The rage continues

According to emails and texts I have received today from friends in Kenya the situation is still very tense and dangerous. The upsurge in violence continues and people are, rightly, very afraid. News I heard earlier of up to 50 people being burned to death while trying to shelter in a church underlines just how shocking and brutal this violence is. One friend in Kenya sent me a terse but heartfelt email asking simply "May God give you power to PRAY for Kenya"
I invite you to join with me in responding to the request.

More bad news

After the rioting following on the assassination of Benazir Bhutto in Pakistan, it is the turn of Kenya to explode into political violence. I was in Kenya in 2002 just before the elections that brought the current government to power and those were tense times but nothing like the scenes that are being reported now in the wake of the presidential elections. In 2005, when I was last there it seemed to be a country that was relatively-speaking at peace with itself.
It is strange to see such violent events breaking out in places that you recognise and which at the time you visited them seemed relatively 'normal,' albeit poverty-stricken, but I suppose violence can erupt in any situation and that the outward veneer of civilisation is pretty thin no matter where you are in the world.
The saddest thing is that the current violence in Kenya seems once again to be based on tribal allegiances, artificially papered over by the processes of colonisation in previous generations.
There is a deep human need to feel that you belong to something bigger than yourself or your immediate family, but when passions run high and one tribe feels threatened by another (whatever the context) the impulse to violence seems hard to contain.
But a sense of belonging to a group need not always be something harmful.
The sense of belonging engendered by a football club is tribal in its own way and, sadly, can sometimes generate its own brand of divisive and destructive behaviour, but as recent days at Motherwell FC have shown a sense of belonging may also provide a positive source of mutual comfort in times of tragedy.
One of the greatest tragedies of all in human behaviour is when groups/tribes/nations/religions/denominations or whatever feel that they can only establish their own sense of identity in opposition to others rather than basing it on something positive.
Let's hope and pray that the violent end to 2007 may not be continued into 2008.
I wish you all a peaceful and blessed New Year.

The village of the world

Today I once again had the privilege of taking an African to visit the birthplace of David Livingstone at Blantyre. (I've been there so often in the past year or so that one of the staff asked me if I'd like a job as a volunteer tour guide!)
This time my guest was Rev. Simon Githiora Njuguna, the Director of the Youth Department of the Presbyterian Church of East Africa.
He had been attending last week's General Assembly and I was asked if I would 'look after him' today as part of a programme of visits around Scotland and Northern Ireland. I was delighted to do so, and decided right away that Blantyre was the place to take him.
First of all, though, I had to 'collect him' from Abington.
I guess many exchanges (legal and otherwise) take place in motorway service stations but this was a very slick handover, timed to perfection.
Simon had been staying overnight in Dumfries at the home of another minister there, and we decided to meet each other more or less half-way at the motorway services for the handover. Poor Simon - shunted from one car to another, like a parcel in the post. (He didn't seem to mind, though.)
And he really enjoyed the visit to Blantyre.
Here he is pictured in the very room where Livingstone was born and brought up with the rest of his family.
When I see the enthusiasm and appreciation of African people for all that David Livingstone was able to do among them, and the respect in which he is still held all over Africa, I am saddened by the indifference (and even ignorance) of so many Scottish people to this courageous and committed man, whose story is quite astonishing.

As we sat and talked over a cup of tea in the cafe at the David Livingstone Centre and Simon asked me about my previous visits to Kenya it suddenly became clear to both of us that we had 'met' before. Five years ago I had spoken to a group of ministers in Nairobi. Simon was still a 'probationer' at that time - not yet ordained, but he had been sitting in the back row.
After we returned to my home, I was able to confirm it all by digging out the old photograph album from the 2002 trip to Kenya, and there he was - or at least his head-partially visible behind another minister. Well, Simon claimed that he could see himself in the picture. I had to take his word for it, and since he could remember (better than I could) what I had been talking about that day I have no reason to doubt that it was his head.
As they say... "It's a small world!" And getting smaller every day.

Partners

By special request (and with apologies to those of my readers who already know all of this, and may well be fed up hearing me talk about it) I thought I'd say a bit about some of the projects in Kenya that our church is involved in.
The first of these is a congregational partnership between ourselves and PCEA Kiambaa.
The partnership began a number of years ago when Rev. Dr. David Githii (then minister at the new, but growing, Kiambaa Church) visited Scotland and, after meeting one of our elders, came to Kirkton.
Some time afterwards, as part of a Study Leave Project I was undertaking, I visited Kiambaa with one of our elders, and we agreed to develop the relationship between our two congregations.
On that first visit we saw the very impressive building pictured here (now known as the Lankia building) which had been erected at Kiambaa thanks to the generosity of First Presbyterian Church, Lancaster, Pennsylvania. At that time (2002) it was virtually an empty shell.
It now houses, among other things, a clinic, lab, library, kindergarten and a computer training centre (more of which at a later date.)
However, the real focus of our partnership has always been the relationship between the members of the two congregations.
The various projects that we have undertaken (though not of the same scale as the Lankia building itself) have always been intended to develop the friendship between our two congregations.
The first of these projects was to pay for electric lights to be installed in the church.
Another project was to contribute towards the drilling of a borehole (although several years later there still seems to be a dispute between the church and the local authority as to who has the rights to the water in the well.)
More recently (in 2005) we installed about a dozen second-hand computers. (Of course, this also included installing all the electrical sockets etc. to run them.)
It may seem strange to take computers to a community which as yet does not have running water, and where few houses have electricity, but there were good reasons for it. If the economy of a country like Kenya is to catch up in any way with the rest of the world and compete in the global market it is not likely to do so through industrialisation, but it might do so through information and communication technology. More immediately, the individual people from Kiambaa who learn even basic computer skills are much more likely to find employment.

(installation of computers at Kiambaa almost complete)

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Partners.

Name dropping

OK, so I like to place-name drop. :-)

I can't really name drop because I don't really know anyone who is famous.

But, actually, one of the reasons I started this blog in the first place was to share some of my favourite photographs of places I have visited over the years and share some of my thoughts about these places. That's because I think life itself is pretty much a journey and I like to pause now and again to reflect on various places of interest I have arrived at on my life-journey.
Of course, the problem is that this can end up being pretty boring for other people.
I remember once falling asleep while someone was showing us slides of their trip to a foreign country. It's more than a little bit embarrassing when you waken up again, not knowing how much you've missed, or whether you were snoring! But you, dear reader, can fall asleep if you wish, and I won't notice, and I won't hear you snoring, wherever you might be.
This picture you can see here is of the Nubble Lighthouse at Cape Neddick, Maine, USA.
We visited it in 2003.
If I have a thing about bridges, I also like lighthouses a lot. I used to wonder what kind of people had the guts to live the life of a lighthouse keeper. All that isolation and potential danger - like being winched across angry seas, as the lighthouse keeper once would have been here at the Nubble. A bit sad, therefore, that most lighthouses are now fully automated. All the romance and drama have been taken out of the business.
The spiritual metaphors are fairly obvious too - the lighthouse warning of the dangers, guiding ships through hazardous seas to safety, Jesus as Light of the World etc. (One reason that part of our church's youth programme is called the Lighthouse Club.)
But the reason I like this particular photograph is because the light you see doesn't come from the lighthouse itself. The only light here is the reflection of the setting sun in the windows. I had to wait quite a while until this moment came for me to capture.
It's a reminder to me that I have no light of my own: only that which is given to me and which I may then reflect back to others.
Which brings me to the second picture - a banner hanging up in the Guest Hostel of PCEA Kikuyu Hospital in Kenya.

Keeps you humble.

Too close for comfort

Just in case Tess happens to be watching over my shoulder, I thought I would post a picture of an elephant, because I know she is fascinated by them.

This particularly magnificent creature was coming towards our vehicle on the Masai Mara in 2002. In the end it decided not to come too close.

Later on, though, a young, but still pretty large, bull elephant came striding up the track towards our 'bus' and refused to stand aside. It came right alonsgide the bus and was about to push its considerable weight around, and could easily have flipped us over. However, our alert and experienced driver 'growled' the engine at him a few times until he reluctantly moved away. Actually (like Tess perhaps) I was too fascinated by this strange but magnificent beast to feel afraid at the time. Only afterwards did I realise that we were perhaps a little bit too close for comfort.

Half a loaf...

I suppose administration and bureaucracy are necessary - but sometimes they can be very frustrating.

You may remember we have been trying to organise a visit to Scotland by two of our friends from Kiambaa Church (our partners in Kenya.)

[The photograph shows some of the young people of Kiambaa church just before we left in 2005]

In the last few days and weeks there have been many messages (telephone and text) flying across the miles between us and today there was some good news. At last. One of our guests, Nancy, has been granted a travel visa and thanks to the very helpful people at Key Travel, I have just managed to book a flight for Nancy for tomorrow night and she should be with us by Sunday morning which will enable her to begin the World Without Walls Training Course in Bo'ness on Monday morning. Unfortunately, Wilson has been asked to go back to the British High Commission on Monday morning and has not yet been granted a visa. At this stage we have no idea whether he will be successful or not. It is all very frustrating.

Of course, as I probably mentioned in a previous post, if Wilson was married, had lots of money and lived in the city he probably would have had few problems in getting a visa, but clearly the authorities consider that there is a risk that he will choose not to return home and somehow just disappear in this country. It is all very frustrating.

However, I suppose half a loaf is better than no bread... and if we keep on hoping and praying maybe Wilson too can have the privilege of leaving the warmth of equatorial Kenya to come to the sub-zero temperatures of central Scotland.

On that point, I have been getting quite irritated (once more) at all the fuss in the TV news about the weather in England. Honestly....a couple of inches of snow and you'd think the world had come to an end! For goodness sake... it is February. It is winter time. Sometimes in winter it snows in this country! And sometimes (for reasons that didn't seem to apply when I was young) that means schools are closed... oh, and traffic has to move more slowly. So what? There are other more important things happening in the world. Learn to live with it.

All's well that ends well...

A glimpse of the two "baddies" (Haudit and Dropit) from 'Jack and the Beans Talk.'
Of course, they turned out alright in the end.
So did the panto as a whole. Everybody had great fun and, what's more, so far it has raised over £1100 for charity.
We plan to share the proceeds among the Children's Hospice Association Scotland, World Vision, Kiambaa Church (our partner church in Kenya) and Glory Christian Fellowship Orphanage in Kenya (another project we regularly support.)

We are hoping to further strengthen our links with Kiambaa very soon, as long as the visa authorities in Nairobi are on our side. We have invited two of our friends from Kiambaa (Wilson & Nancy) to come over to Scotland and take part in the World Without Walls training course. We tried this last year but Wilson and Nancy were refused travel visas. We are hoping and praying that this time they will be successful.