Race Through Nairobi to See One Last Student

My brain furry with jet lag and culture shock, I turn on my computer. Strange, after a month of being away from technology, to sit and consider the possibilities of what I can do with a single click of the mouse. It feels as surreal as our last day in Kenya.Wanting to see the lush “breadbasket” of Kenya, we had left the dry, arid bush where we’ve worked for the past five years to go to central Kenya for two days. Curiosity led us to this land deemed most desirable by the British when they declared Kenya theirs at the turn of the century. This area, known as the White Highlands, sitting on the edge of the Great Rift Valley, was so desirable that the British colonials decided to “relocate” all the Kikuyu tribe that had lived on the land for generations, giving them the option of becoming servants on the British plantations or moving to reservations. On these “reservations” they’d be required to get passports and move about only with British approval, which was virtually impossible to acquire.In a simple statement, Desmond Tutu captures this colossal move, the move made by imperialists in tandem with missionaries, “When the missionaries came to Africa, they had the Bible and we had the land. They said, “Let us pray.” We closed our eyes. When we opened them, we had the Bible and they had the land.”And what a land it was. Beautiful beyond imagining, still jostling with the underlayment of poverty at every turn, but not the extreme poverty we’d come to know in the bush. Feasting on avocados and papaya, we drove through rolling fields of coffee, tea, pineapples, rice, and bananas.We had decided that on the day we were to fly home, we would leave the north in enough time to go visit one last student; Daniel Jumaa Ngome, a young man that had been on scholarship with us through his secondary school and had gone on to a teacher training college on the outskirts of Nairobi. He had been sponsored for his training by a teacher here in Lake Oswego. I wanted to deliver her letter to him and see how he was doing, but it was starting to get late, and the thought of driving through Nairobi was starting to worry me. Never do you see and feel the seething tension of a poverty-stricken country like you do in Nairobi. I didn’t like the idea of being there as it started to get dark. Within the last week there had been two deadly explosions. I hated to think of having to make frequent traffic stops in an area where the notorious gangs of “thugs and hooligans” could surround our car.But Brent, dedicated and determined as always, felt we couldn’t leave without seeing Daniel Ngome. While my mind pictures every worst case scenario possible, risks never seem to cross Brent’s mind. It’s another way we seem to balance each other. So off we went, circling Nairobi, from the wealthy areas like Karen (named after Karen Blixen of Out of Africa fame) to the famous slums, the clock ticking and me becoming more unsettled by the minute.But at last we found it, the Thogoto Teacher Training College, a well-ordered, lush campus that spoke of discipline and hope; a breath of fresh air after the despairing squalor of Nairobi. And there he was, Daniel Ngome, walking towards us, now a young man. We only had minutes to speak to him, to hear of his progress, his hopes and his dreams, his desire to go back to his home village as a role model and teacher. In the illiterate, mud-hut world he came from, he hoped to return with the light of his learning. He beamed with gratitude for what the US teacher/sponsor had made possible for him. Brent had been right; it was worth anything to get to see this student as our final sendoff.Our driver, a skilled safari driver, knew of a rough dirt road that skirted Nairobi as a short cut to the airport. We bumped and bounced down it, a final adventure, getting to the airport in record time. Fatigue and relief washed over me. Were we really going home? Daniel Ngome, can I keep the image of you in my pocket? Can I see that image juxtaposed next to the young boy you were when I first saw you in the dusty village school in the middle of nowhere? When finding sponsors feels like an arduous task, can you somehow help me remember your proud smile and the light in your countenance?I will remember you, and all of the other 128 sponsored students whose stories have so touched and taught us in our month in the bush. My thanks go to all of you, friends and family, who have made scholarships as well as libraries and classrooms available to thousands of students! They’re literally seeing hopes and dreams unfold as they bless their humble families and their communities with the education they’ve managed to acquire. The rewards of this work go beyond anything I ever could have imagined.