It wasn’t easy for us to get the boys here.  Coral had to raise a lot of money for transportation costs from donors.  But we had other troubles also.  Benson was turned down for a medical Visa at the last minute because “We only have five finger prints and we need ten to grant him a Visa”, said the American Embassy in Nairobi, Kenya!  It made as much sense as if they required Samuel to walk correctly.  With some strings pulled from New Jersey, the problem was solved.  Benson packed for the trip home with his new artificial arm and Samuel was able to walk straight on his foot for the first time in his life.  Of course they enjoyed the wonders of the USA like television, electricity, big homes, cars and video games, but they missed their families. 

            Maywoodians Doreen and Bill Wetzel drove me to Newark airport that Friday so I could meet up with Coral, her family, Benson and Samuel.  They came for another chance to see the boys who they took all over on tour in New York City when they visited Maywood on their way to Salt Lake.  It’s a long flight, 7 hours to Amsterdam and then 8 hours to Nairobi, but we arrived Saturday night and got Coral, her family and our two boys into a hotel for the night before we left in the morning for the school. 

I was invited to stay with our two Nairobi Kenya Project Angels, Chris and Rose Nugundu.  Both with jobs in travel agencies have worked for over four years to get our volunteers the lowest prices on our trip to the school at cost with no commission or profit to themselves.  Beyond that, Chris and Rose have volunteered so many hours to purchase school supplies and construction materials from our donations and transported them 300 miles to our adopted school.  Rose has kept strict records of every one of our donations.  They truly are our Kenyan Angels.

Now Nairobi is a big city of almost three million people but one million of them live in the largest slum of Africa inside the city. 

            But the Maasai are like the Native American Indians on a reservation, struggling to keep thousands of years old traditions in the Maasai Mara.  But the other 26 tribes of Kenya have long since moved into the 21^st Century, it seems like all of them have a cell phone.  So I was curious to see how non Maasai Kenyans live in Nairobi.  Some Americans would consider Rose and Chris’s Nairobi home a tenement or slum apartment because it is a cobbled together group of rooms in a building.  I found dozens of water filled plastic bottles at the house because the water can go off for weeks due to frequent droughts.  They have a home phone but it can be out of service for months before service to their neighborhood wires are fixed.  They have a television, electric stove and a sitting room as well as bedrooms for their two teen age boys who attend private school. 

            It may be considered a slum by some Americans, but I have never been inside a richer home than Rose and Chris’s home because I have never felt more welcome and wanted as a guest.  I was treated like a royal visitor. They worked hard cooking many wonderful Kenyan dishes on my first night in their home and I stayed up too late drinking Tusker, a Kenyan beer talking to my good friends. We talked for hours about how best to help our one little school and that we were all blessed to be a part of this Rotary Project. The big secret is that it IS better to give than receive.  Before I went to bed that night, I noticed that it’s true, the water in the toilet goes down in the opposite direction from Maywood because Nairobi is just 1 degree south of the equator! 

            On Sunday morning, we picked up Coral Terry, her husband Doug, her daughter Brenda, her neighbor, Cassandra, Benson and Samuel for our 45 minute trip to our lodge near the school.  When the 11 passenger plane landed on the tiny dirt landing strip, I looked out the window to see over three hundred Maasai waiting for Benson and Samuel to come back home.  All of them were dressed in their best formal Maasai attire. Most of the 300 were relatives of the boys.  They all cheered when Benson and Samuel got off the little plane.  They were greeted like royalty.

            I got out of the plane last and walked over to the side of the crowd so as to not crowd the homecoming, but not for long.  First it was a few Maasai mothers who came over to me on the hot airstrip, then it was a few dozen and in the end, almost two hundred Maasai who wanted to shake my hand.  “Kelvin, welcome back home!” “We miss you Kelvin.”  “Jambo (hello in Kiswahili) Kevin.”  “Sopa (Hello in their native Maasai Language) and “We missed you Kelvin.”  “How is Maywood?” When I looked into their eyes, I noticed they all really did remember me, it wasn’t a staged event.  And they were truly grateful that I came back.  My hand was getting cramped shaking so many of their hands.  “Assanti Sana, Kelvin.”  I felt like a rock star but after a while, I felt less embarrassed because I finally realized that their sincere gratitude wasn’t for me personally, it was for all the donors back home in Maywood and other people who gave to help these school children.  I wish everyone in Maywood could see how sincerely grateful these people are for the help we send.   

            We went back in jeeps to our volunteer home, Siana Springs Tent Camp and Benson and Samuel came back with us.  Coral Terry was confused, after all these months, why would the boys come back with us rather than go home with their parents to the village?  It didn’t make sense to her because she knew the boys really missed their parents.  I explained to Coral that there is a “Maasai Right of Return Ritual” she must complete.  She must formally go to the village, give her speech and formally return the boys to their families.  It was a wonderful event as they praised Coral and her family for caring for their two children.  It must have been so difficult for Coral go give back the two boys who have lived in her heart and family for so many months.  They dressed Coral, her husband, her daughter and neighbor in gifts of traditional Maasai clothes and jewelry to honor their hospitality.  “They were wearing thread bare clothes while giving us new Maasai clothes and jewelry, it didn’t seem right”, said Cassy, Coral’s neighbor.

            All of us were staying where we always stay, Siana Spring Luxury Tent Camp, a tourist resort.  And it is luxury! A sink, toilet, hot shower, two beds and a concrete floor in each tent.  It also has an open restaurant and bar as well as a pool and full time massage therapist. All this luxury only one mile from our adopted school where there is so much poverty. At Siana Springs, the front desk manager is a wonderful woman called Mercy Purity.  Mercy, who is Rose’s sister, who has worked countless volunteer hours during the last four years making our project a success, was our host for our stay.   Having been to Maywood not once but twice, she had many “Maywood Questions”:  “Is Lorraine still Mayor?”  “When does Tim become Mayor?”  How is Diane Rhodes?’ Maywood Library?  And Pleasant Avenue?  She asked about every single trip volunteer for the last four years.  And after all that, “So how is my Maywood Rotary? Sawa Sawa (Okay), I hope?” 

            Mercy is truly the mother of the Maywood Rotary Kenya Project.  Her love for the Maasai children and willingness to volunteer forty hours a week is what keeps it going.  Without her, there would be no help because no one else in the area are willing to work that hard and long for no money. 

            While at the camp, I got to know a wonderful neighbor of Coral Terry’s in Utah.  Her name is Cassandra Steel, and she was a “second foster mother” to Benson and Samuel during their visit to Utah.  Cassy is a mother to her three children and is whole heartedly devoted to helping the Maasai school children thru the Maywood Rotary Kenya Project.  She even promised to pay for all four years of college for Benson and Samuel when they finished high school scholarship!  And she wants to return to Kenya with our next volunteer trip in July of 2008.  I could see how much she wanted to help and asked her to join me at all the work meetings Mercy scheduled.  I was so lucky to meet Cassy.   

            Mercy set up a full schedule of work meeting for me while I was at the camp.  My first meeting was with our partner in London, a generous man named Wayne Collins.  He is my “go to” man.  When I needed to build a new preschool room and kindergarten room and didn’t have enough donations, I went to Wayne and he paid for it.  When I had enough donations to build a boys dorm but not a girls dorm, I went to Wayne and he paid for it.  When I needed plans to be drawn up for a school classroom I go to Wayne, an architect, and he gives them to me.  At this meeting, he explained to me his plans to set up a “rain gutter and water storage tank” system so we don’t have to use precious well water for the garden, and dorm showers.  He is coming back again to the school at his own expense in February to make sure it’s installed properly.  Wayne also met with several construction contractors to get us the lowest price and best workers for our next school project.  So, you can see, he is our London Angel.

            Mercy also scheduled a meeting for me with the head Maasai Chief of the entire area.  I was honored.  He turns out to be a young man, but I found he was very wise in helping all the Maasai under his rule.  “Kelvin, your Rotary help is much appreciated.  There is much need and poverty in all the villages, but your dollars will do the best good caring for the schools.  Then every dollar will make the best helping changes for my Maasai.”  The Chief was very impressed and supportive of the many full four year scholarships we have been able to give to the graduates of our adopted school, Empopongi Primary.  He was excited to know that Ridgewood Rotary and Wayne Rotary would help a second school in the area, Nkoilale Primary school.  “We have never had a woman Chief but when you go home,” the Chief said, “give my regards to the Chief of Maywood State, Lorraine.”  It was an honor to learn from him on how best to help his people with much needed food, water and other education essentials to better there lives.   I appreciated it so much because it’s my job to make sure every dollar of donations is spent in the best way possible. He helped me do that.

            Cassy and I were supposed to meet with our school’s Board of Education, the group of elders who are responsible to run the school, at 10:00 in the morning.  But that could mean as late as 11:00, “African Time”.  So many issues were discussed during the three hour meeting, use of the only area library at the school, solar electric for lighting the dorms and library, replacing broken well pipes (the elephants step on the pipes causing no water for days).  I was most impressed by one board member, Paul, who said we must not become too dependent on Maywood Rotary and hoped they could look into other ways of funding the school besides our donations.  It’s a courageous idea because the parents are too poor to pay more than the few pennies they already pay to the school and the government will not give them one more dime (or shilling).  But that is Maasai wisdom, to make sure that everyone who can help the school is helping the school. 

            But one Maasai elder on the Board of Education wanted to tell me “We are not like the traditional Maasai, we have allowed a woman to serve on our board, even though it’s not allowed by Maasai law.  We even let her talk!”  I thought to myself, “LET her talk?”  But Board member Mama Letura, whom I’ve met before, always opened her mouth when the men were going in the wrong direction.  God bless her.

            The board also told me that the anti malaria nets we donated last July have dramatically reduced the illness among the children.  Fewer children are dying.

            It was also a difficult meeting because I am representing every donor and have to fight for their best interest.  So it’s my job to make sure that every dime is spent correctly and that the school does the best possible job to support itself.  For example, last year the school board asked if we would have enough donations to build a “Dinning Hall” attached to the kitchen.  At first, I though this was a luxury, but then I changed my mind. Right now, our children eat their lunch outside, but when it rains or the dry winds blow dust into their food, their lunch is ruined.  They eat it anyway. Plus a dinning hall could also be used for a gym when it rains, a community meeting place for the entire seven village area and a place for religious services on Sunday morning.  It’s a good idea.  During my meeting, I gained an agreement with the Board that they would pay $700.00 toward the cost of the building construction.  The $700.00 is only five percent of the cost, but a massive amount of money for the school to raise.  It’s wonderful to see them take ownership and responsibility for their own school. 

            The three hours I spent in the meeting was probably the most important hours I could spend in Kenya on this trip.  We also talked and came up with policies on parental involvement in fund raising, dormitory policies, and even broken windows.  Much was accomplished. 

            That afternoon, I went back exhausted to my tent at Siana Springs.   Soon, Benson came by and said someone walked here to see me and could I talk with her now?   Of course, I said.  It turned out to be Lucy.  Lucy is a proud and hard working school cook.  For the past two years, she has cooked lunch for all our students every school day, often working for many months without being paid her $20.00 a month salary because she loves the students.  Before we installed the well, she would haul water in large and heavy jugs a half a mile each many times each day until she had enough water to cook the beans and rice. Before we built the kitchen, she would cook every day, even if it was raining.  Twice in the past, I have used donations to pay her back salary.    

            I had heard that Lucy was pregnant a while ago, but when I met her at the camp that day, she was carrying her new born baby on her back.  The beautiful baby, Linda, did not look healthy.  Lucy grabbed my hand tightly.  She started to speak in her native language, Mai.  Benson interpreted for me.  “Kelvin, I pray for you every day, you are my family.  Linda is sick with malaria and I was fired from my job because the school elders said I cannot cook because I have a little daughter.  I have no money today to buy food or medicine for Linda.  Please, please, adopt my Linda and take her back to Maywood where she will have a good life. You be her father.” 

            I was truly stunned, for several moments, I couldn’t decide what to say to Lucy.  I felt outrage, despair, and overwhelming sadness.  Here is a hard working woman, fired for being a mother, and loving her sick child in a country with inadequate health care.  She loves her baby enough to give her up.  To regain my composure, I had to remind myself that no matter how much good we do for the school, it’s only one drop in an ocean of poverty and suffering.  A good drop, and it’s our drop, but only a drop.  So, I asked Benson to translate for me, “Lucy, thank you so much, you honor me with the biggest gift you could give anyone, your little baby girl.  But because of laws here in Kenya and the laws of Maywood, I cannot accept your wonderful gift.  They will not allow me to be Linda’s father.”  Then I gave her some of my own money for medicine and food and told her I will speak with the school board.  And I did.  But I am haunted by the desperation on Lucy’s face every day since this happened.  She loved Linda so much she would give her away if it meant a better life for her.

            Sometimes, I think I volunteering full time on the Kenya Project because I think that if I do some good, all the other horrors of poverty and suffering won’t hurt me so much.  Well, I am wrong.  It still hurts just as much.

            Speaking of sexism, when Samuel was back in Utah, someone asked him why is it that in the Maasai culture women do all the hard work, hauling fire wood, carrying water, building all the homes and other manual labor?  Samuel responded, “Oh, you don’t know?  Everyone knows that women’s backs are built for hard labor, men’s spines aren’t. That’s why it’s men’s jobs to watch the cattle everyday.”  I am sure Coral corrected him anatomically. 

            I am always proud to tell everyone that the entire Kenya Project is run by email.  Telephone would be too expensive and postal mail too slow.  But email between two people of different cultures is still fraught with problems.  For example, I spent many hours as I could sitting down at Siana Springs and talking face to face with Mercy.  It was a golden and rare opportunity to transact business in person.  Mercy brought up the subject of the recently constructed classroom for the 8^th graders and asked me if I would have enough donations “for lockers”?  My first thought was that there was no need for lockers, the 8^th grade students have lockers in their newly constructed dorm and I just didn’t want to spend donations on unnecessary duplication.  Mercy disagreed and we both went on and on for about a half an hour before we realized we had no idea what the other person was saying.  Mercy was trying to tell me that in her country, lockers are not gym type lockers but individual school desks!  It turns out that the word desks means a three person classroom desk!!  Now that all happened in just a half an hour.  If I was trying to solve this request by email, it would have taken weeks of emails back and forth before we understood each other across the cultures. 

            I also was given a tour of the school by Assistant Head Teacher, Boniface.  The beautiful kitchen built by donations from Glenn Rock elementary schools, is still beautiful.  The library is stocked with our books and with the card borrowing system set up by Maywood Library director Diane Rhodes is working well and adults walk miles to the school to borrow books.  Dorothy Fenniman’s grandson built a wonderful organic garden this past July on our volunteer trip.  He told them to “thin out” the seedlings after they started to grow.  The Maasai students didn’t listen, they thought it was a waste to throw away growing plants so they just dug up new garden area and planted them.  Now the garden is FIVE times bigger than it was.  It provides fresh vegetables everyday for the school children’s lunches. 

            Then Boniface brought us to the dorms for the 7^th and 8^th grade students.  Mercy sewed curtains for the girls dorm and the boys dorm and we are a few mattresses short in the boy’s dorm.  But then Boniface brought us to the bathroom in the boy’s dorm, the sinks were concrete but fine and the showers worked.  The boy’s urinal (which Mercy with her Kenyan accent somehow calls the “Rhino”), was a half wall with a gutter type system on the floor that emptied into the latrine.  I then went to look inside the stalls to the toilets.  I had wanted flush toilets in each of the dorms but Mercy and the school board had insisted that they were too expensive and that just latrines would be fine.  So I respected their choice and expected to open a stall to see a flush toilet into a latrine.  I didn’t.  I found just a six inch hole cut into the concrete.  I was stunned.  In my own western mind, this was terrible.  I thought, “Somebody call a plumber and get a water flush toilet here, now!”  But, that’s what I would want, their culture is different and I have to respect that.   Another lesson in learning that my way is not the only right way. 

            The time came to leave the school and go back to Nairobi to do some work with our Nairobi partners, Rose and Chris.  Chris came to pick me up at the Teterboro style airport and insisted on showing me all around Nairobi.  The capital city has a population of almost three million people but one million of them live in Africa’s largest slum, called Kibera.  It’s an ocean of heart breaking poverty so I didn’t go there.  Interesting things about Nairobi: it’s illegal to smoke cigarettes in public, although there are hundreds and hundreds of people walking in the streets, more often than not, I was the only white guy in sight, and all the advertisements are for one of three presidential candidates.  Their once in five year elections will be held on December 27^th.  And I got to see where Chris and Rose work in their jobs as travel agents. 

            Both Rose and Chris wanted to introduce me to their good friends who were so curious about the white guy from a place called Maywood who wants to help the Maasai. And besides that, it was there chance to met a real live gay person, something that never happened to them because to be gay in Kenya means 21 years of prison.  So, by 8:00pm that Friday night, there were over twenty “Rafikis” (friends) of Rose and Chris and a bounty of native Kenyan dishes for the party.  It turned into a long and fun question and answer party.  I was astounded on how they knew almost every Democratic and Republican candidate for president and could give a fact based opinion on each of them.  I could barely name the three presidential candidates who were running in their Kenyan election next week. 

            These lively, wise and open hearted people kept the conversation going well into late into the night, even after I went to bed.  I had to because I had to get up at 5:00am in the morning to catch my flight.

             So, what lessons did I learn from Kenya this time?  That the Maasai parents are deeply grateful for all the help we have given the last four years.  That, with our help,  they sincerely want to work towards other ways of funding so they don’t become too dependent on Maywood Rotary Kenya Project.  And I suppose I learned the hard lesson that no matter how well the school is doing, there will be heart breaking poverty and suffering for the Maasai.  But with donations the future can be different for our 300 “adopted” school children.  If you want to be a part of making a big difference on the other side of the world, please make out your donation to “Maywood Rotary Club Foundation” and mail to 453 Golf Avenue, Maywood, NJ. 07607.   For further information, go to “maywoodrotarykenyaproject.org” on the web. 

            Yes, I did make my early morning flight from Nairobi to a two day layover in Amsterdam.  But we will not talk about that because in Amsterdam I had my wallet with credit cards and cash pick pocketed, I came down with a bad upper respiratory infection and my back went out.  I got home to my beloved Maywood, and that’s all that’s important!

Kevin J. Williams, Chair

Maywood, NJ. 07607

Kevin@maywoodrotarykenyaproject.org