August 19, 2005

Two beautiful ladies

In the 1960s we spoke of “Flower Power.” The phrase is no longer popular but the power is still around and we have certainly found it among the women of God in Africa, whether it is in the Women’s Guild of the Presbyterian Church of East Africa or those individuals who have launched out on their own, responding to the needs and opportunities around them.

We first met Elizabeth about 16 years ago in the port city of Mombasa. At that time she was the director of the Association of the People Disabled of Kenya (APDK) clinic that was operated by the Christoffer Blinden Mission. We were introduced to the 70 or so children who surrounded her on crutches, in wheelchairs, and in bed—but all with smiles. Little did I realize that this was the beginning of an eight-year working relationship. Every three to four months Mia and I would take the overnight train from Nairobi to Mombasa to work beside Elizabeth. Within 30 minutes of exiting the train station we were with dozens of children who had been identified and rounded up for examination. Transport, X-rays, hospital accommodation, purchase and distribution of medicines, arrangements for operating rooms in three local hospitals—all this was added to Elizabeth’s usual work load of running a 70-bed rehabilitation facility. Recently she has been working outside institutional walls, bumping over potholes in a Landover and walking into shanties, overseeing the Community Based Rehabilitation Program in the poverty stricken districts around and within Mombasa.

Elizabeth is a nurse who has had training in cerebral palsy therapy in England. Though Ugandan by birth and upbringing, she has lived and worked in Kenya most of her life. In presenting Elizabeth with the rehabilitation worker of the year award this spring, we were saluting her twenty-third year in this field of endeavor. Elizabeth says that her only problem now is, “How am I going to retire?”

Wanjiku is a very capable, warm lady whose fineness belies her humble background. Born into a large family in a rural community, she typically started each day before dawn carrying out household chores before the long walk to school. Through an encounter with a visiting American in her classroom, the opportunity arose for her to complete high school studies in the United States. She declared her intent to prepare herself to better serve her people. That resolve has never wavered, though it has resulted in many hardships, including the break-up of her marriage. Finishing her high school studies with flying colors, Wanjiku was granted a scholarship to a university in California and then did postgraduate studies in the eastern United States.

She then returned to her home country to become a lecturer in the social science department of Kenya’s prestigious Nairobi University. There, Wanjiku urged her students to take up projects in the slum areas of the big city. In face of their continued reluctance and fear, she eventually took on the mantle of slum worker herself.

After building friendships and trust with people in that suspicious society, she launched a counseling center in 1984. This was the beginning of a stellar, many-faceted, holistic approach to the overwhelming need. Her office seems to be her cell phone, as she escorts visitors through slum lanes, tin-sheet classrooms, and schools as well as a student work farm in the outlying Rift Valley. Microenterprise programs have impacted dozens of poor families. Bright-eyed kids from one-room shacks with dirt floors are learning the ethics and tenants of the Christian faith. A deep artesian well next to one of her Maasai schools nourishes crops in the fertile but dry, flat farmlands 20 miles from the capital city.

Calls seem to always be coming in. Staff and community volunteers huddle with her throughout the busy days. Unflappable, challenges and decisions find their resolution in Wanjiku’s bright eyes and keen mind. One of the programs founded and operated by Wanjiku is a rough, two-story concrete building that houses about 25 handicapped kids from the Kiserian slum community. That is how Mia and I got into the picture last year. It has been our privilege to help with a few of the skin problems and reconstructive surgical needs in that home.

As I write this letter, Mia and I are on the brink of a nine-week Afghanistan sojourn where we expect to be working in a mission hospital in Kabul. Doubtless, there too we’ll find more of God’s beautiful ladies. Pray that we will be wise in our work and witness in that society with its current restrictive climate.

God bless you all.

Stan and Mia Topple