Turkana post

We all returned safely from Turkana, monday week so that was good. This update comes from Lauren's account of Turkana which she has graciously let us all share today :) So enjoy and God bless, Kiri and Hannah and all the Soul edge Gals 2009 "We had an amazing time, it was so good to experience everything.... My perception of average journey lengths has changed some what since being in Kenya! It was about 17 hours on the way up, and about 14 ish on the way back, but you just deal with it, and it’s good because when I get back home four hours is gonna seem like a doddle! And we were told that it was going to be really really bad, and may take up to 21ish hours, and so 17 didn’t really seem that bad.
Lots of interesting toilet experiences this week, uhhh, such a horrible smell! That was something I’m not sure if I could ever get used to. You have a little cubicle with a small round hole in the floor, and a big pit beneath, full of everybody’s waste, and then maybe rats or maggots. I don’t know how often they get emptied, but it was scank! I think my lung capacity increased from trying to hold my breath for as long as possible!
Turkana was stretching physically, it was really hot, and with the toilets and not having cold water to cool you off, it was a bit uncomfortable at times, I found out more about about my limits in terms of what I could cope with. It made me admire the people who live there so much, especially the people we lived with, Wilson and Alice. I think if you grow up living somewhere hard then you are used to it, but if you move there having lived somewhere else that was nicer then it’s even harder, because you find yourself comparing what you used to have to what you’ve got now. Wilson and Alice also work for Youth Apart, the main organization that we have been working for in Kitale. They live in a really tiny house, and don’t have hardly anything by way of possessions, (although that is so much more then other people in Turkana have, 92% live below the poverty line) but they still shared what they had soooooooooo much, with us, and with people in their church, Wilson is a pastor, and the neighbours, and everyone! It reminded me of that bit in Acts (Acts 2:42-47, the Believers Form a Community) when the disciples are just starting up churches and they live really communally. And it did make me more grateful of things that I hadn’t even realized I took for granted, like cold water.
But it was so worth that stuff, to be there. We got to sleep outside every night under the stars, partly because there was no room inside and partly because it was so incredibly warm, even at night. Wowie, good stars! The Turkana tribe are one of the last nomadic tribes in east Africa, so most people don’t actually stay in one place for very long, but there are a few towns, like the one that we were staying in. One day we went out and did a food drop off in the bush which was an incredible experience. We drove out to a water pump that had been built last year, tooted the horn a few times, and then waited for people to come. Which they did after a while. It was a group of women and children who came, the men all stay out in the hills with their goats, so the women do most of the day to day stuff. We got to hear about what the women do, which was interesting, because even though they might get married off for however many goats at the age of 14, and their husbands might have more then one wife, they are still the main breadwinners. Such strong women. They make charcoal, and then will walk through the night to get to town so that they can sell it in town during the day. The bag of charcoal would weigh about 25kg, and they normally carry them on their heads. If they sold the whole bag they might make about 150 shillings, which is roughly £1.50, and to buy a small bag of lentils, which is a basic food, it would be about 120 shillings (£1.20), and when I say a small bag I mean about the size of a normal bag of sugar, so to me it seems a bit of a miracle that they survive at all. It was great to be able to bless them with food, which is obviously so needed. We took lentils, flour, salt and cooking fat. They said thank you that God had remembered them. It is good to be able to be a good example of what Christians are meant to be, to the Turkana people. One of the girls in our group, Gemma was given a marriage proposal while we were doing the food drop off, apparently she was worth 50 goats, 7 camels and 4 donkeys! But we held on to her, it was still early in the week at that point, so I think we were hoping to get a better deal! We got an insight into a bit more of what the corruption looks like in Kenya too. We were meant to do the food drop off the day before we actually went, but we were just loading the food onto the top of the land rover, when a police man came and said that we weren’t allowed to go out into the bush without an armoured truck to come with us, as it was unsafe for a group of all girls with just Wilson. So we had to then go to the police station and there was a bit of a shouting spree, and then we got to go home. So then the next day when we eventually left, we got to take two armed guards with us, which made it even more squishy in the land rover, but at least it was less expensive then a whole armoured vehicle. We didn’t really need the guards, I think it was a way for the police to make a bit of money, but it was nice that they cared about us. A worse example was when we were traveling up to Turkana on the bus, and the police just randomly do road blocks, and if you want to go through you have to pay them, it’s not that they are checking your drivers license or anything, although there are checks like that, but some are just to make money.
Another day we went to a ‘school’ to give out some food and play with the kids. I don’t know if you guys recall, but last January, in 2008 there was a lot of violence in Kenya after the national elections, because people thought it had been rigged. So that violence created loads of displaced people, particularly from an area called Mount Elgon which is not that far from Kitale, where we are staying. So lots of these refuges have ended up in Turkana, and we were at the school for one small camp of refugees. We sat with the kids while they ate their lentils, out of dirty bowls or cups with dirty hands. Then we sang some songs and acted out David and Goliath. They were really sweet kids. It’s sad, because I’m sure they are really keen to learn, but they just have nothing, like really nothing. A few of them had notebooks, and we gave then a blackboard so at least now the teacher has something to write on. But they all just sit in a group on the floor and I guess do things like practice counting together, and learning songs and stuff. But it’s good though, because they get at least one square meal a day through going to school.
Another day we went to the actual UN refugee camp in Turkana, which is huuuuuuuuge! I think there are around 200,000 people there, from eight different nationalities, Kenyan, Congolese, Rwandan, Burundian, Sudanese, Somali, Ethiopian… can’t remember last one. Each nationality has it’s own section within the camp, we were in the Ethiopian part, so it’s like a mini Ethiopia, I guess kind of like how you have China town in London! But to give you an idea of how big the camp is, there was a school in the camp that was 15km away from the bit of the camp that we were in, and it’s only 9km to cycle down the cycle track from Barnstaple to Bideford! It was really interesting to experience what it was like in the camp, even though we were only there for a few hours. The people in the camp get a better deal then the Turkana people who live in the area, in some ways, as they get fed, a house and basic schooling for free in the camp, but then obviously there’s the fact that they are refuges, and living outside of their normal surroundings. When we were on the bus on the way back home from Turkana there was a group of Ethiopians who were from the refugee camp, and they were being moved to Australia. They didn’t know which airport they were flying into or anything. That must be scary, to be moved to a country which you probably don’t even know where it is, and when you don’t speak that much English either. And it must be hard for the UN as well to keep track of everyone, we reckoned that moving them from Turkana to Australia would prob take about three days, and there’s so many different stages to the journey where people could get lost if they are in completely new surroundings. And it must be hard for the UN to make sure that that doesn’t happen, that people don’t get lost and for them to keep caring about people as individuals, rather then just thinking of the target number of people they have to move each year, and then just bumping up the statistics if a few people do get lost in transition.
This week we have been doing more normal stuff, like going to visit the teenage mums, the Esther girls, in their slum, and doing a Bible study. Although only one of them was there this week which was a shame. And we have been working more on the Esther home, where they will be moving into hopefully really soon. It’s almost all painted now, so I think this week we will be able to start buying furniture. We were at a wedding today (Saturday), it was the lady Naomi who runs the baby rescue orphanage who was getting married. She is English, but her husband Bill is Kenyan, and it was kind of a Kenyan wedding, which meant it started two hours later the planned! But there was lots of dancing and a real atmosphere of celebration which was really cool. It was held in the grounds of the orphanage, they have a really big garden. We were there mostly to help out, and look after the kids so that the ladies who run the orphanage pretty much 24/7 could have a break and enjoy the ceremony. It was funny though, we got there about 9:30, the wedding was meant to start at 12, and we thought we would just be looking after the kids, maybe doing Naomi’s hair and helping a bit with the cooking, but I ended up making four bouquets of flowers, there’s a first time for everything (!) and Hannah ended up cooking one of the big pots of lentils, but it was all good fun. Again Archie you would have been in baby heaven with all the little ones! And on the subject of babies, Marlies, whose husband is called Daniel, the couple who head up Youth apart, have just had their second baby, on the 17th of Feb. She is so tiny! Her name is Leona Vada, I think they said Leona means stronger then a lion, and Vada, that’s her middle name, means warrior in Arabic, not as a connection with Darth Vada in Star Wars!
We were meant to be going to climb Mt Kenya this coming week, but when we were doing painting at the Esther home, Hannah’s ladder broke, and she fell on her ankle. I got to go to hospital with her and it wasn’t broken, just sprained, but obviously climbing a mountain with a big fat kankle (is that how you spell it?!) isn’t fun, so we have changed that trip to right at the end. So now we are here in Kitale for two weeks, then go to Uganda for about a week, then home for a day or two, then off to Mt Kenya, and then I think we go straight to Nairobi and off home. Time has seriously flown by!" This SATURDAY we are all climbing Mt elgon!!! EXCITING STUFF!Blessings to all!x