October 7, 2012 Kakamega

Greetings

Well I thought I was doing better.  I was feeling fine the last time I wrote however once every one left on Friday it hit me like a ton of bricks.  Not sure what it was or is but for a minute there I was about to check myself into a hospital.  After two long days this morning I woke up and did not feel too bad.  I was able to have two eggs, two pieces of toast with red plum jelly, and two cups of coffee this morning and I have so far after eight hours been able to keep it down.  Still feels like it wants to come up but so far so good.  Bishop Hezron must of said something since I have many well wishers and people checking up on me every now and then from the guest house.  Either that or they missed me at meal times.  There is nothing like being in a foreign country sick with that nagging feeling that food is your enemy.  I have a few more weeks to go and I have to eat sooner or later. 

My last blog was on the fourth and today is the seventh.  Friday morning into the afternoon the Bishop, Morris, Matthew, and Patrick came to the guest house to discuss establishing their micro-finance and micro-savings bank.  Morris is the General Secretary whom I have talked about before.  Matthew is the Project Manager and is the owner of the furniture shop in Mumias that I have also talked about before.  Patrick I have never met before and the Bishop had thought it a good idea to bring him into the picture.  Patrick is retired from what he said was a British Bank.  I think it is the Standard Bank or something like that.  Patrick also owns a small grocery in town and has some dairy cows that he tends to.  Between the five of us we discussed pretty much all the particulars of getting this institution started.  It was decided that Bishop Hezron would not be a voting member of the committee and that four others would join them to make a committee of seven.  I informed them that I am going to become more of a shadow since my presence seems to cause some problems.

During these last few blogs I have been talking about the issues of aid coming into the country.  The deeper I get into this the more I realize our good intentions of giving have created a nightmare for our ministry leaders here in Kenya.  The leaders and the pastors of the ministries all realize that the only way to help their people is to lift them up through employment.  The giving is not enough to sustain them and when the giving stops they are right where they were to begin with.  Don’t get me wrong they will gladly accept any money you might want to give.  We agree with our friends here and are willing to help in the form of loans.  However the people see money and they have been conditioned by many years of our giving to believe it is just another gift from the mzungu. 

While we were sitting discussing the program on Friday Matthew told me a terrible story to add to my grief.  This could also be contributing to my condition.  Anyway Matthew owns the furniture shop in Mumias and who got the lathe last summer.  Well it turns out that some of Matthew’s employees came to the conclusion that he was getting large sums of money from the states.  A few of them started to skim some of the orders and some of the lumber to feed another furniture maker across the way for a share of the profit.  It took many months for Matthew to find out what was going on and in the mean time he had to go to the bank for a couple of hundred thousand shilling loan to keep his small business afloat.  Once he confronted the employees about the theft they quit.  I am not sure if trying to press charges against them would amount to anything.  Matthew tells me he is recovering and he has learned a valuable lesson.  I told Matthew it saddened me that he was taken and that we will win over this evil.  Our Lord is still in teaching mode and I am still convinced that we can accomplish what God has intended for us.

In order for these people to get out of their poverty we have to stop willy nilly giving and start helping.  Please use your hard earned contributions by making sure that the organizations you are giving to are using your money effectively.  Churches, schools, and clinics are all good however they do not need to be St. Peters Cathedral, Harvard, or the Mayo Clinic.  Are these organizations using your money to Americanize our friends here in Kenya or anywhere else for that matter?  How much of your money is being used to build fancy office buildings, pay huge salaries, or funding other non profits that you might not agree with?  We have created the entitlement mentality in our own country and look what it is doing.  There isn’t enough money to go around so the government takes it in the name of charity.  Everyone wants to keep what they feel is adequate for themselves, their families, their retirements, etc. and who suffers?  Some of you might disagree with me but my Bible does not say that money is to be taken from those that have to be given to those that don’t.  Our Lord would never condone the use of force to take anyone’s money.  If you do not believe that the government uses force then do not pay and see what happens.  God tells us that charity starts with those that have to give and we all know what He expects.  We can’t hide He knows our hearts even before we were born.  The unknown is kinda scary isn't it? 

We feel in order for our friends here to own this they all have to realize they are not getting a gift.  Our investors have no desire to collect any interest from the loans and only require the principal be paid back in time.  Our friends here in Kenya will charge interest and fees according to their own by-laws to manage their micro-finance and micro-savings banks.  Our desire is for them to provide a mechanism for their members to save and to use some of that savings to secure a loan to help sustain them selves through projects.  It is also our desire that within the church community those that are unable to be business owners or farmers be helped by becoming employees.  Then there are those “Ones” that can be neither and whom better to take care of Them but their own church.

Not sure what I am doing tomorrow.  I still need to make it through the night.  You Know I Have Been Thinking That I Might Do A Whole Blog Where All My Words Have The First Letter Capitalized.  Try it sometimes it is not as easy as you think. 

Take care and God bless

Dave