This is my first Christmas in Kenya. In fact, I’m pretty sure this is the first Christmas I’ve spent away from “home” in my entire life. I’ve spent every Christmas up to this point with my family – my mom and dad, when they were living, along my brothers and sister. When I went to college in NY, I travelled home for Christmas. When I first started working for IBM in NY, I went home for Christmas. For the many years I lived in the Boston area, I went home for Christmas. It feels strange not being “home” for Christmas, but Kenya is my home at this point in my life. However, it also feels different because Christmas is different in Kenya. There are, with a few minor exceptions, no indications that it is Christmas Eve (as I write this blog post). There are no Christmas decorations to be seen, no Christmas trees, no Santa Claus, no wreaths or candles. There are no Christmas songs playing, no holiday parties, no Christmas television specials.
In my one year of living in Kenya, I’ve found it to be much more overtly religious than the United States. There are churches or mosques everywhere. There is religious music or calls to prayer blasting from them at all hours. There are apparently no noise ordinances here, or at least not for religious entities. Everyone prays before meals. There are religious quotes and mentions of God everywhere. The ubiquitous matatus (commuter vans) prominently feature religious slogans. Storefronts often bear the name of Jesus or God. The churches are generally packed and people actively participate through prayer responses as well as singing and dancing. Government schools have religious names.
Religion is truly everywhere in Kenya, yet no sign of Christmas – not even in church. Not only is the church not decorated at all, but the music at Mass is exactly the same as it is the rest of the year. I’m not sure how to process it. I guess you could blame it on the fact that people don’t have money to put food on the table, so Christmas decorations take a back seat. However, I’m not sure that’s totally it. People decorate in simple, inexpensive ways in general, so not sure why Christmas would be any different. I still don’t have a good answer.
Although no external signs of Christmas is a little disorienting for me, the good news is that there is a complete lack of commercialization of Christmas here. Although I have seen the terms Black Friday and Cyber Monday used, they are by far the rare exception rather than the rule. This has allowed me this Advent season to focus more fully on what Christmas means to me and my relationship with God, as I didn’t have to concern myself with the external distractions that usually surround Christmas.
As Catholics, we talk about the three ways that Christ comes to us at Christmas. The first is Jesus’s coming among us in history as an infant two millennia ago in the Incarnation. God became man to dwell among us. The second is Christ coming to us today – through creation, in our encounters with one another, in his holy Word, and through the Church – especially in the Eucharist. The third is a look with hope to Christ coming again in final glory – the definitive triumph of good over evil. In this final respect, Christmas is the celebration of our final union with God – the ultimate end for which God created us.
I would like to focus on the second of these and our role in making Christ present in the here and now. Meister Eckhart was a thirteenth century German theologian and philosopher. He was also a Dominican preacher and mystic, who said
We are all meant to be mothers of God. What good is it to me if this eternal birth of the divine Son takes place unceasingly, but does not take place within myself? And, what good is it to me if Mary is full of grace if I am not also full of grace? What good is it to me for the Creator to give birth to his Son if I do not also give birth to him in my time and my culture? This, then, is the fullness of time: When the Son of Man is begotten in us.
Meister Eckhart (1260-1328)
This is what I meditated on this Advent season. Think about it. We are all meant to be mothers of God. We are all called to make Christ present in our lives, present to those around us, and present in our world which is so badly in need of Christ’s presence. Obviously, the Virgin Mother is the ultimate example of how to do this. She did not just give birth to Jesus, but she gave her entire life to God. In her “yes”, she gave herself entirely over to God – physically, intellectually, and spiritually. Her ascent to God is the model of what our response to God should be. Unfortunately, speaking for myself, I was not immaculately conceived as Mary was and so my response is always somewhat imperfect. However, I accept my imperfections and continue to push forward following Mary’s lead and trusting that she always leads me to Jesus.
What an obligation Meister Eckhart presents to us. He is telling us that the Incarnation is not just a historical event worked through the cooperation of Mary, but rather, that God asks each of us to be bearers of the incarnate word in our own lives, in this sense, mothers of God. This bringing forth of Christ, which is an ongoing process, must take place within each of us. We are all called to bring forth Jesus now, in the present time and probably most frighteningly, within our culture – a culture which at best relegates Jesus to a secluded corner and at worst denies and aggressively tries to eradicate him.
But, like Mary, we are given a choice. In the measure that we say yes as Mary did and acquiesce to God’s desire to push concretely into creation at all times and places, we participate in the Incarnation. To me, this is the true meaning of Christmas. As Meister Eckhart says, “This, then, is the fullness of time: When the Son of Man is begotten in us.” This is our call, not only at Christmas, but at all times. Not easy, but what God asks of us.
In his letter to the Colossians, St. Paul says,
“Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I am filling up what is lacking in the afflictions of Christ on behalf of his body, which is the church”.
Colossians 1:24
I struggled with this passage earlier in my life. I knew that it certainly did not imply that Jesus’s atoning death on the cross was incomplete or somehow defective. So, what does it mean? What I have come to realize is that this passage from St. Paul is telling us the same things that Meister Eckhart is telling us. We are called to continually bring forth Christ in our lives. We are called to make Christ concretely present to others. Jesus suffering and death are not incomplete or imperfect, but God wills that we participate in this bringing forth of His son at all times and in all places.
God is love and true love gives without limit. God manifests his love in creation and in you and me. We “fill up what is lacking in the afflictions of Christ”, when we participate in the manifestation of this love. We contribute to the glory of Christ when we allow him to manifest himself in us. We glorify Christ when we make Christ present in our lives and when we make Christ present to others. We give glory to God when Jesus is begotten in us. We make the Incarnation a present reality in the measure that we cooperate with God to continually push Christ into creation and into our world.
God wills that we be active participants in Jesus’s eternal birth. God calls us to continually say yes as Mary did. What more could we ask for as this is ultimately a call to share in His divine life. This is Christmas. This is the manifestation of the depth of God’s love for each and every one of us.
The schools in Kenya are on break for the months of November and December. It’s the equivalent of summer vacation in the US. One school year has just ended and a new one will begin in January. We are also approaching the hottest time of the year where the average high temperature in Mombasa is just over 90° F. We certainly have days with higher temperatures in the summer in the US, but it’s the humidity that kills me. The humidity in Mombasa is comparable Orlando, but there is no air condition here to escape to. Also, there isn’t anything resembling cooler weather to look forward to. During the “cold” season from June through August, the average high temperature drops to the low to about 82° F. It is certainly a different experience for me to be approaching Christmas with the weather so hot, but I don’t miss the cold weather.
As we do with all three breaks during the school year, we ran tutorials four times a week for our H.O.P.E students during the month of November, which kept me pretty busy. As I’ve mentioned previously, we installed a flat screen TV in our office to use during tutorial sessions to show videos and display graphics to enhance the learning experience for the students. The latest addition to my teaching toolbox is the addition of a tablet that I can use to display what I write freehand on the tablet to the flat screen TV as well as annotate on top of what is already displayed. Coralis went back to the US for her niece’s wedding for a few weeks in November. I used the opportunity to order (with my sister Tricia’s help and use of her Amazon Prime account) the tablet and have it shipped to Coralis in Texas. She then brought it back to Mombasa with her. If only I could get Amazon deliveries in Mombasa! There are some companies that claim to deliver Amazon products to Kenya, but they are expensive and I don’t really trust them. For now, I have to rely on people coming to Kenya from the US who have room to carry back my order.
The tablet comes in handy when teaching math, where I use the tablet like a whiteboard. However, my favorite use of the tablet is to add “color commentary” to something I have displayed on the TV monitor. During the tutorials this school break, we mainly focused on cell biology, organic chemistry, and in math, calculating the surface area of solid objects and the area of segments of a circle. Yes, I had to relearn all of this! Where possible, I use videos from Kahn Academy or Crash Course as the basis for the tutorial. However, we don’t just watch the video straight through (probably much to the displeasure of the students). I constantly stop the video to clarify concepts and ask questions to both make sure they are awake as well understanding the material. Plus this gives me an opportunity to use the tablet! What complicates the effectiveness of the videos, is the language. The school classes here in Kenya are taught in English, but the students are much more comfortable and fluent in Kiswahili. The material in some of the videos, especially the Crash Course ones, are delivered at a very rapid pace. The material is great, but hard to digest at the speed it is delivered – especially for someone who is not a native English speaker. I have to slow things down and reiterate concepts. Plus, I constantly challenge the students with questions. With all my interruptions and questions, it’s not unusual for us to take two hours to watch a fifteen-minute video!
One of my biggest complaints, and there are several, with the educational system here in Kenya is the rigidity of the curriculum. It is very rigorous and comprehensive, but at the same time rigid. The students are expected to be able to answer a standardized set of questions and solve a standardized set of problems. While this is important, I personally view the primary value of education as teaching students how to reason, think critically and solve problems. Most of us will only use a tiny fraction of the specific knowledge we acquire in school in our lives and professional careers. However, the ability to take what you do know and apply it to new and different problems is what is of real valuable. The ability to think through a situation, to reason and to develop solutions is what is key. In support of this, I constantly push back on the students when they simply want to plug numbers into a formula. Instead, I make them explain what the formula means and how it applies to the problem at hand. When the ask for a calculator, I typically tell them that I don’t care that they get the right answer, but rather that they understand the underlying concepts and how to apply what they know to solving the problem. The numbers are just the last step in the process, and in my opinion, the least important.
It remains to be seen how effective my methods will be in helping the students. The reality of the situation is that the students still need to be able to get good grades on, or at a minimum pass, the standardized tests. I can’t lose sight of that. However, at the same time, I’m aiming for a little bit more.
Last week we had our annual H.O.P.E. Sports Days – one day in each of the two locations where we run tutorials. The good news was that there was no rain in sight either of the two days. However, it was hot and the sun was brutal. Besides my best efforts to lather myself in sunscreen and wear a hat most of the time, I still managed to get a good sunburn on both the top of my head (where I now lack any form of natural protection) and my arms.
In Mbungoni, one of the technical schools we work with allowed us to use one of their campuses for our sports day there. Unfortunately, they are doing construction at the campus and the whole field that we used for the sports day was recently bulldozed over. In fact, there was more excavation work underway at the opposite end of the site while we were there. This meant that the field was all dirt (and some mud from raid we had earlier that week). That didn’t stop the students in the slightest. They played soccer, ran races, jumped rope, and got muddy. In Changamwe, we were able to put up a volleyball net and so added that to the list of events. Fortunately, we had grassy fields to work with there.
The Sports Days were a lot of fun for them as well as for me. This was the most exercise I’ve gotten since I arrived in Kenya. It was great trying to keep up with the kids. Unfortunately, most of our students don’t have many opportunities like this to just be kids. Most of our children live with their mother (with no father) or with a single guardian, typically a female relative, if both parents are deceased. From an early age, these kids are expected to do household chores and, in many cases, care for younger siblings. Not only are the school days long, with many children having to walk long distance to and from school, but these kids typically have to do chores both before and after school. That doesn’t leave much time for them to study, much less play.
Not only was it great to see the children running around and enjoying themselves, but they also practically got to eat to their hearts content. Most of these kids don’t get a lot to eat. Seeing them eat a big plate of pilau (rice dish with spices and meat) and then lining up for seconds, was wonderful.
However, the most special time of each day was the chance for the children to say goodbye to Coralis, who is leaving Kenya at the end of the month. Coralis has been the administrator of the H.O.P.E. project for the past four years. She has also been the Regional Director of the Kenya/South Sudan region. I am taking over the role of H.O.P.E. administrator from Coralis as she will be beginning a new missionary journey working with migrants and refugees on the US/Mexico border. As the previous administrator of H.O.P.E., Coralis has been my mentor for the past half year. As Regional Director, Coralis found me a host family to live with when I first arrived in Mombasa, who are now my Kenyan family, guided me in discerning a ministry job, which ended up being taking over her ministry job (no pressure), and helping me settle into my own place. Maryknoll provides a housing allowance to assist missioners in setting up their residences in their mission country. What also typically happens is that furniture and household items are passed down from departing missioners, which will happen with me when Coralis leaves in a few weeks. However, as there was very little in the way of “saved” household items for me when I moved into my house at the beginning of October, I basically had to purchase all the bare essentials that I needed. Coralis took me shopping, helped me make lists of what I needed, and assisted me in allocating the allowance based on her past experiences. We were able to get all the essentials that I needed to move into my house in about the span of a week and I was able to move in shortly after signing the rental agreement. I hate shopping and so am very grateful to Coralis for helping me get through this necessary evil.
Florah and I had been planning Coralis’s goodbye with the children for a while. We instinctively decided on the Sports Days as the events as these would really be the last time that everyone would be together before Coralis leaves. At the end of the day after lunch in Mbungoni, which was the first of the two Sports Days, we had the kids distract Coralis and then play a game where she was supposed to guess what a surprise was with her eyes closed. We then took the opportunity to sneak in the cake. Once Coralis discovered the cake, the children broke out in song which continued through the cutting of the cake. Corolis’s face was then painted with icing and she proceeded to feed each of us a piece.
It was impossible to pull off the same element of surprise in Changamwe the next day as the secret was already out. However, this in no way detracted from the specialness of the goodbye there. After lunch, the children again sang as we brought out and cut the cakes. Coralis again proceeded to feed everyone a slice of cake – all fifty plus of us. However, the day in Changamwe was special in its own right. There are not only more students in Changamwe, but more older students. Even a few former students attended. After cake, everyone came up and talked about what Coralis and H.O.P.E. has meant to them. I then presented Coralis with a memory book in which each student had a page to express whatever they wanted to tell Coralis in word and/or picture. The younger students mostly drew, but many of the older students wrote some very touching tributes to Coralis. Luckily as I mentioned, Coralis went back to the US for a wedding for a few weeks in November. This gave us the opportunity to have the kids make pages without her knowing. Here is a copy of the dedication page from the memory book that we gave her.
Last week I also had the opportunity of attending William’s graduation from nursing school. William is Florah’s older son (Pascal being the younger) and the oldest grandchild in the family. William graduated from a local medical training college with a diploma (three-year degree) in Community Health Nursing. I was honored to spend the day with William, Florah and the rest of the family. As I have mentioned many times (and hopefully will continue to do so for as long as I am in Kenya), they treat me like one of the family. I am so grateful to have them in my life.
Me and WilliamFlorah, me, Joel, Pascal and Patrick
This was my first Thanksgiving in Kenya. No, there isn’t a Kenyan Thanksgiving holiday, I mean the American one. As I understand has been the tradition, we spent the week in Nairobi at the Maryknoll Fathers House. All eight Maryknoll Lay Missioners in Kenya/South Sudan region travelled to Nairobi for the week. Steve Veryser, who is the Regional Director for Tanzania and now will also be responsible for the Kenya/South Sudan Region also joined us for most of the week. On Monday we had a regional business meeting, which we typically have once a month and schedule as much as possible for times when we are all together like this. On Tuesday and Wednesday, we had an Advent Retreat, which I was responsible for organizing. On Thursday we had a Thanksgiving meal together with the Maryknoll Fathers and the seminarians. Friday was a free day with some people departing, but most like me traveling home on Saturday.
While in Nairobi, we recorded a video for Maryknoll of the lay missioners and seminarians singing Angels We Have Heard on High (or Mbali Kule Nasikia in Kiswahili) – one verse in Kiswahili and one verse in English. I can’t believe how much patience the seminarians had with us. They are all pretty good singers and several are musicians. On the lay missioner side, not so much. We practiced for a few hours for two days and on the third day recorded the video, which itself took a number of takes. The seminarians were intent on making the video as good as possible given what they had to work with. At one point, we decided to ditch the Gloria in Exclesis Deo refrain for something simpler. The seminarians came up with a replacement for it which I think makes our version of the song rather unique. Adding to the complexity of the endeavor was the fact that the notes of the melody in Kiswahili is slightly different than the way we sing the song in English. I’m guessing this is a result of the adaptation of the song to Kiswahili and the different number of syllables in the translated lyrics. Not sure. In any event, the seminarians had to teach us the Kiswahili verse and we had to teach them the English one. It was quite an experience. Again, God bless the seminarians for the patience they had with us in their pursuit of “perfection” (if I dare call it that).
As I mentioned, I was responsible for organizing the two-day retreat. I chose “The scandal of the Incarnation” as the theme for the retreat. I based this on a short meditation that Pope Francis gave not very long after becoming pope. I was able to get a wonderful Jesuit African priest to lead the retreat. He structured the retreat based on a number of sub themes that he developed from the main theme that I provided.
The scandal of the incarnation refers to the scandal of a God who became man. The creator of all that is, entered into creation and become one of us. Obviously closely tied in with the scandal of the incarnation is the scandal of the cross – that our God who became man, died on a cross. A God who gives without limit and identifies with the marginalized and poor, doesn’t quite fit in with contemporary thinking of an all-powerful God. Thus, the scandal
The reason I chose this theme is that I think we sometimes don’t quite reflect enough on the enormity of what it means that the God who created the universe, the stars, black holes, quantum particles, electromagnetism, DNA, and time itself, entered into creation in the form of an infant who was completely dependent on Mary and Joseph for care and protection. Lying beneath the surface of the warm feelings we have of nativity scenes, lies the fact that the God who created the heavens and the earth, could not find room within his own creation to lay his head, upon his birth into this world. Instead, he had to be laid in the feeding trough that animals ate from. As Pope Francis says, there will always be a strong temptation “to do good things without the scandal of the Incarnate Word, without the scandal of the Cross”. These things are uncomfortable and many times don’t fit in with our view of the world.
I also chose this theme, because it fits in well with what I view as my role as a Catholic missioner. Pope Francis goes on to say that “We can do all the social work we like, and people can say: ‘how good the Church is, what good social work the Church does!’. But if we say we do this because those people are the flesh of Christ, it gives rise to a scandal”. This fits perfectly in with why I became a Catholic missioner. Yes, I want to do good things and help people. But most of all, I want to encounter Jesus Christ in others and have them encounter Christ in me. Pope Francis continues, “The Church is not a cultural or religious organization, nor is it a social one, it is not this. The Church is the family of Jesus. The Church confesses that Jesus is the Son of God who came in flesh. This is the scandal and this is why they persecuted Jesus”. The Church is the mystical body of Christ. It is not a human institution. It is not an NGO. It is Christ himself.
Pope Francis then says “if we become merely reasonable, social and charitable Christians what will the consequence be? That we will never have martyrs”. However, when we say that “the Son of God came and became flesh, when we preach the scandal of the Cross, there will be persecution, there will be the Cross”. I don’t have a death wish or anything like that, but I firmly believe that as the Body of Christ, we can’t separate the good that we do from proclaiming in everything we do, the Good News of Jesus Christ.
As has been said, with the Incarnation comes the Cross. Even the Church is not immune to this as we are so sadly aware. However, as St. Paul tells us in his second letter to the Corinthians “But we hold this treasure in earthen vessels”. Yes, in earthen vessels. The instruments God uses, us, are human and fragile. But as St. Paul concludes “that the surpassing power may be of God and not from us.” (2 Corinthians 4:7) We are the Body of Christ. Christ is our head who will lead his body to the ultimate end for which it was created – sharing in the everlasting and unbounded love of God himself.
St. John Paul II said that Advent helps us to understand fully the value and meaning of the mystery of Christmas. He said, “Advent is, so to speak, an intense training that directs us decisively toward him who already came, who will come, and who comes continuously.” I pray that this Advent helps us to welcome our Savior into our hearts more fully at Christmas.
This is the time of year when we begin the process of accepting new children into the HOPE Project, my ministry in Mombasa which provides educational assistance to vulnerable children, for the following school year. The academic school year in Kenya begins in January and assistance for the new children accepted into the program will begin then. The focus of the project is to assist orphans infected or affected by HIV/AIDS. Typically, to be accepted into the program, the child must have lost one or both parents to AIDS and the remaining parent or guardian must be unable to finance the education of the orphan. That is, there must be real need.
Candidates to the program are usually referred to us by community health workers, who work in the candidate’s community. Once a child is referred to us, we conduct an initial interview with the parent or guardian in our office to gather basic information. We then schedule a home visit to get a better and more detailed understanding of the child’s home environment, how the parent or guardian supports the family, and how they currently pay school expenses (assuming the child is currently in school). Florah and I have been busy doing home visits for the last several weeks across a number of different areas of Mombasa. We usually only do a few home visits in a day, in the morning before it gets too hot outside. Also, some of the homes take a while to get to and from, so this also limits how many visits we can get done in a day.
The homes of HOPE children are pretty much all single room. Some are made of stone, but others are simply made of mud. Some have real floors, but many just have dirt floors. The roofs are usually made from corrugated steel. Most of the homes have electricity, but only one or two lights. The electrical wiring is all out in the open. There is obviously no sense of electrical safety codes. The homes don’t have running water. The families have to go buy and carry back plastic jerry cans of water to use for cooking, bathing and washing clothes. The rooms typically only have one bed, no table, sometimes a sofa, which is usually in pretty bad shape, and a few plastic chairs. The mothers cook in the room on a “jiko”, which is a small, portable, charcoal-burning stove. There is a community bathroom that is shared by the residents of the compound. Clothes are washed by hand outside and hung to dry on clotheslines that are strung across the entrances to the building.
During the home visits we ask a number of questions and document the parent or guardian’s responses. Using the information obtained in the home visit, we write up case profiles for each of the candidates. These will be presented to the HOPE board for approval. Decisions as to whether candidates are accepted into the program are made based on need and circumstances. The number of students we can accept into the program is limited by the amount of money we have to fund the upcoming school year. We sometimes run into cases where information we were given to us by the parent or guardian was not completely truthful. While no one we do home visits with has an easy life by any stretch of the imagination, it’s a disconcerting when someone misrepresents things.
We typically don’t take any pictures during home visits. If we take pictures and for whatever reason the child is not accepted into HOPE, the parent or guardian many times will feel that the visit was just a photo op – that is, simply for publicity or to raise money. While I don’t have any pictures of from the home visits that Florah and I just completed, I do have this photo of a special home visit that Florah and Coralis did at the end of April.
A few weeks ago, Kathy arranged a day trip for her, Mike and I to visit the north coast of Mombasa. None of us had really explored that part of the coast before and it was a good opportunity for us to do something together. Plus, we all needed a break. Kathy arranged for a driver to take us up the coast and explore different sites. As the plan was to leave early in the morning, given that we all live in different parts of Mombasa and local travel is problematic in general and unsafe very early in the morning, we decided to stay together the night before the trip, which was going to take place on a Friday.
Late on Thursday afternoon, I left home to meet up with Kathy and Mike. As I wanted to avoid, going to town late in the day to transfer matatus/minibuses, I chose a route that required two transfers, but avoided “town”. The first two segments of the trip were uneventful. As I boarded the third matatu, which had come to a stop in an area that had a lot of water as it had rained that morning, I did my best to sidestep the water and got one foot in the matatu and began to climb in. As I was climbing in the matatu moved forward. Losing my balance and surprised by the sudden movement, I lifted my head and smacked it pretty good on the top of the door. I was seeing stars, but was able to step down out of the matatu. However, there was blood everywhere. I didn’t know what to do. There is really no hospital around, at least one that I would consider going to except as a last resort, and it was starting to get dark. Not surprisingly the matatu just drove off once I got down. I guess I should be grateful that they waited for me to completely step down before taking off. A number of motorbike drivers were coming up to me wanting to drive me to the hospital. First of all, I wasn’t going to ride on a motorbike in the middle of rush hour in my condition. Secondly, I think they were more interested in getting a fare from me than my physical condition. I stand out wherever I go, but at this point I really stood out. Everyone in the area was looking at me. A few people come over to try to help. One even offered me a facecloth. As it looked fairly clean to me and I had to stop the bleeding, I took it. I would have to worry about infections later. After applying pressure for a few minutes, I could see the bleeding was stopping. I really didn’t want to have to go to the hospital at that time of the day, so I made up my mind to just continue on to meet up with Kathy and Mike. By that point I had blood all over my hands and face. Luckily, I had somehow managed to not get any blood on my clothes as I had my head bent forward. A very nice young lady came over with a bottle of water and helped me wash the blood off my face and hands. The guy with the facecloth wanted the equivalent of about 20 cents for the item. The young lady wanted to pay for it, but I was able to reach in my pocket and find the exact change. With the facecloth pressed across the top of my head to prevent any more bleeding, the young woman made sure I was able to board a matatu that would take me to where I needed to meet up with Kathy and Mike. I thanked her profusely and learned that she was from Nairobi and was going to school at Mombasa Technical University.
After getting of the matatu, I had about a ten-minute walk to where I needed to go. However, about a third of the way there, I got a call from my friend and coworker Florah wanting to know what happened to me. How in the world did she know I had a little mishap? Florah lives about an hour from where all this occurred. It turns out that a motorbike driver, who saw me bleeding all over the place, recognized me as the guy who used to live with Florah’s sister Anne’s family, who live about fifteen minutes from where the mishap occurred. He called Anne, Anne called Florah, and Florah called me. After convincing Florah that I would live, I had to call Anne and do the same with her.
After a few minutes, I got to where Kathy and Mike were waiting for me and explained what had happened. By then, the bleeding had pretty much stopped. Luckily Kathy is a nurse. She washed out the wound and although she thought my wound probably warranted a few stitches, I would be fine without them. She added that without stiches, I’ll probably have a little scar on the top of my head. I told her that I was devastated that my modeling career was now over. My head was sore and I had a slight headache, but a few extra strength Tylenol resolved those issues.
By morning, I was ready to hit the road with Kathy, Mike and Jacob, our driver. Our first stop was Gedi – a coastal town on the Indian Ocean. It took us about two hours to get to Gedi. In Gedi, we took a tour of the ruins there. Gedi has an archeological site featuring the ruins of a walled town that includes a mosque and several stone houses, some of which I assume would be considered palaces by the standards of the time. The tour guide told us that about 800 years ago, Gedi was thriving trade center. Now, not so much.
The rest of the day consisted of exploring a number of costal communities. This included the Vasco da Gama pillar in Malindi. The Portuguese explorer visited Malindi in 1498 on his way to India. While in Malindi, he erected the coral pillar which we visited. We had a nice lunch in Watamu, which is a popular resort town, in a restaurant right on the ocean. Driving back, we wound our way through many other towns along the coast. We left the house a little after 8 AM and didn’t get back until about 7 PM. It was a long day, but we had a great time.
The schools in Kenya are currently on break between the third and last term of the year and the first term which starts at the beginning of January. The break goes from the beginning on November until the end of the year. During the three yearly term breaks, we run tutorials for our HOPE students four times a week. As I mentioned in previous blog posts, during tutorials, I usually work with the secondary school students on math and science – chemistry, biology, and physics. The students really struggle with these subjects. Not only are their school classrooms overcrowded, but the children are not exposed to any supplemental materials like videos and graphics to help reinforce the concepts. As our students don’t have computers, smart phones or internet access, what they get in school is all they have to learn by. With the introduction of a flat screen TV in our HOPE office, we now have the capability to incorporate these types of supplemental learning materials into our tutorials. The students really like the computer based lessons. The hope is that over time, the use of technology in our tutorials will lead to a better grasp of the subjects by our students and better grades in the classroom.
Last week, a bunch of the primary school students approached Florah and asked why I only work with the secondary school students. I’m not sure it had anything to do with me, but more the fact that they wanted to watch videos too. When Florah told me that, I said let’s do some sessions with the primary school students too. When Florah asked them what they would like to learn about. They answered the human body. OK, I thought. I’ll do some sessions on organs and human body systems such as the circulatory, digestive, skeletal, and muscular systems. This will be great. I’ll use some diagrams and find some videos that describe how each system operates. This is exactly why I wanted to have the flat screen TV. For the circulatory system, I’ll show diagrams and videos of how the heart and blood vessels in the body deliver oxygen and nutrients are delivered to all the cells in the body. For the digestive system, we’ll follow the path of food entering the body through the mouth and evacuating the body you know where. Perfect.
Well it turns out that when they wanted to learn about the human body, what they really meant was reproduction. Yes, I can imagine the snickering and wisecracks from my family right now half a world away. After composing myself, I said that I can do this. After searching around on the internet, I found a good video to use called “Asexual and Sexual Reproduction” by the Amoeba Sisters. If you want a quick refresher on the biology of reproduction, the video is just a little over five minutes, look it up on YouTube!
I first played the video straight through. Although all the classes in Kenya are taught in English, the students are much more comfortable speaking in Kiswahili. Between some technical terms, like gametes, and how fast the speakers on the video must seem to talk, the video was a little difficult for them to understand. I tried to imagine me watching this video in Kiswahili. It wouldn’t reflect well on me. When the video finished and I started asking questions, it was like pulling teeth. I was able to get some responses, but not many.
We then went through the video a second time. This time I would pause the video about every 10 – 15 seconds, explain things in my own words and then ask them questions. Although it took them a while to warm up to this approach, the second viewing of the video resulted in a much better outcome. As we proceeded through the video, I would tie things back to stuff we saw and heard earlier in the video – constantly reviewing, but continuing to push forward. The students understood that their DNA came from their parents, but not why their DNA was different from their parents or different from their siblings. I really wanted them to understand how sexual reproduction leads to diversity and how important this is in the evolution of a species. If you are interested, view the last part of the video – the segment with the grasshoppers. J
I have to admit that when I thought about what I’d be doing when I came to Kenya, teaching about reproduction to a bunch of primary school students wasn’t on my radar. The Holy Spirit certainly leads us in unexpected directions. As Pope Francis is keen on saying, “the Holy Spirit can be unpredictable” and “makes unthinkable, unimaginable choices.” That’s for sure. But, as the pope also says, we must ask the Lord for the grace of docility to the Holy Spirit in order to follow the Spirit’s lead. That is my prayer.
This whole experience is a learning process for me as well. No, not the biology of reproduction. I’m talking about teaching. I’m pretty good at math and science. I also taught a lot of technical seminars in my time at IBM. However, my experience has always been teaching at a more advanced level. I don’t have a teaching certificate and was never formally trained in any formal method of teaching. My approach to teaching is simply to try to articulate and explain how I think about things, my understanding of how things work, how I understand specific concepts and how I approach problems which employ these concepts. When learning something new, I usually have to break thinks down into simple terms and build from there. I’m hoping this same approach will work in my interactions with our students. All I can do is continue to learn and try to get better at what I’m doing.
Last Saturday was Joel’s birthday. He turned seven. I miss him a lot since moving into my own place. As I have to teach tutorials on Saturday mornings not too far from where I was living with Richard, Anne and the family (but about an hour from where I currently live in my own apartment), I often stay at their house on Friday nights. On the way there last Friday afternoon, I picked up a few things for Joel’s birthday – a Transformer-like action figure and a soccer ball. He has been telling me for the past two months that it’s his birthday. Now it had finally arrived.
As I had to head home after tutorials, I asked if I could give Joel his presents in the morning before I left. I had successfully gotten them into the house and hidden under the bed without him seeing me. On Saturday morning, we all ate breakfast as a family. As I was preparing to leave to go to my tutorial session, they insisted that we have Joel’s cake before I left so that I could celebrate Joel’s birthday with them. So a little after eight in the morning, we sang happy birthday to Joel, he blew out the candles, and he cut the first piece of cake. We all all ate Joel’s birthday cake, drank soda, and had cookies and candy before I left. It was great.
I can’t tell you how much I appreciate them making me part of Joel’s birthday celebration and going so far as to cut the cake in the morning so I could be there. Not that I wanted them to do that, but the fact that they wanted so much for me to be there means so much to me. They always tell them that I am a gift to their family, but from my perspective, they are a gift to me. They opened their home to me and share their lives with me. I love them like family. If I got nothing else out of my time in Kenya, my relationship with them makes my coming here all worth it.
This past weekend, Kathy and I traveled to Subukia for the National Day of Prayer. Subukia is about 450 miles from Mombasa and is north of Nairobi. The National Day of Prayer is an annual event organized by the Kenya Conference of Catholic Bishops. The date and location of the event was announced several months ago. Kathy immediately expressed interest in going. I was a little more tentative given the distance. I assume this what also dissuaded any of our fellow missioners from wanting to go. Even though the travel there was challenging, I’m so glad that I went.
The day of prayer was held at a beautiful shrine in Subukia. The shrine is dedicated to Mary the Mother of God and is the national Marian shrine of Kenya. However, the shrine also attracts many non-Catholics and even many non-Christians. Given the beauty and the sense of peace that surrounds the shrine, that is not a surprise.
Catholic parishes from all over Kenya organized busses to go to the event. Mostly every parish sent at least one bus, but many parishes sent multiple busses. The way most of the trips worked from the Coast, where Mombasa lies, is that the bus would leave on Friday, arrive in Subukia either late Friday night or early Saturday morning, leave Subukia on Saturday afternoon after the day of prayer concluded and arrive home on Sunday morning.
By now you can probably understand my initial hesitance in making the pilgrimage. There is no stopover on the trip. You travel the long distance, attend the event, and immediately travel back home after the event. Not only is there no lodging in the area that could accommodate even a tiny fraction of the visitors, but there are very few people who would be able to afford the cost of a room for a night even if there were.
Once Kathy and I made up our minds that we were both going, the next decision was who to travel with. Kathy and I belong to different parishes. Kathy lives on the island of Mombasa and I live on the mainland, which is over the causeway from the island. As each parish was responsible for making its own travel arrangements, the busses from each parish were leaving at different times. Neither of us wanted to leave early on Friday. It made no sense to us to arrive in Subukia on Friday night and then have to spend the night in the bus there. Kathy’s ministry is at St. Patrick’s Dispensary, which is located in the Bangaladesh slum. The dispensary is part of St. Patrick’s parish, which was built and is run by the Kiltegan Fathers, a missionary society based in Ireland, who Maryknoll has known and worked with in Mombasa for a number of years. The bus from St. Patrick’s was scheduled to leave at 2 PM, which sounded much better than 8 AM to us, so Kathy and I decided to go this route. We paid our fees and made our reservation.
About four days before the event, we are told that the bus is now leaving at 8 AM. The archdiocese wants all the busses from Mombasa to form a caravan and drive up together. It didn’t sound too practical to us. Can you imagine a caravan of busses travelling 450 miles together? Additionally, the whole reason we chose to leave from St. Patrick’s is because their bus was leaving at 2 PM. If we knew that we were leaving early in the morning, we could have left from one of our own parishes, slept at one or the other’s house and walked to the church to catch the bus as both of us live within very short walking distances to our parishes. Now we both would have to travel to St. Patrick’s in the morning to catch the bus. As I’ve written about many times in the past, commuting here is not fun, especially during peak hours. In Kenya, you just have to go with the flow.
A few days later, which is now just two days before the trip, we are told that the bus is now leaving at 11 AM, not 8 AM. As it turned out, the cost of the trip, which was the equivalent of about $40, was too much for many of the parishioners. As I mentioned early, St. Patrick’s serves the residents of the Bangala slum. The parish also has an outstation church, St. Francis of Assisi, which is not too far away, located in another slum called Kibarani. A number of parishioners form Kibarani were also traveling on the bus. This is a huge amount of money for them and a big financial sacrifice, if they can afford to go at all. Given this, the parish decided to swap out the bus and reduce the cost of the trip. We were originally supposed to travel in a coach bus, but now we would instead use a school bus. This would obviously not have been my first choice, but I certainly wanted people who wanted to make the pilgrimage to be able to go. The good news is that we got half the cost of the original trip back, but we would pay for it later in other ways.
Kathy and I decided to meet at St. Patrick’s at 10:30 AM on Friday. When I arrived at about 10:15 AM, Kathy was already there. Fr. Nicky invited us to come have tea and juice with him. Before we went up, we decided to put our bags on the bus to reserve our seats. Not surprisingly, although no one was on the bus, there were already bags on most of the seats. The only seats we could find were way in the back, the next to the last row of the bus. Argh!
After spending about 15 minutes with Fr. Nicky, we headed down to board the bus. Fr. Nicky was not going to the National Day of Prayer, but another priest from the parish, Fr. John, a Nigerian priest who works at the parish, was going. When we got down to the bus, we were told that we would sit with Fr. John and were given front row seats right behind the driver. From a comfort point of view, I’m not sure we gained anything, but at least we weren’t in the back of the bus.
The configuration of the bus is the typical school bus layout we are all familiar with – room for two people to sit on one side of the isle and room for three people to sit on the other side. When I say people, I really mean children. This is after all a school bus. There are not separate seats, but one seat that you all share – tight squeeze, no reclining, and no leg room. The bus held about 60 people. Every seat was filled and one person traveled in the stairwell that you use to climb into the bus – only in Kenya. Well maybe not only in Kenya, but certainly not allowed in the U.S. Kathy graciously volunteered to sit between Father and me, although to be honest, I’m not sure any other way would have worked. I took my place against the window (and when I say against, I literally mean against) and we left the aisle seat for Father.
The bus actually left at 11:30 AM. This was a complete shock to both Kathy and me. Nothing here in Kenya ever starts or leaves on time. Waiting an hour for someone to arrive for a meeting is not out of the ordinary (although it really bugs me). Neither of us ever expected us to leave St. Patrick’s before noon. We were told to bring food and drink for the trip as there would be limited places where you could purchase things to eat and drink. Yes, that means food to last from Friday when we left until Sunday morning when we arrived back. As Kathy lives much closer to a supermarket than I do, she graciously offered to pick up food for us to bring. She packed a bag for each of us containing chapati (flatbread), granola bars, dried mangos, peanuts, roasted chickpeas, which were spicy and crispy, water and a juice box. I made a few peanut butter sandwiches and hard-boiled eggs to bring with us, as I knew I would need a little more sustenance, but Kathy wanted no part of those.
We arrived in Subukia at 4 AM on Saturday morning with the trip taking a total of 16.5 hours. We made around five stops along the way to use the restrooms. As it turned out, most of the places we stopped were typical rest areas for travelers, which had small shops where you could buy coffee, tea, soda and snacks. Several of the rest areas even had fast food restaurants – no, no McDonalds, KFC or Subway. The amazing thing to me was that a single driver drove the whole way. I didn’t want to think about that too much. I got a little sleep along the way, but not much. Maybe a few hours total. It was just too uncomfortable for me to sleep. My knees were killing me as there was no way to stretch out your legs further than a ninety-degree angle. I had to keep standing up to relieve the pain, as did Kathy. Father had the aisle, so he could put his legs out a little that way if he needed to. Plus, he is younger than Kathy and me. Kathy and Father may have fared a little better than me in the sleep department, but I don’t think much.
One item of note about the trip. This was the first time I ever felt cold since arriving in Kenya. In Mombasa, I never wear a long sleeve shirt or jacket and never sleep with a sheet on top of me. We were told and I knew that it would be somewhat cold as we were traveling up country into the higher elevations. But I’m thinking, people in Mombasa wear sweatshirts, jackets, and even hats, when I’m perfectly fine in short sleeves. I’m from New England after all. So, for the trip, all I brought with me for warmth was a long sleeve t-shirt and a rain jacket. Once we got out of Mombasa, we had to shut the windows on the bus and I was fine during the ride. However, I have to admit, it was a little chilly when we got out of the bus at the rest stops. I checked my phone and the temperature was about 57 degrees F. OK, not exactly bone chilling cold. Maybe my blood has thinned living in the heat and humidity of Mombasa. Kathy also thought it felt colder than 57.
We arrived at the shrine in Subukia in the pitch dark at about 4 AM on Saturday morning. There were hundreds of busses parked in a large field near the shrine. Some people were walking around, I could see people on other busses, and some busses were completely dark – either everyone was asleep or else everyone left the bus. Other busses continued to arrive after we did and this continued all morning. There were no facilities, no water, no food, no place to wash. Just the busses. It was kind of like camping.
Some people on our bus, about half the bus, got off as soon as we arrived. Kathy and I stayed on the bus and managed to sleep a little more than 2 hours. We got up about 6:30 AM, ate, bushed our teeth and headed out around 7 AM. Kathy and I walked around the grounds of the shrine for about 2.5 hours. As I mentioned earlier, the grounds are very beautiful with awesome views. The focal point of the Day of Prayer was a large, outdoor Mass with the tens of thousands of people who attended. The Mass was supposed to start at 10 AM, but actually started at 9:45 AM. A pleasant surprise, definitely not Kenyan time.
We found out later, that the people who got off the bus when we arrived in Subukia at 4 AM, walked for two hours to a spring to collect holy water. They didn’t get back to the bus until around 8 PM, after we had left. We had no idea where they were going at 4 AM. The people who went to the stream claimed that they had to navigate hard, hilly terrain to get there. The spring water is believed to have miraculous powers. These people all returned with jerrycans now filled with holy water to carry home.
Bishop Martin Kivuva, my bishop, the Archbishop of Mombasa, was the main celebrant for the Mass. Mass lasted three hours. The theme of the Day of Prayer, the Mass, and the bishop’s homily was Baptized and Sent. Another way of saying this, which was used in some of the literature for the event, is Proclaim and Witness. Pope Francis has designated October as Mission Month, whose purpose is to focus on missionary outreach, and the theme of the Prayer Day echoed that of the Mission Month. As the pope tells us, we all have an obligation to share the Gospel. We are all sent by virtue of our baptism. Everyone may not be called to evangelize with words or to work in foreign missions. However, everyone is obliged to share the Good News through our witness and welcome. We are called to proclaim and witness in the everyday goings on of our lives and in how we love our neighbor.
The Mass concluded with almost an hour of speeches on corruption. Corruption is such a big issue in Kenya. The Catholic bishops call corruption the greatest challenge facing Kenyans and say that Kenya is doomed unless corruption is rooted out. They bishops accuse the state of failure to properly address this most important of issue and that cases of corruption are worsening, denying Kenyans basic public services such as health, education, and transport. In his homily, the bishop went so far as to say that although most Kenyans decry corruption, many when presented the opportunity, will choose the wrong path. Like all social evils, we all play a part. The onus is on each one of us to reflect on ourselves and our actions first. We all must be agents of fighting corruption, but it begins with each and every one of us. As a sign of their humility in seeking God’s mercy and in solidarity with those who have suffered and continue to suffer the dehumanizing effects of corruption, the bishops removed their shoes and walked barefoot.
Our bus left Subukia at 3 PM on Saturday afternoon. Not surprisingly, with all those busses leaving at the same time, there was a big traffic jam getting out. We arrived back at St. Patrick’s at around 9 AM on Sunday morning, making our return trip about 18 hours. As we stopped fewer times on the way home than on the way to Subukia, I think most of the additional time it took to get home was due to the fact that it took such a long time to get out of the traffic leaving the shrine. We didn’t really stop for dinner on the way home until after midnight. Luckily Kathy and I had plenty of snacks. The rest area that we stopped at around midnight had a sort of fast food restaurant. The problem was that the prices at the food place were a little expensive for the people on the bus. So about twenty of them decided to go on foot in search of cheaper food. Kathy and I asked each other where could they possibly find food to eat at this time of night as there appeared to be nothing else around. I don’t know exactly where they went, but apparently, they found a place and returned content and ready to proceed on the journey home.
Although I wasn’t really looking forward to the bus ride to and from Subukia, I’m really glad that I went. I had a really good time, I got to spend time with Kathy, and I got to see the beautiful shrine. However, most of all, as I have other times I’ve done things like this in the US (like going to Philadelphia in 2015 to see Pope Francis when he visited and said Mass for the two million people in attendance), I got to experience the universality of the Church. I’ve always loved parish life and being part of a parish. For me, that is the heart of the Church. However, every once in a while, it’s wonderful to see the bigger Church, which in its totality is the mystical Body of Christ.
As I mentioned early, St. Patrick’s has an outstation church, St. Francis of Assisi, in the Kibarani slum. Fr. John was scheduled to celebrate the 9 AM Mass there. Obviously, we didn’t make it back in time for him to do that, so they just told everyone that the Mass would now be at 10 AM instead. In Kenya, this is no big deal. People just stayed in the church and waited. The choir practiced, some people prayed, the children practiced their dancing for the offertory procession. Could you imagine showing up to Mass at a church in the US and being informed that the Mass had been delayed for an hour?
When we arrived at St. Patrick’s, they asked us if we would like to attend the Mass as the bus would drop people off there on its way back to the school where the bus came from. Even though we had been on the bus for 18 hours and I had been in the same clothes since Friday morning (luckily the weather was cool and I didn’t sweat at all the whole trip), I told Fr. John that I would like to go. I had not been to the new outstation church yet and since Fr. John was celebrating the Mass, I thought this was as good a time as any. I guess I had gotten my second wind. Fr. John had time to go into St. Patrick’s and wash up before Mass. He would drive over to Kibarani separately. There were only a few people on the trip who opted to come to the Mass. Kathy decided to go home, shower and attend the late Mass at her parish that evening. As the bus belonged to a school very close to where she lives, she was able to get a ride home on the bus.
When I arrived at the Kibarani church, the parishioners were so nice. They wanted to make sure I was taken care of as they knew I had just returned from Subukia. They offered me tea/chai, but I really didn’t want anything. I went into the church, found a spot in the back as I really wished I had the opportunity to take a shower beforehand, and sat down. While waiting for Mass to start, I not only got to reflect on our trip to Subukia, but also got to see how much the parishioners love their church as I observed all the things going on around me. I thought about how much sacrifice it took for all the people on the bus to make the trip to Subukia. It was as uncomfortable for them as it was for me. Even though the price of the trip was reduced, I’m sure the cost of going was a financial hardship for most of them. I’m sure many of them had to skip work and be away from family to travel to Subukia. Yet they came. And they sang and prayed. And they bore witness to the Good News. Everyone still needs to do their own part in their everyday lives, but hopefully others witness this event and see the love and commitment to ending corruption in Kenya that was on display by so many this day.
At the end of the Mass, Father called me up to tell everyone about myself. After introducing myself, giving a little background and talking about my ministry helping orphans pursue education, I tried to tie back my living and ministry in Mombasa to Fr. John’s homily, which focused on faith, which was the primary theme of the day’s readings. I told the congregation that I came to Kenya not knowing what I was getting into. Now that I’m here I feel that the needs are overwhelming and the problems insurmountable. I don’t even know where to start to make a difference. What can I do? Although I know that I’m useless on my own, I trust that the Lord will provide all that I need. I trust that if I sprinkle the seeds the Lord will do the rest.
As Fr. John said in his homily, you have to have faith. But what is faith. St. Paul tells us that “Faith is the realization of what is hoped for and evidence of things not seen.” (Hebrews 11:1) To me, faith and hope go hand in hand. There seems to be a lot of overlap. But perhaps, in one respect, faith is a starting point. Faith is the initial leap you have to take. However, I don’t think that’s all there is to it. Something I need to read and reflect on more. In any case, I can easily relate to Habakkuk in the first reading when he says “How long, O LORD? I cry for help but you do not listen!” (Habakkuk 1:2) How many of us have been there? But God answers Habakkuk, “For the vision still has its time, presses on to fulfillment, and will not disappoint; if it delays, wait for it, it will surely come, it will not be late.” (Habakkuk 1:2) This is the faith and trust part. If we had all the answers, could see into the future and see how everything works out in the long run, we wouldn’t need faith. Rather the Lord asks us to trust in Him and look at things through the eyes of faith. We need to trust in God and believe that in the end that everything works out for good. God will not disappoint. He answers all our prayers, but in light of what is truly best for us and at the right time. Wait, for it will surely come. This reminds me of the passage from Isaiah, where the Lord says “So shall my word be that goes forth from my mouth; It shall not return to me empty, but shall do what pleases me, achieving the end for which I sent it.” This is faith. Believe that the word of God does not return to him empty, but achieves the end for which it was sent. Believe this also about yourself. As theme of the Prayer Day and Mission Month states, we are sent. Believe and trust that you were sent. Believe that you were loved into being for a unique and individual purpose in God’s plan of salvation. Believe that God will not allow you to return to him empty handed, but rather he will shower you with graces to achieve the purpose for which he created and sent you. Does this automatic happen? No. God respects our free will and wills our cooperation. However, it we have faith and trust, He will give us all that we need to accomplish his will.
As I said in my reflection at the end of Mass, things can seem overwhelming and impossible. However, as Jesus tells us in the Gospel reading, “If you have faith the size of a mustard seed, you would say to this mulberry tree, ‘Be uprooted and planted in the sea,’ and it would obey you.” (Luke 17:5-10) God has given us great gifts. We just need to believe and trust in him. Not easy, but there for us if we take the leap of faith.
After Mass, Fr. John drove me home. The next day, on Monday morning, we had our first Monday of the month Pastoral Center Mass and meeting. We learned that the Archdiocese sent 115 busses consisting of about 7000 people. Three buses broke down along the way and didn’t make it to Sabukia. One bus got in an accident, but no one was seriously injured. The Lord was with us.
After the meeting, since I was already in town and Monday is usually my day off, I went food shopping in one of the several supermarkets in the area. I was having my vegetables and fruits weighed – in Kenya a store employee does this at a separate station in the produce section before you head over to a checkout line. As I was standing there, a man using a cane walked up holding a few cucumbers. As I had a number of items left, I told the person weighing my fruits and vegetables to take care of the man first. As his cucumbers were being weighed, his wife came over and they asked if I were the one who spoke at the Mass at St. Francis of Assisi in Kibarani the day before. Small world.
It has been quite a busy time for me since I last posted to my blog. There had been so much going on that it was very difficult to carve out time to write. I’m so happy I finally have the opportunity to catch up with everyone on what I’ve been up to in August and September.
August
We were busy the whole month of August with tutorials for our students. The school year in Kenya is divided into three terms. Roughly speaking, the first term goes from January through March with students off much of the month of April on break. The second term consists of the months of May through July with much of the month of August serving as the term two holiday. The final and shortest term of the year, term three, spans the months of September and October. There are also week-long half term holidays for terms one and two, which occur roughly in the middle of the term. There is no half term holiday for term three as it is short in duration. The big school break here in Kenya is November and December after the end of term three, where the students are off for roughly two full months. I equate this to summer school break in the US.
The one big exception to this two-month vacation is for those in their last year of secondary school (high school), which is called Form 4 (what in the US would be twelfth grade). Students in Form 4 have a month long set of exams called the Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education (KCSE). These exams are literally make or break for students in Kenya. A KCSE certificate is required for any further study beyond secondary school – not only college, but even vocational schools in most cases. On top of that, a student’s scores on the KCSE exam will determine, what type of school they are eligible to attend for further studies. In short, to a large degree, the future and career of a child depends on the results of their KCSE exams. (There are also a set of standardized exams for eighth grade students called Kenya Certificate of Primary Education (KCPE), which have similar importance in determining secondary school placement, but these exams are only span three days.) So, the month of August was the last chance for us to work intensely with our Form 4 (twelfth grade) students before their KCSE exams in November.
During the year, my ministry project, Helping Orphans Pursue Education (H.O.P.E.), runs tutorial sessions every Saturday in the two locations in Mombasa – Changamwe and Mbungoni. However, during school breaks we run tutorial sessions three times a week in Changamwe as there are more than double the number of students there and a much higher concentration of secondary school students. So, during the month of August, we run four tutorial sessions a week – Monday, Wednesday and Friday in Changamwe and Saturdays in Mbungoni. Before I started working on the project, Coralis would run the Mbungoni sessions and Florah the ones in Changamwe. Since joining, I’ve been floating between the two locations and trying to get to know the students in each. However, once Coralis leaves Kenya at the end of the year, I will run the Saturday sessions in Mbungoni. However, during school break, I felt it would be a better use of my time to do the tutorial sessions in Changamwe. The secondary students there really needed help in math and sciences – most specifically physics, chemistry and biology – and this is something I’m equipped to do, or more accurately used to be equipped to do a number of decades ago when I was studying all this stuff at a college level.
Although I have degrees in Physics and Engineering, I hate to admit it, but I’m pretty rusty in these areas. I spent most of my career at IBM as a software engineer with the latter part of my career focused on cloud computing (for those of you who know what that is) and artificial intelligence (most specifically, what is referred to in the industry as machine learning). Ask me to create a model to predict if prospect is likely to react positively to a promotional offer and I can probably still pull that off. Although, I have to admit, that even these more recent skills are quickly deteriorating. I can’t believe that it’s now been just a little over one year since I left IBM to pursue my dream of becoming a missioner.
During the month of August, I was still living with my Kenyan family in Frere Town, which meant I had about an hour commute in each direction to and from Changamwe. I won’t go into another rant about the difficulties of getting around here. I’ve done that enough in other blog posts. On most days, I would leave the house a little after 7:30 AM, get to Changamwe a little after 8:30 AM (assuming no major problems with the commute), do tutorials from 9 AM until 4 PM, leave a little before 4:30 PM and get home around 5:30 PM. In addition to tutorials, we still run normal office hours in Changamwe from 9 AM to about 3 PM on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Depending on what was going on, I would sometimes take a Tuesday or Thursday off, but this still meant that I was commuting to Changamwe at least four times a week and doing tutorials on Saturdays in Mbungoni, which is luckily only about a twenty-minute walk from where I was living in Frere Town.
During the month of August, I pretty much focused all my efforts on tutorials. In Changamwe, we generally would do math in the morning and then a science during the afternoon – alternating between physics, biology and chemistry. At the end of the day, the students would give me a list of specific topics they wanted to cover in the next tutorial. In my “spare time”, meaning when I got home, I would spend several hours preparing the lessons for the next session, including problems I would review with them and ones that I would have them try. At first this whole preparation process was extremely difficult for me as I had to search around on the web for material to review and use, which took a lot of time. Luckily a few major donations to the H.O.P.E. project came in from a few of Coralis’ donors and we had some funds that we could use to help improve our tutorials. We made two major upgrades to our tuturials. First, we bought a set of textbooks for the secondary school subjects (math, physics, chemistry and biology) that I’m tutoring the students on – one per grade level. Although we have a library of books for the students to use during the tutorial sessions, we did not have a full set of textbooks that I could use for lesson preparation. The addition of the textbooks has helped me tremendously in preparing for tutorial lessons. Additionally, I now get to see exactly how the concepts are presented to the students in the classroom, which is also a big benefit. The second purchase was that of a flat screen TV, which is now mounted on the wall in the office and which we use as a computer monitor. Unfortunately the office is not very big, but you would be amazed at how many students we can cram in there to watch a video.
Tutorials in Changamwe are held outside behind the parish center under an overhang that stretches the length of the building. Our Chamgamwe office is in the church compound of St. Mary’s Church and the parish lets us run tutorials there. Typically, I use a chalk board for presenting lessons and having students solve problems. This works fine, especially for math. However, I wanted to bring the science tutorial sessions to another level. For example, talking about how food is digested in the body and supporting this with some crude diagrams on a chalkboard is one thing (and anyone who knows me, knows that I have exactly zero drawing skills), showing a video that animates the digestive process is another. I now use the TV/monitor to supplement tutorial lessons with diagrams and videos that I believe greatly enhance the learning experience for our students, including primary school students. We’re still exploring more ways to use multimedia, including the use of educational videos and movies that are not necessarily tied to the curriculum. Grades are important, but I also want to expose the children to more than what is presented in textbooks and get them to start thinking about the world around them and their place in it.
On August 15, in the middle of the term break tutorials, we ran our yearly Career Day workshop for our students in Grades 7 – 12, which made August even more interesting and challenging. I’ve written about the Career Day Workshop in previous blog post, my last blog post, dated August 19. Please check that out if you have not seen it. I had such a great time planning and running the workshop.
Suffice it to say, it was a long month, but I wouldn’t have traded it for anything. As I’ve mentioned before, although I spend a lot of time in my ministry doing administrative and technical stuff, like building a website, which I’m still working on but at least now have a prototype, my favorite part of the job is doing tutorials with the students. I love to teach students and help them learn new concepts and new ways of seeing things. I think we’ve all experienced that feeling with a child when you see the light bulb come on. It’s priceless.
September
With the exception of my first few days in Mombasa in mid-April when I stayed with Mike, my fellow Maryknoll Lay Missioner, I had been living with a Kenyan family. I have now just recently moved into my own place. Although both the family and I would have loved the living arrangement to have continued on, I’m not sure it was practical for me to live with them indefinitely and Maryknoll certainly would not have approved of it. Part of the experience for the missioner is to live in the environment where he is serving. While there is no question I was doing that living with Richard, Anne and their family in Frere Town, there were many things that didn’t have to worry about. Although while living with the family, I had to learn how to get around Mombasa, buy personal items, and do my ministry job, I didn’t have to worry about anything in the house. Everything at home was provided for me. While I’ve lived on my own and even owned my own house since a few years after graduating college, it’s a whole different ballgame in Mombasa. I don’t understand how a lot of things work here and struggle many times to get the simplest things done. While many times I wish I didn’t have to deal with any of this stuff and could just focus on my ministry, which is why I came to Kenya in the first place, I have come to realize that that the struggles of living here are all part of the package. You really can’t have one without the other.
The other motivating factor for moving into my own place was that I wanted (and was determined) to live close to the Changamwe office where I spend most of my time working. I no longer wanted to commute an hour each way in less than ideal conditions. Finding a place close to the office and church turned out to be quite a challenge. When I first expressed an interest in living close to St. Mary’s Church, the Fathers and parishioners took an interest in finding me a place to live. I was told an apartment in the building right behind the back wall of the church was opening up at the end of June. However, the person living there decided not to move out and I was back to square one. I was kept being told to be patient and that something would open up. At the end of July, with no prospects, I started contacting agents as well asking everyone I know to help me find a place. Soon I was getting lots of leads and spent a lot of time looking at apartments. On a side note, the way it works here in Kenya is that the renter has to pay a “viewing” fee to see an apartment. If it turns out you want an apartment, the renter has to pay the agent a fee equivalent to a month’s rent. That is in Kenya, the renter absorbs all the costs, not the owner. Seems backwards to me, but I had no choice. Unfortunately, all the leads I got turned out to be not good. The apartments were either very bad, in a bad location, or both. Also, a few were so far from the church that I might as well live in a nicer area and commute.
Finally, when I had just about given up hope, the parish found a house available just a few minutes’ walk from the church. The house is just one street over from the original apartment I had wanted that fell through when the person didn’t move out. I immediately set up an appointment to see it. The major thing that I didn’t like about the house is the fact that it is a small standalone house in its own compound, not an apartment in a building. That is, the house sits behind its own walls and gate that are not shared by anyone else. Generally, you would think this is more ideal – more privacy and more room. However, as security is always a concern here, I would have preferred to live in an apartment building with other people close by. As I stand out like a sore thumb, everyone will know where the “rich” foreigner is living. Also, the house has three bedrooms and a yard. I not only didn’t want something this big, but also certainly didn’t want to have to take care of anything outside. Been there, done that for many, many years. As it turns out, although the house has three bedrooms, they are not very big and the footprint is actually no bigger than the homes of the other missioners here in Mombasa, who all have two bedrooms. After much deliberation and praying, although I actually only had a few days as the owner was keeping the house off the market for me to decide, I decided to rent the house. There really were no other options and from what I was told, it was unlikely that there would be any other apartments coming on the market this close to the church in the near future. I signed a rental agreement at the end of August that began on September 1. I was determined to live within walking distance of the office and church and after much frustration was finally able to make it happen.
After signing the rental agreement and beginning to pay rent, it took several weeks before I was at a point that I could actually live in the house. I needed to acquire at least the bare necessities for me to live. In Kenya, apartments don’t even come with refrigerators or stoves, so I was starting with nothing. I was given a few items handed down from other missioners who have since left Kenya– mainly an extra twin bed, a small table, two chairs, a bookcase, an office chair, a stool, an older microwave, a set of sheets, a few towels, and some odds and ends kitchen items. I had to buy pretty much everything else – refrigerator, stove, bed, mattress, pillows, extra sheets and pillow cases, more towels, dishes, silverware, knives, pots and pans, glasses, mugs, kitchen utensils, storage containers, a water filter (I can’t drink the water directly from the tap), surge protectors (everything of any value needs to be plugged into a surge protector here), power strips (there is only one power plug per room), and padlocks (padlocks are used on all the doors and gates).
Furnishing the house is still a work in progress. Although I have all the basics to live here, I really can’t have anyone over as I currently have no furniture to sit on besides the small table and two chairs that currently serve as my dining table. When Coralis leaves at the end of the year, I will get some of her stuff. In the meantime, I’m not sure how much more furnishing I will be doing. I hate shopping and will only do it when absolutely necessary. Where is Amazon when I need it?
This is now my home here in Kenya. I love living close to the office and the church – about a five-minute walk. I love not having to commute – except on Saturdays when I go to Mbungoni for tutorials. But I miss my Kenyan family.
When I moved in with Anne and Richard; their two children – Joel, who will turn seven at the beginning of November, and Hope, who turned one at the beginning of July; and Dorothy, their inhouse help, none of us knew what to expect. I had been used to living alone most of my life – in my own house with spare bedrooms and bathrooms and a kitchen all to myself. Now I was living in a house with five other people (sometimes six or seven people when they had other guests) with two bedrooms, one bathroom, a galley kitchen, and one sitting room. They on the other hand, were used to sharing their home with visitors, but now had this American moving in whom they knew little about. The initial understanding was that I would live there for a month. As time went on, we grew closer, got to know each other more and more, and shared everything together. We ate all our meals together, I went on weekend trips with them to visit the extended family, we watched TV together, and we played games together. They taught me how to navigate Mombasa and deal with living in a new and different place. By the time the month was up, none of us were in a rush for me to move out. They were now my family here in Kenya and treated me as such. I more than felt the same way about them. It wasn’t until I settled on my ministry job and decided that I wanted to live in Changamwe, that I even really began looking for another place to live and that wasn’t until the end of June.
When the time came to actually move out, it was very difficult for all of us. I’m now living in my own house. I enjoy living close to work and the church, which I so much wanted, but I certainly miss my Kenyan family and they tell me that they miss me a lot too. I miss them all very much, but I especially miss Joel. I took him a little while for him to warm up to me. At first just I was kind of there and he didn’t really interact with me that much. However, over time, we became very close. I love him very much. We would often play games when I came home from work – floor hockey with a roll of tape on the floor or with his toy cars racing around the table and up and down the sofa. I’d also sometimes watch cartoons with him – Joel loves Sponge Bob and Disney’s the Lion Guard among others. Many times Hope would wander over, especially lately as she can now stand up holding on to furniture and move around, but Joel would have no part of it and would generally pick her up and move her off to somewhere else. However, the most fun I have with Joel is playing Uno.
Several months ago, after a game of tape hockey on the floor with Joel, I was trying to think of some kind of game I could play with him and came up with the idea of Uno. The reason this stuck out in my mind is that while in Nairobi before coming to Mombasa, I visited the house of my friend and classmate Joseph. He and two other members of his congregation live together and teach catechism to children. While I was there I played Uno with the children and I thought it would be great to introduce the game to Joel. The challenge was finding a deck of Uno cards. After searching in the few malls here in Mombasa and coming up empty, I asked Dee, my fellow lay missioner in Nairobi, to look in the malls near her. There are a lot of malls in Nairobi and she lives within close walking distance to one. Dee found a deck for me. After waiting for someone to bring the cards back from Nairobi, I finally introduced Joel to the game.
Joel took to the game immediately. In fact, he is pretty much an Uno card shark now. I have a hard time beating him. When Joel wins, he will break into a victory dance and yell “I win. I win. I win.” at the top of his voice. I’ve never seen someone as lucky as he is. As Joel has not yet mastered how to shuffle a deck of cards, I generally deal the cards, although I’ve more recently begun having Joel deal after I shuffle the deck. However, whether I deal or Joel deals, he always seems to get all the good cards to start the game. The streak continues after that as he’ll pick up a number of the special Uno cards – the Wild Draw Four, the Wild and the Draw Two – during the course of a game, while they are nowhere to be seen for me.
There is always a lot of contention with respect to whether someone actually calls “Uno”. Those of you who play Uno know that the moment a player has just one card left, they must call “Uno”. If they are caught not saying “Uno” by another player before the next player takes their turn, the player who forgot to call “Uno” must draw two cards as a penalty. Joel often forgets or will call “Uno” right before putting down his last card to win the game. Then he will proceed to claim that he called “Uno” before. Or he’ll often claim that another person did not call “Uno” when everyone else heard it.
Joel is also sneaky when it comes to drawing a card from the draw pile. You can often see him lifting the top few cards on the pile and trying to pull out the one that is most advantageous to him rather than the one on top, which is how the game is supposed to be played.
It’s even worse when he is playing one of his friends. Sometimes I’m in my room working on my computer and can hear a fight break out. Joel is claiming he won, but his friends are contesting that he cheated somehow. I go out and try to see what happened, but most times it’s impossible to get to the bottom of it through all the yelling.
Luckily, this is not the end of the story. Although I don’t live with my Kenyan family anymore, I hope to still see them often. As I have to go to Mbungoni on Saturday mornings for tutorials, I can always visit while I’m in the area. Last Thursday, Anne asked me to come for dinner on Friday, sleep over, and go to the tutorial in the morning. They were all expecting me. I gladly accepted. It was like old times (OK, maybe not so old as I only moved out two weeks ago). We had chai (tea), I played Uno and cars with Joel, got to see Hope’s pierced earrings, which look very nice on her, ate dinner and watched some TV as a family. They like these prime-time programs (which to me are pretty much soap operas) from India that are broadcast on one of the channels here. They got me hooked on them while I was living there. Having no TV (which is a good thing) in my house, I’ve had to wean myself off of them. For dinner, Dorothy made my favorite – chapati and beans. Chapati is a flatbread that is a staple here in Kenya (as well as other East African countries and on the Indian subcontinent). The beans are pretty healthy, the chapati not so much as they are made using tons of oil, but I’m addicted to them and they are everywhere.
I can’t thank Richard and Anne enough for welcoming me into their home the way they did, sharing their life with me, and making me part of the family. If I get nothing else out of my time in Kenya, becoming part of their family would have made coming here all worthwhile. While, I’m confident that God has lots more in store for me before my time is up here, it’s great to be part of a family while I’m here.
One last note on Dorothy, who is not only the inhouse help, but also part of the family too. Joel and Hope love her a lot. She works so hard. She is the first one up in the morning and the last one to go to bed. When I first arrived at the home, I thought she might view me as one more thing she now has to take care of. I thought that she already had so much to do and now she has to worry about me on top of everything else. That couldn’t have been further from the truth. From the moment I got there, Dorothy did everything to make sure that I felt comfortable there and had everything I needed. When I come home from work, she gave my chai and a snack. If I had to leave early for work or Mass on Sundays, she made sure I had breakfast before I left. For the first few months I used to wash my clothes at Mike’s house on my day off while he was at work (we usually have different days off). At Dorothy and Anne’s insistence, I started letting them wash my clothes. Dorothy kept insisting that it was no big deal for her to wash a few more clothes.
When I was getting ready to move out, I asked Anne what I could get Dorothy to thank her for all she did for me while I was living there. Anne said that she would appreciate anything. I thought about it for a while and came up with what I hoped was the perfect gift. Dorothy has an old mobile phone, which is not a smart phone and not really a flip phone either, which the battery always falls out of. I think you get the picture. So, I purchased a new smartphone for her right after I moved out, but didn’t have the chance to give it to her until I visited this weekend. When I gave Dorothy the phone, she could hardly hold back tears. I certainly didn’t want her to cry and felt that the gift was the least I could do to say thank you for all she did for me, but seeing her reaction was so special. Later on, Anne and I were talking about the fact that many times we do things, hopefully good things, that we think go unrecognized. However, we may never truly know how our simplest actions, or words for that matter, impact another person and sometimes even make a difference in the lives of that person. I’m glad I got the opportunity to tell Dorothy how much her kindness meant to me. I tried to give her something, but I feel I got more in return by her reaction to my small token of appreciation. It’s funny how that works.
Once a year, the H.O.P.E. project, my ministry here in Mombasa, runs a Career Workshop for our more senior students – typically the students in Grades 7 through 12 (or in Kenya what would be referred to as Standard 7, Standard 8 and Forms 1, 2, 3, and 4). In past years, the theme of the workshop has ranged from determining potential career paths based on a student’s strengths and likes to having someone from a certain profession, say healthcare, come in and talk with the students about what it is like to be a health care professional and what it takes to get there.
Last month as Coralis, Florah and I sat down to decide what we wanted to do for this year’s workshop, so that we could finalize the logistics for the session, they both proceeded to ask if I would facilitate this year’s workshop. I suspect that they conspired against me, but I gladly accepted as I love working with the students. My role as the administrator of the H.O.P.E. cuts across many facets of the project including financial, administrative, as well as community and donor relations. However, by far, my favorite part of the job is working directly with the students – specifically running tutorial sessions for groups of students as well as tutoring individual students. To me, facilitating the workshop is along the same lines as tutoring as in both cases I have the opportunity to open up the minds of the students to see things in new and different ways, help them to critically think and solve problems, and to encourage them to be creative. So, I was very happy that Coralis and Florah asked me to do this.
On a side note, while I love running tutorials for the students, I’m embarrassed at how much I’ve forgotten since high school and college. During tutoring sessions, I mainly work with our older students, those in secondary school as well as some in grades 7 and 8. I primarily focus on tutoring math and sciences – algebra, physics, chemistry and biology. Since I have both a Bachelor of Science degree and a Masters in Engineering, you would think this would be right in my sweet spot. But alas, I have not used most of this knowledge for a long time – actually decades, but I hate to admit that, so I’m a little rusty. Who remembers from Algebra class what the determinant of a matrix is and how to calculate it? Who remembers from Chemistry that water may function as both a base and an acid. That is, water is amphiprotric! Who remembers from Biology that the lungs are made up of up to 700 million alveoli, which are tiny, balloon-shaped air sacs whose function it is to exchange oxygen and carbon dioxide molecules to and from the bloodstream?
Once I actually review the material, things comes back fairly quickly, but I have to do my homework and spend time preparing. At least it’s comforting to know that this knowledge, which I spent time and effort learning, does still exist somewhere in the recesses of my brain. I just need to reach back in there and pull it to the front.
What makes tutoring especially challenging in Kenya is the way the education system works here. The curriculum is extremely demanding and densely packed. They shove a lot of information down the throats of the students and the hours that students are in class is much more than in the US. The success or failure of a student and their advancement is solely based on how they score on standardized tests. Unless you go to a private school, which is not a possibility for the students we work with in the H.O.P.E. project, the student teacher ratios are extremely large. Single classes can have over 80 students, and sometimes even more, with just one teacher. Given this reality, students get no individualized attention. Students are pushed through the grade levels regardless of their grades, but in many cases, this simply means that they are falling further and further behind. When it comes time for secondary school, students without passing grades will not be able to proceed. For those who don’t have the grades, a vocational or trade school is the only option, if they have the financial means.
OK back to the Career Workshop. Since I was not here in Mombasa for any of the previous career workshops, I decided to start with a clean sheet of paper and not concern myself with how past years’ workshops were done. The first thing I did was to come up with a topic for the workshop. I decided on to base the workshop on what I call Job Readiness skills, meaning characteristics that every person needs to be successful in a job. These are often referred to as “soft” skills. These are not technical or career specific skills, but skills that you need in order to perform both individually and as part of a group. Individual skills include such personal character traits as motivation, self-confidence, and flexibility. Group skills include things like teamwork, respect, and negotiation skills. In the workshop, I stressed how both individual and group skills are important for success in the workplace.
Being a product of corporate America and IBM in particular, I immediately had to create a Powerpoint presentation to organize my thoughts and use as a framework for developing the workshop content. I proceeded to document my workshop objectives and sketch out an agenda for the session, which would start at 8:30 AM and go until 3 PM. As I knew that the students would easily get bored and that I would quickly lose everyone if I simply lectured a lot, I decided up front that I wanted the workshop to be very hands on. That is, I wanted the students active and engaged in learning activities, not listening to me talk. So, I limited myself to 30 minutes of speaking at the start of the workshop to set the stage for the rest of the day. After all, I had to give the students some context in order to give meaning to the activities that would follow.
After much searching on the internet for ideas, I decided on eight activities that I would use. I knew that this was more activities than we could possibly get through in the day, but I’d rather not get through them all than not have enough. I then had to retrofit the activities to limit the cost of the material needed for the activities to stay within budget. As we usually have around fifty students at these workshops, we needed to find and/or purchase enough items to support this number of participants. After much brain-racking, I decided to limit the workshop activities to only use these simple items – pens, paper, popsicle sticks, clothespins, string, rubber bands, plastic cups, and pieces of cloth to use as blindfolds.
I call these simple items, but as I’ve come to learn, nothing here is as simple as it appears. We not only ended up having to go to a number of stores to get all the materials, but finding popsicle sticks turned out to be quite a challenge. There are no Michaels Stores, Hobby Lobby, or Joann’s Fabric and Craft Stores here in Kenya. After walking around from store to store for over an hour, I was almost ready to buy a few hundred popsicles just to get the popsicle sticks. It would have been quite a sacrifice for us to have to eat all those popsicles to get the sticks, but sometimes you just have to take one for the team. Just when all hope seemed lost, we walked into a book store that also sold some craft items and lo and behold, it turned out that the store sold popsicle sticks. There was a half empty box in the display case so I asked the clerk to get me three full boxes like the one in the display. She sent someone in the back to get them, but he returned with only one box. That was unfortunately all they had. We proceeded to buy that one box as well as the half empty box from the display case. We completely wiped out the store’s supply of popsicle sticks. It wasn’t as many popsicle sticks as I wanted, but it would have to be good enough. I ended up having to change one of the activities to account for the reduced number of popsicle sticks, but such is life in mission. You constantly have to work with the cards you are dealt.
Students serving up lunch.Lunch time!
Each of the workshop activities was designed to practice one or more Job Readiness skills. I would begin each activity by explaining to the students what they would be doing in the activity, telling them what skills the activity was intended to explore, and then breaking them up into small groups of 5 – 6 students. I would shuffle the teams after every activity so that the students worked with different students each activity. This forced the students to learn how to adapt to working with different people and figure out how to best use the different skills that each person brings to the team. However, the most important part came after the activity was completed. This is when we did a debrief of the activity as an entire group. The students had to answer questions such as: What did you learn about yourself? What did you learn about others? Why was teamwork important for the activity? What skills did you need to use both individually and as a team? Did you or anyone on the team get frustrated? If so, how did you handle it? How can you use what you learned in real life, say on a job?
Once I had the workshop agenda and activities sketched out, I spent several weeks experimenting and tweaking them. As the activities were specifically designed to be team based and not capable of being done along, I solicited the help of the Kenyan family I live with to do practice runs of the activities. Joel, who is in first grade and saw the materials (popsicle sticks, clothespins, plastic cups, etc.) in my room, was very enthusiastic about playing with them.
At the actual workshop, we were only able to get through five of the eight activities I had prepared, which was fine. As I stated, I knew that I had prepared more activities than we could possibly complete. It was more important to spend time on the debrief after each activity and reinforcing what the students learned than simply rushing through them to get more activities done.
Here are the activities that we ended up using in the workshop.
Cup Stacking Challenge – The teams had to build a pyramid consisting of six plastic cups (3 on the bottom + 2 in the middle + 1 on top) without using their hands. We attached 1 ½ foot long pieces of string, one per team member, to a rubber band. The team could only use this contraption to assemble the pyramid. No hands allowed, even if they knocked over a cup. They had to work as a team to operate the device with the right amount of coordinated tension and control.
Right Way/Wrong Way – Each team was assigned a job readiness skill. They had twenty minutes to prepare two short role plays – one demonstrating the right way to model the skill and one the wrong way. Take patience for example. You can imagine the scenarios that participants come up with to demonstrate lack of patience. To be honest, this was the activity that worried me the most. I was concerned that the students would not take to role playing and so struggle with this exercise. Boy was I wrong. The students did a great job. Some of them really hammed it up in their role play!
The Blindfold Game – Each team selected one person to be blindfolded. After the person was blindfolded, the team was given a picture of a structure that the blindfolded person had to construct out of popsicle sticks and clothespins. Only the blindfolded person was allowed to touch the items and build the structure. The other participants could only give verbal instructions. To make things more challenging, the structure had to be stable enough to stand on its own for three seconds with no support. Three teams were able to accomplish this, which I thought was an awesome feat. Most of the other teams were able to construct the structure, but it would not free stand.
Time Management Challenge – The teams were given a list of questions to answer in ten minutes. The answers to the questions were lists of things – countries in Africa, cities in Kenya, prime numbers between 1 and 100, chemical elements, top ten countries in the world with the highest population, and a word for each letter of the English alphabet. Some lists provided more point values than others. For example, five points for each chemical element vs. only one point for each country in Africa. Sometimes more points were awarded for getting more items in the list – one point for each city in Kenya, but two points for each city after the tenth one. If you got the whole list, you got a lot of points. For example, five points for each of the top ten most populous countries, but ten points each, or a total of one hundred points if they got all ten countries. The activity was designed so that the students were given way more questions than they could possibly answer in ten minutes. The teams not only needed to figure out how to best manage their time as a team, but they also needed to devise a strategy for which questions to answer to maximize the total number of points earned as well as assign tasks to team members so that they are using the knowledge of each team member optimally and not duplicating effort. Obviously, this is a lot to ask, especially with only ten minutes to complete the task. But that was the point. I wanted them to feel overwhelmed by a seemingly impossible set of requests. None of us have ever felt this way at work!
The fifth and final activity was a more relaxing one. After all the grueling activities the students completed, they needed to “unwind” a little. We all stood in a big circle. Next, everyone had to reach out to shake hands with two other people, with each hand holding that of a different person. Then the group had to figure out how to untangle the human knot we had created without letting go of each other’s hands.
We concluded the workshop with a session for the students to tell us what they learned. Based on the feedback and the way the students embraced the activities, I was very pleased with the way the day went. Our challenge going forward will be to continue to reinforce what the students learned during the workshop. Otherwise, I fear that they will quickly forget about all the skills we practiced in the session.
At Mass on Sunday during the homily, Father talked about how we can often feel like we are stuck in mud. I can relate to this. As I’ve expressed many times in my blog posts, I often feel this way. I many times feel unproductive and like I’m not making much progress, or at least not making progress at the rate I want. But as Father also said, if we keep our focus on God, He will pull us through the mud. Although, I still many times feel like I’m stuck in mud, I at least don’t feel like I’m sinking. I may not be moving forward as fast or as easily as I want, but I am moving forward. The workshop helped me to realize that being in the mud is maybe not all that bad. As I witnessed in the process of planning, developing and delivering the workshop, God jumps in and wades through the mud with us, guiding us all the way, if we let him. Although I may not be completely out of the mud yet, I take comfort that I’m in good hands.
I came across this quote the other day. I have to keep reminding myself to simply do my best to do everything with love and stop focusing on success and accomplishments.
“I think too, that God is not concerned with ‘what’ we do, as much as with ‘why’ we did it.” —Jim Flickinger, OFS
If we do things with love, God will do the rest if we place our trust in him.
My living and ministry work here in Kenya are under the sponsorship of the Archdiocese of Mombasa. This sponsorship is not in a financial sense, but the Archbishop of Mombasa, Archbishop Martin Kivuva Musonde, signed both my work permit application and my application for an Alien ID (or as it says on the card itself, “Foreigner Certificate”). Yes, I am now official. I no longer need to carry paper copies of my US passport and work permit with me all the time. All I now need is the Alien ID card. I can now easily, without any begging or sad stories of how I’m a poor missioner working and living here, pay resident rates for things.
Like pretty much all dioceses, the Archdiocese of Mombasa has a pastoral staff to oversee the various ministries in the diocese. The pastoral staff gets together for Mass every Monday morning in the pastoral center chapel to pray and worship together. On the first Monday of every month, the staff gets together in the conference room for chai (tea) and to give updates on their department or ministry. This month was my first time attending the monthly Mass and meeting. Although I’m not required to attend, I want my ministry project, Helping Orphans Pursue Education (H.O.P.E.), to have good visibility within the archdiocese in order to better tap into the resources within the archdiocese to help make my ministry project thrive. This can only happen if people know what is going on with the project and are made aware of challenges, issues and where we are struggling.
The archbishop tries to attend the weekly Masses and most specifically the first Mass of the month and meeting that follows. I was happy that the bishop was available for my first pastoral center Mass and meeting. The bishop concelebrated the Mass that day with four other priests. There were over fifty people in attendance for the Mass and meeting. Although I’ve had the opportunity to previously meet with the archbishop and several members of the pastoral staff, this was the first time I really had the chance to talk in detail about my ministry and plans for it moving forward. I also had the opportunity to introduce myself to other staff members that I had not previously met who were in attendance.
The first reading for the Mass that day was the story from Genesis where Abraham pleads with God, or more like haggles with him, over the fate of Sodom. The reason this stuck with me is that the bishop’s homily revolved around this reading. As it happens, this story from Genesis is also the first reading for today’s Sunday Mass. Although the homily at today’s Mass I attended did not touch on this story from Genesis, it got me thinking again of the pastoral center Mass earlier this month, the bishop’s homily, and how he also incorporated some reflections from the reading into the words he shared during the meeting after Mass.
The story from Genesis is the one where the Lord says how great the outcry against Sodom and Gomorrah is. Abraham then proceeds to ask if he will sweep away the innocent with the guilty there. Abraham asks God if he would wipe out the city and not spare it if there were just fifty innocent people there. Abraham even tries to strengthen his case by telling God “Far be it from you to do such a thing, to make the innocent die with the guilty so that the innocent and the guilty would be treated alike!” The Lord replies that if he finds fifty innocent people in Sodom that he will spare the whole place for their sake.
Abraham then begins to haggle with the Lord over the fate of the city, although he tempers his remarks by adding in how he is presuming to speak to the Lord this way even though he is but dust and ashes. Abraham then continues to press the Lord by asking what if only forty-five innocent people are found there. Again, the Lord says that he will spare the city for the sake of forty-five. Abraham persists and asks God what if only forty are innocent, what if only thirty, what if only twenty, and finally what if only ten innocent people are there. Each time the Lord replies that he will spare the city for the sake of those innocent people.
This passage can be looked at from so many different perspectives, each with a powerful message. For example, we can look at the passage from the perspective of mercy and justice (especially if you know how the story of Sodom eventually ends). However, I’d like to look at this passage from the perspective of prayer, especially prayers of petition, which is how the bishop approached the passage.
From Abraham’s encounter with God we see several things. First, our Lord wants us to approach him and talk with him. He wants us to open our hearts to him. He wants us to trust him and not be afraid to come to him with anything. He wants us to share our lives with him as he shares his life with us. God also wants us to persevere in our prayers. As we see from the reading, Abraham was persistent. In the span of the passage from Genesis, Abraham approached God with a new proposal six times. In his “negotiations” with God, Abraham asks God to spare the city of Sodom six times – what if fifty, forty-five, forty, thirty, twenty, and finally ten. However, as we also see, Abraham approaches God in complete humility as he says to God that he is but dust and ashes and asks that the Lord to not grow impatient or angry.
All of this is punctuated by today’s Gospel reading. It is so beautiful how the readings from the Mass fit together. The Gospel starts out by one of Jesus’s disciples asking him “Lord, teach us to pray.” This simple statement encapsulates what our approach to prayer should be. We are to humbly bring ourselves before our God acknowledging that we don’t really understand everything and aren’t completely sure how to proceed. But that’s OK. God is there with us, talking to us, guiding us.
After Jesus teaches his disciples the most perfect prayer, the Lord’s prayer, he proceeds to teach about the necessity and efficacy of perseverance in prayer. First, he uses a parable to talk about a friend who visits another friend late at night after he and his family have already gone to bed. The visitor asks for food for another friend who has just returned home from a journey and has nothing to eat. The friend who is being asked for food tells the visitor to not bother him. Jesus then says that if the friend does not get up to give the visitor food because of their friendship, he will get up to give him whatever he needs because of his persistence.
Jesus continues by saying “Ask and you will receive, knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks, receives;and the one who seeks, finds;and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened.” Jesus concludes by saying that the Father will give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him. All we need to do is ask. What a goldmine we are sitting on!
Although it may seem disheartening, the flip side of this is that our prayers do not really alter God’s plans. Our petitions do not cause God to change his mind. God lives in an eternal now consisting of all time as we view it – past present and future. God already knows what he is going to do and what is going to happen. So, what’s the point then?
I believe the point is that prayer changes us. If we approach God in trust and humility, prayer transforms us and draws us closer to him. But in order for this to happen, we need to approach God trusting that his will is truly what is best for us. We need to trust that if we don’t get the outcome we prayed for, or even if our prayer seems to go unanswered, it is because our loving God knows best and has something even better planned.
We can become so fixated on getting answers to our prayers and the things that need fixing, that we miss the bigger picture. Yes, I know it’s not easy. I struggle with this just as much as anyone else. I can so clearly see what the best path forward is. Why can’t God get with the program? I just don’t understand. But I also realize that this is a lack of trust and humility in my relationship with him. Again, God doesn’t need to change. I need to change. I need to better approach God in trust and humility and allow him to work through me. If I do this, I know that my prayers will deepen my relationship with him and conform me to the person he created me to be. God wills to share his life with us for all eternity. Prayer is how we get there. For if we allow prayer to transform us and bring us into closer union with God, we cannot do other than love him and our neighbor in our thoughts, words, and actions.
This is the true power of prayer. Through the perseverance in prayer as Jesus taught and displayed by Abraham, we learn to trust God more and enter into a deeper relationship with him. Although hard to put our heads around, even though our petitions may be completely self-giving and involve the life and happiness of ourselves and the ones we love, our loving God desires something even more for us. Our petitions are temporal. God’s desire for our happiness and good is eternal.
The true purpose of prayer is to draw us closer to God. God may not answer our prayers the way we want or according to what we think we need. However, he never stops reaching out to us, offering to share his life with us, and drawing us into deeper relationship with himself. What ultimately matters is not how God responds to us, but how we respond to God. If we let it, prayer will transform us and lead us to the union that God desires with us.
Patience is not one of my greatest virtues. Although I actually feel, hopefully not mistakenly, that I’m am pretty patient with other people, I’m just not very patient with myself. When I have stuff I have to do, I have a hard time putting up with things that get in the way. This is something that I’ve always struggled with, but is now even more challenging to me as I live, work, and do my ministry in new and very different environment.
Florah, my coworker, and I have been praying a novena to St. Anne, the mother of our Blessed Mother and grandmother of Jesus, or as one of the novena prayers refers to her, mother of the Mother of God, which I really like. St. Anne’s feast day is July 26th, so we started the novena last week in order to finish the novena in time for the feast day. Praying the novena together was entirely due to Forah’s initiative, but I’m so happy that she invited me to pray along with her. On the days when we are working together, we pray the novena together. On days when we are not together, Florah texts or calls me to make sure I have remembered to pray :0)
As you pray the novena each day, you are asked to state your intention/petition. The first day, when Florah asked me to pray the novena while we were in the office together, we began reading the novena prayer for the day, which I had not read beforehand. When we got to the part which says to state your intention, I had to come up with something on the spot. What I believe providentially popped into my head was to pray for patience, which I did. OK, it’s not like I hadn’t been thinking about the fact that I need to be more patient, but this was the perfect time to entrust my petition to the powerful intercession of St. Anne. This has been the primary daily intention of my novena ever since. Yesterday was Day 5 and the novena prayer for the day appropriately starts out with “Great Saint Anne, how far I am from resembling you. I so easily give way to impatience and discouragement”. Yes, I thought while reading it, that is me.
I love my ministry work on the H.O.P.E. project. I feel blessed to be able to play a small part in helping orphans, who otherwise would not have the means, pursue an education. I feel so strongly in education as means of empowerment. Education is what I believe is key to providing the children we work with an opportunity to raise above their current situations and have happy and fulfilling lives.
I especially love working with children to help them learn how to think for themselves and learn how to solve problems. When I am tutoring students, I try to emphasize to them to not so much rely on memorization, but rather understand concepts. I’ve always had a terrible memory. I’ve always wished that I could better remember things. I get so frustrated when I know that I have read or studied something in the past about a particular subject, but just can’t ever seem to recall the specifics when I need the information. On the positive side, my poor memory has forced to be focus on understanding concepts, not just memorize things. Understanding concepts is certainly more important than brute memorization, but I still wish I had a better memory. If only I could have both!
As I begin my work on the H.O.P.E project, I’ve come up with all these grand plans on how I would like to expand and improve the project going forward. Still being in US corporate work mode, I’m developing a strategic plan with goals and objectives, as well as a number of deliverables in support of these goals and as a means of socializing my ideas with the project’s stakeholders and the broader community. My frustration and lack of patience revolves around the fact that compared to what I’m used to, it is just so difficult to get things done here. The simplest things that I would previously take for granted are a big deal here. Things that I used to be able to do pretty quickly, take a very long time to complete. Things that I used to be able to schedule and organize, seem never to work the way I plan here.
Probably not surprisingly given my background, the direction I’m trying to move the project is to utilize technology as a key enabler. I want to leverage technology to enhance collaboration, improve efficiency, and better publicize the project in order to attract more donors, funding and partners. I would also like to use technology to improve the learning experience of our students. Although right now I’m not sure how to pull it off (but keep reminding myself to leave things in God’s hands and that nothing is impossible for him), my hope is to utilize technologies like computer-based training to help students better learn and prepare for standardized exams, which are so important in Kenya. Unfortunately, these plans, which are maybe ambitious to begin with, are made even more difficult due to the infrastructure, security, and corruption issues.
I still tend to look at things in terms of productivity – what did I accomplish today, this week, the past month. I have all these plans, why can’t I make more progress? Why can’t I seem to get much done? I know it’s not only impossible, but also the completely wrong mindset to work strictly in that type of mode here, but I’m struggling to break myself away from this line of thinking. However, this is the way I lived most whole life – in pursuit of accomplishing things. Coralis, who has been in Kenya for almost 20 years and from whom I am taking over the H.O.P.E. project, is constantly reminding me to stop thinking this way. However, this is yet another journey for me.
All of this hit home for me at Mass yesterday. The Gospel reading was the story of Martha and Mary (LK 10:38-42). Jesus entered the village of Martha and Mary, who were sisters. While Martha was busy serving, taking all the responsibility for entertaining, Mary simply sat at Jesus’s side just listening to him speak. Martha approached Jesus complaining that Mary has left her to do all the work and asked our Lord to tell Mary to help. Jesus said to Martha in reply, “Martha, Martha, you are anxious and worried about many things. There is need of only one thing. Mary has chosen the better part and it will not be taken from her.”
I certainly identify more with Martha in this story than I do Mary. There is always a long list of things that needs to be done. If I don’t do them, who else will? At least that seemingly is my typical mindset. So, it is with my ministry. I have all these things I want to do, all these things I want to accomplish, not enough hours in a day. Sometimes I feel like I’m back at work at IBM. I am in no way complaining as Martha did that no one is helping me, but rather see myself in the Gospel passage, like Martha, as being too obsessed with achieving and accomplishing things than in seeing what is right in front of me. That is, being present to see and experience Christ in everyone I encounter and in all that I do.
As Jesus told Martha, there is no need to be anxious and worried about so many things. Jesus reminds us that there is only need of one thing, the better part, which is him. I don’t think that Jesus is saying that we shouldn’t work hard for the things that we want to accomplish. Rather I think he is saying that we need to keep things in balance and perspective. We both need to work for what we want but also make sure to recognize him in what we are doing. We all need to work to provide for ourselves and our families. We all need to work to help those we are trying to serve. However, Jesus is also telling us to not get bogged down and overwhelmed by these things. Jesus is telling us to make sure to recognize him in the people we encounter and in the world around us along the way. By recognizing Jesus in the things that we are doing, the great things we are trying to accomplish, as well as the smallest, mundane things we do in our daily lives, we unite ourselves with him in accomplishing them. If we do the things we want to accomplish with true love, we bring Jesus’s presence alive in them and in ourselves.
This is the twentieth anniversary of the Helping Orphans Purse Education (H.O.P.E.) project, which is now my ministry here in Kenya. Since its inception in 1999, H.O.P.E. has assisted about 2800 orphans to obtain an education that they otherwise would not have had the means to pursue. I had the opportunity to sit down and talk with a former student of the H.O.P.E. project the other day. His story touched me deeply and I want to share it with you.
Daniel (not his real name), who is now 30 years old, was born and raised in Mombasa. His father died when he was young. Daniel and his sister, who is just few years older than him, were raised alone by their mother. When Daniel was in eighth grade, a social worker brought Daniel’s case forward to H.O.P.E. and he was accepted into the program starting with his first year of high school. While Daniel was still in eighth grade and not long after being accepted into H.O.P.E., his mom passed away from AIDS. After his mom died, Daniel and his sister were living on their own. Again, at this time, his sister was just high school age and Daniel was in eighth grade.
After Daniel was accepted into the program, H.O.P.E. was able to secure a special sponsor for Daniel so that he could not only attend high school, but attend a boarding school. This not only provided the opportunity for Daniel to pursue his high school education, but being a boarding school, it provided a safe and stable environment where Daniel could not only learn, but thrive. H.O.P.E. paid for the entirety of Daniel’s secondary schooling – tuition, room and board, fees, books, and uniforms. Daniel didn’t just make the grade at boarding school, he excelled. He not only finished near the top of his class, but also played on the school’s basketball team. H.O.P.E. supported Daniel though all four years at the boarding school until his graduation.
The fact that H.O.P.E. was able to fund Daniel for boarding school became critically important when his sister went missing when Daniel was in his first year at the boarding school. During break when Daniel went home for vacation, his sister was gone and no one knew how to find her. With yet another devastating event to deal with, Daniel returned to school and persevered with continuing his education. On a side note, many years later, Daniel was able to track down his sister. By that time, his sister was married with four kids. Escaping everthing was apparently Daniel’s sister’s way of dealing with the situation. Daniel and his sister now stay in contact and they see each other a few times a year.
After graduation from the boarding school, Daniel was on his own again and moved in with a friend. Through the generosity and financial support of another person who came into Daniel’s life, Daniel was provided the means to attend college. Daniel applied and was accepted into a technical university to study Biochemical engineering. He started classes at the beginning of the next term. Daniel really liked sciences in school and thought Biochemistry would fit his interests well. As many of us can relate to, Daniel found his first year of college difficult academically when compared to high school. This was the case even though he had a full schedule of fluff courses – Physics, Biology, Chemistry and Calculus. :0) However, not to be deterred, Daniel studied hard and did very well. When I asked Daniel what his toughest course in college was, he answered Molecular Biology, which he took in his third year. Anyone who has taken Molecular Biology can certainly empathize.
Education here in Kenya is very time intensive. Although they have recently lightened the load a bit, students put in a lot of hours at school. This applies for primary and secondary school as well as college. Daniel told me that his classes went from 8 AM to 5 PM Monday through Friday. While in college, Daniel played rugby. He played or practiced every day after classes. When I asked him when he did homework and studied, he replied after rugby. When I asked him when he slept, I didn’t get a good answer.
Daniel graduated college in four years ranking near the top of his class. Apparently colleges in Kenya, don’t provide any job placement assistance. Daniel finished his degree without securing a job. After graduating, Daniel rented a place and resorted to doing odd jobs – including driving matatus, the minivans here in Kenya that serve as public transportation. During this time, Daniel applied for Biochemistry positions at several companies and research institutes, but he could not find anything.
Discouraged at not being able to find a job as a Biochemist and wanting a better life, Daniel thought a change of scenery would help. So he moved to a rural farming town where he lived with a friend and together they tried to earn a living farming. However, they found it very difficult to make any money. After six months, Daniel and his friend gave up on farming. As Daniel was not able to find any other employment in the rural town, he was forced to move again.
This time Daniel move upcountry to the town where his father was from. With no real good options or prospects for employment, he figured we would explore his roots. Once he arrived upcountry, he was able to track down his father’s sister, Daniel’s aunt, who was still living in his father’s hometown. Daniel had never met her before, but she welcomed him to stay with her. After a short time, Daniel found a job at a pharmacy and moved into his own place. Although he didn’t have a certificate to be a pharmacist, he did at least have a Biochemistry degree. The owner proceeded to train him on the job for two weeks. Although the regulation of pharmacies here is Kenya is nowhere as stringent as in the US, Daniel was fortunate he got away with not having a certificate. Daniel stayed in his father’s hometown and worked at the pharmacy for two years.
At this point, Daniel had a yearning to move back to Mombasa, where he was born and raised. So last year, Daniel moved back to Mombasa and opened his own business selling clothes. Daniel did not have a shop, but rather sold clothes though social media using platforms like Facebook and WhatsApp. He bought merchandise from China using the Alibaba website and stored inventory in his apartment. Daniel sold merchandise to clients in the Mombasa area and delivered the clothes himself to buyers using public transportation, meaning matatus. Business was good at the beginning, but then slowed down drastically. It appears that a number of people started selling merchandise procured from the Alibaba website and there was too much supply. Daniel eventually sold all his inventory off, but it took a lot of time. He now had to look for another source of income.
Earlier this year, Daniel found employment doing safety work with a Chinese company supplying building materials for a port under construction (yes, the Chinese are everywhere here and at some point soon will own most of Africa). Unfortunately, the work ended after only three months.
Since April, Daniel has gone back to doing odd jobs and looking for employment. As you can probably imagine, it is not that easy to get employment in Kenya as a Biochemist. Out of the 48 students in Daniel’s Biochemistry graduating class, only two are currently employed doing Biochemistry. Part of the reason for the difficulty in finding a position as a Biochemist is simply the fact that there is just not an abundance of these types of jobs in Kenya. However, the disturbing part for me is that Daniel is not even getting an opportunity to compete for the jobs that do exist. Unfortunately, like most good things in Kenya, you either have to know someone or bribe someone. As I’ve talked about before, corruption is rampant here and the people of Kenya are the ones who are injured by it. Daniel is a student worked hard and ended up at the top of his class, but still is not being given a chance. It’s tragic. Despite his frustrations with finding a job as a Biochemist, Daniel continues to persevere. He does odd jobs to sustain himself and continues his search for employment.
Daniel certainly seized the opportunity presented to him by H.O.P.E. He put in the time and effort to get very good grades and finish at the top of his class. He is prepared and ready for a career in Biochemistry, if only given the chance. Even though Daniel has yet to find an ideal job that utilizes the skills which has honed, he is very grateful for the opportunities that H.O.P.E. has provided him. Without H.O.P.E., Daniel would not have been able to complete high school. Without a high school diploma, Daniel it would be very difficult to get any kind of job. Without a high school diploma, Daniel would never had the opportunity go to college and earn a bachelor’s degree in Biochemistry. Daniel goes so far as to say that without H.O.P.E. he would have been out on the street and ended up as a street kid where gangs and drugs are everywhere.
As I begin my ministry as administrator of H.O.P.E., cases like this are at the core of my hopes and struggles with the project. On the one hand, I see the tremendous benefit H.O.P.E. gives orphans like Daniel by providing the means to get an education and skills for a successful career and life. On the other hand, I feel helpless in the face of the unfairness that inhibits people like Daniel from succeeding. I know I can’t solve all the problems of the world, but I can at least give them a voice (as small as it may be).
Pope Francis addressed corruption in a prayer intention earlier this year. He said this.
What is at the root of slavery, unemployment, and disregard for nature and goods held in common? Corruption, a process of death that feeds the culture of death. Because the thirst for power and possessions knows no limits. Corruption is not countered with silence. We must speak about it, denounce its evils, and try to understand it so as to show our resolve to make mercy reign over meanness, beauty over nothingness. Let us pray that those who have material, political or spiritual power may resist any lure of corruption.
As Pope Francis stresses, corruption is not countered with silence. We must call it out and denounce it, and most certainly not be a party to it. Let us also pray that our Lord will touch the hearts of those in power to be good stewards of the gifts he has entrusted to them.
This past week we had meetings with the guardians of the
students in the H.O.P.E. project. As I mentioned in my last post, H.O.P.E. helps
provide orphans infected or affected by HIV/AIDS with access to an education by
assisting with tuition, school fees, uniforms, supplies, and other school
related expenses. Meetings with the guardians are held in both Mbungoni and Changamwe twice a year (usually in
consecutive days). The purpose of the meetings is twofold. The first is to give
the guardians an opportunity to provide feedback on the project, voice
concerns, tell us what is working well and what they would like to see changed
or improved, and to interact with other guardians. The second is more educational
in nature. Typically the meeting will include a workshop on a social issue, a self-improvement topic, or a session on spiritual enrichment. The
workshop topic for this set of meetings was “self-awareness”. We had a
facilitator, Yohana, who led the workshop.
This was the first time I had a chance to meet the guardians
of our students. It was certainly an enlightening experience for me. Here are
some of the things that the guardian’s told us during the session. They told us
that H.O.P.E. provides them “hope”. It gives them hope for a better life for their
children, hope in an education on which their children can build a career, and hope
that their children can become self-dependent and live happy, joy filled lives.
The guardians told us that H.O.P.E. is the only chance their children have of
an education and learning career skills.
The guardians said that H.O.P.E. has changed not only the lives
of their children, but also their own lives. They said that they are much
happier now and more stress free with their children in the H.O.P.E. project.
They even told us that reduced stressed has even had a positive impact on their
health. What was probably the toughest comment for me to hear was when they
expressed that H.O.P.E. has removed the shame they felt by not being able to
provide an education for their children.
Guardians Meeting in Changamwe
All these wonderful comments are a result of the great work
that Coralis and Florah have done on the H.O.P.E. project over the past several
years. This was emphasized even more by the outpouring of emotion for Coralis
when she told them that she would be leaving H.O.P.E. at the end of the year
and heading back to the U.S. I only hope that I can continue to serve the orphans
and guardians in such a positive manner as I begin my role as H.O.P.E.
administrator. Luckily I have Florah and I looking forward very much to working
with her in moving H.O.P.E. forward.
Finally, I was thrilled to hear of the direction that the
guardians would like to see H.O.P.E. go in the future to be even better and
help more children. They threw out ideas like opening a school, which they want
to call H.O.P.E. Academy, to provide students with a learning environment with more
personalized attention than they receive in public schools. The guardians would
like to see us be able to support more orphans, that is to expand the number of
children we are able to help. They also threw out ideas like expanding H.O.P.E.
beyond only funding education and also moving the project in the direction of
helping graduates start and/or expand businesses. The worse scenario is when
graduates can’t find a job and make a living after completing their education.
Obviously some of these ideas are lofty and sound out of
reach (although I won’t say that anything is impossible), but I am humbled at
the enthusiasm that the guardians have for the continued success and growth of
the H.O.P.E. project. I currently have no idea how to accomplish any of this,
but trust that God will provide and give us the help we need to fulfill his
plans for H.O.P.E.
Guardians Meeting in Mbungoni
All of this was driven home for me on Sunday, which was the
feast of Corpus Christi (or what is now more formally known as the Solemnity of
the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ). I attended Mass in Mikindani with
Florah. The Gospel for the feast day is one of the very well-known accounts of
Jesus feeding a multitude of people. Yesterday’s Gospel reading was from St. Luke.
Like any of the Gospels passages, this account of the feeding of the crowd can
be read and understood from so many different angles. What resonated for me, especially
in light of what I had rattling around in the back of my mind from the recent H.O.P.E.
guardian meetings, was looking at the Gospel from the viewpoint of the
apostles.
In the Gospel passage, Jesus had been speaking to the crowds,
but it was getting late and they were in a deserted place. The apostles
approached Jesus and asked him to dismiss the crowds so that they can go into
the surrounding villages and find lodging and something to eat. Jesus responded
to them and said “Give them some food yourselves”. On the surface, this sounds
like a pretty harsh response. The apostles are concerned about the well-being
of the people, approach Jesus and ask him to dismiss the crowds to allow them
to go find something to eat, and Jesus responds by basically telling the apostles
to feed the people themselves. Not exactly what I expected to hear Jesus say.
However, in actuality, Jesus is not telling the apostles to
feed the people themselves, but rather
to allow him to work through them to accomplish what they asked. Jesus is not
telling the apostles to go it alone, but rather to trust in him, cooperate with
him, and allow him to accomplish his will through them.
Tutorial session in Changamwe
Jesus did not need the apostles to tell him that the day was
getting late and that the people needed food.
Jesus not only already knew this, but he also knew how he would
accomplish feeding the crowd. Jesus just wanted the apostles to trust in him
and cooperate in his work. God wills that we participate in our salvation and
in bringing the kingdom of God to others. It’s not that God needs us to
accomplish his will, but that only through giving of ourselves to others do we
truly share in his divine life and become the person that he created us to be.
God wills that we work with him and allow him to work through us in accomplishing
his work.
But how do we accomplish what in many cases seems the
impossible? In the Gospel passage, the apostles were tasked with feeding five
thousand with only five loaves and two fish with which to work. But as was the case with the apostles, God never
asks to do something without giving us everything we need to carry out what he
is asking of us. Jesus doesn’t say that everything will be easy, but if we
trust, he will provide all the graces we need. Again, God already knows what we
need and how he will provide what is needed, he only asks us to accept the
invitation to work with him, to trust in him, and to allow him to use our
efforts, as meager as they may be, to accomplish his will. As God can never be outdone in generosity, he
takes our efforts, in the case of this Gospel, the five loaves and two fish,
and uses them to accomplish great things in abundance. Not only did the five
loaves and two fish feed the five thousand, but the leftovers filled twelve
wicker baskets!
Tutorial session in Changamwe
As I’ve stated many times, God doesn’t ask us to do great
things, but rather to do whatever we do with great love. As St. Therese tell us:
“Our Lord does not so much look at the greatness of our actions, or even at their difficulty, as at the love with which we do them.”
St. Therese of Lisieux
Love is the means with which God accomplishes all things and
by which he accomplishes his works through us. However, we must cooperate and
trust in what he is doing. God wants us to be willing participants. He does not
force anything on us.
As I continue on in my ministry, what lies before me at
times seems daunting – both in terms of what I want to accomplish and how to
get it done. I realized that I need to allow our Lord to lead more and do what
he wants, not what I want. However, I also know that if I trust in him and
truly allow him to work through me, everything will work out for good. As I
know that Flora shares in my trust of the Lord, I am confident in the fact that
he will be working through both of us.
I’ll end with some words from Pope Benedict’s address after
being elected pope in 2005. Pope Benedict described himself as “a simple,
humble, worker in God’s vineyard.” He then continued “I am consoled by the fact
that the Lord knows how to work and how to act, even with insufficient tools …”
Pope Benedict, I’m with you.
