What a long strange trip it's been... It seems like ages ago I was sitting in Heathrow on my way to Nairobi. It was only about 20 days ago, but so much has passed since that happened. I finally feel like I have a good grasp on my new job and what I'll be doing. It was thrilling to work with Kenyan students, professors and pastors training them to conduct qualitative research. I got to sit in and facilitate focus groups with Bible Translators from remote tribes in Kenya and work to develop indicators to measure their influences on social capital in the communities where they work and empower people through not only the Gospel of Christ, but with the gift of a written language that empowers people to worship, to read, write, sing and contribute to the cultural and intellectual landscape of the world. It was quite a blessing to listen to the Kenyan staff members speak, talking about cultural disconnects between western missions agencies and ground workers in Kenya. The main cry was for the need for perspective and the recognition that both partners are gifts from God to the other and that this should dictate business and spiritual manners.

We worked quite hard on our research project, compiling a 49 page report on the status of youth ministries in Kenya. Kenya has gone through a lot of turbulency this year, most of it stemming from the post-election violence and the reminder of the legacy of tribalism that still exists in the collective conscious of this country. Students responded with widespread rebellion, violence and destruction, setting fire to several schools reflecting the current crisis facing Kenyan youth. In September, my organization oversaw a random stratified qualitative survey of 4000 Kenyan youth to gauge the current issues they face and the root of their discontent. In light of this research, after training 23 focus group facilitators, we conducted 35 focus groups in Western Kenya, Nairobi and the coastal region. We met with NGO's, various government officials, pastors, denominational leadership, youth workers (Christian and public), teachers (urban and rural) and students (age 13-18, urban and rural). We had almost a hundred pages of raw data that I took the lead in consolidating and then a team of five or six of us went through and plugged responses and formulated key points from the focus groups into the research questions that came from strategic planning after the survey of 4000 students was completed. Both the Kenyan government and school system are very open to the church assisting and leading in implementation of youth programs, overhauling the school curriculum and leading the mandatory hour of religion teaching that is a requirement for all schools in Kenya. The church has been very slow to use this incredible opportunity. Youth comprise almost 70% of the population in Kenya, and so all institutions need to figure out how encourage and develop youth, but the church especially ought to be doing this. Media access is rampant and unmonitored in Kenya. Kids were even commenting on wanting guidance in discernment and talking about how easily pornography is accessible through magazines, private computers and public showings in the slums and elsewhere. Meanwhile, the church has remained very distant from the youth, not adapting to the emerging youth culture, operating in irrelevant cultural paradigm, not including the youth in worship or developing/utilizing their gifts and talents. They have basically been dismissed from the church and in their pursuit of freedom, they cry for guidance and structure that is not being provided by parents, schools and the church. It was amazing to watch pastors, youth workers, and teachers conducting focus groups, participating in the process and reading the information realize the extent of the generational gap and the incredible opportunity as well as essential need to incorporate a genuine compassionate and empowering ministry to the youth in the church, the school and the community.
Seeing them process the information and realize apart from our influence, that the church needs to help youth discern appropriate media/technology content, the church needs to use cell phones, the internet and technology to reach youth. Students were practically crying out to be nurtured and empowered by the church, for the church to meet them on their level and love them, not dismiss them, force feed them or force them to change. It was an interesting contrast to hearing the voice of tribal groups in the remote areas of Kenya begging for their mother tongues to be made into written languages with Bible translations so they can discover the extensive power of the gospel and literacy on their level.

The church needs to be beating down the doors to schools to lead the religious instruction hours and to operate and provide programming for the government sponsored youth centers that are being established. The church needs to provide counseling to students and families along with family programming and training. The next steps were fairly obvious from the compiled data in the focus groups, but it was essential that these suggestions come from Kenyans and not just outsiders coming into Kenya. I’m not sure how cut out for this work I am, and if it’s truly my passion, but it was pretty amazing to be a part of this process.

I have quite a few friends in Kenya now, professors, pastors, students, security guards, and taxi drivers. The friendly guesthouse staff called me at 4:30 a.m. knowing that I wanted to see the election results come in as they happened miles and miles away. Groggily looking through the mosquito netting to see Obama claim victory in my beautiful state of Pennsylvania and a key win in Ohio that sent me back to sleep knowing that the world would wake up to remarkable news that the United States was moving in a new direction. I drove the streets of Nairobi swerving to avoid the spontaneous celebrations in the streets organically errupting in the wake of Obama's victory. People chanting, carrying signs, home made t-shirts, victory notices scrawled in the dust of numerous vehicles that gather layers and layers of dust from the clay filled earth of Nairobi. I was brought to tears seeing the celebrations, the joy and overwhelming significance of this historic event which took place thousands of miles away. My mind was transported to my home in West Philly knowing that the celebrations there would be insane and overwhelmingly joyful. I wept in the car at the thought of my own journey in my racial identity and politics, again questioning who I am and what I want to do with my life. People were so excited and came up to me and I would unbutton the top of my dress shirt to reveal the Obama 08 shirt and give the thumbs up to celebrants reveling in the Nairobi sunshine. What a remarkable experience to be in Kenya for this historic life changing moment. Rarely do I have the humility and confidence in our imperial nation to say that I am proud to be an American. (I am fully prepared to defend that sentiment, and I certainly do not deny the extreme privilege and freedom I experience as an American, particulary a white male, but I'd love to talk about that with anyone who wants! My point is that freedom and privilege quickly lead to fascism, imperialism and arrogance which are often swept under the banner of patriotism and pride)