pokot

Putting this week into words has been extremely difficult, hence the lapse in posting.

I still don't feel like I can really capture what I experienced in just those 5 days...

The thing is, this place is just a place of so many contrasts (as is really the whole of Kenya).

Two years ago our friend Ben came to this place. It was one of the most difficult things he had ever seen or done. Meeting a people destroyed by drought, violence, superstition, and injustice. Seeing women who walked for almost an entire day just to carry back a small container of water, and repeated it again the next morning. Hearing of Ugandan armies raiding villages, just for kicks. People did not educate their children, understanding school as far inferior to keeping the livestock, thus enslaving future generations to illiteracy and dependence. Politicians have either neglected the place, or taken advantage of it. Women are commonly thought of as equal in value and respect to a child or a cow, and treated that way.

Many of these things are still true today. Women are still treated like dirt. Education still seems pointless to them. People still die in cattle raids.

It's really just difficult to wrap your mind around the fact that people live like this, even while standing right in the middle of it.

But then... there's this:

How can I wallow in sadness and even empathy when I see skies like that,

when I see faces like this

when I wake up to spend time talking to the God of Light in places like this

when these women are starting to send their children to school

when these children can use as much water as they want because there are 5 new boreholes

and when this, this, comes up out of the ground, out of dirt that has never ever seen buds of anything except thorny bush trees. This spinach, planted and cared for by the Pokot women, sold to give them income. It's unheard of.

We visited the gardens where these vegetables are being grown, instructed on how to make them even better, and got to see the fruits- the actual fruits!- of women's hard work.

We taught a class of 6th grade students- the eight lucky ones who have won the absolute luxury of going to school. Putting knowledge into little minds that have managed to escape society norms. There are four girls in this class, sitting at desks learning English and math and history, while the overwhelming majority of other 13 and 14 years are working somewhere outside, with a baby on their hip, existing as the 2nd or 3rd wife to a man who sleeps all day and wakes only to demand dinner at night.

We visiting minatas- Pokot homes- praying with people who suffer from disabilities due to the lack of medical care. We pray- not as a bandaid on an unfortunate situation or a obligatory mission exercise- but as literally the only thing we can do. It's a natural cry to the only one that has any real power here, where man can offer nothing.

We planted new seeds, cleared drainage runs, fixed equipment.

We conducted community meetings. Men and women sit on separate sides- they do not mix. We posed questions and listened to debate over who was to blame for children not going to school.

Women: "Our husbands won't let us."

Men: "Our wives won't take them."

Among other answers offered were: its expensive, children need to be taking care of the livestock or their other siblings, there's no reason- what good will it do?

Unfortunately the last does carry some weight- even if students make it past class 8, there is no secondary school in the area, and Kenya's education system prevents the students from qualifying for coveted positions at boarding schools.

We shared with the women, hoping to empower them spiritually, even a little bit.

I shared the story of the 10 talents, in hopes to encourage their new farming efforts. The words I spoke were translated from English, into Swahili, and then into Pokot. Ha, it was crazy. And although I get so easily bored with stories that that that I've heard a million times, how it crazy it is to see delight in people's faces when they hear the Word. After all, there are no Bibles in their language- hearing scripture is a luxury.

I just kept thinking:

This. This is the Kingdom coming...