Juvenile Home

Habari (Hello). I pray that you all are well. It has stopped raining here but is pretty cold for Africa. I'd guess in the 50s--everything is in Celcius, so I'm never quite sure. but in any case the africans are freezing and all wearing sweaters. July and August are supposedly the coldest months. I'm just glad I'll never have to go out and scrape snow off my car.

Today began with a typical day of Kenyan transport. We were supposed to leave the house before 7 to get to a meeting by 9. We left at 7:10, walked to pick up a bus. The bus never came. So we walked some more and got on a different bus. The bus got stuck in traffic and then decides to turn perpendicular to all the traffic and cross traffic going the opposite direction to hit another road. this is very common and happens almost everytime i ride a matatu. anyway, we got into the city at about 8:55, then waited for 2 other Kenyans, Ruth and Dominic. Dominic never came, and we finally called and found that he had already taken another matatu to the place. So then we finally boarded another matatu and arrived around 9:30-9:45 at this Juvenile home for boys. The thing is no one even cares when you're late so no biggie. but that whole trip would have taken about 45 minutes at home :)

We went to this juvenile place with our director to get permission to have our team start working there. we spent a lot of time tramping around in the fields from place to place b/c it was out in the country. i was reminded of indiana as i walked through the fields of maize (corn) but their maize is spread apart and all different heights maybe because they can't fertilize and do all these things we do. so the fields look very wimpy. anyway, at the first part of the juvenile home, the pastor took us into the classrooms. i was the only muzungu, so naturally they were curious. we all quickly wondered why there were no teachers in the classrooms. the pastor told us they have no teachers! and yet they were behaving better than any other school i've seen here. much of that is probably b/c of the structure. the kids here either got in trouble with the law, or they were abandoned, lost, etc. but this pastor is trying to teach all of these kids who are all in different rooms. i really don't understand it. and this is a government run facility. i'm realizing more and more that despite its problems, american education is SO good. everything is so cut and dry here. it's like NO Child Left behind style in that there is no creativity at all, but that's probably b/c of a lack of materials and training.

then we went to another place there which was for children 0-6, again abandoned, lost, etc. we met the director and then went on a tour. the pastor took us into the sleeping quarters and was saying how it was nice and how at some places they won't give you a tour b/c things are so bad. what he said kind of caught me off guard b/c the moment i stepped into the room it smelled like urine. i felt like i wanted to vomit. all of the mattresses were all ripped with the foam coming out and nothing looked clean at all. of course clean is such a relative term here. and the thing is that kibera is totally worse and i know it. but the fact that this is a government place and that in kibera at least a lot of people have families. i cannot imagine being an orphan and stuck in this facility.

After more walking around and meetings with various people, we were finally given permission to start coming on thursdays. i think we'll be doing christian education with some of the kids and possibly some sports things too. i would really like to teach at that first school we saw, so i asked peter about that. he thinks that might be possible in the future as we build a rapport with them. but things here are so slow. so i think it will be several months till anything like that happens.

on the way home i cracked up b/c getting into the matutu, i had to climb all the way to the back and duck my head. i was squeezing between the seats with my bag, and i totally got stuck. there were seats on both sides and my bag was making me 2 big to squeeze through. imagine that my head is bent over and my butt is sticking up in the person's face of the seat behind me. Ruth (the secretary for ICY) was cracking up.
Later she was helping me cross the street and she said to always stand to the right of people b/c if the matatu hits us, atleast it will hit them first before us. i thought that was hilarious. everyone jay walks constantly to cross the street, and the cars do not stop. someone even saw a sign that said, "No stopping for pedestrians." i'd rather be in a matatu than walking for safety's sake.

someone asked about the tribal situation here in kenya and kibera specifically. as far as i know, all the schools i'm in are a mix of tribes. in the countryside, schools are more confined to a tribe i think. africans can tell instantly what tribe someone is in just by looking at them or hearing a name. this consequently affected much of the election problems back in december. but there are muslims and christians here in the same schools too. i think in nairobi there is more of a diverse mix. to my eyes, it has been hard to tell where places where destroyed during the uprising this past winter. but Jane and Sally, 2 kenyans, said in kibera most places where the shacks have new shiny tin, that means that something had been burned there. we saw one church that had been partially burned, but otherwise an outsider would never know. Alex, a kenyan part of our team, was shot during this, and he has told us all about his bullet wound. apparently his mom was on CNN and victor (also kenyan) found out about Alex from that CNN newscast. peter said that during that time the only way to drive around was if you put a sign in your car that said "Press." people then left you alone b/c they knew you would go back and report things in another country. but locals did this too for safety.

so this is getting long, but i realized i haven't said anything about the people here. i love the ICY team. Peter, the director around age 32, is very funny and very focused on improving the ministry. Victor is in charge of all the MSTs like me. He is my age and hilarious. He loves joking around about some of our american expressions, like "expensive taste." for some reason he thinks that's really funny. Amie is my house mom and Peter's wife. Baraka their son, is learning more words everyday. all the msts are teaching him things like "I love you", etc. he's going to have good English. Then there's lots of other people in ICY. Locally we're known as Swahiba (friend) Youth Networks. There's probably 15-20 people that are associated in someway. it's hard to keep track of everyone. Dominic handles most of the scheduling and office stuff. Ruth corresponds with MSTs. So that's that. We end up having a lot of random meetings all the time. Some about camp in August, sometimes prayer meetings. yesterday at the prayer meeting Dominic prayed for 15 minutes straight and i thought i was going to fall asleep! so even though these meetings become very long and drawn out, i know that they really do center on Christ in everything they are doing. so in turn i think God somehow allows some productivity out of all this.

one last thing, i was going to sleep the other night, and the mosquito net drives me crazy. i'm on the bottom bunk so it's always falling in places and not working. i have to stuff it between the slats to keep it up. the thing was all around me before i started tucking and i told julie i never want to wear a veil at my wedding b/c it will remind me of this dumb net!