This is the second of a multi-part series about my recent trip with a group of former SOS Summer Staff to Kenya to work with farmers and orphans in the name of the gospel. I will post another part every day or two until the story is complete.
The driver took me the Brackenhurst conference center about an hour outside of Nairobi, and helped me to my room that was already arranged for me. After sleeping for a total of maybe fifteen minutes on the plane rides over I was definitely ready to go to bed. I went to bed that night knowing nothing of the next day other than the fact that I was to meet someone at the coffee house at Brackenhurst at 7:30 am. So around 7 am the next morning I stumbled around the conference center until I found the “Muna Tree Cafe” and sat down to wait for someone to arrive that would know what to do with me. Before long Horace Tipton, the founder of Planting Faith approached me and asked me if I was Andrew, to which I responded “Yes, and I’m very happy to see you!”.
We hopped in his car and made the 45 minute drive to where the team was camped out in Thika, with a short stop at the grocery store on the way to buy machetes. We arrived at the camp, thankful to have survived the chaotic Kenyan traffic, and we were greeted by my team members. It was a happy reunion! Even though it had only about two days since I’d seen them, it seemed like much longer.
We were camped next to a children’s home which is also a small farm with a school and a church right next to it. I walked the short the distance to the camp bags in hand and when I arrived I met the team from ACTS that was accompanying us. There were five Kenyan men, each of them a joy to be around. Daniel was our guide, who stayed with us throughout our entire time in Kenya. We also had Paul, our driver, and Reuben who cooked for us, as well as Evans and Ezekiel our guards who patrolled the camp at night keeping watch and warding off stray dogs. The rest of the group had traveled to Thika in a massive vehicle known as the Overlander, which is essentially a large trailer truck, except instead of an actual trailer it had a large open-air seating area with cargo space underneath. The Overlander was pretty much the ultimate camping vehicle as it was where the ACTS team stored all their supplies, include the tank for our drinking water, and it even had a place for our driver Paul to sleep. Daniel and Ezekiel helped me set up my tent and then I headed back to the area where we were working.
Our team had been divided into three smaller teams with different tasks. One team worked inside the children’s home doing some painting, another team worked on making silage to feed the cattle, and the last team built a playground for the children. Since, I arrived late I had already been drafted onto the silage-making team. The next few days of work on the farm were incredibly eye-opening to say the least...
For more information about ACTS visit: http://actsoverland.com/
For more information about Planting Faith visit: http://plantingfaith.org/
(To be continued)
No comments:
Post a Comment