dawn: adventures of a journeywoman

Here's a mediocre picture of me riding a boda boda (bicycle taxi for anyone perplexed by my last post.
Yesterday our group of summer interns visited Shikokho, the village where I will be living for the next 8 weeks. Shikokho is a farming community, with most people making less than $1 a day. I was prepared for the poverty we would see, but not the beauty. The beauty was gushing out of the land and the people we met. The 30 minute walk down the dirt road from the next closest town overlooked sunlit green hills (my picture cannot capture the full beauty). Every person I met in the community gave me the bizarre feeling that we had met before. In a way, we had. When I found out I had received the summer internship at Shikokho Medical Clinic, my background form mentioned that it had been started with the help of Chevy Chase Presbyterian Church in Washington, DC. As I met with the various members involved in the American support of Shikokho, I was continuously blown away. Here's the history as I understand it: A.T. Miller came to the village as a PeaceCorps volunteer and significantly helped the secondary (high) school, serving as the headmaster. He lived there for several years becoming fully ingrained in the culture and traditions. Gretchen Donaldson was working on her master's thesis and was hoping to study women's groups. Through a friend who knew A.T., she was able to hook up with the fledging Shikokho Women's Group to study for a few months. She lived with the leader, Mary Lidonde. Mary's husband, Issac had been selected as a young adult from Shikokho to become trained in medical laboratory work. After he retired from working as a lab tech in Nairobi, he came back to Shiokho. While Gretchen lived with the Lidonde's, Issac mentioned his dream of starting a clinic in the village. Later when Gretchen was telling her church about her time in Kenya, they became excited about partnering with this community to start the clinic. In 1995, the clinic was completed and in October of 2005, the church helped get electricity to the clinic (and the primary and secondary schools). The church has partnered with several other community initiatives including Solid Rock Youth group, which provides care to about 80 HIV/AIDS orphans in the village (which my host mother, Julia works with). After hearing this history from many of these movers and shakers in the U.S., it was a little unreal to meet the legendary Shikokho members. Each one conveyed an overwhelming warmness the second we met. Sharing with them a common connection from A.T., Gretchen, and many members of the church bolstered a new bond. I'm counting down the hours to tommorow when I arrive "for real" in Shikokho to learn how to be a member of the community. All of these "connections" remind me how truly small the world is and what an instant bond being part of the body of Christ can bring. For we share a common hope and purpose that exists beyond culture, tradition, nation, and tribe. Galations 3:28