Twelve days to go !!

I can't believe its over a month since I was last on here, and the three of us go out to Kenya very soon.

News from there hasn't been good recently; firstly there was the fire at Nairobi airport arrivals, luckily I suppose, at night, when there were very few people there and no planes arriving.   http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-23598012     Apart from one report a couple of days later when they re-opened the airport, using marquees and the presidential arrivals area, I haven't heard any reason or explanation on how the fire started.

The other news was about the terrorist attack at the Nairobi Westgate Mall shopping centre filled our British papers for about a week.   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westgate_shopping_mall_shooting      I heard on the news today that there are still some people unaccounted for and DNA investigations are being carried out to try and identify bodies recently discovered in the wreckage.

Some of my friends have suggested we should abandon the visit .... but trying to be sensible about it, I know that people didn't stop using the London Underground after the 7/7 bombing, nor did people stop visiting New York after the 9/11 disaster, so it seems to me that a terrorist attack in Nairobi shouldn't stop us going to Kisumu.  

 

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I've been given a new task at the Hands Around the World office.    We publish a monthly 'Prayer Prompt' on the Facebook page and our web-site, and I've been asked to take it on !

Here is my offering for October .....

I’m a great fan of the books by Alexander McCall Smith about the Botswana No 1 Lady Detective, Mma Precious Ramotswe.   I’m reading all of them for the second time, and I see there is a fourteenth book being published very soon ! 

Mma Ramotswe is a traditionally built Motswana lady, keen to keep up the old ways of Africa.   She is a kind, fair, moral Christian lady, so it was with delight that I recently discovered a book written by the  Bishop of Worcester, John Inge, (who is obviously a great fan of Mma Ramotswe) called ‘Living Love: in conversation with the No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency.’

Bishop John comments that in these books we learn through the stories of the individual characters to empathize with different peoples who have suffered, and are suffering.     Isn’t this what we do in Hands Around the World ?    A friend of Mma Ramotswe,  Mma Potokwani,  who is the house-mother at the Gabarone  orphanage, comments, “We must look after other people.  Other people are our brothers and sisters.  If they are unhappy, then we are unhappy.  If they are hungry, then we are hungry.”   (Tears of the Giraffe)

There is a sameness of the human condition, so that recognition of how much we have in common with people in different situations makes empathy easier.    Mma Ramotswe herself  comments  “If only more people knew there was more to Africa than all the problems they saw,” (Blue Shoes and Happiness).     Working and praying for Hands Around the World shows us every day that   “There is plenty of work for love to do” (Tea Time for the Traditionally Built)

So very true .... we hear  all about the problems of Africa, but we rarely hear what is good about Africa, which is so much greater.