Tuesday, January 26, 2016

The Same Old Song



Were you ever surprised to hear an old favorite song which you hadn’t heard in years …. a song which you forgot and suddenly, hearing it again, you found yourself singing the words and your body moving to the beat?

That is what our re-entry to Kenya has been. Driving from Nairobi to Meru, we saw the throngs of people walking to work, the donkey carts on the road, the cows and goats grazing on the side of the road, women hauling huge stacks of wood on their backs, the side-of-the-road fruit stands blazing with color, the aggressive street peddlers …. suddenly the melody of Kenya came back to us.  It was the same old tune, a tune we loved, and we began smile as Kenyan life surrounded and embraced us and sang to us, “Karibuni!” (Welcome home!)

However, even though it was familiar again, we made some rookie mistakes. On our first day we managed to fry the only printer we brought (anyone need laser printer cartridges?) and to over-boil the hot pot and flood the kitchen area. Rookie mistakes!

So good to be back!

-Bud

Monday, January 4, 2016

Full Circle



We returned from Kenya at Christmas of 2008 after working for several happy years in the diocese of Meru; Sue with the orphaned children at the Children’s Village as a teacher and counselor and Bud with the Bishop in administration and fund raising. In both capacities we worked closely with Father Riwa, director and founder of the Children’s Village.

The Children’s Village is a home /school for hundreds of orphaned and abandoned children. As we were leaving Kenya, Father Riwa asked us to assist him to rescue the girls who were beginning to appear on the streets in Kenya. 

This motivated us, upon our return home, to establish a non-profit, Friends of Kenyan Orphans, to raise funds to build a facility for the girls. For the past 6 years this occupied our time and energy. About a year ago we realized we were further and further away from our original mission call to be with the poor in the developing world. This prompted us to turn our non-profit over to capable hands here in the US and return to Kenya to revisit our original call to mission. 

For us it feels like we have come full circle!