The Sunday before we departed Ann Arbor, I was handed a colorful homemade cloth bag after church. "Did I think the Kenya Team could use a few of these as gifts in Kenya?" Confession: I immediately thought of all the things we were bringing including a drum set for the BLISS band. I paused for a moment and said "sure." If nothing else, we could pack a couple of bags around the drums.
Later that afternoon, the doorbell rang and there she was with six more. Uh-oh … were these bags going to be like gerbils and I would soon be packing the drums around the bags?
By Wednesday, I had 16 that were carefully packed for the trip, still not sure what would happen to them. By mid-week, it was clear that we wanted to do something special for the teachers at Gichunge Primary … the bags!!! We would fill them with pencils and chalk for their classrooms as well as their Friday sack lunch.
Susan Baily … not sure if you could hear the squeals of delight in Ann Arbor, but the staff went nuts. The photo below does not do justice to the joy you created. We sure hope you had a good Friday … thanks to you, we did.
All in all, the sack lunches were a great success. Like last year, many of students "saved" most of their food for their families to share later. This is a student body that relies heavily on the daily porridge program … dinner isn't always there at night.
We celebrated our final day at the primary by planting trees along a ridge on the far side of the fields where they plant corn for the students. It was joyously chaotic. There were the 24 of us trying to maneuver ourselves over the freshly plowed field like a trail of army ants, about a third of the student population spontaneously nominating themselves as "helpers" thus tagging along, and then the "official" helpers carrying jugs of water and dozens of tree saplings. The Deputy Head Teacher marshaled us all into action and we were all soon covered in dirt as the samplings were dropped into holes and soil had to be packed in around them … forget the cute garden tools … this is done with your hands. Between the trek across the field (temp in the 90's) and digging in the dirt with our hands we all got back looking like survivors from the Great Dust Bowl. It was wonderful.
Things can get very turned around in Kenya … projects we think will be fabulous just sort of limp along … and then there are those so sweet surprises like the brightly colored bags that someone thought we might use, fleece scarfs made by Susan Salo and her women's group for the preschoolers (they freeze when it hits the 60's!), and the community created when everyone quits being cool and gets down in the dirt. It's a wonderful reminder that you just never know when God winks and something happens.
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