Trip Reflections 2017

CommUNITY.  Together.  Collegial. Supportive.  Collaborative.  Helping that really helps.

From first-morning observations at the Nairobi elephant orphanage to Inspiration Centre's Art Camp for 19 moms and their challenged kids, rich life-changing actions filled each day.

Among the many highlights

• Observing and serving a Colorado Front Range special education team providing supports and activities nearly unheard of in Kenya
• Drinking in the wisdom and passion of teachers at Eburru Primary School (where the student/teacher ratio is 150:1) and launching new instructional supports
• Wild and crazy "games day" with Eburru kids
• Gifting ceremony at Eburru Pre-School
• Kiswahili lessons in Naivasha
• Half-day "tour" of the slum of Kasarani near Naivasha
• Dinner with a Nakuru farm family and an after-dinner ridge walk above the Rift Valley
• Massive daily doses of local leadership wisdom through conversations at breakfast, dinner and driving/flying/walking.  Deep privilege of being extensions of Kenyan leadership teams.

Super simple slide show...

Just finished a draft for a "super simple slide show" regarding the relationships and work with our friends in Kenya. Fun.

Booklook: Imperial Reckoning...

One-word take on Imperial Reckoning–The Untold Story of Britain's Gulag in Kenya:  Tough.

Sanitized summary: Reveals the abuse of the Kikuyu tribe (think Eburru) by colonial powers in the 1950s.

Scary:  Imperial Reckoning brings first person accounts of detention camps, enslavement, starvation, sexual abuse, beatings, and death directed at the Kikuyu tribe in the 1950's by the British government (which lived in modern "denial" until very recently).

Too simple:  Foreigners were in control of Kenya. The Mau Mau revolutionary movement, comprised mainly of the Kikuyu tribe, sought to reclaim the land and culture from 1952-59.  All parties did violence to one another.  The Kikuyu tribe was at war with itself, divided among loyalists and supporters of the resistance.  Christian missionaries were used as tools of manipulation in the British "hearts and minds" campaign.  The British lost.  Kenya achieved independence and launched its independent democracy in 1963.

Caution:  A very sensitive topic among all Kenyans, especially Kikuyu.  Many Kikuyu don't talk of these times, even today.  Some do.

BookLook: White Man's Burden...

Warning: White Man's Burden takes a long, tough look at the why, what and how of international efforts with poverty.

The sobering  subtitle: "Why the West's efforts to aid the Rest have done so much ill and so little good."

The root: "The White Man's Burden emerged from the West's self-pleasing fantasy that 'we' were the chosen ones to save the Rest."

Crucial needs for success: Constant feedback from the poor and ongoing accountability to the poor.

Author William Easterly on effective and ineffective choices:

• "It hasn't worked to tell the poor what to do."

Invaders...

A creative, five-minute glimpse of an out of touch, helping-hurts culture. 

For more of Chalmers Center wisdom and tips, go here.
For the Pamoja! highlights of Chalmers' classic WhenHelping Hurts, go here.

Ethics of photographing locals...

The tourist trap!  

You're in a new and exotic place meeting people who live very differently than you.  The moment is intriguing and full of wonderment.  Cool to take pictures?  What's our why behind all the snapshots? What does getting informed consent to photograph children really look like?

For an insightful article, go here for the whys and whatfors of photographing others while traveling.

For a comical look at the same topic, catch the first two minutes of Despicable Me 2, here (or click on scene above).  Watch for the bus blowing over a local, the intrusive tourist horde and the seeing-only-thru-the-lens crowd.

2014 Retreat launches "KenyaTrip" season...

Twenty DCC service journey leaders retreated this past weekend to build relationships, learn from one another and develop next-stage planning with a leadership development theme (tag sheet above).  

In a similar fashion, this year's trip team of six will soon launch a series of two-hour gatherings to connect, review plans, practice travel scenarios, prepare gear lists, and build unity.

KenyaTeam's ongoing goals (for mission, core values and norms, go here):

• Gifts, talents and skills expressed with impact
• Interdependent, loving relationships
• Understanding of cross-cultural differences
• Persevere through inevitable conflict and dissonance
• Celebrate together
• A sustainable, "family on mission," team-based ministry

Thanksgiving: Dry Bones!

What an autumn joy to discover the values, commitments and love of the folks at Dry Bones,  a ministry committed to practicing the ways of Jesus.  They do this by ... "meeting the spiritual and physical needs of homeless and street-connected youth and young adults.  Seeking to equip and inspire all involved to relieve suffering, facilitate reconciliation, and free the heart to love."  Two different Saturdays featured a "turf tour" followed by "101 volunteer training." All along the way: richness and clear "transferrables" for our Kenya efforts.

Here's Reb Duke (above-right), Dry Bones Staff, as we toured the bridges, stairwells, river, woods, and tunnels that serve as temporary homes to the homeless:

• "If we look only from a distance, we're not going to know what's going on and how to help."
• "Let the city teach you."
• "Look for values, the values speak."
• "Every piece of trash is evidence of a human being."
• "I hold on to the hope that this is temporary."

Matt Wallace, Dry Bones Staff at the 101 class:

• "Dry Bones is all about experimenting."
• "We are a family."
• "As labels fade, we become friends." (with people on the street)

2013 Trip reflections / Randy...

Mathare kids and group leaders arriving at Camp Brethren

Amid a wild mix of memories from our two-week journey, some clarity shines through:

• Helping with the first-ever ArtCamp that blended kids from the urban slum Mathare with kids from Eburru's rural poverty
• Discovering Kenyans rich within poverty, constantly
• Building relationships, right and left
• Mathare church time focused on not exchanging the temporary for the forever
• Encountering a culture with a deep tendency of pleasing first, truth seeking/telling a distant second
• Processing two financial requests: Funding a rare Eburru man seeking a teaching certificate  and/or "couches and chairs" for a home with a constantly leaking roof
• Ongoing connections and blending with the elements of our core book Simple Spirituality: Humility, community, simplicity, submission, brokenness [one of many key verses: "Surely the Lord is in this place, and I was not aware of it." – Genesis 28:16]
• A teammate breaking past fear...another teammate helping develop an accountable small group...another teammate seizing every opportunity to engage Kenyan life...another constantly affirming...each teammate discovering unique expressions of learning, gifts and passions
• Challenging, humbling flights to Kenya that bonded the team and set the pace with challenging our American "status quo"

BookLook: Toxic Charity, take 2...

It's been a month since the end of my "marathon" with reading Robert Lupton's Toxic Charity. At times, I could barely make it through a page. A crazy intersection with the book, season of life, preparation for the Kenya journey, long history there with shared toxicity, and my own stuckness. Daunting, depressing, depleting thoughts about our small part in a shift to mutually healthy, honoring, deeply respectFULL giving.

A “few” excerpts (to go along with Pam's May 17 post) for your pondering:

• "The oath for compassionate service: Never do for the poor what they have the capacity to do for themselves; limit one-way giving to emergency services; strive to empower the poor through employment, lending, using grants sparingly to reinforce achievements; subordinate self-interests to the needs of those being served; listen closely to those you seek to help, especially to what is not being said; above all, do no harm."
• "In the United States, there's a scandal we both refuse to see and actively perpetuate. What Americans avoid facing is that while we are very generous in charitable giving, much of that money is either wasted or acutally harms the people it is targeted to help."
• “Doing for rather than doing with those in need is the norm. Add to it the combination of patronizing pity and unintended superiority and charity becomes toxic." 
• How do we hurt others with our giving? "Dependency. Destroying personal initiative. When we do for those in need what they have the capacity to do for themselves, we disempower them."
• "Religiously motivated charity is often the most irresponsible."

Raising financial fuel...

It was a great yard sale...
Weather.
Comaraderie.

RexBurgers.

Interesting people stopping by.

Kelley's "live updates" on Craig's List.
Lots of laughter.

"Guard dog" Prince.

Constant connecting.

Michael's negotiations with "the surfer."

The woman with the "Unearth dignity!" goodbye.

Our first "teamTeam" fundraiser.

BookLook: Maximizing your CQ

David Livermore's Serving with Eyes Wide Open is blazingly focused on crucial (mis)understandings and (mis)behaviors of (un)successful short-term missions people.

It's a disruptive read, challenging traditions of we-know-best, let's-go-do-a-project and even aren't-short-term-missions-cool while providing disturbing insights about how easily and breezily we miss and mess up love opportunities.

His solutions-based thinking:  Loving God and loving others cross-culturally will be done well when we develop four elements of high cultural intelligence (CQ):  Knowledge, interpretive, perseverance, and behavioral.

Key counsel:

• "The goal is to grow in our cross-cultural understanding and then combine that with a thoughful, reflective spirit."
• Four factors of cultural intelligence (CQ) will help short termers interact effectively:  Knowledge CQ, understanding cross-cultural differences; Interpretive CQ, accurately decipher cues as we engage; Perseverance CQ, processing through conflict; and Behavioral CQ, acting appropriately

          

• Starting points for being a short termer with cultural intelligence:  "God's a lot bigger than your short term missions trip; stop petting the poor; be yourself, seek to understand; think, again; try, try again; actions speak louder than words; give up trying to see who's in [a Christian] and who's out; love God, love others.
• "As we learn to interpret, reflect, and reframe our observations, we create a link between our cross-cultural understanding and the actual behavior we're after in our mission work."

More insights along the way:

• "Serving with eyes wide open goes against the grain of our fast-paced, urgent culture by pausing to reflect on and question our assumptions."
• "If we think of people as 'poor,' we demean them."

BookLook: Helping yet hurting

After two weeks of pondering the wisdom within When Helping Hurts, I'm refueled, re-envisioned and, well, feeling like I've got a weird 300-pound backpack on these old shoulders. 

Cascading challenges, African stories, troubling insights, and biblical links all left me with one thought: The intersection of poverty and "short term missions" is confusing,  complex.

Some tips for success from the concerned, thoughtFULL and very experienced authors:

• Design the trip to be about "being" and "learning" as much as about "doing." Stay in community members' homes and create time to talk and interact with them. Ask local believers to share their insights with team members about who God is and how He works in their lives; have team members share the weaknesses in their own lives and churches and have local believers pray for them.
• Ensure that the "doing" portion of the trip avoids paternalism. The goal is for the work to be done primarily by the community members with the team in a helping role.
• "Stay away from the 'go-help-and-save them' message and use a 'go as a learner' message... change the name from 'Short Term Mission Trip' to something like 'Vision Trip' or 'Go, Learn, Return, Respond.

Wisdom along the way:

• "We are not bringing Christ to poor communities. He has been active in these communities since the creation of the world,... [A] significant part of working in poor communities involves discovering and appreciating what God has been doing there for a long time!"

Glimpse of our journeying

Here's a simplified look at what's driving the "Kenya" effort, so far:

• Discovering, constantly, DCCers who want to help lead, train, and/or go
• Implementing a mission of "engaging in life-changing, loving relationships with Kenyan friends"
• Gaining new clarity on "DOing" and it's not about "doing to" or "doing for" but "doing with" 
• Developing a sustaining rhythm of "ready, roll, relate, return, respond"
• Honoring God and enjoying him fully

For a glimpse at the simplified plan, go here.