Out of Africa: Part 8 – Final Full Day

On my recent trip to Africa, I disciplined myself to keep a daily journal of what transpired and how I felt about it. These entries are from that journal.

Monday, October 24, 2005
Experience #1 – Time Spent with Sponsored Children

Each morning we met to begin our time together with devotions. Joshua shared some challenging thoughts from Isaiah 61 and Luke 4. After devotions we prepared to drive to visit our sponsored children. We would be leaving in two separate vehicles going in two separate directions. As we prepared to depart, I noticed that each morning after we had driven in every imaginable mud road the previous day, the Area Development Project staff had washed the vehicles. I commented on that to John and he said, “Yeah. They take good care of these vehicles.” Once again, I was very impressed with the World Vision staff here in Africa.

Visits to our sponsored children were pretty incredible experiences. There were four children that we had to visit. In two cases we were going to pick them up at school and drive them home to meet their parents. We talked about how strange this must have looked to the children. The parents know their children were going to be sponsored, but there was a lot of explaining ahead of time regarding what “adoption” and “sponsorship” actually mean. Many parents, understandably so, desired assurances that their children would not be taken away to America. Fair enough. Now imagine a four wheel drive with two white men, showing up at their school, and driving away with one of the children. The adults all knew the scoop, but I am not sure the children did.

Before departing, the school we visited classes. Here is a sad point; the children were literally CRAMMED into the classrooms. My best count there were 110-120 kids in the level 4 class we visited. Imagine three rows of ten desks with four children at each desk!! I could not help but think about how many teachers in the US talk about they have 25 kids and it is too many. I am not disputing that, I am just saying, imagine 120!!!

Ole Masi, asked the kids how many of them were seeing a Muzungu for the first time. (I am a Muzungu. A Muzungu is a white man!) At least 45% of the kids raised their hands and laughed aloud. It was a truly great moment for me to raise my hands and say, “I am just like you!!!” And I am. The only difference is skin color. Inside we are all alike. We are all children of God. We are all loved by God equally. We are alike!

After our visit to the first family, we took the boy back to school. They were so excited to see us back. It was recess, and we then did something really crazy. Gary had brought a Miami Dolphin’s nerf football for his child. (Gary is from southern Florida.) We got two teams and taught them to play American football for about 15 minutes. It was a hoot!! They absolutely loved trying to learn the game. I had one interception but it ended a tie game. We did not bother with sudden death overtime. Since we had introduced our African hosts to M & M s the night before, we joked that in ten years, we will see the Kenyan national football team sponsored by M & Ms!!