I am enough

There are some sayings that I struggle with, or used to struggle with.  Mary Oliver’s poem The Journey has the line ‘determined to save the only life you could save’; or Oriah Mountain Dreamers poem The Invitation has the line “are you prepared to disappoint another to be true to yourself” or recently Brene Brown saying the answer to hiding our more vulnerable selves is being able to say to my self “I am enough’.  I’ve struggled with all three of these sentences at one time or another because they initially seemed a little selfish or self centred.  The first two sentences I finally saw the wisdom in over the past few years; and this week was the turn of “I am enough”.

Jane captures the beauty of Elsamere & Lake Naivasha with her pen

We have been back on the shores of Lake Naivasha this week. Our second visit to train another 150 people who live in fragile and vulnerable communities. We stay at Elsamere, the home of the late Joy Adamson (of Born Free fame), share afternoon tea with the Colobus Monkeys, the early mornings and late afternoons mesmerised by flights of thousands of Pelicans, share the evening meal with the most gracious Sam or Johnson, the managers of Elsamere and then manage our journey to bed through the hippos and zebras coming up to our door to graze.

The beauty of the swamplands of Lake Naivasha

The three days of training are exhausting, but in a great way.  When 94% of those you train say that the training will greatly change their lives you’d have to be a little numb to not be excited.  Each programme we deliver is different. Each has its own flavor. Usually one of the three days is tougher than the others. This week it was day 3. Day one and two had gone well, felt energized, felt like we were  making good progress. But for some reason day 3 felt tough. We usually realise by mid morning that something is disturbing the ripples of our minds and we start processing hard to work out what it is.

When you’ve spent your life, and your parents before you and their parents before them, feeling pretty hopeless about the future, the water table of your self-esteem gets less and less.  Day 3 is when reality hits people. They realize ‘hey, this training is for real and it ends in a few hours time and I’m both excited by the new possibilities that my new mind sets and skills have given me…..but……”. But what? But, ‘am I enough?’.  I don’t know enough, don’t have experience enough, don’t know what it is like to have someone tell me that I have potential and cheer me on, don’t earn enough, aren’t clever enough….don’t feel like I am enough. 

I felt their struggle more acutely than ever on day 3 because five days earlier I had found myself trapped in a deep rip tide within myself and the only way out of it was the insight ‘hey, I am enough’.  I realised in a grateful moment of clarity that ‘I am enough’ does not mean I am everything, I am perfect, I don’t need others, but it does mean….well, that there’s enough of me…. enough inside of me to make it, to live a growing life.

So, for the 150 flower and vegetable pickers of Lake Naivasha,  as we fought a good fight together on day 3, I was aware that whilst I could repeatedly tell them, “you are enough”, I knew that ultimately it is only a gift we can give to ourselves  - “I am enough”.

TW

Karibu sana Jambo Toto school

I am delighted to tell you a story of one man's startling courage. It's our friend Charles again - remember him? He believes in pushing into the unknown with his light held high, saying, "I'm headed this way, do any of you want to follow? And let's see what we can achieve together"

The new, brand-new, Jambo Toto school - built in 4 weeks

Back in December, we visited a scrubby piece of land with our friend. Just able to be classified as a 1 acre plot, Charles was positively glowing with skippy-pride as he explained to us his plans to build a small school for the children of the quarry mothers. "You see, these children are shamed or chased from the state schools because they have no school shoes or uniform and certainly no money for books. So they drop out of education and fall into crime and lives of hopelessness."

Charles wife Rose (in red) and the quarry mothers

Many of you know that this situation at the quarry sat heavily with me all over the Christmas holidays while we were back in the UK, until the burden of my thoughts crafted itself into a plan of action. Charles says that when he saw the needs of the vulnerable quarry children his heart said, "This is NOT OK" and his passionate anger got busy (I love the concept of 'passion' and 'anger' being a dynamic combo. It's what is needed to bring about great change where injustice reigns and complacency rules).

Celebrating inside the new school

It certainly isn't ok to experience such great and obvious need and then to do nothing, but how do we convert uncomfortable feelings into ACTIONS that bite deep into us with dogged determination, not letting us go, until we get the task done.

So, this is how things went....this is the speedy version.
We had an idea to have a fundraising evening and with the tenacious help of Jane and Andrew Meyler and their friends and community + other precious friends and family, we raised a stunning £4,500 (my sis even gave me the money she raised from selling our mum's piano - thanks darling). And on the very day the bulk of the money was in the bank Charles started building the little Jambo Toto school in Nairobi, thousands of miles away. His team of beavers worked like crazy and Charles sent photos at regular intervals. And I emailed him back and forth from the UK with suggestions and encouragements and we chatted about progress and we watched as the building literally took shape before our very eyes, within weeks.

Listening to their story

Rose, Charles and Trevor

And now we're back in Nairobi and were delighted to be able to attended the actual opening of this little school last friday, along with many of the mothers from the quarry, their tiny ones, chiefs and village supporters. It made for a wonderful gathering, which involved a tree planting ceremony, ribbon cutting, plaque unveiling and a raft of obligatory speeches. And the heavens opened upon the sturdy tin roof, while I tried to tell and act out for the children the story of the proud Lion and the courageous mouse - more for their entertainment than for any other deep and meaningful reason.



But Charles is the man I want to honour in this Blog entry today. His vision, focus and ability to say "We can!", has not only inspired us, but literally affected the lives of thousands of others for good, not just in Kiserian, but in other projects he has started since attending the Leadership for Hope programme in 2012.

'The honour belongs to the man who is actually in the arena...' and you'll always find Charles in the arena of life.

Mothers serving out the celebration meal from their new kitchen

Whether it's bringing clean water to his home village, which also benefits 3 other villages, or caring for widows and orphans (he has adopted 5 orphans).

- We calculated that Charles has greatly impacted the lives of over 6,500 people.

And lastly,
a massive THANK YOU to all of you who supported Charles. Without you Jambo Toto school would not be a triumphant reality.

Shalom & Amen

 - JB

                                                                                                                                             

"Build a life as if it were a work of art”

Our drive to the training each day

Just before he died an NBC interviewer asked the great Rabbi Joshua Abraham Herschel 
“What message have you for young people?”

Herchel answered,
“Let them remember that there is meaning beyond absurdity;
Let them be sure that every deed counts,
That every word has power,
And that we can all do our share to redeem the world in spite of all absurdities & all frustrations & all disappointments.
And above all let them remember to build a life as if it were a work of art”


Over these past few weeks I have been slowly sucking the juice out of Herschel’s words in the book
  “I asked for Wonder”.
Even while we have been up in the vast beyond of central Kenya this week, my mind has been pondering on his words.

Every picture has a story: pain...wisdom...grace

We arrived up in Nyahururu last Monday with the mission of delivering our first Leadership for Hope of this year. After bumpy hours of travel beyond the equator we arrived at our base for the week, the tired looking lodge on the edge of Thomson Falls (the photo of Jane’s big toe holding in the plug in the previous blog sums it up). We trained around 135 farmers involved in vegetable & rose growing; who earn around £1.80 a day.

The nub of our training seeks to inspire & educate people to realise that their life is a real story, happening right now, but the issue is “who has got the pen?’...because “if you don’t have it, someone else will”.

We took them on a three-day journey  to inspire them to own their potential, transform their mindsets & learn how to write a different story. The training concludes by helping them to set up projects that will benefit their communities, their income and their families.

We tested out a new mobile phone feedback survey and we knew within hours of finishing on Friday evening that for over 93% the training had had a “great impact on their lives” and half of the group had already shared their learning with between 2 to 39 others.

I tend to look at these figures with a mixture of pleasure and great skepticism because the true picture can often be hidden from our view.

On the morning of day three I interviewed five of the participants and it was clear that the changes they had made in their lives in days 1 & 2 had already impacted a potential of 450 others. Multiply that by 130 more and you get the scale of our sense of wonder and privilege at what we are involved in.
It feels so big and yet so very small.

This morning, as we drove the long, rattling hours back to our home in Nairobi, I saw an old woman carrying a crippling weight on her head, donkeys dragging carts along the streets with produce from the fields where I watched the whole family working together breaking the soil with hoes……I felt felt the weighty size of the challenge. But when I remember Stella standing up yesterday morning, a beautiful young lady, telling us how she had already taught all she had learned to over 70 people the night before, I am filled with hope and wonder.

Meet Stella

Like art, creating a painting or a story is not a rational, linear, clean, straight line of a creation. It’s a messy dance of wonder, exploration, formation and creation.

...“we can all do our share to redeem the world in spite of all absurdities & all frustrations & all disappointments. And above all let them remember to build a life as if it were a work of art”


I am exhausted after teaching for 8 hours a day... but I feel inspired; I want to gather a thousand young people together right now and encourage them to create a work of art out of their lives that redeems the bit of the “absurd, frustrating, disappointing” world that they are in.

Meet Wycliffe

This morning Jane has just accepted an invitation to speak to a girls school full of very bright girls from the toughest of Kenya’s background.

...“let them know that there is meaning beyond absurdity & that every deed counts”


- TW

SAFE?

From the back of our Nissan Navara wagon I’m watching the world flash by from behind black tinted windows; safe inside.

Really, safe from what??

Travelling across the Equator
 - can you spot the elephant deterrent wires hanging down?

Safe to be invisible as I gaze out and allow myself to be carried along by our driver, along a road to a place that right now means nothing to me.

Safe from the need to respond to the swarms of Nairobi street sellers who nudge around our car when we slow down, their eyes pleading with us to buy, buy, buy!!

But, more than that I request safety from heaven itself, that we don’t end up in some treacherous ditch, on the chewed edge of the shambolic and nightmarish roads, as we head north past Kenyan’s equator and into the heart of the country.

The fact is I want everything and everyone to keep me safe, but to be honest my safety feels more in the hands of a dice and the other loonies on the road.

The entrance road to our new training site, Simba farm - here they grow, pick & process 120,000 roses every day

On the verge I suddenly notice a goat tethered to a stake by a piece of tatty rope, its world is only as big as the arc it can nibble from. Then in a flash the poor animal and its tiny grazing world is out of sight. But I start mulling on how much of life actually calls out for us to take risks, break ropes and flirt with danger? 

And it’s got me thinking about the whole issue of SAFETY….and whether any of us are ever really ‘safe’?

Maslow did a lot of thinking about this subject too. He enlightened us about our inbuilt craving for safety and our instinctual aversions to anything that might whiff of danger. Well, it makes perfect sense, doesn’t it? Why would we put ourselves at risk? Why would you play chicken on life’s electric rails? But then again why not? How do we get the balance right so we can cheer ourselves on to embrace change, take risks and dare greatly? Coz we’re only here once! 

Apparently, it’s a fact that as we get older we become less adventurous and more focussed on getting ourselves as ‘safe’ as possible for old age; snugged-up for retirement and an undemanding cocoa’n’slippers life.

Hit by a dust storm on day one of our training.

Taking risks is not the same as being reckless. I got BUPA health insurance sorted today because I’m not reckless but I want to squeeze the juice from the orange of my life (gosh…naff analogy…sorry).  

As William drives our car through monsoon downpours, through squalid shanty towns, around stray cows and navigates disintegrating tarmac and roads that are more like river beds… battling on hour and hour, lurching me as I type like a pea in a pod and scaring the life out of me on some occasions when I lift my eyes.

And as all this happens I keep thinking about what life would be like without the ‘joy’ of risk and without the willingness to strap oneself in and delight in the ride – scary moments being a part of the deal.

Frank explains the whole process, from harvesting the roses to express delivery into our UK shops

The quest for safety could see us missing out on some lush pastures and thrilling views.

At the beginning of Brene Brown’s book DARING GREATLY, she quotes  from a speech by Theodore Roosevelt, in which he says.

‘….The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly....because there is no effort without error or shortcoming….and if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly’

 Buy the book…and dare greatly

Bath process:
1. secure plug with big toe 2. Hold slow trickling shower - head
3. Keep yourself busy for 30 mins and hope you don't get a power  cut

- JB