"Courage dear heart"

We have seen quite a lot of good in Kenya. The land is beautiful. The people are warm and eager to welcome visitors. The sunsets are so unbelievably beautiful they defy description!

Last week, we were immersed in some of the bad.

Thursday, we went to Dandora, the dump site. Acres and acres of trash towers above the humble roof tops, putrifying the air and poisoning the people. The mountain of garbage used to spill into a school playground, making kids sick, until a German NGO built a wall to protect them. Now, the students don't play right in the trash, just in it's shadow.

We watched the kids play and returned their greetings as the stench of the rotting garbage turned our stomachs. Another example of the juxtaposition in Kenya; cheerful kids playing feet from such a mess.

Thursday was bad, but my heart was truly broken Friday. We went into Kibera, the largest slum in East Africa (maybe the world). About 1.3 million people are squeezed into an area of 5 miles. There is no plumbing and very little electricity. People can live their whole lives, birth, work, marriage, raising kids without ever leaving the slum, without ever seeing a tree or breathing fresh air.

We drove maybe a mile into Kibera through a sea of corrugated metal buildings before the streets became too narrow to pass. Then we (including our 3 armed guards - the slum is not a safe place) walked down narrow, twisting alleys to a little school to conduct a health camp. Each new alley brought new, terrible sights and smells. The filth, the garbage, the senseless poverty were almost paralysing. At one point, I just stopped in the middle of the path fighting back tears. How can people survive this? How do you get up and fight another day, when you make $1 a day and your slum lord charges you $25 a month for rent? 

We saw about 200 patients in a tiny school room. Almost every child had respiratory symptoms from the awful, close, smokey air they breathe. (Our lungs hurt after just a couple hours there.) Many, many patients had communicable skin conditions, like scabies and ring worm. Most also had intestinal parasites.

Like the last health camps, it was sweaty and exhausting work. Like the last health camps, it was worth it. We are here to light a candle, instead of just cursing the dark. We are here to love and serve, and I feel so honored to be able to come alongside those who serve in these terrible circumstances every day. It's awful and life changing and can only be faced with great courage, but there is hope...

The school that hosted our camp is an amazing example of fortitude and service. It started when a Kibera pastor's wife, Mary, saw all the young children home alone all day with no food while their parents worked. Mary couldn't stand to see them waste away, so she began wheeling a wheelbarrow full of beans and rice through the streets, feeding children as she went. Eventually, she began gathering the children in one place and teaching them songs and Bible stories. Now, they have a school building and feed and teach 125 preschoolers to first graders! Mary and all the teachers are volunteers. They don't make any money; they are just there as an act of service to the community. And it is an amazing, joyful oasis in the middle of the worst place I've ever seen.