You Go, Girl!

Yesterday was our last in Siyiapei.

After Kristin and I returned from the Maasai manyatta, I headed into Narok to tie up things with the World Concern folks and Kristin went into Narok to have lunch with all of Everlyn’s sisters. Last evening we participated for the last time in the Home kids’ Fellowship Time—it has never lost its appeal. Those kids are such talented dancers and singers, its like the music just naturally wells up out of them and they can’t contain it. They have so few worldly belongings—I mean, really, it’s ridiculous bordering on shameful when you compare to how much we have—yet their joy is so boundless.


And their hope is boundless, too. This time in Kenya I have considered what I find to be a very disturbing reality. Why have so many of our American youth—our American youth who have been given so much and have every opportunity if they would only grab one—why do so many of our youth seem so unmotivated and so without hope or excitement for their future? (And this, you understand, is a disturbing question not least because it is very personal pertaining, as it does, to my own son.) That trend is definitely not present here in Kenya. Even in the absence of opportunity, opportunity is sought; in the absence of material goods, joy and contentment are found; in the absence of parents, guidance is welcomed; with little chance of reaching college, education is valued above almost anything else.


Last night the kids borrowed Everlyn’s aging CD player and one speaker and set up the ‘sound system’ in the dining hall. Hours of dancing followed, in honor of Kristin. The kids are supposed to spend the two hours between supper and bed studying, but last night no one cared that studies took a back seat to celebration. I left Kristin to enjoy the evening alone with all those lovely kids.


This morning we said our last good-byes to Everlyn and Richard, to Stanley the social worker, and to Pauline. Everlyn and Stanley were to deliver Pauline (finally) to the Maasai Girls’ School today at 11 a.m.—she still doesn’t have all her supplies, nor has her first term tuition been paid, but the school agreed to let her start anyway with the promise that this will all be worked out in the next week. Let’s just all pray that it IS all worked out in the next week.


This evening finds Kristin and I back across the Rift Valley in Kijabe. This afternoon, we took a long walk through the forest in search of colobus monkeys, to no avail. But it was warm and sunny and the forest was thick and lush and green and after all the dust and the arid, dry season parch of the other side of the Rift, it was lovely. Tomorrow I will leave Kristin here and head back to Nairobi. Wow. My daughter--of whom I am increasingly in awe of--will be on her own. For 2-1/2 months. In Africa.


You go, girl!