kajiado: a breath of fresh air (literally!)

Last Sunday, I hopped on a psuedo matatu and headed south of Nairobi to Maasai land, just a few kilometres north of Tanzania!

I stayed at Kajiado Children's Home for five nights. This was my first out-of-Nairobi experience, and it was a culture shock indeed! The pace of life - much slower; the car exhaust and air pollution - there isn't any!

Eighty-five children live at Kajiado Children's Home, a project begun by British and American donors ten years ago. The kids range in age from 5 to 18. A few have now left the Home for college and university.

From the moment I arrived, I sensed this was going to be a very different experience for me. A children's home is a far cry from a Compassion project, where the children visit on the weekends but then live with their families or relatives. The Home, on the other hand, replaces the family unit. Each child there has eighty-four siblings, and they all do chores, pick fights with each other and also look after one another, just like kids in a natural family.

I wasn't sure what I was going to do while there, but I also realized that the point of the week wasn't necessarily to do. No, what I needed was to slow down, pray more, and try being a part of this Kajiado family however I could. So, I met many of the children, played games with them, learned how to do laundry from them, cleaned and ate with them, and did a bit of exploring in town and the surrounding acacia forests.

Thankfully there were also tangible ways I could contribute. I became a personal secretary of sorts to the project managerfor the week. A donor from England visited the project during my first two days there. He brought excel spreadsheets that the project manager would need to start using, in order to beef up accountability and detail exactly how all donor money was being spent. The manager isn't too computer literate, so I was able to create and fill in many of the forms for him.

I loved the kids and teenagers I met at Kajiado. They clearly had come from difficult places, and many are currently struggling with being teenagers on top of that. Agnes, Sylvia, Eunice, Grace, Jedidah, Mary - all girls that I will not forget. If you're reading this now, perhaps you can pray for them, and the Kajiado family as a whole. This is a Christian home, but many of the teenagers there need to know that the Gospel is personally for them. Meeting with the British donor also gave me some insights into the specific challengers of running a home like this.

The little kids, like kids anywhere, were so full of energy and just loved any bit of attention given to them. They also were fascinated by my white skin. Even by the end of the week, a few of the kids would still shout "WOOOOWW!" whenever I walked into the room. One morning, I had eight of them crowding around the outdoor sink to watch me brush my teeth! They often had me laughing. :)

By the time the week ended, I was starting to grow accustomed to the slow pace of life in Kajiado. Thankfully, some of the calmness and quietness of that place stayed with me as I re-entered the bustling capitol.

(By the way, I cannot overstate how closely God has been protecting and providing for me. Even on the way back from Kajiado - he used a kind Muslim woman to both save me from getting cheated out of a lot of money and from being stranded in a bad part of town. She walked with me for 40 minutes once we reached Nairobi until she got me to where I needed to go!)

(Picture: here's me at Kajiado with some of the kids. These were the real characters. Asha, Elizabeth, Helen and Esther... And you'll have to excuse my scruffy experience. Though it did feel nice to rough it for a week! A new experience for me was "showering" with just a bucket of water.)