They Say It Takes a Village...

March 4, 2013

I'm Moving Home!

My commitment in Kenya is over and I am excited to announce that I am moving home to Dallas at the end of March to become the first stateside Director of Development for Naomi's Village!

I'll keep this short as I hope this video says it all.

Video about my year in Kenya

February 4, 2013

And I'm Back!

I am back from the States and have had an insanely busy three months! I will keep this one relatively short and sweet.

Pictures are at the bottom and videos are throughout.

1. My furlough in the States was non-stop between going to Mexico for my brother’s wedding, visiting my sister and her family, moving out of my apartment into storage and trying to see all my friends and family in between. Needless to say, I think I crammed something into every possible second I was home but it was well worth running myself ragged!

2. About a month after I returned to Kenya we took the kids to Mombasa for a trip to the Indian Ocean. Many of our children and staff had never seen the ocean before which made the trip all the more exciting. To see the looks on their faces as they played in the waves was something I can’t quite do justice in retelling. It feels so good to be a part of such a beautiful memory in their little lives.

One of my favorite parts of the trip was actually watching the Kenyan staff and their reactions to what we were doing. Many of them have lived their whole lives within a 10-hour drive to the ocean but have never gone. They were just as excited, if not more excited, than the kids. This video of one of our housemoms learning to swim tells it all!

Video of Teaching NV Staff to Swim

3. It must be wedding season because I have attending 3 weddings and 1 dowry negotiation ceremony in just the last three months. If I could sum it all up I would say that weddings in Kenya are LONG (and I mean LONG) but their colorful traditions make the 12+ hour experience well worth attending.

The day of the first wedding started with the groom’s family going to the home of the bride to retrieve her for the ceremony. Everyone in the neighborhood surrounded the house as a huge procession of honking vehicles waited outside. The female relatives of the groom sang and danced for about an hour until the bride’s family allowed them inside the gate. Once inside, the groom’s parents made their way to the front door. As the bride walked out of the house, all the women started to lay down their mashuka (clothing wraps) on the dirt ground. One after another the mashuka were placed until the bride reached the vehicle that took her to the church. At the ceremony, when the bride walked down the aisle, the bridal party shot foam guns in the air so that the foam fell on the bride as she walked past them. The ceremony was many, many hours long and filled with song/dance performances by friends and family. Even the Naomi’s Village kids sang a song. This particular wedding was a community event to say the least with hundreds of street children in attendance. That is one of the beautiful things about Kenya… everything is focused on the community so when I say that hundreds of street children attended, I mean they stayed for the entire ceremony and reception. They were treated like all other invited guests and were fed a meal and cake.

Video of Bride Retrieval Ritual

The second wedding was the wedding of our NV financial director. Hands down, my favorite part of the wedding was when the groomsmen and bridesmaids walked down the aisle. I won’t try to explain it. You just need to watch this video.

Video of Bridal Party Dance Entrance

4. We have been struggling with what to do with our NV kids concerning education for quite some time due to an extreme lack of quality schools in the area. Never did I imagine being a part of opening a school in rural Kenya would be another step in this journey but lo and behold, we opened Cornerstone Preparatory Academy on January 14^th to 31 of Kenya’s future leaders!

Kenya is ranked the 9^th country in the world for school dropouts and of the 1.3 million Kenyan children starting school every year, only 62% finish primary school and 30% actually graduate from secondary school. With the state of Kenya's education system, we knew we had to do something drastically different to give our children, and the surrounding community, a fighting chance to end this cycle.

The school’s motto is 'Change Starts from Within'. The core of Kenya’s problems will never be solved with foreign aid. Real, sustainable change must come from Kenya's own people taking ownership of implementing and enforcing that change. We desire for our students to be agents of such change. Cornerstone’s holistic approach focuses on each child as an individual as we instill dreams, honor, respect and communal responsibility. I cannot wait to see where these children go with what they have been given. Kenya will never be the same.

5. Although I missed home terribly this holiday season, I can’t think of any place I’d rather spend Christmas if home isn’t an option. Some of the highs and and not so highs of the holiday are as follows.

When I picked up Baby Evans on Christmas Eve he wrapped his arms around my neck and called me momma.
I saw my first ever goat slaughter on Christmas day. All I can say is... wow.
I made my mom's holiday hot fudge and vanilla ice cream for the kids and the result was a lot of bowl licking and chocolate smeared faces. Even though I’m on the other side of the world, I wasn’t about to miss the tradition of making that delicacy during the holidays!
We had our first ever broken bone on Christmas Eve when little Kimberly fell and broke her wrist. Needless to say, her cast was the talk of the village!
Spending the holidays with the kids reminded me what the true excitement of a child feels like. And that’s a good feeling to have.

Ry & Becky's Wedding

in Puerto Vallarta

Finally Married!

Visiting My Family

in California

Mombasa Indian Ocean

Quincy and His Lady

Kenyan Wedding Season

Laying Mashuka Down

for the Bride

Foam Gun

Bridal Entrance

Street Child

at the Wedding

Cornerstone Preparatory Academy

Opened in January 2013

Christmas at

Naomi's Village

October 7, 2012

Naomi's Village Child Sponsorship

Tomorrow I fly back to the States but I wanted to share this short video about child sponsorship at NV before I go. We are currently in need of quite a few sponsors as we continue to grow so please let me know if you are interested.

September 27, 2012

Babies Dancing to Futbol Fans Rioting

I am less than two weeks away from heading back to the States for my brother’s wedding and to renew my visa, which only allows me to stay in Kenya for 6 months at a time. I cannot believe how quickly the first half of my commitment here has flown by. What a beautiful and eye opening journey. It is going by too quickly. I wish I could press slowwww moootionnnn… This time I only have a Top 5 list so here it goes.

Pictures are at the bottom and there are links to videos throughout the post.

1. The fact that I just turned 30 is not a “top” story but my sister coming to Africa to go on safari to celebrate definitely is. I couldn’t have asked for a better birthday to cap off 30 years of life! Our trip started with a 2-day safari in Masai Mara with two other friends. We stayed in a tented camp guarded by Maasai tribesmen. We didn't quite understand the need for a personal guard holding a spear right outside our tent until we woke up to the moan of a lion on our first night in the camp. The morning of my birthday, my sister and I did a hot air balloon ride over the African plains. It was hands down one of the most amazing experiences of my life! To watch enormous herds of animals move swiftly across the plains as the sun rises is one of those things I thought you only get to see in the movies. The hot air balloon ride ended in the middle of the safari park near a random tree where we had breakfast in the plains. That night a group of Maasai performed around a campfire and grabbed both Missy and I to join in which was awkward but fantastic all at the same time. The following day we visited a Maasai village where we got pulled into dancing with them once again. Classic sisters trip to Africa.

Video of Maasai Dancing in their Village

We spent the next four days at Naomi’s Village, the IDP Camp and in Nairobi. While visiting my friend Joseph in the IDP Camp, we walked past a group of kids playing in the middle of a dirt road in front of their house. I noticed one little boy had something black all over his cheek and I asked him if it was dirt or something else. He quickly hid his face and his older brother told us he burned it on a skillet when their mom was making chapatti. I asked how many days it had been since the burn and he said five. We went back to NV, told our nurse about the little boy, she grabbed some medical supplies and we headed back to the camp. When we returned, we found the kids in their house alone. Their mom was in Nairobi and had left three kids under the age of 12 at home alone for two days. I was able to see the burn a little better at that time. It was about 2x3 inches and there was raw exposed flesh in the middle of black, charcoal looking skin. As our nurse treated the wound, you would have thought this little boy was dying based on the way he was screaming. I’ve never heard anything quite like it. We left burn cream to be applied daily but when we returned a week later to check up on him, no cream had been applied. Thankfully the wound had healed quite a bit. Neglect and irresponsible parenting is unbelievably common here and it doesn’t get any easier to witness with time.

2. When I first arrived, two of our babies weren’t even crawling. Now, five months later, I have watched them learn to crawl, take their first steps, learn so many words but most importantly, they’ve learned how to dance! If Internet was faster here, I’d be putting first-time moms on facebook to shame with all the videos I’d be downloading. For now, this video will have to do.

Video of Babies Dancing at Bedtime

3. Jina langu ni Rachel. Mimi ni mwamerika, lakini ninaisha Maai Mahiu, nchi ya Kenya na ninafurahia maisha yangu hapa… All that is to say I am taking Swahili lessons once a week and pole pole (slowly) I am picking it up!

4. We have three new little ones at Naomi’s Village. The first is a baby named Hannah who was born weighing 3.96 pounds to a mentally ill rape victim that didn’t even understand that she was pregnant. In just three short weeks her weight almost doubled and her little body is filling out to look like a healthy baby girl. She is so precious and her sweet demeanor is an amazing blessing to the Baby Mamas that care for five babies under the age of two at NV right now.

Eric (age 6) and Muthui (age 5) are cousins. Eric’s mother passed away from aids and his father is absent. Muthui was one of the lucky few that survived a church massacre near Mombasa by the Indian Ocean. His mother and baby sister were two of the many victims that did not make it out alive. Both of the boys came in only knowing their tribal language but are quickly picking up English and Swahili. It took a few days for the boys to adjust but once they did, their playful spirits came out and I haven’t seen them without a smile since.

It is beyond tragic, so tragic I almost wish I didn’t know the details, that led these children to NV but they are now in a safe environment where they are loved and cared for in such a beautiful way. If you are interested in sponsoring any of these children, please email me at rach.l.lewis@gmail.com.

5. The most popular sport in Kenya is no different than the most popular sport in the world so going to a futbol game has been a “must do in Kenya” from the beginning. Little did I know, the game I ended up going to was between the two biggest rival teams in the country; one of which is known for throwing stones at the other team if they lose. After a few hours of watching this spectacle, the team with the more aggressive fans (Gor Mahia) won the match (thank the good Lord above) at which time thousands and thousand of fans jumped over the wall, flooded the field, let off smoke flares and ran around in circles as they chanted their victory song. We were some of the last people to leave the stadium and by the time we made it into the Central Business District of Nairobi we saw mobs and mobs of fans running through the streets still celebrating their victory. Had I not gone to the game, I would have thought we were caught in the middle of a mob protest!

Post Futbol Game Field Chaos

Masai Mara Safari