Dry Shelter - A Visit to Mt. Elgon

A few days ago Kathy and I traveled up to Kopsiro on Mt. Elgon. A team of us from the ATS campus in Kitale were making a quality assurance visit to the Mt. Elgon Training Center campus to work with our counterparts and validate the quality of their procedures. It was a good visit and we were all encouraged by the vitality of our study programs there.

Kathy, however, went with a different purpose. There are many widows on Mt. Elgon these days due to the land clashes there in 2006-2008. They are poor and find it difficult to acquire even the essential things in life. One of those essential things is dry shelter. The widows can construct a simple home from clay and posts wove with branches, but roofs cost money. It takes from 8-12 corrugated iron sheets to properly roof a home and at $12-15 a sheet, the cost is beyond them. So they improvise, using canvas and other materials, but the constant rains overpower the roof. One widow told our co-worker on the mountain, Chrispine Juma, "Pastor, I want you to visit me in my home, but only when it is raining..."

Thanks to a gift from a relative of Kathy's which we were able to match, we had arranged through the staff to acquire enough iron sheets to roof the homes of ten widows. Kathy spoke to the widows about the concern that some believers in the US have for them and also about the importance of having the greater shelter, Jesus, covering them.


One of the things that struck us on this occasion was how young the widows were. As the widows waited patiently for the distribution, their children came and went. One young mother caught my eye in particular - so young and vulnerable, but left in a position where she had the sole responsibility for caring for her young.


The widows were very happy to receive the sheets. I was touched as we were driving out of Kopsiro to see one of them walking along, carrying her precious roofing sheets on her head. We were able to help 10 widows, but we have a list of 66 others who still have this need.

I think that Mother Theresa said something to this effect, "I cannot work by multiplication but by subtraction. I cannot focus on the thousands I cannot help, but on the one that I can. Each one I help is one less than there was before."

A Funeral in Kenya

Last Friday we received the sad news of the passing of the 20-year-old daughter of one of our ATS Adjunct Faculty, Rev. John Kiboi. Faith Kiboi had sickened and died after a very short bout of pneumonia. Yesterday Kathy and I attended the funeral services. Funerals in Kenya are very personal - the family must retrieve the body of their loved one, prepare it for burial and entomb it on family land. There are cemeteries in Kenya, but most people would prefer to be buried on family land.

The first part of the ceremony was held at our church, St. Lukes. About two hundred people attended, some coming from as far away as Nairobi (a contingent of faculty members from Carlyle University where John is the Academic Dean). The service, scheduled for 10am, began when the coffin and family arrived from their home in Kibomet (a housing area in Kitale). Many people spoke, parents, siblings, extended family, friends and guests. The service lasted about 2 1/2 hours. Then we loaded into cars and caravaned out to the family property. There were no policemen on motorcycles shepherding us on the way, but people and drivers, for the most part, recognized what was happening and made way with grace.

As we stood with the large crowd in the Kiboi's front yard (our group from the church was swelled by neighbors), we watched as the coffin was taken from a table where it lay for a viewing by those who were not at the church, and laid in a grave that had been dug on the side. It is a sobering thing to see the dirt scraped back into the hole and the simple wooden cross set in place. Following this, the family served a meal to all the attenders, and then, around 4pm we dispersed.

Faith would have turned 21 tomorrow (Saturday). One of the speakers suggested that we might honor her life by taking a moment to remember her and her family in prayer. I think that is a good idea.