A Sunday Away from School

One year ago today, the violence in Kenya was just beginning to subside. The post-election unrest had claimed nearly a thousand lives nationwide and tens of thousands of people were fleeing their homes. Because tribes have blended and migrated through the years, many Kenyan communities had become little melting pots. However, the election of December 2007 divided them, causing neighbor to turn on neighbor.

For most of 2008, these IDP’s (Internally Displaced People) lived in overcrowded Red Cross or UNICEF camps. Eventually, the government came through with something to help. For those who had been burned out or physically intimidated out of their homes, the Kenyan government gave small allotments of money as compensation. The amount was too small to do much with, especially for buying a plot of land for themselves. However, if they put their money together, they’d be able to buy a plot of land and share it. And that’s what they did.

In the picture above, you’ll see small white clusters of tents on the floor of the Great Rift Valley. These are the IDP camps. Each family owns the right to have a small tent on the dusty, barren, dry, windy valley floor. There is no water. No resources. No sanitation. No shade. And this is where hundreds of adults Kenyans and their many hundred children will live for an indefinite period of time.

This is the sad part.

The beautiful part of the story is that Sunday, a group of young Kenyan adults and teenagers in our area, raised money and resources to take down to the IDP camps. Although these people are far from wealthy themselves, they recognize that they have so much more material goods and that they are obligated to share it with those poorer than they. A group of missionaries drove the Kenyans to the camp for their ministry outreach (myself included), and we spent Sunday afternoon giving out jugs of water, firewood, bags of grain, clothing, and candy.

It really wasn’t much, when you consider how many people were in the camps. But the people were so grateful for the little we were able to give them. And the biggest joy of the day for me was watching Kenyans—whom I usually see on the begging/receiving end of my American, Christian charity—generously giving to those in need because of the compassion God put in their hearts.