Chris Loehmer Kincaid's Blog, page 165

Not Quite My Final Thoughts on Kenya

Hard to believe that it was only two months ago that I was in Kenya. Where has the time gone and what final inspiration should I leave with you as I move on to other things to blog about?
1) I don't think many in Kenya have high blood pressure. They truly live by the saying of "hakuna matata" - no worries. I am reading a book, "All That You Can't Leave Behind: a rookie missionary's life in Africa". The book is written in journal-format, so each day covers not only what is happening in his life, but random thoughts on life in Kenya. He explained in one entry that this attitude of being so laid-back is what helps to keep Kenya in poverty. When things are going well - there are enough rains and crops are growing, instead of thinking of ways to conserve this water for the drought that will surely come, they just enjoy the prosperity while they have it, not thinking much about the inevitable return to poverty.
2) They don't really drive on the wrong side of the road. They drive on the side of the road which is opposite of the side we drive on here in America. So why, as soon as I got there, was I comfortable with riding on the left side of the road. And when I came home after only two weeks, it felt wrong to drive on the right side of the road. Is it because I am right-brained or left-brained or just need a new brain?
3) I haven't figured out their school system. The government offers free education through elementary school. So why were a lot of people talking about school fees? I know they have to buy their own uniforms and books, but what were these extra fees? I think that there are a lot of private schools which charge fees, but these schools didn't look that much better than the public schools. I really need to get my daughter to clarify that for me.
4) You can buy anything at the Nakumatt. Sometimes it will be a lot cheaper than in the US, sometimes it will cost more. (You cannot be too careful with your digestive health when you are traveling.)
5) Everyone has cellphones. At first that seems like such a luxury, especially when food, clothing and housing seem to be lacking. But a lot of people do business that way. They need to stay in touch to make any money. The example that immediately comes to mind is anyone who supplies any sort of transportation for hire.

6) I think that I have more thoughts, so this will be continued next time…

Faces

But Jesus called the little children to him and said to his followers, “Let the little children come to me. Don’t stop them, because God’s kingdom belongs to people who are like these little children. The truth is, you must accept God’s kingdom like a little child accepts things, or you will never enter it.” Luke 18:16-17 Easy-to-Read Version





 These are some of the faces of the children we encountered while in Kenya. I feel lazy by not writing some profound words about these faces. But really? What else can be said, the pictures speak for themselves. 
I pray God please bless all these precious little ones. 

Happy Fourth of July! Celebrate with me!

"You know what cross country coaches say? You run the first miles on your legs and the last mile on your guts." Pat Loehmer (1959-1999)

Sorry that I haven't finished the story of my trip to Kenya. I am close. In fact, I only have closing remarks and final thoughts to share with you, along with a few random pictures that haven't fit in anywhere else. But that will have to wait.

Here it is the Fourth of July back in the States. When my kids were little, we would do the parade and whatever else we had to in town. Run back in at dark for the fireworks. Now that my kids are over that, and my husband works this year, I didn't have to go to town for anything. I planned on just spending all day being lazy at home.

Then something crazy happened. It all started earlier this spring when a coworker saw a picture of her daughter and grandson in the local paper. The picture was promoting the upcoming Fun Run in town on June 18. They had run in it the year before. My coworker thought the picture was great (their own little claim to fame), and from that she got the crazy idea that she and I should run in this race this year.

I have never run before in my life. In high school I would have been voted in the top 5% of the least athletic students. What was I thinking?

I looked over the details. Five kilometers. That's just over three miles. I could do that. So I started running. The first night after running one-tenth of a mile, I thought my lungs were going to explode. My legs had turned to Jello

It didn't get easier very quickly. I stuck with it though, spending more time on the treadmill or just running laps in my basement as winter dragged through all of April. But suddenly I was close to running a full mile.

Then other plans popped up for June 18. Good thing, too, as there is no way I could have even walked three miles by then. My coworker had backed out by then too. But now I had a dream. I wanted to run a 5K.

They have one here in my hometown every Fourth of July. When the first coworker chickened out, I begged two others to take up the challenge with me.

I knew I wouldn't be able to run the full way, but everyone told me that a run-walk-run-walk pace was ok. As long as I was able to jog around that last corner and cross that finish line!

Something happened though as I was a block from that last corner. My sister Pat popped into my head. "You run the last mile on your guts." Get out of my head, I said to myself, I don't need to start crying now. What I needed was the kick. And I got it. And I finished at a sprint - oh, yeah, right. Like I could sprint at the beginning even! But I finished.
Don't we look all fresh and ready to go? For the three of us on the right it was our first 5K ever. The guy, my boss, runs marathons. I think he just ran the 5K to mock us - just kidding, he's been very supportive of us. The gal on the far left also runs marathons and has started training for triathlons. She ran the 10K and did pretty good. 
Why do I already look like I am in pain? We are just starting out! Coming around that last corner and getting my kick on! 
Running the race for my sister Pat.

When God closes a door . . .

They do not fear bad news; they confidently trust the Lord to care for them. Psalm 112:7 New Living Translation
The Compassion center at Ewauso Kdong.As you may know, for the past eight years, I have sponsored a little lady from India through the organization Compassion, International. Neela has grown from that little girl into a beautiful young woman. And because life goes on and sometimes it gets away from us, my little lady in India is no longer in the program. (This link might answer some of your questions regarding this.) 
I got a call Friday night from Compassion explaining the situation and was asked if I wanted to sponsor a different child in India. “Well,” I said to the woman on the other end of the phone, “Can I tell you my story?”
After I rambled for a bit, the woman asked, “So would you like to sponsor a child in Kenya?”
Ya think?
I knew that this would happen one day, that I would be asked if I wanted to continue sponsorship and where would I like this new child to be from? I go on the Compassion website all the time trying to find kids who might be living in the places I visited in Africa. How cool would it be for them to walk the same land that I walked? How cool if Val could find this new child while she is still in Kenya?
God guide me, send me to the child who needs me the most.
“Um,” I said to the Compassion woman still holding on the other end, “Give me a girl in Kenya who has been waiting the longest for a sponsor.”
“I have a little girl – I can’t pronounce her name, but she is nine years old. Oh, her birthday is July 11. What a wonderful birthday present for her.”
“That’s perfect,” was all I could answer because by this time I was crying.
“We will send her profile within a week. Otherwise if you go to our website, she should be on your account within 24 hours.”
This was eight o’clock Friday night. When I checked my Compassion account at six am Saturday morning, there was my new little girl. Mueni. No, she is not from any place that I have visited or that Val has visited. According to Google Maps she is a good two and a half hour drive from Nairobi, which on Kenyan roads is more like five hours.

But that is ok. Just like Neela from India, Mueni is the child God chose for me. And I will accept His will.  
The Lord will work out his plans for my life— for your faithful love, O Lord, endures forever. Don’t abandon me, for you made me. Psalm 138:8 New Living Translation
And Lord, don’t abandon Neela or Mueni. Amen The Compassion center in Nairobi. 

Eating like an Ethiopian

I may have told you this before, but when I was a kid my family sat around the supper table every night to eat together.  Just like a Norman Rockwell painting. The thing that Mr. Rockwell forgot though, when capturing the middle-America typical family, was that the TV was on at supper time. And the program on the TV was the nightly news. It seemed that every night there was news from Vietnam and later on from Watergate. It also seemed like the famine in Ethiopia was covered every night as well.
I did some online research and that famine in Ethiopia really did not last throughout my entire childhood (like the Vietnam War did). But it was those pictures of starving children in Africa, their bellies huge, their arms and legs sticks, their eyes vacant, that made me decide way back then that someday I would go to a third world country and make a difference.
Who knew how that would all end up? You know where it all ended for me during this last trip to Kenya? In an Ethiopian restaurant.

Apparently Ethiopian food is very popular. I always pictured Ethiopians eating little besides rice or gruel. But they serve a variety of dishes, the most common being several different items plopped onto injera, the spongy-looking, pancake-like flatbread which they use to scoop up their food.

I’ve had worse food, I’ve had better. The important thing isn’t what you eat as much as who you eat it with.  

Final Thoughts on Saikeri

We were in Saikeri, the land of the Maasai for such a short time. Tuesday afternoon came and we needed to head back to Nairobi.
What are my fondest memories of Maasailand? The peace, the quiet, the stillness at night sitting in the yard looking up at a million stars and finding the Big Dipper and knowing that we are never that far from home, that home is where you find yourself. (And kicking myself for not at least trying to get a picture.)  
And who can forget the infamous choo, the hole in the ground to use for a toilet. Going for four days without a shower. The medical clinic with no water or electricity. Minor inconveniences in the grand scheme of things.
Oh, but the chai tea. Until you have had chai tea made in the Bush by a Maasai momma, you have not had chai tea. If you get the chance you also have to try authentic ugali, but only a small piece.
The ride there in the back of an ancient Toyota pickup. And the ride back on the back of a piki-piki, a Kenyan motorbike fit for three and a week’s worth of supplies.

Sigh. I would go back to Kenya in a heartbeat if I could, and I would definitely spend more time at the place beyond the end of the road.   The yard at the volunteer house in Saikeri. The shower room is on the far right - a shower of course is taken using two buckets of rain water. The choo - or toilet - is just next to the shower room.  Sunset The piki-piki ride back to Ngong. While I was hanging on for dear life, Val was holding her camera out to the side to get pictures.

Just Like Working Back Home

When I traveled to Kenya this May, I found it easiest to say I was going on a Volunteer Trip. “Volunteer”. What exactly does that mean? It sounds so ambitious, like I am going to spend forty hours a week working, only not getting paid. Does anyone who goes on a “volunteer” trip work those kinds of hours? Oh, sure, a lot of them do, but I think in general we get more down time than we do back at home. Which is ok.
Or I could say I went on a mission trip. To me that is even more pressure, not only am I volunteering my time, I am on a mission. I have a goal to accomplish, whether it is bringing Christianity to the unsaved or bringing typhoid vaccine to the masses.
I was talking to my boss this week about something similar. His daughters are on a trip to South Africa for three weeks, and their group leader is calling it an “Acquaintance trip”. I think that was the word anyway. The main goal of the trip is to turn those acquaintances into friendships. You travel to a distant country to work with the people of that country, you have a physical project to accomplish, but you have the more important goal of getting to know these people and their culture. You don’t know much about them at first, but over the course of your stay, you come to understand what they are all about.
Know what I mean? Or am I rambling? Maybe I will just get to my point.
The two weeks I spent in Kenya in May, I did a few things here and there, but I think mostly I was there to meet people, learn their stories and understand the lives they lead. All so I could turn around and share that with you.
All except those two days I worked at the clinic in Saikeri. I’ve had busier days back home, but never days that busy in a foreign country. Just being in a foreign country, at a clinic with no water of any kind and no electricity, where there is a huge language barrier, made the work hard enough.
I’m used to being on my feet all day, and a lot of days I don’t get time for lunch. But I do take some water breaks and I do wash my hands with soap and water between every patient. Neither of those things happened at the clinic in Saikeri. Not that I’m complaining. Those were two of my favorite days in Africa.
What kind of patients did we see? An elderly lady with possible Tuberculosis, a young man with a two-day old machete wound, an older woman with a possible broken hip, a three-year-old with an abscess the size of an egg yolk on his head, and lots and lots of viral upper respiratory infections (i.e. colds).
The clinic was quite fortunate to have a physician assistant from Great Britain volunteering there, in addition to Rhoda, the Kenyan nurse who ran the clinic. Unfortunately, this nurse didn’t speak very much Maa, the language of the Maasai. Luckily most of them knew a little Swahili, but not all of them. Which meant, the PA and I would wait for this convoluted translation to take place with nearly every patient.
The most help that I gave to the clinic was the long line of babies that I gave routine immunizations to. The mommas would give their card to Rhoda. She would write their information in this huge ledger, while telling me which shots the baby needed.
I was quite pleased that these babies were getting the same immunizations we give back home. That is such a blessing to these wee ones. Give them the basics at least, keep them from getting the childhood diseases like measles or polio or even pneumonia. Diseases which could be fought off under optimal conditions, but which could easily kill an infant out here.

I think I did ok those two days.  The refrigerator at the clinic. With no electricity, it is run on a gas coolant. Drawing up immunizations. Giving immunizations.  The Physician Assistant I worked with at the clinic and two of our patients. The two white tabs on the desk are malaria tests. We tested all of our patients for malaria those two days, and all the tests came out negative. Rhoda the Kenyan nurse who was in charge of the clinic. 

Walking Safari

When I was in Kenya this May, I didn't go on a tourist's safari. I didn’t ride in a Jeep with a bunch of other people, traveling across wide open plains, snapping pictures of dozens of wild African animals. I experienced that seven years ago, and though I would love to do it again sometime, this year there was neither time nor money in the budget.  
This time, I went on what I will call a walking safari. We didn't see much wildlife but we took in the peaceful beauty around us. We got to sense what Africa is really like, feel the earth beneath our feet, breathe in the clear air which has filled this space for millennium.
It was a seven hour walk there and back. I was tired beyond belief by the time we got back to our guest house. But it was that kind of tired that just makes you want to stop and sigh and be thankful for the amazing day.  It was a beautiful day for a walk. The animals in the distance are Maasai cattle. Our destination was that little peak in the far right corner.   The classic Kenyan Acacia tree.   Caught a few zebras  And a few gazelle. Most of them are Thomson's gazelle, but on the right, the guy without a strip and with larger horns is a Grant's gazelle.   The blob in the middle of the picture is an emu. Sorry I couldn't get him in any better focus.   Even saw some flora.   There's that peak. We are getting close.   And we made it! Now we just have to walk all the way back. 

Home, Sweet, Saikeri

Ok, so the ride to Saikeri, crammed in the back of a Toyota pickup was tons of fun. At one point the truck just couldn’t make it up a steep, rocky hill, so we all got out to walk up.
On another hill, which wasn’t quite so long, one of the men jumped out of the truck as it inched along. He picked up a big rock on the side of the road, and whenever the truck seemed about to slip backwards, he would set the rock under one of the rear wheels.
When we arrived in Saikeri, we dropped off a few of the people on one end of town, then drove to the other end to drop off the supplies. Ok, the town is like a block long with maybe a dozen buildings on the main street.
 Most of the supplies we had brought out here in the truck were going into Phillip’s store. Here is Phillip, fresh out of high school and an entrepreneur. Out of his little shop, he sells medicine and feed for the livestock which the Maasai raise and cherish.

Phillip also works for Maggie, helping the volunteers to feel welcome at her humble home.
 The only electricity in her house came from the small solar panel on the roof, which provided enough power for a single light bulb in the living room and to charge cell phones. All the water for the house came from rain barrels under the eaves. We brought our own drinking water with us.
Just like when I was at Mosiro seven long years ago, this place felt just like home to me. I can live with a few inconveniences. I could have stayed forever.   
Oh, and the chai tea? Brewed to perfection! The flies thought so too. 

I'm riding in what?

            When I went to Kenya the first time, back in 2006, the highlight of our trip was the stay in Massailand. We worked and played for several days at Mosiro, running a medical clinic and doing health education for the Maasai who live there.             This time in Kenya, my daughter Val and I visited a different place in Maasailand. The town was called Saikeri and the road there was as tenuous, though shorter, than the road to Mosiro. But upon arrival, just like Mosiro, I instantly knew that the trip had been worth it.             This is how we got to Saikeri.            We left the volunteer house around ten in the morning, took a matatu to Nakumatt Junction and then a city bus to Ngong. Ngong is a bit like Narok – very busy, with a mix of modern and Maasai. It is the last vestige of civilization before heading down out of the Ngong Hills and into the Rift Valley.
            Our ride to Saikeri, Maggie, said she would meet us at the corner in front of Barclay Bank. As if she had nothing else to do and nowhere else to go, she suggested we stop at a café for chai tea and samosas.             I’d had chai at Nakumatt Junction and had been so disappointed. It tasted like the chai which I made at home and nothing like what I remembered drinking in Kenya the last time. Now here at Ngong, I thought, finally, really chai. But it wasn’t to be; this still didn’t taste right. At least the beef samosas were good.             After visiting and finishing our snack, Maggie directed us to the Naivas grocery store so we could get some last supplies to take with us into the Bush. Maggie left us there while she went off to run some errands.             With our meager purchases crammed in our backpacks we waited patiently at the designed spot and soaked up the ambience of Ngong. Ok, there is no ambience in Ngong, just a lot of people and traffic, dust and noise. 
            Finally Maggie came back and took us to the vehicle we were to ride out to Saikeri. It was a two-wheel drive, compact, ancient Toyota pickup. The bed was half-full of supplies and Maggie suggested that I ride in the cab with her.             Val naturally thought I should get the full Kenyan experience, so suggested I ride in the bed of the truck with her. That sounded fine to me. How bad could it be? I grew up riding in the back of my dad’s Chevy.             Oh, but it got bad. First off, Maggie took off to run another errand. While we waited, people kept coming up to the truck and setting boxes and bags in the back of it. Then they would just walk off. I kept asking myself, do they know what they are doing and where this stuff is going?
            Then two older Maasai women came along and crawled into the bed of the truck. Then another hundred pounds worth of supplies were dropped in. Two more Maasai women and a Maasai girl clambered in.             I said, “Val, maybe we better get in before they run out of room.” So we sat on the boards which were across the wheels on each side and waited some more, while more supplies and more people crowded in.             All total, by the time we left, an hour later, there were nine people in the bed of the truck, two boys on the roof of the cab and three people in the cab, along with hundreds of pounds of boxes, bags and loaves of bread. There was no longer any room in the back of the truck, so we road on the side hanging for dear life to the thin railing running along the box.
            After being in Ngong for what had to be hours (this is why you don't wear a watch in Kenya, it just makes for more frustration), it was time to head into the Bush. Check back on Tuesday to see how that went.