There can be words spoken, stories shared, and pictures shown, but you can not know 100% what you are getting into until you are there. Until you are living and breathing in that moment away from everything you have ever known and called comfortable.
Even once you arrive there are questions, and you seem to live in a dreamlike state for the first few days or so. This was the culture shock experienced by my team as we entered into the country of Kenya. Nobody could have mentally prepared us for what we would experience.
Sure, we had seen the pictures and done our research. Starving children in Africa. Send money to the hopeless kids. Look at their sad faces. Feel guilty.
There is a pre-conceived idea when one goes to Africa. There is an idea of what you will encounter. You think you know what to expect. Before going to Kenya i was one of these people. I had made up images in my mind. I thought i had Kenya defined. I had come up with what i was going to see and how i was going to deal with it.
What i ended up finding was something entirely different. I ended up seeing hope. I ended up meeting children so beautiful, and people so full of love, that i didn't quite know what to do with myself.
Except fall in love.
I fell in love with the people, the culture, the country.
The children.
We spent the first two weeks in the bush about an hour away from the city of Mombasa. We lived at a children's home called Ray of Hope village. And at this little compound hope was truly evident. Hope, and peace, and beauty, and the love of God. We lived among the staff and children. Ray of Hope was not an ordinary orphanage where kids come and then get put up for adoption. Once the kids get rescued by Ray of Hope they become a part of the family. And that is just how our team felt during our stay there; like family.
My favorite time of day while in the bush was the nights; after dinner on the porch with the kids waiting for the staff to finish eating, and for the kids on-call to finish cleaning up. We had about a half hour every night while we waited for the night devotions to take place. The beautifully crisp Kenyan air, the African sky filled with stars too numerous to count, the sound of children laughing, and the sound of the drums being played.
Sometimes Gilo would drum on the buckets, and sometimes Chidodo or Irene. I could always count on Abiba and Ruthie to dance with me, and laugh when my dancing didn't quite match the African standards. But i was learning, and loving every minute of it.
It was on these moonlit nights in the bush that my perspective started to change. These love-filled children began to change my view on Africa. I was slowly able to stop seeing the hopelessness, and start seeing the hope that God intended for each and every child. This revelation started with one simple activity.
I fell in love with Kenya while having my hair braided.
There were a thousand words that could be spoken about the hope, love, and absolute beauty found in these braids.
God did something in those moments. He did something when Chidodo (pictured to my left) and Ruthie (behind me) would grab me away from dancing and sit me on the porch to braid my hair. They pulled and they tugged, but i believe there was an outpouring of love in that moment. I believe there should be a sixth love language and it should be the receiving of braids. As i sat there under the careful, and sometimes painful, hands of these girls i felt like i was so much of an equal. Physically i am a 19 year old from America, and these children have suffered abandonment, malnutrition, disease, and abuse before they were rescued. But in that moment we shared the common bond of being loved by the best Daddy in the world. We were sitting there as His beloved daughters just basking in His infinite love. These girls poured out the love they had received right back on to me, and i felt more loved than i can even describe in words.
These girls, along with all of the other kids at the home, had found hope even in the starkest of circumstances. They had been poured into by people who loved God and desired to share this love with others. Kenya is not hopeless. Africa is not hopeless.
After we left Ray of Hope we traveled to many other places in Kenya. We spoke at many schools. I stood in front of hundreds of hopeless faces. Before i had met Ruthie and Chidodo, whose stories changed my life, i don't know if i could have told these kids about hope. I don't know if i would have confidence as a 19 year old from America to speak to them about something i had really never known.
But i saw what God had done in Ruthie and Chidodo's life, and i could look out into the faces of those kids with confidence knowing that hope was really possible. I no longer saw the faces of kids that needed food or money, but i saw faces of kids who just needed a glimmer of hope.
I think about every time my hair was braided, and i think about the hope and love that is possible.
"For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the LORD, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future." Jeremiah 29:11
