Amongst the charitable activities that our church has been privileged to support has been the work of Derek Reeh flying for the Missionary Aviation Fellowship in Kenya and his wife Janet, who works to help with the education of under privileged children ("Kids to Kids") as well as being Training Coordinator for MAF. Here is a letter from Janet telling us of the current situation in Kenya. Please do keep Janet and Derek in your prayers.
Dear Friends,
Thank you for your emails, for your concern
and for your prayers. We are fine, the expatriate community is somewhat removed
from the situation although lamenting the sorry state of this once beautiful
country. The situation in Kenya remains tense and phrases like “ethnic
cleansing” are being bandied around. The number of IDP’s(Internally displaced
people) are growing by the day. There are many camps in and around Nairobi and
Police stations and Churches remain important sites around the country to house
these people, and today an estimated 300,000 are still sheltering in 44
makeshift camps, two thirds of whom are estimated to be women and children. The
Kenya Red Cross is doing remarkable work but is becoming overwhelmed by the
scale of the problem in some areas. A friend visited two IDP camps this week and
found one full of Kikuyu’s just outside Nairobi that she likened to a holiday
camp, it was so well run, and another with thousands of every tribe except
Kikuyu’s, at a police station in the tea farm area near Limuru a few miles
outside Nairobi where the organisers were completely overwhelmed, people were
arriving, trying to carry all their possessions with them. In this second case
the people had been threatened by the Mungiki who are a terrorist group among
the Kikuyu tribe. They have in fact been causing trouble for at least a
year.
At "Kids to Kids" we are hearing of some of
the families who are being told to move on and David one of our teachers was
also told this week that he must shift. He is a Luhya and all his neighbours and
his landlady are Kikuyu’s. Most of the landlords in the Nairobi slums are
Kikuyu. His landlady was being threatened by the Mungiki that if she had tenants
who were not Kikuyu her houses would be burned. This situation is becoming
common all over Kenya. We have now got to the stage of revenge killings, so the
situation is spiralling out of control. Today one of the guards on our compound
was threatened with death if he didn’t move out, so a relief guard came on duty
to allow him to move his possessions. I don’t know where he was going to move
to!
Kofi Annan and his team have been making
progress and seem to be agreeing on a course of action. He is insisting that the
politicians speak with one voice, however President Kibaki blew that straight
away, by still claiming he is the rightful president and that ODM started the
violence. There are a growing number of Kenyans that have limited faith in the
process. One lady said the other day that she thinks as soon as Kofi Annan
departs the process will halt. We can only pray for better than that. The media
have now been told to put across positive messages about living peacefully
alongside neighbours and captions now run across the TV screen. On Saturday I
saw the following: “We are all equal in God’s eyes. We are all equal as Kenyan
Citizens.” I hope the local radio stations have toned down their words they were
actively inciting the people to violence. Many tribes have their own radio
stations in their own languages a popular one round here is KISS 100 a Kikuyu
radio station, according to Eunice they were actively inciting the Kikuyus I
don’t know if this has ceased yet.
Today at kids to kids we accepted 5 more
children on to the programme so now we have 27 children enrolled, we still don’t
know what has happened to 8 whom we pre registered. It is still far from safe to
enter the slums, so our home visits will have to wait. We were hoping to provide
uniform for our children this year, but have been wondering if the time is right
to look for sponsorship amongst our congregation. However we now have the
samples and will finalise styles and colours tomorrow. I tried our samples on
two children today and they did look smart. The colours are red and blue. They
are being made by Jane on our K2K committee who has a tailoring
business.
Derek was busy flying last week. On Saturday
he flew a group of politicians and clergy to places in the west, Kisumu, Kisii
and Kitali, and collected others, some were going to a funeral but they were
also going because Kofi Annan had told them to get to their constituencies and
speak to the people. So far they have all been hiding in Nairobi where it is
relatively calm. The paper today reports the excursions of many MP’s to their
constituencies this weekend. Two ODM MP’s were killed last week one in Nairobi
and the other in Eldoret, now they are all asking for body guards. They are
allowed to carry guns anyway. Derek has gone to Sudan today and is back on
Wednesday. The Sudan work is still carrying on as normal and the extra flights
because of the crisis are being fitted in wherever possible.
Bernard our Programme manager sent us an
update recently and with the following story: "In the evening my phone was
ringing, when I answered I heard the nervous voice of a woman asking for help.
“I am not safe here and I am told to leave with my three year old girl, -
please, please help.” My question, “Where are you now? did not get a clear
answer – I had no idea where she was and she did not seem able to explain more.
Suddenly I realised that the music teacher of my daughter was in the adjacent
room, a Kenyan from that region. I rushed into the music lesson, “Do you know
this village?” there was a moment of hesitation – “No I think not” – but then
remembered a friend who had once mentioned the village. A quick call on another
telephone while I was calming the woman gave us the new information from the
friend. On our large wall map we quickly found the village, close to the Ugandan
border and we were then able to identify the nearest airstrip. My heart leaped,
we had not flown to that destination for years, but just the next day we
happened to be evacuating some people from there, and there would be space on
the flight! This was more than coincidence! While I quickly passed on the
details to the frightened woman my heart was filled with a silent prayer: “Thank
you Lord, You do care for your people and it is an adventure to serve
you!”
I have been reading a book by Philip Yancey
recently on prayer and he said that when he prays coincidences happen. Surely
this is God at work. Each week I meet with a group of ladies in Nairobi from all
walks of life. We have far reaching discussions, Bible study and times of prayer
together. This group certainly helps me in my prayer life. Regarding Kenya it is
difficult at the moment to get beyond the stage of lamenting to God, and we do
feel helpless in many ways. It seems the only thing I can do at present is to be
a listening ear and offering consolation and prayer. There are so many terrible
stories, but I know there are stories of courage and Godliness that are emerging
from this crisis, particularly amongst the Kenyan health workers. I pray that
Kenyans will be able to accept a new identity, that of being Kenyan and not
Kikuyu or Luo, or any other tribe, that the church leaders will speak with one
voice to bring harmony and reconciliation and that the politicians will be able
to address the serious problems of poverty and land
ownership.
Thank you again for keeping in touch. We
love to hear from you. Please keep praying for Kenya.
With love from,
Janet and Derek