Happy New Year dear ones!  2013 was both a very challenging and very wonderful year in so many ways.  I am so thankful for all God has done and am so excited for all He has in store for us this brand new year!  2014 is as limitless as He is and I'm so excited for all that lies ahead.

My sweet little family welcomed the new year all the way back at our genesis.  We went to visit the little town of Eldoret, about a 6 hour drive north of where we live now.  Just on the outskirts of Eldoret is the poorest little slum, called Kamkunji, where my husband was born and raised and spent the first 22 years of his life.  It's where we lived and served much of our early married years, and it's where our son was born.

It never ceases to amaze me when I walk through Kamkunji and I imagine my own childhood.  I think about how as we were growing up, my husband's and my life were so unfathomably different, we quite literally might as well have grown up on different planets!  And yet the Lord caused our worlds to collide, for His purpose, His glory, and His good pleasure.

I look at the sweet little boys in that slum, playing in the sewage with the pigs and see my husband not all that long ago.  My heart breaks for him and for what he endured, and my heart breaks for them all over again.  And yet I see a ray of hope.  I see proof in my husband that there IS a way out, and I'm reminded that the way out, the only Way, is Jesus.  It's so humbling.

I look at the women there too.  I see such weariness on their faces.  They are so run down and so tired from trying to survive just one more day.  They have experienced tragedy, pain, turmoil, suffering, and heartbreak most of us can't even begin to fathom.  But of course, there is hope for them too.  There is always hope.

This visit was especially precious because my mom, my sister, and my baby nephew are all here in Kenya with us for several months.  It was the very first time my mom met my husband's mom in over 10 years of us being together!  God is so good.  As we walked through the slum, my mom was so perplexed by the situation.  She asked questions like,

"How do these people survive?"

"How do they get food?"

"What do they do when they're sick?"

"Where do they have their babies?"

It occurred to me that the answer to many of her questions is - "they go to their local midwife."  When someone, anyone, in the family is sick, when they haven't eaten in days and need food, when they have nowhere else to go, when they need marriage counseling or advice concerning family or life in general, and of course, when they are pregnant or in labor, they go to the midwife.

Today this hit home even harder when one of my clients called me saying her sister has a friend who gave birth 2 days ago and something is wrong with her breasts.  Her nipples haven't "opened" yet so she's not producing milk and the baby just won't stop crying.  What a sobering realization to discover that I am their ONLY resource.  There's no hopping online to find the nearest lactation specialist.  There's not even LaLeche League or a good book to refer her to.  There are no trusted doctors, midwives, nurses, or doulas who I can send her to or they to her.  It's me.  And she's too far away for me to reach her.  So I sent my client's sister to this sweet new mama so that we can get more information from her over the phone and figure out how to best help her and the baby.  Starting of course by assuring her there is NOTHING wrong with her breasts, her nipples do not need to open because they were never closed, she is producing exactly what her baby needs, and the more she nurses, the sooner the milk she's so anxious to see will come in.  It breaks my heart not only that these sweet mamas have no information, but no access to any resource to get it.  Even if they manage to go to prenatal clinics, the horrifying things they go through there, coupled with the shockingly harmful misinformation they receive there, I have to admit, sometimes I wonder if they'd be better off not going at all.  Shocking I know, but remember, this is a different planet.

Back in Kamkunji, as we drove through the gorgeous green rolling hills, I couldn't help but be moved as I saw far away in the distance a tiny little mud house belonging to the most renown local Traditional Birth Attendant.  I remember like it was yesterday, sitting in that dark, stuffy, stinky little hut, just days away from the birth of my own son.  I held a laboring woman in my arms, supporting her as she struggled for hours to bring her baby boy into the world.  I choked back tears as I remembered that when he finally made his grand entrance, he was so limp and lifeless.  And I remembered with such deep awe, respect, and gratitude, how my midwife from Oregon, Sherry Dress, sat on that filthy mud floor and wiped him down with the slip of her dress because there was nothing cleaner to use.  And how she spent about half an hour working on that sweet baby with absolutely nothing but her hands and her breath.  She just would not give up.  And how miracle of miracles, he finally started to breathe and give out weak little cries.  I remembered how hard it was to leave them there that night and how afraid we were to return, unsure of what we'd find.  I remembered how astounded we were to find them the next morning, beaming, bright, and perfect.  Thriving and happy, waiting to walk home with the baby's father who had come to fetch them.  And I remember how that was the last straw for me.  How I immediately started searching for distance Christian midwifery schools and how God so lovingly and graciously led me to Charis, and to all of you!

It all started there, in that tiny little town.  What a beautiful way to start the new year - remembering the wondrous things God has done.  It makes me so excited and expectant for what is yet to come.  And I'm thankful that what He started in me there, will better equip me to be the resource and help to women in Kamkunji and all over the world so desperately need.  Most of all, I am thankful for the Way, the Hope, and the Answer that I carry and that He is entwined in all we learn and do in Charis.

Precious children playing in the garbage with the pigs

Walking through Kamkunji slum and gaining an entourage of sweet children

Jannekah's husband Martin
standing with their daughter Amariah  in front of the mud house he once lived in.


 
In the slum the babies raise babies while their parents work hard
to make sure they have at least one meal every couple days.