Day 2

As the rest of the days have gone, we awake to the same alarm, at the same time. The soreness of the first day was starting to set in. The emotional toll was setting in. The confusion and frustration was setting in.

As usual we ate breakfast and I had the omelette special from my main man Kimani. A master behind the grill, and an artist of the food. Today I got the "peppers" in my omelette. I would later regret this decision, because the peppers from Kenya are nothing like the peppers in the state's. They are waaay  hotter. Lesson learned.

We finish breakfast, load the buses and head to pangani. Today we are determined to finish more shelves than the one from the previous day. We get to the school and go our separate ways. The construction team takes off like a theif in the night. We start cutting sheets of plywood, which we later find out are 1x2s glued together and adhered between two pieces of what seem to be veneer.

Our goal was to get was to double our production of the day before. We had to calculate tea time and lunch. Once on a roll we didn't want to stop for either. Following the same tea time and the same lunch time, we continued our blaze. By the end of the day we had 4 shelves done, trimmed and hung.

I won't go into the struggles of personality clashes, or the fact that too many A type people usually hinder the work being done. I also won't say that working with people of other cultures is easy and adaptable. Through this all, the most important thing was that we were doing the work of God for people who needed help.

On the way home we suffered through the brutal roads of Kenya, the diesel filled smog and the fact that none of us had seen any type of air conditioner since late fall.

Once at the hotel we had dinner and our meetings to talk about how the day went and how we all felt about the overall trip. Thus far for the most part we all seem to be on board with the work that needs to be done and the most efficient, effective and culturally accepted way of doing things.

All in all a great feeling, now comes the middle of the work week.

And then we went to work

We start the day off with a great spread of breakfast choices. The same spead that we have had every day. Not bad, but predictable and good at the same time.

Following breakfast we loaded into the two buses to head into the mathare valley where we would be doing the majority of our work. Michelle is on the medical team and myself on the construction team.

We pray divide into our designated areas and meet our missions of hope workers, trying to get a grasp on what tasks were at hand. Each group has a few translators and a few Kenyan workers who are as surprised as us.

Something we had trouble with was trying hard not to force our western ways. The go go go pace of America isn't exactly the same for Kenya. the workers are paid by how much work there is to do and not how long they work.

Also, the language barrier wasnt too difficult, but the dialect was difficult on both ends. Because a lot of Kenya was colonized back in the day, the verbiage was something to get used too. For instance you don't wait in a line, you wait in a queue. The first floor of a building is called the ground floor and the second floor the first. Not confusing at all. Especially when you are directed to go somewhere.

Getting started was a bit of a task. We didn't have the best direction of what we building or constructing. We knew that we were building shelves for the classrooms. All we were given was wood, nails, glue and a hand saw. Yes a hand saw.

So we jump right in like typical Americans, go, go ,go. Unfortunately the Kenyan way more of the slow and steady mentality. Cuts and measuring take us to our mandatory tea break. And by mandatory, I mean all work stops literally and we go and drink our tea and eat our sambusa. Which is basically a crescent roll with meat and onions inside.

Soon after tea and getting back into the swing of things we take lunch. For the most part every meal has rice, some form of meat, which is usually lamb, and vegetables. We finally get back on track with what to build and how to build it. By the end of the day and all of the confusion we ended up with one desk built and hung.

Hopefully tomorrow we can at least get a system going and be more productive since we know what we are doing and what we want to accomplish.

Church

<p dir=ltr>Today we awake to "everyday in hustling" by rick Ross as the sound of the alarm goes off at 515am. We get up and head down to breakfast. Same breakfast and omelettes just as good. We returned to our room to find out that the water in our room was being "serviced". Great start to the day. Ahead of us are two church devices that seem to be up to 2.5 hours apart. </p>
<p dir=ltr>We shall see how the morning pans out, we are in our church attire, mostly dresses for the women and polos for the men. The buses have started and the smell of diesel fuel fills our lungs. Great time for a cause.

It takes us about 1 and a half hours to get to Joska where the boys service was being held. Imagine about 300 adolescent boys at a type of boarding school learning, growing, thinking and maturing in the middle of what seemed to be a desert. Prior to the service we took a tour of the grounds. Even saw where the water for most of the region was bottled. Nothing fancy just a few sand filters and a UV filter is all that keeps us from getting sick. So far so good.

After the service which ran over by almost 2 hours we made our way to the girls boarding school about 5km from the boys. We sre greater with singing and dancing. For each person that exited our bus there was a young girl who would take our hand and lead us to the main courtyard. We danced for what seemed like hours in this African sun.

We sat through the girls service  which was followed by a tour of the girls accommodations. The girls seemed more excited that we were there. We got to go to their classrooms and ask them questions. Even though they were only studying they still were in class, on a sunday. Also these 13 & 14 year old girls were studying for subjects like physics, biology and stuff most high school kids don't even touch. After lunch we left the girls dorm and headed back to the gracehouse. A few meetings and dinner and off to bed to prepare for our first day of work.

Until then....

First Day in the Valley pt 2

...where to continue, yes the sewage in the middle of the street. There is no such thing as getting used to the smell, there is no such thing as ignoring it either. The sad part is that the people who live there are so used to it that they walk around barefoot and go on about their lives. What makes this pill even harder to swallow is that the children, most of them barefoot, play and frolic in these same streets. Some were even seen rummaging through an outlet of a waste line looking for coins. I asked my guide, whom was very open to not sugar coating anything, why isnt there any type of sanitation places or bathrooms. His response was shocking as there are restrooms but it costs 5 Kenyan Schillings to use the bathroom. In a place as poor as we were in , the most cost effective choice was not to use the outhouse, but go, outside the house.

We made our way though the mazes of small tin roofed shanties to the house of Elizabeth. Elizabeth was a shinning light in such bleak surroundings. Elizabeth had been apart of the classes that mission of hope had conducted and sponsored. Since successfully completing her training she has been able to send her children to the mission of hope school. As it stands she has one child in the process of going to college, and the other in the process of completing high school. The importance of Elizabeth's story shows that not only is mission of hope trying to help people better themselves, but giving those people the tools to better each other and others around them. 

We made our way back to the mission of hope building for lunch, announcements and meetings. One of the main dishes in Kenyan culture is rice, which we had. And goat, which we had. The food is always very colorful and robust. A few things that we had to overcome, the flies that seemed to work as a team to land on our food and finding a bottle opener because every pop that was available was in the old school glass bottles.

After lunch we finished with out individual group meetings to discuss what we would actually be doing once our mission work starts on Monday  We concluded our meetings with prayer, and jaunting ride through the streets of Nairobi back to our residence, which if i didn't mention before is called the Grace House Hotel. Not to leave out that our accommodations are great. The hospitality is something that you SHOULD expect at a 4 or 5 start hotel, but here it is from people who are actually sincere about their words.

We only had about an hour and a half of relaxing time after we got back from mission of hope, but it was just enough time to sit down, reflect and prepare our hearts and minds for what is ahead of use. Dinner was a buffet of chicken, beef, and fish culminated with salads and desserts to end an emotionally draining day. Breakfast tomorrow starts at 530am, we have not 1 but 2 church services tomorrow and we will be in a Joska which can be 1.5 to 2.5 hours of commuting! Yes!

Until tomorrow...

First Day in The Valley

5 Airports and 31 hours of travel later, we finally make it to Nairobi. Since some of the events have taken place before today I will comment on those details later. The place that our group will working is called the Mathare Valley. It is a small community located in the city of Nairobi. We met with the school children just after breakfast on what would become a bus ride that none of the 95 people would ever forget.

Traveling through the streets of Nairobi there were times that the driver would warn us to close our windows to deter people from reaching in and taking what is in our possessions. At other times we were warned to not take pictures of certain areas that were affiliated with the upcoming election. Apparently election time was very stressful in Kenya and locals see it as a time of unrest for the people.

We arrived at the Mission of Hope school and church. We were greeted by the most angelic sounds of 5 - 12 year old kids who were singing a welcome song that included the phrase 'Hakuna Matata'. Which for you Lion King fans means 'No worries' in Swahili. After introductions, songs, announcements, dos and donts we were split into teams to join the leaders from the Mission of Hope staff.

Our tours with the staff took us around the actual school grounds and showed us that there was much more than a school for children. There were classes for women, men, high school kids and all ages. Teaching more than just a base curriculum, they are teaching trade skills that people can take back into their own communities where they can become businessmen and women. They also inspired to be the hope that the community sees as a positive influence that makes a difference and hoping to create a positive cycle of progress.

After the tour of the school grounds we went into Mathare Valley. No infomercial, no celebrity answering phone calls could have possibly prepared us for what we were about to see. The majority of the people that we encountered were children. Some just being able to talk uttered "how are you" to us 'Americans' as we walked through the valley. Words cannot describe the conditions that people are subjected to live in. If you have ever seen 'Slum Dog Millionaire' that is a small but close representation of the living conditions. There is no running water for the most part, as well as sewage or waste disposal. The waste runs literally in the middle of the streets....

I am going to leave with that and continue this day in a second post..