I peered out of the grimy glass through the metal grille of my second-storey
bedroom window onto the corrugated-iron huts of the surrounding shanty-town.
Wild dogs, pigs and chickens mingled with children and farmers trudging through the mud and negotiating the boulders and craters of the road outside.
Ludicrously, a satellite dish poked up through the rust of next-door’s hut and the distant call to Muslim prayers mingled with the strident call of a nearby pneumatic drill. Even without the mosquitoes and assorted bugs, it’s not easy to get a good night’s sleep in Kisumu, Kenya’s third city.
I spent Sunday morning preaching in a slum-dwellers church (2 two-hour services virtually back-to-back) that started with a dozen or so congregation and reached around 60 by the time I got up to speak.
Regular people like you and me – just different coloured skin and a greater aptitude for languages; most Kenyans speak at least three.
My friends ask me if I had “a good holiday”? I tell them it wasn’t a holiday and I cannot describe it as “good”. “Humbling” maybe. Certainly different. No rich fattening desserts. No desserts at all! Rice and lentils most days. Plumbing and
electrics leaving a lot to be desired. I never used an undamaged toilet anywhere in Kenya and often “showered” from a dribbling tap.
Many of the church leaders I met made their living in rudimentary farming or from selling clothes and crafts by the roadside. Those who were paid got £30-40 a week.
I hope, by the grace of God, that I made a small difference. I certainly feel I
learned more than I taught. And I’ll certainly think twice before I criticise the state of Thurrock’s roads. Or its garbage collection. Or the condition of its parks.
And so I’m back to my daily creature comforts. Hopefully a wiser and more grateful man.
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