March 16-18
Our house in Kapsowar with the green fence.
We
found a way of doing some great exercise. We have discovered a great walk that
takes us about 1hour if we do it very fast. This place is very hilly and on top
of that it is 7500vt. above sea level. We found out that the high altitude long
distance training center is between 5-10 km from Kapsowar where all the best
Olympian athletes of Kenya train. We saw some runners when we drove to Kapsowar
and there is also many athletes from the USA and all over the world that tried
to keep up with the Kenyan athletes. Agnes took me to town on Friday and it was
quite an experience. One thing that amazed me is the initiative that everybody
takes to make a living. I saw a little
shack with the words communication center on it and Agnes told me that you can
charge your cellphone there for a fee.
It is only then that I realized that they have to charge their phones and do not have electricity at their own homes.
The open market is fun and buzzing but I
don’t understand how it works because they are selling the same vegetables and
if you buy from one person , she would go and get change from another person
who sells the exact same thing. I guess at the end of the day they get together
and do some reconciliation.
The
church service on Sunday was a very emotional experience for us. No other
people in the world have so much natural talent to sing in different voices
without training than the children of
Africa . If you combine the beauty of their voices with worshipping God you
just know that this is a once in a lifetime spiritual and emotional experience
- a gift from God. Clapping hands and
dancing in church are also so natural and contagious that you just can’t help
but join them. The Kapsowar church has
two services on Sunday one at 9.30am that is in English and one at 11am in
Swahili.The church is founded by the African Inland Curch and is involved in
many Christian programs throughout this part of the Rift valley.
Here is a summary of all the programs that the
pastors of the AIC church together with Samaritan’s Purse are involved in.
-Primary
Church school for about 220
children.
- Part
of their responsibility is to be the chaplain’s at the hospital .
-
Do devotionals throughout the year every morning at the Nursing school with
about 130 students..
-
Do counseling plus teaching on sexuality at the girls school of about 600 - 800 and
a boys school of 250 students and both
schools have National status which means that the students come from all over
Kenya and the teaching is in English. Pastor Elkanah told me that the pastors
have free access to the schools and that they are teaching the sexuality
programs based on Christian principles to the students. That was quite a shock
to realize just how much we struggle in Canada to have Christian based teaching
on sexuality in our own schools
-
Providing Bibles in the hospital and also to the students .
-Samaritan’s
Purse is also the main organization who find medical doctors and students to
work in Kapsowar hospital.-
The Kapsowar church started a
Theological school last year and currently has 3 pastors in training.
The river in Kapsowar and also our daily walking route.
I was begging the kids for a picture , they are very
friendly but shy for pictures.
The girls were dressed in their Sunday clothes and they love
to dress up.
All the schools have
their own school uniforms.
I have lots of pictures ,it just takes too long for the pictures to uplaod for now
I will load them as soon as we have better internet connections..
March 19th.
I had a very interesting meeting today with 2 of the 3
pastors who serve the Kapsowar hospital and the AIC church that is situated
right next to the hospital. They are very involved in all of the community and
want me to help out in the following ministries.
-
Doing devotionals every morning at 8am at the
School of nursing where they have 130 students.
-
Help with the teaching at the Nurses fellowship
on Friday nights from 8 pm till 10 pm.
-
Do some preaching on Sunday mornings at the
nurses church service that is at 8am.
-
Do teaching at the local schools on sexuality
that is based on Christian values.
The things that I found interesting from a counselling
perspective are:
-
Although this is very rural , they face the same
problems what we face in America , such as
:
Relationship issues, dysfunctional families
with alcoholism as main reason, divorce , adultery and under the young people they also have
peer pressure, identity and sexual promiscuity as problems.
-
They also have abortion issues but it is
miniscule compare to the US or Canada. Abortions are still illegal in Kenya and
in this region the pastor said that there is one older woman who performs
abortions and he reckoned not more than 5 a year for the Marekwet region.
-
A problem that is new to them is teen suicide;
they had 3 cases last year in this district.
-
They do not have problems with drugs but with
alcoholism.
-
There is still some illegal procedures of female
circumcisions but that is mostly with force by grandmothers in the very remote
areas about 10km from Kapsowar. The pastor said that in the older generation
the percentage of female circumcision will be 95 % of women. It is also illegal
in Kenya to do this procedure.
-
Financial problems are huge, most families
struggle to pay the $400 per year school fees. They do not earn money or get
any support from the government. There only means of income is to sell something
like eggs, fruits , vegetables ,cows, maize and some women who are good with a
sewing machine make dresses for special occasions.
-
Many families own money to the hospital ,
although the missionary doctors perform all the surgeries and treatment for free
, the patients have to pay for their own medicine ,blood test and for their stay in the
hospital where they get three meals a day.
-
The hospital and its operating rooms were built
through funds provided from Samaritan’s Purse.
-
Some people come to the hospital as far as 8
hours’ drive by car from here.
-
Since we arrived we realized with a shock that
there was a tragic event at the hospital every day from a young child with
meningitis who died to a patient with a massive brain injury from a motorcycle accident.
The positive things that we see are:
-
They are still very family orientated and
whenever a person is in need , everybody help them out with the little that
they have.
-
If a person in a family go to university and end
up with a job with regular pay they do not forget about their families , as a
matter of fact they end up supporting the whole family even cousins .
-
Kenyan’s are very friendly and very relationship
orientated. They love to visit each other and talk.
-
All the schools in this region still practise regular
devotionals every morning and also an assembly with worship song, bible reading
and teaching once a week. I was invited to speak at two of the schools in this
region and that was truly an unforgettable experience. The girls school has 600
girls and the boys school has 250. These schools have National status which
means that the standard of the schools are the highest in the country.
- Every Kenian we meet ,shakes your hand , from a 2 year old child to an 92 year old grandpa . I went to the Church primary school during their morning Thai tea break and made the mistake of shaking the first hand and when I looked up there was this huge storm of little kids who wants to shake my hand . The teacher of the school had to come and rescued me I could not move.
