Category: Intern Voice
March 21, 2012 by LoriEaton
Last week, Empowering Lives Kenya attended the 2012 Eldoret National Agriculture Show. This is the premiere agricultural exhibition in the Eldoret area. ELI seized the opportunity to show the community what our organization has to offer. All the staff worked very hard to prepare for the show. We set up and decorated the tent, built eye-catching displays, painted posters, created a drip irrigation demonstration plot, brought in tree seedlings for sale, put together an informative brochure, and produced drip irrigation kits to sell. The star of the show was drip irrigation. Many farmers are thirsty for drip irrigation materials that can water their plants year-round easily and effectively. The Kenya anti-alcohol staff also brought a poster which read “alcohol can destroy your crops” that created a lot of discussion! (more…)
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September 27, 2011 by Katie
This past summer I was blessed with the opportunity to spend two months in the village of Kipkaren, Kenya serving with ELI. One of the things that I was most challenged by during my time in Kipkaren was the difference of how food is viewed. I observed the Kenyans laboring over their crops, observing the weather to ensure their harvest would be full, and caring for their animals with intentionality. One night as we were saying grace for our dinner, I remember thinking how that simple prayer of thanking God for our food had transformed for me during my time in Kenya. Rather than flippantly hurrying through a prayer of thanksgiving, I had come to a place of truly thanking God for His provision, as I had seen the work and effort that went into placing the meal on my plate. As Americans, it is not often that we connect with our food in that way. In general, we go to the grocery store, choose what we need, pay, and leave, without ever thinking about where the food came from or what it took to get there.
As the weeks passed, and I enjoyed my twentieth plate of ugali and kale, I was further challenged by the variety and caliber of food that I eat so often. (more…)
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September 13, 2011 by Katie
This week marks the official end of summer, and what an amazing summer we’ve had here at ELI. From June to August, our training centers in Kenya hosted eight teams, eight interns, and a dozen visitors. Teams built housing for medical staff, trained teachers, planned and participated in VBS, ran mobile health clinics, and put on a huge camp for 500 youth in the community. Despite all the amazing work that was accomplished, central and most importantly, beautiful relationships blossomed this summer. We’d love to give you a brief glimpse into some of the specific relationships that formed, and hope that someday we can hear your story as well!
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by Katie
This past summer I was blessed to spend two months serving in Kipkaren, Kenya alongside the staff of Empowering Lives International. During my time there, I was attached to the Moiben family at the Children’s Home. It is with this family that I shared my meals, spent my evenings, and connected through fellowship and deep conversations. From the first day I arrived in Kipkaren, there was one girl from the family that I seemed to connect with almost immediately. She was the first to introduce herself when I visited the compound, the first to ask me a myriad of questions about my life in America, and the first to call me her sister. From that time on, Esther and I were inseparable. (more…)
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by Katie
During my month in Ilula, I grew very close to three particular boys. My little “crew” as I called them, included Emmanuel, Apollo, and Edison. These three children all had different personalities. Emmanuel is smart and is a hard worker. He loved to show me the corn he is responsible for in the shamba (garden). I thought it was sweet how he wants to be a missionary someday. Next we have Apollo. (more…)
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July 7, 2011 by Katie
A Feast to Remember
My 3 month internship with ELI was coming to a close, and I had been trying for a couple weeks to come up with a way to celebrate with and bless the Kipkaren Children’s Home before I left. It came to me one night as the kids excitedly talked about getting to taste American hamburgers a few years ago. Many of them listed hamburgers as their favorite food.
“I’ve gotta do something about that,” I thought to myself. There is more to life than hamburgers. “That’s it! I’ll make them a meal.” As I talked and planned with the Matekwas, some of the house parents, we decided that it would be fun for the kids to sample Mexican food, since I had talked a lot about my family and cultural heritage during my time with the Children’s Home. In my family and in the village community, food brings people together; what better way to conclude my time in Kenya, breaking bread (or tortillas!) as brothers and sisters in Christ.
And so, my last night in the village, we celebrated with a feast- burrito night! In the Old Testament, the Lord actually instructs the Israelities to feast multiple times a year, to remember what He has done. So we followed suit, and had a blast! (more…)
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by Katie
A steady stream of tears rolled down my cheeks for the then 8-hour drive from Nairobi to Eldoret. The man sitting next to me was reciting the Qu’ran, the mother in front of me was changing her twin babies’ diapers and feeding them a stinky avacado, banana, and honey mixture, and the lady who was escorting me had the worst body odor and sang completely off tune to the Christian music on the radio. My body flailed up and down as the car zigzagged between the potholes. Dust filled the sweaty, humid car every time a big truck passed us. As a young, naïve 17-year-old small town Canadian girl, culture shock hit me hard.
I had arrived in Kenya a week earlier with a team from Canada (not an ELI team). We headed straight on safari where my culture shock started to consume me. I cried non-stop. I was deeply homesick. It was completely foreign feeling for me and it was horrible. The safari was majestic but not majestic enough to keep me from wanting to go home. I was confused. I couldn’t figure out why I was utterly miserable.
Ever since I was a little girl, I had dreamed of coming to Africa and loving on orphans. I used to watch World Vision commercials instead of Saturday morning cartoons and was moved with compassion for the people I would see on the television. I used to study, research, read up on everything that had to do with Africa. I even finished high school a year early so I could come to Africa. But now that I was in Africa, I didn’t want to be here. I was puzzled. Wasn’t this what I had dreamt of since I could remember? Isn’t this what God has clearly put on my heart? Then why did I hate it so much? (more…)
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May 6, 2011 by Katie
“God has brought us far.”
It’s difficult to imagine what the kids at the Kipkaren Children’s Home in Kenya experienced to get to where they are today. Losing both of their parents. Being taken from life as they once knew it to start again in an unfamiliar place; meeting strangers for the first time who are supposed to become parents and siblings. Brian Kiptoo is in class 8 and dreams of becoming a flying doctor someday, the type of adventurous physician that responds to emergencies by flying to the bush in a helicopter to evacuate someone who has been injured. As we shared ugali and sukumaoiki one evening, he gave me a glimpse into what the beginning was like for them. (more…)
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January 26, 2011 by admin
One night I was having a conversation with Hillary Kipng’etich, a 15 year old young man in my host family in the Children’s Home in Ilula, Kenya. Hillary asked me many questions about my home, my family, and my future, but one night he asked me a question that stuck out more than any of the others. While there was a pause in conversation, he asked me “Mat, why do most poor people remember God, and then when they become wealthy they forget? I don’t mean ‘remember’ like tithing or offerings, but remembering the needy.”
I sat in awe for a moment and responded with a simple “That’s a good question”. I took some time to really think, read, and pray about Hillary’s question. The next day Hillary and I sat down together and went through some scripture- a moment I will never forget. While I was in Ilula I saw many transformed lives in the children’s home. But this question was an example of what God has done, is doing, and is going to do through Hillary. Hillary sees remembering God and remembering those in need as the SAME thing.
It is one thing to recognize that when people become rich, they tend to forget God. To understand that remembering, caring for, and loving the needy IS loving God is revolutionary. Hillary has been blessed and changed by God through ELI and the Rono family who has cared and loved him as a true family. Not only is Hillary learning truth, but his life has been so radically transformed that he understands the importance, and quite frankly the necessity, of remembering those in need. Hillary is now in his second year of high school, and one day he will return to his home village knowing he has been wonderfully made with a PURPOSE by his loving Father and Creator. “The King will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’ – Matthew 25:40
Hillary’s willingness to ask questions and his understanding of God has inspired me to live in a way that is not about me at all, but about those in need. The world needs love, and I am blessed to play a part in God’s plan to give it.
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November 16, 2010 by editor
Onesimus is the kind of project that would grab the attention of any entrepreneur. As our group toured the facility, the team was enraptured. The company taps into one of the largest markets in Kenyas Rift Valley: Milk.
Onesimus, a project begun by ELI, is empowering the people of rural Kipkeran, Kenya by giving them a place to sell their surplus milk. It may not sound like anything groundbreaking to a westerner, but in a region where a normal income is around $1.00-2.00/day, cows are in abundance, and refrigeration is rare, the fact that small-scale local farmers now have a place to sell their milk (rather than watch it spoil) is making a significant impact.
David Tarus, the Director of Onesimus fielded a barrage of questions from our intrigued team. How does it work? How do you select who to buy from? Where do you sell all of this milk? As we spoke, dozens of farmers trickled in on bicycle, on foot, and on motorcycle, lugging one and two gallon milk containers. It was apparent that word had spread quickly about this new program, and that it was having a widespread effect.
The company has only been in operation for less than a year, but it already buys from more than 3400 farmers. Although it has a refrigerated storage capacity of about 2000 gallons/day, David explained that the facility was designed to empower the impoverished, and it does not matter how much milk a farmer brings, whether a few cups or 100 liters; as long as it passes the quality check, it will be purchased for distribution.
This is a source of hope for this community of small-scale farmers, who initially produced milk only for consumption by their families, but are beginning to see the potential to turn farming into a small business. Aside from milk purchasing, Onesimus also provides a variety of other services, including health checkups for farmers’ cows, educational seminars for improving milk yield, and at-cost artificial insemination from purebred bulls to increase the farmers’ milk production in future generations.
I could see pride in David’s eyes as he told the story of a woman who has become a regular there. Every day, rain or shine, she makes the bicycle trip to Onesimus on the rough, often muddy, dirt roads and sells them a mere 0.5 liters of milk (making the equivalent of about 30 cents a day). Two weeks before our visit, one morning he was startled to hear shouts of excitement coming from the milk collection area. Upon investigation, he found that for the first time, the woman had arrived with a full liter of milk to sell, and the staff had gathered around to congratulate her.
Go nearly anywhere in this community and you will see these farmers making their daily voyage to town along the muddy dirt roads, dozens of bright-colored milk containers dangling from their bicycles. Already, the company’s business is funneling an average of $76,000 a month into this impoverished rural community – an astounding number when one considers the value of the US dollar here.
Onesimus was designed to benefit ELI’s Children’s home in Kipkeran, where 96 orphans are fed, educated, and call home, but it is also helping to build up the community as a whole. It is a business, and just like any other, the topics of market value, competition, and the bottom line are central to its operations. However, when you sit down to a cup of hot chai tea with David, it won’t take you long to realize that there is much more to it for them than simply turning a profit. It is a company designed to teach and empower this community, and its effects can already be seen rippling through this place. The same cows that used to produce 5 liters a day are now producing 15 and 20. Farmers are being enabled to pay their children’s school fees. They are opening savings accounts. They are even raising more cows.
As I pour the milk for my morning cereal, I have to admit… Milk is tasting a bit different to me now.
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