Speaking Up

Speak up for those who cannot speak,

For the rights of all the destitute

Speak out, judge righteously

Defend the rights of the poor and needy

(from Proverbs 30)

Proverbs 30 was my morning reading on Sunday and appropriately followed our time with the women from Threads of Hope, some of whom are truly destitute. I hear it loud and clear.

During breakfast that day we met two women who are working with internally displaced persons, Salome, Ann and baby Simon among them (read the former post). There are 400, 000 such people. Those who have come to Kenya from Somalia are external refugees and they number over a million—I’m sure you know about that tragedy. To be displaced from home, to have no place to call home must be among the most bitter of human experiences—particularly for those whose land means so much to them. Ann said they left everything behind. She looks most sad as she talks about her gardens. I ask if there is any hope of returning. No, she says.

But the two women we talked with at breakfast told us that their organization is close to closing on a tract of land where Ann and Salome and their families may relocate and begin to build new homes and lives. I pray that it may be so.

John Njane is also displaced having been burned out of his house. His hope for a new home holds five young boys in the bundle. When we first talked to him last week he told us that some people think that because his house burned God must no longer care—that somehow God must have left. But John believes that God is more near. The fact that help came so soon afterwards proves it for him. You may or may not know that Nancy, Cyndi and others packed several suitcases with clothing for John and his family the day before we left for Kenya—most of it from Jon Makowski’s closet in Jim and Nancy’s home-- and the team provided some funding as well. John also shared that he believes that God has the plan and John is waiting for God to reveal it to him.

John is model for many in his community; but he's also a model for us as we consider the verse from Proverbs. An articulate voice for those who have none, he defends the rights of the destitute even while he himself is homeless.

I was most moved by something John said when we first talked with him last Thursday. Someone at the table was teasing Jim about being surrounded by women and John replied that helping women is a very smart thing to do because women work hard and invest in the community. That idea seems to be a theme running through our experience in Kenya.

Tomorrow: meet Chief Sobore, Helen Nkuraiya,
and Village of Protection!!!