I was privileged to have been invited to join a small team of people to go to Kenya to see some projects which are being sponsored by Misean Cara, which is celebrating 20 years of its existence.
There were six of us in total. I joined three members of the Board of Misean Cara, a Presbyterian minister and a lay member of the Church of Ireland.
Leaving behind many preoccupations in the Diocese I entered into a very different world in Kenya. It was my second time in the country but the contrast with home was still very stark. Nairobi is a bustling city of several million. Since social welfare does not exist just about everyone has some tiny business or enterprise to eek out a living. Almost everywhere we went we saw poverty but in the distance we could see high rise apartments and we passed some residences which were palatial. The contrast there too is stark.
After our first night in Nairobi we travelled the next morning a few hundred miles north of the capital in a 12-seater Cesna 208 which certainly helped one to pray a bit better! We landed in Samburu to see a mission where the impressive Stephen Cowen has worked for 30 years. He is a lay Presbyterian missionary from Co. Down. He knows the people and their language and is bringing the Gospel to life in such practical ways. He and his wife, Angelina (who was away) and those he has gathered around him have improved life greatly for the native people of the area. I was glad to meet Fr. Carlos and Fr. Juan from a nearby Catholic mission and to see how good the relations were between them and their neighbours. Stephen also runs and encourages another mission which we visited a few hours away by jeep in Seren. Interestingly he has not constructed a church building in either place. He sees the people as being the church. Much food for thought there.
Seeing the people’s basic way of living makes me question the superfluity of my own life. I wonder what a person from Samburu would make of the way I live – with so many unnecessary things.
Samburu Awareness & Action Programme (SAAP), Presbyterian Church of Ireland & East Africa
Tuum, Samburu County, Kenya
Following Samburu we went back to Nairobi to visit a wonderful mission run by an Anglican community in a quarter of the city which comprises of several blocks of what they call houses but which we in Ireland would call sheds. When the local city authorities decided some years ago to clear a part of a slum area of the enormous capital each displaced family was given a plot 6 metres by 6 metres. The people built as best they could and together formed a strong community and are gradually building up lives filled with hope and vision through education and enterprise.
Tujisaidie Community School (CMS Ireland)
Soweto, Nairobi, Kenya
On my second last day in Kenya we travelled just less than an hour outside the city to a haven of peace in Thigio where the Daughters of Charity of St. Vincent de Paul run a school for special needs children, a hospice, a clinic and day care centre. I remember the love with which the children were treated. The clinic runs on a shoestring and sheer grace of God. We were again blessed to witness the Gospel in action.
Daughters of Charity Services, Thigio, Kenya
My last day in Nairobi was spent in one of the slum areas of which there are several in the city. The Franciscan Missionaries of Africa (founded by the extraordinary Mother Kevin Kearney of Co. Wicklow) showed us some of the schools they run.
It is hard to believe the utterly basic nature of the resources available to the staff and students. Once again we heard testimonies of people who were themselves brought up in the nearby slums and who were won over by the love of the Sisters and lay staff and the education they were offering. One ‘star’ student is now on the staff and is himself a Muslim. Such is the peaceful co-existence which is possible when love is genuine.
Then I had to leave Kenya before the group had finished their work. I left with mixed emotions and a great deal on which to ponder. The work of Misean Cara goes on. A few days after our return we were confronted with revelations of past sins of some small minority of religious in Ireland. My visit to Kenya was an antidote to this and a reminder of the great efforts of countless people of faith to make a difference and, urged on by the will of God, to help those less fortunate and to do what they can to relieve the human suffering which is in the world and indeed always has been. There were times in my visit when I felt that the work being carried out by all these groups was but a few drops in the ocean of the vast burden of human pain. But all of us are only human and are therefore limited. What matters is that we do what we can and leave the rest to God. By God’s grace a great deal of loving work is being done through people working together, supported by the generosity of Misean Cara.
