KEUMBU, Kenya -- Claims of human longevity are sometimes difficult to verify, especially in less-developed cultures where government and medical record-keeping may not be up to par.

Even so, the woman jumping up and down and singing a little song of thanksgiving as she shook my hand looked every day of the 100 years old claimed by her relatives.

Jan Schilling of Smyrna shakes hands with a resident of Keumbu whom we were told was 100 years old. (T-G Photo by John I. Carney)

It was Wednesday, the exact center of our week of ministry in the Kisii region, and instead of holding our normal afternoon worship service we had broken into small teams and were visiting homes near the church in Keumbu. We went to a home with a matriarch named Dorcas. None of her six sons or five daughters lived in her little home -- made, like most of the other homes in the region, of a mixture of clay and cow dung, with a tin roof. But a large number of family members had turned out to welcome the mzungu visitors and join us in a meal.

After the meal was over, we posed for a photo with the members of the family outside the home and were asked if we wanted to meet Mama's mama, who lived a few feet away in another small hut. They told us she was 100.

She bounced up and down like Granny from "The Beverly Hillbillies" as she shook our hands. She told us we were the first white people she'd ever met, certainly the first she'd ever had in her home. They told us she was blind, but she apparently had some sight. She asked Jan Schilling of Smyrna about her bottled water, and Jan gave her the bottle, which she clutched tightly for the rest of our visit.

Bottled water, of course, takes on special significance when you visit a developing country. Even at the Mwalimu Hotel, where we were staying, we were advised not to drink or brush our teeth with the running water. And there was certainly no running water at the church. Our LEAMIS team set up a water purification system at the church during the week, but it was late in the week before it was working. And it didn't yet have a connection to the spring or a way to catch rainfall, so the only water coming out of it was water which someone manually poured into it. We had empty plastic water bottles which we would refill from gallon jugs which the team leaders kept in their rooms at the hotel. Abel Onchari, our host pastor, also kept some bottled water for us in the church office.

So when Jan gave her bottled water to the 100-year-old woman, it was like giving up a security blanket, at least.

A member of New Life Restoration Centre prepares to serve tea, coffee and Milo to church members and visitors. (T-G Photo by John I. Carney) [Click to enlarge]

This would be a good time to send out some respect to the Coca-Cola Company of Atlanta, Ga. When we were back at the hotel in the evenings, we could go to the bar and buy nice cold bottles of Coke. The penetration of Coke throughout the world never ceases to amaze me; you find little kiosks selling it even in the most out-of-the-way crossroads. In some cases, when you compare the price of a Coke to what you are told is the average living wage, it boggles the mind that anyone would buy one. Somebody must be buying them, however. In any case, I have to admit that it's a little taste of home at times when you are feeling overwhelmed by your environment.

Kenyans, going back to their years as a British colony, tend to drink hot tea, coffee or Milo after their meals. The coffee and hot tea are made with milk and heavily sweetened.

Milo is a Nestlé product, a vitamin-enriched hot cocoa mix. I have seen already-mixed Milo offered as a cold drink in the Latino foods section of Kroger. Milo bills itself as "the energy food drink of future champions," and I drank enough of it during the trip that I'm bound to be a champion in something some time real soon. Actually, Charles Ngau, one of our team leaders, aspires to run for the Kenyan Olympic team, and he drinks coffee, so maybe the Nestlé people don't have their facts straight.

But I have wandered from my original topic. Since we were staying in a hotel, not in homes, it was important for our LEAMIS team members to make our home visits. I think most of us here in the U.S. are smart enough to realize at a mental level that we are more fortunate than the vast majority of the world's population. But it doesn't really hit you in the gut until you sleep in a dirt-floor shed in rural Nicaragua or walk through the Kibera slums outside Nairobi.

My friends get tired of hearing me say it, but that's one of the great paradoxes of short-term mission work. On the one hand, you are hit by a wave of sympathy -- which you must keep from becoming pity -- by the realization of how much these people lack. Whether it's proper nutrition, free education, readily-available medical care or even running water, life in the Developing World has very real consequences, one which we as fat, wealthy Americans have no right to ignore.

And yet, the people I've met in Kenya and Nicaragua don't, for the most part, go around hanging their heads. They have a peace and joy which puts me and my whining to shame. We have the responsibility not only to offer our help but to listen and learn. That was one reason that the partnership aspect of this year's trip, which paired residents of the Kibera slums with U.S. volunteers as we ministered to the people of rural western Kenya, was so remarkable and so important.

At the end of LEAMIS trips, we take a day or two to debrief our experience in some quiet and comfortable environment. For Kenya trips, that means a wildlife park. This year, several of us took a side trip to see an actual Maasai village located within the boundaries of the park. The Maasai people, wearing their dramatic red cloths, danced and sang and showed us their village -- a circular enclosure of 14 little mud huts surrounded by a corral of brush so that they can bring the cattle in each night.

During one of the debrief sessions, Frank Schroer asked those of us who had been to the Maasai village for our impressions. He noted that we didn't express the same kind of pity or concern for the Maasai that we had felt for our friends in Keumbu. Perhaps that's because the Maasai still live according to their native culture and have less sense of having been trampled by the march of colonialism. The people of Keumbu have the worst of both worlds -- a system influenced by western culture and western expectations but without enough gas to get there round-trip.

A system where Coca-Cola is available but you might not be able to afford toothpaste.

I don't know if our dancing granny was really 100 years old; perhaps so. I wonder what Kenya will look like when the children in her family reach the century mark.

TOMORROW: Lost and found