Pilot Project Progress Part 3: Meet Beth

Thursday afternoon we’ll be having our second general meeting with the pilot project group, but before we do that we’d like to introduce you to Beth Muthoni Kabathi, our new CCS partner in the work!

Beth was born and raised within the Murang’a district where our project is located. She received her degree from Daystar University, a very well respected Christian university near Nairobi committed to raising up Christian servant leaders in every area of life. Beth studied business and accounting, and after graduation went to work for CCS for six years as the Mount Kenya regional accountant. During that time, she not only did great accounting, she also learned more and more about what CCS does in the field. Along the way she took part in a distance course through the Chalmers Center at Covenant College on community development, and later decided she wanted to be involved in something more directly related to helping the poor.

So, get this, she went and got her Masters in Micro-finance! Just last week, Beth defended and presented the research she did on insurance among poor Kenyans, and now we’ve got a real master on the team!

Best of all, Beth is passionate about the work, and about the community. She has brought tremendous insight to our work, helping the two dumb wazungu (white people) figure out what the heck is going on. Beth is a tremendous example of a highly educated Kenyan woman on the front lines of serving the poor, making great sacrifices to do so (including having to learn how to ride a motorbike). Please pray for Beth as we continue to sail into uncharted waters together, and that God would help her to build real rapport and community within the village where we’re working.

Peace,
Michael

Missionary Stuff

So occasionally, very very occasionally, we act like “real” missionaries. Some recent examples:

Rebecca has been involved in several women’s outreach events, using them as an opportunity to try to help some of our Kenyan friends from town get plugged into a church (ours, preferably). Two of our former neighbors have been really good friends to us, and have come to church events with us on a couple of occasions.

Rebecca drove a car load of Kenyans and Congolese refugees out into the Rift Valley last Sunday to be a part of a soccer match between our church’s youth (18-35) and a group of IDPs (internally displaced persons) living in a refugee area because of the violence after the last election.

Rebecca actually gets asked to play a lot, not surprisingly, and both of us played with a team of Congolese refugees one Saturday morning a few weeks ago. The refugees we know come from two families who attend New City Fellowship. Despite being “aliens in a foreign land,” they have been incredibly hospitable to us, and Rebecca and I have enjoyed playing soccer with them, making a visit to their home, and watching the dance group they’ve put together for the young folks. They’ve got a lot of free time on their hands but they’re making the best of it, and Rebecca and I have been brainstorming about how to be more involved in their lives (see below).

Rebecca and I got to do a “follow-up” lunch with a couple of deacons at our church, New City Fellowship. You may recall that we got a chance to lead two Sunday schools on working with the poor with the new deacons in June, and now they’re working hard to come up with a set of policies that will guide them in their work among the poor. Because New City is a small, highly inter-racial church, with a high number of very poor families from the slums, we can say that they have their work cut out for them! It was awesome to get to kick around ideas with a few of them, and to simply be a part of the conversation about what it means for a church to holistically care for the poor. In the next few weeks, we’re hoping to visit a few of the folks the deacons have worked with (particularly the Congolese refugees) to begin trying to do with them what we talked about in our last blog post: discussing what God has done for them, what gifts and abilities He’s given them, and how they can better use those gifts to provide for their families.

Rebecca lead our small group Bible study last Friday. We talked about Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead, with Rebecca helping us to look carefully at Mary, Martha, and Jesus’ characters specifically. The small group has been awesome for us, giving us a real base for making friends and real encouragement in our own lives with Jesus.

I got to lead worship the past two weeks at New City because our normal worship leader was sick. Although I’ve participated before, these were my first opportunities to actually lead. And while I’ve lead music for years in numerous different venues, this was, to put it mildly, a completely different thing altogether. The team consisted of about eight people with six different national ethnicities represented (India, Pakistan, Madagascar, Kenya, Korea and the US). We sang in English, Hindi, Kiswahili, and some language from Zimbabwe for good measure. I had lots of help, to say the least. But as someone who has been thinking and convicted about the importance of racial and stylistic diversity in all worship everywhere this is like a dream come true. And because the worship leader’s doctor asked her to stay away from singing for a month, I’m on the schedule twice more in November.

Moreover, Jesus has put us in relationships with several different individuals or families who are either Muslim or openly nominal Christians. Please pray that Jesus would use us to bring some of these folks to himself!

All of this is very exciting for us, not only because we’re passionate about Jesus and His church, but also because it allows us to bring our heart for his kingdom into our lives in Nairobi itself, instead of leaving all of that to our actual job descriptions. And things are happening all the time. I visited a Teen Challenge residential facility recently that is literally three doors down, and have been asked to preach at New City in November. So please pray for all of it.

Peace,
Michael

Pilot Project Progress Part 2: Appreciating Assets

Had any of you magically been whisked away to Nairobi last Wednesday night to visit the Rhodes household you might have been surprised at what you would have found. Two very stressed 20-somethings scribbling on poster boards, bickering about whose job it was to figure out how to say "values" in Swahili, and generally running around like chickens recently departed from their heads. Preparing for the first day with a new pilot project turned out to be a bit like getting ready for the first day of school. And we both slept just as poorly.

"Not with bang, but with a whimper." That's what T.S. Eliot said about the world's ending, but it fit quite well with our pilot beginning. When we arrived with our new coworker Beth at the beautifully shady grove of trees where the meeting was to be held, we found literally nobody (we were a bit early). But slowly and surely people streamed in, walking or on bikes, clearly having just left their farms or cows or other morning work. By the end of the day, 13 of 17 people made it, which isn't bad for the first day!

More importantly than the turn up, though, was the meeting itself, which was a complete success. The overall goal of the pilot project is to help a group of farmers to be able to collectively produce and sell a crop with a good market, while also learning the skills to know how to read the market and respond to its changes and fluctuations. But we didn't start with marketing trainings, or giving the group a crop to grow and a lesson on how to grow it. In fact we didn't really do any training at all.

That's because in this project we're trying to begin where the Bible itself begins: the story of God making human beings in His own image. If we really believe that incredible truth, then we have to treat every single human being as if they have value, skills, abilities . . . in short, that they have assets that God has given them to be managed and stewarded in His world. And while almost every Christian would agree, most of the time the way we think about the poor comes from the implicit idea that the poor simply lack things, whether money, knowledge, character . . . whatever. And when that's our implicit idea, whether we like it or not, that's what gets communicated to the poor people we try to work with.

But don't people really need knowledge, capital, food? Of course we all have needs. But, as Brian Fikkert and Steve Corbett have explained in their excellent new book When Helping Hurts (everyone should read it!), a Biblical view of poverty centers around broken relationships with God, with ones self, with others, and with creation. And whether it's inner-city Memphis or rural Kenya, one thing that all poor communities face is the consistent implicit message from the non-poor world that they're messed up, worthless, powerless, vulnerable, stupid, and incapable of change. The government, many NGOs, sometimes even the church, as well as the Primary School of Everyday Experience all teach poor people that they matter less than the rich, that their problems are their fault, and there really isn't much they can do about it. And when outsiders come in with programs that treat the poor as people lacking resources, it simply reinforces the lies they've been told, inadvertently reducing that individual or community's ability to really make changes in their own lives.

But the truth of the Scriptures that conquers the lie is that God has given every person His image! And that means that every one of us has assets and skills that we can use. And so in this pilot project, our primary objective is to help community members use their own assets and resources to study the market, to design a business plan, and to execute that plan to gain a profit.

So on Thursday, we started the whole process with two funny things: drawing maps and telling stories. You see, if we really want this project to be about helping the poor recognize their assets and empowering them to use it to address the problems and opportunities they themselve identify, we wanted to start with activities that would help us do just that. So Rebecca opened up the entire meeting by explaining that we believe that every person has God-given assets and abilities, and that we wanted to begin by learning about what assets God had given this community. She did an excellent job of explaining how every stage of the project would flow out of this foundational idea: God has given you the ability to make changes for the good in your community.

We then began with a Participatory Learning and Action (PLA) activity. PLA is a set of tools that community workers have used for a number of years to help a community process its own resources, opportunities, and problems. The foundational assumption is that community members are the experts on their communities, and that by getting them talking and thinking, an NGO can empower them to begin using their resources and abilities to address their own needs, all while affirming the Biblical message of being made in God's image.

Our first PLA activity, led by our coworker Beth, was a simple community map. The idea is remarkably simple: Beth merely asked the group to create a map of their community, emphasizing local physical resources. But what followed was extraordinary to watch. All 13 community members began scratching and drawing in the dust, gathering sheaves of corn to make crosses to represent churches and rocks for schools, and discussing in great detail all of the physical resources in their community. These included the irrigation project that they began, and also highlighted some limiting infrastructure issues, including far off markets, and a ferry that doesn't operate year round. Not only was this incredibly fun to watch, not only did it encourage every person to be involved, but it got all of them thinking about how resource rich their community really is, and it taught us a whole lot about the area where we're working.

Our second activity comes from a set of methods known as Appreciative Inquiry. The foundational assumption behind Appreciative Inquiry is that every functioning community is a miracle. The fact that people exist in community is a sign that God is working, that people have found a way to overcome obstacles, to work together. Appreciative Inquiry allows a facilitator to help community members form action plans based on their analysis of their own assets and strengths. And AI begins with something everybody loves: stories.

So after the mapping, I explained to the group that before we could begin to think about where we are going, we had to remember where we were, where we had come from. I told them that our project was all about them using their strengths, abilities, and successes to come up with a plan on how to keep moving towards their dreams. And then, I just started asking for people to tell stories. "Tell me a story about a time when you were proud of your community?" "About a time when you tried something new on your farm and succeeded?" "About a time when you faced an obstacle and overcame it?" As people would tell stories, I asked one of the young women in the group to write a few words about the story, and then I would walk through the process of analyzing the strengths, values, and enabling conditions present in the story. For instance, when one man told the story of how he had wanted to get married in a church, and the community pulled together to help him be able to pay for it, we said that the story showed the community was strong in unity, friendship, and love, that they obviously valued family, marriage, and following God's laws, and that in order to have had that experience, they had to have jobs, money, the willingness to help one another, etc. We did the same process with the stories about the man who started selling watermelons as soon as they arrived in the area, and sold them in a far away market, or for the person who told the story about traveling far away to learn how to grow rice, and taking the risk to try it in their own home place.

At the end of the day, the community had spent several hours talking only about their successes, only about their resources, only about the encouraging moments and powerful aspects of their community. Maybe some people think all of this is silly, but after years of development in the 2/3rds World and increasing Welfare states in the West, we believe it is something to begin where God does: that people matter, and that He's given all of us skills, abilities, and assets to manage and use for His glory. This is the beginning and heart of community development, and it was absolutely amazing to see it in action. And maybe, just maybe, it gave us the foundation, the starting point, to walk together with these farmers all the way towards sustainable agricultural business. We'll see.

Peace,
Michael

Pilot Project Progress Part 1: Man's Work

Authors Note: This post is the first in a series about the newly started Pilot Project. Look for regular updates as the project is just now beginning!

The first general meeting with the new group isn’t for two more days, and yet the real work has already begun. As many of you will remember, Planting Faith is conducting a Pilot Project in the Murang’a District to try some new techniques and strategies based on keeping the best of what PF has done before while also improving and addressing issues and challenges we’ve had with other groups.

One of the first issues we wanted to address was the issue of group size and formation. At a simple level, it’s really hard to have meetings where everyone’s voice is heard if there are 50 people. At a much more complex level, we’ve found that if you ask people “hey do you want to do x,” they basically always say yes, whether you’re talking about promoting agricultural business or about underwater basket weaving. Which makes it really hard to make sure you have people in a group who are really interested in what it is you actually want to do!

Of course, these are some of the things that make international development so difficult, right? I mean, cross-cultural communication is hard, often times what the NGO thinks the community needs and what the community thinks they need are quite different, and it certainly seems so much more efficient to work with 50! And yet, often times it seems that these simple decisions made at the outset really do set the stage for the entire shebang.

So with this project we asked CCS to help us find a group that already existed, that had expressed an interest in agricultural business before hearing about our project, and that was already involved in their own projects. And what a group they found!

The Githuri Water Project group consists of 100 farmers who have mobilized themselves to access gov’t funds in order to get irrigation for their farms. Previously a total drought region, their group has now managed to get irrigation water for 50 households (and counting) using gravity, a nearby river, funds from the gov’t, and a whole heckuva lot of work. And after discussing with our CCS partners, they’ve agreed to mobilize 25 of those 50 households who are specifically interested in agricultural business for our project.

So, having met the leadership, Rebecca, Beth (our new CCS coworker), and I decided that it would be a good idea to invest a little time in the community to learn more about what’s going on, to begin some relationships, and to communicate how excited we are about what they’ve already accomplished. And so, just yesterday, we picked up hoes, pick axes, and shovels, took of our shoes, and joined the group in digging the main trench where they will put the next section of irrigation piping.

Let me be clear about two things: this pipe is a big pipe. And this ditch they put it in . . . it’s a big ditch. And so, what we had dreamily contemplated as a relational building time became (in addition to that) probably one of the hardest days work of this city slickers life. We’re talking digging 6 feet down into the earth, removing enormous boulders, and shoveling out tons of dirt in the excruciatingly hot Kenyan sun. And we’re also talking about watching women old enough to be your grandma totally making your 23 yr old self look like a complete pansy. I mean, these folks can work! So of course, Bec and I got blisters in all of thirty seconds, and did our best to not make total fools or ourselves. And while we’ll be feeling the effects for a few days, the relationships begun, the message conveyed, and the sheer joy of feeling in your bones a hard days work done together was well worth the effort.

Actually, most of my hardest days of labor have been on missions trips: mixing cement in Mexico, gutting houses in New Orleans, etc. But I’ve never, on any trip, really worked under local leaders who are already providing all the supplies, labor, and planning that the project required. There had to be 30 people who showed up to work all day in the hot sun with no pay and no food. If there’s ever been a time when you might have generalized the poor as lazy, incapable of managing or leading, or at least not very driven, it’s time to think again.

What a great opportunity for us! Hopefully, it was the start that we needed in the community (in addition to meetings with the leaders and a walk through the village as well). Please pray for us these next couple days, because our first meeting is on Thursday (check the blog on Friday for the next update!), and we’re all going to be out of our comfort zones!

Peace,

Michael

Long Time Gone

Well, there’s nowhere to begin but by apologizing: sorry it has been so long! But despite the long silence on our end, there’s plenty to tell . . . we just haven’t had time to tell it. To dive right in . . .

Visitors
Since the World Freedom Day party we’ve hosted numerous folks at our home in Nairobi, including Marian, Mark, Christen, and Stephen Sasscer (Rebecca’s Mom, Dad, and two of her siblings), Dr. Russell Mask (one of my profs from Covenant), and Mom and Dad from Memphis. All in all, that’s more than 30 days of visitors since July!

Former professors and new in-laws sound like a recipe for major stress, but we can honestly say that all our visitors were an incredible encouragement to us, and that everybody weathered the various small storms of international travel (running out of water, no power, bumpy roads, multiple day car breakdowns, food poisoning, and one really mean jellyfish) with incredible graciousness! I’d like to publicly thank Dr. Mask for interacting with us and giving guidance on all sorts of work and cultural issues (he worked in Nairobi for several years), Christen and Stephen for spending the last few days of their break running around with us, and all of the parents for being incredible role models for us newlyweds, for giving us great advice and encouragement, and for being willing to roll with the punches during their stay. Plus, ya’ll were a great excuse to do some great vacationing!

Work
Based on our guest schedule, you might assume that we’ve hit a lull in our work schedule. Not so! In fact, and maybe I always say this but really this time, I don’t think we’ve ever been busier. To take it group by group:

Our farmers in Ngare Ndare have planted butternut squash! Back in August we visited the group and took a tour of about 7 farms with the entire group, which was really fun. They had just germinated at that time, but they looked good, and the reports over the phone line sound like they’re coming along well. This is great news! Please pray that we’d be able to get up there in October before harvest, and that we’d be able to help the group to put together a marketing plan in time to really turn a good profit. This would be a major success.

In Mang’u farmers continue to grow passion fruit, but the truth is, many of the farmer’s crops failed due to neglect or disease, and we’ve spent most of our time since arriving trying to help the group find its feet again and decide on a way forward. After the leaders sent letters to all defaulting members (on their own initiative), we got a good portion of the group together for a meeting. The group decided they want to plant a new crop together using their own funds, to get on loan repayment schedules that would allow them to repay their loans slowly, and to start a community managed loan fund referred to locally as a Table Bank.

Table Banks are basically small-scale, informal credit unions that, using only the members contributed savings, make small loans and allow members to save with the potential for annual dividend payments. Table Banks have several distinct advantages over traditional microfinance banks and loan schemes. First, and most importantly, Table Banking is an initiative that begins in the right place: with the community’s own assets and resources. So many well-intentioned community development programs implicitly enter a community with the message that “You need help. You have problems. And we can fix them for you.” Nothing could be more disempowering and hurtful to the vulnerable poor, who already feel powerless and destitute than to bring a message that says, "You can't solve your problems without our help." But Table Banking begins with the message that “You have resources! You have opportunities! You have money! If you work together, you can help each other achieve your goals!” Second, using the community’s own savings for the loan capital means that loans are smaller, safer, and more appropriate. Whereas an outsider might over-estimate a poor person’s debt capacity, and mistakenly give them more debt than they can possibly manage, Table Banking begins at the right level, as determined and managed by the community. Third, whereas microbanks and lending programs tend to be totally based around credit, Table Banks reward people who do nothing but save by giving them dividends or interest payments on their savings at the end of the year!

Our group in Kabete has also decided to begin Table Banking, so we’ve agreed to lead both groups through a training on forming Table Banking produced by the Chalmers Center at Covenant College. This is a totally new step for us, and we’re trying to equip our coworker, James Njeru, to be able to do the training on his own by the time we finish, so pray for us in all of that.

Our sunflower and aloe vera groups are continuing. We finished our Prepare a Better Business training in one of the groups, and the training continues to go well in all the groups. Two groups have harvested their sunflower, but low production because of the drought here and complications with getting the machine for processing have made the process more complicated. Our aloe vera farmers are implementing some new irrigation techniques, and production seems to be good, but we’re continuing to work on the marketing side of things. Please pray for wisdom and encouragement for both us and the farmers.

Finally, we’ve begun meetings with members of our new Pilot Project group! I posted something about the project several months ago, and more updates will be coming out soon, but for now I’ll just say that CCS hired an excellent new staff person for us to work with, and after meeting with some of the farmers and even visiting some farms we’re more excited than ever. Stay tuned to see how all of this new stuff unfolds!

Etcetera, Etcetera, Etcetera
And of course, there’s always the rest of everything. Rebecca and I celebrated our 1 year anniversary on August 23rd. Not many people graduate from college, move out of their parent’s houses, get married, and move overseas all in the space of a single year, and both friends and family have covered us with prayers because of the potential stress and strain that all that change can put on a marriage. We praise Jesus for giving us an incredibly happy and joyful first year, and for leading us to a job and country that have given us such a huge opportunity to learn more about each other and our future lives together.

We also are continuing our adventures with urban gardening. Having successfully harvested a heckuva lot of lettuce from one tire and some very small carrots from another, we’re ready to expand our operation to five tires for the October rains. And while you might be thinking that we’ve got bigger concerns than learning how to make salads grow up out of our driveway, I’ve got to admit that there’s been something significant about getting into the rhythms of growth and harvest, of participating in just a minute way with what our farmer’s do every day, and in remembering what our farmer’s have always known: that food doesn’t come from a restaurant or in a box, it comes from the earth, and it comes with care.

And we’re continuing to try to find ways to engage relationally with our farmers and other friends here in Nairobi. Our New City Fellowship small group continues to be a blessing, as does our relationship with my good friend from Bungoma, David Khisa. Alvin Mbola, a local community development professor and field worker here, has given us priceless guidance and direction in everything from our pilot project to how to help our friend who is trying to decide how to care for her orphaned, HIV-positive niece. And even as I write this, our three farmer friends from Mang’u, Lucy, (another) Lucy, and Mary, are busy in our kitchen learning how to make pumpkin pie.

Jesus has been good to us. The work is hard, and we’re always looking for better ways to do what we’re doing. Please pray specifically for the work, that our farmers would see success and that these projects would benefit their lives, that Jesus would guide us through this pilot project, and that he would guide us in our daily life as we seek to understand how best to walk through the many trials and struggles that our friends face here. Pray also for our Muslim neighbors who are celebrating Ramadan now (and who occasionally bring us tasty leftovers), that we would be good neighbors to them.

We would love to hear from any and all of you any time.

Peace,
Michael

A Different Spin On Independence

Ten days ago, on the day that Americans traditionally celebrate independence from Britain, we decided to do things a little different here in Kenya. Instead of American Independence Day, we celebrated "World Freedom Day," complete with tasty Kenyan "nyama choma" (fried goat) and ugali, Indian curry, and American deviled eggs, potato salad and burgers. Many people from church came, as well as 25 children from a nearby Children's Home, neighbors, co-workers, and other friends. In other words, we had a PAR-TAY!

The day was both amazingly busy and unexpectedly delightful. Some of my favorite parts of the day. . . 2 women from church coming to spend the night just so that they could help us in preparing for everything. All the men helping Michael grill hamburgers, cheeseburgers, chicken and goat by the truck load (okay, maybe not a truck load, but almost). Kids running around everywhere, playing various forms of soccer, rugby and wiffle ball. Youth from the church lounging on blankets in the grass and eating popcorn (lots of popcorn). 15 women all packed in the kitchen, all rapidly chopping, cooking, spreading, filling - whatever needed to be done in order to serve the 80 or so people who showed up over the course of eight hours - and along with all the preparation, lots of chatting and laughing. Seeing different people from different places, cultures, ethnic groups, economic backgrounds, and communities being together, eating together, and playing together.

When we gathered together to pray before eating, Michael explained why we decided to celebrate the 4th of July like this. First, he explained that we knew this 4th of July would be different for us simply because we are here in Kenya and not in the States. But more than that, he shared that we really wanted to celebrate our true freedom, as believers in Jesus Christ, instead of merely celebrating America's independence from Great Britain. Instead of celebrating the country of America and being exclusive by definition (as many people know, a person cannot simply be an American by wanting to be an American), we wanted to be inclusive by definition, because as Jesus followers (from anywhere in the world) we get to celebrate our freedom together every day, and also as believers we get to invite others into the joy of knowing Jesus and finding their true freedom as well.

I know this might sound hokey, or like I'm trying to over-spiritualize something that we shouldn't be so worried about. But I don't think I am. If living here in Kenya has taught me anything, it has taught me that I should never take for granted the freedom I have in Jesus, and the constancy of His love and His peace. As an American, it's true that I have noteable "freedoms," freedom of religion, freedom of speech, freedom to buy assault rifles, etc. But all of these freedoms are temporary, incomplete, and unfulfilling. American freedoms don't get at or solve the problems that I have. . . the problems that I have with God, with myself, and with other people. American freedoms don't make me a better person, and they don't make other people better people. American freedoms can't promise lasting peace, security, or love. American freedoms are not what make me free. And they do not and will never make anyone free. When we look at all the different horrible sins nations, including ours, have committed in the name of preserving "freedom," it seems like at least sometimes, national freedom really means slavery, whether for ourselves, or for those people that get rolled over in the process.

But Jesus changes everything. Jesus does promise, has brought, and will fully bring eternal, complete, and fulfilling freedom. Freedom in Jesus chases away sin "far as the curse is found," and brings me back to a right relationship with God, with myself, and with other people. He is the only way that any of my relationships will ever be good and right and just. Freedom in Jesus doesn't just make me a better person; He makes me a new person, and has actually given me Himself by dying on the cross and defeating death by His resurrection. Freedom in Jesus promises peace, security, and eternal love. God has so loved the world by giving His Son, Jesus. He is our Peace. He is our Freedom. Happy World Freedom Day.

Rebecca

Beginnings and Continuings

The problem with getting bogged down and forgetting to update the blog is that when you finally get to it, it’s hard to even begin to sum up all the things you’ve been doing. But here goes nothing:

Rachael’s Visit
For the past two weeks we’ve hosted Rebecca’s older sister Rachael, who came all the way to Africa just to say hi. Expecting, as we all do when we first arrive, the “slower pace of African life,” I’m not sure Rachael was prepared for the jam packed two weeks we prepared for her. It’s been awesome to catch up, to get her perspective on our work, and to have an excuse for doing a bunch of touristy stuff that we haven’t done yet.

We began with a trip to Nakuru National Park (home of the famous Nat’l Geographic shots of a lake filled with like a kabagillion flamingoes). Rachael arrived at 6:30 a.m. on a Thursday, and by 5:30 p.m. that evening we were looking at rhinos and water buffalo in the park. Karibu Kenya! During this two night camping excursion, we also ended up at Naivasha again, and finally took the boat ride to see the hippos. Very cool, and because Rachael is a fanatical photographer with a new camera, our lives are better documented than they’ve been since our wedding.

The next week we went on a 4 day work trip that included visits to Nyeri, Ngare Ndare, and Mitunguu. We got to stay with Rebecca’s co-coach at Rosslyn Middle School for a night, followed by another night with Jedida and John in the Ngare Ndare group, and were once again amazed by the extraordinary hospitality of pretty much every Kenyan we know. Mitunguu was also fun, and by the time we got back, we were all completely exhausted.

This week we also visited the elephant orphanage (probably the “cutest” experience on the planet), where you get to see, and touch, numerous baby elephants and even a baby rhino that apparently thinks it’s a dog. None of them are more than three feet tall, so you can imagine the googooing that occurred between my wife and her sister. It’s a good thing you can only be there an hour.

All in all, we cherished our last few days with Rachael, and were really sad to see her go. She’s been an encouragement and a reminder that what we do for work is also, as it turns out, quite a bit of fun.

Work
On the surface, our projects are continuing as they have been for some time. We’re still doing the Prepare a Better Business trainings (and getting better at them all the time), the groups are still meeting monthly, making savings, and growing their crops. Under the surface, however, there’s a lot going on.

In Ngare Ndare, we have at last agreed to grow the butternut squash, and have been working with the group to try to be ready to plant by mid-July. This will require a whole lot of finagling on our part in terms of getting them the inputs that will constitute the loan in-kind, and probably more trips up that way than usual these days. But we’re excited about it all the same.

With our CCS coworkers, we have recently visited the farms in both Embu and Mitunguu (sunflower groups). The rains, as feared, have gone away as quickly as they came. In parts of Mitunguu, the flowers are, frankly, looking pretty bad, although still harvestable. Elsewhere in the region, our farmers have great sunflower, so that’s going to create some interesting group dynamics as it comes to processing and selling. We’ve also been working on actually getting the processing machines that the groups will use to process the sunflower seeds to create and sell the sunflower oil. This has been a trying process, requiring a lot of difficult discussion with our coworkers and the farmers, trying to figure out the best way to go about all of this. I spent all of yesterday actually driving around Nairobi looking for the machines, and yet we still haven’t completely sorted out how all of this is going to work. Please pray for guidance on this issue, and also that we would remember that the way we deal with the farmers is as important in development as the final product. Development is as concerned with empowering means as it is with financially empowered ends.

In Embeere and Kirinyaga, we are working to get simple, cost-effective irrigation systems installed, while also beginning the trainings. The Embeere group, which is in a drought-prone region, is working really hard, hoping that aloe vera’s drought resistance will make it a good source of income for them. Pray for them as they continue to learn how to take care of this new crop, and for us as we continue to try to understand the marketing aspects of the crop.

In Mang’u, the group continues to sell passion fruit, which is a huge blessing. Several of the farmers have almost paid off their loans, and they sold 70 kilos just yesterday! But many of the farmers’ crops have failed, and the group is struggling to find its way. Rebecca and I recently lead the group in a discussion to try to understand what has worked, what hasn’t, and what could be added to the group to make it stronger. This was all, of course, a great excuse for me to play with beans and rankings again like I did in Bungoma (check out thedudegoestoafrica.blogspot.com for pictures of what it looked like last time). The long and short of it is that we used participatory activities to make sure that everyone’s voice was heard, and that the group will be able to plan how to go forward. One thing we learned in classes back at CC that we’re seeing in real life now is that participation by the community is the most important element of community development. Designing good programs is much less important than empowering the community to design their own. This is a first step in shifting the focus away from us and back to the group.*

Other Stuff
To begin with, we’ve started a garden. Most of you are probably imagining us with a nice little plot outside of our grass thatched hut. In reality, it currently consists of two used tires and a seedling tray in our concrete driveway. Urban gardening is definitely in with the Rhodes family. This is our first effort at growing something from start to finish, and we’ve begun with tomatoes, carrots, and lettuce. We have absolutely no clue what we’re doing, and I honestly never expected anything to come up whatsoever. But about a week ago, on day five, we saw some green! And now, our little tires are just full of little veggies (that will, because of our ignorance, probably never make it out of the tire, but nonetheless)! I have to admit, seeing a bit of the process in our own backyard (tires), got us both pretty fired up.

We’ve also been introduced to some great new opportunities recently, both in terms of work and otherwise. I (Michael) recently got asked to lead a two part Sunday School class with the new deacons at New City Fellowship. The pastors heard that Bec and I are involved in microenterprise development, and wanted us to talk to the deacons about ministry among the poor. This was an incredible opportunity for us, because we love our church, and had prayed and thought about how God might use us to participate in the conversation about how the church can continue its life-giving, kingdom ministry with and among the urban poor. I spent the entire first session talking about God’s heart for the poor from Genesis to Revelation, and preparing for it was a good way for me to open my eyes again to the radical nature of God’s Word. Whenever I feel like I’ve got a good grip on my economic or political theory, the Scriptures quickly put me in my place.

Rebecca has also been introduced to some new opportunities, and is currently considering committing one day a week to a CRWRC/CCS project targeting high school age girls with programs to help keep them from being vulnerable to HIV/AIDS. This would include health training, as well as informal counseling and community building activities (cottage ministries, and most importantly for my athletic counterpart, SOCCER!). It would also require about a week’s worth of training, and could expand even into some basic economic training similar to what we’re already doing. We think this would be a great way for Bec to continue to use her gifts and abilities to really be a part of God’s kingdom work here. Pray for us as we think through all the ins and outs of this.

We went to our Kiswahili teacher’s children’s home to lead a soccer workshop with kids ages 8-17 last Saturday. We had a blast, I scored my first goal in any soccer game ever anywhere, and Rebecca wowed everybody who participated. Julius, our teacher who runs the children’s home, really is an incredible man of God who is doing really great community work for the kingdom.

We’re also diving more and more into a network or relationships here in Nairobi. Our neighbors, Josh and Emma, continue to be awesome guides around the city, and have also visited our church with us occasionally. This yielded practical returns when Josh came to our rescue after we broke down in downtown Nairobi at 11:00 p.m. (he’s a mechanic). We are growing more and more in our relationships with our predominately Indian-Kenyan Bible Study group, which has also grown into a Tuesday night badminton/Indian food event. And we’ve continued to enjoy playing soccer occasionally with the young Kenyans in the NCF youth group, and getting to know Agnus, our friend and house helper who lives in one of the poorer areas in Nairobi.

Agnus in particular has really helped us to understand the beauty of God’s image bearers who are living in Nairobi slums, and also the vast network of oppressive forces that they face in their daily lives. Just as a recent example, when Agnus got pneumonia recently, she had to get a “loan” from her neighbors . . . at 30% interest per month, while still not really being able to take care of her 8 kids and one adopted addition. Rebecca has led the charge in us trying to help Agnus plan financially, to begin saving with us (because she doesn’t have access to a bank), and to try to make the income she gets support her life.** Now Agnus is putting away her rent money every month with us, and only going home with a portion of her pay from us after working, letting us keep the rest in a “savings account” for a rainy day. This has reminded us that some of the most important work we do among the poor isn’t with big programs or based on education and specialized skills. It is the person-to-person, “walking with” our friends who find themselves in bad economic straits, and trying to apply God’s word to both of our lives together. And that’s something we can all be a part of in our lives.

Peace,
Michael

*Our explanation of our work on the blog is technical because we assume that people that go to the blog want to know more than those who just read our update emails. If you ever have questions or want to know more, please drop us an email at michaelandrebeccarhodes@gmail.com

**Agnus is also part of a cottage ministry that makes beautiful greeting cards. These have authentic Kenyan artwork on the front, and are made out of recycled materials. The proceeds go directly to benefit people who are doing honest work to provide for themselves instead of turning to all sorts of immoral alternatives or giving in to the despair that surrounds them. If you are interested in placing an order, we’d love to facilitate that. And seriously, they’re really cool.