A snapshot...
Through the window of my eyes I look out towards the eternal Ngong Hills (think of the scene from the film, Out of Africa). They seem so close today, appearing to begin where the garden ends and tips off into the scrub. Their impressive mass captures my attention, while above them I see rain clouds are arriving from neighbouring skies, to hover above their bony ridges.....rain will come before tea I'm sure.
We're sitting on Johnnie's huge outdoor veranda (our new Kenyan home), shielded from the harsh rays, gazing out with wonderment upon the delicious vista and wondering what could ever shatter this blissful moment.
I let the sweet beauty of the moment fill me.
The past week has been full-on and crazy-busy. Trevor has trained 15 people from 5 different countries to be the first generation of trainers for Emerging Leaders and the Leadership for Hope programme.
All very exciting. It was a fabulous experience for us all. They have all returned to their natural habitats now, including Ethiopia, Zimbabwe and South Africa, to start running Leadership for Hope in their own places of work. We are excited to see them go and wait with anticipation to see what they will do with their training.
Then suddenly my tranquillity is shattered. News races to our ears that there's been a terrorist attack at the shopping mall in the north of the city. 15 people have been shot dead, 7 are being held hostage and 80 are trapped in the basement. The Westgate shopping mall was full of Saturday a.m shoppers having a leisurely morning when hell descended upon them. We realise too that we had been living less than 2 kilometres from this Mall all last week and nearly stopped there last night on our way home to Karen...
Out across the horizon a steak of brilliant light sweeps across the darkening hills, a gust of wind unsettled the garden trees and a rumble of thunder crawls in the distance. The guard dogs look edgy and trot off to check their domain and we are left reflecting on many things......
- JB
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| Celebrating a 'Here to There' exercise |
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| Africa's first 15 Leadership for Hope trainers |
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| Trevor teaching on the move |
“……that
which came to me as seed, goes to the next as blossom and that which comes to
me as blossom, goes to the next as fruit”
I love these words and I love the whole
poem by Dawna Markova. “ I will not die an unlived life”
It certainly feels like we have lived a
“lived” life in these past two weeks. I shared with you Eunice’s story from
week one. Today, as we sit and look out
to the beauty of the Ngong Hills and recover from a week of 16 hour days
running Emerging Leader first ever Train the Trainer programme for Africa, we are
reflecting on more stories of changed lives.
This one is from Peter, a single parent of
three children from the Dandora slum, who is changing his world in ways that
leave us speechless. Here is just one of his stories resulting from the
Leadership for Hope programme he attended in May.
“My
name is Peter from Dandora. After the Leadership for Hope training in May
(2013) I changed my thinking to see what impact it could have in my life; so
after the training we were given a task to come up with a community project.
I
went to my community with an idea that I had always wanted to do, that is, a
Talent Academy For Children. I used the
“five steps” on how to write a different story and realized that for this
project to succeed I needed to work with other community youth and one of them
was Michael. This Michael had always been my competitor doing things around
children and I truly feared working with him since I thought he would take the
glory. But I used the principle of “we can do more together than we can on our
own”. So I set my pride aside and went to talk to him. To my surprise he was grateful and we started
a childrens project called M.T.I Kenya (Magicians Talent Initiative, Kenya). I became the acrobatic teacher and he became
the music teacher. I introduced my own children to the group and one of my
children developed an interest in dance and Michael was his teacher. We have
had done some amazing things together e.g. brought costumes for the group, done
video shoot and documentary about children. We heard of a talent competition in
Nairobi put on by the South Korean
government and so we decided to enter the children. To our amazement our group won and their
prize is that next month they are being flown to South Korea for a dance
competition!!!”
Dandora
slum is built on Nairobi City’s rubbish dump (http://www.afronline.org/?p=4780)
Here
is a little youtube of the group practicing
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y9bRLrUWVYk
- TW
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| Introducing Peter from Dandora |
