Small Oases of Rest in a Month of Work and Travel

David spoon-feeding a baby rat.

This month has been very full. Too full at times, and it has been easy to let two weeks slip by without a post. In the last post, I had described a visit from our leaders and a busy two weeks of field visits. That was followed shortly thereafter by a trip to Nairobi by Rebecca to meet with some professional colleagues from the Great Lakes Initiative (that is the Great Lakes of Africa not North America). It is a peacebuilding network that meets annually and several of its leaders have wanted to develop a course of study on a theology of reconciliation. Her report on her experience is here:

It was such a joy for me to be invited to this consultation -- a follow up from our annual gathering in January. I am always grateful for the times I get to meet again with these amazing leaders and theologians who have become friends over the years. Two of the men, Emmanuel and Acher, are pastors of our old church in Burundi, and I really love being in their presence. We had the task of taking the five themes of the movement towards reconciliation, and distilling them down into a coherant flow that could be taught over a 13-week course. How would we evaluate students' academic progress, but also engage their hearts? We worked hard in small groups on specific pieces of the curriculum and finished our work after 2 days. Our venue was the Mennonite Guest House in Nairobi -- a place I had been longing to visit since we returned to the region, with its peaceful gardens and beautiful flowers. The travel by shuttle bus went smoothly as well, thankfully.

I was home with the kids during her 3-day excursion, and I would say it was fairly smooth sailing. Fortunately, it was a pretty normal week with the kids going to school and me to work. Since I am the morning person in our family, I did not have much trouble getting us all out of the house by 6:40am every morning. It was good to have her back by Wednesday night though, and she had a lot of catching up to do at work on Thursday and Friday.

For me and our MCC director Sharon, Friday was a bit stressful because we were awaiting the arrival of our residence permits to Arusha so we could get exit permits in our passports which we needed for travel over the weekend. We sweated it out while Lucia our finance officer spent several hours at the immigration office waiting for them to be signed. She succeeded shortly before the office closed for the weekend. It was a major relief since we had made travel plans to attend a conference in Nairobi, leaving on Sunday.

The weekend seemed cut short by the fact that after I taught Sunday School, I had to get on a bus and head off to Nairobi myself. Actually Sharon and I were both going to the same conference and rode together to Nairobi. The conference was a global gathering of organizations working in the field of community health. It is called the CORE Group, and this was the first regional conference they had organized (outside of Washington DC),

Sharon and I arrived in Nairobi at 8pm and parted ways as she was staying in the Amani guesthouse, but I had found an Airbnb that some people from World Renew had rented close to the hotel where the conference was being held (Safari Park Hotel). Actually finding the location of the Airbnb after dark with a cab was about as difficult as I expected it to be, especially since I did not have a Kenya sim card so could not call anyone while we were on route. After unsuccessfully looking for the place for about an hour, I went into the Safari Park Hotel and managed to call the owner. He directed us more precisely (it turns out we had passed it about 4 times). Despite the delay, I was the first of the group to arrive as the other renters had took nearly 3 hours to get there from the airport because of a major traffic jam. Faye and Lemon from World Renew in Malawi were my suitemates for the conference.

Fortunately the place was walking distance to the hotel and we headed over Monday morning to register and attend the plenary. The conference as a whole did not disappoint at all. There were at least 400 in attendance, and many break-out groups with diverse topics. There were representatives from all the major donors like USAID, as well as many local Kenyan NGOs, as well as the Kenya Ministry of Health. I saw many people I knew from other networks, and was glad my colleague Paul MCC's global health coordinator, as well as Sharon were both there to appreciate it as well. I saw several friends from the Christian Connections in International Health network and that was useful because we had a chance to meet and discuss the Mother and Children's working group I co-chair for them.

I heard many fascinating presentations and tended to focus my selections on community interventions in maternal and child health, people with disabilities, and mental health, since we have several projects focused on these areas. One of the most impressive presentations I heard was by CRS who have introduced some mental health modules into care groups for women post-partem. they have found that the introduction of mental health awareness and coping strategies shared by community health workers improves a mother's mental health, AND reduces infant mortality! I am trying to think of ways we might do some mental health modules in the care groups we are managing in our partner's Ngorongoro crater project.

There were also some presentations on gender-based violence, intimate partner violence, and child abuse It was inspiring to learn about some good evidence-based interventions to try and reduce this through community health programs. A key question was raised about what capacity a community health worker might have to provide strategies to reduce family violence, such as providing training on alternative forms of discipline for children.

On the first afternoon we had options to go on a number of field visits. I opted to go to a place called "Maker Space". It is an experimental lab at the University of Nairobi where they build appropriate technologies to address clinical needs for maternal and child health. They had many very cool prototype inventions, built with local materials for local application, The best example of this was a birthing station for use in clinics where women, culturally, prefer to kneel or squat rather than lie down for delivery. The chair in the photo allows for women to deliver in a position they are more comfortable with and will hopefully encourage them to come to a facility for delivery from a skilled provider.

It is very inspiring to be around many people who are impassioned about community health and it gave me a lot to think about in our programs here, but also to appreciate that we are doing some good work in our current projects. I am hoping I can share an abstract or poster in the future.

I returned on the Wednesday afternoon shuttle, like Rebecca the week before. She had had the kids home for the past 3 days as they were on mid-term break for the whole week. We had planned to take a few days off when I got back, so after getting home that night, we repacked for a camping trip. (I am glad Rebecca had done much of the packing before I returned.)

We had planned to head to Simba Farm Lodge which is on the slopes of Kilimanjaro. Unfortunately, it had begun pouring rain that week and we were warned that it was terrible for camping that week. We made a quick change of plans and headed West, away from the mountains toward Ngorongoro crater. We stopped at a camp called Migumbani, right near Lake Manyara game park, where we had stayed once last year. It is a very nice place and generally gets less rain than around Kilimanjaro.

We arrived in the late afternoon and pitched one tent, and rented of their safari tents so we had a place to stay if it really poured. It was wise because it did rain most of the two mornings we were there until noon. It is a very relaxing place to be with a lot of outdoor space, a pool with a view, some places for short hikes, as well as a covered cooking area and running water in kitchen sinks and bathrooms. It also has a semi-covered restaurant where we could play games if it rained.

We enjoyed the time there despite some rain. David, Rebecca and I took a hike down to a mountain river and saw quite a few blue monkeys. Oren did some of his art homework while we were there since he was quite loaded up for the week off. The first year of O levels means school is a lot more serious than the past years. He is doing art as one of his 'majors' and gets quite a bit of time-consuming homework in it. David was very happy to find a baby rat, that looked like it had been abandoned he fed it milk from a spoon and kept it alive for several days before it finally died. Probably a small mercy considering we have a cat at our house.

We returned on Saturday afternoon, on time for Rebecca to lead worship that Sunday. I was involved in Sunday school as usual and don't get to see her lead often. We also had our small group that week at the Taylor's house.

The following week was blessedly normal with Rebecca and I dropping the kids at the bus then swimming and going to work. Sharon was out of town still at regional meetings in Nairobi. That did not mean the office was not busy. We had a lot of MCC work to catch up on. This is the season when concept papers are coming in, as well as completing proposals for approved concepts.

The week seemed to go buy quickly because it was so busy. We did relax on Saturday by going to lake Duluti with some friends from small group (Joerg and Kathryn) as well as Jessica. I took David and their young son Luka fishing while the parents walked around the lake. Between the 3 of us we caught about a dozen tilapia. Although we threw them all back. It was a very pleasant afternoon.

Saturday was relaxing but I had to prepare a sermon on that busy week before as well, as I was preaching on Sunday. I had the text about the prayer of the Pharisee and the tax collector. I thought I handled it pretty well, especially the children's sermon which preceded. As an improvisation, I asked them on 3 to think of one of the two postures of prayer, Pharisee, or tax collector and make an instant statue. When I said 3 each on either knelt and bowed, or stood and raised their hands in the air--then froze. The adults cheered because it was quite impressive, like standing in a museum. We examined each shape and determined whether they were praying like the Pharisee or the tax collector. The sermon for the adults went very well also.

This past week, Sharon was back in the office and the busyness seemed more focused around family events. Rebecca went to school one day for parent's day to watch David in class. She took some photos of him and his classmates working on different subjects. She also has had several evening meetings involving church council or the school Parent Association. She has responsibilities in each of those.

The end of the week has been devoted to preparing for David's Birthday party. We had a small family celebration on his real Birthday, but have a big party with piniata planned for this Saturday.

More about that in our next installment.

Bonus Photo: David having breakfast in his costume before school. They had a non-uniform day so kids could wear cosumes if the wanted. He painted the head piece and the shirt, mostly himself.