Mwalimu Hotel: Widowmaker

KISII TOWN, Kenya -- I had just finished making some signs to hang around the necks of the players in a children's ministry skit: "Jesus," "Friend No. 1," "Crippled Man," and so on. I went downstairs and left the signs in Room #5, where we held our team meetings each morning.

Even though I hail from "Sharpieville," I had neglected to bring any Sharpie markers of my own, and so I hung the little pouch containing a variety of colored Sharpies on the door handle of Kylene McDonald and Janet Patterson's room. The markers belonged to Kylene, but I didn't want to disturb Kylene or Janet. It was still early according to my American schedule -- maybe 8:45 p.m. -- but we were all tired and there was no way of knowing who might have turned in early, especially if they weren't feeling well.

I turned to head back to my room and I saw Phyles Mutunga and Grace Weama in the stairwell. "Where is everyone?" Phyles asked. Her Kenyan accent sounded thick to me, although I'm sure my American accent sounded equally thick to her ears.

These were the Nairobi members of the LEAMIS International Ministries mission team. From left: John Odumbe, Grace Weama -- with daughter Charity -- Duncan Macharia, Phyles Mutunga and Charles Ngau, who was one of the team leaders. (T-G Photo by John I. Carney)

"I don't know." Unfortunately, there was no natural spot in the Mwalimu Hotel where our mission team could hang out.

As I returned to my room, #14, I started thinking about Phyles and Grace. Phyles was, I assume, in her 50s or 60s, although it was difficult to tell for sure. Grace was a young mother whose daughter Charity took her first steps during our trip. I'm almost sure they had traveled within Kenya before. Many residents of Nairobi, even poor ones, sometimes go upcountry to visit family members. But this trip was probably different for Phyles and Grace. I think this trip was probably a real high point for the Nairobi team -- just as it was for the U.S. team.

Bob Willems of Tracy City, a co-leader of the LEAMIS International Ministries mission team, chats over breakfast with teammate John Odumbe, whose home in the Kibera slums John Carney visited in 2004. (T-G Photo by John I. Carney) [Click to enlarge]

From Aug. 9 through 23, I was part of a LEAMIS International Ministries team serving a church in Keumbu, Kenya, a tiny place about half an hour's drive from Kisii Town. This was my third LEAMIS trip to Kenya, but this one differed from the first two in its approach.

For this trip, LEAMIS volunteers and team leaders from the U.S. partnered with members of New Life Restoration Centre in the Kibera slums outside Nairobi, Kenya's busy capital. Our combined U.S. / Nairobi team traveled cross-country to the Kisii region and conducted cottage industry workshops for the members of New Life Restoration Centre in Keumbu. The combined team stayed in the Mwalimu Hotel in Kisii Town for a day or two of training and during a week of ministry.

By U.S. standards, the hotel was shabby and run-down. The bathroom sink in my room had worked loose from the wall and sat at an odd angle. But by Kisii Town standards, the Mwalimu was quite comfortable -- there was maid service each day, a bar and a dining room, plus a patio with thatch umbrellas.

Each room featured an electrically-operated shower head, nicknamed a "widowmaker" here in the States because early models could be dangerous.

To take a shower, you would turn on the shower head and it would heat the water as it passed through. The one in my room never got any hotter than lukewarm, but it beat a cold shower.

There was a Gideon Bible on the dresser. In the dresser drawer, there were little silver packets, a sign that the hotel had joined a Kenya government initiative to try to prevent the spread of HIV/AIDS.

The hotel's manager, Joseph, was a devout Christian, and he dropped by our team meeting on several mornings asking us to pray for him.

All the same, two U.S. team members were the victims of theft. Jan Schilling had money stolen from her room, presumably by the housekeeping crew. Joseph was mortified and arranged for Jan to be reimbursed. Frank Schroer, one of our team leaders, had a camera stolen from his room. He never reported it to Joseph, afraid that if Joseph tried to reimburse us for that, too, the hotel would end up losing money on our stay. (The hotel did have a policy telling people not to leave valuables in their rooms, and a lockbox was offered at the front desk. But sometimes it's hard for us as Americans to adapt to a different environment.)

The word "mwalimu" is Swahili for "teacher," which was quite appropriate, since teaching cottage industry workshops was a key purpose of our trip.

The partnership between volunteers from the U.S. and Kenya was what made this trip a powerful and unique one. Charles Ngau was named a team leader alongside Bob Willems and Frank Schroer. The team trained as a unit over the weekend before we began our active ministry. The original plan had been to hold separate U.S. and Nairobi team meetings each morning, but that was abandoned after the first day; from that point forward, we met as one unit.

Duncan Macharia said during one of our meetings that he had never before experienced that type of partnership between Kenyans and white people. (Duncan was speaking in English; if he had been using Swahili, he might have used "mzungu," the Swahili word for a white person.)

"Although you are white," he said, "we are one."

One of the team members who was with us at training was not able to participate during the week. Jane, one of the Nairobi team members, became sick right at the outset of the week. She was pregnant, and it alarmed her because she could no longer feel the baby move. She was taken to the little Catholic hospital in Kisii Town. There was no one there at night to do any sort of scan, and so it wasn't until the next morning that the doctors determined that she had, in fact, lost the baby. She spent a few days in the hospital. Later in the week, while we were at the church in Keumbu finishing up our workshops, Jane and her husband held a funeral for their unborn child. It would have been too expensive to transport the body back to Nairobi, and the family had some relatives in the Kisii region, so the baby was buried in Kisii Town.

At least some of the Nairobi team members came from the Kibera slums, an area of up to 2 million residents outside Nairobi. When I worked in the Kibera slums in 2004, I was shocked at the conditions -- dirt-wall shacks crammed in three or four feet apart, with filthy runoff running between them. In 2004, I visited the home of John Odumbe, who was part of the Nairobi team this year. And yet, this year the Nairobi team was focused, not on its own challenges in the big city, but on how we could help the people of the rural Kisii region.

Of course, it was sometimes difficult to get our hosts in Keumbu to treat us as a unified team. There was a tendency among the host church to pay particular attention to the mzungus. One of the great challenges in this type of mission work is the balance between accepting graciously-offered hospitality while at the same time trying not to reinforce old, paternalistic or colonial ideas which would put up a wall between ourselves and our hosts.

TUESDAY: Raising cain and following Abel