hopefully you haven’t given up on me completely yet

The little girl whose family I met in rural Kenya (see more about their story below)

I can hardly believe it has been two full months since I last wrote. There has been so much going on! And the truth is that the more that happens, the more I procrastinate because I know it will take even longer to catch everyone up. And the longer I wait, the more there is to tell, etc. So that I’ve got myself in quite the vicious cycle.

Before I get so far behind that I give up all together, I shall try to let you know what has been happening.

First, Joe came! In addition to the fact that he is somewhat distracting for me anyway, it also meant I was out of the office, so no internet connection and no update. Then I spent the following week trying to catch up on all the work I didn’t do while I enjoyed Joe’s visit, while simultaneously attending meetings at Akagera, about 1.5 hours from Kigali. So no update.

Then I began a solid month of travel to Kenya, then Uganda, then back to Kenya, which resulted in my being home only 2 days between May 16 and June 15. I was helping to host visitors to these countries and was flung back into the 16-hour work days of my old tour leader schedule -- and so no update. For eight of those days, I was actually camping in rural Kenya with no electricity or running water, let alone internet. And so definitely no update.

Miraculously, one of the two days that I was home, my shipping container finally arrived. I won’t go into all the details here, but after I tagged along with my clearing agent for eight and a half hours, we were finally loading my things into a truck and driving them to my house!

In all, the journey of my container from Colorado to Kigali (via New York, India and Tanzania) took exactly 136 days. Upon my return from my second Kenya stay, I started unpacking boxes with the help of Baptiste and both of us have hardly stopped to take a breath since, except that sometimes I have to come into the office for work. And so again, no update.

Obviously, with all that’s been happening, there are so many things I could talk about -- and I will try to get some of those written down in the next few weeks. But for now I will settle for telling a few stories from several weeks ago that have stuck with me.

the love of mothers and children

Over the years, I’ve come to realize that most people have an interesting story if we can just be bothered to hear it. For certain, the majority of the people I work with here in Africa have incredible stories. Many come from very poor backgrounds -- which is partly why they have chosen to work with Compassion. In an area of the world where few things come easily, most have gone to amazing lengths to get to where they currently are.

Recently I heard the story of one of my female colleagues who grew up in rural Tanzania. She told of living with an abusive, alcoholic father. He became more and more violent until one day he repeatedly threatened that when the children’s mother came home, he was going to kill her. The daughter went quickly to find her mother, begging her not to come home.

The mother went into hiding and over the coming weeks, my friend quietly brought belongings to her -- once a shirt, another time a khanga (the multipurpose cloth worn by women throughout East Africa), first one shoe and then the other, so her father wouldn’t realize what she was doing. For some time they existed this way, until the father could finally be talked out of killing the mother.

We have worked together for several years but somehow I’d never known about this amazing woman’s past. As she told this story -- successful, happy, beautiful, intelligent -- I tried to picture her 20 years earlier, a young girl trying to keep her mother alive and safe.

Later that same day I was talking to one of my coworkers who lives here in Rwanda. Like many people here, he actually grew up outside Rwanda. Many families fled to Uganda, Tanzania, Kenya, Congo and Burundi starting at least as far back as the 1960s. The problems had begun long before the 1994 genocide.

This gentleman grew up in Uganda. I asked if he was born in Uganda and his answer was, “Somehow.” This is an expression people use to answer questions when they’re not really sure of the answer. Another friend was sitting with us -- also a Rwandan who grew up in Uganda -- and he laughed. “How can you be somehow born in Uganda?” he asked. “Don’t you know?”

As it turned out, the man didn’t know. “My family was escaping at the time,” he explained. “We were somewhere along the border when I was born. My parents don’t know which side we were on.” Again I found myself looking at this gentleman, trying to picture his 9-months-pregnant mother fleeing for her life and that of her unborn child, pausing along the way to give birth.

These stories amaze me. These individuals are my colleagues, my peers, my friends, my “age mates” as they say here. And these are the stories of their lives.

With these two stories still fresh in my mind I headed to Kenya. We visited several Compassion centers, including one in an area predominately settled by the Maasai people. With a small group, I visited the nearby home of a sponsored child.














All these people live together in the small home behind them. The girl on the left is now sponsored in Compassion's program and the family sleeps on mattresses for the first time in their lives.

In this tiny home live a grandmother, a mother and her three children, and the child of the woman’s oldest daughter. This daughter/young mother is perhaps 18 and has numerous health issues due to epilepsy. Her child, a little girl about 2 years old, is malnourished and small for her age. She was somewhat scared of me when I arrived but after a few minutes decided I was okay and raised her arms to be picked up. Light as a feather, I carried her around with me for the rest of our visit. Her mother was proud and pleased and would come and give me hugs from time to time.














The grandmother was especially friendly and happy to have us. Her great granddaughter is standing in the door of their home.














My little friend -- she was not sure what to think of me when we first arrived.

Finally it was time to leave and so I started to set the little girl down. Her mother began talking rapidly and gesturing. Even before the translator interpreted, I knew what she was saying. She was asking if I would take her daughter.

It is not the first time I’ve been asked to do this, and it is always heartbreaking. Though I would love to say yes almost every time, there are countless reasons why it’s not actually possible.

I explained that the little girl should stay with her mother, that the child would miss her too much. And all the time in the back of my mind, I was picturing what life has probably been like up to now. It was clear that this young mother loved her little girl -- and so I could only imagine how desperate she must feel in order to be willing to give the child up to a stranger.

The family’s situation has already improved in the brief time since the middle child (the sister of this young mother) was enrolled into Compassion’s program. They have mattresses to sleep on for the first time in their lives. They have a small garden from which they can feed themselves. The family is encouraged and hopeful.

I think of my friends with their incredible stories and know that it is possible that this tiny girl might also be sharing her own story one day, smiling and healthy and thriving. But I also know it will be a very long road.