Going Where the Journey Leads

As you all know, my first trip to Kenya was in 2006 with Life Missions. At the time, I never would have guessed how that trip would change my life. Thanks to those two weeks in Africa, I was drawn to another volunteer trip, this one to Peru in 2009. When I came home from that trip, I signed up to mentor a Kinship kid, Ciaara, who brought a whole new perspective into my life and gave me a whole new set of adventures.

If it hadn’t been for that first trip to Kenya, I wouldn’t have returned there three more times and my daughter Val wouldn’t have returned four more times. We would never have formed our own non-profit organization, Tumaini Volunteers. I never would have written a memoir about that first trip and may never have had any books published.

I may not even be writing this post right now. I started it when Val went back to Kenya in 2010 for six months; she began a travel blog at the time and challenged me to write my own blog.   

Jen and Dave Bell were our team leaders on that first trip, and though we haven’t been in direct contact since 2013, I still follow their work. They’ve been living fulltime in Kenya since that trip we took with them in 2006. They’ve been through a few changes, but are currently running Mahili pa Maisha, an infant rescue center outside of Nairobi.

Last summer, they published a book about their lives and how they came to be where they are, how they continued to follow each twist and turn in the road which God sent them down. “Lick and Turn” chronicles not only their time in Africa, but the journey it took to get there.

Every turn in my life seems to have led to another step in my journey. I guess we all have a journey to take, whether it leads us overseas or not. No matter where life is telling you to go, just go there.  

Scene 1 from the discarded files

            As you may or may not know, my first novel, “Where the Sky Meets the Sand”, is in the process of being published. I don’t have a date yet when it will be available, and I suppose that’s why I haven’t been spreading the word as much as I should.

          It is the story of an American woman and an African boy. When I first started writing it, I switched back and forth between not only the woman’s and boy’s point of views, but about five other people as well. It became rather cumbersome and confusing. I had to cut out some of the various character’s stories, but didn’t delete them entirely. Those words, those other perspectives, remain on my laptop. I thought that maybe, in prelude to the release of the book, I would start sharing some of those scenes here.

            The boy’s point of view

The boy didn’t know how long he lay on the floor of his mother’s hut. He knew that she was working around him, cooking meals, making chai tea. He knew that sometimes she knelt next to him and poured goat’s milk, mixed with cow’s blood, down his throat.

The bleeding had stopped but the pain continued to pound through his entire body. He was afraid that he would never be able to walk again. He was more afraid that no one in his tribe would speak to him again.

Then one night, when everyone was fast asleep, he rolled unto his belly and pushed himself up onto his knees. He rose on wobbly legs and took a tentative step. He discovered it wasn’t as bad as he thought. Walking actually helped, it made him feel alive again, it forced him to breath. 

In silence, he filled a cloth bag with several pieces of chapati, the flat fried bread which they ate at most meals, and some strips of dried meat. He tied the bag along with the knife to his side and reached for a long stick which was leaning against the wall outside.

He knew what he had to do.  

These boys, from my first trip to Kenya in 2006, were the physical inspiration for the boy in the story. 

Return to Hell's Gate

I was looking at previous blog posts as well as pictures from my trip to Kenya this spring, and just realized that it has been three whole months since I was there. In some ways, it feels like it was yesterday and in others, it seems like a lifetime ago. Also, as hard as it seems to believe, I have only posted a fraction of the pictures I took.

Last time I wrote about Hell’s Gate National Park, we were still in the gully. I had traversed a seemingly insurmountable obstacle, but I still had a lot of hiking ahead of me.

 The beauty, however, continued to make it worthwhile.

 This is the wall I slid down and sustained my visibly worst injury, scraping all of the skin off my left elbow and a small patch off of my left side. 

 Another obstacle. 

 Took it like a champ. I am still just plain too old for this nonsense. 

 The very last wall to climb. I took a rest before clambering up this one. It was no worse than rocks I’d climbed in search of waterfalls back home, but it had been a long morning. Yes, it was still morning; our day was not nearly over. 

 The view made it all worthwhile, though. Eventually I will blog about lunch and the rest of the day. 

Feathered Friend Friday

 Whenever you travel with someone, you always find out something new about them. When I was in Kenya last October with my friend Denise, I learned that she fancies herself as a birder – trying to seek out and identify as many birds as she can when she travels some place. Which of course meant that I would succumb to this whim while on safari with her.

 The easiest bird to identify would have to be the ostrich. Obviously he is the largest bird, but also the most well-known. Perhaps less well-known is that, just as with many other species of birds, the colors of the male stand out more than those of the female. Even though he is black, he is still more noticeable than the female.

 Next well-known is probably the stork. Not that this is the picture of the stork we usually have, thinking instead of the Vlasic pickle stork, or the bird who delivers babies. Or maybe he does. 

The rest of the birds I took pictures of were of species I was clueless about. Until I did a Google search of “birds of Kenya”. This beauty was the first to come up. He is the lilac-breasted roller. The reason he pops up first in my search is because he is the national bird of Kenya. Who knew?

The lilac-breasted roller is found over a large range and has a stable population, thus he is easy to spot. And obviously easy to identify. His picture on the internet looks exactly like this one.

This little guy is the green bee-eater bird. They eat bees, apparently, and unlike the ostrich or many other species, the female is just as pretty as the male.

On the other end of the colorful scale is the fork-tailed drongo. He’s still pretty, though, don’t you think? Kind of like how every woman needs a plain black dress. Always elegant.

 

 Without even looking up this bird, I would call it a partridge. I thought it might be a stone partridge, but his feathers aren’t quite right or the way he holds his tail. Further research, and I think he might instead be the red-necked spur-fowl. See that small spot of red under his chin? But what do I know?

And last but not least, another guess. I think this is a pair of Egyptian geese. Though Egyptian geese originated in Egypt (hence the name), they are found throughout all of Kenya except for the far north and west. I can’t say for certain that this is what these guys, but they do look like it.

I’d love to hear your thoughts. Especially Denise’s. 

My List of Failures

I took an un-announced break from blogging because I was basically feeling sorry for myself. 

Here's my list of failures. 

In 2005 I signed up to sell BeautiControl, which if you know me and my lack of makeup-applying skills, you may find hard to believe. You will no doubt find it easier to believe that after five or so parties, I hung up on that dream of getting rich. 

Next I got this cleaver idea to sew pillows with pockets (the next best thing after blankets with sleeves, right?). I sold a few to people I know, but the Etsy store and the craft shows went nowhere. 

I returned to my childhood dream of writing, wrote my memoir, then found a publisher in 2012. They even published two more of my books the following two years. As is the tread in publishing right now, marketing of my books was quite a bit on my own. Again, I feel that I have failed there.  

A fourth endeavor, which this time I am not in alone, is the nonprofit organization which my daughter Val started in 2013. The two of us have tried promoting Tumaini Volunteers through various venues, but yet again, I feel that we haven't gotten anywhere. 

I can trace all of this failure to my fourth year of college. I was majoring in mass communications, with - of all things - a concentration in marketing and public relations! Can you just even believe it? 

Hopefully you will believe what happened next. God sent me a clear and distinct sign that I should drop out of college. Seriously. So I did. Good thing, I think. Years later, God sent me to a community college with a medical assisting program and that's how I ended up where I am today. Without any marketing expertise, and some statistics to support that. 

So, where do I go from here? I still use BeautiControl products for my own personal use, coz I like the stuff. I still sew and am working on quilt squares for a quilt for my own personal use. I've got three books for sale on Amazon.com (and a box of each of them in my closet). Someday I may have to read again all those words I wrote. And lastly my daughter and I are still plugging away on Tumaini, trying to finish writing our business plan, trying to raise some money, and trying to scare up some more volunteers for both here at home and to go to Kenya. 

I kinda want to leave it all on God's plate to deal with, but He has enough stuff on His plate already. But I've heard His plate is pretty big...  

If you want to help God out, here are the websites you can go to: 

http://www.tumainivolunteers.org/

http://www.amazon.com/Chris-Loehmer-Kincaid/e/B00FOC3WAY/ref=sr_tc_2_0?qid=1425951043&sr=1-2-ent

https://www.facebook.com/tumainivolunteers/timeline

https://www.facebook.com/ChrisLoehmerKincaid

https://www.etsy.com/listing/216789576/unique-kenyan-necklace?ref=shop_home_active_3

http://www.tumainivolunteers.org/donate.html

Like them, share them, comment on them, open your wallet. Or not. 

Tumaini means Hope

I spent another entire evening tonight working on Tumaini Volunteers Inc. The IRS form 1023, the big complicated form required to apply for tax exempt status, is complete and Val will get it in the mail in the next few days.

We also have a logo and had a little fun in between all the hard work by designing and ordering business cards. I will post a picture of that as soon as they arrive.

The next item on our agenda is to plan a few small fundraisers and secure some speaking engagements. I also hope, that as things begin to take shape, we can rope some more team members into jumping in the trenches with us and helping with some of the work. I think it is also time to get some commitments from volunteers who are ready and willing to journey to Kenya and possibly jump literally into the trenches.

It is all very fun and exciting, as well as nerve-racking.

If you are tired of hearing about my travels in Africa, click here to follow the Compassion bloggers as they journey to Uganda. They would appreciate your support as well.

The vision of Tumaini Volunteers is to build teams of individuals who share the same passions to reach out to these underprivileged communities.

It is the mission, duty, and purpose of this organization to educate, encourage, provide aid, and facilitate sustainable development projects in underprivileged areas through empowerment of people on a local and global level.

(From our website)

“The toughest job you’ll ever love.”

That’s what started it all. Started my dream of changing the world. Those Peace Corps commercials from the sixties, when I was just a kid and didn’t have a clue. But I would watch those ads, and see young Americans feeding starving children in Ethiopia or building a bridge in Colombia, and I would think, “That’s what I want to do some day.”

Instead, God sent me a husband (and then a second husband), two children, an eight to five job, a mortgage, a car payment, a dog and too many cats. Ok, maybe God didn’t do all of that. Maybe I made some choices of mine own. Maybe I took the easy path, the road more traveled, the conventional life.

In 2005, when God told me it was time to take that trip to a third world country, to make a difference, to change the world, I wasn’t easily convinced. After all, I had the husband and the kids and two dogs at that time. Plus I was old (hard to believe that I am even older now). I went to Africa, just as God had told me to do, and while I was there, I felt sure that I couldn’t make a difference and I certainly couldn’t change the world.

What changed inside of me? Did I lower my expectations? Did I accept second-best? No, but I figured it out. I can make a difference, you can make a difference. It really isn’t that hard. Just answer when God calls.

"The same Good News that came to you is going out all over the world and changing lives everywhere, just as it changed yours that very first day you heard it and understood about God’s great kindness to sinners." 

Colossians 1:6 Living Bible

(If you are reading this blog on the day it posted, you still have a chance to get my memoir for free and learn all about that first trip to Africa. Simply click here.) 

When God closes a door . . .

They do not fear bad news; 

they confidently trust the Lord to care for them.

Psalm 112:7 New Living Translation

The Compassion center at Ewauso Kdong.

As you may know, for the past eight years, I have sponsored a little lady from India through the organization Compassion, International. Neela has grown from that little girl into a beautiful young woman. And because life goes on and sometimes it gets away from us, my little lady in India is no longer in the program. (This link might answer some of your questions regarding this.) 

I got a call Friday night from Compassion explaining the situation and was asked if I wanted to sponsor a different child in India. “Well,” I said to the woman on the other end of the phone, “Can I tell you my story?”

After I rambled for a bit, the woman asked, “So would you like to sponsor a child in Kenya?”

Ya think?

I knew that this would happen one day, that I would be asked if I wanted to continue sponsorship and where would I like this new child to be from? I go on the Compassion website all the time trying to find kids who might be living in the places I visited in Africa. How cool would it be for them to walk the same land that I walked? How cool if Val could find this new child while she is still in Kenya?

God guide me, send me to the child who needs me the most.

“Um,” I said to the Compassion woman still holding on the other end, “Give me a girl in Kenya who has been waiting the longest for a sponsor.”

“I have a little girl – I can’t pronounce her name, but she is nine years old. Oh, her birthday is July 11. What a wonderful birthday present for her.”

“That’s perfect,” was all I could answer because by this time I was crying.

“We will send her profile within a week. Otherwise if you go to our website, she should be on your account within 24 hours.”

This was eight o’clock Friday night. When I checked my Compassion account at six am Saturday morning, there was my new little girl. Mueni. No, she is not from any place that I have visited or that Val has visited. According to Google Maps she is a good two and a half hour drive from Nairobi, which on Kenyan roads is more like five hours.

But that is ok. Just like Neela from India, Mueni is the child God chose for me. And I will accept His will.  

The Lord will work out his plans for my life— for your faithful love, O Lord, endures forever. 

Don’t abandon me, for you made me. 

Psalm 138:8 New Living Translation

And Lord, don’t abandon Neela or Mueni. Amen

The Compassion center in Nairobi. 

Just Like Working Back Home

When I traveled to Kenya this May, I found it easiest to say I was going on a Volunteer Trip. “Volunteer”. What exactly does that mean? It sounds so ambitious, like I am going to spend forty hours a week working, only not getting paid. Does anyone who goes on a “volunteer” trip work those kinds of hours? Oh, sure, a lot of them do, but I think in general we get more down time than we do back at home. Which is ok.

Or I could say I went on a mission trip. To me that is even more pressure, not only am I volunteering my time, I am on a mission. I have a goal to accomplish, whether it is bringing Christianity to the unsaved or bringing typhoid vaccine to the masses.

I was talking to my boss this week about something similar. His daughters are on a trip to South Africa for three weeks, and their group leader is calling it an “Acquaintance trip”. I think that was the word anyway. The main goal of the trip is to turn those acquaintances into friendships. You travel to a distant country to work with the people of that country, you have a physical project to accomplish, but you have the more important goal of getting to know these people and their culture. You don’t know much about them at first, but over the course of your stay, you come to understand what they are all about.

Know what I mean? Or am I rambling? Maybe I will just get to my point.

The two weeks I spent in Kenya in May, I did a few things here and there, but I think mostly I was there to meet people, learn their stories and understand the lives they lead. All so I could turn around and share that with you.

All except those two days I worked at the clinic in Saikeri. I’ve had busier days back home, but never days that busy in a foreign country. Just being in a foreign country, at a clinic with no water of any kind and no electricity, where there is a huge language barrier, made the work hard enough.

I’m used to being on my feet all day, and a lot of days I don’t get time for lunch. But I do take some water breaks and I do wash my hands with soap and water between every patient. Neither of those things happened at the clinic in Saikeri. Not that I’m complaining. Those were two of my favorite days in Africa.

What kind of patients did we see? An elderly lady with possible Tuberculosis, a young man with a two-day old machete wound, an older woman with a possible broken hip, a three-year-old with an abscess the size of an egg yolk on his head, and lots and lots of viral upper respiratory infections (i.e. colds).

The clinic was quite fortunate to have a physician assistant from Great Britain volunteering there, in addition to Rhoda, the Kenyan nurse who ran the clinic. Unfortunately, this nurse didn’t speak very much Maa, the language of the Maasai. Luckily most of them knew a little Swahili, but not all of them. Which meant, the PA and I would wait for this convoluted translation to take place with nearly every patient.

The most help that I gave to the clinic was the long line of babies that I gave routine immunizations to. The mommas would give their card to Rhoda. She would write their information in this huge ledger, while telling me which shots the baby needed.

I was quite pleased that these babies were getting the same immunizations we give back home. That is such a blessing to these wee ones. Give them the basics at least, keep them from getting the childhood diseases like measles or polio or even pneumonia. Diseases which could be fought off under optimal conditions, but which could easily kill an infant out here.

I think I did ok those two days. 

The refrigerator at the clinic. With no electricity, it is run on a gas coolant.

Drawing up immunizations.

Giving immunizations. 

The Physician Assistant I worked with at the clinic and two of our patients. The two white tabs on the desk are malaria tests. We tested all of our patients for malaria those two days, and all the tests came out negative.

Rhoda the Kenyan nurse who was in charge of the clinic. 

I'm riding in what?

            When I went to Kenya the first time, back in 2006, the highlight of our trip was the stay in Massailand. We worked and played for several days at Mosiro, running a medical clinic and doing health education for the Maasai who live there.

            This time in Kenya, my daughter Val and I visited a different place in Maasailand. The town was called Saikeri and the road there was as tenuous, though shorter, than the road to Mosiro. But upon arrival, just like Mosiro, I instantly knew that the trip had been worth it.

            This is how we got to Saikeri.

            We left the volunteer house around ten in the morning, took a matatu to Nakumatt Junction and then a city bus to Ngong. Ngong is a bit like Narok – very busy, with a mix of modern and Maasai. It is the last vestige of civilization before heading down out of the Ngong Hills and into the Rift Valley.

            Our ride to Saikeri, Maggie, said she would meet us at the corner in front of Barclay Bank. As if she had nothing else to do and nowhere else to go, she suggested we stop at a café for chai tea and samosas.

            I’d had chai at Nakumatt Junction and had been so disappointed. It tasted like the chai which I made at home and nothing like what I remembered drinking in Kenya the last time. Now here at Ngong, I thought, finally, really chai. But it wasn’t to be; this still didn’t taste right. At least the beef samosas were good.

            After visiting and finishing our snack, Maggie directed us to the Naivas grocery store so we could get some last supplies to take with us into the Bush. Maggie left us there while she went off to run some errands.

            With our meager purchases crammed in our backpacks we waited patiently at the designed spot and soaked up the ambience of Ngong. Ok, there is no ambience in Ngong, just a lot of people and traffic, dust and noise. 

            Finally Maggie came back and took us to the vehicle we were to ride out to Saikeri. It was a two-wheel drive, compact, ancient Toyota pickup. The bed was half-full of supplies and Maggie suggested that I ride in the cab with her.

            Val naturally thought I should get the full Kenyan experience, so suggested I ride in the bed of the truck with her. That sounded fine to me. How bad could it be? I grew up riding in the back of my dad’s Chevy.

            Oh, but it got bad. First off, Maggie took off to run another errand. While we waited, people kept coming up to the truck and setting boxes and bags in the back of it. Then they would just walk off. I kept asking myself, do they know what they are doing and where this stuff is going?

            Then two older Maasai women came along and crawled into the bed of the truck. Then another hundred pounds worth of supplies were dropped in. Two more Maasai women and a Maasai girl clambered in.

            I said, “Val, maybe we better get in before they run out of room.” So we sat on the boards which were across the wheels on each side and waited some more, while more supplies and more people crowded in.

            All total, by the time we left, an hour later, there were nine people in the bed of the truck, two boys on the roof of the cab and three people in the cab, along with hundreds of pounds of boxes, bags and loaves of bread. There was no longer any room in the back of the truck, so we road on the side hanging for dear life to the thin railing running along the box.

            After being in Ngong for what had to be hours (this is why you don't wear a watch in Kenya, it just makes for more frustration), it was time to head into the Bush. Check back on Tuesday to see how that went. 

For Val

“You have brains in your head. You have feet in your shoes. You can steer yourself any direction you choose. You’re on your own. And you know what you know. And YOU are the one who’ll decide where to go…” From: Oh, the Places You’ll Go! By Dr. Seuss

How can you not love Dr. Seuss? My daughter Val got the book “Oh, the Places You’ll Go!” as a graduation gift. What a great book! What wonderful inspiration!

It doesn’t matter if you are graduating from high school or college, or taking a new job or relearning an old one. It doesn’t matter how old or how young you are – the world is out there, yours for the taking. You can be anything you want to be, you can go anywhere you want to go.

And don’t let anyone say that you can’t!

“You can get so confused

that you’ll start in to race

down long wiggled roads at a break-necking pace

and grind on for miles across weirdish wild space,

headed, I fear, toward a most useless place.

The Waiting Place…”

And if you end up in that useless place, don’t stop, just race through to the other side. And remember to learn something along the way.

“So be sure when you step, Step with care and great tact. And remember that life's A Great Balancing Act. And will you succeed? Yes! You will, indeed! (98 and ¾ percent guaranteed) Kid, you'll move mountains.”

But you’ll move nothing by just sitting there. So go for it!