Thursday Nov 5 10:00pm (Nairobi time)

Jamba… It is Thursday night (about 10pm in Nairobi, Kenya) and I’m just getting ready for bed (certainly the earliest I’ve gone to bed yet).  We have finished the orientation phase of this trip having had another fantastic 5-hour session from our World Vision staff.  Today we focused on the World Vision model for community partnership as well as the financial elements of child sponsorship and other funding. We also had training on cultural dos & don’ts while we are in our ADP (Area Development Program – for us, Kivuruga, Rwanda).  It was very helpful & informative in understanding the role of Child Sponsorships, the impact our efforts will have, and how our efforts are supplemented with other sources.  I am even more confident and aligned with WV model after talking about it and asking a number of questions; I’ve never been more convinced Our Response chose the right partner for this effort.

Another experience we had today was going deeper into Nairobi and going to one of their local markets; this is basically a tin roof with a series of 5 foot by 5 foot (or less) area of people selling things.  The amazing part is how intense they are at their sales practices; there were times I (and others) felt physically trapped in the store wondering if we had to forcibly remove ourselves to avoid buying anything.  The good news, however, is that everything is negotiable.  I was asking the prices of things at one of these slots and they kept telling me they would give me a good deal on a “package of things” – so I was to pick out everything I wanted and they would tell me the price for the package.  So I did that and he came back with the price of 14,400 Kenyan Schillings – this is about $175 U.S. Dollars; I said that we weren’t even close to a deal and started walking out.  They said 10,000…. To make a very long story short (because it was a long story), I walked away with everything I wanted at that store for $3,000 Kenyan Schillings (about $36).  The only other store I bought stuff at talked them down from 4,000 Kenyan Schillings to 400 (or about $50 to about $6).  I got a lot of cool stuff, I think… we’ll see what others think.  I had brought more money to buy stuff for Our Response as giveaways, but ran out of time to really negotiate for those things – we had a set meeting time back at a more traditional mall (which required walking through crazy traffic and deep puddles – trust me, you have never seen traffic like this… insane).

Food, as always was amazing.  Had a great breakfast and supper, but I didn’t even bother eating lunch – I was just too packed and wanted to start scaling back as we prepare for the next leg of our journey.  I think about this trip as 3 phases: Orientation, Experience, and Decompression.  We leave the hotel tomorrow at 6:30am to go to the Nairobi airport for a 10:00am flight to Kigali, Rwanda (the capital).  The flight is about an hour and then we’ll have about a 3 hour drive to get to the area of Kivuruga, where we will be focusing the efforts of Our Response.  Each of the next four days will include part of the day discussing various items with the World Vision staff & community leaders of Kivuruga with the rest of the day being spent with the residents of Kivuruga; I believe it is Sunday we will be meeting the sponsored children which is certainly one of the highlights of the trip.  We return on Tuesday (I believe) to a different part of Kenya where we will have a couple days of meetings and decompression at Massai Mara before finally heading home; arriving around 1pm in Minneapolis on Friday 11/13.

So, tonight I am reflectively on the verge of seeing Kivuruga – the pinnacle of this long-awaited trip; to meet the people that we will spend the next 15 years trying to build support for.  To look into their eyes and see not only the need & the pain, but also the hope.

Thank you for your comments and continued support; you have no idea how much that builds us up just to know you are tracking with us and praying for us.  We are so excited to bring this story home and see East Central Minnesota awakened in the area of global compassion – and to do it as a community is very, very cool!  Remember, keep telling people to check out the blog and clear 12/3 on their calendars.