A final look at Longido

While we were in Longido, we stayed at the Tembo Guest House, which was built several years ago by a group of women from Ottawa.  This is where we ate our breakfast - the building is round, with the bedrooms on the outside walls, and this eating space on the inner circle.

One of the lovely features was this patio area at the back where we could relax, enjoy a cool drink (those who know me know which cool drink I ordered the most often!), and view the setting of the sun.  Somehow this picture of the trees as viewed from our patio, taken as we watched the sun go down, captured for us the spirit of an evening in Longido.

Since Art and I were only in Longido for 2 full days, we didn't get to know the staff of Sauti Moja Tanzania as well, but they were very helpful in touring us around a little bit.  We travelled in this vehicle nicknamed "the beast"!  

Ngoresa (may not be spelling that right!) was our driver. When we were getting in, he said "the Momma should sit up here" - that was me, and I got the passenger seat in the front.  Tim, Jenaya and Nashapai were very gracious about climbing into the back seat! 

The roads here were nowhere near as rough as the roads in Marsabit.  However, the rains have eroded the roads in this area as well.  At one point we had to cross a river bed, and the banks were rather steep. Ngoresa said "no problem - the beast is an old strong truck - lots of power".  I covered my eyes (which he found hilarious) as we drove straight down one side and a steep climb up the other side - but he was right, we got through fine without getting stuck.  One of the places we visited was the school at Oltepesi.  Unfortunately, the rain has badly eroded the mud walls again, and the inside of the school was flooded so the floor was a mess.  

What they really need is for the walls to be cemented, but at this point there is not enough in the budget to do that.  So everytime it rains they will be in a bad spot.  This is a pre-primary school - using the Montesori program, they teach the Masai children some basic Swahili, and some math, so that when they go to primary school in the village they will not be so alienated from the other children.  Here I am standing with the teacher - he is Masai himself, and has received the Montesori training, so he can now teach the children.  He made all the teaching materials he uses himself - clearly he is very proud of the work he does.  I just hope that some day his school will become more permanent so that it can withstand the heavy rains.  These are roads we were driving on to travel from Longido out to Oltepesi - not as bad as Marsabit roads, but not exactly a highway either!

Another day we travelled about an hour away to visit the village of Mairowa.  This is where Cory Wright began the experience of community conversations to help address the struggles of HIV/AIDS.  Our first stop was to see the progress on the resource centre which has been an ongoing project.  You may not be able to see it in the picture, but they began with cementing between the bricks, then ran out of cement so there are a few layers that are mudded, and then they were able to do the top layers with cement again.  Inside there is a large open room where the community conversations and education sessions can be held, plus there are two smaller rooms for an office and for storage space.  

Here is the Sauti Moja Tanzania staff looking out of what will be their office.  Their main office will remain in Longido, but it will be good to have space to meet in Mairowa as well.

Our first visit was with two people who have self-disclosed that they are HIV positive.  In Mairowa, there are a few people who made it public that they are living with HIV/AIDS.  That is one of the most positive effects of these community conversations - no longer are people living in such isolation and fear once they have tested as positive.  By self-disclosing they are HIV positive, they can access a support group, and get more education about how to live a healthy life, even with the diagnosis.  

The man sitting with his head down was the first one to admit to testing positive.  He told us about how in the "glory days" he could walk for miles, often taking part in livestocks raids as far away as places in Kenya.  However, he kept getting weaker, and was diagnosed 3 times with TB, each time getting a little more sick.  So they did a test for HIV/AIDS, and it was positive.  He told us he feels fine now - the only struggle he has is that he is now blind as a result of the disease.  But otherwise, he manages quite well. 

 He had 3 wives.  1 refused to get the test, 2 others tested and both were positive.  One of those wives died a short time ago.  But the other woman here is his second wife.

She has become a very important spokesperson for how to live a healthy life-style even with the diagnosis.  She has spoken to groups in Longido, and usually begins by asking them to describe how they think someone would look who was HIV positive.  Once they have described all the probable symptoms of someone, she tells them that she has been tested and she is positive.  They are usually shocked because she looks so healthy.  She then tells them why she is so healthy looking - that she gets the proper medication and she does her best to eat well.  She is a very helpful spokesperson in terms of encouraging people to have the courage to be tested, and then educating people about how to live longer even after the diagnosis. She is upbeat and filled with both grace and strength.  Once again I was touched by the warmth of her heart, and the beauty of her smile.

The other thing this woman made clear in speaking with us, is how very much she appreciates the support of Sauti Moja.  Over the years they have helped by providing them with a donkey so they could get water, plus they have made it possible for them to get the transportation necessary to travel to the clinic to get the medication they need.  Part of the difficulty of this illness is that people can't afford to travel to the clinic - the actual medication is not costly, but the transportation to get there is not easy.  What they are now hoping to get assistance with is a way to work their fields.  They own land, but they are too weak to do the plowing themselves.  If they had some assistance to work the land, they could do the planting and the weeding themselves.  That might be one way for them to stop relying so heavily on food relief, which is not always dependable for feeding their family.  All the children have been tested, and none of them are positive, so her concern continues to be to give her children a healthy diet and to make sure they all get to school.

The last night in Longido, Jenaya treated us to her gourmet pasta dish - the ingredients in Longido are a little sparse, so she had to be extra creative to come up with the meal she prepared for us!  We bought her a little magnetic dart board so that she could have something to do in the evenings besides talk to her cat, Pete.  I know that I will continue to be processing much of this experience for a very long time.  I am profoundly thankful for the experience I have had both in Kenya and in Tanzania.  Tim and Jenaya helped me to see a face of Africa that I know that I would never have seen on a regular "tourism" kind of tour.  Art said it well to me - when all the layers of "stuff" that we tend to surround ourselves with are stripped away, it enables us to see human decency at its best.  The women we were introduced to through Sauti Moja have a dignity and a strength that is impossible to miss.  The work that Sauti Moja is doing with the most vulnerable women in Kenya and Tanzania spoke strongly to me of our call to seek justice, love kindness, and always to walk humbly with God.  I don't expect that I will ever forget that group of widows saying to us that they never expected that they would survive the drought, so to be alive is for them a clear sign that the God of the poor is not asleep. 

As we move ever closer towards Christmas, I hope that you will think of Tim, Jenaya, and the others who work so hard for Sauti Moja - for "one voice for peace".  If you are at all able, go to their website and make a donation - it will help to build a school, or feed a child, or bring hope to these women who are doing their utmost best simply to survive.  One of the things we talked about was how so little cash can make such a huge difference in the quality of lives here in Africa.  I know that I have gone out for supper in Regina and easily spent $50 - that amount of money will feed a whole family here for a month or so.  I know that my finances are stretched thin in Canada - but I also know that I will be thinking about what I can afford a little differently now that I have have sat in the homes of some of these women in Africa.  If you can't make a donation at this point, please hold these people in your hearts and prayers.  As one of the widows told me with great emotion in her voice - it helps a huge amount to know that there are people across the ocean - strangers - who will pray for the well-being of herself and her children.

My next post will be moving away from the vulnerable widows, as I share with you some of the amazing pictures and stories from the 3 days we were on Safari in Tanzania.  Amazing what we learned from watching the animals of Africa!

A first glimpse of Longido, Tanzania

We have been away from the internet for a few days while we spent time with Tim and Jenaya in Longido, Tanzania.  We are at a hotel in Arusha for tonight, so I will introduce you to Longido tonight while I have access to the internet.  On Tuesday morning (Nov 29), Tim and Jenaya had work to do, so Art and I had a morning to just relax.  We walked up to a place where Tim's son, Cory, has built a permanent tent camp.  As we walked up to the site, a couple of women met us along the path and came and sat for awhile with us.  They didn't speak any English.  My Swahili consists of "welcome"and "thank you", so the conversation was pretty sparse!  But we smiled a lot at each other and they were quite happy to have their pictures taken:

Below is the view we were enjoying with them...

 Unfortunately we didn't have any Tanzanian money yet to buy any of the bracelets this woman wanted to sell us, but she enjoyed wearing Art's sunglasses - so he squinted, and she grinned:

It was actually pretty funny - it was like the word spread about these white people sitting up at the camp, and the visitors continued to come.  So this was our next visitor - one of the Masai men from the village.  Once he saw we had a camera, he insisted on posing for us.  And what fascinated him the most was our binoculars.  He couldn't stop looking through them and grinning - who knows if he was focusing them or what he was actually seeing through them, but he sure enjoyed them:

The next visitor was a young boy who we had been watching as he herded his sheep on the hill just below us.  I imagine he would have been about 7 or 8.  He spoke no English at all.  But he seemed to think we were hilarious - he giggled a lot with us.  He loved looking through both the sunglasses and the binoculars.  He especially liked looking through the binoculars backwards - he and I spent time sticking out our tongues at each other while he looked at me through the binoculars backwards - he found it very funny!

After lunch, we went out to one of the sub-villages of Longido called Oltepesi, which is where one of the child mothers lives.  She lives in a group of houses called a "boma" - several traditional Masai homes grouped together.  Inside the grouping of houses, they have enclosures that are fenced in with the thorn bushes to keep the livestock close to them at night.  The child mother we visited is a woman named Sara.  The first two pictures are outside their home.  Sara's mother is holding Sara's daughter, whose name is "Happy".  There were several other family members visiting with us as well:

This is a picture of Sara holding her daughter Happy:

Beside Sara, is a woman who works with Sauti Moja Tanzania - her name is Happy as well - kind of a popular name here apparently!  Once we had finished conversation outside, we were invited to go into their home.  You will see the little girl in the red stripes behind Sara?  That is the doorway we were to go through.  Honestly?  It was completely dark once you stepped inside.  I literally had to be talked over to the place where I could sit - it took forever for my eyes to adjust!  Once we were seated in the house, we had some chai tea.  Here are a couple of pictures from in the house:

As we were sitting there enjoying the hospitality of this Masai family, the grandmother, who was sitting right beside me, leaned over and said she had a present for the "mama" - that is me.  She took a necklace off of her neck, and put it around mine.  Later I was told that the Masai people are very generous and like to give gifts.  I don't think I will ever forget the feel of those cool beads as they touched the back of my neck - I felt very honored to wear the necklace that she had been wearing.  You can see it around her neck in the first picture I posted of her holding her grandchild.  And here is a picture of us standing outside.  I think we were deeply connected - mother to mother - it was a very good moment.

All in all it was a wonderful first day in Longido.  I have more pictures and stories from our second day, but Art and I are off on a Safari tomorrow - yeah!!  So I won't be back to the internet until Sunday evening.  Check in again in a few days...I will just leave you with this picture of Art in the little patio behind the guest house in Longido.  The frigid temperatures of the Manitoba prairies, and the chaos of a busy work place, seem a very long ways away at the moment...

On the road again....

So, the rains let up and our plane arrived in Marsabit Saturday morning about 11:30 a.m. - this is Martha coming to tell us the good news.  She was involved with a wedding from her church and looked like so beautiful in her wedding finery that I couldn't resist taking a picture:

This time the plane we were travelling back to Nairobi on was quite small - 5 passengers and the pilot.  Weight was a critical issue, so the pilot had an amazing job to do.  First of all he filled the plane with fuel, then weighed all our luggage, asked us all our weight (I chose to be very honest rather than my usual cutting off a pound or two!), then began to figure out how to distribute everything so that the back end of the plane was not too heavy.  That took us until 1:00 to get sorted out!

The luggage mostly fit in that storage space beneath the plane, except for one suitcase that wouldn't fit - that belonged to the one man on the flight!  I ended up sitting in the very back of the plane.  Jenaya had my camera because I couldn't hold anything on my lap - no extra weight allowed - so these are the pictures she took - beginning with her self-portrait!  We were very, very happy to be finally on our way....

                                                   

These are a couple of shots of the Marsabit mountain - it was quite incredible to see how very green it is.  It hasn't looked like this in 10 years is what we were told.  So I am glad Jenaya felt free to use my camera to capture it!

It was, of course, quite wonderful to arrive in Nairobi and find Arthur here with Tim (who was quite glad to see us arrive with his suitcase of clean clothes!).  Today Art and I had a chance to play tourist, and gave Tim a break from being our tour guide.  The first place we went was to the elephant orphanage.  We saw 18 of the orphaned elephants - we arrived to see them get their 11:00 a.m. feeding.  These animals have all been orphaned for different reasons - sometimes their mothers have been poached for their tusks, sometimes the mothers have died of other means.  But a baby elephant needs its mothers milk for a minimum of two years - without that milk, they will very quickly die.  So this organization called the David Sheldrick wildlife trust has created a haven for these baby elephants.  I now have many, many pictures of elephants - and of Arthur!

This was bringing the elephants to get fed.

Yes - he's in Africa!

 A baby elephant needs to be fed milk for a minimum of 2 1/2 to 3 years.  Then what this organization does is try to re-introduce them into the wild.  A trainer will walk with the elephant out into the forest early in the morning and return with it around supper time.  Out in the forest this elephant will begin to interact with the other elephants who live in the wild - eventually one of the groups of elephants will accept this new elephant into their group. But this process of introducing the orphaned elephant to the a new group could take up to five years.  The trainers might be working with one particular elephant for up to 8 years - it was quite touching watching their interaction with the elephants - clearly they developed personal attachments!

The other place that we went was to the Kenyan Giraffe Centre.  Not as many interesting facts, but some great pictures!

Tomorrow afternoon we will be heading to Longido, Tanzania, to find out more about the work that Sauti Moja Tanzania does.  I have been told that although we will be staying in a very nice guest house there, that we will not have internet.  So my assumption is that it will be a few days before I can post anything again - I may be silent for a bit, but I will be back!  Today I am well aware that it is the first Sunday in Advent - I can't even begin to tell you how far away I feel from Christmas right now!  

Surprise - another day in Marsabit!

I am kind of wishing that I didn't tell anyone that this was going to be adventure - adventures have a way of turning any plans upside down!  This new adventure began when Tim discovered the airplane that was available for today didn't actually have enough seats for all 4 of us to return today, so he began to scramble to find an alternative to get home.  He actually bought a bus ticket, even though the bus trip from here could take 2 days to do what should easily be manageable in one day.  However, late yesterday he was able to make arrangements to go in a 4 wheel drive, smaller vehicle with some workers from one of the NGO's here.  He left at 6:30 this morning, thinking that he might be able to be in Nairobi early this evening.  We just got a cryptic text from him that they were having car troubles, but still expected to be in Nairobi later this evening.  MEANWHILE, back here in Marsabit, Nashapai, Jenaya (2 of the staff from Sauti Moja Tanzania who have been with us for a week) and I were feeling sorry for Tim because of his long trip, fully expecting that we would be on the plane and back in Nairobi by late afternoon today.  At 1:00 we discovered that the weather had been too bad in Nairobi so they couldn't take off after all - the plan is that they will try to get the plane again tomorrow, but there are certainly no guarantees as this is the rainy season.  MEANWHILE,  right now, as I write this, my husband is on the plane from Heathrow airport.  Yesterday when I was in touch with him, I told him - no worries - I will be at the airport to meet you.  Our internet was down all morning, so I couldn't be in touch with him again before he left England.  So, here's hoping he figures out what to do when he walks out into the terminal and there is a taxi driver there with a card with his name on it - welcome to the African reality of trying to make plans!!  At least Tim will be at the guest house in Nairobi sometime tonight so that Art won't be totally on his own for all of tomorrow.  It is a good exercise in learning to be an adult in a situation that is totally beyond our control.  We have shelter, we have food, we have water, we have internet - all will be well!  I do have a few pictures I can show you of some of the people we have spent time with.  Two days ago, we walked out to see a friend of Tim's who has had a home for children in Marsabit for many years.  These children are all orphans, meaning that their fathers are not living, and if their mother is living, she is not able to take care of them.  There are 30 children who sleep at this home, and all of them are in either primary or secondary school.  John, the director of the home, arranged for all of them to gather and pose for a picture:

Last night we were invited to Martha's home for supper.  Martha is the manager of the Child Mother's program, plus she does most of the administration for Sauti Moja Marsabit.  Martha has been in many of the pictures I have taken of child mothers, and of the widows that we have been interviewing.  She has a deep compassion for the beneficiaries of Sauti Moja, and it is clear in watching the conversations that she is deeply respected in this community.  I know that when I picture Marsabit after I have left here, Martha is one of the faces of compassion that I will remember.  I wanted to find some small way to offer her some support, so I decided to "re-gift" her with the prayer shawl that I received from Selkirk United Church.  Often in the evenings while I was writing these posts, I would have the prayer shawl around my shoulders.  It feels very good to be leaving the shawl here - to offer Martha the strength of knowing that there is a community of people across the ocean who will continue to pray for her ministry here.

Another person we spent a fair bit of time with was Philip.  Philip is the project manager for the livestock program - the goats and the donkeys.  Philip came and had a visit with me this morning and talked a bit about his own life story.  When he was young his family couldn't afford to pay for him to go to Secondary School, so he was only able to go up to Class 8.  Eventually he found work as a night watchman which enabled him to begin to save some money.  Once he had saved enough to pay for the school fees, he asked a friend who was a teacher to give him some help to prepare so that he could study enough to write the final exam.  He worked hard and was able to finish Form 4 in 2007 - that is the equivalent of Grade 12 in Canada.  He has now been working on distance education and will soon have his diploma in social service and community development.  Again, I was very touched by his dedication to the work that Sauti Moja does.  He works hard to find the most vulnerable women in the surrounding villages, and treats them with great respect as he works with them to provide the livestock and instruct them in the care needed to ensure they have healthy animals.  I wanted to leave him with some small symbol that would let him know we will continue to pray for him across the ocean, and so I re-gifted him with this rock that I was given by someone from the Sunset congregation.  The rock was given to me before I left Canada, so that when I felt alone or overwhelmed, I could wrap my hand around the rock and know that I had a community of support - that I was not alone.  It felt right and good to leave this Canadian rock with a man who is clearly a rock of support for many who need to know that they are not alone.

Martha and Philip are often the contacts for all the beneficiaries of Sauti Moja who live in very isolated villages in the Marsabit district.  The only way they have of getting out to do those personal visits is on this motorcycle.  Philip usually uses it himself, but if Martha needs to go somewhere, he gives her a ride - side-saddle!  They were very gracious in posing for me, since I told them Canadians would have to see it to believe it!  So, as you get in your cars to go wherever it is you are heading this weekend, please remember these two Kenyans, who are living their faith by reaching out to those who live on the very margins of this society.  My heart has been touched, and my faith has been strengthened by the witness of these two people:

And please - pray for clear skies for Nairobi for tomorrow - I would like to actually spend time with Art for the remainder of my time in Africa!!