A Special Weekend

This past weekend (Feb 19-21) our Suba Lakers Football Club reported to Mbita for a weekend of training. Nineteen of the twenty-three girls came on Friday and stayed through Sunday afternoon. Some travelled by foot, others by public vehicles, others on the back of motorbikes, and about four came from islands on boats.

These primary school players come at least one weekend a month, but this one was extra special because Coach Ted travelled from Kisumu to conduct the training. He is the coach of a professional club in Kenya called Kisumu Real. Also, the director of Kisumu Youth Football Association, Kelsey Moore, also came with him to see what we are doing with our girls and to train with them. The girls loved having someone new putting them through a workout and they also loved having a mzungu (white) lady training with them. The girls worked really hard over the three days and impressed the visitors with their skills and ability at such a young age. Most of our girls are only in 6th-7th grade and are around 11-16 years old. They have really improved over the past year that we have been working with them. If they stay together and continue to grow at the same rate, we will have a pretty incredible team in the coming years.

The club is preparing for the Copa Coca Cola tournament at the beginning of March and also for the primary school ball-games immediately after. Most of these girls will be forming the team that represents our district at Regionals and many of them will represent the region at Provencials. Even a few may get selected to reach the National Level.

Our club was grateful to our good friends, Ted and Kelsey, for taking time to travel to Mbita, staying with the girls in the camp, and helping to train them.

Proud of Our Kids

I have a big sense of relief now that all of 25 of our graduates are safe and sound in their new secondary schools. It is pretty remarkable that each of our students that finished at CGA last year are in schools. The transition rate from primary to secondary within our district is around 60%. If you factor in those that dropped out before finishing 8th grade in the district, then it would be much lower than that (around 40%). We have had a 100% transition rate in our school's history. Currently we are sponsoring 90 students in secondary schools all throughout the country. We have eight of our former students in National Schools and most of the rest are in the next best class of schools (Provencial).

That is pretty amazing considering that most of our students are orphans from poverty stricken families where few others, if any, are educated. It is a testimony to God's faithfulness and how he has used CGA to impact the lives of so many others.

So all twenty-five students from CGA have begun their first year in high school. Twenty-four are in boarding schools. Many of them got chances at some of the best schools in the province and in the country. We are excited to see how they will excel against the best and brightest. Part of CGA's vision is to prepare these children for secondary school and for life. The ones that succeed at CGA, end up doing even better when they reach the next level because they have learned how to be self-disciplined and self-motivated. They end up out-performing others who had higher marks than them in primary school.

I had the opportunity a couple of weeks ago to attend a big secondary school sports tournament and I was able to watch several former CGA students competing in boys basketball, girls basketball, boys football, girls football, volleyball, rugby and field hockey. It was so much fun to see them using their God-given abilities in different areas. Sports has a way of creating a close connection between the student and the school and with their coaches and teammates. It also provides them good exercise and allows them to be exposed to new places away from school. Plus, it helps to develop their character as they learn about hard-work, discipline and teamwork.

I am very proud of all of our kids. So many of them have had challenging lives, but are managing to rise above it with support from CGA.

Learning to Beg

As the Secondary School Sponsorship Coordinator at CGA I am responsible for all of our students that graduate CGA and move on to Secondary School. Through carrying out my responsibilities I have developed some good relationships with secondary school principals and teachers as I visit our students at their various schools. The education system in Kenya is very different than America. These students are "called" to various schools throughout the country after their national exam results come out. Sometimes they get good schools that they are excited to go to. Other times they don't. This time almost all of our students were selected for schools that were not their first choice, even the students with high marks.

If a student doesn't like the school he was selected to then their parents can go out "begging" another better school to give their child a chance. There are very few "good" schools in the country and so everyone rushes to those schools after they get called to a school they don't like. So hundreds of people clamour for a chance at a good school that may only accept 10-20 additional students besides the 200 ones they have already selected to join through the computer selection process.

Since we are so deeply involved with our secondary students and because most of them are orphans, we take this responsibility upon ourselves to help them find a good school because it will greatly impact their chances of going to university and their futures.

So Pastor Amos and I hit the road this week driving all over Nyanza province to every good school we know. At each school we went to we would find long lines of parents waiting to see the principal and beg for a chance. God showed us much favor at each place because of our good relationships with the principals, deputy principals and other teachers. Most of the time we didn't have to wait in line and were able to present our request. Some granted the requests on the spot and others asked us to leave the request and check back next week. It is humbling though to be at the mercy of the principals. They can really say whatever they want. Ultimately though it is all in God's hands. He will find the right school for each student. I found myself trusting in his sovereignty more and more as the journey went on.

I was amazed to see how God cares for the orphans. He opened some amazing doors for his dearly loved ones. At the best boys school in the province there was a stack of over 400 requests from parents and all of them had higher exam scores than Joseph, but the principal accepted our request and wrote out an invitation letter immediately. At a National School (one of the best in the country), the principal said he could get fired for doing it, but felt like he should give our top orphan boy a chance to join. He said if we are that concerned about the orphans that he should support what we are doing however he can, especially since he was once an orphan.

There are still many more requests we are waiting to here back on in the next week. All of the students will reporting to their new schools on February 1st.

Trying to Make a Difference

In the midst of opening the new school year at CGA, getting 90 students off to their various secondary schools and dealing with the death of a former student, I have had the opportunity to try to make a difference in a couple of young girls' lives. With our Suba Laker Football Club I have the opportunity to coach many talented players from around the district. I also have a chance to connect with them and their families. One of my favorites is a young girl named Akoth. I have coached her for about 3 years now. She is so disciplined, respectful, hard-working and obedient. Unfortunately due to her primary school and home situation she scored really low on her 8th Grade National Exam. With the marks she got, she wouldn't be able to join secondary school and there are very few options for her, except getting married like most girls around this area do when they don't pass their exam.

Our club officials met with her widowed mother and former teacher to discuss other options. The only other option was looking for a chance to repeat at another school, possibly around Mbita. Akoth was given the opportunity to take some entrance exams at Mbita Primary and after a lot of discussion and persuasion she was given the chance to join 7th grade. In America most 16 year old students would be devastated if they were forced to go back two years in their education. Akoth was overjoyed at the chance to rewind her education which gives her hope for a better future.

Another young girl named Josphine has had a difficult life. Her mother died when she was young. A few years ago she ran away from home because her father and older brother were abusing her too much. She stayed with her cousin for a while, but then a neighbor sent her to Mbita to be a maid for a family with some young children. When she reached Mbita, she quickly informed the family she was working for that she wanted to go back to school. They agreed and helped her get a chance in a local school.

We have been encouraging the players and their parents/guardians to try and get their birth certificates and also death certificates of their parents if they are orphans. These documents are essential to acquire a national identity card, help them gain financial assistance from the government in higher education, and many other things. Josphine was determined to travel back to her homeplace in December to try and get these documents. When she arrived, she found that her father and brother had also passed away (presumably from AIDS). The local chief tried to ask her for a bribe so that he could help her. She didn't have money and so was now forced to come back to Mbita empty handed.

We are now trying to work through local chiefs, her school principal and other government officials to get these necessary documents.

Please continue to pray for Akoth, Josphine and the rest of the girls in our football club.

Not the New Year I Expected

My world has been turned upside down in the past 24 hours. I don't really know how to do this, so I guess I will just share the story from beginning to end...

I had enjoyed a good New Year's Eve and was home at night eating dinner with a neighbor. After dinner I was catching up on a few things and began getting ready for bed at 11:30 pm when a phone call came. One of our cooks in the kitchen at CGA, Phoebe, called to say she had taken her son to the Mbita Health Center a few minutes earlier because he was coughing up blood and they were being referred to Homa Bay District Hospital. The Mbita Health Center only had one nurse on duty; no doctor was willing to come in and they wouldn't release an ambulance to take him to Homa Bay, 45 kilometers away on a very bad dirt road. So they had no way to get help.

To help you understand the severity of the situation, let me give you a little background. Her son was Javan Ochieng. He is 17 years old and used to be a student at CGA. In 2004 through the help of a sponsor, CGA assisted Javan in getting open heart surgery to put two artificial valves in his heart. At the time he had no parents and was staying with some relatives. Since then his mother showed back up after being away for most of his life. After his surgery CGA has continued to support him to travel on a regular basis to see the doctor who performed the surgery. He also was on blood thinning medication that we had to hound him to continue to take as he would resist at times.

So when the call came on New Year's Eve I knew it could be serious. I first called Willis, one of our leaders at CGA. He suggested just hiring a taxi to take them to Homa Bay. The proble was that every taxi driver we talked to resisted because they said the road was too bad to travel at night and it was too dangerous with the bandits setting traps on the roads to rob vehicles coming through. You know it must be dangerous if they were willing to turn down the opporutunity to make money. They said they could take him in the morning.

My vehicle was not at my house so I immediately set off on foot at 11:30 pm to reach the clinic and assess the situation better. It is not very wise to walk around the village after dark, but there wasn't much of a choice. Walking for an hour gave me a good chance to pray and think through the situation. So many things were running through my head before I finally arrived.

When I reached the clinic, Javan seemed to be sick, but not so bad. He was coughing blood and wasn't able to talk, but he didn't seem to desperate. His mother explained that he had been fine throughout dinner, but then collapsed in his room after dinner around 10:30 pm. The nurse had given him some IV's, but other than that she wasn't very much help. It seemed like the best thing was to wait until morning and get a taxi to take him to Homa Bay to see a doctor. But the situation deteriorated quickly. He went into shock and started rocking back and forth and mumbling words we couldn't understand. More and more blood kept coming out his mouth and he had no control over his extremeties. He was like a wet noodle. After being with him for 30 minutes it was obvious something had to be done quickly. I found someone with a motorbike to drive me to my vehicle which I collected quickly and drove back to pick up Javan, his mother, and two of their neighbors who were helping.

At 1:15 am we set off for Homa Bay. It is only 45 kilometers away (30 miles), but usually takes about 1 hour 15 minutes in good conditions because it is very rough and much of the road gets washed away by rain. It took us about 1 hour 30 minutes and we only passed one other vehicle the whole way. I think the two Kenyan men were more scared then I was; maybe because I am too naive. Every corner we would approach they would be looking keenly around for bandits or things blocking the road. Javan was still in shock, coughing up blood, flopping back and forth along the bumpy road and mumbling the whole time, complaining about his back. Halfway there he had to go to the bathroom (#2). That wasn't very easy since he had no control over his extremeties. It took all four of us to hold him, take off his pants and help him finish the process.

Finally we arrived in Homa Bay a little before 3:00 am. We rushed him and the nurse took down notes and allowed a medical officer to assess the situation before admitting him into the ward. In the ward a nurse hooked him up to some oxygen and gave him some drugs. He was flopping around in the bed and moaning about his back. At one point the nurse tried to get a sample of his blood, but even though the needle was right in the vein, she could only manage to get out a couple of drops. That is when I realized he might die soon.

Eventually the doctor came in and got to work quickly. He wanted to give Javan a blood transfusion but there was no blood available in the hospital. He asked if any of us were A +. Since I was, they rushed me back to the lab quickly and drew a sample and tested it to make sure it was safe. After clearing that process I had to rush out to the pharmacy and buy a blood bag. They started drawing from my left arm but it was coming so slowly. They were forced to switch to my right arm to fill the bag. I was so happy that I could actually do something to assist. I had felt helpless all night long to relieve the pain that Javan was in. I was excited that God was going to use me to help save his life.

The exact second they finished drawing my blood and removed the needle, I heard some wailing coming from the hallway. At first I didn't think much of it and asked the man with me to go check on Javan. The lab technician cautioned me to rest for a while after giving blood, especially since there wasn't anything to eat or drink. About ten seconds later, it hit me. I went running down the hall to find Javan laying motionless in his bed, with all the women around crying at the top of their lungs. I couldn't control myself. I broke down sobbing thinking of all the things that contributed to this. How it took me so long to walk to the Mbita Health Center. How we delayed in the decision to drive him to Homa Bay. How the nurses and doctors moved so slowly and how my left arm wasn't producing enough blood. A few seconds or minutes could have helped to save his life. I took turns between crying and praying for God to bring him back.

He didn't.

After about thirty minutes I began discussing with the doctor. It seems that Javan's artificial valves must have failed. He had a lot of internal bleeding including all the blood in his lungs. Once those valves fail, the chances of survival are very minimal unless he can get to a specialist (only in Nairobi and Eldoret in Kenya). Because it all happened at nighttime, there wouldn't have been much that could have been done, even if we would have brought him to Homa Bay earlier of even if he got the blood transfusion. Later on that day we discovered that Javan had gotten into a fight two days ago and was beaten severely. He didn't tell his mother because he must have been trying to hide it. Most likely, that is when the heart began failing and the internal bleeding could have begun.

Amazing how fragile life is.

It took about 45 minutes to clear the bills, acquire a burial permit and leave the hosptial. We decided it was better to bring the body home instead of leaving it in the mortuary in Homa Bay which would be expensive and difficult to later retrieve. So we loaded the body back in my Landcruiser and set off for Mbita at 6:15 am when the sun was beginning to rise. The biggest problem now was that it had begun raining about an hour earlier. The road was terrible and my four wheel drive Landcruiser was slipping and sliding all over the road. Somehow God brought us through all of that and we reached Mbita by 8:00 am. Not much was said in the vehicle on the way home.

As is typical custom here, many relatives, friends and neighbors were in the house waiting for the body. As we arrived they began wailing loudly. Those emotions alway strike a chord in me. We helped carry the body into the house and laid it on a mat. I quickly said goodbye and went home to try and get some rest; totally exhausted.

So many thoughts and emotions are running through me right now. I don't know what to say except that it shows how important it is to make sure those around us know Jesus and surrender their lives to Him because none of us know when our time will come.

Sharing Jesus Birthday

While I was in Kenya on Christmas Day, the newest addition to the Peterson family was coming into the world in San Diego. Kylie Noelani Peterson was born to my brother Sam and his wife Sally at 11:35 am on Christmas Morning. She was 7 pounds exactly and 18 1/2 inches long. I can't wait to see her!

Christmas in Kenya

After a busy December working with returning secondary students and our football club, it was time to get away and celebrate Christmas. Originally I was planning on spending a few days on Zanzibar Island out in the Indian Ocean with some friends. Unfortunately, those plans fell through and I was not able to go. At the last minute I started checking on-line for some flights home because I thought it was worth a shot in the dark to see if I can spend Christmas with family, especially since my sister-in-law was due to have their 2nd child. I was amazed to find a roundtrip ticket home for $700 and I started making my plans. I was so excited until I went to the final booking and realized that the taxes brought the ticket to over $1400. Oops. That was a little too much to spend for only 5 or 6 days at home. So I had to settle for going to Nairobi and spending Christmas with some friends there.

It turned out a little more difficult than I planned. I was riding on public transportation. Only ten minutes outside of Kisumu the police pulled the van over and said they didn't think the inspection sticker was real. So now it is the 23rd of December and I was joining thousands of other people in Ahero Police Station waiting around for an inspector to come and inspect our vehicle to make sure it is safe. It wouldn't be so bad if they consistently enforced these rules throughout the year, but they never do. They just pick out a day every now and then and decide to crackdown. Christmas doesn't seem like the best time of year to do that, but maybe my perspective is a little different. It was an enjoyable three and a half hours of doing nothing, but eventually the inspector came and told us what we already knew (that our vehicle was fine). What made it worse was that it delayed my arrival into Nairobi which then coincided with rush hour in addition to a storm that knocked trees into the middle of the road! Ugh!! Eventually I arrived at my friends around 9:00 pm (I had left Kisumu at 7:00 am).

It was a good Christmas. Vance and Kathy Ficek live in Karen on a compound with their daughter Tera and her husband Tom. They have separate houses in the same compound. Kathy is the principal at West Nairobi School while Tom and Tera also teach there. They welcomed me into their family and we enjoyed the holidays together. We had a lot of time to rest, relax, read, talk, eat, etc. My Christmas gifts were all food. Things like Pasta and Sauce, M & M's, Twizzlers, Instant Mashed Potatoes, etc. Not just food, but American food and easy to cook. Perfect. Couldn't have been a better gift for me since I am still learning to cook without having a fridge to store leftovers.

We enjoyed the time together. It was nice to be around an American family for Christmas and to have a little time away from Mbita.