Kenya Kids Can!

Recently Korean missionaries were targeted in a country north of here, and several were killed. All of them were known by our students whose parents work in that country. None of our students’ parents were killed, but the game you can play with yourself that it is all ok and you aren’t in danger being here, came unglued. The next day you could tell every kid that was from that country; the fear was all over them. Their parents were in danger, and that was the reality of the choices they had made to share the gospel.

I was at one of the schools I work with in the valley, and I was trying to film the students about using computers, and it wasn’t coming together. After three tries with three students where I could get nothing but a yes or no out of them, I asked the computer teacher why they were acting like that. She told me that there was no food in most of their homes, and school was ending soon, and that the lunch at school was the only food they got in a day.

Then she asked me, very gently, if I had ever been hungry.

I told her no, I had never been hungry.

She told me that if you had ever been hungry, and you knew you would be again, it was the worst feeling you could imagine. The fear would grab a hold of you and not let go.

The reason the children were not helping was because they were wrapped up in the fear of being hungry.

I thought about this all weekend. On Sunday, my daughter had asked if we could go into town and watch the Hannah Montana movie. (Ben threw up in his mouth when I asked him if he wanted to go.) As we sat in that awful movie, with her sitting eagerly at the edge of her seat, I thought about the unusual path that it took for us to have a daughter.

Having a daughter has helped me face all the awful things I’ve seen in Kenya. Love is the only thing that can help you face fear. And love is the only thing that makes you want to fight for those who don’t have a voice or a chance.

I’m so grateful that love is greater than fear.

Your pal,

Steve

PS: After sitting in my tenth assembly to honor the fourth place volleyball team, I decided that what we needed was an award that recognized the best efforts in college admissions. You can see the story here:

The Prestigious Scheenstra Award (video)
The Prestigious Scheenstra Award Part 2 (video)
The Prestigious Scheenstra Award Part 3 (video)

I hear lots of interesting things as a guidance counselor, but perhaps the greatest thing I’ve heard all year was from a parent who had come in to express her rather extreme displeasure with me about the advice I was giving her daughter:

VERY Displeased Mother: Why on EARTH are you recommending Cal Tech to my daughter?

Me: Your daughter is bright enough to get in and I think Cal Tech is one of the premier colleges in the United States. When I was at Oracle, we revered the graduates. It is a beautiful campus filled with the best minds in the country.

VDM: I FORBID her to go to Cal Tech.

Me: Why?

VDM: It is FAR too nerdy.

Me: Where do you want her to go?

VDM: MIT

Me (Desperately looking at anything besides VDM, and trying to think of unpleasant dental appointments I have had): Oh.

Mom was right, and the first female in our history is going to MIT. And I am QUITE sure that MIT has outgrown any nerdy tendency they ever had.

I had someone ask me if I enjoyed college guidance, and I thought about another student. I think Katie was as insecure of a student as I had ever met when she came to RVA as a freshman. She was gifted, but she really had no confidence. RVA is a place that grows lots of kids, and she was progressing nicely. When she was a junior and I suggested Harvard, she laughed and told me there was no way someone like her could ever go to that college.

She got an interview, and as we drove over to Nairobi, she was pretty nervous. We were with someone else as we drove who was quite a talker, but then we had to take a cab to a part of town I would have never have found on my own. It was just the two of us in the cab, and I told her I really didn’t care where she went to college. That was between her and her parents. What I cared about was that she realized that she had a legitimate place at the table. I encouraged her:  Go and show them who you are.

Our fourth student will be going to Harvard in the fall. I cried when I heard the news. But I cried when our first student was accepted to Wellesley on a full ride, and I cried when I heard the news on all the kids. These parents have sacrificed everything to be on the mission field, and when their kid gets into a great school at a price they can afford, it is as fulfilling as anything I know.

And Tabitha now has all the monies to go to college this year. The only hold up is her getting her passport. Thanks so much for helping her and please pray; there is no reason for them to deny her a passport, but they are doing it to her right now for no good reason. We need a miracle.

One of my best friends here is thinking about adopting a child. He is in his 50s and they didn’t set off to adopt; the baby was abandoned and his wife went down to the hospital to hold her, just because babies need to be held. One thing led to another, and they are in love with this child. But the path of adoption in Kenya is crazy hard, and there are no guarantees. When we were talking about it, he realized that they were opening themselves to potentially tremendous heartache in trying to adopt Hope.

I realized that was the holiest thing I had heard in some time, and probably what we are all called to:  to make our self vulnerable to heartache for something greater than ourselves. 

This has become real in the past few weeks. Perhaps the greatest pain is when you have tried to help someone, and they betray you. We have had so many computer centers attacked that we had to take all the computers and bring them to a secure place. When I would visit a school and didn’t have computers with me, the children would cry.

A part of me was just sick of the hassle. Everything takes 20 times more than what it would take to do in America, and then this started happening. It would be so much easier to just pull the plug. My hero Mark Buhler told me the sad part of that thought is that it would be the children who will suffer.

But if you are fortunate, and you have people praying for you, you can move from disillusionment to anger and cynicism to something greater:  you decide some things are worth fighting for. The thieves don’t motivate you, but you can use what they have done to fuel the drive to not back down.

Bruce came up with a way to reinforce the doors so it will take a tank to break in. Every school now has two guards, equipped with cell phones and weapons. The next school that gets attacked will be greeted with dozens of parents who have been notified, and they will come running. They are outraged at what has happened, and they will fight for their children.

If those who would steal from children want a fight, I will give them a fight. 

Your pal,

Steve

True Confessions Time:  my wife dresses me. This is, I know, a shocking revelation for all those who know me and love and admire my fashion sense, but the truth must come out. The other morning I was in a panic; Nancy had left and I had not determined what shirt would go with what pants. I didn’t know what to do, and then I remembered I had a secret weapon.

Katie.

I called her into our bedroom, and she went through the closet and after examining my shirts, she grabbed one and said, “This one will work.”

And it did. It would be impossible to overestimate the thrill this is for me, although since that day, I get daily appraising looks from my daughter, which sort of make me nervous. But knowing I’m double covered more than makes up for it.

One of our seniors was invited to have an interview with Harvard last week. I took her into town, and waited out in the back yard while she had her interview with an alum of the school. The alum runs a charity that provides sanitary napkins for young women. It is one of those very important, but not widely known charities. At the end of the interview, the alum stopped to chat for several minutes, and told me about her great work. As we left, she said, “Wait” and ran to give me a package.

A package of sanitary napkins. 

I promise you that I am the only person this kind of stuff happens to.

We have another student living with us this term. Like Rupert, she is a university student doing a paper on our work. Rupert wrote about the food program; Becca is documenting how to build a computer center. Both are extremely bright, and Becca has the additional benefit of not being a Brit, which means we do not hear tales of the wonders of baked beans for breakfast.

Becca has more energy than any human I have ever met. My understanding is that police in the United States have order to shoot any coffee out of her hands; caffeine is NOT a need she has. But I receive an email or two a week of people asking how to build a center, and we will have an excellent document to give to them. And if we gave her two cups of coffee, she could build the centers herself.

There have been some alarming things going on here. We had a break-in at one of the computer centers. Five men attacked the guard and hit him in the head with a machete. They broke down the door and got all the computers. It was so discouraging; when I first heard the news, I didn’t know what to do.

But one of my favorite scriptures is Genesis 50:20: “You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives.”  There is a hand-out mentality prevalent here, and part of what we are trying to do is help children get the tools to be able to make a living rather than expect a hand-out. The parents called an emergency meeting, and voted to hire three guards. They didn’t ask for any money from me, they just did it. During one of my calls to the school, I could hear children loudly weeping. The community has seen the value of these centers, and they are going to fight for them.

 The situation in the valley is grim. There has been three crop failures in a row, and it is causing us to go all the way to Uganda to find maize. The prices have gone up so much, and there are an additional 1000 students enrolled in the 34 schools we work with. Bottom line: we only have the monies to buy food for half a term. Again, I don’t know what to do. Please pray for wisdom for us.

I promise I will never do anymore projects, but our last one is to pay for Kenyan students to take the SAT, and then try to find a college for them in the United States. Tabitha graduated first in her class last year. Her father died when she was very young; her mother has AIDS. They live in a one room shack. Tabitha got up at 4am to study for the SAT every day.

She has been accepted to Warren Wilson College and given a $20,000 scholarship. We need about $12,000 more. In some ways, this is so hard to ask. I have a son who goes off to college in 2010, and his meager college fund was pounded into the dirt. I don’t know how he will go to college.

But I will tell you this:  Tabitha is someone worth investing in. One of the major ways to change this country is to educate its citizens, and she wants to study medicine and work in rural Kenya.  She has nothing; we will need airfare, clothing, books, and the rest of the monies.

She will change the world if she is given the chance.

Your pal,
Steve

P.S. Check out our first video:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tdeOfEsUC_o

Never been too good at that romance thing. Actually took my wife to Schindler’s List on Valentine’s Day once. But with age comes wisdom, and you add a big dollop of that holy missionary stuff, you really start to have the goods.

RVA has a senior banquet every year. The juniors do it in honor of the seniors. They write a play, build a set, perform it for them and cook all the food. The only people allowed are the seniors, the juniors, and the sponsors of each class. For some reason this year, Nancy and I were invited.

One of the important rituals here at RVA is making a big deal about how you ask someone to banquet. The kids go to amazing lengths to ask; so much so that the administration of the school has had to set times when you can start asking, and make some rules on what you can and cannot do.

Nancy made it clear that she was expecting to be asked, and that I shouldn’t presume. That made me a little nervous, although Katie let me know that if momma said no, she would go with me. That took the pressure off, but I was DETERMINED to make an impression.

I had to take someone into town that week, and maybe the one thing you can get cheaper in Kenya is flowers. I bought 100 roses and spent less than $12. I would bring them home, and when Nancy came in, wow would she get a surprise.

She DID get a surprise. The school encourages us to hire local people to work in our homes, and so I had asked Teresa to arrange the flowers. She got the ten bundles and stacked them neatly on the table. So, when we got home, we had the fun of cutting the bottom off 100 roses. But that wasn’t the worst part.

It is a very guy thing to buy his wife 100 roses. It is NOT a guy thing to ask the question, “Where would you PUT 100 roses?” It turned out there wasn’t a good answer to that question, and the answer wasn’t romantic.

I did go down on one knee and ask my bride to go with me. And she said yes. But she had to help me back up off the floor.

Maybe I don’t have the goods just yet. 

About the week before the banquet, it occurred to me that I only owned one suit and I had not worn it since the CNN thing. When I tried it on, I realized that I needed to lose about twenty pounds in five days, and that was my BEST option. The day came, and I realized that if I huffed and puffed like the big bad wolf, I could manage to put the pants on. Later, Lamaze breathing techniques became the key to the five-hour event. I believe the phrase that would come to mind is putting 20 bags of manure in a 15 pound bag.

Romance: I’ve got it COVERED.

Ben came down with malaria, which was really scary. We have been here ten years and none of us have gotten malaria before. Malaria is fairly easily treatable, but the only way they know for sure you have it is if they can do blood work while you are running high fever. Since he was running a 104 fever, the malaria showed up. He had felt sick for awhile, but the meds we used when we went to the coast virtually ensure that you won’t get it, so the doctors initially ruled it out. He was one sick boy for about a week, but he is back to his old self, and we are so grateful for that.

I don’t know what your politics are, but it was pretty amazing to be in Kenya during the swearing in of the new president. Nancy and the twins were watching the swearing in, and Katie asked if she could get out the American flags. So during the swearing in, the three of them sat on the couch and waved American flags.

Ben asked me, “Dad, did you know there has never been a black president before today?”

Whatever your politics, it is good to break out ceilings.

I was visiting with a headmaster this week, and he told me that it was so dry that Kenya was in danger of having the third consecutive crop failure. It is hard to know what to say to someone in that situation; you can tell that many of the children are only eating lunch now, because there is no food at home.

I told him I would pray.

He told me that was the best thing I could do.

Your pal,
Steve

I like the word “yako.”

In Swahili, it means yours, but being a creative sort, I have found it has a myriad of uses. Unlike my wife, who has managed to become fairly fluent in Swahili, I have found that my breathtaking pace of learning one new word of Swahili a year was not equipping me to interact in the community like I needed to.

I began a new way of learning language, and I believe that it may revolutionize the entire field. What I have done is utilize the words I have learned, and make the word mean whatever I want at the time.

For example, I greet almost every Kenya by saying, “You have no yako.” What does that mean? I’m usually not sure, but it has its intended effect, which is to make sure they switch to English when dealing with me.

But it has further uses. Margaret often asks me to pray for rain, and so I tell her, “You love yako so much.” She knows that it means rain. We are paying for Peris, a young Kenyan woman, to take a computer class, so I often remind her, “You must work hard on your yako.”

I think I am on to something big.

The school was understaffed this year, which meant that most of us ended the year feeling pretty exhausted. Our superintendent had a party for the staff after the term was over and reminded us that there really wasn’t a way to have pulled off this term.

It really was a miracle.

The hardest scripture in the Bible says that He delights in being strong in our weakness. This has been a year of weakness, of failing, and having Him be strong in me in spite of it all. I’ve always hated looking like a failure, even when it was painfully obvious to all but me, but it has been a breakthrough year. I am weak, and I’m starting not to care who knows.

As someone who has always had an answer for everything, especially when I didn’t have a clue, this has been the year of “I don’t know.” There have been so many issues in the community this year where I just didn’t have a clue as to what to do. It has been so humbling to start almost every conversation with “I don’t know,” but it has also been freeing and taught me to seek Him in a new way.

He knows.

Nancy has started getting involved in a local orphanage for little girls, and we went over there the other day. To see how little they have and how happy they are can help you look at your life in a new way. They have 20 little girls, and they live in the simplest way you can imagine. The government is supposed to help them, but they haven’t quite gotten around to it yet. Edwin, the man in charge, told me, “There are so many orphans.”

That was my cue to want to talk about all the need there is, and how this week, as headmasters called me and asked if we could add their schools, I was forced to say that no, I haven’t been able to raise the monies needed to add any schools this year. To hear grown men cry is as horrible as anything I can think of.

But Edwin said, “With what little we have, we are satisfied.”

And for the first time, I realized that I could be grateful for what we could do, and not bemoan my failures. We ended the year with 18,300 children being fed lunch every school day. Virtually every school had huge increases in how they were rated in their zones, and the dropout rate flirted with 0%. We have 15 computer centers operational now, and Bruce Kinzer, the force of nature who builds them, has started to add shelves to the centers, so they can also function as a library.

2008 started with a riot. It ended with a celestial celebration, and a reminder of who is in charge. We are grateful to Him for all He has done through you all. You have made such a difference in these children’s lives.

JT arrives here next week, and we are so excited to have him here. We hope that you have the chance to be with your loved ones this holiday.

Merry Christmas and a Yako New Year.

See?

It really does work.

Your pal,
Steve

Being the college counselor in Kenya is interesting in ways you don’t always expect.  The best counselor I know told me that most of her kids stayed in the northeast, so she didn’t get to know colleges outside of that region. I have had to learn the whole United States, and I’m starting to know Korean universities also.

But sometimes you get kids that come up with interesting ideas on their own. I had a student last week who is Korean, and he was very upset that I hadn’t told him about this great school he had discovered.

It was Howard University, probably the premier university for African American men. It took a long time to explain why it might not be a fit.

We had to take eight kids to take the TOEFL test (an English language test required of all non-US citizens wishing to attend universities in America) into Nairobi last week. We left at 7am, arrived around 8:20 and were to begin the test at 9. I had signed the kids up the first week of September, and had paid for all of them at that time.

At 9:30, they announced there were technical difficulties, and only four of the kids could take the test. So four of the kids started taking the test at 10, and four started taking the test at 12. It is almost four hours, and the room that they had to take it in was almost 100 degrees. We had plans to take them out to lunch at 1, but instead they ate cold pizza and warm Cokes during the breaks.

We ended up getting home at 5:30. None of them complained.

This is the busiest time of the year for me, and I work lots of hours getting college applications done. But writing recommendations for these kids is one of the joys of my life. I finished JiHee’s recommendation with this:  ”Africa can make you old and cynical, but JiHee reminds me that that the right person in the right place can still change the whole world.”

I asked Nancy to write about our return to our roots; our first year in Kenya we did this a lot:

This year we facilitate a Sunday school class of juniors and seniors who go down to the crippled children’s hospital to share a Bible story, sing, and then play with the kids who are patients. We have a great group of students and they are such a blessing to the kids.  The favorite games are batting a balloon back and forth or popping the bubbles that are blown. Often one or more of us would take our digital cameras and take pictures, which the kids just love to see. Last month a visiting friend brought us a small photo printer which we can take down to the hospital and print photos out on the spot. Most of them have never had a picture of themselves, and you should see their faces when we hand them a picture of themselves that they can keep. Yesterday, one mama just kept saying “Nimefurahi  sana!” over and over again as she danced around the room holding the photo of her and her daughter. That means “I have just become so happy!” Sometimes when you share the love of Jesus it isn’t received, but sometimes you get the blessing of someone in some way expressing, “Nimefurahi  sana!”

School ended for the year for most Kenyan schools on Friday, but I got notice from several of the computer teachers that the students were requesting that they keep teaching, so many of the centers will stay open when school is done because of popular demand. That is such an encouraging sign, and then we went to a new center last week.

I was trying to think of something profound to say about Thanksgiving, and I came upon this little boy, who was wearing rags and had no shoes. He didn’t even have a spoon; he was eating with his fingers.

And he came up to me and pointed at the computer center and at his food and said:  ”I am so happy.”

Happy Thanksgiving.

Your pal,
Steve

Before I went on my last trip, Matthew had a dilemma:

Matthew: I really want to ask JoAnna to movie night.
Me: That sounds great.
Matthew: I just don’t know WHEN to ask.
Me: Why don’t you ask her during play rehearsal?
Matthew: I CAN’T ask her during rehearsals.
Me: Why?
Matthew: She plays my MOTHER in the play.

Another time opened up, she accepted, and a fine time was had by all. And I thought it showed unusual brilliance in my son to realize that there are ways and there are ways to start a relationship.

I had the opportunity to go to the States, and spoke at Warner Pacific College and Corban College in Portland, Oregon. It is amazing that anyone would want me to speak at a chapel, and both schools were very kind and supportive.

But what I want to talk to you about is that someone I didn’t know until a few months ago, and who I met over the internet, picked me up at the airport, fed me and housed me, and drove me around Portland so I could see some RVA kids.

I promise you, when we get to the other side, no one will remember a word of what I said, but the self-effacing attitude of two retired doctors humbles me every time I think of it. In fact, if you need a speaker, I assure you that I would much rather hear the Thompson’s than me, and I’m me.

I marvel at the body of Christ.

From Portland I flew to Seattle, where my conference was taking place. It was also the scene of the greatest concert of all recorded history. I’m happy, for any who request it, a song by song analysis of the concert. It should only take 40 minutes to read.  It really was great, and the 18,000 people there with me had a blast. The gentlemen in front of me told me to congratulate him, and when I did, he told me that he had just turned 84. I was tempted to say that was the median age of concert goers, but actually there was a wide variety of people there. And Neil Diamond is still hungry; after all these years, he went out there like he still had something to prove.

But what I want to talk to you about is that Neil Diamond’s guitar player provided tickets, back stage passes, a tour book signed by the entire band, and an autographed picture of the man himself inscribed to Steve and Nancy. I had never met Doug before, but he had done all these kind things to a stranger.

I marvel at the body of Christ.

I was in Seattle to attend a conference of colleges, and the highlight is when they have a college fair, and they had over six hundred colleges present. It is a chance to go booth to booth and meet reps from schools. We had some local women make tiny baskets that had RVA on the outside of them, and they could fit one package of tea that said Out of Africa on the cover. I hired Loren, a former RVA grad and a handsome young man, to go booth to booth while I focused on colleges where I knew where our students would be applying.

So I’m in the middle of this huge convention center, and I’m speaking with a famous college on the east coast not known for its conservative Christian thought. I tell them about a student who is applying, and I read one paragraph of her very touching essay. The vice president of this college breaks into tears, and tells me, “Oh my God, we need kids like that at our school.”

Twelve-day trips are so exhausting, but suddenly I felt very alive.

After getting to speak at a church and seeing some friends, I got to speak at Darlington School in Georgia, which is a fantastically amazing high school. I spoke in the morning, afternoon and evening, and they were kinder than kind. The students have decided to eat beans and rice once a week and donate the proceeds to the food program.

Something else happened that looks almost too amazing to be true, and I can’t quite talk about it yet, but it was another sign that God was still opening doors.

The highlight was getting to see JT and my sister and brother in law. I actually got to spend a night in JT’s dorm, and as I watched my son sleep on the floor so I could sleep in his bed, I marveled at how well his mother raised him. They keep interesting hours in college dorms, so I don’t remember much, but I was so grateful for the time with him.

A headmaster called me last week and told me that the food program was saving lives right now, and he wanted to thank me. I told him I wasn’t the guy to thank, and so he said, “So whoever they are; thank them and tell them they are saving lives.”

But I want to balance that by saying I know very well what has happened to the U.S. in the last few weeks. We wanted to tell you that if this is a difficult time for you, please don’t feel obligated to continue to support us or these projects. We trust the Lord, and we know He is the provider. 

Nancy had an amazing experience that I asked her to share:

Recently I took a group of high school girls to an orphanage one Saturday.  We took some maize and beans and the girls spent the morning playing with the 15 girls ages 5-16. I haven’t been able to get those 15 girls or Ruth, who runs the orphanage, out of my mind even though life here at RVA has been crazy busy. So finally, last Friday some time opened up for me and I called Ruth and arranged to go and  visit.  I had cleaned out Ben and Katie’s closet of  outgrown clothes and we also have some solar flashlights that were given to us that I wanted to take along. 

I arrived and gave her the clothes and showed her one of the flashlights. (I had brought 20 to give her, but had left most in the car for the second load.) She told me that when she told her husband I was coming, he said, “Maybe she will bring us a torch (flashlight).”  I thought that an interesting thing to specifically want when there were so many things they could use.  

What was more interesting was when I brought out the other 19 solar flashlights.  I was helping her install the batteries and she just started smiling and said, “You have heard God. On Monday, Kenya Power and Light came and cut our stima (electricity) because we could not pay the bill.  We have been using a few candles at night and we didn’t know what to do. You are such a blessing to us.”

I said, “But the real blessing is that about 6 months ago — before you ever had trouble paying for the stima — God put it on the heart of a man in America to send us many of these torches so that now, when you need them, they are here. Our God knows what we need before we ever know we will have the need. That is what is so wonderful about this.”

I marvel at the body of Christ.

This has gone long, and I’m sorry, but there is one more story that can’t wait. One of my best friends in Kijabe is Dr. Rich, the dentist. He is the nicest human on the planet, and is beloved by all. There was a abandoned baby at the hospital, and his wife started to go down to hold her every day, because newborns need to be held.

The hospital was overcrowded, and so they asked them if they could take the baby home until some room opened up. What happened next surprised them all. Dr. Rich is in his early 50′s, with a son in dental school, a daughter at Chapel Hill, a senior, a sophomore and a sixth grader at RVA. They weren’t looking, but the entire family started falling in love with this baby, and they are now wrestling with the thought of adoption.

Right now, my favorite scripture is when Jesus tells some of the disciples to go to the fish’s mouth and get coins. I’ve puzzled over that for years; why would He tell them to do that? I think part of it was Jesus was fun, and that was a cool way to give them money. The other reason is this:  Jesus wanted them to know that He was in charge, and His ways are not our ways. 

These are perilous times, but I believe in the God who puts coins in the fish’s mouths. 

And I bet the baby does, too. Her name indicates she might understand a lot. 

Her name is Hope.

Your pal,
Steve

When I got the opportunity to attend the first RVA student’s graduation from Harvard, I got to meet Sam’s family, and his brother Rupert. Rupert is 21 and doing a thesis on non- profit organizations, and he asked if he could write about the computer and food programs. We said yes, and he moved in the beginning of the month. He has fit in as part of the family; the twins get upset if they don’t get to say good night to him, and the young ladies on campus are all sweet on him.

We knew that our British friend had an impact on the family when I asked Ben how he was doing, and he said, in his best cockney accent, “Brilliant, actually.”

To keep things in perspective, I remind him often that we won the big war, which I’m sure he is grateful to hear and be constantly reminded of.

Matthew was named as the section head of the percussion section of jazz band, and I finally put my foot down. After he got the male lead in a musical back home, and now this, the nagging doubt started to trouble me.

Is it possible that we received the wrong baby at the hospital? Because of my legendary skills in dancing and rhythm in general, I was haunted by the fact that perhaps, just perhaps, we picked up the wrong baby. It happens. Matthew reminds me that his mother won the dance award at her high school, and so it is probably nothing to worry about.

Probably.

After last month’s stirring email about the woes of traveling, I did manage to forget that I had one more trip planned next week. I am speaking at a couple of colleges in Portland, a college conference in Seattle, a high school in Atlanta, and a day with JT in North Carolina.

And a certain concert. To celebrate, a friend is marketing these:

http://www.zazzle.com/steve_peifer_is_not_neil_diamond_bumpersticker-128490527355909301

I have been sharing my grand news about the concert with the entire staff and student body, and while you might expect jealous rage, this is such a holy place that if I didn’t know better, you would think the responses consisted of apathy, seeming ignorance of who Neil Diamond IS, and a mild form of pity.

I’m so glad I know better.

Most of the food has been delivered, and we were out at a school and I noticed that there was some construction going on. When I asked what was going on, the head master told me that the school had improved so much, the government  had decided to invest in the school and build water containers. There had been no investment in the school since it was built.

These are scary times in Kenya. Inflation, a poor crop and near drought conditions have made living so hard for so many people here. There is such a relief when we bring the food, and sometimes you worry that you are doing it all in vain.

But I watched the construction of the water tanks, and in a small way, I think we are seeing the beginning of a tipping point. The government is beginning to see improvements, and they are investing in the schools.

Tipping point? It’s brilliant actually.

Your pal,
Steve