And I Don’t NEED Sun
Screen
Our kids are all changing. I have this conversation with
Katie almost every day:
Katie: Daddy, what color skin do you
have?
Me: I have white skin.
Katie: What color skin do I
have?
Me: You have beautiful black
skin.
Katie: And I don’t NEED sun
screen!
Whenever
In the picture, Ben is wearing a coat that JT wore,
Matthew wore, and his cousin Douglas wore. It is remarkable how clothing can
evoke emotion, but it really did when I put on his jacket for the first
time.
Matthew is becoming a young man, and recently wrote a
piece of music that was just beautiful. The sixth graders go on a special safari
at the end of the year, and he is thrilled about becoming a member of the polar
club, which involves jumping in an ice fed lake. Traditions are IMPORTANT here,
even weird ones.
JT is now 15, and has gone on three dates. The first
girl asked him to a Sadie Hawkins movie night. She is an absolutely beautiful
white young lady. The second young lady who asked him out to a Sadie Hawkins
luncheon is an absolutely beautiful Kenyan woman. On his third date, he asked
out a beautiful Korean woman. For more excitement, he got invited to
The computer lab is operational, and that is a story in
itself. I went to a guy named Walter who I met during our orientation school for
coming to
I told him that I wanted a computer lab. Several weeks
later, he came up with an idea, a design, and a budget. Because our budget was
limited and because thievery is such an issue here, he took an old metal
shipping container, and
When we got the used computers, they had a ground plug,
which is not compatible with any converter plugs here, and I panicked. Walter
just pulled them out; he is a guy who knows what to do, and he does
it.
But what you might not know about Walter is that after
he delivered the Computer Center, he lived in it for three nights to do all the
work that needed to be done and protect the special tools he would need to make
it function. While we were doing finishing touches today, he got out a can of
paint and did touch up work. I had to walk off and cry over that; he has just
done it all for this project, and done it with excellence and care that inspire
me when they don’t put me to shame.
(Walter)
But it is working perfectly. We have a teacher, and for
this month, she is just going to be teaching the teachers, while the children
are on break. No one at this school besides the teacher has ever seen a computer
in real life, so we are starting from ground zero. I was instructing the head
master about using his baby finger to type the letter A, and I told him so many
times that he greets me with a wave from that finger. They are excited beyond
excited.
(Rachel is the computer
teacher)
(Headmaster with special attention to his little finger
and the A.)
A young man came up to me last week and told me `When
you told me that you would build a computer center, I did not believe you. When
the computer center came, I still did not believe it.’ I invited him in and let
him write his name. `Now I believe’ he said with a face full of
tears.
This is going to get weirdly personal, so feel free to
skip through the next few paragraphs. I so desperately believe in the feeding
program we do, and I pray that it can continue in May. But like much we have
done in
I’ve been in Kenya for four years, and this is the first
time I’ve felt like I have took a stab at the beast that has robbed and raped
and stolen from this country. It is a small center, and it will only serve a few
hundred children, but it is a start, and a real way out of the poverty that
consumes this land.
Besides the super important and obvious best days of my
life (
When Stephen was born, he had such a cleft lip that he
couldn’t drink from
I asked if I could try, and the nurses reminded me that
they were neo-natal intensive care nurses and two of the best nurses had been
unsuccessful. I asked again, and they sighed the heavy sighs that only nurses
can sigh.
And he took the whole bottle from me. And he would only
eat from Nancy and me, like he knew he didn’t have much time, so why waste it on
someone else? And that still stands as the greatest day of my
life.
The other day, which has nothing to do with the previous
one, was over 30 years ago. It was a summer evening, and I was in the car with
Tom and Charlie and Chopper and Rocky Mountain High came on, and I loved that
song and I loved my friends and I knew that they loved me and I just felt so
alive and so happy.
I don’t know why I thought of those two events, but as I
watched Walter put on the touch up paint and I cried, those thoughts came
pouring into my mind. And I realized what a gift it is to do what you all have
allowed us to do in Kenya, and I would have to say thank you for giving me one
of the greatest days of my life.
The Passion movie hasn’t reached
I’m so grateful for the second chance you have given
these kids. I hope you have the greatest Easter celebration ever. And don’t
forget the sun screen; some of us need it.
Your pal,
Steve
Steve
and Nancy Peifer
Stateside
Address:
Phone:
011-254-20-32046-252
http://peifer.kijabe.org