Faith and Community: Initiation

There is a moment in every journey where expectations, anticipation, and excitement come face to face with a new reality, a new place, a new culture. Our team host Charles Wachira introduced us step by step into the world of Maai Mahiu and the work CTC is engaged in.

But, there is a moment when the joys and struggles of the people become incarnate in relationship. For many members of our team that moment came at standing in a demonstration garden at Ngea Primary School. Ngea is a public school with about 1000 students and 10 teachers.

The garden which is used by CTC to teach the kids in the Environmental Club how to plant and raise vegetables to help feed their families, sits on the corner of the school campus, bordered on one side by the school’s kitchen (basically s storage building with an open pit fire in one corner) and on the other by an orphanage.

Charles was explaining how the school serves a hot lunch to the kids whose families can afford to pay 50 Kenyan shillings per term (less than 1 US dollar) and it is the only meal most of them get a day. “Does everyone eat?” “No,” said Charles, “Only about half of them.” After a long silence when we were all trying to process what he just said, Charles told us the story of his own struggle to find money to finish 8th grade and then later secondary school. The sacrifices his mother made was the only reason he was standing there with us. He now spends all his extra money making sure his siblings, not to mention children he does not even know, stay in school. “Education is everything. It will make the biggest difference.” After a long pause he finished, “I love my mother very much.”

It is easy to be overwhelmed by the intensity of the need. Everywhere one looks, there is need.

But still, in Charles’ story (and many others we would hear), there is hope.
Education begins with one person trying to make a difference, and finds its completion in a community transformed.

This Friday, Charles will turn in the final chapter of his Masters Thesis. The transformation continues.

Peace,
Ken

Note: The Faith and Community team has completed its trip to Kenya. This journal entry and the ones to follow document a piece of our experience.