In Theory

 We imagined that God was looking down on us - right through the clouds.



 There were crocs down by the river. Made me think of Steve Irwin.
 And then there was this guy, a secretary bird - I think
Hippos are so big. There were probably 100 of them down in the river and the shore. And how can you not say, "put a bird on it?"
 And seeing over a dozen lions was pretty cool. Seeing this one walking about and not sleeping was great.

There is no way to tell the whole story of any story. Words capture as much as an image at a moment in time. All the smells, sights, sounds, sensations, tastes and moods cannot be gathered into writing.

Such is true with gathering words to write about Kenya life. What was it like day and day out at MITS? Being submerged into a culture different than my own made for everything being worth noting. I even understood the people I knew from the states differently in Kenya.   Context can change the meaning of something that itself does not change. Weird, but true.

There are four things I want to share that were a constant experience in Kenya: weather, mobility, access, and time.

Weather: The weather is important no matter where a person lives, but I would argue that it is more important in Kenya than in the states. The reason has not so much to do with the weather, but rather than so much of Kenyan life is outdoors.

We were within about 100 miles from being on the equator. Prior to going to Kenya, my assumption was that being so close to the equator would mean being super hot. I geared up for it.  I had been to Ghana twice, about 300 miles north of the equator, and it was always hot there. However, where we were in Kenya was about a mile high in elevation. Mornings were cool, in the 50’s and days were warm, but not hot, in the high 70’s and maybe low 80’s.  Days run about 12 hours near the equator. Since we were south of the equator, it was technically winter in Kenya. Felt pretty good to me.

It rained once while we were there, which of course prompted a chorus of Toto’s 1980’s song, Africa, more than once. The rain was not a deluge as it was not rainy season, however, the rain mixing with the dirt there made for some of stickiest clay-mud I have ever experienced. Since all walking paths and roads at MITS (and everywhere) are dirt, there is no escaping the clay-mud when it rains. Yes, read NO SIDEWALKS.

The way that the mud-clay accumulated on the bottoms of shoes was extraordinary. It was not the sloppy mud that is so messy, but sloshes off after some accumulation. It was not clay that sticks, but might knock off. It felt as though with every step the mud-clay accumulated a little more with the end result being an every  increasing heel of some accidental Kenyan platform shoe.

When it dried, it wanted to solidify so hard as to  simply become part of your shoe. 

Getting around. There is more walking in Kenya than in the states. A lot more walking. I had a 30 minute walk to get from where I stayed to where I taught. Had I a car, I would have driven it. But no one does that. Long slow walks are part of the life in Kenya.  It was good as it provided opportunity for conversation and getting to know people.

In the states, 30 minute commutes are singular activities with radio too offset the solitude. I liked the rhythm of daily walks.

Driving was necessary in order to get into the city or run to the store for something that was not at any of the local vendors. And driving is terrifying. With random, massive, and unexpected speed bumps and humps, with driving on what I consider the wrong side of the road, with the aggressive passing, with all the honking and flickering of the headlights, with all the “overspeeding” (as they call it), and herky-jerky here and there, side to side, speed up fast and brake driving action, it is enough to make one never want to be  in a vehicle ever again.

Locks. Everything is behind a pad lock, gate and wall. Security is an issue. Poverty is just life. Taking what is not yours is not acceptable, but it is understood to be a common occurrence. The challenge with everything being behind a padlock is that most of the locked were key locks with a single set of keys – that were in someone else’s hands when you wanted them.

Not having access to the place you are staying can make for a great deal of insecurity, especially bathroom insecurity.

Time (now). Now is the time. Clocks, schedules, appointments, deadlines, and so many of the situations that time-obsessed Americans tether to the clock are not so much in Africa. Although the more westernized style of educated Kenyans does lean toward time-centered flow of the day, there is still a sense that there is Africa time – which is when it happens. Time is now. We are here now and that is what matters.

There are ups sides and down sides to this. Being present in the moment is easier as a Kenyan. There is less worry about the future as today is all that there is to deal with. Americans may view this as an unproductive way to go about living, and in some measures of American productivity, it is. However, what Americans lose in their ever time-conscious worldview is the moment in which they are living. This can come at a high cost with excesses resulting in regret.

Kenyan life and American life differ, sometimes greatly. I hope to capture being in the moment more now than I did before.

An organization is only as good as the people who run it. That being said, MITS is an amazing organization.

The staff at Made in the Streets is an incredible collection of people who are dedicated to the mission of rescuing, nurturing, and equipping children who have been on the streets of Eastleigh and preparing them for productive and meaningful lives in Nairobi.

The MITS staff is comprised of nearly 40 amazing people. What is incredible is that about a dozen off the staff are MITS graduates, which means they were on the streets at one time, went through the MITS program successfully, and then were invited to return to be on the MITS staff.

Here are a few of them:

Moses. Moses walks base camps in Eastleigh engaging street children, praying with them, inviting them to programs at the center that provide hope. Once on the street himself, Moses knows that challenges, questions, and experiences of children living on the street. He also knows that there is a pathway off the street.

Mary. Mary is so full of life and energy. She inspires skills students in fashion and design. Mary has overcome much adversity in her life. When she prays, it is a force of nature. When she leads worship, there is no stopping her. She desires to be fully engaged in what God is going in her life, in the lives of the MITS children, and in the world around her. She recently got some press in a prominent Kenyan fashion magazine that featured her work. When I was there, she was interviewed for an hour on one of the most listened to radio programs in Nairobi.

Mbuvi. Francis Mbuvi is the leader of the team in Kamulu. He leads with a quiet and gentle spirit. He is as rock solid as they come.

Irene. Irene is as intelligent as she is passionate about serving the children of MITS. Trained in psychology, she understands the experiences of the children, their trauma, and how to build resilience. She has big dreams too. She has hopes to create a counseling center at the MITS facility. I also have some big dreams that dovetail with hers. I would love to send students to MITS for an internship to do therapy with the children.

The children at Made In The Streets are inspiring. The younger children are learning basic literacy, math, communications, science, Bible and some other subjects while the older children are learning a trade: woodworking, fashion and design, catering, beauty and hair, or farming. They are being prepared with useful and marketable skills for their local economy. With these skills, these children who were formerly on the streets fighting to survive will be situated to thrive.

I like Antony’s smile and sly sense of humor.



Jane gave me my first ever pedicure. This girl is going to make it. She is good at what she does and is savvy in her marketing.



Lydia and Lucy are both such sweet and beautiful young women. Their hearts are deep and they have a lot of love to give.


Ambush is his name and he graduated last year and is working in the Nairobi fashion industry. He came back to MITS for a day to speak with current skills students on what it is like to graduate, get a job and live on your own. He is an inspiration to the current students, but also to the MITS staff and the visiting team.


Sylvester has such a welcoming smile and servant’s heart. He was found helping out frequently.


One of the great joys of this trip was to have my mother join us. It was a dream come true as I recall when I was a children she would speak about how wonderful it would be to do mission work in Africa. Well, it took a few decades, but here is evidence of a dream fulfilled.

Mom got tagged as “Sho Sho Linda,” which means Grandma Linda. The children took to her. Being from the streets, these children had little or no contact with their grandmothers. There is a grandmother void for these kids and my mother was glad to put a little something of herself into that void.

I had the privilege to teach a class to many of the older students to help them prepare to launch out into the world.


Children of all ages of all nations like to  play


and to be silly


and to be held. it should be stated that this little guy has the look on his face that we saw more than once. It is his fake "I am not having fun face." He was loving the attention he got from Sierra and LOVED HIM SOME IPHONE.

One of the most amazing things to ponder is how the street children of Eastleigh, with their painfully filthy living conditions, glued addicted stupor, and withering poverty can turn into healthy and smiling children poised for success in life. Having seen face to face both street children and MITS children, there is no better measure of the transformational work of this mission and how God uses people to lift people.

In two previous posts I talked about Methare Valley (here and here). Another place in Nairbo where Made In The Streets has a presence is in the Nairobi suburb of Eastleigh.

Methare Valley and Eastleigh have poverty in common, but there are many differences. Eastleigh is both more and less developed than Methare Valley. Eastleigh is not a slum, but s run down suburb where poverty has come in and run amuck. There are multi-story buildings in varying stages of either development or dilapidation in Eastleigh as opposed to the random, make-shift housing units cobbled together in Mathare Valley.

Another difference is that Eastleigh has a much more overt Muslim presence than Methare Valley. There are Muslim places of worship, more Muslim dress, and much more signage in Arabic.

Eastleigh is “home” to many street children whereas there are no street children in Methare Valley. In fact, street children in Methare Valley end up in Easleigh.

Our visit to Eastleigh involved base-walking, which means meeting the street children at their bases. A base is simply a location where street

children gather. It is usually identifiable by a small lean-to or unique land formation. To them it is home. When we came up upon our first base, I did not even know it was a base. It just looked like children sitting together, high on glue. Larry Conway guided our base-walking group through some basics of base-walking. As we approached the children, Larry and Moses took lead and helped our group engage with the group of children. Moses translated between English and Swahili.

We all introduced ourselves and they themselves. I was surprised they were so eager to listen. What I found out later was that street children are either feared as dangerous by locals or are invisible to locals. In short, no one bothers to talk with them. So, when Mzungus (white people) bother to stop, they are at least curious and sometimes eager as it might mean help.

This was a base that had been visited by Larry and Moses and others before, so there was some pre-existing familiarity. Larry, in both English and Swahili, ,asked who would like to say a prayer to start our conversation. It was an unexpected move so far as I was concerned. Then what come next was even more unexpected. One of the boys at the base base pointed directly at me and said, “you.” Then everyone looked at me. I looked around at everyone looking at me with the expectant looks on their faces. What else could I do? I began to pray. Moses interpreted.

We spent about 20 minutes at the base sharing scripture and stories and the boys at the base listened much more than I could have ever imagined. Perhaps they were really engaged. Perhaps they were so high on glue that they didn’t have the will to do anything else. Perhaps they thought they were going to get food. It is really hard to tell.

Then it was time to close it out and visit another base. Larry asked the boys which one of them would close us off in prayer. Again, it was unexpected. Then one of the boys stepped up and volunteered to pray. Dirty, covered in flies, glue bottles shoved in his left from pocket, he stood to pray.

His prayer maneuvered past all of my defenses and put me to tears. He prayer for us, for our safety, for protection for others, for all kinds of selfless things. His prayer was coherent, compassionate, and unselfish. How could a glue addicted street kid put together such a prayer.

It occurred to me that he is living in two worlds. He depends on glue and he depends on God. He is in squalor and abject poverty and has a wealth spiritual access. He is broken and he is whole.

But my tears. What was it about his prayer that squeezed my heart? Later I figured it out. I felt deep within me that as different as our life circumstances are, there is no difference between us. He has a glue bottle shoved in his pocket that I  can clearly see, but what “glue bottle” do I have shoved into my pocket? What do I rely on when I should have faith?

I entered the base walk to engage with people so different from me and left with the disconcerting and generous understanding that our differences are overwhelmed by our similarities.

These glue addicted children on the streets of Eastleigh are in process, just like I am. They are loved by God no less and no more than I am loved by God. We have our own types of poverty and our own types of wealth. We engage and share in each other’s poverty and share in each other’s wealth. And we hope and we pray and we never give up.

In my last post I shared a bit about the slum of Merthare Valley in Nairobi where half a million people live. It is a place of contrasts with poverty as a main feature, and yet seasoned with beauty, redemptive smiles of children, and a thin but active economy.
When we first approached Methare Valley in our bus, all I saw was squalor. Lines of abandoned cars covered in dust, trash piled up with old men and children picking through it looking for something valuable, people standing around with seemingly nothing to do – the place looked like what depression feels like. I tried to imagine what it was like living there and my heart sank. I wondered, “Where is God?”
This question that emerges in the midst sprawling poverty, “where is God?” is exposing…of my own spiritual poverty. My immediate assumptions about Methare Valley and poverty and God had immediate implications. Although I did not overtly think this, the assumption supporting my question was that God cannot be where economic poverty is. In short, I was unwittingly admitting that I am much more beholden to the Joel Osteen style prosperity gospel than I would like to admit.

This is embarrassing since I am such a critic of this false teaching. To make the automatic assumption that economic conditions are some indicator light for the presence of God IS THE PROSPERITY GOSPEL!. Of course God is in Methare Valley. God is as much in Methare Valley as He is in my middle class neighborhood in Tennessee, the monasteries of Kentucky, Wall Street, or anywhere else. God does not play favorites and prove who is “blessed” by money.
When I looked to that which contrasted the poverty, I saw God. In the smiles of children, the the families that were still in tact, in the neighborly way people looked out for each other, in hospitable and welcoming spirit people had, in the lack of complaint for their situation – there is life in the slums. Slum churches were vibrant a live in their dark ramshackle structures. In the midst of economic poverty, life emerges, it presses through, and it is even thrives. Like flowers grow through the cracks of pavement, life presses through the pavement of poverty.
God does save people in the poverty of Methare Valley, but God also saves people in the poverty of Wall Street.  The way God saves people usually has nothing to do with how much money they have. People saved out of effects of economic poverty of Methare Valley might never get rich while people saved out of the moral poverty of Wall Street might always be rich. There is no necessary correlation.
There is a life and depth of spirituality alive and well in Methare Valley that I do not have access to in middle Tennessee. There is constant faith for provision that I simply do not consider on a day to day basis. I must purge the prosperity gospel that has a greater hold on me than I want to admit and notice that my confidence in things has so comforted me that I have replaced faith in God with the reliability of the good infrastructure.

Where is God in Methare Valley? When I was there, God was busy - very busy. And one of the things he was doing was undoing layers of internalized bad theology in me.

Methare Valley is a sprawling slum in Nairobi. Half a million people live in this slum. Narrow zig-zag pathways snake between endless ramshackle, make-shift metal housing units where ducks, chickens, and goats lap sewage water that runs in sometimes random places. Low hanging power lines link across the zig-zag pathways and water trickles in the cracks on the ground as you walk creating a constant hazard.
There are far fewer actual roads than the population density requires and the roads are poorly kept. It feels disorganized, unplanned, and uncontrolled. Forget about zoning and HOA rules. This place feels like a free for all. Poverty closes in on all sides as the slum stretches for as far as the eye can see.
The main road passing through the slum bustles with activity. Venders selling their wares and food fill the streets, some of the very engaging and some aggressive as they seek to make a day’s wage. If they can make a couple dollars, they have had a good day. One person cooked french fries over an open fire in the street. They looked pretty good, but I passed by not giving in the temptation.


The smells of the slum were a strange mix of delicious food, raw sewage, and diesel exhaust. The smells were pungent and savory all at once and there was the slight feel of carnival excitement. It appeared as though the smells were invisible to the locals, but what was not invisible to the locals was our group of white Americans walking through the slum.
 
In the midst of the immense poverty, there was beauty. The beautiful children with smiles on their faces played in the streets perhaps oblivious to the extent of their poverty.

Young women with habits looking like nuns enjoyed delicious popsicles as they walked down the street after Sunday worship.

The main focus of our visit was to go with a Made In The Streets staff member named Jackton to visit his father, who still lives in the valley. He lived in a very small place situated deep into the valley. Snaking between the puzzled together houses made it impossible for a newcomer to have any idea how anyone could know how to get there get there or how to get out. All 15 of us found a way to squeeze into the home of Jackton’s father, a space no larger than my bedroom. He told us stories of living in the valley, how he worked as a mechanic, and how his wife lived in the up country on their land in order to protect it from thieves.

Many of the children who are at Made In The Streets once lived in the valley. It is a place they call home and it is filled with a strange mix of memories for them, some good and some bad, just like the mix of smells.
It is overwhelming and humbling to walk through Methare Valley. In one sense it feels hopeless. How could there ever be enough economic input the lift this slum from the withering poverty? On the other hand, it appears that for many of the people there, the poverty is more of a problem for me than it is for them. Regardless, the experience in the valley felt like both a gift and an indictment. It forced me to understand myself outside of my most common context, to be in a place where I know that the social forces of poverty are so far beyond the power I have to change it that my own sense of power diminished to some more appropriate level. My privilege became as obvious to me as the color of my skin walking the streets.

Of the many roles I took on in my time in Kenya, teaching was one of the primary roles. I had two teaching situations: staff and students.
Staff Seminar. For the staff I conducted a 4 hour seminar on trauma and resilience. The purpose of this training was to help the Made in The Streets staff become more familiar with indicators of trauma as well as reinforce community processes that promote resilience in individuals. The focus on community processes was intentional because African culture is much more communal in its assumptions as opposed to individualistic.
The staff received the seminar well. I was not surprised that they were such quick studies on the material as it related to the MITS students, but what did take me off guard some was how readily they applied the material to their own lives. A decent percentage of the staff were once street children themselves. For some of the staff, along with the incredible work they do for the children comes reminders of their own difficult past. It was a great joy of mine to get to affirm what they are already doing right for the students and themselves as well as introduce them to some new and useful concepts.
Student class. I got spend several one hour class periods with the older students discussing their lives in the past, the present and the future. The goal was to get them to imagine a good and successful future, anticipating their success and potential challenges.
The students received the information well and engaged in the role play.

Teaching in a cross-cultural setting has its challenges. Even though the staff and children speak English, that does not guarantee shared meaning. One thing I learned is that English has a much more robust emotional vocabulary than does Swahili and also the tribal languages. So, when asking for emotional expression in words, what I am also asking is for the students and staff to go to their third language to find those words as I am monolingual (blush - shame). The problem is that when multi-lingual people express emotions verbally, their native tongue is most accessible to them, but the language most accessible is significantly void of emotional vocabulary. It is a challenge.

All in all, my teaching role went well and I was pleased with the outcomes. At the same time, if I get to go back and do it again, I believe I will make some changes and engage with more experiential opportunities.

The trip to Made In The Streets in Kenya was nothing short of amazing. There were so many things that happened that capturing it all at once is going to be impossible.
I am incredibly grateful to the over 3 dozen people who supported us financially and the many more who supported us in prayer. Thanks to all the people in Kenya who welcomed us, hosted us, made space for us, and shared their lives with us.
Although there are so many different ways to understand the time in Kenya, I try to clump the experiences into something I an put a name to. Here are the categories of things that happened:
1. Teaching
2. Methare Valley
3. Methare Valley (Where is God?)
4. Eastleigh
5. MITS kids
6. MITS Staff
7. Kenya Life
8. Safari
It is my hope to get the opportunity over the next few days to write on each of these topics.