FKM: Kenyan Realities

While I raise money to return to Kenya this summer, I'm sharing a memory about my journey to Kenya, Africa every Friday. 

You can donate to help my return to Kenya by going HERE to the Christian Relief Fund website.  Be sure to specify that your donation is for "Emily's Kenya Trip Fund."

Friday Kenya Memory: July 3, 2009

An older boy named Moses spoke to me for a while.  He said that he was twenty years old and still in secondary school, which is the Kenyan term for high school.  He explained how that a few years ago, his mother became extremely ill with AIDS.  He quit school so that he could find work to pay her hospital bills.  All he could scrounge up, however, was barely enough to pay for pain killers for her.  Moses was forced to live out on the streets.  He soon became addicted to sniffing glue, an addiction of many of the street kids in Kenya.  He was lost until the KipKaren Church of Christ at the Milton Jones Eagle Academy found him and helped him piece his life back together.  Now, at the age of twenty, he is finally able to return to school.

Our team left the orphanage reluctantly, laughing as the children chased after our matatu, banging on the windows and waving goodbye with huge smiles stretched across their faces. 

Francis was in charge of getting us back to our hotel, but we arrived at a place nobody recognized.  We were at some sort of a park, with animals and mud huts and a few rusty amusement park rides that I would never dare to try.  We all had a glorious time looking at the animals and chasing after a brilliant, turquoise-colored bird that always flew just out of reach of photographs.

I began to explore the life-sized mud huts of the various tribes of Kenya.  They were small and rural and very poverty-stricken, and I figured that this must be a museum of types that displayed the homes in which the Kenyans had lived a long time ago. 

"No, Kenyans still live in these houses," one of the church elders explained to me seriously.  "These are like our homes right now."  In fact, the home in which this man lives is a mud hut exactly like the mud huts we saw in the park. 

We finally headed back to our hotel and ate a delicious supper of rice, ugali, chicken, and greens.  It was lovely.  We finally were able to head up to our rooms and get ready for bed.  The shower in my bathroom consists of a single faucet in the middle of our ceiling where only a meager, ice-cold drizzle ever escapes the rusty nozzle.  It is past midnight now and I must go to bed, but I cannot wait to experience new things tomorrow.

Three years ago: Happy Birthday, Amy! Two years ago: Live like you're dying. One year ago: Reflections