroit on my way to New York. Pearl River, NY is the HQ for the US base for our Organisation. This is where Rob, Kristina and I met. Then, May 26 we began a long trek from New York to London, which I believe was neigh seven hours. After a few hours of layover in London, we got on another plane to Nairobi, Kenya, nearly a nine hour flight. We spent the night in Nairobi at the Organisation's guesthouse. The next day we began our ride around Kenya.

The places we went and why...
Kijabe: hospital, homestay and to orientate with Pam and Paul (longtermers in Kenya)
Nakuru: church, game park (safari), the only hotel (one night)
Churo: dispensary, Amaya moblie clinic, the most rural place we went
Nakuru: dropped Paul off to go home to Kijabe drove through
Litein: hospital (up close and personal)
Nairobi: stay in guesthouse (one night)
Kajiado: Childcare center, dispensary, mobile clinics in Partimarou and Piliwa, girls school
Nairobi: guesthouse for a night and flight to Minah

Minah is divided into four "provinces" in a way, like Canada, only it takes a 30 minute plane ride to get from one to the next.

We spent time in two "provinces" which we shall call GC and MH.
GC cities:
Oni: homestay, Catholic hospital, Muslim Hospital, Dr. Cortino's (a Ugandan) private practise, Kathryn's team in GC. We spent a week in Oni and then went to another "province" MH and stayed with Ruth (Kathryn didn't come with us).

MH cities:
Ezi: Staying with Ruth, visiting Heather
Ani: dispensary
Boni: hospital and clinic
Goni: hospital and families

Then we went back to GC and went to Dja for debriefing. Then back to Kenya, and back to London and New York and IL and Iowa.

Please note that the cities in Minah are magically abbreviated to be not the real names. Now, once we are all caught up on how the navigation of the trip worked, I will tell you the good stuff.

Mind's Eye

Greetings to all,

I have been in Iowa for a few days now and have been thinking about what to write on here first, what order it should go in ect. So that you know, I don't believe that what I write will be entirely chronological, maybe not at all. I will eventually write about the order as a reference though. Also, getting everything out onto the blog will most likely take a lot of time, and I have no goal as to when it will be finished. Even if I were to write all I thought through, there will still be many ways that this 2010 trip will be moving my life in the future. So I believe it will never actually end.

It is strange being in Iowa, even New York and London were weird. First off, there are so many more wazungu (white people- non derogatory). Secondly, Rob, one of the four people that comprised our team, we left at the Nairobi airport on the 29th of June. While I was in Kenya, I began listening to the Lord of the Rings radio version, and when we left Kathryn and then Rob, and then I left Kristina, it very much felt like our fellowship was breaking (which, in the physical sense, it was).

I have over 2000 photos from the trip, and my mother and I were flipping through some of them. We got to one from Kajiado-a place you will hear much more about in the future- and my mind, for a second, took me back there. I cannot adequately explain it, but I felt like I was standing (which I was when I took the scene in the photo) but my physically intact body was sitting. I squinted my eyes because of the sun, by it was dark in the room. I snapped back and took a deep breath- it was so odd.

Every now and then when I am missing a certain bunch of people, I will close my eyes and my mind takes me back to them. A few moments ago I was missing people in Kajiado- for some reason my mind went back to a very specific day in Kajiado compound and rewinded me through my walk to morning devotions, waking up and having a small disagreement with the mosquito net, then the night before, sitting at the table and talking with Kathryn and Rob. Its amazing. I remember rocks, little details, sounds, lighting, colours of clothing and who was there, where they were, what we were talking about, everything. It's amazing.

I asked God to help me remember so that I could bring small glimpses of Kenya and Minah back with me. So that I could share. So that He could use what I shared to change peoples' hearts in my home country. He answered that prayer, just like He did throughout the whole trip. One right after another, we saw Him healing and loving and walking with us, and answering our prayers. He answered this one.