My church's trip to Kenya, or, I'll be alone for 2 weeks!

On August 2, my parents will be going to Kenya on a missions trip with my church. My dad leads the group, which is why he needs to be healthy (see my other post on his visit to the ER). I've been 3 times, but I'm just not well enough to go anymore. The trips began in 1986 when a member of our church who worked for the UN was approached by a group of Maasai, traditionally a tribe that has killed all outsiders, during the drought. They not only wanted help with water, but also asked that they establish a school to teach their children because they were getting cheated by other tribes and didn't have the understanding to stand up for themselves. For example, they don't have a word for "have" in their language. They "use" or "are with" something. They are herders, and they travel from field to field with their cows and goats. So someone from another tribe would say, "Can I have this land?" and their response was, "Yes, you can use it because I'm not using it now." Then, they'd come back to find fences put up and be unable to enter their land, not knowing that they had just given it away.

So they wanted their children to get an education in order for them to survive in the new world. The UN worker started a relief organization and connected my church to this particular village. Other churches have been connected to other villages. And when I say village, it's actually just a central location, with circles of mud huts scattered all around it, and the people walk 2-5 miles each way to get to the Hope Center, as they are called. My church has been going back to the same group every two years since 1986, and how they have established a couple other Hope Centers as well. The Hope Center has a church, a school, a well with a windmill, a medical clinic (staffed by a full-time nurse, which has dramatically improved the health of the people there), housing for the teachers (since housing is expensive, this was a smart move, as now all the teachers want to teach there because they'd live for free, so the school is now the second best in the district!), a cookhouse, and some other places.

People from my church pay money each month to help support the children's school fees; the government pays for the teachers' salaries. If you build a school, they'll staff it because labor is cheap, but the government can't afford to build new schools. To try to encourage the parents to make an investment in their children's education, we ask them to pay 1/3 of the school fees, and we pay 2/3. Then, they've established a center council, who decides on scholarships for the orphans or fatherless children and other projects they want done around the village. My dad administers this from our end and tells them they have X dollars, and they have to decide what is the most important thing to do with those dollars, and he won't release more until he gets a clear accounting of how they used the money, to make sure no one is stealing it.

We eventually left the relief agency we started with because it was taking too much out for overhead and went to another one that lets my dad do all the stuff from the U.S. end and donate his work, so all the money goes directly to Kenya. That one was established by a wonderful older lady who has lived in Kenya more than 50 years and has done wonderful work saving children as a nurse. But the problem is that she is now in her 80s and I think is getting some kind of mental illness. For one thing, she is very paranoid about letting others get too much power because she is afraid they're going to "mess up" what she has started. And she keeps firing people but seeming to think that they asked to go. My dad is the chair of the U.S. board of that relief agency, but the U.S. side doesn't really have any power; it's really all in Kenya, and there are 3 people on that board: the missionary woman, her adopted Kenyan son, and one other man. So it is heavily stacked towards her. She has even forbidden the people in Kenya to communicate with my dad, so they've had to go behind her back to tell him of problems that have gone on.

Can she do this legally in the U.S.? Not really. But since she has so much power in Kenya, they aren't in a position to try to oust her yet. It wasn't until just a year ago that they even got control of the computers that contained the list of donors to the agency, so she could have told the whole board to take a hike and gone on her merry way if she had chosen!

It's sad to see this because she really is a wonderful woman who has sacrificed a lot to help the poorest people in Kenya. She is much more Kenyan than American. I truly believe it is a mental illness that is doing this to her and not her own nature, especially based upon what I know of her past. Her husband used to fly supplies to missionaries in parts where they didn't have easy road access!

But anyway, my church group will be going and leading programs with the children and doing stuff with the adults. The teachers all speak English, and the children learn it in school, so there are enough people around to help translate.

One thing that I also like is that while this is a mission trip, where they do teach people about God, they make an emphasis to do so within their own culture. Especially historically, people thought that if someone wanted to become a Christian, that person had to become "Westernized." Missionaries made them change their clothes and their music and every way of living. But we believe that is inappropriate, so the only thing that we really do emphasize is that if they want to be a Christian, they can't take another wife. If they already have a second wife, they are to take care of her and her children, but they are not to marry a second woman. There also has been some teaching recently against female genital mutilation, but interestingly, that has been a push by the African church itself and not by our group. We detested it, but felt that a movement against that should come within the Africans themselves, and it has!

I myself am not looking forward to the two weeks during which they'll be gone. I'll be home alone with the two sweet dogs and the nasty parrot. I have lined up a couple activities to do with people, but on the whole, I am going to be by myself, and I don't do very well when I am by myself. I get really depressed, and I don't take care of myself well either. When I was discussing this with my therapist today, he teased me that when they come back, I'll be 95 pounds! I wish I'd lose weight, but not to that degree!

So as a means of trying to preempt the probably loneliness and depression I'm likely to experience, would any of you be willing to let me call you during those two weeks? I have a couple friends I can call in the evenings after work is over, but not many friends who are home during the day. The one who is on maternity leave is pretty spotty as to when she is available to talk, so I don't count her. If you would be willing to let me chat with you (or even to call me if you don't hear from me), would you PM me? I'd really appreciate it. I just know how badly I did the last two times I was home alone, and I don't want to let myself get like that again.

And I'm sure I'll be posting plenty here, as long as I feel well enough!