The first week

Ok, where do I start.

Today was one of those days that makes you really think about who you are and what you are doing in this world. I know that what I saw today changed my perspective and will never leave my mind.

Last night on our flight from London to Nairobi Doug sat next to a woman named Helen who was returning from the UK. Her husband is a doctor and they have their fingers in all sorts of good stuff. They run a 24-hour a day medical clinic and a children’s school. But this is not just any ordinary school. This school is smack dab in the middle of one of the largest slums in Nairobi. Well, …. she invited us to come with her and see the work that her group has been doing.
To be honest, the thought of going into the slums scared the crap out of me. I have heard the stories of people going into the slums in Rio and never coming back. She shows up with a couple of her main counterparts, James and Davison. Then Ben, Doug, my Dad and I jump into their two late 80s Subaru wagons and head out into the streets of Nairobi.

First of all, riding as a passenger through the streets of Nairobi with a native is quite an experience. There are no laws, no lanes lines and the boundary between the oncoming lanes is just a suggestion. Passing on the left or the right is not a problem, and if you need to get out into a traffic circle, you just force your way. The taxis (mutatus) are these Toyota mini vans and they run them like busses picking up people along the way. There is a drive and a passenger handler, who leans out the window and tries to get you to jump in the cab as you walk by. Anyway…we jumped into the cars with Helen and head out. At first Doug told us that we were just going to go look at the clinic, but as we were going Helen mentioned that she was so excited, cause it had not been raining and we could go into the slums to see the school.

What? We ARE going into the slums? Ok, Lord I am trusting in you. We head down a major road in Nairobi and then turn and start down a small dirt one. There are people everywhere walking, riding bicycles, pushing carts and carrying babies. You glance over and there are two children no older than two sitting on the side of the road, there parents have to work, so they just leave them sitting there all day. Trash is everywhere and pools of stagnant water lay everywhere. We turn right and head into what is no wider than an alley, with street vendors lining both sides selling dried corn, shoes, produce. The vendors operate out of cardboard or corrugated metal building. All eyes are on us as we make our way up the road. First of all it can not even be called a road.
You see…… Helen and her Husband got four wheel drives in order to even be able to carry supplies back in. If the rains had come we would have been walking and as it was, we had to navigate huge mud holes, and deep ruts, while getting help form the hordes of people, chickens and kids walking next to us and past the car. We got stuck once and about 5 guys were shouting instructions to Helen as she tried to get us out of the hole. We pass a little shack where the entire community gets water from a small ½ inch pvc pipe coming up from who knows where. There approximately 300,000 people living in this slum. Think about that, two thirds of the population of Fresno living in tin shacks. Plus, this isn’t even the biggest slum in the City. The biggest one has over 1 million people. There have complete communities, with churches, small markets, and even hair salons. It was wild to look into a little store front made out of old cardboard and tin boxes, and see a young girl getting her hair straightened in a one chair salon.

We come to a place where we cant get passed a big mud hole and have to walk. I wanted so bad to take some photos, but I was afraid of taking out my camera. We walked a couple of hundred yards down a small side road and arrive at the Children’s school. There are 6 or 7 classrooms, all with small carved wood desks and little black boards. They teach about 250 kids at the school and they also feed them porridge everyday, since for most, that will be the only meal they eat all day. Helen also brings here clinic staff to treat the kids and give them shoots to get rid of worms and other parasites. An eye opening experience for sure. You hear people say that it makes you realize how lucky we are. That statement could not be closer to the truth.

After we left the slums we went to the site where Helen and her group are building a new school
for the children that will be located outside the slums, so the kids will have a better environment in which to study. She is a very bold and ambitious woman. She treated us to a very nice lunch at her house, and her three daughters cooked the meal. There is a young engineer Ben that came along on the trip, and one of Helen’s daughters was quite taken by him. She leaned over and said to him, “You are very handsome.” Ben was totally taken back and did not know what to say. It was pretty funny and so Doug started negotiating the marriage. 20 cows was the price for him to come home with a nice Kenyan bride….

I showed Helen a picture of Finn and Reed and told her how much we miss each other. She laughed and said in a cheerful happy voice, ”Of course, but you must do the work the Lord, and they are doing there part as well by supporting you in this effort.” They gave us the most wonderful meal of rice, cabbage salad, potatoes, and Kenyan chicken. Chicken from Kenya is very different from the chickens we have in the states. They are free range, and when I say that, I am not talking about being raised in an open-air coop, these guys are super tough lean muscled birds. There are no two pound chicken breast here.

We finished our lunch and Helen drove us to the airport, where we hooked up with Chris and Mark. Then we caught a flight to Eldoret, where Meshack from the ELI training center picked us up at the airport. Apparently, they thought our flight arrived at 2:00. We started driving and headed into Eldoret. There are people walking and riding bikes all over the place, the driving is just as crazy here as it is in Nairobi. Except here, it has a more primitive feel, and everything is a little wilder. It is truly amazing driving through these Cities. There are people roasting corn on the side of the road in little metal grills that look like they are made from hubcaps.

We head south and hit a dirt road that takes us to the ELI training center. The six kilometers seemed like a lot longer. The roads are super rough and bumpy stuff fit for a heavy duty four wheel drive, but we were taking them in a Toyota van. We turn the corner and finally reach the training center where a group of about 200 people were waiting to welcome us. We step out of the van and they begin singing the most beautiful song. It totally sent chills down my spine and I was completely humbled and blown away by the how wonderful it was. The community has been looking forward to this bridge for so long, as the temporary bridge is getting worse and worse by the day.

We had a nice dinner with the group that runs the training center. David and his wife Allison, Julie, and Peter then headed to bed. I woke up at 5:30 and went outside to take a look at the River for the first time. A frothing brown picture of motion. Across the river are some mud huts with thatched roofs, which are very typical of this area. We ate breakfast and headed down to the bridge site to take a look, measure some stuff out and get things going. It is quite a picturesque scene. A small dirt path leads down a steep slope to the old bridge. Green fields and hills surround the site. Villagers come out of nowhere to take a look at what is going on. Ten to fifteen men were already assembled to get the work started. We receive a blessing from a local pastor in Swahili and got underway.

The days task involved surveying and staking off the locations of the large footing on the sandy side of the river, drilling the anchor bolt holes for the rocky side and excavating the hole where the bridge abutment is going to be poured and then pouring the keyway. The keyway is a two-foot wide anchor piece of concrete that will be help the bridge resist lateral movement. With the Kenyans doing all the heavy lifting and digging, we made super fast progress. There were definitely leaders among the Kenyans. Mica, a very soft-spoken 35 year old business man, seemed to be allocating the tasks and making decisions. He manages a bread distribution service around Eldoret. In his quite gentle way he led the others and came up with practical ways for the team to do certain things. The Kenyans definitely do things differently. At any one point in the day there would be up to 30 guys standing around taking turns with the shovels, carrying wheel borrows full of concrete or shoveling sand, gravel or cement into the gasoline powered mixer. They were amazing workers and most of the time we found ourselves watching and supervising the job, making sure the rebar was placed right and keeping the concrete mix the right consistency. The Kenyans worked so fast that we completed two days work in the first day and found ourselves ahead of schedule.

The next day we set out to pour the 4-foot tall 3-foot wide foundation block in which the bridge structure is to sit on. The Kenyans constructed the formwork in their typical Kenyan ways, by piecing together timbers and using anything they could to get the job done. They are amazingly resourceful and while it may not look neat and tidy, it is beautiful how the structure came together. It took all day to pour the main section of the abutment, and as dusk was beginning to set, Mica smoothed out the top section and we made plans for the next day.

Doug, Mark, my Dad, and I decided to take the short walk back to the training center instead of the bumpy car ride. While we were walking a group of children followed wanting us to take their pictures and Doug ran after them and tickled them as they laughed hysterically. The children here are amazingly beautiful creations. They will come wandering down to the bridge site, some not much older than a year old, and sit and watch. They sill stare at you wondering what these crazy white men (mazungus) are doing. You give them a little smile and their little faces light up as they shyly turn away. They love to see their pictures in the camera. The can’t wait to look and laugh at themselves and their friends in the photos. You can’t help but want to take them home with you.

It is amazing to think that less than a year ago this whole region was ravage by violence. The ELI clinic has an ambulance that is used to transport people to the clinic or just to drive people to and fro. Julie, one of the missionaries here was telling us how valuable it was during the unrest. As we were talking about it, she softly mentioned how horrible it was. The area where we are staying was the center of a lot of the unrest.

As we walked back, we take a short detour through the children’s school grounds and into the children’s home. There are over 100 children living here in groups of 12 boys and 12 girls with a parent group. The system is quite interesting. We wonder into the cluster of houses as a loud bell rings letting the kids know that it is time for the daily devotions. All the kids come running with their little Bibles in hand and a couple of them offer up their hands and take us inside. There sweet little voices say come, please sit. All 100 kids squeezing into the little room as they begin singing. All the kids are AIDS orphans. They are truly beautiful. One of the older girls leads the singing. She has an amazing voice and the others follow her lead as they sing praises to God. The singing goes on for several minutes and then they begin taking turns reciting Bible verses. It was a fantastic experience to be there listening. Tiny little boys dancing and young babies sitting in older siblings laps singing. As the kids were singing a small little boy, had to be less than two comes toddling up to me and wants to sit up in my lap. I grab him and he sits down and keeps watching all the others singing and dancing. I was touched to watch these children that would be on the streets have such a wonderful home. After devotions were over the children all want to say hello shake our hands and show us where they live. As we leave, Doug is talking about the children and their singing and he says, ”That my friends, is just like heaven.” They are all truly beautiful.

It has been amazing to see how the Lord has been working during this trip. Sometimes he is subtle and sometimes he likes to beat you over the head. To the point where there is no way for you to ignore it. On Wednesday morning Chris and I were sitting out in the Gazebo watching the river reading and he turns to me and says, “hey if your going to do the devotional this morning how about using this passage for 1 Peter.” You see, someone from the team will present a reading from the Bible and we will discuss it and we will all reflect and pray. That morning we went into breakfast and my Dad was all ready to do the devotional. Well, he read the same verse that Chris and I had talked about. Chris and I just looked at each other and laughed. It was amazing, and made me realize again, even though I should never be surprised, how real God is and how he provides for us when we need it. Another example is something that happened Thursday morning.

Last night we went into Eldoret to meet with Soren, the engineer who is fabricating the bridge, and have dinner at the Eldo Grill. I have to say that was an experience. The menu is Italian, Indian, and American fare, complete with lots of interesting spellings of English words. Sort of like this blog (isn’t that right Tracy). It was the first time we able to talk with Ben since the first night in Kipkarren. You see, what Ben and Soren are doing is the crux of the whole project. They are cutting and welding the steel together to create the structure of the bridge. They are the critical path for this project.

Well, Ben was talking about the difficulties of the fabrication and how it was hard to watch each of the workers to ensure that everything is done to specifications. It is critical, because the pieces have to fit together right or the bridge will not work. Kind of like building a puzzle by creating the pieces from scratch and then hoping that they all fit together. You could tell Ben was frustrated, he even said as much. The going was slow, and their schedule was pushing the time to completion right up to the day before we leave. We needed another set of eyes to ensure quality control. Well, we get back to Kipkarren and the next morning at breakfast there is a couple, Mike and Debbie, from Pasadena that are here on a prayer mission. We get to talking and if turns out he is an Engineer who has specialized in steel fabrication for over 30 years. YOU HAVE GOT TO BE KIDDING ME!!!!! Their trip to Kenya had been delayed twice before, and this time they made it. He was more than excited to help with the bridge project, and agreed to go into Eldoret to help Ben with the fabrication. It was unbelievable. God has been showing himself to us in so many ways on this trip. Those are just a couple of examples of his grace and provision.

Today we finished forming the second abutment and poured the concrete. The Kenyans worked very hard and they even began back filling where the road will be with rocks. You see, the deck of the new bridge will be much higher and there is a considerable hole that needs to be filled. The pour of the abutment was tenuous and we thought for a while that the forms may fail, which would be a catastrophe, but they held and the concrete is setting nicely. Tomorrow we are going to go to look at the log bridge, where many people have dyed trying to cross. Doug would like to construct something there that would be safer to cross.

That is my report for now. Keep praying and I thank you all for reading. Hopefully, I will be able to post more frequently know, as they have fixed the problems they are having with the network here. Sorry for now photos....the computers are fighting against us here.

God bless you all.