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