Day 1: January 25th, 2014

The Long Day & The Long Journey At last! The first update from our January 2014 trip to Kenya!! We left Incheon, South Korea at 9pm this last Friday, January 24th. After 14 hours of a graciously uneventful flight, we arrived to Jomo Kenyata International Airport in Nairobi at 6am local time. Upon arrival, we weren’t anticipating having any issues with the customs office, but as soon as their saw our large boxes with donations for Kenya, they said we brought too much and needed to pay import taxes. Of course we didn’t actually bring too much—only $1400 worth of equipment between the 8 of us (when most travelers are allowed up to $400 each)—but they began to run some very unofficial numbers off the tops of their heads and said we needed to pay as much as $700 in taxes. Peter, seeing that they weren’t exactly working from any official customs documents, knew this was an opportunistic dip into the “wealthy foreigners’ purse,” and was able to talk them down to $300 after one of the officers dubiously asked him, “Well, then how much do you feel comfortable paying?” So, it wasn’t exactly a customs check that was on the books. After an hour, we chose to just go on to avoid spending any more time at the airport, we paid the $300 and went on our way. Outside, we met our awesome crew that will be hosting, guiding, and supporting us as brothers throughout the week. Josphat Mbondo, Peter’s friend of the last 14 years, Paul and his brother Solomon, and Mula welcomed us all with warm smiles and ready arms to haul our luggage. We were greeted as warmly as old friends and they’ve already made us feel like Kenya is our second home. Our first stop was Mbondo’s house and office, a gated property (with an abundance of chickens people have given him to celebrate the birth of his firstborn, Gideon, last year) in a lovely and quiet neighborhood. Taking a rest, we were treated to a good breakfast and our first cups of tea—THE drink of choice for every Kenyan. As Mbondo says, “In Kenya, any time is tea time!!” That sounds good to me. Comprised of warm milk and water with a generous heap of sugar, this tea is delicious… maybe too delicious. (: After eating breakfast, Peter and I went to meet Mbondo’s most recent ward, a young girl named Nancy who was raised in Kibera, Africa’s largest slum. Nancy’s parents moved to Kibera when she was very young and her father spent 10 years trying to find work, but found little. This last year, he decided to move back to the country with his wife, but Nancy—an excellent student at primary school—knows that she will never finish high school if she returns to the country with her parents, so her family asked Mbondo to hire her as a nanny for his new son instead. This might sound like a solution, but it’s not for several reasons. The first is that Nancy’s not legally old enough to work, so Mbondo would be breaking the law by hiring her, second, Mbondo can’t afford to help her family pay her school fees as it is, let alone the money he would need to pay her wages, and third, if she’s working, when will she have time for school? Nancy is only 14. She’s still a girl. She should be a girl for at least a little while longer, but like so many girls in Kibera, the threat of reality for the poor in Kenya is haunting her at an early age. The consequences of Nancy not completing high school is akin to the difference between night and day. If she finishes high school, she’ll be able to get a good job working in an office, in a retail shop, or in a restaurant with the opportunity to go on to college and get her teaching certificate or business degree, etc. But if she doesn’t finish high school—if her education is limited to the first 8 years of primary school—she will not be eligible for any jobs beyond the walls of the slum, and jobs in the slum are already in scarce supply. But education is not cheap, nor is it compulsory in Kenya, so if students are going to go to high school, there are many fees attached to the ‘free’ cost of their education. In countries like America and Korea, most everything is paid for (including electricity, lunch, and school books). In Kenya, however, only the cost of the teachers is paid for by the government. Electricity, books, uniforms, lunch, and the staff to cook the lunch are all additional fees which add up to a whopping $500 per year. That might not seem like a lot for a full year to those of us in the west, but that’s an extreme amount here in Kenya, especially among the poor. That’s the annual rental cost of an “apartment” in the slums. Tragically, though, Nancy is not alone. There are thousands of girls in a situation like hers. Mbondo’s social work as a high school counselor has put him in a unique position. So many girls have come to him with their heart-breaking stories—their addictions, their self-doubt, their longing for suicide, their mothers’ inability to care for them and their subsequent abandonment to the streets of the slum, their sexual submission to a man in order to simply have a place to live and food to eat… They feel trapped. They are trapped. Where are they supposed to turn when they have no one? Or when whoever they do have doesn’t have enough? Girls like Nancy have little hope of the lives we so easily take for granted outside of Kenya. The government hasn’t come to their rescue. Their community barely has enough strength to survive. Her family has no money. Her guardians can’t support her without help. If Nancy doesn’t finish high school, her future will be a repetition of her parents’ past, not an improvement on it. She will likely end up in the streets, or in the house of a man who will only pay for her to continue living if she repays him with other favors in return. With over 1 million people crowding its garbage-lined shanty streets, Kibera was a heartbreaking sight to see. Walking through row after row of shacks made of tree branches and corrugated tin seamed together in lopsided patches, there was rubbish strewn about everywhere, and in many shanty windows residents hung whatever meager collections of wares they had to sell: bananas, mangos, key-rings, shoes, etc. Few residents eat more than one or two meals per day. This is not a place where life is full of abundance… at least not the good kind of abundance most of us think of when we speak of the word. The trash is abundant. Hunger is abundant. Drugs are abundant. Alcoholism is abundant. Crime is abundant. Neglect is abundant. Need is abundant. Kibera was the next stop on our journey yesterday, but one thing we are anxious to avoid is giving the impression that our visit to Kibera was simply a kind of “slum tourism.” We weren’t walking the streets just to see how the poorest people of the world live. We already know it’s bad. But there’s a difference between knowing about something and truly understanding it, so we walked through Kibera to understand the severity of the circumstances in which most of its citizens find themselves. In visiting Kibera and documenting the suffering of its residents, we are now equipped with the first-hand knowledge and records we’ll need to tell others about the township and help make a difference for the people living there. Before we even set out for Kibera, Peter shared his vision of starting a scholarship program to do just that. In raising awareness for the people of Kibera, we aim to raise enough money to offer the chance of a better life for young girls like Nancy who have little chance of rising up out of such a place without help, many of whom will turn to prostitution and drugs in their desperation when they don’t get it . Girded with that understanding, we now have a deeper understanding of what it will take to help, of how much work is ahead of us, but also of how worthy a cause it is to be fighting for. For less than than $0.75 a day, we can send these girls to high school and completely change their lives. Imagine that. For a fraction of the cost of our morning cup of coffee, we can protect and promote the bright futures of these incredibly smart and dedicated girls who are only waiting for their chance at a better life. As soon as it’s offered to them, they’ll be able to run with it. To give you a better idea of what Kibera is like, it’s the largest urban slum in Africa. It’s literally an ocean of tin-roof shacks and shanties poorly stitched together in a maze and labyrinth of Kibera is a township beyond even the control of the government. Gangs, drug-running, prostitution, and crime run high. There are few places with running water or electricity. Rent for an “apartment” (a tiny, one room, tin-roofed shack in which an entire family will live) costs anywhere from $30-$50 a month and few families can ever afford more. In order to go in, we needed to hire armed guards, otherwise, as foreigners we would have been quickly swarmed, harassed, and mugged by the local residents and gang members. Taking further precautions, Peter asked that I be the only one to carry equipment and take any pictures. Because we were foreigners, we had to hire armed guards to go in, otherwise we would have been swarmed by the residents and, likely, local gangs who would forcefully take our money and belongings. Wanting to avoid any risk, Peter asked that I be the only one to carry any equipment. {Because wifi is limited, I apologize in advance for the delay in any posts, as well as the limited number of pictures I’ll likely be able to upload for the time being.} Anyhow, it’s about 8 in the morning… everyone is up and getting dressed for our next full day in Kenya… and it’s time for tea—creamy, sweet, warm and yummy tea—along with breakfast. We hope you all have an amazing Sunday! We’re anticipating an amazing one. Americans, Koreans, and Kenyans coming together in the presence of our wonderful Lord and Savior. How could such a day not be incredible? (: Blessings until next time, Ellie