"Grow your souls"...

Today after working on the picture slideshow I went over to Tumaini and joined the rest of the volunteers who had gotten back from the school and were sitting down to watch The Constant Gardener, which Mum Kate had suggested they watch. I’d seen it before, but this time it had a much bigger impact on me, partly just from seeing it a second time but mostly because it takes place right where I am. Much of the movie takes place in the Kibera slum, the largest slum in East Africa (and maybe even all of Africa but I need to check my sources on that) which is just a few miles from where I am here in Karen. If you haven’t seen it, I recommend it. It’s a really moving story, even if you don’t want to do work that takes place in Africa or a developing country. It really just opens your eyes (or it did mine, anyway) to the corruption that does exist in this world. I tend to be rather naïve about people because I generally prefer to see the good in people--it’s an attitude I don’t want to lose, but I’m realizing I have to combine it with a heightened awareness of my surroundings and air of caution (I’m still working on it, but don’t worry I’ll get there). The movie also shows how one person can affect one person enough so that justice can be achieved.

Mum Kate came home towards the end of the movie and sat down and watched the rest of it with us. Afterwards, she sat with us and gave us a few words of wisdom.

Kate is a woman who has lived in an orphanage, was a nun for 20-some years, and eventually got married and lived the family life. After her husband's death, she Googled orphanages in Kenya and up popped Nyumbani orphanage in Karen, Kenya, where she went to work for two years before setting off on the adventure that became Hekima Place.

Mum Kate reminded us--no, demanded us--to grow our souls while we‘re here. It’s all fine and good for us to come to Africa and want to help these girls and learn a bit about another culture, but it can’t stop here. We are responsible, as citizens of the world, to do our part in seeking justice and in helping others. People are not dispensable, an idea that this movie fights against. This movie, she urged, cannot just be another movie to us. There is “no way in hell” (and those are her words) that this movie is fiction. Maybe the names and companies are different, but the ideas and the events are true. She told us to dig deep for the truth in this world. We all have a different idea of what truth is--”some of us are at the top of the ‘T’, some of us are at the bottom of the ‘U’, and some of us are in the middle of the ‘H’--and we just have to piece it all together. We have to sort through the lies and the corruption and the greed and the righteousness to find what is true and to find what is just. “If all the prayerful ones would seek justice and all the justice-seekers would pray, we’d have a much better world.” She also told us to “be wary of righteousness, even me”.

We also learned from Mum Kate that PEPFAR (President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief) only provides 1st line drugs and won’t provide generic brands. So while PEPFAR’s increased funding from the US government sounds great, doctors here won’t actually prescribe it because the first dose is free from PEPFAR, but the doctors know that their patients will never be able to afford the second dose. I also learned that ARVs (anti-retroviral drugs, which help prevent HIV from becoming full-blow AIDS) can have very serious side-effects, particularly on your liver and mental health. And ARVs cannot be taken on an empty stomach, which presents a serious problem for many of the poor population that’s being given free ARVs from NGOs in slums like Kibera. What often will happen is that the NGO will give a person food to eat so that when they come to get their dose of ARVs they’ll have a full stomach. But the people getting this food come from whole families who don’t have enough to eat, so they’ll selflessly share the food with their family. Unfortunately, though, when they do that, they’ll end up getting extremely sick from the ARVs--worse than if they hadn’t even taken them. It just goes to show how much depth of consideration must be given to the complex issues we face in this world.

And as hard as it is, we have to remember, in all that we do, that what works for you, might not work for your neighbor or for the person who lives half-way around the world.