From my Diaries

I almost do not feel prepared to write about Nairobi. i have found it difficult to translate my experiences and encounters, emotions, sights and sounds into legible thoughts. The vast, endlessness of the shabby make-shift market shacks and the chaotic sea of people is stifeling after the peacful Athi River. Everywhere we go are crowds of begging street kids, and we spent a lot of time getting to know them and bringing them fruit and vegitables.
The street kids all live outside of the city center, because the policemen here, who are merely theives and opressors in uniforms, armed with automatic rifles, beat them and chase them off the streets.

When visiting the slums, i feel a lot more peace. And as we walk through the streets crowds of children follow us chanting "how are you! How are you! " Because it is the only english they have learned in school, and it is actually what they call white people. I suppose because we are always asking it.
The living conditions in the slums are not good and are unjust. The gap between the rich and poor is enormous, and the rich treat the numerous, huge slums as embarrasing eye sores and nothing else.
Yet the people living in the slums have so much joy, and I really enjoy hanging out with them.

two nights ago I met a young guy named Douglas, and he was asking if the conditions in Nairobi, and in Kenya, were what I expected. I also asked him what he thought about the condtion of his own country. He explained about political corruption and violence, mass poverty because of lack of jobs, the need for good education for everyone and not just the rich, and the problem of the great divide between rich and poor.
I agreed with him and got to tell him a bit of my own world view. How change can only occur when the individuals spirit is changed by Christ. No people have ever been able to make significant and lasting social change towards justice. People are unjust by nature, and so we must change our nature by putting on Christ's. If the individual has real hope living inside of them, their lives are completely changed, and quality of life if better, even if their living conditions remain the same.
He commented how rediculous Americans are for talking about change and putting so much hope in Obama, which was refreshing because most Kenyans are have blind hope in Obama, mostly because he is from Kenya.

Douglas seems to have a really level head and is really aware of the problems around him, where many kenyans ignore them or except them. I think that he could potentialy be a really influential person.
I asked if I could pray for him, and I told him what I thought I saw in him. I hope to talk to him again over tea one evening.