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."