A visit to Africa

Last week I went to Kenya to visit Nakuru 3:16, a home for street children in Nakuru, Kenya. If you're not familiar with our family's involvement in this project, here's the quick backstory. God led us to Nakuru more than 10 years ago through a mission trip, some insightful and compassionate questions, and an unexpected inheritance. The project was started in 2006 to help address the problem of the cycle of street living in Nakuru:

Poverty and disease have combined to create a staggering number of orphaned children in sub-Saharan Africa. Since there is limited government assistance, most of these children end up living on the streets, even at very young ages. With a crippled economy, there are virtually no opportunities to escape the street life, despite any amount of desire or willingness to work. Females are the most marginalized. They quickly become victims of violence and sexual abuse; disease (HIV) and pregnancy both follow. The girls raise their children where they can: if they are lucky, they can rent or squat in a shanty. Otherwise, they live in the garbage dumps and alleys. They make money however they are able, often resorting to prostitution. A disturbing number of the girls and their children die from malnutrition or disease. The ones that live perpetuate the “cycle of pain”, as the children grow up to be another generation on the streets.

The idea was to take young mothers and their children off the streets and bring them to a group home. There the mothers would learn to kick the dependencies and habits that were acquired on the streets, work to complete their education, receive job training, and finally graduate to become successful contributing members of society. At the same time, the program would ensure that the resident children received the education and upbringing they needed to avoid becoming the next generation of street children.

The Nakuru 3:16 home

Over the last 10 years the project has helped dozens of women and children find relief from life on the streets. Our home church, First Presbyterian in Missoula, MT, has been a big supporter. They have sent 3 mission teams to visit the project, and helped fund the construction of the beautiful home where the residents of Nakuru 3:16 now live. Several other churches in the U.S. have also sent mission teams and funds to Nakuru.

I was part of one of the mission teams that went to Nakuru 3:16 in 2011. After only being involved in the project from afar for the first five years of its existence, my commitment to the project increased exponentially after my visit. While in Kenya I saw firsthand the dumps that the poor people of Nakuru live in. I saw the addiction to sniffing glue in order to dull the pain of hunger and hopelessness, I saw the starvation of adults and children alike, I saw the literal feeding frenzy that occurred when we served a meal to the homeless in a local park, I saw the terrible physical condition of some of the residents of the street and knew that there was no medical care available to them. Then I saw the Nakuru 3:16 home. There I saw smiling kids who love to put stickers on their foreheads and wear dime store plastic rings on their fingers. I heard the laughter of kids who are in a safe place with enough food to eat. I saw the school uniforms worn by children who now have the chance to get an education and escape their previous fate. I saw smiles on the faces of the mothers who had been rescued from that life and had a shot at something better for themselves and for their children. My heart was forever imprinted with the stark contrast: where these people had come from vs. where they  are now; where they would have been without the existence of Nakuru 3:16.

Since that visit 5 years ago, hardly a day has gone by that I didn't think about the girls and kids and wonder how they were doing. We used to get fairly regular updates from the house, but the program director left in 2013 and communication has been spotty at best since then. I had hoped to visit 2 years ago with a group from FPC Missoula and a church in Whitefish, but we weren't able to get enough people to commit to a date that worked for everyone. Then Dan and I decided to move to Germany and it has taken this long to finally make plans to get back to Africa. On the plus side, the trip from Berlin to Nairobi is only about half the time and distance as from the United States, it's considerably cheaper, and it's only a 2 hour time difference! Those things made the trip much easier. It was also very easy to plan since I made the trip alone; I didn't have to coordinate with a mission group. So I literally decided in February that I would go in March, and I bought my plane tickets just one month prior to the trip.

I was a little nervous to be making the trip by myself, but the benefit was that I could organize my own itinerary. My goals for the trip were broad and somewhat vague. At the most basic level, I just wanted to see for myself that Nakuru 3:16 still exists and is functioning. But assuming I would find that that was true, the main goal of my trip was to communicate to the kids and girls (now women) who live at the house or have lived at the house that I haven't forgotten them. That I think about them, pray for them, and hold high hopes for them. That they aren't just some African people I met one time on a trip; rather, they are special. I care what happens to them, even if don't get to spend much time in Nakuru with them.

I had a secondary but equally important goal, to check in on Dan Cripe Wanjiru, the sweet little boy named after my husband, whom we had learned in 2013 is deaf. When I first learned of his deafness I was fairly distraught, worrying about what kind of a future there would be for a deaf kid from the streets. I spent time researching conditions that cause deafness, possible interventions, and Kenyan sign language, but I felt powerless to make a difference from so far away and without a direct way to communicate. So a major objective for this trip was to find out how Dan is doing.

I am thrilled to report that the trip was amazing and exceeded my expectations. I found the house in great condition and the children happy and well. Many of them were babies when I visited before, so I was a stranger to these 5 and 6 year olds now. But the older ones remembered me and were happy to see me. I visited Dan at his school, which includes a classroom for the deaf. Dan got a late start with his learning, but I was told that he's a quick learner and there is good reason to believe he will eventually be able to communicate via sign and also read lips. He can already sign the alphabet and has a small vocabulary of other signs too. I was able to spend a lot of time with Monica Wanjiru who, with her 4 children, has a special relationship with us. I met with members of the church congregation, Presbyterian Church of East Africa-Nakuru West, who oversee the project. I was able to piece together what has been happening over the last 5 years and clear up some misunderstandings about money and communication. I spent time at the house playing ball with the kids, letting them fix my hair, taking photos, and eating meals. I spent hours and hours talking with Zablon Kuria, the head of Rock Bridge Ministries which originally began and administered the program before it was mostly turned over to Nakuru West. Although my trip was short - just 3 full days on the ground in Nakuru - I feel like I was able to get caught up on what the project has been doing and where it is going, and I'm pretty confident that my message of love and hope came across to the kids at 3:16.

The biggest challenge facing the program right now is not the kids but the adults. It is relatively straightforward, with adequate funding, to feed kids and send them to school. But mentoring adults who are accustomed to their independence is a much harder task. The project has been only mildly successful in terms of rehabilitating the mothers and sustaining them in a healthier and more productive lifestyle. It turns out that was a much tougher task than we had the funds and experienced personnel to tackle. So the focus of the program has shifted towards the children, but that presents its own challenges as those children grow up. Education becomes more expensive as the children advance in school, and mentoring becomes more and more important in order to steer kids in appropriate directions. Joyce has lived at Nakuru 3:16 for the last 8 years or so, and just graduated from high school. If she is to continue to university, we will need to find someone to sponsor her because the program doesn't have the funds for advanced education. There are 3 other children currently in high school who will need to sponsors in the next few years in order to realize their dreams. So funding remains a challenge, as it is in nearly every charitable organization.

This is just the CliffsNotes version of my trip. I plan to write in much more detail about each resident of the house, what has been happening for the last 5 years, and the current needs and challenges of the project. Stay tuned if you want to know more!

P.S. If you are interested in donating to the mission, you can see how to do so here. Be sure to indicate that the donation is for Nakuru 3:16.

Me, Monica and Regina with Dan!

Anne and Charity braid my hair, while Monica practices
her pedicure massage on my foot

The kids play with the soccer balls I gave
them while the clouds darken with
an approaching storm

Someone's got my camera, as always! Virginia and Anne
pose on the front steps, Grace licks the remains of her
Ritter Sport bar, and Fathili and I watch from the porch

Sophie takes a whiff of dinner

Christmas in Tuscany, Part 4

Now that it's almost Easter, here is the final installment of the Christmas trip report!!

For New Year's Eve we planned to visit Montalcino and Siena. Montepulciano and Montalcino are the two wine-lovers' towns. Montepulciano has the Vino Nobile, which we had tasted a few days before and enjoyed a lot. Montalcino has the famous (and expensive) Brunello wine ("little Brunette"). We only went to one tasting facility in Montalcino due to time and expense, but I am finding now that we are back in Berlin that, now that I know what to look for, I sometimes see Brunello and Vino Nobile wines in the stores here and we can try them here at home.

We went to a very interesting automated tasting facility.  There were long rows of wine bottles displayed in a stainless steel casing, like a vending machine. Each bottle had a spigot in front of it and a digital price displayed above it. When you enter the Enoteca, you check in and get a tracking chip. You browse the rows of wine and when you find one you would like to try, you insert your chip in the slot closest to the group of bottles that contains the one you want to try. (The slot is below the green display area in the picture.) Then you place your wine glass under your wine bottle's spigot and press a button to dispense. Wine pours out in just the right amount for a tasting. The price of the tasting is noted on your chip, which you pull out of the slot and move on to the next wine you want to try. It was a really interesting way to try wine. Typically when we go wine tasting we go to a particular winery that sells only its own wine. Since we were in a hurry to get to Siena, it worked well to go to one place that sold wine from many different wineries. The choices were daunting though, and part of the appeal of a wine-tasting is speaking with someone who is knowledgeable about the wine who can suggest varieties based on your particular tastes. Thankfully there was a nice English-speaking man available in this shop who selected 5 or 6 very different types of wine for us to get a representative sample.

You could quickly go broke tasting Brunello like this. It's a very expensive wine and each taste cost anywhere between €4 and €12. Each taste, not each glass! Another downside of this tasting method is that it's not possible to benefit from a generous pour of wine; each sample is measured to the same specific amount. No fun. Anyway, we actually didn't like the wines we tasted very much, with the exception of a €100+ bottle we tasted just for fun. Of course, we thought that one was excellent.

There's not much to do in Montalcino besides taste wine, plus we wanted to get on to Siena, so we didn't stay too long in that town.

This peaceful park on the edge of Montalcino boasts
benches and amazing views

The Enoteca where we tasted Brunello di Montalcino

Montalcino's main attraction is its fortress, now empty on the
inside but all the walls and towers and ramparts still stand.
Sometimes they host festivals and events inside.

Just beside the fortress and with a spectacular view into the
valley was a small Christmas market

Palazzo Publico and Torre del Mangia lit up at night,
with the stage for New Year's Eve bands in front

Siena is sort of the grand jewel of the hill towns, the largest and most famous. It seems like everyone who has been to Siena has loved it, so we had great expectations for enjoying the rest of the day and possibly into the night to pass the new year. Well, of course with those high hopes we were bound to be disappointed. Probably it was partly because we saw Siena at the end of a week of seeing other hill towns and we were "hill-towned-out". But probably even more it was because Dan's and my tastes are just not the norm. If there is a crowd you can generally find us heading in the opposite direction to find a place with more solitude. So we were immediately repulsed by the crowds in Siena. There were so many more people there than had been anywhere else we had visited. Just another indication that had we done this same trip itinerary in the summertime we would probably have had a miserable time.

Unidentified sausages and salamis hang
from the window of the delicatessen
where we bought sandwiches

Another factor that soured our impression of Siena was faulty planning. In general I was really pleased with how our entire visit to Tuscany had gone: arriving with a general idea of what I wanted us to do and then leaving the details and particulars to spontaneity. But I botched our new year's eve. We didn't eat in Montalcino and so we were pretty starving when we arrived in Siena. But restaurants in Italy usually take a break between lunch and dinner, so there was no place that was open to sit down and have a meal, plus it got dark pretty early and we didn't want to take the time to have a long meal so we could tour the city in the daytime. So we bought sandwiches from a super authentic local meat guy whose shop had sausages and other dried meats hanging from the window. But nobody liked their food very much. The meats had a very strong taste, and the kids didn't like the fresh cheese on the sandwiches. We also paid way too much for a wheel of panforte, the special Italian Christmas dessert made with densely packed fruits and nuts, which we ended up not liking very much. With so much wonderful food in Italy, I was so bummed every time we ate something that we didn't enjoy, it seemed like such a lost opportunity!

Siena's Duomo

After an unsatisfying meal and wandering a little around Siena, thinking it was too big and kind of impersonal, we bought tickets to tour the Duomo. This I enjoyed very much. It was beautiful on the inside and I enjoyed having the guide book with me and seeking out all the interesting parts of the church.

The cathedral's interior

Piazza del Campo, the huge public space in the center of Siena
where the Palio horse race is run in the summertime

After getting kicked out of the church because it was closing, we came outside to a rapidly chilling night, even though it was only early evening. We came to the realization that we had nowhere to go and nothing to do. We had no hotel to relax in. Museums and attractions had closed for the holiday evening. Restaurants weren't open yet, and when they did open they would be fully booked with reserved tables. The New Year's Eve entertainment in Piazza del Campo wouldn't start until 10 p.m. Our only option seemed to be killing 3 or 4 hours drinking coffee or wine somewhere until the festivities started, which sounded pretty good to me but not to the kids. It was too cold to stay outside, and we weren't even sure where we could go inside because many of the wine shops simply sell you a bottle and a couple of plastic cups and send you on your way. Understandably the kids were beginning to act up in this situation and Dan and I were frustrated by our failed day, so tempers flared and Dan ended up getting really mad at Carter and hurting his feelings, so much so that he wouldn't speak to us the rest of the night. Sigh. Had I known what our plans for the week would be, I should have booked us a room in Siena, booked us a nice restaurant for dinner, and we would have done the whole thing differently. But I couldn't have known that; we had never planned to spend New Year's Eve in Siena, it just happened organically. So in the end we decided to leave Siena before the big evening celebration and we drove back to Chianciano Terme, each one of us silent and disappointed. I would like to give Siena another chance sometime.

Monica had graciously invited us to have a new year's eve meal with her extended family. We had gotten to know her from quite a bit of visiting over breakfasts throughout the week. We had talked a lot about parenting, since she is in a difficult stage right now with a small baby and a very feisty toddler boy. She had gotten to know us too. She made a chocolate cake for breakfast one morning to please Carter. And when she found out I was sick she went straight to her yard and pulled some plant from the ground and made me a tea with its leaves and roots and some fresh lemon. We got to see the real woman behind the face of the bed and breakfast, and we were honored that she would invite us to a meal. We weren't sure, though, if anyone in her family but Monica spoke English, and we also had thought maybe we would stay in Siena for fireworks and music. So we had told her that we wouldn't have dinner but that if we got back in town at an early enough hour, we would knock on her door and have a new year's toast.

When we returned from Siena we left the kids in our apartment for some decompression time and Dan and I walked across the street to wish Monica a happy new year. We were welcomed with open arms, given drinks and offered lasagna. Her relatives all had small children so the scene was a familiar one from our not too distant past: a cartoon playing on the tv, toddlers getting into things they shouldn't be, parents trying to have conversations while being climbed on, etc. One cute little girl I had seen at breakfast came over to me with a toy bin and proceeded to empty the bin and show me each one. I "whooshed" a toy car down her arm and she was so thrilled that she must have handed the car to me again and again 25 times before her mom came over and rescued me. It was a happy domestic scene and I mostly just watched everyone and played a little with the kids. Dan found someone who spoke English and had an animated conversation about a wide range of topics from video games to movies. After a little while we excused ourselves and went back to our apartment. I didn't really see the point in staying up, so I went on to bed. It's the first time in many years that I haven't stayed awake until midnight to ring in the new year. Dan and the kids stayed up and at midnight they walked outside and caught a glimpse of fireworks going off somewhere.

New Year's Day dawned as a new start. When I originally planned this trip I had hoped that if the weather was nice enough we could go biking or hiking since so many summertime trips are planned around those activities. This, our last day in Tuscany, promised to be relatively warm and sunny, so we decided to go for a walk/hike. Monica cooked up a wonderful breakfast, as always, and we pored over internet boards and maps to choose a destination for our walk. Monica suggested a lovely walk through a forest to a hilltop viewpoint, but since it was a nice sunny day we decided we would rather be out in the sun, so we settled on walking part of the highly recommended route between Monticchiello and Pienza. We had to be back in Chianciano Terme by 3:00 because we had made reservations for a New Year's meal at one of the nicest restaurants in town, one we had been trying to get to all week.

We drove to Montichiello, not far away, and were immediately struck by how picturesque it was. It is tiny, so it only took us a few minutes to walk around the town, but it was very scenic. There was a cozy trattoria just inside the town wall that was serving food on the holiday. The man in the tiny visitors shop told me that there would be a drum performance later that evening. It was decision time: do we take a short walk and then hurry back to Chianciano Terme in time for our afternoon lunch reservation, or do we cancel the reservation, take a more leisurely walk and spend the day in Monticchiello? Once I make a plan I like to stick to it, but we really were drawn in by cute and cozy Monticchiello. We decided to cancel the reservation but the only problem was language. Almost no one at restaurants in this part of Italy speaks English (Monica had made the reservation for us). I used Google translate to change "My name is Jennifer Cripe. I have a reservation for 4 people at 3:00. I would like to cancel it. Our plans have changed. Thank you. Goodbye." into Italian. I practiced it several times, then took a deep breath and dialed the number. I made it through my speech and the man on the other end of the line seemed to understand what I was saying, at least enough to questioningly repeat the word "cancel" in Italian. "Si, annulare" I said. Whew, I did it! We put our name on the list at the restaurant in Monticchiello and took off on our walk.

It was genuinely lovely, one of the highlights of our trip. All was forgiven and we walked and laughed and took goofy pictures, throwing a frisbee back and forth as we walked. All too soon it was time to turn around so we could get back to the restaurant before it closed.

See the frisbee in the air between Haley and me?

Monticchiello up on the hill

It turns out that even though we had put our name down for a specific time, our table wasn't ready when we returned and in fact we waited probably close to an hour for it. But no matter, the food was good and we eventually sat down to a nice celebratory meal.

After dinner it had gotten dark and the drum performance started in the main square. It was a group from Africa and they drummed and chanted in front of a large bonfire. It was a cool small community celebration - all ages were singing along, tapping their feet, or dancing. Someone was selling hot spiced wine and hot chocolate for a small fee from their own drink dispenser. It felt like a very worldly new year's celebration: Americans in Italy listening to a performance from Africa.

We spent our final night at the bed and breakfast and the next morning had our last yummy Monica breakfast, then crammed into our rental car one last time and drove back to Florence. It was a rainy, yucky day and we couldn't see any scenery through the clouds, fog and rain. It really made us realize what a different trip we would have had if the weather had been like that the whole time! Thank goodness it was only for the travel day. We all agreed this was one of our favorite European trips so far.

A party like nothing I have experienced before!

I'm catching up on blogging from a few weeks ago, and I wanted to talk about the big bash thrown by the CEO of Dan's company. He had booked the Felix Club, next to the American Embassy in the heart of Berlin, self-touted on their website as "considered the hippest premium club of Berlin". And further, "premium clubbing is served on a silver platter in an astonishing atmosphere." Not being a connoisseur of premium clubbing (or even sub-premium clubbing), still I would have to agree with the "astonishing atmosphere" piece.

Dan and I dressed in the hippest clothing we could assemble (darn! we forgot to take a picture!) and took a cab to Mitte for the 1:00 sharp arrival time. We were warmly welcomed by our host and checked our coats in the cool high-tech coat check. Each hanger had a bar code; your coat was hung on the hanger and scanned into the system; then your ticket was printed and given to you. The entrance was on an upper floor and then there was a grand staircase leading down to the area which had been prepared with tables for the meal. We immediately noticed the large center table at the base of the staircase at which were seated about 20 or so beautiful young girls dressed to kill. Christian, the host, is only 30 so we thought at first maybe they were friends of his?

We descended the grand staircase and were quickly presented with a glass of champagne, which was refilled again and again in endless fashion throughout the day by a large staff of roving waiters and waitresses. I can't imagine how many bottles of champagne were consumed by our group of 150 or so guests. After some time for mingling we were instructed to take our seats and the food began to appear, carried out on platters by a hardworking staff of a dozen or so people. The event was titled a "brunch". One thing that never ceases to disappoint me in Europe is breakfast. Sure there are tasty pastries here, and the other things they eat in Europe for breakfast taste just fine, but when I think breakfast I think blueberry buttermilk pancakes, a Denver omelet, biscuits and gravy, egg and sausage casserole, coffee cake, fresh fruit, bacon and sausage links and grits, and a number of other things that are making my mouth water as I write this. So I have to admit I was a little disappointed when the platters that were being carried out held bread and deli meats and cheeses. There were also smoked fish, marinated vegetables and some fruit. Why don't I just post the menu for you - here.

The best part was a small platter of super yummy squares of a couple of different types of dessert. There was a chocolate mousse-y thing and a fruity thing, but my favorite thing tasted like Oreo cheesecake. Our table wasn't filled with dessert-eaters, so I had two pieces of the cheesecake-y thing. We all sighed, full bellies, while the waitstaff cleared the tables. But wait - then they brought us all out another clean plate and another set of silverware! Was there more? It turns out that all that food was just the appetizers. The actual meal came next. (It is listed on the menu but there was only one menu per table and no one had bothered to look at it, so no one knew to save room.) Unfortunately I would guess that most of this wonderful food went to waste. Our table had a few bites of each dish but most of the food was still in the huge serving bowls when the lights went out and the entertainment started. I felt so bad for the waste.

On to the entertainment! Christian had hired an entertainment troupe from Sweden that had traveled to Berlin for the party. The lights went down and a guy with a saxophone appeared at the top of the staircase. He proceeded to come down, lit by a spotlight, all the way down the stairs and out onto the middle of the table with the 20 girls. After his performance, Stormtroopers appeared, accompanied by a cool techno rendition of the music of the Dark Side. That was my favorite dance number of the night.

Our host performs

Then a rapper made his entrance; he turned out to be our host for the afternoon. Somewhere around this time the club staff walked around passing out foam glowstick things. Every 15 minutes or so there was a new spectacle: a man and woman wearing almost nothing but gold body paint; special effects like confetti being dropped or blasts of cold air near the dance floor; dancers wearing a variety of glow-in-the-dark costumes; huge balls that dropped from the ceiling that we could bat around like beach balls. The table that the girls had sat at turned into the dance floor and people could climb up onto it and dance to the music of the DJ. We finally realized that the attractive girls were part of the party package! Their job was to get the party started and keep it going. It seems like an odd idea but it was actually a really good one because there was significantly less enthusiasm from most of the actual party guests, and the party may have fallen flat if there hadn't been a group of people heartily cheering on every performer and participating in every activity.

Confetti and foam glowsticks

Big balloon bouncy balls

Girls in cool light-up butterfly costumes

Gold body-painted guy carries the Little Person on his
shoulders, while the ladies parade across the table in
gladiator costumes. Hmmmm....

The oddest part of the afternoon was that every half hour or so the host called the names of people that Christian wanted to recognize and they would go up on the stage. Then there was a group of scantily clad women and a Little Person, dressed in different costumes each time, who would parade down the stairs, present the people with a small gift, and then proceed to dance on the stage with them. Dan was the lucky recipient of one of these presentations, as the ladies carried small American flags and everyone danced to "Living in America". Weird.

I watched from the sidelines for most of the afternoon, but someone convinced me towards the end to get up on the stage and dance for a few songs. At 6:00 the party was over so the club could clean up and prepare for the evening's premium clubbing. It felt very strange to emerge from 5 hours inside a dark and very very loud club and have it not even be dinnertime yet! Our ears were ringing for the next 24 hours or so. I think it's safe to say I won't be attending a party like that again anytime soon!