Back again

Yes, I am back, not just from Msafara, but from suffering from some stomach bug (which was never identified). I am still processing all that I experienced and learned on Msafara. It was a emotionally, physically and spiritually draining trip, but it was also amazing, moving and indescribable.

Let me give you an idea of what we did. In the group, I was part of the volunteer team which meant that much of what we did was with IDPs (internally displaced persons - get used to the abbreviation!). In every place, while the pastors were meeting with the local pastors and working on reconciliation among them, we would go to the IDP camps. It has been more than a month since the peace deal was signed, but there are still over 200 IDP camps all over the country. The people there are still waiting to see the fruits of the peace deal. During the visits, we got to talk with displaced people and hear some of their stories. Even though there is "peace" now, these people cannot return to their homes because they have either been burnt, or they just do not yet feel safe going back. Many of them, even kids, have witnessed people being killed or hurt and their houses and properties being burnt or destroyed. Many of them are also still very bitter and hurt on the inside - they cannot or do not want to forgive what has been done to them. In that, it is hard for them to move on and to have hope for the future.

We tried to help these people in different ways: We brought "hygiene packs" that were distributed, we interacted with the people, talking with grown-ups and playing with the kids, and we had worship services with them. Even though these people have been taken care of physically and also have been given counselling, they are really thirsting for spiritual food and spiritual accompaniment in what they are going through. It was amazing to see people in the IDP camp in Nakuru breaking down in tears, asking God to help them be able to forgive those who had hurt them. In many ways, this is just the beginning of the work of reconciliation - we pray that this seed will grow and bear fruit. Many are not yet able to think of forgiving or reconciling - much still needs to happen for them to be able to move on. (For some people this is the third time that they have been chased away in post-election clashes.)

In Eldoret and Kisumu, the tension could still be felt on the streets as we came into town.

Oops, I have run out of time and must leave for our retreat... to be continued!

Msafara - Wheels of Hope

A few weeks ago, I wrote about the changes our church was making because of the political and humanitarian situation. A third of the staff was left in charge of running the church and the services, the other two groups started working with IDPs (internally displaced persons) and with the Msafara - the caravan of hope. For weeks the latter group (together with many other churches and pastors) has been preparing this caravan of hope which will be going through the five major cities that experienced post-election violence to work for healing and reconciliation.

Since I am in the group that has been running the church and the services, I did not expect to go on the Msafara (meaning caravan or convoy - safari, by the way, means trip). This week I was told that I could/should go, so I am getting ready to leave in a few hourse. For more information, you can check the website: http://www.msafara.co.ke/.

Tonight (Friday), we are leaving for Mombasa. We are staying there until Sunday night, coming back to Nairobi again at night. We then leave again for Nakuru on Tuesday morning, continuing on to Eldoret and Kisumu and coming back to Nairobi on the 17th of March. This means that it will be pretty silent on this blog for the next ten days, but I appreciate your prayers for safety and protection as we travel. Pray that God may bring true healing to the country of Kenya. Even in the church, pastors and members are divided along political and tribal lines.

I am actually not sure yet what I will be doing, but I am sure there will be plenty to do, whether it be with logistics, humanitarian aid, prayer or counselling. I will let you know when I get back! While I am gone, you can keep up with the happenings through the msafara blog: www.msafara.wordpress.com.

"We have a deal"

Today, finally, there is good news about the political situation. It is the news we have all been waiting to hear for the last two months. Kibaki and Raila Odinga have signed a coalition agreement whereby (not sure of the correct usage of this word, but this is a favourite word of Kenyans and is used in any and every context) the new post of prime minister will be created. The part about the prime minister was agreed upon some time ago, but the details and the powers of the prime minister and president took a long time to be worked out. Kofi Annan gave up talking with the two groups of party representatives this week and announced that he would be talking with the two head leaders, since they were the ones who really would have to agree. Today they finally struck a deal. (To read about the details of the deal, look up http://www.eastandard.net/news/?id=1143982557&cid=4.)

Everyone is relieved at the news. For such a long time we have been going back and forth between hope and dispair, further development in the talks and people predicting the failure of the talks, that it seems hard to believe that the crisis has finally come to an end. Our hope of the talks ending successfully had been deferred so many times that I realised that I had not dared hope for such a quick resolution when Kofi Annan announced his plans to talk with the leaders. The good news has yet to sink in. Finally, we can move on. Thank God.

Then again, many people will not be able to move on for a very long time. There are still thousands of people in living in camps, unable to return. They do not know yet where they will be going and how they will be able to continue their lives after they have lost everything. Hatred between tribal communities is still festering and there is additional bitterness over what has happened in the last few weeks. There is still much work to be done.

I hope and pray that this coalition will last and that the underlying issues of this crisis (such as tribalism and economic disparity) will be addressed and taken care of (and not swept under the carpet as they have been every other time they have come up).

Intern Commissioning

Today is my day off, which I spent going for a swim and hanging out with Njeri (fellow intern and service manager). This is also when I get to catch up on blog-writing, because I still have not written about the historical event of intern commissioning on March 17th!
Last Sunday but one (as Kenyans say), the interns were officially introduced and commissioned (“eingesetzt”) in church. There are 23 interns, 18 Kenyans, one Indian-Ethiopian, one Armenian, two Germans and one Swiss (two of the interns were missing on Sunday). Dressed in black pants or skirts and with a Kanga (Kenyan piece of fabric used as clothing by coastal tribes) around our shoulders, we walked up on stage – barefoot! The bare feet were in order that we could receive African sandals as a symbol of those who go out to bring good news (“How beautiful on the mountains are the feet of those who bring good news, who proclaim peace, who bring good tidings, who proclaim salvation, who say to Zion, ‘Your God reigns!’” Isaiah 52:7). In that sense we are now sent and enabled to do our work for the church and for God.
I was happy to receive new sandals (the ones I bought in 2005 broke shortly after I got here), but I have only worn them twice for a very short time. They are still very hard and stiff, not like my comfortable old ones, and after the first ten minutes of wearing them I already had a blister. I have worn them once since the first day, trying to break them in slowly (“einlaufen”). I guess it is the same with the internship and the work I am doing here. I am still in the process of being broken in, getting used to the culture, the expectations and the kind of work I am doing.
You can take a look at the pictures from the commissioning as soon as I put the link up on the right. I have also gotten some pictures from the German couple of our relief work in January which you might want to take a look at.


Intern Work
The last week I have been very busy, often working until six in the evenings and continuing at home. I now have specific jobs: being in the service planning team, being service manager (I am still a bit fuzzy on what exactly this entails), putting together the bulletin (“Mitteilungsblatt”) and teaching baptism class. I started baptism class last Sunday and will be doing that every Sunday until Easter. There are only five people in the class (in a church of 1200 people), but I have enjoyed preparing the material and teaching last Sunday. I am getting a slow start on the bulletin because there were special bulletins last Sunday and the coming Sunday, so I only had to do an insert with the announcements. In the future, putting together the bulletin will also mean ghost-writing the main article for the pastors!
This week, some of us are able to go to a seminar on counseling for rape victims. I am looking forward to it, even though it will mean catching up on all the work on Thursday and getting up very early tomorrow morning (latest by 5:30am) to get through the traffic and across town by 8am.

Survival Tactics for Interns

I am back. After having been very quiet the last two weeks, I am trying to catch up with blogging. Part of the reason why I have not written any blog entries is because I have been very busy. I have now gotten the responsibility together with Njeri, another intern, of becoming “service managers”. This means that we are in charge of everything happening in the Sunday service. We oversee everything from cleanliness to the décor to lighting/sound to making sure the pastors have everything they need for the service. On Sunday, I got the first taste of what this might look like and set up the following guidelines for myself (to be taken a grain of salt (= nicht ganz ernst nehmen)):

• Never ask about anything that is not your responsibility – it might become yours.

• Do not show too much interest or empathy for someone with an administrative or organisational problem – you might be asked to be part of the solution (or even worse, it might become your problem).

• When having made the mistake of taking on extra responsibility, be sure to delegate the job to someone else.

• When being asked to solve someone else’s problem (e.g. “Please go look for XY and tell her to come to here”), have a good reason at hand why you are not available right now. – Look busy at all times!

• When faced with a problem, the best solution is not necessarily to ask your supervisor. Ask someone who you know will give you a clear answer, an immediate solution or realistic options. Ask someone you know will get things done!

• Do not give the impression of being reliable or trustworthy or you will be given more work than you already have. Other option: Make sure to delegate your work to others, but make sure they are trustworthy, otherwise it will all come back to you!

Hospital visit

Last week I went to the hospital to visit Njeru’s mother. I went with Njeru, also a pastoral trainee at Nairobi Chapel, and a pastor from Nairobi Chapel. Njeru’s mom had had a stroke the week before. They had been able to have her transferred to Kenyatta Hospital from a hospital outside the city because they have a relative working in administration at Kenyatta (the sign outside the hospital says “corruption free zone”). I was amazed at how many people were walking around the hospital. It was absolutely crowded and we had to stand in line to get in the elevator. When I visit the hospital in Switzerland, I mostly see nurses and doctors in the hallways – here I was noticing all the other people. I soon realised why there were so many people. In Kenya, if you are sick, you do not just get visits from your family and friends, but from your family’s friends (like me) and your friends’ friends. There were eight people in the room with Mama Njeru – usually about ten at all times according to Njeru, sometimes they have to take turns being in the room. I cannot imagine being ill and constantly surrounded by ten people, many of whom I do not even know. Maybe that is why they limit visiting hours to 12-2pm and 4:30-6pm.

Not Business as Usual

A week ago I thought that the internship was starting to become clearer and more organized, but on Friday, everything changed.

The first few weeks in January, everyone was focused on the political situation and the violence that had taken place. Churches were trying to help those who had suffered from violence and were speaking out publicly for peace. As things quietened down, people tried to return to their normal lives, expecting the situation to be resolved soon. Now it has been more than a month, and the situation has not really gotten better, even though here in Nairobi one can live one's life almost as if nothing had happened. While the mediation talks are going on, there is still violence and the number of internally displaced persons (IDP) is increasing. I have heard stories where the message was passed around a town or neighbourhood, warning the members of a certain tribe to get out before the end of the next day unless they wanted to be killed. The people concerned do not wait to find out whether the threat is true but leave their homes behind and seek refuge in a police station or church. This ethnically motivated violence has continued and will not be stopped through the resolution of the political situation. On the other hand I have heard reports of an area close to Nairobi where the pastors in the area reacted to the threats of ethnic cleansing by going out and speaking to people one-on-one and in groups, convincing them that this was not the right path to pursue. In that way, violence in that neighbourhood could be avoided.

Last week, the pastors of my church, Nairobi Chapel, decided that they could not continue business as usual. It is not business as usual for those people living in camps fearing that their attackers will come to attack their camp, neither should it be business as usual for us. The situation is not resolved yet and we believe the church should be part of the process towards peace and reconciliation. Therefore the church has decided to release a part of the pastors and staff to work in the following areas: opening the church ground up to displaced people (especially since the Jamhuri camp close to Nairobi Chapel is closing down and sending people back home - not all of them can return home), being a media presence to tell stories of hope instead of violence and destruction, setting up a "caravan of hope" (500 pastors who will visit the affected areas), and networking with community leaders in Kibera and Dagoretti (the area around the church) to convince them to use their influence among the populuation for peace.

It is exciting to see the church making this kind of a decision, but it also means that a part of our internship program is put on hold for now. A third of the staff will keep the Sunday services running while the others are busy on new projects. As I am on the pastoral care team, we are still more or less working on the same things, but we have also taken on service planning in addition to our regular tasks. The other tasks that I have been given is to set up a canteen (a cafeteria) after church on Sundays to raise money for the interns and to come up with a four-week baptismal class which will be starting in two weeks!

The canteen was successfully started last Sunday, and we made a good profit, though we have to get more efficient on setting up and cleaning up. We hope to sell even more as people get used to the idea of having a snack (samosas, donuts or hamburgers) or a soda after the service.

I do hope, however, that we will be able to continue our readings and discussions which I found very interesting and stimulating. We have been reading two books on leadership and church growth/church management ("Courageous Leadership" by Bill Hybels and "The 7 Practices of Effective Ministry" by A. Stanley, L. Jones and R. Joiner).