The bit before the end...

After school care centre for fruit picker's children in the Western Cape SA

The bit before the end of anything is a fascinating place....

Why?
Because you don't know how it will end: you anticipate a good ending, you fear a bad ending, you want an ending that exceeds your expectations, but you don't want an ending that disappoints.
Life, unlike an Agatha Christie novel, doesn't allow you to flick to the last page to know the ending before the ending arrives.

We are at the bit before the end of our three-month journey in Kenya, with a touch of South Africa and Zambia thrown in. We leave on tomorrow night. We have spent the last few days physically and emotionally recharging after Mugumoini. But we feel a great sense of joy over what we were able to do. We have a lunch today with a few people we want to honour for their role in our time here and who will be key to supporting what could happen in 2014.













As if in harmony with the ending of this trip we recently decamped from our Ngong-Hills-view home to a local hotel that is equally delightful (The staff are unbelievably friendly – every single one of them) and is giving us space to reflect. Reflect on the ending. What have we done? What have we achieved? We spoke to each other this morning about the importance of practicing gratitude and so that’s what we have been doing.




So, what are we thankful for?

.....we have
* Run 5 Leadership for Hopes
* Trained 1335 emerging leaders
* Trained in 2 countries
* Trained 15 new trainers for Africa from 4 countries
* We have established relationships with potential partners
* We have established that the best way to get the trainers for Africa is from the grassroots communities themselves
* We have established that Kenya is genuinely the toughest base from which to work, but we have stuck with it and made good progress
* We have delivered our toughest Leadership for Hope in Mugomoini slum
* We have just heard this morning that we have been granted funding for a whole new adventure in 2014. A few of you know just how hard we have worked & at what cost, to get to this place over the past 8 years
* We have met some amazing people (& some absolute rogues)

Boys at William's orphanage

On top of all that…..
* We have stayed well (until this week)
* We've had such fun together
* We learned each day from the books we're reading to each other & been constantly processing new thoughts, ideas & possibilities
* We loved having our hearts & vision expanded by the visits we made to different schools & orphanages
* We loved waking up and looking out at Mount Kenya
* We saw more rhino’s than you can shake a stick at
* We couldn’t get enough of the peace & beauty of Elsamere (home of 'Born Free' by Lake Naivasha)
* We sat in silence with our friend Archie as the sun set over Table Mountain in Cape Town
* We wept as we returned to the very slum in Lusaka, Zambia, where EL all started 8 years ago






This autumn has been a wonderful chapter and it has given us joy to share it with you

What happens next? What happens after the bit before the end? Kenya beckons, South Africa beckons, Malawi beckons, Sri Lanka is beckoning.
How will the story end?
What is the next chapter?


...such is the bit before the end !

- TW

Nairobi Half Life

JANE:
Before you read our latest Blog, please take a moment to click on the link below and orientate yourself to where we have been this week, running the last Leadership for Hope event before we fly home on Sunday 8th Dec.

The photo's you'll see were all taken by the photo-journalist Georgina Goodwin. It was she who implored us to come to Mugumoni before returning to the UK. Some weeks ago she took us into this desperate slum, on the edge of Kibera, to witness for ourselves the realities of Hopelessness and the living hell where 20,000 people dwell. This week we partnered with her and our tiny team, to host the event ourselves.

Have a look now:   http://www.lightstalkers.org/images/show/1382834

Running this event posed huge logistical challenges for us. We had no partner organisation within the slum to liaise with (there are no NGO's or government organisations working in the small area of 'Southlands' where we decided to base ourselves), so we literally had to start from scratch and organise the whole event:

• finding a venue that was safe (a fenced compound with security guards)
• finding someone who would be competent enough to cook for 300 people every day
• finding a way to get food to and from the venue every day, as we had no kitchen and intermittent electricity
• finding a team who could mobilise people within the community and would literally spend days weaving in and out of the bars and filthy streets talking and persuading people to come - people who would be serious about committing to the 3 days of training
• we had to secure a 'good enough' relationship with the slum chief to provide us with a 'safe enough' status - without his 'support' we would not be safe
• we had to buy or find all the equipment and supplies, from chairs to toilet paper & soap, from training sheets to bottled water (900 over 3 days)....we also needed a venue that actually had running water (which is a luxury)
• we had to source armed guards also, as there was a security alert from the British Government just before we started, concerning possible terrorist attacks in slum areas.

The amazing fact was that somehow or other we actually overcame all these challenges... stumbling and faltering. And it happened, against all the odds....and it feels like a bit of a miracle. 

People actually came and we watched the impact of the training on people's lives over the 3 days. Thomas, a young guy, fighting a daily battle with strong drink and ill-health said to me, 'I know that if I don't change my thinking I will never change my life. I must lead myself to a better place. You have helped me to see that I can do this. I have potential...I want to be a bigger person'.  

During the 3 days Trevor taught about the destructive power of Hopelessness, which can feel like an impossibly high wall, impossible to overcome. And the corrosive impact of 'poverty thinking'  - poverty not just being a material reality, but one that can come to live inside our heads. He spoke about the need to think 'new thoughts' and to lay down the mindsets of a leader that would generate a proactive and life affirming way of thinking, that would expel entrenched fear and lead to living a life that helps discover our full potential. 

I have to say, that the 3 days were mighty tough, especially as Trevor was sick for days 2 & 3, but made it through hour by hour. He was totally brilliant!

We are both totally mackerooned right now, but that's ok, because we've been left feeling deeply moved by the courage of those who have so little, yet they left with a determination to flourish and write a different story for their lives - one of HOPE. We feel like we have scaled an impossibly high wall this week. We made it, inch by inch, trusting that we were in the right place at the right time. 

PS. I can't end without giving a 'big shout' to our friend Nick, who responding like grease lightning to our need for financial support to feed everyone over the 3 days - we are so thankful to you Nick!!! Respect and thanks 

- JB

Peter our cook, feeding the 5,000... (he started cooking the 600 chapati's each day at 3am!!!)

                                                                                          

TREVOR:
It’s hard to put into words what oppression and fear look like. We joke about ‘the big man’, ‘the mafia’, but we have been living with this first hand this week.

Corruption is endemic. It’s all about how people use their power for their own interest. They smile in your face and in the next second they are wanting money. Money for what? Nothing. They just see it as their right if they have a position of power that everything and everyone should be a source of income. If someone in the slums roof is leaking and needs a few nails then they have to pay the Chief money. Why? Because that’s how it works. The real thing that hurt us most about it all is that it ensures that poverty doesn’t get broken in these communities. Even when the young people come up with amazing initiatives to clean up the community, the powers that be want a slice of the action. It makes everyone smaller. It makes the community smaller. It crushes innovation & creative thinking that would bring about change. We had to fight with this attitude every day and not give in to giving bribes in order to make the space to bring Leadership for Hope into this community.

Martin Luther King said, “Darkness does not chase out darkness; only light chases out darkness”

Mary aged 27 - a true leader

And we had real glimpses of the light. Mary literally dragged herself each day the 3km from her home on her fragile 4’ body, on her two crutches to get to the training. Mary is courage. Mary is light. Mary told us that she will take the training back into her groups in the Kibera slum. The thing about Mary was she always had a smile on her face.
Peter is a Rastafarian from the Dandora slum, a single parent dad, with the most gracious heart, vision and talent.....he is light. Peter was influenced by Leadership for Hope in our early days in Kenya in 2012 and is now leading 9 community and income generating projects in his slum, was one of our first 15 trainers we trained on arrival here in September. Peter translated the whole of the 3 days with me this week and he was simply amazing.

Georgina, Trevor, Peter (our translator, friend and Kenyan Trainer) & Jane

PS. By the way, Nairobi Half Life is an excellent Kenyan film, made about inner city Nairobi. Sell the farm and get a copy



PPS. After our last blog thanks so much to those of you who were moved to offer money for the glasses. We have now bought the protective glasses and have had confirmation that they will be distributed to the ladies of the quarry this Saturday (with the blessing of the Chief – a prime example of how power can be used for the benefit of others).


- TW 




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Charles' Story

We told you William’s story a while back, so here’s Charles story. I first met Charles in January 2012. He was one of 100 people in Kenya’s first pilot of Leadership for Hope. I remember Charles because he stood up on the morning of day 3 and told how he gone home and ‘lifted up his head’ (one of the 7 different mind sets we teach on day 2). He told a jaw dropping story of how he had stopped to speak to a ‘mad’ woman on his street corner on the way home the previous evening…….and changed her life. He found her lodgings, recovered her dreams and got her hooked up with a project that would help her learn to make clothes and sell them……all in one evenings conversation! That was Charles.

I’ve met Charles on every visit back to Kenya since and he has been a solid and safe ‘pair of hands’ in arranging some of our work here. Last Wednesday we got a message from him asking if Jane and I would come for lunch and visit a school he’d started after Leadership for Hope. We were both curious and encouraged. So, this morning, with William driving us, we headed into Rongai community in inner Nairobi. We met Charles at an obvious land mark in the main street so he could guide us through the back street, dirt-roaded maze to his home. As we climbed the two stories of his apartment building I was aware how dark the corridors all seemed. Inside his flat we were warmly greeted by his wife Rose and then his 2 yr old son…..and then four other children they had simply adopted off the streets. I don’t have words in my heart to capture that level of generous, lifelong hospitality they have shown to these four children.

Charles was on our first Train the Trainer programme in September. And he’s using it. He is now running Leadership for Hope at work, he has been sharing the principles of it to his church groups, sharing the principles with visiting Catholic leaders from Italy who’d been hearing about the life changing work Charles was doing. Charles told us stories over lunch of the lives that are being changed as a result of the Leadership for Hope’s that HE is running (not us). I cant tell you how exciting it is to hear the stories that come via others training, rather than our own. It means the story is growing.

“The story is growing” became the repeated phrase throughout the day. William was invite into lunch with us and shared stories that beget more stories. We all sat humbled and amazed by what we were hearing. “The story is growing”.

After photos on the cramped balcony it was time to head out to the actual project in K. Charles told us the full story. In January 2012, the time of our first Kenya Leadership for Hope, he was living in K. (and having just visited the area this afternoon I can honestly say you have to see it to believe it). Down the dirt track of K is a quarry, a rock quarry.

After attending the programme Charles took a walk to the quarry and this is what he saw. There were literally hundreds of women sitting breaking rocks, surrounded by hundreds of children in rags. He talked to the ladies about their lives and asked about the children. The children were breaking rocks with their mothers. Why weren’t they in school? The mother’s couldn’t afford the money or

the time. It was easier to just have them swarming around them for the day and used as child labour for the family income.

Charles did a base line study and then met with the village Chief and built a vision for these 261 children from the quarry. They took over some derelict sheds as classrooms and started a school for 66 quarry children, looked after by 4 teachers. EVERY day Charles wife Rose goes to the school centre to encourage, help and lead the way forwards. After school more children come and sing and play. With the help of our very own Louise they have got some partner funding from Sweden and the children even have some Swedish pen pals. These children now have a safe place, food in their stomachs and an education……..all because Charles lifted up his head and took responsibility for what he saw.

Today we saw the tiny tin-shack school, played with the children, visited the plot of land that they hope to get a 10 year lease on, to build more classrooms to rescue more children from the quarry……and then we started walking with John the Chief and Charles and Rose and William to….the quarry.

Oh my goodness….today we watched child labour first hand!! We watched a 7 year old, an 8 year old, a nine year old, and countless others, sitting, like their mothers, breaking rocks. It takes a 12 hour day to break enough rocks to earn £1. Hour after hour smashing rocks under the watchful eye of their gang masters (who quickly were surrounding us to find out suspiciously what was happening. This is why it is so crucial to get the Chief and Charles on your side to take you in to such places).

We noticed no one wore glasses to protect their eyes from the flying flint. Why would they? You earn £1 a day and a pair of glasses cost £3 and you need to feed your children…..what would you do? We started calculating how much it would cost to source 100 pairs of protective glasses to get them started (which we aim to do before we leave) - Having spent a week with Chiefs who are only interested in lining their own pockets, what a joy it was to spend an afternoon with village Chief John.

So we saw what happened when Charles lifted up his head. We saw the quarry community where he lifted up his head, we saw the children and the mothers who were benefiting. We saw Charles wife who has caught her own leadership vision for these seriously vulnerable children (We asked her quietly if she had seen any difference in Charles since attending Leadership for Hope in 2012? She responded so positively “he is a different man”).

And as we walked back towards the car to head back to our secure, comfortable, base, we reflected to ourselves with full but pained and sobered hearts that……The story is growing.

TW

Beer and Biscuits

Never has a beer tasted so good as it does tonight (well... not since the last beer anyway). It's been a long, hot and dusty day and the old throat is as parched as a gravel pit.

This morning we headed off to Naivasha again. Belting along the crappy roads of Nairobi, we skimmed the elbows of cocky verge walkers, manoeuvred around balmy matato bus drivers and rode the rutted tarmac that once upon a time decided to turn itself into a river of tar and then at the last moment changed its mind.

We headed north-west out of the city (driver William at the wheel), and after an hour we rounded a bend and found ourselves gasping with spontaneous wonderment as we gazed down upon the Rift valley that sits at the head of the Maasai Mara. Words really can't alert anothers mind to the sheer awesomeness of the geography...our socks were totally knocked for six!!!

We made the hairy decent, with no roadside barriers in sight but plenty of lorry driving lunatics. We passed a tin shack painted with the words GOD IS GOOD, ALL THE TIME and a zillion red and white stalls all selling the same tourist-tat....until we reached the valley floor and on we went until suddenly William lurched off the road and headed across desert-like scrub. I recognised a few desolate landmarks and I knew we were almost at the orphanage again (the one we'd visited with William back in October, called PBB - Prayer Beyond Boundaries Academy)

All the girls 

This time we had returned with goodies for the 68 children aged 5-12. We'd been kindly donated footballs and skipping ropes by my brother-in-law Andy, from his school in Canterbury. And we'd bought some education materials and sugary biscuits.

When we arrived at the entrance and sat waiting for a guard to admit us at the metal gates, I was suddenly full of a great sense of inadequacy. It felt so pathetic to be arriving with these gifts....what use really were our meagre offerings? And who were we to be doing this drop'n'run charity visit?
I just didn't know if we were doing the right thing...but what would the right thing look like?

William gives out the footballs

The next moment we were driving into the children's world and parking the car. As my eyes scanned the group I was shocked. They looked so dishevelled, more than I'd remembered and they looked back with dulled eyes and exhausted expressions. Trevor and I exchanged looks and I knew what he was thinking....my heart tightened.

These children had all lost their parents, their families and their whole communities during the post election violence that swept across the country back in 2007. As Trevor wrote in one of our earlier blogs, they had witnessed unspeakable atrocities and many of them had escaped death by the skin of their teeth - surviving massacre attacks, terrifying brutality and acts of pure evil. Some had sort shelter and refuge in a church with their traumatised families only to have it set ablaze....and miraculously these little people had survived.

And now....now they are living under the care of a few adults, in very poor conditions. They have no guardians or mentors. They are not visited from outside or given an opportunity to experience the outside world. They have literally lost everything. They are homeless, rootless and hopeless.

Trevor and the older boys

We both threw ourselves into our time with the children; playing football, skipping and giving out biscuits to lick and nibble. But they were like tired, dusty birds...thin and ragged, with no hope of finding a cosy nest. I felt a waterfall of sorrow welling up in my heart. I longed to do so much more than skip with them and give out biscuits - I wanted to feed them, wash them, read to them, hug them and most of all play with them and see them smile.

When we drove away they burst into spontaneous song...''Good bye visitor, thank you for what you have done for us, God bless you visitor".

I didn't want to be just a visitor; a fleeting do-gooder. In the car for the rest of the drive we talked about what could be done to bring hope and a future to these children. We talked about the need for each child to have a mentor to love and support them emotionally with a link to a family in the outside world. The need to learn skills and crafts. To have fun making, creating and developing their imagination on a daily basis. To have the opportunity to play sport and have activities to develop their bodies. To delight in building dens and climbing trees. To keep pets and learn about life from people who keep telling them, "You are so incredibly special, we see the potential in your beautiful life and we can't wait to see how you'll grow and how you will bless this world....we are all so thrilled that you are here. You are unique and greatly loved".

Lining up for biscuits

Who will be there to tell them this? They are children of the universe and they deserve so much more.




As we left I was surprised to feel a great sense of hopefulness - that was not what I'd expected.  They have already proved they can survive. They have already shown how courageous they are.  They have already shown such resilience in life.
So, as we bumped our way back down the Masai cow herders track to the main road I decided to trust in their potential to overcome their traumatic start to life.



Braam Malherbe said, "What are you going to do to be an asset to the planet? If you're not an asset you are a liability. We have the ability to overcome. Life learns to Adapt or Die"

And Darwin said, "It's not the strongest who will survive, nor the most intelligent ....but the one who most accepts change"

                                                                                                                               - JB











 

Homeless

"Homeless, homeless..."

I have the words of Paul Simons song from the Graceland album repeating around and round in my head for the last few days and they are closely followed by Hugh Masekela words from Stimela on his Hope album…..

Or when they sit in their stinking, funky, filthy,

Flea-ridden barracks and hostels.

They think about the loved ones they may never see again Because they might have already been forcibly removed

From where they last left them

Home

 - (the whole words on http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20091128123741AAhgWHi….. or better still, buy the album)

Both songs refer to the plight of displaced and migrant workers in South Africa. Until this past week they were just words that had caught my attention, like some distant land.

That all changed this week.  We made our first trip to South Africa this week to speak at a conference and then deliver the 3 day Leadership for Hope programme up in the Western Cape.  The programme itself went extremely well and we were moved and deeply encouraged by what we saw happen across the group in the 3 days. 

But some impressions will definitely stick....

The beauty of table mountain as the sun was setting

The endless miles of lush vineyards that produce some of the worlds best wines

The apples, peaches and cherries that will fill the worlds supermarkets

The “lord of the rings’ mountains we drove through to get to the training venue

How much more developed the infrastructure is in South Africa from any other country we’ve worked in

...And how clean it all was

View from our breakfast window

But there was also

The farm hostel for migrant workers where we chatted with 4 young girls from Lesotho who had travelled across country in search of work and there was none

Their tiny dark room, which was their universe until the harvests were ripe for picking

The time I asked the group  of 150 people we were training, how many of them had had to leave their families and loved ones on the Eastern Cape to come and live in these hostels and rooms in search of work on the Western Cape and almost every hand went up!

The fact that they live away from their wives and children for nine months of the year

I once asked a lady in Malawi what we can best offer people through what we do and she said with out hesitation “self esteem….people need self esteem”.  These may not be the poorest people in the world with their £4 a day pay,  but their self esteem is amongst the lowest.

Homeless………..homeless………Hopeless……..Hopeful.  As we drove away at the end of Leadership for Hope I once again I feel a shiver down my spine of the honour of doing this work.
                                                                                                                                            - TW

The lush farms framed by the 'Lord of the Rings' mts

Cape Town sunset

Heartfelt gratitude

"There is something about Safari life that makes you forget all your sorrows and feel the whole time as if you had drunk half a bottle of champagne, bubbling over with heartfelt gratitude for being alive. 
It seems right that human beings should live in the nomad fashion, and un-natural to have ones home always in the same place; one only feels really free when one can go in whatever direction one pleases over the plains, go to the river at sundown and pitching ones camp with the knowledge that one can fall asleep beneath other trees, with another view before one the next night"
 - Karen Blixen (of 'Out of Africa' fame)

Do these words give you a champagne feeling? I have to confess that I felt my heart gasp when I read them outside Karen Blixen's house the other day.  But what is it about this Safari life quote that makes 'ones' heart skip? (by the way, have you ever read a quote with so many 'ones' in it?).

Is it the idea of not being tied down, or of being able to flee from our tawdry, domestic worries? Or the thought of retrieving a youthful, maverick life without a care in the world?

We are coached all our lives to work towards the ideal of owning our own home, champing towards a hard-fought goal where we will discover happiness and security. 'Work hard, get a secure job, save like billy-oh to get your own bricks and mortar, then settle down and enjoy your bliss'....really? Is that what it's all about? ...life I mean?

I'll confess that I've never before entertained the thought of 'living in a nomad fashion'. Up 'til now I've been a bricks'n'mortar gal myself, but a still small wind is making me think about what a safari life could mean.

I'm talking about a 'safari life' of a different kind (just in case you've lost me). One that has nothing to do with bumpy jeeps or scorched savannah grasslands. Where there's not the slightest whiff of rhino dung or sexy game drives. But rather the kind of safari life that say, 'Yes, to uncertainly' and 'Yes, to the thrill of the ride' and 'Yes, I wouldn't miss a second of this crazy drama that brings with it a potent mix of passion and pain'.

I'm challenged to reflect on where I'm headed? ...Hammering on towards accruing life's comforts and storing up trinkets for my old age, or is the safari life calling? I'm sure it's not simply a choice between one or the other; not cosy cottage v life on the open road.

.....what I do know is that if a safari life leads to a life full of heartfelt gratitude then that's the life for me and champagne bubbles would be an added bonus.

JB

Hakuna Matata

Remember Pumbaa? Every safari park or game reserve you go into has a Pumbaa or two hundred, haughty walk, tail erect into the air like a radio antennae. Apparently they are the most stupid of all creatures (The more I see and learn, the more I think Disney got it spot on in The Lion King). A wart hog has a memory span of about 5 minutes. It forgets what it was doing and where it was going, so after running like crazy for a few minutes it stops and asks itself “where was I going in such haste?”, only to discover what he’d forgotten the moment the lion arrives with its jaws around its neck…”oh, yes, that’s why I was running”.

Yesterday we spent the day in the Solio Game Reserve – the largest population of Rhino’s that you can ever imagine amongst other notable friends such as the giraffes and baboons and waterbucks. The afternoon before we went on a walking Safari in the Aberdare National park.

All this to say, we are ‘chilling out” for a few days before heading back to Nairobi tomorrow. When the kids were young we used to call them ‘down days” or “bummy days” (as in, ‘bum around’)

I’ve been reminded in these few days of a quote by Salman Rushdie (who one doesn’t often get to quote) who said
                       ‘Those who do not have the power of the story that dominates their lives – power to           retell it, rethink it, deconstruct it, joke about it and change it as times may change – truly are powerless because they cannot think new thoughts’

The view of Mt Kenya from our room at dusk

“Think new thoughts”.
As we’ve been unwinding, it isn’t that we end up thinking about nothing, but we now have the space to think new thoughts. Whether it’s standing in breathtaking silence looking as far as the eye can see in every direction and seeing the most beautiful expanse of space, under the watchful presence of Mount Kenya, or marveling at the tapestry of tree shapes and colours and entwining wonder, in the wetland valleys of Solio, whether it’s what we are seeing or what we cant see….everything allows our minds to wander to new places.

Even the people we meet by just stopping and making time. A casual ‘hi’ turned into hours of conversation and lunch with a delightful Palestinian couple who are working for UNICEF and who shared with us perspectives on Palestine, the middle east, what its like to live with an Israeli tank at the end of your street - a view of the world that has enriched our own.


So what kind of new thoughts?
- Meeting the Palestinian couple opened up new possibilities for our next steps... or maybe not
- We’ve created two new short programmes, Leadership for Life and Leadership for Legacy to support our flagship Leadership for Hope programme
- We’ve looked at what we’ve achieved so far this autumn and what we haven’t and where we are stuck and how to turn the difficulties on their heads
- Jane has been working on her longed for book on helping children to understand the power of their awesome brains in developing resilience for their young and future lives
- We reflect on the power of silence and ‘not knowing’ and how the ‘life’ of new thinking emerges from the ‘death’ of simply stopping, being and waiting in the silence
- We’ve been reading Susan Glenks research book on how people seem to either have a fixed mindset in life or a growth mindset and how this shapes our approach to every aspect of our life….and that then set our minds thinking about the work we are doing and how one of these mindsets shapes peoples response to what we’re teaching

- ….and Jane is drawing…wonderful drawings that continue to feed her soul and enrich my heart and eyes


All this without trying. We haven’t been trying to find anything. We just slowed down; stopped; and made a space, a space for new thoughts….and like the elephants that come to the watering holes in the quiet of the evening, so new thoughts have just found their ways into our hearts and heads.

TW

Tea-leaves & transformation

As a new mum I can remember that ‘sucked-inside-out’ feeling, when tiredness came to live in my bones and there were moments when I felt so exhausted I could have happily laid down on the kitchen lino and nodded off in an instant – Have you ever felt that tired?

This last week we have been staying in sight of Mt Kenya, running another Leadership for Hope programme – this time for tea pickers and workers in the huge Tea processing factories. As part of our prep for the training we took a trip out to a tea farm and factory. Under the tutorship of Mr Chai, our guide for the day, we learnt about the lives of the 60,000 small-holders in the tea growing region, eking out a living on between 800-10,000 acres of rolling hills, planted with tea-bushes that must be nursed and tended from dawn to dusk. The precious leaves are picked by patient souls who traverse their fields for 8 hours each day, come rain or shine, filling their back-baskets with between 20-40kg of leaves each day….and tealeaves aren’t heavy!

Mr Chai explains how to pick the best leaves

It’s easy to be mesmerised and delighted by the eye-popping beauty of the patchwork hillsides of seductive greens, or the intriguing processes within the Tea factories themselves, but the everyday reality for these tea-folk paints a different story. It’s a grim and relentless reality…no days off, no slipping off work early and no relief from the grinding cycles of poverty, debt and hopelessness. You see the women walking for miles, delivering their baskets of leaves 2 or 3 times a day to their local factory and then queuing to get them weighed… and tomorrow and forever will be the same.

This week we were joined by Jon & Andy from the UK

 So, this week we met some of these tea pickers and learnt about their lives. And through the training they were able to gain insight into how they could learn to diversify (not just rely on tea growing), how they could start to break their cycles of debt, to change their entrenched mind-sets of hopelessness and move towards a new found self-esteem. 

It was another amazing week, but at times it was as emotionally enjoyable as pushing a beer-barrel up Everest….our batteries were definitely needing to find a source of refreshment.

We are now half way through our Kenya trip and tiredness has arrived. But what we realised this evening, after training 250 young Catholic priests from across Kenya this morning, that even if you are surrounded by challenges, you still have the opportunity to grow and flourish (not just collapse on the lino).  Currents of weariness are just part of the marvellous mix, that swirl around us and have the ability to move us forwards to places of deep joy further down stream.

Alice

As the sun sets I know that what we are doing is a profound honour, it's changing lives and bringing hope. I’m reminded of the face of people like 70 year old tea-picker Alice, standing in front of 320 people yesterday morning, telling her story of how her life has turned around in amazing ways in the past three days.

She was shining for all to see.

- JB