Wow! It has been a long while since we blogged. Meaning... we have been very busy.
Busy in Mombasa.
We arrived in Mombasa August 8th. Now it is September 3 and we are ready to leave again.
There is a "suburb" north of Mombasa city called Mtwapa. This is where we have called home for the last few weeks. It is familiar to both of us because we have both lived here before, at different times, in 2010.
In Mtwapa we stay with a Kenyan family who run a school. They are our connection & follow-up people to 3 sponsored families in the area. We have another 2 families that we support ourselves near Mtwapa as well. Our follow-up on each family gave us plenty to occupy our time here! And it was rewarding.
The sponsored families are currently helped by having their kids' school costs taken care of. The families of these children are not helped financially beyond that.
Our aim was to assess the home-life of the children and use funds that our supporters donated for our trip to establish these families; get their feet under them so to speak. Well... we hope God made a difference through what we could do.
It is always difficult to know what the best way to "help" is. We don't want to enable dependence (on sponsorship or funding), yet we want to kick-start something that will go on & on, a self-sustaining life/employment being the goal AND, most of all, God's hand being seen and all glory given to Him.
There are 3 families we visited in Mtwapa. Each have Canadian sponsors for their children's education. One family unit has 4 children with a mother & father, another family has a single mother (named Baraka) with 3 children, a grandmother and adult handicapped brother (the single mother provides for everyone), and the last family is a 15 year old mom/wife (no, that was not a typo), a 19 year old father/husband and a 1 year old son.
Another family we help lives in Bamburi (Mombasa "suburb"), a single mother of 5 kids (the oldest turning 12 this November).
Upon our visit to each home, we realized the greatest physical need was beds and mattresses - and space. So the first project was to build beds for these families. We found "bottom beds" and then Wayne built bunks to go on top, with the help of John (the 19yr old father previously mentioned). What an undertaking, but what a great project. Wayne enjoyed working with John. Wayne loved John's initiative to show up and work hard and to learn. Wayne said if we lived here he would hire John in a second! The beds turned out great, SOLID and fantastic overall. We installed them along with good-quality mattresses and bed sheets ... and threw out nasty, old, unhygienic heavy foam that the families slept on. One boy has asthma. The thought is that it came from the dust and living conditions. We hope these changes improve health conditions.
Have you ever seen the American tv show, Home Make-Over, that transforms homes for disadvantaged people? We felt like we were doing our own little version of that show here in Kenya! "MOVE THAT BUS (no, CART!)!!" The greatest joy was our own.
We purchased curtains to divide two of the 1-room homes, into an area where the kids could sleep and the parents/adults could have their own space. It's amazing what you can do with very little space! Providing beds also provided extra storage space (under the beds) so we purchased crates to slide under the beds as well.
Baraka is a hard working mother, in her 20's (mentioned earlier). Due to her determination and struggle to provide for a family of 6, we asked her what she would like in order to better provide for her family. She humbly & shyly requested a "duka". A duka is a little, outdoor stand to sell goods for locals (fruit, vegetables, soap, kerosene, oil, flour, fish, maize meal... anything you can think of really!). The amazing builder that Wayne is, got right on that after the beds were made. Another great undertaking!
Long story short, there is a beautiful duka set up on a little local path, somewhere in Mtwapa Kenya with a hard-working young lady running it, 3 kids helping her and so delighted to have a business of her own. :)
Mapenzi is the 15 yr old mother of 1 year old Alan. Mapenzi wants to go back to school so we have arranged for her enrollment starting next January. John, her husband, is willing to go back to high school and/or a trade school. There isn't funding for him to go to school at the moment, so we plan to put the word out (or work hard and sponsor him ourselves) and help him help his family by providing him skills for a paying job.
The stories go on and details are even more that, but that is a summary of our last month!
We still struggle with different aspects of this culture (more than other times for some reason, maybe we are seeing it at a greater depth?) and try to grasp "why" a lot of the time ... wishing to understand things from a Kenyan perspective, but realize that we will never fully understand. We are learning to accept that, but still yearn for understanding too. Sometimes we just wish for "normal" (to us). I guess Canada looks more normal all the time :). Yet again, We love these people, learn much from them and are privileged to be a part of their world, country & lives. We have much to be thankful for and even more to learn.
Right now we have finished 4 wonderful days at a hotel in Mombasa with Jordan, Prossy & Rueben Froese(!). A fun time of relaxing with family on the coast. It has been GREAT to be with FAMILY!! We drive back to Uganda with them soon... it was suppose to be today but the mechanic broke parts on their truck, so hopefully it will be tomorrow! We meet up with our Crossroads Red Deer church team in Jinja on Sept 5th.
Learning, loving, laughing (lots) & praising,
Wayne & Kami
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