Day 169 - A Cry For Help

December 26, 2012 (Sam)

      This blog is a little different in nature because we are using it more as a plea for help than a fun or interesting story. We are asking for your help.

      We have come to know a woman here over the last few months who has really touched our hearts. Her name is Anita. She lives in our neighborhood in Ongata Rongai. After spending some time with her, she disclosed to us that she is HIV positive. She contracted HIV after she was raped 17 years ago. She also got pregnant. Her daughter is now in high school. As is the vicious cycle for many young girls growing up in poverty and without a father, her daughter, Katherine recently got pregnant too.

      Anita is a seamstress by trade. The only school she ever went to was to learn how to sew. She now ekes out her meager existence pumping out odd jobs on her foot-powered sewing machine in her one-room tin shack. Finding work is hard. Supporting her family is even harder. She is surviving on less than $50 a month.

      We went to visit Anita today. She was sitting outside her house crying. She is overwhelmed. Knowing the importance of education, she is insisting that her daughter return to boarding school in January, right after she is due to give birth (most high school aged children are sent away for boarding school; this is not considered a privilege or a punishment in Kenya). She informed us that she plans on shouldering the load of raising this baby, her grandchild, by herself. “My daughter needs to be in school. I am willing to sacrifice anything to see her stay in school.”

      We asked her how she was going to afford it. She said, “By faith.” We asked her, when her daughter leaves to go back to school and isn’t around to breastfeed, how would she feed the child? She said “I’ll buy milk at the store.” And we’re not talking about baby formula milk here; we’re talking about unpasteurized cow milk from a plastic bag.

      Formula is available here, but it’s expensive: around $10 for a can, and only available in the supermarkets. This is simply not realistic for a woman in Anita’s position to be able to afford. We asked Anita if she had any other supplies to take care of the baby. She said no. Now when I talk about “supplies,” I’m not referring to a crib, a carseat, or a stroller; I’m talking about a blanket, clothes, and diapers. Essentials. She has nothing for this baby.

      We prayed with her for provision, and we know very well that God often provides for people’s needs through the generosity of others.

      We asked Anita if we could tell her story, and make this plea for help to our friends. She agreed. So we are asking you, as our friends and family, to help this sister from another country. This is about the life and health of a child. This is about the education of a young woman. This is about helping a family who is not in the position to be able to help themselves.

      If you are interested in helping and encouraging Anita and her family, please do one of two things: We think it would be really powerful if you would write Anita or Katherine a letter of encouragement during this really difficult and stressful time. Send letters to us via e-mail or Facebook and we will print them off for them. Second, support Anita and her grandbaby financially by clicking the “Donate” button on the upper-righthand side of this page. This sends money directly to us via PayPal. If you would like your donation to be sent through a 501(c)(3) certified organization, please send checks to our church in Delaware at:

Lewes Church of Christ

15183 Coastal Hwy

Milton, DE 19968

      Every penny that is sent will be used to pay for formula and other supplies for this baby. One of our strongest held beliefs is that we are blessed so that we can pass that blessing forward. Our goal is to be able to help support this child for the first six months of his/her life as this woman gives up everything she knows in order to raise her grandchild and ensure that her daughter is able to complete her high school education.

      Thank you for your generosity.

      “You will be enriched in every way so that you can be generous on every occasion, and through us your generosity will result in thanksgiving to God. This service that you perform is not only supplying the needs of the Lord’s people but is also overflowing in many expressions of thanks to God” (2 Corinthians 9:11-12).

Day 168 - Our Kenyan Christmas & Video #9

December 26, 2012 (Sam)

“Sovereign Lord, as you have promised,

you now dismiss your servant in peace.

For my eyes have seen your salvation,

which you have prepared in the sight of all people,

a light for revelation to the Gentiles

and for glory to your people Israel.”

-Simeon (circa 4 BC)

      This was the declaration that Simeon made about Jesus after first seeing him in the temple courts of Jerusalem in Israel. He proclaims that he has seen the salvation of God in this child, who, as a firstborn male, has been taken to the temple by his parents to be consecrated to God.

      “The salvation of God.” Jesus was sent to be the Savior of the world because we needed a savior. We were dead in our transgressions and sins and God sent Jesus to save us from our sins. Without a savior we were doomed. When Jesus was on earth, he compared us to a lost sheep. But the sheep doesn’t stay lost; the shepherd went after it. In the same way, Jesus had to come down to earth to rescue us, to save us. This is his gift of salvation.

      But one interesting fact about this gift of salvation was that it wasn’t exactly optional for those hoping to be saved. It was needed. It was a necessity. This gift means life, and without It, there is no life. “He who has the Son has life; he who does not have the Son of God does not have life” (1 John 5:12).

      And this is what I think Christmas is all about. It’s about celebrating the birth of Jesus, his coming to earth, and the salvation that he brought with him. It’s about celebrating the Gift. I assume that this is where the tradition of gift-giving on Christmas came from, and what a wonderful tradition to remind us of what we have been given.

      This year, we got to celebrate Christmas with 14 of our Kenyan friends, many of whom we’ve come to know from the community here through our work with Beacon of Hope. We were surprised when many of them told us that this was the first Christmas they’ve ever celebrated. Christina and two of her friends spent all morning in the kitchen cooking up delicious traditional Kenyan food. In the afternoon, four families, all headed by single mothers, meandered into our apartment and the festivities began. I was dubbed the Chief Entertainer for the kids, and after two hours of getting hit in the face with balloons and kicked in the shins, we sat down to eat together. Christina and the girls went all out: fried chicken, pilau (spiced rice), chapati (Indian bread), matoke (mashed plantains), coleslaw, kachumbari (tomato, onion, cilantro and salt) and fresh fruit for desert. We ate until our bellies swelled. Then we sat down and read the Christmas story from Luke 2 together. First, I would read in English, then one of the girls would translate into Swahili.

      Next came the gifts. I’ve never quite experienced a present-opening ceremony like that before. The kids were first. They sat in the middle of the floor with their gifts wrapped on their laps just looking at them; they had no idea what to do. After some prompting, they carefully tore them open. Then the mothers each got a bucket full of food to take home. They clapped and cried. I’ve never experienced such gratitude and appreciation in such a concentrated dose in my life. People were tearing up, saying how they’ve never been given a gift like this before. And the curious part about it all, was that they didn’t get anything extraordinary or extravagant; it was just food.

      I personally love the tradition of gift giving. I love giving and I love receiving. But the more birthdays and Christmases I celebrate, the more I notice that in our culture, we rarely give out of necessity; we seem, more often, to give out of generosity, or maybe even obligation. I mean let’s be honest, getting someone a cocktail blender for Christmas because you can’t think of anything else that person might need clearly demonstrates that that person probably has no real or immediate physical needs. But Christmas for us this year was different. When the gifts we receive are needed, or life-giving, they take on a whole new meaning.

      Now I’m not trying to equate the gift of food to the gift of Jesus, but in different ways, each is necessary for our existence. Without food, we perish physically. Without Jesus, we perish spiritually.

      I hope that you will join us in celebrating this Christmas season as we rejoice in the greatest gift that has ever been given: Jesus himself.

      “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16).

      Praise his great name. We have been given a life-giving Gift.

Check out our video of our Christmas together below!

Day 164 - Getting Some Perspective

December 22, 2012 (Sam)

      I told Christina I would never do this. I told my parents I would never do this. I told myself I would never do this. But here I am... doing just this: walking down a dark, unlit back ally in the middle of the night. It’s been pouring rain all day. The road is littered with potholes and mud puddles. Every shadowy form that emerges from the shrubbery on the side of the road sends my mind racing. Our friends got robbed at machete point on this same road just last month. I think it was about the same time of night too. I’m on high alert: supremely aware of my surroundings. This is unarguably the sketchiest position I’ve found myself in here so far.

      Just a few hours earlier my biggest problem was trying to figure out why the waitress at some hole-in-the-wall restaurant here in Rongai couldn’t manage to get our bill straight. She keeps insisting that we’re going to have to pay an extra $3 because she had to get my chicken from the restaurant next door after she ran out. Apparently the restaurant next door charges an extra three dollars for its chicken. Her restaurant ran out, and I’m stuck paying for it. I may have gotten a little heated with her and told her if she couldn’t do me the decency of informing me that she was borrowing chicken from the considerably more expensive restaurant next door, then she could expect to never see us again.

      But now my mind is anywhere but on overpriced street chicken. I’m walking next to a 90 pound Kenyan woman who offers about as much security as a neutered Pomeranian and we’re walking into one of the diciest neighborhoods in this city. It’s so dark that I can’t even see 20 feet in front of me, and while I may not be able to see anything, my white skin glows at night here like a light stick at a rave party. My pale complexion and stupid ponytail are just screaming, “Rob me!” Hopefully my wicked mustache will ward off any would-be-muggers.

      Walking back from the restaurant earlier that night, Christina and I rounded the corner of our apartment only to run into a woman who we know well from the community here. She’s sewed up more than a few pairs of pants for me and we’ve enjoyed many cups of tea at her house. Her 17 year old daughter is about to pop out her first kid and we know things have been a little tight for them recently. We get to chatting with her and she informs us that she’s “stranded.” What does that mean? Apparently, after some misunderstanding with one of her fellow church members, our friend has had a hit put out on her. What!?! She’s been told that within three days, she’s going to be found and killed. Over a simple misunderstanding. So now she’s stranded here: Too scared to go home, which is nothing more than a tin shack offering no security whatsoever, and too nervous to know what to do from here. She’s scared that this person might have hired thugs to whack her. Does that actually happen!?! 

      Christina and I gently prod her inside with us, where we sit around, drinking hot tea and talking about the situation. We come to a few loose conclusions, but nothing more can be done tonight. We insist that she sleep here with us, where it’s safe. Christina grabs some blankets while I string up a mosquito net. But then our friend makes a discovery that undoes all of the comfort and ease that we’ve just tried to help provide her with: she realizes that she’s left her medication at home. And I’m not talking about some melatonin to help her get to sleep either. This woman is HIV positive and she must take ARV’s every day, on schedule, if she’s to keep from getting extremely sick and having her immune system greatly weakened. We only have one option: trudge back to her house to get her medication. Great. If I’m supposed to be learning some great cosmic lesson right now, I concede! I’ll go back and eat at the chicken lady’s place again, I swear!

      So here I am, walking next to a twig of a woman, through a neighborhood where people get mugged for cheap watches, late at night, lurkers around every corner, my firsts clenched in my pockets and my eyes bugging out of my head. How’s this for some perspective? My grumbling earlier in the night seems suddenly pretty petty compared to what I now realize is an almost constant reality for many people living here. Sometimes it takes being in a position like this before you can appreciate the security we live in. Point taken. We got the meds. Can I go home now?

Day 158 - Duty to Comfort

December 16, 2012 (Sam)

      There are two pictures I always carry with me in my back pocket here. One of my family, taken right before Christina and I left to come to Kenya, and one of me and my older brother taken back in the summer of 2000. They go everywhere with me and whenever people ask about my family, they come out. It helps people, especially people who are culturally different from us, to connect to me as a person when they see that I have a real live family too. I think somehow, it helps make me more human to them.

      But besides young women occasionally asking if any of my brothers are single, rarely do people actually ask me any questions about my family. Last Friday was an exception. I was sitting with a prenatal care counselor in her office, helping her download a program onto her computer, and she started asking me about my family. I pulled out my photos and showed them to her. She looked first at the photo of my brother and I, and then the one of my family. “Where’s your brother in this picture?” she asked, referring to the more recent photo. I was caught off-guard. I’ve been showing these pictures to people for five months and no one has ever asked me that question. I cleared my throat. “He died 11 years ago.” I told her. “How?” she probed. “He killed himself.” I told her, avoiding eye contact. She continued her interrogation. “What happened?” I was surprised the conversation had gone on this far. Even with other Americans, once we get to this point in the story, the conversation usually dead-ends in an awkward silence. But this woman continued asking me question after question, wanting to know more.

      After I revealed to her the detail that I was the last person, to my knowledge, to ever talk to my brother, she asked me if I felt guilty at all. I told her I didn’t; I had no idea what his intentions were the night he died.

      I finally asked her, why did she want to know if I felt guilty? She told me her story. When she was 17 years old, she got married. Her and her husband moved into his parent’s house, and she got pregnant shortly thereafter. Her husband left to go into the city and find work. She only saw him once in a while after that. What little money he made working, never made it home to her. She eventually gave birth, but had no money to take care of her baby. Her child quickly became malnourished. She went to her in-laws for help and advice, but they refused to help her, assuring her the the infant would be just fine. One day, when her baby was 8 months old, he started to have diarrhea. She pleaded with her in-laws to give her money to take the baby to the hospital. They refused again, promising her it would go away. The diarrhea went on for three days. Each day, she’d plead with them for money to go to the hospital, and each day they would turn her down. On day three, her baby boy died. She told me that she wanted to know if I felt guilty about what happened to my brother because she has been racked with guilt every day for the last 15 years. She blames herself for her child dying because she had no idea how to take care of a baby by herself. No one ever taught her any better.

      This woman, as I mentioned earlier, has since dedicated her life to helping young, pregnant mothers understand how to take care of themselves and their future children. She has made it her life’s mission to never see another person suffer the way that she has because they “didn’t know any better.” She has suffered in a very unique way, and this suffering has inspired her life. She’s not just sitting idly by, letting the pain eat away at her; she is doing something about it.

      I hope that my life never becomes defined by the bad things that have happened to me; rather, let my life’s work be about how I’ve reacted to those bad things, and how I will use them to try and make the world a better place.

      “Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves receive from God. (2 Corinthians 1:3-4)

Day 154 - Jamhuri Day

December 12, 2012 (Sam)

      Today is Jamhuri Day, which probably means nothing to you. But for Kenyans, this is one of the biggest, and unarguably the most important holiday celebrated here. It’s the equivalent of our 4th of July. In case you didn’t know, much like the US, Kenya was also under British rule until it gained independence in 1963. I don’t know who the Brits thought they were, just rolling in and taking over all these countries without their say-so, but thanks to some less-than-humane tactics and quick thinking by some Kenyan gangsters and politicians (what’s the difference?), Kenya was also able to gain independence on December 12th, exactly 49 years ago.

      Unfortunately, even after gaining independence, tribal ties, combined with the consolidation of power under the newly elected president Jomo Kenyatta, led to an authoritarian regime, the effect of which would haunt Kenya for decades to come.

      As you may have read or heard about, the Kenyan elections held in 2007 were a disaster. After an election obviously rife with corruption, ugly ethnic confrontations broke out all over the country resulting in the deaths of over 1,000 people and the displacement of over 600,000. Hundreds of homes were burned to the ground while girls and women were being raped in the streets. Roadblocks were set up and public transportation vehicles pulled over by violent protestors. They would check the ID cards of passengers and immediately slaughter those who didn’t belong to their particular tribe.

      Below is a 30-minute documentary produced by Picha Mtaani, called Heal the Nation, which graphically portrays some of the fallout of the violence and discusses what Kenya is facing during this coming year, when elections are held again in March of 2013.

Day 146 - On the Move & Video #8

December 4, 2012 (Sam)

      For the last five months, Christina and I have been working to develop a child sponsorship program for an NGO called Beacon of Hope outside of Nairobi, Kenya. Our desire coming over here was to be able to implement a program that would facilitate an easy relationship between international donors and needy children in Kenya. We have come to realize that Beacon of Hope has a different vision for how they see this happening. While our focus was primarily on engaging international support, Beacon hopes to be able to empower these children through more local means, engaging members in their immediate community by encouraging investment in the lives of children here through support not only with their school fees but through mentorship and one-on-one interaction as well. This takes a lot of the options for international support off the table, including how we’ve encouraged people to be willing to support the children in the past, through the online sponsorship program that we were hoping to set up. This has been a hard reality for us to stomach, but we are confident that God is using this situation with the best interests of the kids in mind.

      All this to say that we are finishing our work at Beacon of Hope earlier than previously anticipated. We have helped them put systems in place that will hopefully be very beneficial to both Kenyans interested in helping the local youth, and the children who are still in such desperate need of support for their schooling. With our work at Beacon finished, we are turning our attention to other project opportunities through some different local organizations that we’ve become affiliated with other the last months.

      With this shift in focus, has also come a shift in location. We have moved out of the Beacon of Hope guesthouse and further into the heart of Ongata Rongai, the town we have come to love.

      Life outside of the Beacon compound, for the three days that we’ve known it, is intriguingly different. People used to have to go through two gates and seven guards to get to where we were living. Now we live in an apartment where there is only one gate and one night guard between us and the outside world. And it’s kind of a relief actually. Since we first settled into the guesthouse at Beacon, we’ve felt like we were missing out on a big part of the experience of living in Kenya, being that we were existing almost entirely within the confines of the buttoned-up Beacon compound. Now we are just living in the local community, like any other Kenyan. The accommodations are a tad primitive, but we like the simplicity of life here. We compare it to an extended backpacking trip: cooking with a propane stove, taking bucket showers, no refrigerator. Basically, we love it.

Check out a video tour of our new place!

Day 144 - Ripe for the Picking

December 2, 2012 (Sam)

      I can finally pick my nose in public. It’s something I’ve been wanting to be able to do since I was a kid, and I’ve finally found a country where it’s socially acceptable.

      One of the reasons that I love traveling the most is that I’m able to experience different cultures, and I love being able to learn from our differences. This exposure has helped me be able to evaluate my own social upbringing and develop my own beliefs about what I think is really prudent instruction, and what, that we do, is really just ridiculous, culturally-ingrained habit. Like the fact that our culture tells us that picking our nose in public is socially unacceptable. If you really think about it, what’s so gross about picking your nose? Boogers are just dried nasal mucus, and let’s be honest, when they’re stuck up there sometimes they can get really uncomfortable. So picking them out is the rational thing to do! Yet our society has deemed this act to be gross and inappropriate, especially when in a public setting. Well, for all you repressed nose-pickers out there, I have the solution for you: move to Kenya. Public picking is not judged here; in fact, it seems to be encouraged.

      At first it was a shock. We’d be in the middle of a conversation with someone, and all of the sudden they’d have their index finger halfway up their nasal passageway, digging around like they were trying to locate a secret decoder ring inside a box of Kix. But over time, I’ve come to tolerate, if not embrace the custom.

      To juxtapose this culturally acceptable practice though, is the cultural embarrassment associated with using a toothpick. Kenyans go to considerable lengths to shield this apparently disgraceful practice from others, always being sure to cover their mouth and “toothpick hand” with their other hand, sometimes even turning and ducking their heads as they harvest the remnants of lunch from between their teeth. No, you will never catch someone exposing their grill while using a toothpick here. But don’t be surprised if you see someone extract a sticky green blob from their nose with their finger and then expect you to shake their hand. And you better not refuse either. That would just be rude.