Nursing a Dream

Today was Sunday. It doesn’t need planning, it’s a day for the church family and our Kibos family.

I woke early as I always seem to do at Sunset. The light of dawn streams through the fly screens that pass for windows above the big sliding doors onto the balcony. The birds scurry and scutter around the trees and the water hyacinth, brought in by the overnight tides, cover the once blue lake with a cloak of verdant green.

Anton arrived ten minutes earlier than we had agreed. Regular readers of this blog will appreciate that this is a miracle at least on a par with feeding a crowd of five thousand hungry mouths on a hillside above Lake Galilee with a couple of loaves of bread and some fish. He told me that on Sundays they are now trying to work on English time (as opposed to the ubiquitous “African time” where hakuna matata was the norm and promptness was for those with a hurried outlook on life). After talking with Anton in the car as we made our way through the busy market streets of Kondele things became a little clearer. The church had begun to flourish when they asked people in the village why they didn’t come “you go on too long”, “you are too late”, the “meetings last a long time and I can’t manage the things I need to do as well”. So, in a radical cultural move, they had committed to starting on time and to finishing no later than 12:30.

As I approached the church it was clear that it had worked. The church was full of people, listening attentively to Pastor Hezbon’s teaching session (9:30 to 10:30 prompt)

Hezbon is a lovely man, a former hotel manager who came to the church the very first Sunday we opened in 2004. In 2007 he felt called to give up his work and turned to bible college, where he graduated a couple of years later. He is now the pastor and teacher of the church, situated just 600 yards from where he was born.

When Hezbon had finished Moses introduced a guest to the church.

Fred Okello runs a small children’s organisation he set up himself whilst he worked as a teacher. It is called Onyalo Biro Orphans and Widows Project (Onyalo Biro means "It has arrived"). Fred now works for the organisation full time, promoting a special purpose and a very specific message. He introduced himself, and talked about why he was here. He was touring the area with a small group of primary school children because they wanted to preach a message to the church and to the community as a whole, as the march 2013 presidential elections draw near

It’s a message of peace.

In 2007, the last time elections were held in Kenya, they were followed by a time of unprecendented protest and violence. Kofi Annan had eventually brokered a peace between the factions, but not before tribal lines had been drawn. People had been forced from their homes, repatriated to their homelands and a number had been killed in violent and bloody protest. Kondele, just a mile or two from Kibos, on the way to the city centre, had been a catalyst for the troubles, with roadblocks and gunfire night time companions.

The children sang songs and read poems they had written. Songs that reminded their fellow Kenyans that they lived in a beautiful and rich land, from the fish of Lake Victoria, to the snow capped peaks of Mount Kenya and the Flamingo filled lakes of Nakuru and the Rift Valley. They sang that theirs was a future to believe in and to hope for, here was a generation pleading for peace, for factions to live together in mutual respect and regard.

I found myself listening to them with tears in my eyes, hoping beyond hope that they would see their dreams for their country come true. Changing the stigma of past generations, the pain of past wrongs and the hurt of past prejudice is not easy. But the children made us all see at least some hope for the months and the years to come.

After church I made my way to Kibos, our rehabilitation centre and home to more than 20 children. The holidays are just beginning, as the Kenyan school year comes to an end and the house was filled with the sounds of children tucking into lunch, hungry from their morning Sunday School.

These moments after church are important times to meet up with people, to chat and to hear from some of the children one to one.

I talked with Boniface and Cosmas, old friends from Kachok, with Shadrack (form 4 next year) and Stanley (new to Mamboleo in March), with Henrietta (looking for a nursing or community health course at college) and then I talked with Sheila.

 

Sheila’s story is, like so many of the children we care for, fraught with sadness. Her father walked out on them, and her mother left the rural home for life in the slums of Obunga, on the outskirts of Kisumu. Unable to take care of Sheila she often found herself in the care of her grandmother, an elderly lady who took in washing to try and make ends meet. Sheila’s mother eventually disappeared and her grandmother fell ill and moved back to her rural home. Sheila, in her final year at primary school, was left alone.

It was here that John, our social worker in Mamboleo came across her, alerted by the school to the tragedy that had unfolded. John introduced her to the Trust, initially to the education programme where she was supported in her primary school studies. As her home situation became clear she moved to Kibos, to the care of Moses and Tatu, and made friends with the other girls we support.

Sheila did well in her final year at primary and has spent the past four years at secondary school. In the last week she has completed her Form 4 exams and will find out in a couple of months what the future holds. She is predicted a grade B- or C+

I talked with her about her dreams, her ambitions. Her eyes lit up as she talked about her hopes. She told me that she had, since she was 7 or 8 years old, wanted to be a nurse, to serve others.

If she gets the grades she is predicted, then Sheila will be able to join college in March next year, for a diploma in Nursing. The fees are expensive, but I know that they will be provided. They always have before.

Sheila’s is just one story, there have been many more today, and there will be many more this week. They fill me with hope for a new generation of Kenyans, rising out of the ashes of personal tragedy, determined to make the most of what life offers.

It's times like this that bring it home to me, this is what the Trust does, it’s what our donors and supporters help us to achieve. It makes me proud, and once again my eyes are full of tears as I write.

I have sat and watched as children have pleaded to the adults of the community for a peaceful, hopeful future, sat and listened as a young girl shares the hopes she has for a life lifted up from despair in order to bring hope and comfort to others.

And I am reminded that Jesus took a child in his arms and said “the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these”.