Kenya – Memorable Trip, Lessons Learned

  “So how was your trip to Africa?” people ask.

  There’s no short answer to that. Only a long one will do.

  We were a group of nine, sponsors of students at Caring Hearts High School in Kenya. We’d be there for ten days, staying in Nairobi and commuting to the school, where we’d be teaching classes to the students. The school was founded by Vincent Kituku, a native Kenyan who lives in Boise.

  Kenya is more than 9,000 miles from Boise, nearly halfway around the world. To get there, we flew from Boise to Seattle to Paris to Nairobi, Kenya’s capital. Twenty hours of flying time, not counting layovers.

  By the time we arrived, we were beyond tired and wanting nothing more than to retrieve our bags, go straight to the hotel and sleep for about a week.

  No such luck. One of my wife’s suitcases failed to make an appearance at the Nairobi airport. We looked for over an hour, repeatedly checking the bags on every carousel and in the lost baggage area,

  No suitcase. It was after 1 a.m. when we found out why.

  The good news was that the lost bag had been found.The bad news was that it had been found in Paris. It hadn’t been transferred to our new plane during our layover there. 

  While unpacking at our hotel, we realized that the contents of the bag left in Paris included the adaptors for all of our chargers – cell phones, smart watches, etc. There wasn’t a clock in our room, so there was no way of knowing what ungodly hour it was when we finally got to sleep. Morning came all too soon.

  Bleary eyed, we boarded the van to take us to the school, an hour away from our hotel.

  The road to the school was lined with goats, cows being led, cows pulling carts – and colorful signboards:  “Blessed Welding Shop, Mustard Seed Education Center, God’s Vision Electronics, Mother Courage Plaza …” The signs were so entertaining we forgot how tired we were.

  The school had grown exponentially since our visit a decade earlier. Additions included a third floor for the girls’ dormitory, a life skills center, an administrative block with science laboratories, classrooms and administrative offices, a marching band equipment room and a dining hall with classrooms, a chapel, library, kitchen and bakery. Enrollment had grown from 120 girls to 320, and a boys’ school with an enrollment of 214 had been built just down the road.

  One thing that hadn’t changed was the unusual names (to American ears) of some of the students:  Paradis, Kayalo, Liberty, Irafashu, Dedan, Geradin, Ivexsie …

  My job was to teach classes on essay writing. My first presentation seemed to go pretty well, until I asked the class if there were any questions.

  Not a single hand was raised – and 20 minutes of class time remained. Increasingly desperate pleas for questions resulted only in uncomfortable silence – until one of the regular teachers and my wife, a former teacher, suggested that the students write their questions on notes.

 The problem had been that everyone was too shy to ask the first question out loud. The notes idea opened the floodgates. Most of the questions were on essay writing, but others varied wildly:

  “Do American kids go to school with their mobile phones?”

  “What is the hardest lesson you learned about life?”

  “Do students in America learn the Kiswahili language?”

  “Are there boarding schools in America?”

  “Is it hard to get a job in America?”

  “What is the best book you’ve ever read?”

  “How old are your daughters, and why didn’t you bring them with you to Kenya?”

  “You said you played in a band. Can I sing a song with you?”

  Two things didn’t vary. One was the friendliness and helpfulness of the people. Wherever we went, from the airport to a museum to the school, people offered to carry our bags. At first I was leery, fearing that if I handed my suitcase to someone, he or she would run off with it at the first opportunity. 

  How wrong that was! Not only did people not flee with our bags, they happily handed them back at our destination and even thanked us for letting them help us. And no, not a single one of them asked us for money.

  The other thing that didn’t vary?

  Smiles. Smiles everywhere, especially at the school. The students smiled at us, they smiled at their teachers, they smiled at one another. Many are kids who had been orphaned, kids who had been abused, kids who had been homeless. They had every reason to look sad or angry, but they didn’t.

  Takeaways from the trip? First, gratitude for the opportunity to visit a distant and distinctly different part of the world. Second, to be more grateful for what so many Americans take for granted – comfortable homes, jobs, enough to eat. At a Masai village, we spent time with people who live in mud huts, but seemed happy and content.

  Third, to try to make better use of the time left. The ten years since we’d last been to Kenya passed in a blink. Who of us knows whether we’ll still be around in another ten years? It would be foolish to fritter those years away.

  So thank you, Kenya. Thank you for a memorable experience, and for lessons learned.

Tim Woodward’s column appears every other Sunday in The Idaho Press and is posted on woodwarblog.com the following Mondays. Contact him at woodwardcolumn@gmail.com.