Mission to Kenya: Slums, heartbreak and hope

KIBERA, Kenya -- On the first Friday morning of our LEAMIS International Ministries mission trip, at breakfast, Janie Lorfing told me she hadn't yet felt much culture shock.

That wasn't surprising; Thursday night, after arriving from the U.S., we'd gone directly from the airport to our hotel in Nairobi.

But as co-leader of the team, I knew what was coming. Janie's sister, Sandy Hayostek, was a veteran of a previous Nairobi trip and probably knew it as well.

That afternoon, we went to Nakumatt, a Walmart-like chain, and ate at the adjoining shopping center food court, which features a variety of cuisines. (The first Indian restaurant I ever patronized was at that food court in 2005.)

But then, we got back into our rental vans and drove to a little bluff overlooking a valley. The 18 members of the team, more than half on their first visit to Kenya, looked out into the valley, a sardine can crammed with tin roofs.

We got back into our vans and drove down into that valley, and our hearts broke.

Tightly packed

The Kibera slums measure about three square miles, about one-fifth the size of Shelbyville.

Its population is 1.2 million, living in tin-roofed, mud-walled sheds with the smell of smoke and sewage all around. There are little stalls that sell everything from clothing to cell phone cards.

We had some door-to-door visits in the slums built into the schedule for our time in Kibera, but somehow they never came to pass.

Our first-timers know the slums from that drive and from the New Life Restoration Church and a few little merchants which surround it. Some of the rest of the team, however, have visited homes in the slums and know how tiny they are.

In the mornings, you see people walking out of the slums who have managed to find jobs in the city -- and they look immaculate. It seems impossible somehow -- like the day when it had rained and all of our LEAMIS team had to slog through some mud from the gravel parking lot to the gate of the New Life Restoration Church compound. Our feet were so muddy that one of the church members got a basin of water and personally scrubbed the caked-on mud from each of our shoes. It was a humbling bit of hospitality.

Bishop Paul Mbithi, who must have entered the church through the exact same door from the exact same direction, showed up a few minutes later, with clean shoes, looking like he'd stepped out of a boardroom somewhere.

Partnership

Paul, who was just appointed to the rank of bishop earlier this summer, is still "Pastor Paul" to us veterans, and will probably always be. He left a good job in the Nairobi office of KLM Royal Dutch Airlines a few years back to pursue full-time ministry.

He and his wife Grace, whom we affectionately call "Mama Church," operate a church, orphanage and small school in the Kibera slums and Paul is responsible for planting and supervising a number of small churches in rural areas across Kenya and Uganda. He has been LEAMIS' host and partner for all of our trips to Kenya, whether or not we were working in the Kibera slums.

Over the past five years, I've seen their teenage children, Julie and Benjamin, become mature young adults. Ben followed us around with a video camera for most of this year's trip, and, having seen some of his work, I suspect his video account of the 2009 LEAMIS visit will end up looking better and more professional than my own.

The summer of 2009 has been a busy one for the Mbithi household. In addition to the hubbub and hoopla surrounding Paul's appointment as bishop, there was a particularly traumatic death in the New Life Restoration Church family; a young woman died in childbirth.

Painful reality

In some ways, it's medical emergencies that bring me back to reality when I think about the Third World. We have much to learn from people in places like Kenya. With limited resources, they are forced to be better stewards.

With fewer distractions, their spiritual focus in some ways seems clearer than my own. They often display a peace and joy that seems inconsistent with the struggles they face.

It is tempting sometimes to idealize them, to romanticize them, to tell ourselves that they really don't know any life better than the one they've inherited.

But a few days later, when we were in Malaba, a little girl showed up at our children's activities with a bad cut in her knee. Gail Drake talked soothingly to her, in a language she couldn't understand, and poured peroxide on the wound, bandaging it up the best she could. In truth, the girl needed stitches. In the real world of Malaba, that was not a possibility.

Two weeks before my Kenya trip, on July 8, I was driving through Tullahoma when I stopped to buy a belt at Wal-Mart. The belt came on a plastic hanger, and I wanted to remove the hanger so that I could put the belt on immediately.

Standing in the parking lot, I pulled out a utility knife and cut away the plastic -- creating an inch-long gash in my index finger in the process.

I rushed to the nearest urgent care clinic, where my finger was lovingly soaked in iodine, and five stitches were skillfully applied by a physician's assistant. I was given a prescription for a painkiller I really didn't need and which I never took. The pills are still sitting unopened in my medicine cabinet.

I was given a prescription for an antibiotic, so that I could ward off any chance of infection. I walked out the door without paying them any money, because they knew they could just bill my insurance company.

I will still have a scar -- but the little girl in Malaba will no doubt have a worse one, and that's assuming she doesn't get an infection or some other serious health problem.

Think about that the next time you take an aspirin.

THURSDAY: The water that the Lord has made