At the house, the residents planted beans and vegetables that will be harvested at the beginning of December. Also, there was a birthday party for Daniel Mbote! Other significant events were school visiting for the children in boarding school, and school academic day.

There is good news to share!  Up to this point Esther Wambui has been in a rehabilitation program, still adjusting to her new life off the street . But she is so determined and wanting to learn that she has qualified to join college! She is also interested in hairdressing and beauty courses, for which she has a talent.  Esther has shown a lot of improvement physically, socially, psychologically, and most of all spiritually.

Regina requested prayers for education and health of all the women and children, and prayers for the transition to the new home. The move to the new home is scheduled for December, so there will be adjustments to be made, and lots of settling in.

On Sunday we took the girls and the kids for a (rare) swim outing at a local pool and had the opportunity to see the Nakuru 3:16 family in action.  An outside observer with no knowledge of the genealogies would have been hard pressed to figure out the parent-child relationships.  This is not terribly unusual in a community-centric culture like Kenya, but I found it a bit surprising in a community not tightly bound by blood or tribe, and a community of people coming from an environment where individual survival was the prime motivator.

At one point during the afternoon a freak storm suddenly unloaded with howling wind, torrential rain and pelting hail.  The pool patrons scattered – some under the hotel awnings and many (like me) under a tin-roof gazebo that was not unlike spending time inside of a drum during a Geddy Lee drum solo.  The temperature plummeted and the crowded gazebo was filled with wet, shivering children and adults.  Despite the chaos, each adult or older child immediately jumped into action and tended to the child nearest them, toweling them off and changing them into dry clothes (if available) before tending to their own needs.  I donated my shirt to the cause and did what I could to help.  The kids huddled up into groups for warmth, some with adults wrapping them up in their arms for warmth.  Soon the work was done and it was just a matter of waiting out the storm, which everyone did in calm silence.  The storm ended and life began again, with kids running around playing and adults doing their best to wring out the clothes and towels that had become drenched in the storm.

I stood there afterwards contemplating what I’d just seen- there was no planning, no central authority giving orders, no coordination.  Each adult and older child simply stepped up and did what was right and implicitly trusted that others were doing right by their children and siblings.  There was no fear, no panic, no frantic searching for one’s own child, no concern about stepping on another parent’s authority.  There was just one big family.

Here’s how his business works today:

• He pays street boys to collect plastics from the streets and garbage dumps (of which there sadly is a great deal).  Some of these boys now have a consistant enough income that they are off the streets and off the glue.
• The street boys drop their plastics off at collection centers which double as housing for local (otherwise homeless) women who sort and store the collected plastics until John’s truck passes through on its weekly pickup run.
• The plastics are cleaned and processed into raw “pellets” at a central facility that employs a dozen or so workers.
• The pellets are either sold to other fabricators or used to build one of several plastic parts that John manufactures and sells on the market.

What an amazing business!  The value chain addresses the environmental problem of excess plastic waste , facilitates environmental sustainability and reuse, and provides jobs in slums for people who can’t otherwise get employment, all in a for-profit, economically sustainable model.  John himself is a very well spoken, genuine, hard-working man with a broad and deep view of the challenges that Kenya faces and ways that they can be addressed.  I consider myself a better person for having met John and been exposed to his worldview.

John’s big challenge is that he needed a loan to start the business and it was graciously provided at 28% interest; he’s drowning in interest payments that are crippling his ability to grow the business.  He’s looking for partners who would be willing to (a) refinance all or part of his loan at a lower rate, and/or (b) invest in some of the equipment he needs to expand his business and pursue higher margin components.  We’re looking at ways we can partner with John to both help his business as well as provide opportunities for our girls and their kids.  Please contact me if interested.

Scale used to measure plastics collected in a local slum

Glady’s story not only highlights the painful past lives that the women and children in Nakuru 3:16 must reconcile before healing, but it also brings to light one of the bigger challenges the program has- specifically, how to address the “whole family”.  Many of our girls have siblings still on the street or parents/caretakers continuing to live the same destructive lives that forced their children onto the streets.  For example, both Ann Nyambura and Monica Wanjiru are working to help their parents and siblings as best they can.  We feel we have a practical and moral obligation to address the broader family challenges as best we can, and we hope to be able to increase the program budget next year to include capacity for hiring case workers that can address these needs.

And you know what- I wouldn’t bet against them.  Kenyan kids are very motivated to learn and achieve, but sadly the growing but still small economy in Kenya simply doesn’t have room for all of the skilled professionals coming out of the nation’s schools.  I had the opportunity to meet with the senior faculty at two prestigious Kenyan universities to discuss opportunities for business process outsourcing (BPO) in the software development arena.  As best as I can tell, Kenyan schools are turning out several thousand computer science graduates each year, only a small percentage of whom will end up working in their field of study.  There is a large talent pool here just waiting to be tapped, and I think it will happen within the next decade.

It was very exciting to see all of the school-aged Nakuru 3:16 kids in uniform in school.  In fact, a number of our kids rank at the top of their class.  This may seem surprising at first given the rough years of their early lives, but then again I think those years probably gave them a fierce sense of competitiveness and self-reliance that, if harnessed positively, will make them all forces to be reckoned with as they progress on in their lives and careers.  I can’t wait.

With this in mind, the Nakuru 3:16 leadership team is looking hard at how to make the new home a model of environmental stewardship and sustainability.  Items being considered include:

• Using natural gas or propane for fuel (vs. charcoal)
• Leveraging “instant hot water” technology vs. inefficient boilers
• Solar electric and/or water heating
• High efficiency lighting

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“We saw what caring men and women of God do when they drop their illusions and go to work in their midst. In the end, we saw God at work in Kenya through this sweaty, soaked, labored Body of Christ that all of you fed in not the last, but the first of many suppers.”

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“”When?” is what you ask on an empty stomach.”

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