Tuesday: day 2

Tuesday 30 July 2013 

Good morning pictures from the bus with Isaiah!(:

I feel like every day I'm going to have more and more to say, but never enough words to recreate all of the things I saw and felt-especially on days like today. We left Beacon of Hope this morning in small groups of 6-7 people to visit some of the homes of the people who come to the clinic. Our group walked to one of the slums down the street and even though I took a few pictures of the street on my camera, I felt wrong trying to take pictures of the people, so I hope my words can work well enough. The roads have garbage mixed in to the clay and huge ruts and puddles every where. There are chickens, roosters, donkeys and tons of goats on and beside the roads, and after almost getting hit by a truck, I learned that drivers don't avoid you, you have to avoid them. There are small shack like stores lining the road, people sell fruit and vegetables and shoes etc. A lot of people stare at us, but I think they just aren't sure of our intentions-so I just waved and smiled at everyone and they always smiled and waved back(: and when I said "Jambo!" They laughed and responded but I have no idea what they were saying, so I just smiled and pretended like I did.. It worked(: I think they can sense when people are uncomfortable, and I understand why they would be, but the weirdest thing about being here is that I feel like I'm just walking down a street I've been down a million times. Maybe I just painted my expectations so many times in my head that one of those scenes I created is exactly what it looks like here. If I was fluent in Swahili, I would feel like I was at home.

We turned off the main road and started walking through where the homes were. The first one that we visited had a sitting area that was the size of the bathroom at my house, not including the tub. But, somehow we all fit and sat in a close circle. We met the woman who lived there and her 11 month old son, Brian. She looked like she was my age, but has 3 other children (5, 7 & 9). Her other kids go to a
public school that is a long walk away from their home, because they don't have sponsors and aren't
able to go to the school at Beacon. A typical class at their school has 170 students to one teacher...one hundred and SEVENTY children! So the quality of education is very low, because the teacher has no
way to even make sure that all of the children have done their homework. We prayed for her and
right when we were about to leave, John smiled really big at us and started bouncing up and down(:
soooo cute!

The only way I can describe the way the slums are set up is that they are a maze. The next home was down a narrow walkway, then to the left then to the right, under a bunch of clotheslines and over a creek of dirty water, tucked in a corner to the left beyond that. This woman was a lot sicker than the first one we met. Her home was a little bigger, but very dark. The walls were made of cardboard and a patchwork of random wood and metal, and her clothesline was inside. We all went in and she told us her story. She has 3 children of her own, the oldest is 18, and she is also taking care of her brother's child. She is new to the area, after leaving her abusive husband and trying to protect her children and herself from him. She was just released from the hospital after being there for 10 days with chest pain, a headache that won't go away,  a lump in her neck and a sore throat. She has AIDS and we found out later that day that her CD4 count was in the 40's. She is unable to work anymore and therefore has no way to feed herself or her kids. Her neighbor gave her a bag of flour, but that was all she had. The woman who was taking us to the homes asked us if we had any words of encouragement for her, but we all were at a loss for words. What do you say to someone in that situation? A situation that none of us could ever even come close to understanding or having anything to remotely compare to? The only thing I could think to tell her is that lots of times God puts us through very difficult times, things that seem impossible, in order to bring us closer to Him and to help us realize that He alone is enough. And that even though it was her abusive husband that brought her here, moving also brought her closer to Beacon of Hope, where she can get free medical care, and support from others who are in a similar situation. The abuse sent her to a place where she can get
better. When we were praying, I had chills because I knew that God was already working, just because she had been connected with the Beacon and was in a safer place. 

When we got back, the waiting room at the clinic was full and there were a bunch of children that
looked sad and bored. So actually, they just looked like they needed some coloring books(: I

sat down with the 2 that were outside, they were both younger than 3, and didn't know what a crayon was or how to hold it.. Or that it wasn't food! But when I showed them how the color showed up on the paper, they wanted to color the whole world, especially once they discovered the markers. The floor,
their hands, their clothes, all had marker streaks on them. And before I knew it, there was a whole ciThe LOVED the bouncy balls and thought it was hilarious when they rolled away and had to chase them. It was so sweet seeing them come to life from something so simple. I went inside for a meeting and when I went back out, two of the girls were with their mom and one of them had a box of 16 crayons, all crammed in backwards with a topless blue marker stuck in the middle. She held up the box to show me and her mom was sitting a couple yards away holding her coloring book, trying to tell me something in Swahili. All I could understand was "thank you" and in English she said "she can study." I never even thought about the fact that most kids in the U.S. start preschool knowing how to use and  hold crayons and pencils, before they learn how to write. But here, its a skill that they won't know because they don't have the materials. 

We spent the rest of the afternoon filling hundreds of little brown envelopes with pre-dosed prescriptions for the pharmacy at the clinic Thursday. It took forever and really put in to perspective how many patients are going to be coming through. 

Tonight after dinner, we had a group meeting/devotional and everyone shared how they were feeling about everything they had seen and experienced. I think the main thing that kept coming up was the confusion of how much we are supposed to do on our own and how much we leave to prayer. But the realization I came to after today is that we have to accept and trust that God is always more that enough, sufficient, and knows better than we do on our own. We often have the "I got this" mentality, and think that we can just give these people money or food and fix the problem but everything we can do right now is only temporary, God is forever. And if we accept that God is enough then we are trusting that our prayers will be heard and answered, with out us then trying to come up with our own solutions to the problems 2 minutes after saying "amen." The hardest thing is knowing you could help someone, but also knowing that you, yourself, alone, could never be enough to lift each individual from that situation and make everything better. So, kind of    Like when Jesus asked when he was sick, did you visit? Maybe just being there and praying was all we needed to do.