You know how in the US everyone will ask you how you are and you say fine? And how that gets old? In Kenya, people greet you with Habari yako which means how are you and you respond Mzuri sana which means fine.

I’ve tried to change it with inflection. I say Habari in a normal voice and then, on the last syllable of yako I sound like my underwear just bunched up. It never fails to get a response from Kenyans. But in the spirit of trying to learn a new word a day, I have begun answering Baridi sana. Translated: I am very cool.

If you are a lover of irony, Kenyans try to correct me every time I say this. “No, it is very warm.” The irony part is:  I have never been cool one day in my life. So it falls on me to try to explain what cool is. I think you can make a case that Africa invented cool:  they just don’t know what it means. Having me explain cool is one of the great reasons that they need MORE missionaries in Africa, preferably some cool ones.

We went to Mahi Maihu this weekend. Researchers have traced the spread of AIDS in Africa to truck stops throughout the country. Mahi Maihu is a truck stop community absolutely devastated by AIDS. There are hundreds of orphans in this little town, so we went down to deliver food and play with orphans.

Before we went to play with the kids, we brought some food and clothes for some widows in the area. Suburban America cannot prepare you for this level of poverty. One woman lived in a home that was roughly the size of two cubicles. She had dirt floors, mud walls and two very crude chairs. It was there that she and her six children lived. None of them had shoes, and all the clothing was donated hand me downs.

She told us that she managed to get her children fed, although milk is a luxury item that only the wealthy enjoy in Kenya. Feeding them means one meal of rice and maize a day, and this is served without plates, knives or forks; they grab handfuls of it and eat it standing up.

Her concern is school fees. (There is no free education in Kenya, so parents must pay for their children to be educated. I have been at a school in Kenya where a child whose parents could not afford school fees snuck into the class and was beaten with a stick for returning without paying.) She could afford to feed them one meal, but school fees were beyond her, and she knew that without education, her children would never have much of an opportunity in life. To live in that kind of poverty must be overwhelming; to know that your children will also live like that must be one of the most painful things one could endure.

The woman at the orphanage cooked a huge meal of stew over an open fire. Kenyan women are used to being around open flames; they can handle the heat. I would ask if the fifty-pound pots were hot as I grabbed them to load into a van. They assured me that they were not; I can assure you that they were so hot that it was all I could do to not drop the pans and risk orphans not getting their meal. They thought that I had white hands; all I can say is, someday I will have them over for some Mexican food, and we will see who can handle the heat.

I was honored to be remembered at the orphanage because of many of you. The last time I was there we were able to deliver hundreds of toys to the children, and many of them remembered and greeted me. Some ran to get their Magna Doodles and show me their latest drawings. Although English is their second language, I did manage to teach a group of 50 kids to shout “I love Texas” at the tops of their lungs, which I’m sure was very educational for them. Without words, I managed to lose in six races, have a hopping contest, a hold your breath contest, and a you-can’t-smile contest.

The director showed me the dorms. I hope to return to take some pictures, but these little children live in tough circumstances. The big problem they have is many of the children wet their beds, and that causes the foam mattresses to smell awful. There are 18-24 children in a room, and sometimes the odor was more than I could bear. Some of the mattresses are over five years old; there is just no money to buy new ones. The dining hall is in real need of new tables, because they have so many children and the tables are so old that they are breaking down. It means that many of these kids stand when they eat. We’ve tried to repair them, but the wood is rotting and it is just time for new ones.

As we were leaving, many of the children were clinging to us. The employees of the orphanage work so hard, but there are so few of them and so many children. Children need adult attention, and they get so little of it.

I was crying, and the director grabbed my hands and looked me in the eyes: “You are one of us.”

It’s the nicest thing anyone has said to me since I’ve been in Kenya.

Your pal,
Steve