GUILFORD — On the morning of Feb. 12, nine Windham county residents sat down in a hotel conference room in Nairobi, Kenya to talk about the day-to-day details of their journey through cultures and time.
Thanks to Guilford Community Church Pastor Rev. Lise Sparrow, who had made this journey a number of times before, all the bases were covered, and just about nothing was left to chance.
This was no ordinary trip, and riding the roads of Kenya is not exactly the same as traipsing through the streets of Paris or Rome.
The Brattleboro Area Interfaith Group was comprised of five adults and four teenagers and, over the course of a little more than a week, we learned not only a lot about one another but about ourselves and about people who live in worlds apart from Vermont.
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The first full day led the travelers to the David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust in Nairobi, where 36 young elephants, orphaned after their mothers were killed by poachers, are raised until they are ready for return to the wild.
The elephants are cared for as well as any orphans - human or otherwise - and the public is only allowed viewing from noon to 1 p.m. each day.
At that time, the young follow their caretakers to a ring, where they are fed from large bottles of milk. Some of the young are able to hold their bottles on their own with their well-developed trunks while a few hundred tourists snap pictures and try to get close enough to pet them.
Next, the group moved on to the Kibera slum, a patch of land about the size of Central Park in New York where about one million people live.
Nothing can prepare you for the assault on all of your senses when you walk down the rutted dirt paths that are streets in Kibera. Human waste flows freely, and the corrugated-tin homes, amid the sea of moving pedestrians, is a sight that does not leave memory very quickly.
Yet, among all of this horror there is still a great deal of hope for the future, and the Vermont group found that to be especially true in the primary school that they visited. The principal and school administrator gave us a tour as the children displayed their extreme friendliness and eagerness to embrace new visitors.
Education might be the only way out of Kibera, and Simeon, the man who inspires everyone daily in a school in one of the worst slums in the world, is as worthy of a Nobel Prize as Mother Teresa.
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The next day, it was a road trip to the Kikuyu village of Kaiguchu, where Sparrow has made many friends over the years and where the group would be pushed back into life as it might have been in the early 1800s in the U.S.
After a long ride over a variety of roads that provided everyone with a glimpse into some parts of Kenyan culture, the two vans, along with two driver/guides and a group leader, were welcomed at the village by a group of women who broke into song and dance as soon as the doors opened.
The festivities were nothing like the bland “Hello” that Americans might give one another as an obligatory greeting. These people were genuinely happy to see the Vermonters, and they let them know it by engaging everyone in song and dance with them.
The village women led everyone to a buffet dining area surrounded by forest, banana trees, and huts as they continued to sing and dance their Kikuyu welcome.
The food did not prove to be a challenge for anyone, and the entire group cleaned their plates. Prior to the arrival in the village, Sparrow had told everyone not to leave any food on their plates, because it would be seen as an insult. Luckily, the food was so good and everyone was so hungry that that was not an issue.
The Vermonters spent the next three days involved in various activities with villagers ranging from visits to schools and a local dispensary to participating in a Sunday service, where Sparrow offered a guest sermon. Some in the Vermont group sang for the congregation under tents along a remote village roadside.
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The dispensary tour was an eye-opener for me. I have been a nurse in Vermont for nearly 40 years and have seen health care in a few different parts of the world, but never in a third-world country.
I brought a suitcase full of simple medical supplies, mostly wound-care products. Our group also presented the clinic with an otoscope/ophthalmoscope, a device to examine ears and eyes, whose purchase proved to be quite an introduction into the details of local commerce.
A basic level of care is provided by a nurse, and villagers get prenatal care, are given access to a few medications and lab tests, and are able to know that there is a place to go if they are sick. I did not find out if a doctor ever visits the clinic, but it was clear that a trip to Nairobi would be in order for any serious illness.
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One of the village schools has had a lot of support from a few U.S. groups, including the Guilford Church. It is still under construction on a hillside, yet students and family were arriving the day we were there. We helped a bit with the welcoming committee as the students arrived on 175cc motorcycle taxis with their mothers and metal trunks on board to prepare to begin their studies at their new temporary home and school.
The Vermont teenagers quickly made friends with their Kenyan counterparts as they planted trees and chatted about some of the universal things that teenagers anywhere concern their lives with.
During the Sunday service, a number of local children who have been orphaned by the HIV/AIDS epidemic were presented with tie-dyed shirts made by the Vermont teenagers. These orphans have been followed by the Guilford church for a number of years, and their pictures are posted on the church walls so that congregants can offer prayer.
Payton Lawrence, one of the Vermont teens, met her prayer orphan Stella for the first time after offering prayers for her well-being for three years.
In addition to the tie-dyed shirts, the orphans and other villagers were given suitcases filled with a variety of clothing and hundreds of pairs of badly needed reading glasses donated by people from Windham County.
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The final two days of the trip fell more into the tourist activity category as the Vermont contingent traveled to the 583-square-mile Maasai Mara National Reserve in Narok County, Kenya, contiguous with the Serengeti National Park in the Mara Region of Tanzania.
Our van drivers, who we learned were multi-talented individuals, displayed their naturalist knowledge as they maneuvered through the dirt paths of the reserve, seeming to know exactly where every kind of wildlife would be.
They also were able to provide us with a great deal of information about the habits and the lives of the animals they were scouting out for us. We were not disappointed as we got to within 10 or 15 feet of lions and their cubs, elephants, giraffes, wildebeest, water buffalo, and a wide variety of flora and fauna.
Amazingly, there were no travel glitches, and our group fared well in their travels of about 15 hours of air travel each way and hours of layovers at Heathrow Airport in the U.K. These were no ordinary teenagers and the adults who accompanied them found that to be a comfort.
Some trips are fun and somewhat memorable. Other trips are life-altering experiences.
There is little doubt that all of the Vermont travelers returned home feeling that they had experienced something that would become an essential part of them for the rest of their lives.