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.