All roads lead to Nairobi

Welcome to part three of “What in the world does Kerri do all day?” Today I get to tell you about how I coordinate conferences when most the speakers come from other countries and I am never sure of who exactly is showing up each day. Its a crazy life.

For those that aren’t aware, DOVE Africa, is just one region of a larger body called DOVE Christian Fellowship Int’l, or DCFI for short.  So when we can get other leaders from throughout DCFI to come in and teach at a leadership conference, we jump at the opportunity.  In fact we have one happening in August.  Two speakers are Americans but one is arriving from the US and the other is coming from Malaysia. Another speaker is arriving from The Netherlands, another from South Africa, and one more from Uganda.  This means coordinating four different airline pick ups and transportation to the venue.  I’m glad our Ugandan friend knows the city and is taking care of his travel arrangements!  

Of course, I also have to find out who is planning on attending, so its the invite email, various follow-up emails, and finally texts and phone calls to get all the info from the various regions of DOVE Africa - 3 regions in Kenya, then Rwanda, Uganda, and India. Oops, India’s another airport coordination and transport to figure out.

Now that’s just for this coming August.  I also helped coordinate a business expo we held in March that had people from Europe, North America, Africa, and the Middle East.  That was a paid conference, which meant figuring out prices for hotel stays (resident vs non-resident) in various currencies and calculating it into Kenyan shillings.  Email invites, phone calls, schedule planning, and hand-out booklets were also part of the package.

In June Ellel Ministries came and did two seminar/workshops which we helped administrate.  At least this time, people interested in coming contacted me! But I got to man the table each day taking registration fees, keeping track of expenses (Where’s the receipt?) and selling books.  Oh, and of course being aware of timing, and whether or not lunch was on time and how many people we were feeding that day!

Its always interesting how time works here.  As Ibrahim (my boss) has said to me more than once, “We make time here in Kenya,”  and I believe him.  It amazes me how often I’m anxious about getting somewhere on time, but then others are late, the meeting runs long, and yet everything still gets done... 

Next meeting on the agenda after August is the DOVE Africa Annual Convention in December.  At least there’s a few months in between to get it all done!

Welcome to Kenya...

The fun part of my job (for the most part) is hosting teams when they come to visit Kenya.  If you were to visit here's how things would probably might happen (no guarantees).

Greetings! Welcome to Nairobi, you've just arrived after too many hours in planes, waiting during airport layovers, standing in line for your tourist visa (which just doubled in price to $50 pp), watching the baggage carousel praying all of your luggage arrived with you, and then dodging the customs officials looking for contraband.  Its about 10pm, but your body is too confused to care.  All you want is some normalcy, and a hot shower.  Sorry, we might be able to help you with a shower, but normal is just a setting on your dryer and we don't have one here.

We've arrived at Eshel Gardens, chai and a snack are waiting for you.  If you want to stay up an chat a bit, I'm more than happy to do so, but feel free to inspect your room and bed for the night if that's your preference.  I totally understand.  Just remember, jet lag will can hit about 3am, so make sure you're really tired before you hit the hay.  If you forgot your toothbrush or toothpaste, just ask.  I keep a few on hand, just in case.  Anything else, and it'll have to wait for Nakumatt.

Day 1 of your trip - at some point today we'll probably get to Nakumatt so we can pick up any incidentals that you may have forgotten that we don't keep on hand (anything other than that toothbrush I gave you last night).  You may also want to buy some extra water, though our filtered well water on the table is safe to drink and the tap well water is fine for brushing your teeth & showering.  Other than that, today is your day to acclimate to the altitude and time in Nairobi.  If you brought along a lot of stuff, today is a great opportunity to sort it out.

Days 2 - ?  Hurry up and wait.  Remember, time in Kenya is a totally different concept than in the USA. If someone says 9am, give at least 30 minute grace period.  Life goes at a slower pace here, enjoy the trip and remember the "be-attitude" for any mission team ~ "Blessed are the flexible."  Use the wait times to listen to God speaking to you, or look around and observe; don't forget to write your impressions and observations in your journal (you did remember a journal didn't you?).  Traffic is the bane of every person living in Nairobi.  You can use the downtime in the car to rest or watch out the window and see how others live.

At some point, we'll go to Masai Market & shop for some trinkets and more 'african' stuff.  You can buy carvings, batiks, jewelry, small knives & clubs, traditional type shirts & dresses, woven bags... and A LOT more.  Don't forget your haggling skills though, because they never give you the best price first and as tourists you're a target!  We'll also try and visit one of the National parks, because you can't leave Kenya without seeing our beautiful wildlife; lions and buffalo and zebra, oh my!

You'll have lots of questions, and I'll answer as many as possible.  I am not a native Kenyan, and thus I will not have all of the answers.  If I don't know it, I'll try and find out for you.  However, to prepare you:

1. If we lose power, I don't know when it will come back on.  I also don't know if we will lose it again.
2. I cannot guarantee sightings of the big 5 - lions, leopards, elephants, buffalo, and hippos.
3. Food here is different, please prepare your taste buds for a new experience.  We'll do our best to accommodate specialty diets and allergies, but please be willing to have an adventure and try new things.
4. It can get chilly in Kenya - please be prepared and bring a jacket, hoodie, or sweater.  I don't have enough to outfit a whole team. Layers are key!

Its your last day. Time for packing up your clothes, your souvenirs, and saying goodbye.  We've enjoyed having you and showing you our lovely country and people.  Please come again!

Welcome to the 21st Century

So dear readers, here is an honest to goodness blog post. Some of you know what I do, but I probably a lot of you don't. Mostly that's because even I'm not always sure what I'm doing on a day to day basis. But, under the advisement of my mom some smart people I've decided to start a series based on some of the aspects of my job. This one is about the role of social media and how it affects what we are doing in light of eternity. To that end, part of my job is help DOVE Africa engage in social media. I've redesigned and launched our new websites - doveafrica.com and springsofafrica.com, plus DOVE Africa also has a FaceBook page. (you can "like" us here)

Culture and society are changing at an ever-faster pace. Thanks to the advent of the internet and cellular/smart phones people are becoming more and more ‘connected’. Email has been a great tool in deseminating information across a large distance in moments. But it is very quickly being overtaken by the social media networks.

The coming generations are learning to communicate in new and different ways than those of their predecessors. For them it is about having a dialogue, not listening to a monologue. Social media and networking are the keys to reach them and get them interested in the future of Kenya. We need to reach them at their level.

In February 2004 college student Mark Zuckerberg and his roommates started a network for Harvard students, in just seven years Facebook has grown to over 600 million users (I'm one of them, wanna be my friend?). That is 10% of the earth’s population. Twitter, a micro-blogging tool, has grown to 175 million users since its launch in 2006, and is adding an average of 370,000 per day (you can follow me here). We’ve even added new words to our daily lexicon because of social media, i.e. going viral- to describe the sudden growth of a post on a social network, ‘friending’ someone, ‘tweeting’, etc.

Social media is playing a role in politics. In the revolt against the most recent elections in Iran, the Western media would have had little to report had it not been for YouTube videos that were being posted by people on the ground. Facebook has also been credited in inciting the groundswell of support for the revolutions throughout North Africa and the Middle East during the “Arab Spring”. And who can forget the trouble that some American politicians have found themselves in for inappropriate uses of social networks.

It is a rarity in Kenya to have a land-line telephone, instead most everyone has a mobile phone. The social media networks have seen the trend and made allowances for it, thus the ever prevalent ‘app’. You can Facebook, Tweet, and check your professional associates on LinkedIn from the palm of your hand. You don’t have to wait for the evening news or the morning paper to know what is happening in the world, information is immediately available on your phone.

All of this feeds the desire of the coming generations for transparency and genuineness. They will no longer stand for platitudes and patronizing speech. They may not agree with what you stand for, but if you are willing to hold to your stance with reasoning behind it, they’ll respect you. Social justice issues and causes are very popular with Generation Y and the Millennials. They want to know that they are making a difference in the world and are using the social media networks to partner together to do that.

Unless we are willing to speak to those who will be the next leaders in the language and context that they understand, they will see us only as archaic and out of touch. We will no longer be given a place to teach them or empower them. If they do not learn from our mistakes then they will be doomed to repeat our history. And that, Kenya cannot afford.