The Greatest Distance

Pam and I arrived in Nairobi last night after the long flight from Amsterdam. We have been looking forward to this trip, to catching up with Moses and Paul James, seeing how the work is evolving and growing.

Before we came out we were asked almost constantly by people “You wont come back with ebola will you?” to which our reply was to the effect that we were going to be quite a long way from the outbreak, which has gripped Sierra Leone and parts of West Africa.

In fact, Freetown, Sierra Leone is just over 3,500 miles away from Nairobi – or to put that in perspective, about a thousand miles further than Baghdad is from London. 

My home near Burnley in Lancashire is a mere 2,500 miles from the North Pole, considerably closer than we are from the virus outbreak.

Which just goes to show what a vast continent Africa is.

It made me wonder if I’m not guilty sometimes of grouping the wide variety of cultures and countries together under one label. It would be easy to see the African continent as one labelled with poverty, sickness and unable to support itself, but that is unfair on the wonderful and diverse people that live here. Of course there are deserts and wilderness, tribalism and tension, but there are also some of the most beautiful people I know, doing their best in difficult circumstances.

No child would choose to be born in poverty, no parent would wish their child to have to live on the streets.

Perhaps the largest distance we need to cover and overcome is that of our perception.

When Nicky and I first came out to Kisumu we talked with street children in Kisumu, on the rubbish dump, in the slums and in the rural towns and villages. It’s so tempting to label the children as a lost cause, as thieves, as pests, as hopeless and to turn our backs on them. But our experience over the last 13 years is of a picture that is anything but straightforward.

We have children now at University, children with secondary school qualifications training to be nurses, community health workers, special needs assistants. We have welders, motorcycle engineers, car maintenance workers and salesmen. We even have a pastor.

On this trip Pam and I will be accompanied by a small team of volunteers from the Ackworth Boys Brigade, near Pontefract. I did a talk there last year with Hilary on the invitation of Paula, one of the leaders of the group, who had seen something Hilary had shared on Facebook. 

Since that time Paula and Colin, one of the other Group Leaders have raised funds for a trip of their own. We will be working on our land with them, raising up a water tank and putting in some irrigation that they have worked hard to fund.

Whilst this is a wonderful gift to the work here, enabling us to grow vegetables all year instead of just in the rainy season, it is the gift of their time that is the most precious. We look forward to welcoming them to Kisumu tomorrow and to sharing what can happen when we change our perceptions of street children and give them hope for their struggle, seeing what they can become.

A wise man once said that the longest journey we ever undertake is to move what is in our heads eighteen inches downward to our hearts. When we exchange what we thought was knowledge for a deeper understanding, empathy and compassion.