Hope Behind the Gates in Nairobi

By Carolyn Plumb

Kenya Mission Trip Participant 2009

    On September 10th, ten travelers left Greensboro for Kenya to visit Westminster’s existing outreach projects and to identify other possible ones, especially ones for a youth trip in 2010. On Friday evening we arrived in Nairobi, tired but excited about the upcoming activities and looking forward to meeting those involved in the day-to-day activities at each site. Nairobi is a bustling, noisy, dusty big city in a country where the norm is for every property to be gated. Behind the gates that we entered we found warm hospitality from people putting their faith and trust in God every day as they live out calls of service to the children of this country. To some like Salavdor and Irma and Clive and Mary, it is an adopted home. To others like Gabriel and Monica, Salome, Daniel, Anne and Peter,and Wilson, it is their native land. For each, the challenges are great and the needs are never-ending, but hope and vision abound. Our group set out to learn all we could and to watch for God’s presence in the situations and people along the way.

Orphanges

   New Life Homes in Nairobi and Nyeri provide care and nurture for abandoned babies from local hospitals, many of whom start life with HIV/AIDS. Begun as a ministry to give the babies love until they died, as was the expectation in its early days, with the love and care offered there, they not only survived but thrived. At the homes they play, eat, sleep and learn, led by adults who are committed to providing all they need to be loving, healthy children to adopted parents. And while most are adopted, another home,The Ark, provides an equally safe, nurturing space for those who are not. Westminster presented the congregation’s donated toys, books, clothing and prayer shawls for the homes, including 179 hand-knitted baby caps. We also left prayers and support for the continued life and growth of this dream to give these children a long life of love. This includes the 11 currently awaiting a space in these welcoming places.

Training Programs for Poor

  Two ministries create opportunities for poor women to learn skills that will lead to employment and income. At Amani Ya Juu, many come from places of violence to find safety and training, and then return to their communities to promote peace and reconciliation. Maggie, our guide, moved the group deeply with her passionate descriptions of this work and her own faith. At the Kazuri beads production facility we saw women shaping and painting the beads for assembling jewelry that is sold there and through distributors elsewhere. Jewelry of our own designs created from the “seconds” we brought home and sold at missions auctions will provide funds to support the Nyeri children’s home.

Schools

   We visited four schools. The primary schools in rural regions operate with the most basic classrooms and materials but with teachers who provide instruction, structure and expectations of progress for their students. These are the lucky ones of the communities, chosen to participate in a place with dedicated teachers, meals, and a spiritual foundation that assures them that God loves them. They dream big dreams, too. George wants to be a pilot. Mary wants to be a nurse. They have promise. Maybe they will make it. Everyone in our groups hopes so. In the meantime they need more grades added to the K-3 levels currently available, as well as classroom materials and mended/new uniforms. One school, St. Philip’s Academy offers classes through level 8. This academy, however, is tucked away in the warren of narrow, rutted alleyways of the Mathare slum, the second largest in Nairobi. In classrooms about the size of a walk-in close, with dirt floors and few, if any, windows, students fortunate enough to attend are drilled in reading, math, science, and social studies by young teachers who make the best of a situation most people will never see and which is indescribable. No playground here but there is Wilson, an intelligent, committed headmaster who has hope and a vision for doing whatever is possible to better the lives of the students and offer them a way out through learning and the knowledge of a God who loves them and is with them, even in such a desperate place. Westminster’s scholarships to secondary school for promising students supports this vision.

   All of the children in all of the schools need to know people care about them. We do.

Hospital

   At Tumutumu Hospital we saw how they are benefiting from Westminster’s contributions of a borehole well that provides much needed water and solar panels that heat it, when needed. Kenya is in the midst of a severe drought which makes the well even more vital than ever. And the donated vehicle that takes AIDS medications and medical personnel out into the community is also in use.

Lasting Impressions

   We saw, heard, touched, smelled and tasted too many things to be able to process it all yet. Our goal was to listen and to connect to the various people we met along the way and to communicate our interest in knowing them. We hope this ministry of presence serves as a bridge between us, a way to gain an understanding of each other at whatever level is possible, even if it is just to be the first white faces that the newest students at Ruiru School have seen. An unexpected outcome is that our two guides and drivers became our friends. Our openness to questions between us, not to mention a common love of music, led to rich exchanges of information and outlooks. Mainly, we are more alike than different. As the song says, we will never be the same again.