Archive for the ‘Nairobi-Kenya’ Category
Sunday, December 25th, 2011 ·
by James Copple
I spent most of the year in the developing world with particular reminders of Ethiopia, Swaziland, and Kenya. I observed for the first time a Church working underground in a hostile political and religious environment. I was both amazed and startled by the harshness of religious bigotry and the courage of people who have made commitments to follow a Savior that if publically declared could lead to persecution or even death. I have known persecution and have known of these threats, but I have never before witnessed what a persecuted people are willing to do in order to give their faith expression. In a stark and famine defined area, they share their food, their water, and what little possessions they have to give witness to the redemption they have experienced. Their story begs to be told, but alas, must remain silent to the outside world for fear of retaliation. In one community I visited, if the Government knows you are a Christian, government officials might deny you water.
Early on in my last journey into Africa, I listened to Wintley Phipps’ interpretation of Rise Up Shepherd and Follow. A haunting call summoning listeners to leave the familiar and to follow a star that will lead to hope and promise. I decided in early December to make this my theme for Advent. Rise Up Shepherd and Follow – You will forget your flocks and your herds, as the song calls us to follow him where ever he might lead.
Rise up is a call to action and if you take good heed to the Angels words, you will leave behind your sheep and lambs. The tension between Rise Up and Leave is not easily resolved. It certainly defies some of the sentimentality often associated with the Christmas holidays as families come together. As I both wrestle and embrace this theme for Advent, it has produced a restlessness that is not easily calmed. Rise Up can take on so many different expressions:
- Speak when others are silent
- Go to places where others refuse to go
- Forsake blind allegiances to things of this world whether they are political, social, economic, or religious
- Taking a stand to be on the side of the poor
- Forsaking the comfortable lives of ease we have created and begin practicing a life of compassion and action
From a myriad of interpretations, each of us must sort through the meaning of Rise Up and Follow. But, to all of my friends and family, I urge you to ask the question – what will it mean for us in this new year, to truly respond to the star in the East and the call of the angel – Rise Up and Follow. I think the answer for each of us will certainly be different – but it could be the difference between joy and sadness, hate and love, peace and conflict. I urge you to listen and then to Rise Up!
Tags: africa, ethiopia, faith, famine, James Copple, Kenya, religion, Servant Forge, Swaziland, water
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Monday, November 7th, 2011 ·
by James Copple
This is not my story but the story of a case worker for CARE International. It begins in Somalia and its ending is yet to be written. I found the story in the harsh and desperate world of a refugee camp in Kenya, just 30 miles from the border with Somalia, an area controlled by Al Shabaab, the terrorist organization affiliated with Al Qaeda.
On a conference call to discuss the desperate need for grief counselors in the refugee camp of Dadaab, Kenya, where there is one counsel for every 50,000 people, I asked a rather naive question of Michael, the CARE employee, “Just how bad is it really for the children?” He paused and then said, “Let me tell you about Omar.”
Omar arrived in the camp ten days before he appeared at the CARE clinic located in the IFO expansion camp. Omar was accompanied by his young mother whose face and complexion added thirty years to her appearance. In front of Omar, she told a horror story not, unfortunately, all that uncommon among the recent refugees fleeing into Kenya. Her homestead had been raided by Al Shabaab and all the men were tortured and killed, including her husband. They warned the women they would be back in several days to confiscate all food items. Omar’s mother was terrified and feared for her own life.
On the day they arrived, Omar’s mother, with his help buried herself deep into the sand and used a hallow reed she inserted into her mouth in order to breathe. She instructed Omar to give the terrorists whatever they wanted but not to reveal her hiding place. They stopped 10 feet away from her hiding place. She could hear the exchange. They asked Omar for the location of his mother. He told them she had already left the homestead and was headed for Kenya. They knew it was a lie. They beat him and asked again. Torture and threats were not changing Omar’s story. His mother was gone, he shouted.
Finally, the leader changed tactics. He offered Omar a cup of water and a biscuit. After a long silence, Omar silently pointed to the burial shelter of his mother. He gave him his water and the biscuit. The four terrorists dug Omar’s mother out of her hiding place and gang raped her. When they finished, she found Omar sitting near a bush dividing up the biscuit – a piece for his sister, two pieces for his mother, and one for himself. Since that day he has said nothing and has turned his rage and silence against his mother and sister.
Michael repeated, “For a cup of water and a biscuit a starving child chooses to surrender his mother to the men that killed his father.” What can we expect? Michael was angry and turned to me and asked, “How many counselors can you get me and do you have people that can train counselors?”
The answer to Michael’s question is yes. Through African Nazarene University, we can do both. We began organizing and soon there will be volunteer counselors in place to help. Gender-Based Violence is a major crisis in the camps where crisis is the understatement of the year. Women are continually under threat. Children are in horrific pain.
When Michael asked me to help, Omar’s story became my story. It is now your story. Please pray for the Omars of this famine and for those of you that can do more – volunteer and donate so we can place counselors on the ground to bring healing to the soul, the mind, and the body. We can do this; therefore, we must do this! You can donate at www.ncm.org or at www.sai-dc.com.
Tags: africa nazarene university, anu, CARE International, Colleen Copple, Horn of Africa Relief, James Copple, Kenya, Kenya refugee camp, SAI, Servant Forge, starving children in kenya, Strategic Applications International
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Saturday, September 10th, 2011 ·
by James Copple
This post/column/blog contains graphic details and information about cultural rites that mutilate and victimize women. If you are faint of heart – please do not engage.
To state the obvious, we live in a male dominated culture and world. Various cultures and societies have made progress in their treatment of women. As they earn seats in parliaments, state houses and corporate board rooms, it would seem that there is no turning back – women are equal to men.
Not so fast! In the developing world and no doubt in many places in First World, women still struggle to live a life free from male dominance, abuse and slavery. This week, I interviewed a young woman from the rural Kenyan county of Samburu – a university graduate – the first from her community.
My new friend and colleague from Samburu, Celina Arames Lepurcha from Sesia, in Samburu County Kenya, was unusually transparent with me in what was probably one of the more shocking interviews of my career.
Samburu young girls are forced by older women and tribal leaders to practice Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) as a rite of passage into marriage. Over 90 million young women in Africa between the ages of 0 and 15 undergo this ritual. Though the Kenyan government has taken steps to stop this practice, it is still very much a part of the culture and values of this community.
Young girls are victims of the sexual whims of elder men in search of another bride. Polygamy is the norm as men – older men – continue to seek younger brides often between the age of 12 and 15. Many of these child brides become widows sooner than later as their male partners die from either old age or disease.
She related the practice of older men seeking younger women as potential brides – many as young as 12. The men in the tribe or clan will have sex with these young women and if the young woman becomes pregnant and has not had the community ritual of female circumcision (cutting), then the women of the community force an abortion. Please note I said “forced abortion.” If forced abortion is not bad enough, the procedure for forcing the abortion is horrific. Celina said that the customary practice is to lay the young woman on her back staked to the ground or held down by other women in the community. At that point women jump up and down on the woman’s stomach and uterus crushing the fetus in the process. They continue to jump until they see the profusion of blood pouring from the uterus. The womb and its contents are crushed.
Celina emphasized at no point in this process is a woman given a choice. She has no choice but to have sex with the male, she has no choice about birth control, she has no choice about female circumcision and she has no choice about the abortion. The emotional and physical trauma of this experience is horrific and can be lifelong.
Celina returned to Samburu from Nairobi to work with women support groups. She focuses her attention on the young adolescent women of her community. I met with many of these woman on my trip to Samburu. They wear western clothing. They have goals and ambitions that include education and setting their own destiny for a family and career. Celina told me later that at least two of them had experienced this abortion rite.
Truly, a cultural clash looms on the horizon. Celina also meets with the elder women of the community, dressed in their costumes (shukas), to teach them how to market their skills at bead work and to create some economic independence. Celina teaches and empowers both groups to become independent. Celina tampers with centuries of oppression, cultural values and norms.
Change is happening in this remote village of Sesia led by a young woman of courage and determination. There is a glimmer of hope. Westerners are conflicted over these practices, admonishing us to avoid cultural intrusion and yet wanting us to protect and guarantee the rights of women. I am not sure we can have it both ways anymore. These practices, while not unique to Samburu or Maasai tribal communities cannot continue because they victimize half the population. As long as one woman must endure these practices, none of us should rest.
As I post this article to my blog, the Kenyan Parliament passed draft legislation prohibiting FGM and punishing individuals with a three year sentence for stigmatizing young women who refuse FGM. Development projects and emphasizing positive cultural practices that build trust is the alternative. Now, it is up to the communities to comply and the government to both enforce the draft legislation and promote development projects. The international community must work with these governments to assure that their young women are afforded the same protections that my daughters have. I would not stand for this treatment in my home, nor should I tolerate it in the global community.
Tags: Colleen Copple, female circumcision, Female Genital Mutilation, FGM, FGM in Kenya, James Copple, Kenya, SAI, Samburu County, Servant Forge
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Thursday, September 1st, 2011 ·
by James Copple
Sitting in a classroom at the African Inland Church school in Kibera, the world’s second largest slum, I was impressed by the young people making presentations outlining their business plans. The 30 individuals from groups working with the empowerMEnetwork, an initiative of the Kenya Youth Empowerment and Employment Initiative (KYEEI), are bold leaders. Most have completed university or are soon to graduate. Their ideas were compelling. Here are some of the projects:
- The Golden Rabbit Farm (Marketing Rabbit to High-End Restaurants and Game Parks for Crocks).
- The creation of a Therapeutic Community to provide drug treatment in the slums.
- An upscale bowling alley and coffee house combination where young people can hang.
- A greenhouse project to be used in drought areas producing tomatoes, mushrooms and other “hothouse” food.
- A massive fruit tree reforestation project to support the needs of children suffering from malnutrition.
- An Ambassador program where young people provide tutoring, counseling and business development guidance to rural communities.
These are just some of the ideas shared at this event. I was there to listen, offer suggestions and make recommendations on their presentation style. Like me, most of them struggle to develop a business plan that are both profitable and humanitarian. These young people have a heart and they are trying to figure out a way to make money and do compassion and justice – all at the same time. A struggle, I must confess, I have yet to resolve. In fact, my firm is looking closely at changing our current Limited Liability Corporation (LLC) to a non-profit. Since we truly are a “non-profit”. Unfortunately, if we look like a duck, walk like a duck, then we should probably just be a duck.
If you do humanitarian work, you are not suppose to make money. That value is embedded in the American mindset steeped in a Calvinist theology that we have exported through missionaries and other humanitarians working across the globe. The Puritan ethic has found its way into the Kenyan reaction when young people want to do good but also want a lifestyle that can support a family and fulfill a dream of sending their children to a university. These issues should not have to collide.
Kenya and most of the world are in need of social entrepreneurs that will tackle the tough problems of a community or country. In the process they should not have to take a vow of poverty. We need “tentmakers” to use a biblical metaphor that will confront intractable social problems and transform them into solutions. Entrepreneurs are the kind of people we want taking on these issues. I don’t know who said it, but I have it on a plaque somewhere, “Discovery is seeing things that everyone else has seen but thinking things that nobody else has thought.”
That is what I saw today. Young people seeing the harshness of their environment and the poverty of their circumstance, something you can see throughout Kenya – but they were thinking things nobody else has thought. We should encourage this, promote this and Kenya and Africa will be a better place for it.
Tags: African Inland Church School, Colleen Copple, Golden Rabbit Farm, James Copple, kenya youth, KYEEI, SAI, Servant Forge, Strategic Applications International, youth leadership
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Saturday, August 27th, 2011 ·
by James Copple
She walked nearly 300 miles to get herself and her two children to a refugee camp in a not too distant land that merely tolerates her presence. On the journey she was raped and she witnessed the murder of her husband by Al-Shabaab – the terrorist organization threatening the region known as the Horn of Africa. When I saw her – all you could see was relief – she had made it and now she needed to sort out her future and the future of her boys – ages 5 and 8. Hers is one story of a collection of stories that arrive daily in this small and remote town of Eastern Kenya. For nearly 20 years, refugees have poured across the border seeking refuge in a camp that has the capacity of holding 90,000 people. Today, the Dadaab area has grown to nearly 450,000 refugees and now there are plans to expand to five separate camps. Approximately 1,500 new people arrive each day.
Nobody in Kenya likes to talk about this expansion because they fear the camps will become permanent settlements. Complicating this reality is the political situation in Somalia, the regional drought and the subsequent famine affecting 12 million souls – and the Kenyan government would rather see the refugees return to their homes in Somalia. Today if possible! Yet, the economic conditions and the drought in this area of Kenya also drive Kenyans to the camps because they can receive services they do not receive in their villages and communities. It is better to be treated as a refugee than neglected as a Kenyan.
Defining or categorizing groups of people is complicated: A neglected Kenyan, Somalian Refugee, Somilian Ethiopian and Ethiopian Refugee. Each person above the age of 5 is finger printed and has an identity card that classifies him/her so the host agencies and governments know their gender, age and place of origin. Each family unit is given a two minute call home to assure family and relatives they made it safely. What is common here is displacement. Not just the refugees, but the individuals and families living in the host communities. The wandering, nomadic existence defies any sense of permanence. Nothing to hold on to – no anchor – no foundation. The standard dictionary definition of displaced is, persons who lack a home, as through political exile, destruction of their previous shelter, or lack of financial resources (usually preceded by the ): After the earthquake, the displaced were temporarily housed in armories.
What this definition does not capture is that many of these displaced individuals left their pastoral lands, homesteads and villages because there was no food, no water and their livelihood simply evaporated in the desert heat. They simply collected what they could carry and started walking.
As long as there are people displaced in this manner – perhaps we should all feel a sense of displacement. Sitting in my flat in Nairobi and reading Facebook posts and watching the drama around earthquakes in Washington, hurricanes in the Atlantic and economic stress in my home country, there is a disconnect that gives me a feeling of displacement. I have shelter, water, food and I have resources to replenish them. Yet, my soul will not now allow me to settle into these comforts or these realities. I have been a witness to a human suffering that has shattered my sense of permanence. May I never forget.
Right now, I am doing everything I know how to do to mobilize resources (human and financial) to respond appropriately to this crisis. I am containing my anger, turning my empathy and my intellect into a vehicle for meaningful action in a chaotic world. The inescapable stench of death and hunger envelopes your senses. While I have seen these scenes before and I am a somewhat seasoned and aging veteran of these crises, I am losing patience with a world so indifferent that they can stand by and allow 12 million of God’s souls to walk aimlessly through the desert.
Our biggest fear with media absorbed images of famines is that we might somehow still feel the pain of someone else’s suffering or displacement. God Forbid!
I will return to my home soon – but it will not be with a sense of permanence – but one of displacement. Nothing compared with the displacement of my sister and her two children described above. If I am to walk along side her in her journey, I must be prepared to surrender my own identity, and somehow with her, take on the pain and isolation that is her brokenness. Maybe then, we can both be healed. I think that is, in part, what is meant by incarnational living.
FOLKS, STAND UP and DO SOMETHING! I urge you to give to Nazarene Compassionate Ministries or the Red Cross or CARE or Servant Forge. Your contributions do make a difference!
Tags: CARE, Dadaab, drought in Africa, famine in Africa, Horn of Africa, Horn of Africa Donations, Horn of Africa help, Horn of Africa Relief, James Copple, Kenya, Nairobi-Kenya, Nazarene Compassionate Ministries, Red Cross, refugee camps, Refugees, SAI, Servant Forge
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Friday, July 22nd, 2011 ·
by James Copple
Poverty, drug abuse, hunger and disease are issues that capture my time and attention on most days. Data and statistics come off my tongue as if I had chiseled them into my soul and conscience. I try to impress funders and policy makers with my ease of verbal and mental dexterity that allows me to navigate through a wide range of information. I am an advocate and advocates must do that. I was trained by some of the best to do that. I often speak of the many global catastrophes that threaten our children. I chide, I beg and I plead to make them a priority.
The numbers are sometimes numbing. There are 2.2 billion children in the world and 1 billion of them live in poverty. In the United States 17 million children wake up daily without the promise of a hot meal; and globally 13,000 children die every day because of hunger. Staggering numbers! However, they seem to fade into the landscape of our competing interests and concerns.
Then yesterday I read of an individual disaster. I often work in Swaziland and support faith-based initiatives seeking to address poverty and disease. We have many partners and collaborators in this mission. Highest HIV/AIDS prevalence rate in the world, number 6 in food security in Africa and one of the many African nations facing multiple years of drought. There we go again with the numbers. The individual disaster I refer to is the story of a 7 year old boy named Mamba who was beaten and then hanged by his stepfather. He was a special child to many in the ministry to orphans and children funded by several different organizations in Swaziland. I never met Mamba but this tragic and individual death stalks me today. Maybe because I have two grandsons that are 7 years old. Knowing them somehow has made me know Mamba. I don’t know – but today I am not talking about 2.2 billion children but one child.
In Seminary we often discussed the Scandal of the Particular – how odd of God to have created the universe but cares about the fall of the sparrow. I came across this quote in a sermon from Dan Clendenin, Ph.D, “I recently heard of a wonderful theological idea: the scandal of the particular. The idea is that God, this enormous creative force that “hung the stars” and created “that great leviathan just for the sport of it” would care about one of us, a particular person. That the God of Creation—Aristotle’s Unmoved Mover or Plato’s Divine Source—would stoop to join us in the mundane details of every day human life, would care even if a single sparrow fell to the ground. This “Yahweh” was completely low-brow to the Greeks, it was a scandal: from the Greek skandalon, which means ‘snare or stumbling block.”
If God is to be found anywhere it is in the scandal of the particular. An individual child – a victim of an abusive relationship – a victim of hunger and poverty – yet loved by a mother and caregivers that welcomed his smile and his life into their lives. They were transformed by this ONE child. His loss is a reminder that the numbers we deal with in global policy analysis often hide the reality that behind those numbers is a child found in the bush, beaten and abused. Mamba had individuals that loved him and he loved them in return.
What we do is personal and what we must continue to do is translate the abstract into the particular – if for no other reason – that is exactly what God did!
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Monday, June 6th, 2011 ·
by James Copple
Today, I walked the stoned and cavernous streets of a Nairobi slum with about a hundred volunteers all committed to cleaning up the trash and garbage that fills these streets on a weekly basis. Each week forty young people meet at the Lunga Lunga Biogas tower and organize themselves to collect trash from about 400 families or homesteads that have signed up and pay their ksh10 a week for the service. Ten shillings is about 5 cents in US equivalent currency.
The volunteers and their leadership don’t complain, they don’t shout at the government, they just show up and get the job done.
I have been to this site before and I have written about my experience. Each time I go, however, I leave amazed at their hope and amazed by my despair. When I am home in the States, I don’t even think about trash. I walk into my kitchen and if the trash can is full, I mean really full, I finally pull the trash bag out of the container and walk it out to the dumpster. Several times a week a large truck comes by and raises the dumpster over its hood and unloads the trash and garbage. I don’t smell it, I don’t examine it, I don’t even think about it. It is gone.
Trash is a big deal for the billion people who live on a $1 a day or less. Many of these people live in urban slums in Mumbai, Jakarta, Nairobi and Islamabad. They search the trash looking for things they can sell to the recyclers or as I saw today, a young man put a castoff sandwich in his pocket as he was picking up other garbage. Trash is a big deal to the poor. It doesn’t seem to be that big of a deal to governments whose populations are predominately poor. The squalor in these slums piles up and the indifference is palpable – thus my despair. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, global thinker and former U.S. Senator said, “A nation is judged by how it handles its waste. “ Really – I use to question. I am convinced now that he was right. Unmanaged trash can cause disease, including water born diseases such as diarrhea and cholera; infections from disposable needles, and lung diseases including the breeding ground for TB. Trash in the slums is highly flammable and destroys whole sections in a matter of minutes.
The list could go on and on. It is time that all of us start talking trash. It is time that we hold the global community such as the United Nations, the World Health Organization and the funders at the Gates Foundation to all the Global AID organizations from all the countries doing AID in the developing world to a higher standard of concern. Governments in the developing world should be pressured to focus on trash and waste management. It needs to become a priority of economic development.
Kenya is currently boasting a 5.5% increase in GDP. That is impressive given the economic down turn since the post-election violence of 2007-2008. Yet, this growth is offset by the disease and unemployment found in the slums of Nairobi. Government needs to show up when it comes to waste management.
Mobilize your organizations and your youth groups to begin thinking about the global impact of trash and how we can better manage our waste. There are things you can do. Find them and then do them.
Tags: Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Gates Foundation, Global AID, islamabad slums, Jakarta slums, James Copple, Kenya, Kenya Government, Lunga Lunga Biogas, Mumbai slums, Nairobi Slum, SAI, Servant Forge, United Nations, World Health Organization
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Thursday, May 5th, 2011 ·
by James Copple
We are all familiar with the clichés of “show me the money” or in investigations related to property crime or corruption, “follow the money.” The point of these phrases is that there is an object that defines our behavior or actions.
I must confess I am an unashamed and unabashed pursuer of money. Over the years I have become quite good at finding ways to secure resources to support my various causes and dreams or to support the dreams and aspirations of others. I am a hard headed realist and pragmatist that is not content with simply musing about abstract solutions to complex social and economic problems that contribute to poverty, disease and hunger. Rather, I would prefer wresting with ways to fund water systems, decentralize clinical services to reach the unreachable and to fight through bureaucracies that seem removed from the suffering of their people. Often I lose in these struggles, but as one of my mentors use to coach me, it isn’t over until we win.
Recently several former students reminded me of my admonitions never to surrender or quit while engaged in these struggles. For it is the struggle that defines or better yet, refines our faith. In my book, Voices from the Night: The Power and Promise of Community Change, soon to be published (I hope), I have written that as people of faith we should follow the suffering. If we follow the suffering we will find the heart and mind of God. It is in the brokenness of poverty, the horror of addiction, the despair of homelessness that we find His presence. His presence should be the object that defines our behavior or actions.
Following the suffering will be not easy. You need to begin that journey with your eyes wide open. Several things to remember if you follow the suffering:
- It can take you to dark and desperate places.
- It is possible you will leave those places discouraged and disappointed with broken promises and the failure of people to grasp the significance of your cause.
- You will need to be smart! Be informed and educated on what works when working with those that suffer because of poverty, disease or abandonment. Do no harm!
- Come along side those that suffer and avoid condescending actions or superior know it all attitudes.
- You will need to establish a different measure for success. Remember we are called to be obedient not successful. As the former Mayor of Philadelphia, Wilson Goode has reminded us: We are not to live a life of success but a life of significance.
- You will need to find ways of turning your anger at injustice into advocacy and to be wise as serpents and harmless as doves.
- You will need to go back again and again. When you follow the suffering it demands your presence and resists one-off actions that satisfies your ego but ignores the pain of those you have come to serve
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| Friends in the Lunga Lunga Slum of Nairobi, Kenya who Follow the Suffering |
In the end – you will find the presence of God in the suffering you encounter. But remember, where ever He is to be found there is HOPE – there is POSSIBILITY – there is TRANSFORMATION.
Follow the suffering and you will walk where our heroes have walked and you will certainly find our Savior to be the road beneath their feet.
Tags: africa, AIDS, clean water in africa, Disease, disease in south africa, HIV, HIV/AIDS in africa, Lunga Lunga Slum, Nairobi Slum, Nairobi-Kenya, Poverty, poverty in nairobi, poverty in south africa, show me the money, suffering, water
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Monday, April 11th, 2011 ·
by James Copple
It is Sunday in Nairobi and I was a little disappointed that I couldn’t make it to Church this morning because I scheduled myself to meet with a youth group in the Lunga Lunga Slum of Nairobi. About 40 youth organizing a trash pick up and putting the pieces together for a waste management business. I often go to slums and work in urban environments that are horrific in poverty, disease and crime. But this morning was different. I walked the narrow walkways between corrigated huts interviewing the youth leaders. The smells were so bad that three times I had to fight the gag reflex and I found myself not wanting to breath the toxic odors.
In these situations I become both angry and empathic. I go there to feel what they feel and try to understand their experience but I often leave like Amos outside the city gates of Jerusalem shouting at the oppressors. Huge multinationals surround this slum but they contribute little to its development. People I know and people I have become close with live in these huts. In my meetings they share their experience and each time I find they speak with a voice of hope and redemption. They are not defeated nor do they grow angry at their predicament. Rather, they work hard and struggle to make their place clean, safe and industrious. They don’t ask for handouts, they ask that we come along side and help them think through solutions and create opportunity.
I found Christ this morning and it wasn’t in a mega structure with all the trappings – I found him in the gentle smile of a child walking along the polluted Nairobi river trying to make sense out of his life and knowing that no amount of poverty or despair can remove his hope.
Tags: Amos, Christ, church, James Copple, Jerusalem, Lunga Lunga Slum, Nairobi-Kenya, SAI, Servant Forge
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Monday, April 5th, 2010 ·
by James Copple
By
James E. Copple
Blue Cross Kenya sponsors a group of moms and their children living in the
Korogocho Slums in Nairobi who have given up distilling homebrew alcohol and
abusing their own product. Recovering moms and their children live in the
worse poverty in all of Africa. Yet, part of their work and ministry is
called Hope Raisers and in every aspect of their lives, they demonstrate
resiliency and hope. Their Biblical theme is from I Timothy 4:12 Let no one
despise your youth, but set the believers an example in speech and conduct,
in love, in faith, in purity.
The leaders of Hope Raisers are launching entrepreneurial enterprises that
include tree planning, counseling, candle and jewelry making. These
enterprises have become protective factors from substance abuse and crime.
The spirit in that small corrugated tin room no larger than a small house
trailer was contagious. Getting to our meeting we drove and walked through
some of the worse slums of my entire career. The sites of poverty and
smells forced me to concentrate on not gagging. As I crawled into the room
and met the joyful and smiling faces, my whole mood changed. Inside were
women and teenagers in recovery determined to live a life of healing and
forgiveness. One woman reminded the audience that every journey begins with
a single step – our mission is to be sure you take that first step in the
right direction.
I listened to their speeches, watched their musical performances and a group
of teenagers perform professional level acrobatics in a small trailer and
was stunned with their commitment and their hope. As with all my visits I
am struck by what is needed next to assure that this group sustains itself
and has the capacity to expand its business operations.
For $800.00 we can purchase machines to increase the number of candles they
can manufacture. They currently rent the machine and purchase materials and
tools for the jewelry business. They make carrying bags out of plastic bags
found in the largest dump in all of Nairobi. This capacity expansion for
their enterprises will add nine new jobs and increase their marketing
capacity. They can become self-sustaining in a matter of weeks once they
acquire the initial equipment. Blue Cross Kenya monitors the use of their
equipment and resources and they mentor them into economic self-sufficiency.
This is small intervention that will have a huge impact on the lives of 40
women and children. Often it is the small things that make a huge
difference.
Servant Forge, our international non-profit will make a $400.00 contribution
and I need the readers of this Blog to help support the balance. You can
make a tax deductable donation to Servant Forge at www.servantforge.org.
Or, if you prefer you can send a check to Servant Forge, 6526 10th St.,
Alexandria, VA 22307. One hundred percent of your donation will go to
support the enterprises of Hope Raisers. Your donation does not have to be
much – $10.00 or $20.00 and we can get their fast. Don’t miss this
opportunity to also become a Hope Raiser.
Tags: blue cross kenya, hope raisers, Kenya, kenya poverty, kenya youth, korogocho slums, Nairobi-Kenya, Servant Forge, Youth Empowerment
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I spent most of the year in the developing world with particular reminders of Ethiopia, Swaziland, and Kenya. I observed for the first time a Church working underground in a hostile political and religious environment. I was both amazed and startled by the harshness of religious bigotry and the courage of people who have made commitments to follow a Savior that if publically declared could lead to persecution or even death. I have known persecution and have known of these threats, but I have never before witnessed what a persecuted people are willing to do in order to give their faith expression. In a stark and famine defined area, they share their food, their water, and what little possessions they have to give witness to the redemption they have experienced. Their story begs to be told, but alas, must remain silent to the outside world for fear of retaliation. In one community I visited, if the Government knows you are a Christian, government officials might deny you water.