It's Saturday!

"Hakuna mungu kama wewe
hakuna popote
Hakuna mwenye ishara kubwa
kama wewe mungu."

(There is no god like You, there is not a god anywhere like you, Lord!"
- words to a Swahili praise song that I am learning

There really hasn't been a chance to get online this week at the Amani center. In fact, I'm typing much of this post offline with the hopes of uploading it to the blog sometime during the weekend. We'll have to see.

I'm not quite sure how to describe my Amani experience to you at this point. I am having some difficulty processing all of it myself. I suppose that I will just look over the past week and try to give you an impression of some of the things that have been involved in forming our experience here in Nairobi.

Every day at Amani starts around 9:30 with a short prayer and devotion time. Only a few of the Amani women attend this. Some arrive at the center later in the day, some are engaged in tasks at their work area, and some work from home. Typically there have been anywhere from 8 to 15 Amani ladies there, as well as the eight of us from America. One of the Amani women will start with a praise song. These songs are so wonderful, and I feel so privileged to be sitting in the room to listen to the praises of these women. The melodies are somewhat different than what you hear in Western music and are very linear. The idea of rhythm seems to be much more significant than in our music, too. There is clapping along with the beat - some women clap on "one" and "three", and some clap faster or more elaborate rhythms, so there are a variety of rhythms being fit into the music all at the same time. Then some of the women create harmonies throughout the song. There seems to always be a song leader (but who that woman is always varies) because you can always hear the voice of the woman who started the song a tiny bit louder than the rest of the voices. This is so appealing to the musician in my blood. It's truly wonderful.

After the first song, there are prayer requests and praises, just like any of our American small groups might include at a gathering. They have been faithful to make sure that whatever is said during this time is translated into Swahili or into English. Many of the women speak English, in fact a lot of them speak English very well. After the group prays together, there is more singing. I have wondered these several mornings, if because of the presence of outsiders maybe the women are more reluctant to share their deeper prayer needs. I don't know that I'll ever actually find out. It is simply a wonderful time to spend together with this group of women.

Finally, before leaving the prayer time to start the day, the women greet each other. Try to picture this. Every single woman in the room greets every single other woman in the room (including all of the Americans). They give each other three kisses on alternating cheeks and then a very warm handshake, and the entire time they are saying to each other "Habari" and answering "Nzuri" (meaning "How is your news?" and "Nice"). They will then ask if you slept well and if you are well and can often go on and on with this line of questioning.

On our first day, a very dynamic woman named Jeritha (pictured here) led us on a tour of the Amani facility. Just that one short tour of the property gave me a much greater understanding of how Amani works than I had had previously. We saw the room where they keep the patterns and the fabric, where the women are given their assigned projects, where they go to do the sewing, outdoors where they make the batik materials and do the tie-dying. We also saw the office suites and their little "chapel", which is a special room that is a bit larger and is perfect for holding rows of chairs or a circle of chairs, or however else they want to set it up. The building is new, completed within the past year. It is a beautiful building, with a staircase in the middle, split levels on either side of the stairs, lots of mosaics on the walls and floors. It is wide open, having the staircase completely open to the outdoors and the rooms inside the building with huge windows. It's gorgeous. The store is in a separate building, and there is also a small café next to the store. It's a fabulous facility for the purposes that it is being utilized.

We have each been paired with an Amani "host" woman. Although we are not spending as much time as I thought with our "hosts" (or as much time as I would like), I find that my host, Rose, is a perfect match! She's a young Kenyan woman who is actually not one of the stitching ladies. She is one of the "staff" members (a "manager" of the export department), I consider them to be more administrative in nature, or the "professional" segment of the women at Amani. Anyway, Rose was born in Kenya, but her father was a diplomat and they lived in Brussels while she was aged 10 through 16. Although she was a top-notch student, the move back to Kenya threw off her educational track quite a bit, so she ended up finishing high school a couple years late and didn't quite get the college acceptance that she would have liked. But she is about 25 now, and has gotten herself on track as a student at a local Christian college called Daystar. The director of Amani is Becky Chinchen and her husband, Del, is a professor at Daystar. After Rose took a class with Del, she was able to connect with Amani and the rest is history. If you have purchased Amani products in the United States, you have directly benefited from Rose's expertise. She is well-educated, upbeat, and very cosmopolitan. We have a lot of fun chatting. Tomorrow (Sunday) I will go to church with Rose, and will then go to her home where I will meet her family. I am very much looking forward to that!

We have each been assigned little projects to work on throughout the week. We only have a couple of hours each day between our other activities to work on these projects, but we are hoping that our work will have some impact on the ladies and on the ministry of Amani. My project this week is working with the women in the shop, learning their inventory software (which was developed especially for them) and then to work with one of the waitresses from the café to teach her the software so that she will then be able to get the café purchasing and costing working through the inventory software currently used only for the shop. The woman in charge of the shop is named Simprosa (you can read about the shop and about Simprosa on the Amani website). The other two women who work in the shop are Millicent and Maggie. Each one of the three women has a unique personality and are fun to be around. Simprosa and Millicent have been attending parenting classes taught by one of the other American women in our group (Betty), so much of my time in the shop has been spent being with Maggie. She is a bundle of joy, remembers everyone's name … she will introduce herself to the customers, ask them their names, will write them down in a little notepad and then walk around talking to them and calling them by name. By the time you have been at Amani for a couple of hours, you feel like Maggie is your best friend.

The waitress from the café who I'm working with on the software is Delphine. Delphine is about 22 years old and is Rwandan, but has lived in Kenya since she was about 8 years old. She does not have a very good working sense with computers, as she has not had much opportunity to use them. She very quickly picked up the finer workings of a mouse and clicking and double clicking. We are working on some keyboarding and some keyboard shortcuts. She's a cracker-jack! She is quickly learning everything that I have shown her and doesn't ever need anything re-explained. I think that Becky would like to see Delphine go to college some day. I would have to agree that, based on what I've seen from her over the past two days, she really ought to have a higher education. I don't think that I have any clue as to what it would take to make that happen. Betty and I have also worked with several of the women (including Delphine) on a typing software program, teaching them from scratch to type. Delphine has decided that she will not be satisfied until she can achieve 100% accuracy on the typing drills. I tease her about being a perfectionist!

We have been having our lunches with our hosts most days. Eating with Rose is funny, because she doesn't seem to always appreciate the Kenyan food that is served to the women at the center. She will pick at the meals, or not eat anything. She's tiny … I guess maybe that's what it takes. :-) We've had things like beans and lentil stew. We also had something called Ugali, it's sort of corn-meal based, and it's typically eaten with the fingers (I don't think I actually realized that until after Rose had gotten me a spoon) and used to scoop up the vegetables and meat that it is served with. I have enjoyed every single new food that I have tried!

In between our work with the women on our "projects", we have spent time with different administrators from Amani's professional staff. Mary Maina is the Deputy Director of Amani, second to Becky. Mary met with us one day to talk at length about Amani's ministry and how the organization works. She allowed us an extended time of Q&A, and we really picked her brain. The next day we met with Mary Maina again, this time also with a woman named Joyce who is in charge of Amani's holistic ministries. She is sort of the pastor for the flock of Amani women. She and Mary do a lot of counseling with the women, and they conduct home visits. They really make it their goal to truly know each woman, what her needs are, and how she is growing in relationship with Christ. That was another wonderful conversation.

Finally, one afternoon, we had an extended meeting with Becky Chinchen about her role at Amani. She is a delightful American woman whose husband originally had a ministry with African Bible College in Liberia several years ago. When there was a civil war in Liberia, they literally lost everything. They ended up in Malawi for a time doing ministry there with Del's parents, and eventually Del got a job teaching at Daystar here in Nairobi. Becky was taking classes at Daystar, and one of her projects was to imagine a ministry that combines healing with solving certain social issues. She wrote about a stitching project that could minister to impoverished women in Africa while at the same time earning them income for survival. And, out of her thoughts on this project, Amani was born! Another fascinating conversation!

I have to point out that Amani treats their visitors like royalty! One of the ways they do this is by serving us drinks several times a day. They will come around and take our "orders" and the waitress (often Delphine) will always remember where we are working and exactly what we ordered and how we like it served. They will return with either a Chai tea, or a latte, or a mocha latte or a glass of water or whatever we asked for. It's better than Starbucks! Simply wonderful!

One interesting thing to point out. There have been several tremors throughout Kenya the past several days. The first was Sunday night, about 11:30. I felt it while lying in bed. I felt a tremor years ago in Buffalo, but this one was a bit stronger and lasted longer. There were several more tremors throughout the week, but I didn't notice them (although a lot of other people did). Apparently there was an earthquake in Tanzania the day before the earthquake in Japan. (??) I haven't had access to much news. But the women at Amani have been rather upset about all of the tremors. They seem rather nervous. It was explained to us that these women have all lost SO much in their lives, and the idea of an earthquake would mean that they would have to process through major loss again. It was interesting listening to them talk about the tremors and ask for prayer about the shaking of the earth.

Here are some other random things that I want to point out:

"It is all but impossible to escape American culture." – student in Kampala, heard on a video podcast that I've been following. And it's SO true! In the most unlikely places we simply cannot escape things American.

We have met some very interesting people at the meals at the guesthouse. One woman is Kenyan but is currently a professor at the University of California at Santa Clara. She was attending a conference in Botswana and stopped in Nairobi to visit her family for several days. She works specifically in women's studies and has a great interest in research dealing with how faith must be a part of solving the problems of women living in poverty around the world. She was very interested to learn more about Amani's ministry. We also met a Peruvian man who works for the United Nations in Mogadishu. He says that the situation there is getting much, much worse over the past week or two. I can't even imagine.

There are roosters in the yard immediately next to our guesthouse. The first morning we were annoyed that there were loud "cockadoodledoo's" at 5:20 a.m. But, apparently, 5:20 (which, by the way, is NOT sunrise!) isn't a fixed crowing time. They will occasionally crow at horrible hours like 2:00 a.m. or for long periods of time. Eesh!

I had trouble sleeping for the first several days that we were here. I didn't hardly sleep at all the night before I left, didn't sleep at all on the planes (hard as I tried!), and then for three nights didn't get more than an hour or two. Finally I tried some Tylenol PM and that worked. Now I'm finally sleeping through the night without help! Finally!

In Kenya, they drive on the left side of the road. It never occurred to me, but it makes a lot of sense because Kenya was a British colony. I swear that I wouldn't be able to drive that way ... it's the right of way that would totally confuse me. But, I guess I needn't worry. There also don't seem to be any rules about right of way in Nairobi! The traffic is HORRIBLE, and there are really no rules at intersections. You just pull out into the traffic going crosswise (or the opposite way if you're turning) and expect the other drivers to stop and let you through. It is occasionally terrifying!

The guesthouse is located on a small side street off of a main divided highway. There are several little "stands" selling things across the way from the guesthouse. It makes the street a bit creepy. I don't think that I would go outside the guesthouse gate by myself!

Originally we were supposed to walk to and from Amani, which is located rather close by. It is about a 20 minute walk. But I have a feeling that the way isn't extremely safe, and there are a couple in our group who don't necessarily do well walking so much, so we've been driven most of the time. We made the walk twice, though. It definitely was a touchy situation ... there are several small stands selling things like roasted corn or coal. There are some little hills to traverse, and it's not paved, nor would cars be able to fit through much of it.

You may have seen the symbol that we have on the group blog or that I have on this blog or on the Amani website. I never knew the significance. But I have found out the following: "Africa often communicates her wisdom through symbols. This African motif, Nkyinkyimiie (twistings) from the Adinkra of Ghana, is used at Amani ya Juu to symbolize how God can make the crooked road straight. Throughout the journey of life there are many hardships and difficulties. It can often seem as if life is leading nowhere, wandering from place to place. But when the God of peace is discovered He makes the road straight giving purpose and meaning to life."

I saw a Buffalo Bills sweatshirt my first night here - there is NFL stuff all over the place! So interesting!

COFFEE ice cream!! (I know, I know! Some of you are rolling your eyes!) If you read my Europe trip blog two years ago, you know of my passion for coffee flavored ice cream, and that I found the best stuff around in Europe. I just can't find good strong flavored coffee ice cream in the States! Well, at the mall after dinner on Friday evening, I sure found some fabulous coffee flavored ice cream (actually, it was Italian Gelato). FABULOUS flavor!!

I am starting to learn about "African time". I have to say that I was warned. But it's SO hard for me to KNOW that we're supposed to be somewhere and simply ignore the clock! One afternoon, we were supposed to meet with Becky Chinchen at 2:00. Well, they hadn't served lunch by 1:55 and I told Rose that I wouldn't be able to eat lunch that day because of our meeting. She laughed at me (AT me!) and reminded me that in Africa, a 2:00 meeting will often start at 2:30. Sure enough, after lunch, at about 2:30, when I went to the meeting room, I was only the second person to arrive. Haha!!

Well, since this post has gotten TOOOO long, I will close now, promising more stories later (I'm not sure when!) I will include a story about going to have lunch at the home of one of the Amani women who lives in the Nairobi slum of "Mathare", shopping at the Maasai market, visiting an orphanage, and Saturday visits to an "elephant orphanage" and to a giraffe "farm". Today is Saturday (7/21), tomorrow I will be spending the day with Rose at church and at her home, and on Monday morning we will leave for our safari. We won't be back from that until Wednesday afternoon. That might be the earliest possibility for my getting back online again. If not then, I'm not sure when. So, until then, enjoy and take care! (And Thank You (asante sana) for sticking with me here!)