An Experience

A while ago, Fr. Sebastian of DBYES, asked me (Pat) to write an article for the Don Bosco African East Magazine. It was recently published and here is the article...



My experience here has been like no other experience I ever had. I have been in Kenya for almost 11 weeks now and I have never been more out of my element. This has been the longest I have been away from home, friends, family, and comfort. My journey here has taken me to Europe and now Africa. I have seen new countries, new flora, new buildings, new cultures, new people, and new ways of living life. The one thing that has stayed constant for me, though, is my trust in God’s plan for me being here.
It is not always easy to trust, especially when you are so removed from the comforts of home. I came on this trip to Bosco Boys with my girlfriend, Katie. She has been my home, friend, family, and comfort here. Back at home when I have problems, confusions, or need someone to talk to, I have an abundance of people I can turn to. Here I turn to Katie, but she can not fix everything. I truly feel I have been forced to turn to God and what I have received is His word to trust in His plan.
Bosco Boys is truly a special place. The first thing I realized when I came here is that this place only exists because people believe so strongly in Jesus that they have dedicated and focused their lives on helping these street boys. It is a wonderful thing to experience and be apart of. The children are so talented, full of energy, and intelligent in so many ways due to their experiences on the street. I don’t think children in America could comprehend the reality of the lives of these Bosco Boys. I pray these children will focus their “street smarts” towards the classroom. If they can do this, I believe they could be the most successful people, anywhere.
Before I came here I received many books regarding street children in Kenya from family and friends. I have come to realize that each one of the children affiliated with Bosco Boys has a story and each story could be one of these books. It is touching to see these children be happy, playing, and learning. Children here have had a more challenging story than any person at this age I know back home. Seeing the homes, streets, and slums where these boys come from is truly a humbling experience.
These humbling moments makes me appreciate more the blessings I have had my entire life. I know the rest of my time here will be confusing, fun, difficult, enlightening, and will continue to be an experience like no other.

Painting with Baba

These pictures actually are from April but we're just getting around to putting them up. During break, Fr. Makarios, needed help painting his house. Katie offered to put up a beautiful painting, the rest of us all just painted the walls. It was a fun few days, listening to the sound track of Mama Mia (Fr. Makarios's favorite), eating biscuits, and just having fun.

Anna

Fr. Matunga came by to say hello.

Darren Collison

Lucy

This was the main painting Katie did. She painted this entire wall and it came out beautiful. She sketched the entire wall, painted, and delicately constructed this masterpiece.

Baba

Katie enjoying some biscuits and laughing at Baba

Katie painting the base of the palm tree in the kitchen.

Palm tree


Katie did such a beautiful job painting. She has never done anything to this scale before but everyone here has loved it. It really has made Father's house so much more beautiful.

Community Day

Community Day! A new day for us. We have never heard of this day before but apparently it is a day everyone looks forward to every year. It is actually the day where you recognize the "president" of the school but Fr. Seba (our president) has decided to make it a day for everybody. The day begins with dressing his car with ribbons, banners, pictures, etc., him being driven into the school cafeteria, and we all have morning prayers with song. The day continues with games and ends with a costume party/performances.

Fr. Seba's tiny van. Everyone told us they were driving it through the school, the halls, and into the cafeteria through the regular sized door. We thought they were crazy...

BUT they made it through the door.

Our costumes... Katie put on some face paint and dressed more of a traditional African tribes woman. Pat put on his bed sheet, slicked back his hair.

Pat then realized when he finished dressing up that he looks like Jesus. The children all started calling him "Yesu" (Jesus).

There are some donated clothing bags which the children look through to find costume clothing. The only thing is, the clothing is all woman clothing. So, about 80% of the boys dressed as women. They all wore dresses, some wore high heels, and they all stuffed their chests. The other boys just put a sweatshirt in the stomach to look like a "grown-up "man, or stuffed their butt to look like a "grown-up" man.

What's New

School has been back in session for almost two full weeks now. We have been getting back to the everyday schedule of morning mass, assembly, having a few hours off, class, lunch, class, games, dinner, night prayer, and bed time. It is nice to have this schedule again because it allows us to have some free time during the mornings, be with the children, and gives us a routine. We enjoyed the holiday time at Bosco Boys and the "I Want to See Jesus" Camp but we are happy to get back to our daily schedule.

Our friend Anna, from Holland, left two days ago to go back home. She spent, we believe, 6 months here and was had a bitter/sweet feeling when she left. There was a celebration for her the night she left where the children put on performances, sang, and entertained her one last time.

The weather here has been very rainy. It seems at times the rain here comes down harder only because we have metal roof tops, so the sound of the droplets become even louder than on the roofs at home. The dirt ground has become large puddles for frogs and other insects, the cement ground has become a sliding floor for the children, and you can't help but get dirty here. There is a leak in Patrick's roof in his room and he has had to rearrange his room because his bed got soaked the other night. He now has buckets in the room to catch the water but is hoping to fix the problem sooner than later.

We have been away from home for 3 full months now, the longest either of us have been from our families/comfort. We miss everyone but have really felt we have grown together and individually during our time here. We have experienced many new things, realize we will experience even more because this is only a small portion of our time here. Not everything is easy, like anything/anywhere in life, we enjoy the mystery of the day, and become more appreciative of the blessings we have back home.



Pat and red soil

Katie and the girls

Makuyu: Trip II

Trip deuce to Makuyu, this time it was Patrick, Katie, Anna (Holland), and Nils (Belgium). We also went with a group of boys from Bosco Boys and Fr. Matunga. It was a fun day to go to some new smaller villages and see something new.

Pat and Nils walking into Don Bosco Makuyu.

Pat and Anna's greenhair walking through the shamba (farm) land around a small parish in the Makuyu area.

Beautiful scenery

Katherine Anne

After church the four volunteers all sat under a tree outside of the chapel. The children (around 40-50) began gravitating towards us.

Nils then started acting like a kuku (chicken), chased them around, yelled making chicken noises, and the children absolutely loved it. Though he did make one little girl cry but was the first to say "pole sauna" (very sorry).

The children then surrounded us and we began singing songs, yelling noises of animals, and the children and we all loved it.

Some of the children.

Nils, Anna, & Katie singing

This picture is for my (Pat) friend Carlo Fiatarone. If you are reading this post, Fr. Lionel says he knows you from your time in Sierra Leone. Fr. has spent most of his days in Western Africa and is new to Eastern Africa just like Katie and myself. Carlo, hopefully you see this and can remember him also. Small world if you do... it's ok if you don't. ha... Well father came over and started singing songs with us also.

Then the four of us went on a small hike through the village, got some donuts and soda, found a spot to rest, and we chose next to this donkey.

Anna and Katie

The drive to and fro of this small church was the most bumpy road I've ever been on. If anyone has ever been on the Indiana Jones ride at Disneyland, this was the same but real. The drivers seat on the ride at Disneyland is on the right just like it is here. I really felt like we were on a ride and finally understood what 4x4 cars are for.

The drive back home was nice because we were able to see the country side and relax. Though we saw this torn down building and people looting it. It was amazing to see how many people were taking cinder blocks for their own use. There were police trying to stop people but looters were every where taking what they could. The image driving by, was something I remember seeing on tv. It was different to see how forceful people were towards others with something that was free and abundant.

CAMP: " I WANT TO SEE JESUS"

On Tuesday, all the boys came back to school from their holiday and we started a week long camp for all of the students at the school. It's nice for the kids to get back in the groove of school and being around their school friends after their month long holiday. One thing that we have noticed since they came back, though, is that they are acting differently than before they left. Some of the boys have been a lot more mean to the other kids and there seems to be more bullying going on than before. We don't quite understand why they are acting this way, but after a few days we think it may be because they need to re-establish their "dominance" among the other children. Some of the boys that we have really liked and have always been the good kids in school have really been rude to us and this has been extremely disappointing and discouraging.

Another change that we are dealing with right now is the cultural differences. This has always been a hard thing to deal with but it has been more prevalent during this camp. Most of the misunderstandings have not involved us directly but more among the other volunteers and staff. What we have realized is that there is just a huge miscommunication among people due to the lines of communication being so drastically difference. Misunderstandings between all of us have taken place because of the way things are being said, in one culture this is completely accepted and normal, while in another it can be extremely rude and disrespectful. We have found ourselves really frustrated with certain things here that are different for us, but then we notice even the nicest people here find those frustrating habits a normal and acceptable way of life. It can be hard sometimes for us to distinguish what is rude and what is just a cultural norm here.

Recently we have been able to learn from these misunderstandings and are starting to realize that nothing can be assumed here, because when we assume we get angry about things that the other "side" may never even recognize. We (Pat and I) were walking yesterday (our favorite thing to do here) and just talked about these things and frustrations that we can have here sometimes. We realized that this is something we need to learn to have patience in. We knew that coming here things would be different, we just didn't know how so. We want to learn how to not allow ourselves to become frustrated with things we don't understand because that would be a never ending cycle. We know that there will also be people in our lives in the future that we come across and have personality and/or cultural differences to us, but we need to have a bigger perspective about the world and that when people grow up in different environments (which is everyone) then you are bound to have disagreements.

We also have decided that we don't want to use the word "weird" anymore when someone describes a norm in their own culture. When we first got here we would say that a lot of things were weird. We are surrounded by 6 other cultures (mainly) here and have come to understand that nothing is weird but just different. One thing isn't better than the other, just different. Being here, everyone thinks in their own country they have the best way of living, eating, being governed, etc, but really...to each their own. I grew up thinking one food was the best and Pat grew up thinking another was the best, and from country to country these differences change even more. It's been an experience being exposed to all of these differences, and if there is something we don't fathom...T.I.A.

Shedrick Elephant Park

A little over a week ago, before camp, along with Nils and his girlfriend Annelien we went to the elephant orphanage. It was a bit of a hike to get there but was fun. This is a center where they bring in orphaned elephants from national parks all over Kenya. Many of the elephants parents were killed from illegal hunting for ivory or the baby elephant is sick. The place over looked the Kenyan National Park, which isn't too far down the road from Bosco Boys. It was beautiful scenery. We did take many more pictures on another camera but since the size of those picture files are so large, it would take forever to upload them. We'll upload them one day when we get back.



Walking to the orphanage.


The warthog's are bathing in the background.

This guy walked right up to us.

This is the smallest guy in the orphanage. He is maybe 3 feet tall.

These are the elephant caretakers, they fed them bottled milk.


Nils really wanted to hug an elephant. After he did this, his shirt was completely covered in mud.

So afterwards we went to an area called "Bomas". There we did some small shopping at little shops and got a bite to eat. Nils saw a cat walking around and decided to be a cat also. This is a picture of him crawling towards the cat (which is under the table in the background). The people sitting next to us thought he was pretty "cheesy" (which is slang for crazy in Kiswahili).