Background:
I signed up for this trip with my friend from church Katie and my sister-in-law Charlie with a group called Medical Missions Outreach (MMO), affiliated with a church in Baltimore, MD. The founder of MMO is an alumnus of Pensacola Christian College, where Katie went and was recruited from 4 years ago. MMO goes to a different place around the world each month to work with a local church to set up a free basic medical clinic to allow them to minister to people in their community. There was a total of 23 Americans on our team, along with another 20 or so Kenyans we met on the first day of clinic who were with us all week.
Days 1 and 2:
Flight Left St Louis 12:40pm Thursday June 11.
Flew St. Louis to Atlanta- 2 hours
Atlanta- Amsterdam- 7 hours
Amsterdam to Nairobi- 8 hours
Arrived Nairobi ~ 9pm Friday, June 12.
Total travel time (with layovers)- 24 hours.
Upon arrival and customs in Nairobi, we met our host, Pastor Phillip Warutere. He's the pastor of Bible Baptist Church in Nyruhruru, Kenya. After a bus mix-up (we were a bit later than expected and the bus company decided we weren't coming and then just closed) and a couple hour wait outside the airport while Bradley (our leader) finally got us another bus, we PILED in with all our luggage and made to "the nicest hotel in Kenya", Windsor Resort, arriving at about 1am on Saturday, June 13. Coming out of the airport, we saw about 3 zebras and were excited. We didn't see much of Nairobi, and even if we did, I think there were people sitting on my lap or something in the bus. We went through HEAVY security to get to the hotel. We went to a very normal room. Super nice, and a great way to spend our first night in Kenya after a looooong two days.
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| First group pic in the airport while waiting for our bus |
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| Windsor Resort room |
Day 3:
Began with a 3 hour drive to Nyruhruru after a delicious buffet breakfast. On the way, Pastor Phillip told us about himself, his family, and Kenya. We also got slightly distracted by Zebras and Baboons on the side of the road. He mentioned that he didn't understand why we took pictures of baboons because they "eat his garden" and are pests. He referred to them as "roadkill". He told us about Kenyan customs, especially about dating and dowry (giving dowry to the girl's father in the form of goats is a real thing, both at the beginning of marriage and throughout).
We stopped for a minute for a view Great Rift Valley, home of the migration of the wildebeests, which I'm pretty sure killed Mufasa.
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| Group pic at Great Rift Valley |
Here's a random compilation of bus pics. The amazing gentlemen of our group had to unload and load all our stuff on travel days onto the room and every day had to load/unload all our medical supplies. It fit all 23 of us (plus sometimes friends from the church who needed rides to/from camp). It served as the pharmacy most days. It was a good bus.
We finally made it to our destination, Tower Falls Resort.. Considering I had VERY low expectations for accommodations, I was pleasantly surprised. We checked in with our roommate to nice hotel rooms each with a wood-burning fireplace that they sent someone in to light at night. Rooms looked relatively normal save for the mosquito nets hanging over each bed. The hotel served us three meals a day (buffet style when we were there, boxed lunches when we had full clinic days). Food was relatively "normal": Eggs/veggies/potatoes/ fresh fruit for breakfast, salad/veggies/bread/lentils/rice with beef/fish/sheep/lamb/chicken and fruit/cake for lunch and dinner. Boxed lunches were cheese sandwiches, foil-wrapped chicken, fruit, hard boiled eggs, and wrapped shortbread cookies. I was seriously impressed the entire time. However, when I asked for Diet Coke with dinner, they brought me a Coke Zero... you can't win 'em all, I guess.
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| Charlie the one time either of us tried to get inside our mosquito nets |
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| John came in our room every night at 9:30 to start a fire in the fireplace; wishing he came back home with me! |
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| Clinic day 3 and 4 |
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| Charlie and Ade in their exam room for Days 3 and 4. Was also someone's home they cleared out of for us. |
We worked to set up the clinic. Our team had brought in supplies, including medications, both basic OTC and some common prescriptions. I think some of them were purchased in-country, as we later spent time counting them out of giant bottles and into individual portions. Outside of medication and other give-away items (puppets from the sending church, toothbrushes, floss), other supplies for the medical clinic included a scale, blood pressure measuring tools, stethoscopes, audio scopes, urine (and pregnancy) test strips, an ear irrigation kit, and blood glucose testing strips. They also had a fetal dopplar (a machine to listen to baby's heartbeats). My point is, tools that we had were really really basic, but that's what we used to run the clinic all week. MMO also brings a vision center, designed to fit people with glasses. They bring donated old glasses, measured and sorted into rough prescriptions. Using eye charts combined with a (vision testing tool... ), they can estimate people's prescriptions and fit them with a new pair of glasses. The line for this was often longer than the medical clinic line; people LOVED it and it was great to see immediate results.
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| A pic of all the glasses the vision team brought. Prescriptions were labeled on the side and we matched patients as best we could. |
Flow of clinic went like this.
A local registered people by asking them their name, age, and contact information (which most just put down an area of town b/c they didn't have addresses or phone number). Most names were really common (John, Mary, Margaret, Hannah, Timothy, etc), as this was considered a "Christian" area so people had "Christian" names. Once people were registered, they went to triage, where the team took their vitals and weighed the kids. For babies, people stood on the scale with them and just subtracted their own weight.
Once people were triaged and their stats were recorded on the half-sheet of paper they were given at registration, they were called into a room, generally shared by 2-4 providers and 1-2 translators. They told the providers (mostly nurses with a couple Nurse Practitioners) the reason they had come in. Many people told of multiple ailments, but the providers were trained to try to narrow it down to the one most important problem per patient. The providers had the option to order testing from the "lab"(which is where I was working; literally it was a table set up near triage with a suitcase nearby for extra supplies), consisting of a urine or blood glucose analysis or an ear irrigation, which we would perform, then send the patient back to the provider for final diagnosis and prescribing of medicines. The providers also spent some time educating (for example, many people only had a cup or two of tea a day and they were told they should be drinking about 2 liters of water a day). Then, the patient's form would be sent to the pharmacy (usually run out of our bus) while the patient went and talked to local church members. Then the pharmacy would call the patient's name, give them vitamins plus whatever drugs the provider ordered, and send them on their way. At times, the line was so long, that people stayed 4-5 hours at our clinic. We saw a lot of kids as well; most of them were with their parents or grandparents; some came alone. In total, we saw about 2200 people in the 6 days we did clinic; 130 of those were turned away on Day 4 and just give vitamins because we ran out of time.
I worked in the lab (literally a table set up in triage) most of the days, learning how to test blood glucose and test urine when asked to by the nurses. This offered me other flexibility as well, such as placing patients in rooms, running prescriptions to the pharmacy (aka our bus), and, occasionally, playing.
When we first got there on Day 3, there were lots of people waiting for us. While we were waiting, I attempted to give out some of the beads that had been donated, but, was kind of mobbed by the kids. I later tried to give out candy. Sufficed to say that one had to be systematic when giving stuff out (which people had warned me about but I apparently like to learn things the hard way.) The things that worked best were things we could play with, like kites, Nerf footballs, Frisbee, etc. And Dum - dums. Lots and lots of Dum Dums. And the stickers worked well...on hands, on shirts, on foreheads. The kids loved them.
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| Jump rope contest |
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| The line for the pharmacy. |
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| Getting mobbed by the kids for Mike & Ikes. Not my best moment... |
Day 3 Patient Total : 120
Day 4:
Started with church at Bible Baptist Church. It was pretty traditional Baptist service. Kind of cool to listen to/attempt to sing familiar songs in Swahili. We all did a pretty good job of singing along, as the alphabet/sounds were similar to Spanish. Pastor Philip even had us go around and introduce ourselves to the congregation. Prior to that, there was Sunday School, just like I remembered from the Baptist days. And, apparently the same conundrum exists in Kenya Baptist churches as in American Baptist churches- what to do with the Singles who are out of college. They looked at us and pointed out the older adults and pointed them in one direction. Then there were still a bunch of us and Pastor Phillip looked perplexed. He asked then who was married and sent them in with the older adults. Then he sent the unmarried ones in with the college students. I didn't stop laughing for a while, because the problem of What To Do with Single People is worldwide. But we got to meet some people in Sunday School that we'd be working with all week.
We wound up walking back to the hotel (maybe a 30 minute walk) because the bus had to be repaired. People definitely noticed us, but mostly just waved and yelled "how are you?!" Many of the locals walk 40 minutes to an hour to get to church, so we fit right in!
After church, we went back to the hotel for lunch and then went back to Day 3 clinic site. I had a little more idea what I was doing . We also opened the vision clinic for the first time at a school down the street, so our group split a little. In total, we saw 220 patients (with the vision).
Day 5:
This day was my favorite. The site was literally in the middle of nowhere; it took us about an hour and a half on dirt roads to get there. The devotion that morning that we started with was really good... "You all, we could not BE further from our homes and our families, and yet God has placed us here to do work." We were supposed to be serving what they called an IDP (Internally Displaced Persons) Camp. I envisioned it to be a camp...silly me. It reminded me more like a farm town; the people had spread out. The people that lived in this area, were placed here after the 2007 election violence because essentially they voted for the wrong person and were subject to violence because of it. When we got there, there were a handful of people in line (and we were there about 30 minutes after the clinic was scheduled to start). I was a little concerned that we would have no patients, but they flowed slow and steady all day. I finally got the hang of working in the lab and was doing testing solo. I sneaked away at one point to fly a kite and got the hang of it, but somehow let go of the string... kids ran into a nearby farm to retrieve it, but we couldn't get it back up again. I also played football with kids in line; it kept them entertained for a little bit.
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| Day 5 and 6 clinic was made of steel poles and tarps . And a physical therapy table showed up for David in literally the middle of nowhere |
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| Jump rope! |
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| The green table was my lab |
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| Nerf football |
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| The pharmacy, aka the bus |
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| Boxed lunch time. Worst part was the kids watching us eat. But we were careful to save leftovers and share! |
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| Jessica in triage |
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| Elizabeth |
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| My Ameren Journal pic |
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| Ladies at Rosedale Baptist Church don't quilt; they make puppets for every single MMO trip. |
We wound up having to wait quite a while for the vision team to finish up, so we counted pills and took pics while we waited.
Here's a video on Facebook of our team counting pills and interviews with us!
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We ended pretty late after Day 5, but we were determined to go see Hippo Pond before dark. It was right off the road on the way back to the hotel. We pulled the bus over to the side of the road and walked maybe a half mile through a little village, where the kids called in their high-pitched voice, "how are yooou?", over a bridge, to a pond. Where hippos did dwell. So so surreal. Apparently hippos are super violent and aggressive, but we didn't see that, thankfully. Then, us "hungry hungry hippos" went back to the hotel for dinner and pill counting!
Day 6:
Was pretty similar to Day 5. A second full day at the Displaced Persons camp. The major major difference was the LINE we had when we first got there. Apparently the word had gotten out. We wound up turning away about 130 people around 2 because we wouldn't have time to get everyone through. The worst part was the people that came after that initial turn-away. As I was the "runner" of sorts, I wound up talking to a lot of them.
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| Crazy lines in all directions |
I had some time to fly kites this day. I actually think these pics are over both days.
We also played hot potato and sang Jesus Loves me with the kids.
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| I might love this pic a little bit...ok, a lot. |
Day 6-- 444 medical patients, 113 of those were only given albendazole, Vitamin A, and
toothbrushes, vision 186
After we got back from clinic at an earlier hour than the day before, we decided it was time to go down to Tower Falls, which was on the campus of our hotel. We hadn't done it yet because we still hadn't exchanged our dollars into shillings. But Bradly struck a deal and wound up paying the 2 shillings for us to get in. Beautiful of course, and we saw Bernard taking a camel ride. There were market shop owners eager to meet us and have us remember their names, telling us to come later.
A group of us wanted to hike down to the bottom. We couldn't go without a guide. And the guide charged us something like 6 shillings for all 15 of us that wanted to go. Since it was a little impromptu, I was wearing a skirt and sandals, but I was not going to let that stop me. Going down was slippery and a little perilous. We went down things that "wanted to be stairs". I took a nice tumble towards the bottom but thankfully wound up with only a dirty hand and a sore wrist. And some dirt on my skirt. The way up wasn't too bad for me slippery-wise. Was much easier. However, the high altitude finally found us. Hard to catch the breath going up. But we made it, finally. And at top waiting for us were the market ladies, trying to remember our names and get us to come to their shops. They were relentless. But we headed back to the lodge in time for dinner and some Monopoly Deal.
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| We were exhausted after the hike; I think it had to do with the high altitude |
Day 7:
This was probably my second-favorite day. We got to a school, which had given us a room to do clinic. The room was partitioned off by twine and sheets. Loved the creativity of the set up group (and they were proud of it too!) When we got there, all the school children were out on the front lawn singing to welcome us. I'm pretty sure we weren't on time, so I wonder how long they were in lines on the lawn waiting patiently.
I worked in the vision clinic all day, which was neat because you could see immediate results when people got the glasses they needed. I also felt like I was busy all day, (as opposed to some of the other days where I was trying to find things to do) There were a couple of people who were sooo happy to be able to see, finally. Especially a 15 year old far-sighted girl who got glasses so she could finally read! The medical side of the clinic was actually pretty slow that day. I caught Charlie finally taking some pictures because she had some downtime. And one of her.
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| Aren't they both gorgeous? |
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| The local missionary, Tracy. Had so much fun with her! |
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| Consulting in vision |
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| My translator and friend, Timothy. I miss that guy. |
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| The practice room for Marley and Charlie and Katie |
Day 7-- 324 medical patients and 112 vision patients, 30 saved
That night, we headed to the market by our hotel and bought souvenirs. Pastor Phillip went with us and instructed us strictly to stick to two shops where were owned by the same person; he had supposedly talked to them beforehand to ensure we wouldn't be charged the "extra tax because of our skin color." We all found almost everything we were looking for. Except coffee, sadly.
Day 8:
We had one last day of clinic at the school. I worked as a lab assistant again (I missed being in vision!). It was a quick morning and cleanup took a good amount of time, as the team wanted things put away systematically to ensure we could combine boxes for the plane and would make it through security all day. You don't think about things like not checking otoscopes for safety reasons then getting stopped at security because of them.
We also spent a lot of time saying goodbye to our new friends , who I hope to keep in touch with. It was such a blessing to work alongside such dedicated volunteers. And, we got to know the real people of Kenya and got to be friends. I also left all of the stuff I hadn't given away with them to give out to the kids of their church.
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| A view of our entire team for the week at the school we served out Days 7 & 8. As I said to Timothy, we'll see each other again, either on this side of heaven or the other. |
Day 7- 267 patients and 16 salvations
In Total: 2,249 total patients and 127 total came to know Jesus Christ!
And then, that afternoon, we were OFF. ON VACATION! It was about a 2 hour trek to the Ol Pajeta Conservatory . On the way, we had a few stops. The first was the EQUATOR. My first time crossing it! Pretty cool. Apparently the Southern Hemisphere is pretty great and full of elephants.
After the equator, we did a quick stop at a coffee field. Bernard ran across the street and grabbed a handful of coffee beans so we could look at them. I ended up with them in my backpack (they were bad by the time I got home).
We also opened our windows and cheered at these studs (Kenyan police trainees) running up a mountain. They appreciated the enthusiasm.
We made it finally to our safari destination, Sweet Waters Tented Camp. We saw gazelles (there were so many types...the one I remember is the Impala) right when we first got there. Our bus took us to the lodge, and we walked in and looked around. It was a legit 4.5 star hotel. Nice for any one's standard. Spa, buffet, excisions, window right out to the watering hole. First decent WiFi since our hotel in Nairobi the first night.
We actually were given several free hours (probably our first long-ish down time all week). It was around 4:30 and our instructions were to be at dinner at 7:30 and those that wanted to could pay the resort for a 9:00pm safari. Yes, please. So we set off to our tents. Ha. By tents, I mean hotel rooms surrounded by canvas. Charlie and I took long showers (in an actual shower, as opposed to our wet-room at the previous hotel- not that I'm complaining about that, but this was way better). We loved on our hotel room and decided that it was possible to stay here for several weeks. Hello, honeymoon! Or something. We were ready for the evening by about 6 and decided to take cards and head to the lodge; figured people would be assembling early. As we were walking to the lodge, one of us poked the other and we turned around to see three elephants, headed to the watering hole. OMG. OMG. There was probably a foot high electrical fence between us and them. Most likely more to keep us on our side than the other way around. Elephants. ELEPHANTS. And then, then there was chocolate cake later. David remarked: "I got married, I saw elephants, and I ate this cake. I can now go to heaven." I mean, elephants and the cake was enough for me. I've had a lot of good dinners in my life. But can't much think of one that beats that one. (And Katie, Charlie, and I took the seats right by the watering hole window, letting us peer into the darkness. And see our elephants. Yep, those were certainly ours now.) Did I mention ELEPHANTS???
Onto Safari #1!
We piled into open topped jeeps equipped with thick blankets. Poor Janell was a little freaked out...I think the story of the S African girl getting killed got to her. She was a trooper though. First things first... night safaris are for looking for eyes that glow. Using a red spotlight (that wouldn't scare the animals for whatever reason) that was attached to the jeep. We had two guides; one to drive and one to shine the light.
Goal: Cats. Always cats.
We drove around; David's Indiana deer hunting skills were coming into play . "Over there." "Back up". "Shine to the left." "Can I please hold the light?" (No.)
We learned lots of facts. Namely that Ol Pajeta was home to three of the five remaining Northern White Rhinos. Including the only male in the world; they are trying to get them to breed to no avail. They had them quarantined off in a section with a big electrical fence. We hoped for a glimpse, but never got one.
We saw more elephants, more gazelles, zebras, bison, etc. etc. No giraffes. And no cats. But then...then the call came on the radio and our guide did a turn off road. She wouldn't quite tell us where she was going; then she said, "We have a kill." We saw one of the other two jeeps in the distance in the field. With a light pointed at a lion. Eating a ... something. As we pulled closer, I asked our guide what the lion was eating, and she said something I didn't clearly hear. I said, "what.?" She replied, "A Pumba." Poor Pumba. But that aside, this was pretty much the coolest thing I'd ever seen in my life. The other jeep had gotten there soon after the kill and saw the ribs break and the lion eating the heart. By the time we got there, he (we decided because of the spots on his legs and lack of mane that it was a young male) was working on clearing out the intestines. It was mesmerizing for lack of a better word. Not too long after we got there, the third jeep showed up. I bet each of us watched this scene for 15-20 minutes. Maybe not quite, but we were there a while. And the lion knew we were there, would look up, walk around every now and then, then go back to his meal. Lions need to eat 10 pounds of meat per day. He was in his happy place. Janell was a bit scared that we would wear out our welcome. But I never felt unsafe. We finally tore ourselves away and went back to our lodge. Most surreal, coolest thing I've ever seen. In total... Best. Night. Ever. Still wonder if that was real. So, so blessed.
Day 9/10:
We woke up and embarked on Safari #2 at 6:30 am safari run by the hotel. I think only like 8 of us went. I'm a morning person anyway, so I would have been up long before our scheduled 10 am bus safari anyway, plus, I figure when you are on the preserve for literally less than 24 hours, I'm going to take advantage of every opportunity. Loved seeing the Serengeti in early dawn's light. We were hoping we'd have better chances of seeing a lion/cheetah/leopard in the full light of day with an experienced driver. But, try as we might, we did not. We saw a hyena (that was my spot). Wound up not really seeing anything on this safari that we didn't see later, but certainly not a waste. We loved trying to capitalize on David's mad spotting skills. And, we saw tons of Zebras, which I later found out are Reagan's (my fave almost 3 year old) fave animal, so I'll post a few Zebra pics for her.
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| Warthogs...poor guys... I know their fate now... |
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| Rhino spot! |
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| Sunrise Zebra pic for Reagan |
I figured that by going on the morning safari, we'd miss breakfast, but we made it with plenty of time; create-your-own omelette bar and all. And we embarked on Safari #3 at 10 am safari in our bus, driven by Bernard. We stopped by the chimp preserve, where they control the chimp's environment. I figured it was for the chimp's safety (Can you imagine a chimp vs a cheetah or lion?) but the guide said that chimps are surprisingly violent and they quarantine them for the safety of the other animals. Who knew? We did meet Max, who's motto obviously was: "See human, throw feces." It happened twice to us. Lol. I liked his spunk. I don't think anyone got it on video, sadly. We saw a huge elephant, along with a large herd of elephants that he might have belonged to. And, saw the giraffes I'd been waiting and hoping for.
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| Max |
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| Love this pic! Huge elephant and Zebras! |
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| Baboons. Or roadkill.. |
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| Unreal |
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| Huge herd of elephants. |
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| Loved! |
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| A few more pics by the hotel lodge before we left |
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| And sometimes, Charlie holds a rhino |
Around 2pm, we had loaded up the bus and were headed to Nairobi. Our flight was at 10:25pm and we wanted to get to the airport between 7 and 7:30pm to allow plenty of time to get through crazy points of security. We figured it'd be about 3ish hours to the airport (giving us time to get dinner and stop for souvenirs), which turned out to be a bit of a gross underestimate. The roads back were relatively good. Two lanes, mostly and we hit a little traffic. We did stop to get souvenirs along the way, and we all understood that going to the market in Nairobi was no longer the plan. Around 6:30pm, I asked Bernard about how much longer to Nairobi, and he said about an hour or and hour and half. Charlie and I were sitting right behind him (and poor Charlie had very little leg room). About 7:15 or so, the roads starting getting busier; we had made it into Nairobi. The streets were crazy crowded with cars, people, scooters, bikes, etc. Our bus went to make a left turn and the people on the left of the bus cried to Bernard that we had hit a car. Bernard verified if the car had hit us or we had hit the car. The people on the left side of the bus said that we had hit the car. Bernard dutifully pulled over to the left side of the road (we drove on the left side). He got out to talk to the cop (which appeared out of nowhere and Bernard claimed to know). Almost immediately, probably a dozen people came up to the side of the bus and started knocking on windows and crying out they were hungry and asking for shillings. We tried to ignore them and close the windows. One man opened the door to the driver's seat of the bus and started to get on. Out of nowhere, Bernard comes and shoves the man out of the way, opens the door and grabs a black leather whip from the dashboard (had that been there the whole time?!?!). He runs down the street after this man and just starts beating him. They run together for halfway down the block, Bernard just beating him. The cop is standing by the bus, just watching this go down. Bernard returns and goes back to talking to the cop for another few minutes. Those might have been the longest, scariest few minutes of my life (people were still knocking on the side of the bus; it was dark; "are we going to miss our flight and be stuck here; I have to pee; I'm hungry"...). Bernard gets on the bus and states without fanfare, "that man was trying to do bad things". He was proud of himself. We were all kind of stunned. And I think Charlie and I were the only people who saw the man actually to get on the bus.
We did finally make it to the airport around 8:20pm, about 2 hours before our flight. We all rushed to get our luggage off and to check in. We helped each other to an extent but in the end, it was every man for himself. I made sure I had Charlie and Katie (the St. Louis girls; we were "in charge" of each other), and we did what we could to help each other through. We made it through both security checkpoints and even had a few minutes to stop at the gift shop and buy coffee (which we had been missing this whole time). We went through another security checkpoint to get to our gate finally. Our flight took off around 10:45 pm Friday night. We never really did eat until we got on the plane. All I know was I was never, never so happy to be sitting on an airplane. We flew 8 hours through Amesterdam and then another 8 hours to Detroit with short layovers and thankfully without incident. Through the magic of time change, we made it home by 12:40 pm on Saturday afternoon. With the bus ride and with layovers, we traveled 26 hours on the way home.
Epilogue:
My lovely friends planned a welcome home dinner for me on Saturday night, which forced me to stay up until 10pm, which I think was the thing that allowed me to function on a normal schedule for the next couple of days, even staying late at work on Monday. It wasn't until Tuesday at about 2:30pm that The Tired hit me like a brick wall, at which point, I went home from work and slept the rest of the afternoon and into the evening. I went to bed relatively early Wednesday and Thursday of that week and by Friday was pretty much back to normal.
FAQ:
Q: Would you go again?
A: Absolutely! Like most trips, this one bred more desire for Africa. I would like to go to South Africa now for sure. And maybe the Congo (Gorillas!!). I think people are afraid of the unknown. And certainly there's risk; there is risk in all things we do. But, a wise man once said, "if you get the choice between two things, always choose the one that will give you a better story." And the beginning of many-a-good story starts with, "This one time, when I was in Africa..."
Q: With the same group?
A: Yes! Except I'd probably choose another destination for the sake of new experiences. For me, it was a great way to travel to a new place with an automatic group of great, like-minded people. And it was great that it was all arranged; all I had to do was pay and everything else was done. And it was a great way to see the REAL Kenya, as opposed to just taking a vacation to the safari place for a week. In this way, you combine seeing the beauty/tourism that Kenya has to offer with seeing the real people and culture and being able to give back. It was also great to help the church in Nyruhruru as they were working to plant new churches in new areas.
Q: Did you get the urge to just not come home?
A: I can see the appeal to an extent. But I won't be buying a one-way plane ticket anytime soon.
Q: Do you feel like you helped?
A: Yes! I wasn't sure how our team would be helping prior to going there. I had a fear that it would be a bunch of white people going and telling Africans what to believe and giving them medical care and then just walking away, creating a dependency that isn't sustainable. But instead, we were there to encourage a local church and help them expand. It was locals that were evangelizing and the locals that will be there to follow up. All we did was provide the platform to bring the people and open doors for them to share the Gospel later. I loved the model and I think MMO does a great job of creating sustainable ministry by partnering with great churches around the world.
Q: How has this affected you upon returning home?
A: I think life has been slower a little bit. It started with jet lag and now has just morphed into "lag". There was a saying in Africa: TIA ("This is Africa")...which kind of meant, "Take it slow" or "Don't take anything too seriously". And that has bled over a little into life: not being super obsessed with working out and/or getting it all done right now. I'm realizing that life is lots bigger than "the price of gas pipe" (which is the focus of my current job). Not wanting to diminish the importance of what I do daily, but also realizing that there are so many more important issues in the world and wanting to make sure I'm focusing on the right areas. I also got rid of a bunch of stuff. I looked around my apartment and closet and felt almost strangled by ALL. THE. STUFF. When you see people who have next to nothing and are basically content, you realize you don't need that much to be happy; and that's a freeing feeling. It's a continual process to be sure. And, even looking around at American poverty (the projects, etc), it's almost laughable what we call a "bad area of town." That is wealth to some. I just feel overwhelmed with the blessings I have now.
Acknowledgements:
First and foremost, thank you to everyone who prayed for my trip. Your prayers were certainly felt.
Second, thanks to my coworkers at Ameren. The kids loved playing with the toys you donated and the stickers/candy helped the doctors/nurses calm the kids down and earn their trust. I loved having you all be a part of my trip. I am so thankful I work with each of you and am always continually amazed by your generosity. So thank you!
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