HYC Nairobi: The Call For Kenya

I am no stranger to HOPE Youth Corps. In fact, Kenya was my fifth HYC. I’ve devoted many summers to volunteering and community service- it is my passion and my call as a disciple. I never see Jesus more than in the eyes of a child in a hospital, a woman in need, a group of young men and women flying across the world in order to serve a nation not their own. It is for this reason that I make every effort and spend every dime I have on participating in programs that will give me these opportunities. But with all my experiences, I have never seen or done anything like HYC Kenya 2016.My dream to go to Kenya started in 2009, when my two older siblings went for a Youth Corps of their own. They came back utterly changed. It was all they could talk about for months! I yearned to understand what it was they had experienced. However, I was 12 at the time, so I needed to wait just a few years before I could leave the country on my own. Flash forward to Fall 2015 when I was finally old enough to apply to an international Youth Corps, and you can bet the first thing on my mind was Kenya. But I figured I’d at least give the other places a glance too. All of them sounded incredible, but in my heart I felt the call for Kenya. When I saw that we’d be serving at Kenyatta National Hospital in the pediatric cancer ward, I filled out my application without another thought. I could not believe that God had not only put it on my heart to pursue a medical career, but had presented me with an opportunity to go to a country I had always wanted to visit in order to serve children with cancer! Add on top of that that I had just accepted a job at a cancer consulting company, and you had a recipe for destiny.

It was everything I had hoped it to be, and more. I had never been with such a dynamic group- the youngest of us was 15, the oldest 41- yet not for a second did it feel “weird” or awkward. It was so obvious that God had called each of us there; trying to imagine the group with any one of us missing was impossible. The disciples from Nairobi made us feel like family almost immediately. Any “culture shock” was absorbed by their warmth and love- we were all Kenyans. This was even more visible at church service on Sunday. I was even more in awe that no matter what nation, culture, language, or generation we were all apart of, we all worshipped the same Jesus. And he made himself so visible throughout the trip.

I could go on for pages describing where we went, what we did, who we met, what it felt like, and how much I miss it all, but I’ll do my best to keep it succinct. My favorite thing about Jesus is how he spent so much time loving individuals, and my favorite part of any trip is the experiences I have with individual people, so that’s what I’ll talk about. On this trip, two women stole my heart. First, there was Joyce. A fierce and beautiful woman, Joyce lives in Makindu where we built houses out of mud and rock. As soon as we stepped off the bus, she wanted “pi-tures with Muzungu” (Muzungu being a white person, aka me). She was so confident, so fun, so strong, it was easy to see why she was the leader of the village. She started off our time with a prayer that I couldn’t understand, but the passion and devotion in her voice was impossible to miss. As we worked, she and the other women made us tea, stew, and chapatti (my mouth is watering just thinking about it) and kept us entertained. Actually, I should say we kept them entertained. A bunch of Muzungus coated in dust trying to learn how to make mud to build a goat house is quite a sight. But we felt their love for us, and we felt so much love for them. A few days later, when it was time to leave for Nairobi, Joyce was the one I knew I would miss the most. The HYC shared our experiences, and the village women shared how we had impacted them. Joyce, of course, was the first to share. Once she finished, she grabbed me by the arm, pulled me to her seat, and told me she wanted to give me something. She searched through her purse, trying to find something to give me, and handed me a blue papermate pen. A pen has never meant so much to me in my life, and it was a moment I will never forget. I hastily removed my necklace and put it around her neck, trying (and failing) to give her something that could match her gift. But Joyce wasn’t done. She grabbed me, wrapped her scarf around me, and made us take a picture (she’s a big fan of pictures). Afterwards, she looked at me and asked, “Do you know what this means? It means I am adopting you. You are my daughter now.” She then gave me her scarf. I brought it home with me, and I refuse to wash it. It smells like Kenya; it smells like Joyce. She gave me so much in the so short time that I was with her.

The second woman isn’t actually a woman- it’s a girl. Sharon, a 5 year old, who has been battling retinoblastoma for 2 years. When I met her, she had lost her right eye to cancer. Unlike the other children in the eye ward at Kenyatta Hospital, she did not have a fake replacement eye, but rather an empty lid. And she is the most beautiful girl in the whole world. On Day 1, she was reserved, shy, and definitely did not want to play with me; in fact, she could barely look at me. Her mother spoke broken English and told me that she wasn’t eating very much. Since there were few other kids in the ward at the time, and not many others spoke English, I decided to stick with Sharon and see if I could get a smile out of her. After much tickling, food “airplanes,” and silly faces, Sharon was giggling and eating and sassing me in Swahili. However, as soon as we joined up with the other children and started group songs of “Father Abraham” and “Baby Shark,” she shut down again. But we still had a few days left to bring her out of her shell, so on Day 2, I bee-lined for her again. It took a few moments for her to recognize me, but as soon as she did we were back to tickling and giggling. Her joy didn’t fade even when we joined up with the group. She ran around, threw a ball over and over again, sang all the group songs, played with the other kids, and tickled me while I screamed and ran away. I felt like a proud older sister watching her grow confident. But Day 3 brought our time at the hospital to an end. We gave everything we had left on that last day, and when it was time to leave, I could hardly look at Sharon without my heart aching. Every time I said goodbye and tried to walk away, she would come chasing after me, only to run away giggling again, trying to keep our game going. Eventually, though, I gave her one last hug and left. I knew she was leaving the hospital as cancer-free a few days later, which made me happy, but I also knew I would probably never see her again, which made me sad. She has a hard life ahead of her- weird looks, whispers behind her back, questions about her missing eye- and I doubt she’ll even remember me in a few years. But what I love about Youth Corps, or any form of service, it’s not really about whether my actions will be remembered. It’s about how I made people feel in the short time I was with them. I hope, I pray, that Sharon will remember how breathtakingly beautiful she is to me. I hope I made her feel confident in who she is, and that she keeps her sassy nature as she grows into a woman.

I can’t describe in enough detail everything that happened in my two weeks in Kenya, but my time there was beautiful and special and meaningful in every moment. I miss the place, the people, and the experience so dearly, and I will count down the days until I can see my beloved Kenya again.