Settling In

Picture this:

Dirt paths (really roads) with two hardened tracks from vans and mule carts, not straight but with an obvious destination, intersecting at what appears to be random places at first. Along the roads are some large houses with tile roofs, some tin shacks where families live, a few shops (with self made speed bumps to slow down traffic ... for increased business?) and a variety of goats, a few donkies and cows. Roosters crow and the sound of six pair of boys shoes, tattered mostly, creates a percussive beat in the cool, misty morning. An older boy, Joseph, leads the pace with an obvious sense that if alone, he would be running twice as fast. Following the pack, keeping 'pace', is me - a tall white guy with longer strides that do not match the boys rhythm and are echoed with the sounds of burning lungs. They know it means a slower run, but they love waking me up to come along.

Aside from establishing a morning running routine, we are settling in now that we have our bags and have really started to get to know both the children at the farm and the team members that we are working with. Staying at the boys facility, we see them more often and they eagerly wait for us to return from our tasks at several points in the day. Names are becoming easier to match to the many faces and it is easy to see that these boys who were forced to act like 'men' at such a young age, crave interaction with adults, crave the feeling of being able to be a child amongst elders.

After my run (and without a shower), we ate a quick breakfast and attended chapel with the whole crew of students and team members. Charles gave the team members a very 'on target' talk before class about rules and procedures and encouraged each teacher to be cautious of letting rules 'rule' our environments. Like the pharasies, this becomes dangerous. 'Relationships come first,' he spoke. The Coulston's have done an amazing job at making this facility a well run place. They give appropriate guidance when needed, but leave the program to be run by Mbuvi, a former street kid turned program administrator. Made in the Streets is run not only by Kenyans, but by people who grew up in the street environment and have taken the opportunity to change their lives. They know what they are up against in so many ways. In addition to having the right people in place, the program has an amazing sense of sustainability from the food grown on the farm, to the students cooking their own meals every night, many ways of empowering the kids to take responsibility and support the whole group and the list goes on. Whether this was pre-planned and well thought out or whether it just had to be this way in order to make it work, Made in the Streets empowers kids who have nothing. In addition, the Coulston's both work in the relevance of Christianity in ways that reflect the nature of Christ.

After this afternoon, we have some what of a gameplan which is helping me feel a bit more settled in as well. Tomorrow morning, Darren will observer some classes to assess what areas we can best help the team members, Emily has plans with Darlene (as well as plans to put her experience with teaching tough kids to work in working with the teachers here) and I will be helping Charles weld a pole to extend an antennea in the hopes of establishing communication between a few of the facilities. None of know exactly what we'll be doing, but we know when to show up.

One other intersting note was talking with two older boys, both nineteen, who are not technically in the MITS program but are staying on one of the piecs of property (the 20 acres) for different purposes. Evance ran across MITS serindipitously and Mbuvi saw a sharp kid that could help with the farm and help with the boys. Kennedy was forced out of his home about 1 1/2 hours north of Nairobi during the violence this past December/January after the elections and was able to clarify what has been happening in Kenya between tribes and how many people are being displaced as they are threatened with their lives to leave. Simply because he is of a different tribe, he was chased from his home, spent 3 nights in the forest and was able to get a hold of Mbuvi. If not for Mbuvi's open doors, he very well could be in a displacement camp, truly a humanitarian disaster with people living in tents with very little to eat and nothing to resolve their violent removal from their homes. We get snippets in the U.S. - in fact, we saw CNN at the airport today when getting our bags, reporting on none other than the UFO 'mystery' in Texas?!?! Reporters live at the scene, money spent on 'experts'?! When you see that after driving past a displacement camp filled with thousands of hungry and beat down people, after watching a man high on who-knows-what spinning through a sea of cars in the slums, after seeing men pulling carts stacked with more than a thousand pounds of weight, after hearing the story of a girl who is at MOST 13 years old (probably younger as her feet swing from the chair when sitting) who just had her second baby one week ago while living on the streets... you start to wonder why we think so much of ourselves back home.

We are here!

Just a quick note for now - we'll try to get some pictures up tonight...

We made it - withOUT our luggage - but I fortunately have enough clothes for Darren, Emily AND myself for now. ;)

I ran 5 kilometers with a group of 12 boys today (AT 1700meters!!!... huff, huff, huff), played soccer, recorded 30 minutes of High Def audio at a morning church service, started building relationships with the kids, etc, etc. Every hour feels like a days worth of experience that is crammed into my mind. What a WONDERFUL place to be.

We have a laptop in our room with a cellular internet connection now, so we'll hopefully be able to get going with our postings. It is still very slow... (Sam, the Eee PC won't accept ANY peripherial connections except for the webcam... no go so far and I'm going to have to try to reinstall XP as it looks like an install issue - the modem is USB and won't install!!)

We're going back down to the boys living area right now to continue some fellowship. We have 4 iPods going and two splitters and they are having a hay day listening to music and watching videos. Just like kids in Irving, they pic up on the technology really, really fast.

More later...

What I have learned while traveling so far...

What I have learned from this trip so far is....
1. BE PATIENT
2. That being crammed next to the window at 3:00 a.m can be the most beautiful place on the planet (I saw the sun come up over the Atlantic at 35000 feet-I wanted to take pictures of the colors, but i couldn't get Jerram to move)
3. That the term "pound" in London is a good thing
4. I have learned that someone very small designed the interior of even that largest airplanes. ( Being 6'3'' the fit is quite tight)
5. And I have learned that even though Stewards and Stewardess are supposed to be the billboard for Customer Service-that does not always mean that they are NICE...God Bless them all, I would not want their job!

We are heading to gate 14 now to get on our plane to Nairobi, 8 more hours and we are there. Hopefully we are going to get some much needed rest on this leg, because when we land it will be 6:00 a.m the begining of a work day at MITS...Can't wait!

Some Pics from the Airport

My Sleeping Plan...

So, I think the three of us have all gone about our sleeping pattern approach differently on this trip. ;) Last time I went to Europe I never really let myself fully adjust to the time and was kicking myself the whole time for that. So, with 6 total hours of sleep in the past 48+ hours, I think I'll be tired enough to sleep a good 6 hours on the last leg to Nairobi. Getting there at 6am means we need to be awake for a full day and be ready to go as soon as our feet touch ground. Hopefully I'm on target for that... took a 2 hour nap and a 1 hour nap on the flight to London, enough to keep me foggy and groggy.

I was able to use some leftover pounds to buy us some food and drinks at the airport. A Starbuck's 'Grande' coffee costs $1.75 pounds which is about $3.50 US. I'm down to change, so at least its all used up!

Sleep?? It all looks good on paper...

Em looked at me crazy and Darren turned me down, but I am awake at 3am this morning and 'on track' with my plan!

I figure that we need to be dead tired by the time we get on the plane in London going to Nairobi. It will be 6am when we arrive in Kenya and we will need to be rested, ready for a full day upon departing the airplane. SO, my plan is that getting up now (at 3am on Thursday) will make me tired enough to nap on the way to Atlanta this evening at 5pm, which will give me enough energy to stay awake to London and through the London layover, which will make me dead tired by the time we board the plane to Nairobi.

It all looks good on paper. But so did that rescue of a floating styrofoam ice chest while ON the wakeboard that one time. Speaking of wakeboarding, I'm heading out this morning at 5:30am with my buddy Ryan - not only will it be a gorgeous morning on the water, but that will make me even MORE ready to take a nap and hopefully quench my thirst for riding as the next 3 weeks will mean NO wakeboarding. ;)

It all looks good on paper...