The difference a hand makes & why we should sing more....

Sunrise on Malindi beach, Kenya

 Of course, I know that the sun is doing its breathtaking 'sunrise show' every second of every day somewhere on the planet and will do so until the curtains close on life itself. But when you wake and see this from your bedroom window, the awesome-drama and the dazzling splendour of the rise of the queen-of-the-heavens, you see it as if for the first time.

Yesterday, when we woke to this dawn view we were stunned into silence and simply reverted to involuntary responses like 'gosh' and 'amazing'  - which were totally pathetic and excruciatingly inadequate in every way.

Then I remembered the time when I had been in a similar state of bewitched wonderment and adoration. It was back in 2009 when I travelled to India with my dear friends Caroline, Colin and Helen. Our travels brought us to the southern-most tip of the great country, at the sacred city of Kanyakumari. Here I was been hit by sun-stroke and Helen had nursed me through a grim night. I still felt rough and ragged when my intrepid pals rose to greet the dawn the next day but I decided to drag my limp body to the roof top of the hotel for this city morning ritual. When we arrived in the shallow light we looked around and saw many hundreds of human silhouettes on every available roof space and down on the beach....waiting....waiting for the birth of a new day. And, as the glory began to rise in the east we watched in sublime wonder and intense humility, not really understanding what we felt or what it meant for us.

I felt many emotions that day, as the sun rose to greet us, and one thought has stuck with me - in celebrating the dawn we are in effect celebrate the chance to start over anew each day. And that morning we blessed the dawn, we blessed each other and somehow felt fresh and clean and restored deep within.

Eddie shows me how to hold a sea urchin while it wriggles

So now, meet Eddie...

After the sun got settled yesterday, a head popped over the wall near where we were sitting meditating on the morning sky and a chirpy chap called Eddie offered to take us out through the shallows, using his local knowledge, to the reef (about half a mile out).

We agreed, for a small fee and headed off.
But it wasn't long before I started to feel anxious and thought, 'Heck, this isn't my thing at all. How do I get out of this excursion?'


My feet felt uber-sensitive and winced at every tiny piece of sharp coral and was alert to every tickle of foot-eating weed. Panic gently rose (my Cortisol button got activated).

Scary, pokey-thing!!!!!!!

Then suddenly I heard Eddie's voice saying, ''Give me your hand. I know the way. Put on your flip-flops. Trust me". So I took his hand and followed at his side and leaned into him when the water got chest deep and trusted him. And along the way he showed me how to focus on the path ahead and find sea treasures like urchins and sea-cucumbers. And when he felt me gripping his hand hard, he sang....and I sang... and joy flooded my heart and I knew I was overcoming my fear.



And as I relaxed I lifted up my head and I saw that we were with the fishermen, who knew the oceans like no one else.... and one even found me the most unbelievable starfish....and I was in awe...again.

I realised, as we begun the long wade back to the shore, that my fear could so easily have denied me the joy of the trip to the reef and the opportunity to overcome my cortisol-rush... that was not needed. And I was reminded of the importance to stay Daring Greatly, in the little things and in the larger challenges of life.  

'Courage is being scared to death and saddling up anyway' - John Wayne



'I learned that courage was not the absence of fear, but triumph over it. The brave man/woman is not the one who doesn't feel fear, but he who conquers that fear' - Mandela


'Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go' - T.S Eliot


Namaste 

-JB

Out on the reef with the fishermen - Malindi, Kenya

Inhabiting three worlds

Young people attending the Leadership for Hope in Dandora

Yesterday I had a surreal moment. I sat on our veranda with Jane & two friends from the UK, drinking tea and eating cake, looking out across our little valley, cocooned by a tapestry of trees,  mellow greens and a silky canopy of acacia trees above it all. All I could hear was the sounds from so many beautiful birds, from those the size of eagles to those the size of a teaspoon. This was the world I sat in yesterday - deliciously hot, friendly, beautiful, harmonious, creative, peaceful, luscious, relaxing, restorative.
It felt like the Garden of Eden.

 

It felt surreal because the previous four days had been the opposite of most of these words. Our new Head of Kenya Operations for Emerging Leaders was mugged at gunpoint and thankfully escaped with her life; one of our associates house was violently burgled and his wife escaped to the bathroom just in time but the guard dogs were all killed.  

One of the director’s wives of Vegpro Ltd, our first Kenyan partner, was shot dead. On Friday we were on the adjoining district to two more terrorist bombs in Nairobi and the evacuation of British tourists out of the country from the coast.  

Each day for four days we spent four hours a day driving past the chaos of humanity fighting for survival and existence in some of the toughest areas of the city – hustling for a bit of money, ditches full of garbage, desperate individuals picking through the rubbish for food, roads so bad that your body feels beaten to a pulp by the end of it, training in the Dandora slum, the city rubbish dump, swarming with foraging pigs and cranes and people eking out their living from the garbage jungle, armed guards outside the training room.

And then there was the third world. The cross-over world.... 

We delivered Leadership for Hope this past week to 350 youth in the Dandora slum. The cross-over between these scary realities and the reality of hope and the human spirit. 350 slum youth who have had very varying degrees of education sat for three whole days. I’m told that has never ever happened before. The cross-over between donors who give money to help these places but who never actually come here, to our wonderful team who embraced the world of Dandora.  The cross-over between youth crime and youth hopelessness to working alongside the most amazing young people of the Dandora Uprising, who I trained last year, seeing them running the event like a well oiled machine; a now mature, servant hearted group of young people who I wanted to adopt for life. The cross-over from a world of nothing, to seeing where Peter (leader of the Dandora Uprising and one of our new trainers), is going to build Dandora’s first ever library for youth because he now sees himself as a leader.  The cross-over of 350 youth who live in a violent, often desperate slum, where no one dares to visit, to a place where 96% of the 350 youth said the three days have greatly changed their lives.

 

We lived in the three worlds this week.

Meet Joseph from the Dandora Uprising team - washing 350 chai mugs

- TW

'Making friends with my front foot'

"Is my life making a difference to anyone?"Have you every had that thought? Have you ever laid awake pondering whether your presence on the planet is actually making a toss of difference to anyone; acting as an asset to the universe or just adding to the noise?

Maybe it's my age or maybe I've got stuck in a melancholic groove, but I think about this question a lot.

We've been here for over 7 weeks now. And Trevor and I have been yomping up and down the country with our kit, training people in grassroots communities to discover their awesome potential, despite unbelievable barriers of poverty - poverty in the body and in the mind.

Our focus has been to inspire and educate people into a place of empowered thinking, where they can begin to say, "Yes, I can change my life if I change the way I think. Yes, I can change my hopeless and stuck thinking. I can break the cycles of fearful thinking that have kept me trapped and small and imprisoned in my head all my life".

When the 3 day Leadership for Hope training comes to a close we have now started collecting, with the use of clever mobile technology, the impact and stories from those who attend. Then over the following 2 months we continue to email them sporadically to see how they are doing and to continue giving support.

So here are some of the impact stories and I'll just let them speak for themselves.....

Story 1: Actually i've shared the training with so many people. I have also trained my own partner who gave birth 2 months ago. She left my house without reason, simply because I am poor.  Her family are much better off than I am.  When she got a baby she went straight to her parents and said that she didn't want to come back again to me.  During those days when we were on training I was stressed because of her -  how would I survive away from my son; the only son I have?  I thank God for the training because it gave me the courage and belief that she'll be back into my life again.  At the very moment that you texted me I was sitting next to her, convincing her strongly to come home.  When I got that message from you I told her about the training again and she read the message you sent to me.  Surely she's now convinced and she has promised to come back to me!  Last week I made an arrangement to meet her mother which I did and now am free to see my son any time I want, thank you!

Charcoal for sale - the cause of the decimation of woods and forests

Life!

Story 2: Hi sir, thanks for your message. I've managed to share and train with 45 people, 30 of them are my workmates, 10 from the community and 5 from upcountry.  Anyway thanks for the leadership skills you gave me. Be blessed 

Life!

Story 3: Since I took up the pen for my life and believed that I am a leader, my neighbours and I have agreed to come together and start a poultry project, mainly laying chickens. This can help us supply the eggs to the people around our area at a lower price. God bless you, your education has transformed me abundantly.

 Story 4: I managed to form a merry go round (savings group) and at the end of this last month one member has bought a sheep.  We are hoping each person will have one. I trained the youth at church and we are in preparation of making food warmers. Thank         you I will make friendship with my front foot to be proactive (one of the mindsets)

Story 5: I planned a family gathering at our rural home and after training them about leadership, we agreed on two projects that we shall be doing together

1.fund our sister who finished fourth form to get to university,

2.buy cattle for dairy farming. We started raising funds for both projects. So far we have collected 55000KSh for the projects.

Our beautiful local Maasai market

Story 6: Those 3 days of training still sound fresh to me each day when I wake up, thanks a lot.

I started by training people around about leadership. Personally I am working on finances. By July I want to have saved enough to have posho (maize flour) mill.

Story 7: I am glad you still remember your trainee.  Thank you so much, I have trained more than 300 people. Also my group and I are working on an income generating project.

Story 8: I have started a small kitchen garden behind my house which I believe will feed my family and generate income

Story 9: Thank you for your encouragement.  I meet with 12 people.  I tried to tell them the importance of working together and they accepted this. We started a project of buying a clean water tanks of 3000 litres.  For every one month we buy another one for each member.  They were very happy when I was teaching them about how to be a good leader

 - JB