wfn.org | Missionary Sees Value of One Great Hour of Sharing

[PCUSA.NEWS@pcusa.org]

19-February-1997 
 
97092  Missionary Sees Value of One Great Hour of Sharing,  
                Self-Development of People Program 
 
                by the Rev. Timothy Emerick-Cayton 
                                  
Editor's note: Once in a while, a story comes to the Presbyterian News 
Service that is so compelling it must be shared.  The following account, 
received via PresbyNet from Tim Emerick-Cayton, who with his wife, Sher, is 
a mission co-worker in Kenya, is one of those stories. -- Jerry L. Van 
Marter 
 
NAIROBI, Kenya--Consolata Ojiambo is about 30 years old, recently widowed 
and barely able to keep herself and her four kids alive.  They live in one 
small, mud-walled hut about five or six kilometers from the nearest town.   
 
          She has one, maybe two dresses and one pair of well-worn shoes. 
Her kitchen is a corner of the hut and her stove is an open fire.  There 
she cooks her family's "ugali," the Cream Of Wheat-like doughy mixture that 
serves as the family's primary food source.  Her barefoot children, 
including the toddlers with running noses and covered with flies, run or 
play around the compound, little aware that they had the unfortunate luck 
to be born to poverty.   
 
          Unlike others, however, Consolata has hope and courage.  She is a 
member of a group of 15 like-situated women who came together regularly to 
contribute the few shillings each had earned the previous week from selling 
a few small fish or a bit of the maize they had held back from the 
children's meals in the hopes that together they might be able eventually 
to buy a $2,000 plot of land where they could grow, and later sell, 
vegetables, maize and bananas and thus take the first steps away from the 
poverty in which they had been imprisoned all of their lives.   
 
          Somehow Consolata's group had heard of the Presbyterian Church 
(U.S.A.) Self-Development of People program, which receives One Great Hour 
of Sharing Offering funds, and had filled out an application asking for 
help in buying the land, an ox, a plow and enough seed to plant the first 
crop. 
 
          Change the story.  Make it a fish-growing or dairy project with 
two cows.  Make the group 25 or 35 people.  But no matter how you describe 
their situation, the constant factors are abject poverty, a determination 
to work together to improve their lives and, in almost every case, a strong 
faith that sustains them day to day.  They trust in God. 
 
          During our recent trip to western Kenya we visited 13 such 
projects.  At each site we spent from two to four hours, listening to 
people's hopes, challenges and perseverance.  At each stop I tried to 
personalize what I heard by getting one individual's story.  Together their 
stories could make a book -- stories of poverty, courage, unimaginable 
strength and deep, abiding faith. 
 
          Although the hardship of life was clearly present, it was 
balanced by joy and happiness as a community.  Because we were such special 
guests we were always received with great ceremony and lavish preparations.   
 
          It is an African custom to serve food to visitors, so at every 
project site -- usually the home or compound of one of its members -- we 
were treated to sodas, peanuts and biscuits as starters, followed by 
"ugali," "chapatis" and chicken, fish or beef or sometimes all three.  One 
morning we had "breakfast" three times.  
 
          Those accompanying me included the field director for the 
Presbyterian Church in East Africa (PCEA) and two of my students from the 
PCEA Pastoral Institute who lived in western Kenya.  
           
          Each night we slept in the home of one member of the group. This 
home was usually built with mud bricks, but the walls had been covered with 
cement and there was a cement floor.  The roof was, in every case, made of 
corrugated metal sheets. We were most often given the bedroom of the host 
and each night had no less than a mattress to sleep on, old and worn out as 
it may have been.  In the evenings and mornings we were given the 
opportunity to do a "sponge bath," most often in some  outdoor facility. 
 
          Perhaps the hardest part of the adventure, however, was the 
driving.  Not only was it many miles, but much of the driving was done on 
rural dirt roads, severely rutted or with large, protruding rocks, which 
made the going very slow and hazardous. At times the "road" was so narrow 
and unused that the bushes on each side squeezed our van like a tube of 
toothpaste.  I often wondered going in if there would be a coming out. 
 
          The highlights include seeing Lake Victoria, which looks like an 
ocean from any side.  Seventy people had drowned the day before we arrived 
when an old wooden boat used to ferry people back and forth capsized. Yet 
strange as it seems, 40 to 80 kilometers from Lake Victoria people are 
suffering from lack of water.  You would think it would be so easy to tap 
the lake and provide water for millions. 
 
          The last project we evaluated was near the town of Busia on the 
border between Kenya and Uganda.  Busia was hot, dry and desolate but 
thriving all the same in spite of the lack of water and food. We all 
shouted for joy when we drove away from the last site.  The joy was a 
mixture of relief that the work was done and thanksgiving that the lives we 
would be going back to were ones filled with countless blessings. 
 
          What did I learn?  First, that the Self-Development of People 
program is desperately needed and doing a wonderful job at meeting the 
needs of people who want to improve their lives.  Second, that a strong 
faith can carry people through the even the harshest of challenges.  Third, 
that there are some people in this world who are severely suffering and 
they need our help. 
 
          As for Consolata -- what can we do?  First, pray for her, and the 
millions of others like her, that she will continue to be encouraged and 
hope filled.  God's love is far more powerful than we can imagine and can 
work miracles in the lives of people everywhere.   
 
          Second, contribute.  We can be "giving people," people who care. 
Give to the church that keeps this Spirit alive. But give also to the One 
Great Hour of Sharing, the Red Cross, the Salvation Army or to one of the 
many, many other organizations that are making a difference in the lives of 
people.      

------------
For more information contact Presbyterian News Service
  phone 502-569-5504             fax 502-569-8073  
  E-mail PCUSA.NEWS@pcusa.org   Web page: http://www.pcusa.org 

--