This post is difficult to write. Currently, I am sitting on our porch under the equatorial skies. If I look north I can see the big dipper (upside down) and if I look south I can see the southern cross. The air is cool and breezy at night, a stark contrast from the blaze of heat during the day, and I can hear crickets and the squeaks of bats. Those are the only easy descriptions I can give you. Everything else is difficult.

It is not that I am having a bad time; on the contrary, we are all having a great time. I've seen and learned so much. The difficulty lies in how to convey experiences to people back home that are hard to comprehend even when experienced. We've been through so much since I last wrote. A six hour drive on paved roads and then a three hour drive on a sandy one; a transition from hills and green farmland to desert flatland; a transition from Kenyan culture to Somali culture; all do not suffice to explain the sum of what we have seen and heard. Our location is simultaneously a small isolated town and a huge international center for humanitarian organizations.

Just outside of town stretches the massive UN compound where all the aid organizations are housed safely behind razor wire fences. The shacks, hovels, and small compounds are contrasted sharply by the faceless sprawl of the UN's well guarded fortress. The UN does a lot of work here. There are three (and perhaps a fourth just completed) refugee camps within a few kilometers. Each of them are home to 100,000 people. Displaced peoples from the Sudan, Ethiopia, Somalia and Rwanda all have homes within the camps. Usually the people are here because they were seen as a threat in their home country, or because arbitrary borders drawn years ago by colonialists do not reflect tribal boundaries, or because different clans fought over land or political power.

We went to a refugee camp which was nothing like what I expected. It was sprawling and cosmopolitan. Different aid organizations had set up clinics and food distribution and there were displaced people from all the countries listed above. When I pictured a refugee camp in my head I always pictured neat rows of white tents. The reality is that the settlements are much more permanent; corrugated iron shacks, clay bricks and houses made of sticks are much more common than tents. We went to a restaurant in the camp that was run by Ethiopian refugees. It was little more than a shack made of sticks, mud, burlap and whatever other scraps could be scrounged. We had to duck to enter and the tables were smaller than most Canadian coffee tables. The food was delicious, although the ingredients were limited to what could be bought or traded for in the camp. While we were there we talked to a man who had lived in that refugee camp for 20 years. He is a Christian Ethiopian married to a Somali Muslim. All of his children but one were born in the refugee camp and that is all they know. He wants to be sponsored to get to Canada or the U.S. but the immigration process for someone claiming refugee status in Canada is 5 years and no one yet has sponsored him. There are many stories up here, most of them never heard by western ears, or are heard but never understood.

The other morning we went to an orphanage run by an old Kenyan woman. She is a Christian woman in a mostly Muslim town. The town is split in two by the Tana river. The more populated east side is mostly Somali Muslims and the west side is mostly Kenyan Christians. The kids this lady takes in are both Kenyans and Somalis. Among her children are a few cripples and a couple mentally handicapped children. One boy, named Bob, was born blind, crippled, and mentally retarded. When we got there he was in his crib alone, his eyes rolling sightlessly in his head, and his bed wet from his own pee. This home took him in even when all the other orphanages rejected him. I could tell that he could hear us but he had no way of communicating. I leaned over his crib and brushed his arm and talked to him and tickled him gently. He smiled. I teared up and nearly broke down right there. Here is a boy at the utmost peak of human suffering and he could still smile. Here is a boy whose parents left him to die and who was rejected by all but one poorly funded orphanage, and he could smile. What suffering we endure in our lives is nothing when children like Bob can smile and women like this orphanage caregiver can serve without expecting gratitude or much help.

There is so much need here but I am learning that it is not the kind the UN can address. Giving people their necessities is good and important. The UN does a lot of good, but it is not the ultimate good. The caregiver at the orphanage knows the ultimate good. She loves her God and her neighbor. She shares God's love everyday. The need here in Northeastern province is for God's love to be spread. The need is for the Love that comes into people's hearts and transforms them. It is a great need.
Please pray for us and for all the peoples of Kenya,

- Mark, for Andrew and Ben