A month in Kenya

I haven't written a blog for some time as I have  been in Kenya for the whole of February with no access to internet on my laptop. Being in Kenya was a real eye opener to the issues people face in many so called "developing" nations. Despite doing my best to befriend and respond to the needs of friends in Uganda, Kenya, Nigeria and Pakistan there was much they would tell me about their daily realities that I still fed through the lens of my privileged experience living in Aotearoa. Kenya is more prosperous than many African nations yet I had no comprehension of how difficult and costly transport is there. Many people do not own cars but travel in a matatu or minibus which might be designed to carry 14 people but would somehow fit as many as 20 or more people were waiting beside the road. Alternatively one could pay more for a private driver who would likely be one of the many qualified professionals who could find no work fitting their university training so driving becomes their means of survival. And that is the other reality. There is no unemployment benefit yet a great deal of unemployment. So many people are out in the towns selling fruit or clothes or whatever they can to scratch together a living. The wealth pyramid in Kenya reminds me of stories of the Roman Empire in which the vast majority of people were very poor. Then a relatively small number ranged from having secure employment and income through to the obscenely wealthy old families of Rome with the Emperor at the top of pyramid.

Sadly, some of the obscenely wealthy in Kenya are "Christian" ministers who pressure people who are living in poverty to give so they can live in luxury. A favourite Biblical source of support for this seems to be the book of the prophet Malachi who addressed the opposite situation of a wealthy and complacent Jewish community who were neglecting the tithe which paid for the upkeep of the temple and the livelihood of the priesthood. So it was entirely proper to challenge such a community. To apply such a message to justify wealthy clergy and huge money spent on building programmes when a congregation is living in poverty is nothing short of obscene. The "offertory" in Kenyan Churches is a very public affair with people coming forward, placing their gift in the large bag placed on the altar for this purpose and a leader calling out the amount given by each person and everyone clapping. In fact if the congregation fail to clap they will be instructed to do so. I'm not quite clear how this is seen as obeying Jesus teaching in Matthew 6:1-4.  

Recently  a young friend, himself an orphan, who runs an orphanage for nine other street children in Uganda, was evicted by the landlady because he could not find the monthly rent money. He asked me to explain what a western supporter meant by this message: "But...may there be other properly funded ministries or existing charities? Do pray about possible solutions to compare and so will I!" I thought, "Yeah, sure, you really get it don't you!!! NOT! Show me a 'properly funded ministry or charity' in Uganda". If there are any I have yet to come across them. EVERYONE I know who is trying to help vulnerable people in Uganda is hopelessly underfunded and over stretched as they try to simply help a few. Ten orphans who are evicted because they cannot pay the rent simply do not have other places to turn. That is why they have banded together to form their own little solution and managed for most of the time time to have beans and posho to eat, a roof over their heads, and somehow have scraped together enough money to attend school, until the next rent bill came.

Of course when I first met this young man online I was, in my ignorance asking similar questions. "Why did you start this orphanage if you did not have the resources to run it?" As he told me the sad story of how he was orphaned when his parents died in a car accident, how he lived on the streets until a woman took pity on him and took him in, how she then died but for a time he was allowed to live in her home, how he then did what she had done and tracked down some of his street friends who were the closest thing to family he had, how her family then turned them out so he found the place they had been renting ever since, how he had worked to pay the bills and grown their down food in the garden he had planted, until bad weather destroyed everything he had grown, and the person who gave him work moved away. And now that I have been in relatively wealthy Kenya for a month I understand. There is no social safety net to bail people out in such situations. People use their survival instincts to get by somehow, or they become criminals, or they die. 

This is  Africa, and this is life in much of the world. Those of us who live in a different world have a responsibility to do what we can to make a difference for a few, in our own communities, because poverty and powerlessness to change one's situation is is just down the street from us, or only a suburb or two away, and in nations in which this is the life of most of the population