What inspires you to give?

In our daily lives simple changes and decisions can impact others around the world in great ways.  Read below to see how the youngest member of our recent documentary team, college student Amanda Bates, has chosen to advocate and raise funds for the people she met in the Mathare Valley and Kibera slums in Kenya.  See how God was revealed to Amanda through this trip and how she has sought to respond since her return.

“God took me several weeks ago to the Mathare Slum in Nairobi, Kenya. I was there with Life in Abundance and a team to shoot a documentary film about life in an urban slum. God wanted to show me heartbreak and His heart for His people. He wanted me to experience just an ounce of the heartbreak He feels everyday for the loves of His life. Having your heart broken is the worst pain one can experience. It’s the kind of pain that there isn’t a pain killer for quick relief.

In showing me His heartbreak, He also created an even larger “call to action” requiring something to be done.  More than just giving my time and abilities, I want to give more. Sometimes however, I feel as though I have nothing to give.  As a college student, giving all I have would be the $10 dollars I have in my bank account and my lunch aka: a box of Ramen noodles.

Growing up in the States we believe that the only “helpful” gift is the monetary kind. Where does that leave the people like me who don’t have that to give? Sometimes I feel as though this leaves me in a box entitled, “I don’t care”. I want to correct that mind set. I want to be a part of the empowerment and transformation taking place in the lives of those halfway around the world. Very few can give enough to change the world, but everyone can give a little and collectively that can empower community transformation. Life in Abundance accepts my gift, a little as it is, and counts me in the community transformers.

So my way of contributing is to use the “Goodsearch” tool bar. You can download “Goodsearch” tool bar on to your internet browser. It’s a free download and you can use it as a search engine or to shop online. Every time you use it, it donates money to the organization of your choice. Of course in my case Life in Abundance is the organization of choice. It is only a small thing I can do but I have discovered that when your heart becomes involved with something, everything changes. God changes you.

So, Goodsearch for God and know that you are doing a small thing with a big impact.”

“It isn’t what you look at that matters, it is what you see.” (Henry David Thoreau) This paradox challenged our team while we filmed in the heart of poverty in Mathare Valley, a slum of Nairobi. Yes, the poverty is obvious to anyone who looks, however, it takes one who can really ’see’ to observe. Our perception of a slum tends to be great need, and unrelenting poverty. Yes, there is a great need in Mathare. However, we also observed neighbors helping one another, men and women departing for another days work, and small shop fronts selling goods daily as we entered the slums for another day of filming. We observed faith, hope, entrepreneurship, family, and community even in the midst of such impoverished surroundings.

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Concluding our “How Are You” series, documentary team member Bob Davidson shares about the lasting impact from his time spent in the Nairobi slums.  Below are some of Bob’s last reflections on the culture, community, people and overall experience from this life-changing trip.

Photo by Justin Ahrens

(Un) Final Reflections by Bob Davidson

As I sit on the plane to Chicago reflecting on my time in Kenya, a variety of emotions and thoughts that have surfaced.  Some are obvious.  Some are trivial.  Some are unfinished. Here are a few words/phrases that I leave with…

Obamaland.  Finding out your from America gets you added props these days in Kenya.  Finding out your from Chicago goes even further.

How are you? As mentioned earlier, the most frequented phrase to Westerners is… “How are you?” Like crickets chirping in unison, every time we pulled into the slums, the children would chant the greeting with an anticipated handshake in return.

Nairobi Traffic. Chicago has nothing on Nairobi traffic.  It is seriously the worst I have experienced.  Multiple times, it took us 2 hours to travel 15-20 miles.  Two words: mass transit.

How to Think. The common (hopeful) theme that reared its head throughout our trip was grounded not so much teaching people how to do (though appropriate and necessary), but how to think. 

Mazungu! The origin of the word comes from the notion of “the traveler.”  But these days, it simply means the (crazy) white man.  “Mazungu!  Mazungu!” never got old.

Poverty is complex. Where is the problem?  Better yet, where isn’t the problem?  Poverty isn’t perpetual because it’s simple.  It’s a government problem.  It’s a knowledge problem.  It’s an opportunity problem.  It’s a (global) community problem.  It’s a health problem. It’s a minimum wage problem.  Speaking of…

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Some of you may remember Kelsey from the “Held Hostage by Apathy” campaign promoted to raise funds for the production of our second documentary.  Based on the results from this campaign, author and world traveler Kelsey Timmerman spent one of his nights in the slums of Nairobi.  Below is a glimpse into Kelsey’s experience with the documentary team.  Kelsey offers a personal insight into the idea of faith, and the lessons learned from the beautiful people met in the slum communities.

Faith In the Poor by Kelsey Timmerman

I covet your faith. I’m not sure if that breaks any of the commandments or not. It probably breaks several. Still, I do.

My time with Life in Abudance was awesome for several reasons. One of them is that I had a chance to be around people with such strong faith.

I’m surely surrounded by others with such faith, but there is a separation of church and day-to-day life. I appreciate the separation. I don’t want others telling me what I should believe and I don’t want others telling others what they should believe. Religion and politics are in the “don’t go there” category for me. Unless I know someone is up for an honest and open discussion, I avoid them at all costs.

The last time I prayed, I think I was praying for a puppy dog. It’s been awhile.

Going into this trip with a Christian NGO, I knew that faith would be front and center. And at some point mine would be called into question. I wasn’t sure what to do. Do I stay in the closet and hope that I’m not called on to bless the food or share some spiritual insight? Or do I step off the plane, drop my bags and say, “The heathen has arrived” while making little devil horns with my fingers and flicking my tongue? Of course, I’m joking about the latter one, but honestly was I supposed to walk in and say, “I don’t have faith in Jesus like you do?” To me that’s like walking in to a room full of strangers and declaring who I voted for, or where I stand on abortion and gun rights.

Each night the group sat down and talked about the day’s events. These were deeply personal conversations. We talked about the children in the slums and when we thought of our own children it broke our hearts. Grown men were brought to tears.

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Documentary Team Leader Justin Ahrens provides 11 observations made from his time spent filming in the Kibera and Mathare Valley slums in Kenya.

*  Approx 80% of the citizens of Nairobi live in some sort of slum dwelling.

*  Everyone likes to be called by name, no matter where you live.

*  A local health worker visited a house to check in on a sick child. When entering the house she found the 6 year old making a meal for his siblings, because their mother was dead in the next room.

*  A child’s smile and joyous laugh is a beautiful thing.

*  Many African families in the slums try to have more than one child due to the likelihood of one dying.

*  Taking time to hold, hug or touch a child’s hand can change their day…and yours.

*  1 meal a day is a good day, but the meal is typically the same thing over and over and over and over…

*  A life without dreams is not a life but an existence.

*  During the rainy season people, mainly children, run the risk of being swept away due to inadequate infrastructure between the river and homes.

*  Without money for health care, parents often give their children local or herbal painkillers in order to help their child cope with the pain instead of getting adequate care. Usually the kids just get used to or live with whatever health issue they have, which in turn can be something that kills them.

*  The poor are worth our time, prayers, and resources, and we need to SEE them.

As we continue our “How Are You” series throughout the week, we will be sharing the reflections of author Kelsey Timmerman and Bob Davidson giving their observations from these communities.

If you missed the full reflection from Justin Ahrens we would encourage you to check out his blog post here, regarding his Changed Mind having spent time learning from the people in the Nairobi slums.

Graphic designer and illustrator Von Glitschka provides a great overview of life in the Nairobi slums.  As a member of our recent documentary team Von gives both factual and observational insight into his experience.

Von has set up his reflections as a visual journey seeing the conditions and meeting the people, we invite you to come along.

Slum Life by Von Glitschka

I’m struggling with knowing how to write about this experience? I want to share it with everyone, but I feel wholly inadequate to do so. I’m not even sure where to begin?

The last week and a half I spent in the Mathare Valley Slums in Nairobi, Kenya was an experience that has touched me deeply. And writing about it now brings me to tears as I think about the various interactions I had with the people there.

So I hope what I’m about to share will give you a new perspective on life in the slums.

Mathare Valley Slums Nairobi, Kenya.

The population of Nairobi, Kenya is around 3 million. And the slums which the city encircles both in the Mathare Valley and Kibera makes up 80% of that population. So the majority of the Nairobi work force comes from the slums.

I was part of a team of around 12 people filming a documentary about the work that Life in Abundance is doing in the slums in Nairobi. My roll was mostly related to grip and gaffer duties but I was able to work with the kids from the slums too which I’ll share more about later this week.

Our days shooting were spent in the heart of the slums interacting with the people and traversing their daily environment.

Descending into a labyrinth of slum corridors.

The slums are a labyrinth of interconnected corridors between the haphazard constructed homes that align them.

We spent most of our time in the Mathare Valley Slums but someone has managed to map the Kibera Slums which we shot in as well.

A river runs through the Mathare Valley slums.

A river slits the Mathare slums into two sides and crossing the water can be somewhat dangerous at times depending on the weather, bridge construction and of course motor skills. I almost fell in once while crossing.

Most of the Mathare slums are on a grade, so when it rains water can literally cascade down the valley through the poorly built slum homes and drain into the river. This of course makes life a lot harder and dangerous for it’s residents.

There are only a handful of paved roads in the slums and most areas are just hardened dirt. When it rains many areas become a muddy mess.

Daily life in the slums consists mostly around the essentials. Food, Clothing, and Shelter. The main street entering the slums is a vibrant marketplace of small shops such as Salons, Butchers, Repair Shops, Groceries, Food Markets, Cell Phone Carriers, and I even noticed a slum movie theatre playing boot legged Bollywood videos.

The slums have no formal grid of electricity, although some have managed to tap it both legally and illegally. I was told that the local power company in collaboration with the police do raids into the slums every six months arresting people for illegally tapping the power lines in the area.

The irony is the power company charges too much for most slum people to afford, so because they need electricity they steal it by hiring off hour power company employees to hook them up, but than they risk being arrested and fined more than what they can make in a year.

Politicians in Nairobi give lip service to the slums in order to get their votes, (somethings never change) but in many cases these same politicians make money from the slum lords that demand monthly rent from slum dwellers. To say the least this whole situation is a very vicious cycle.

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Justin Ahrens, Principle and Creative Director for Rule29 Creative, as well as an LIA board member, shares about his experience from his time spent in the slums working on our latest documentary project.  Read below as Justin Ahrens answers the question, How Are You?

A Changed Mind by Justin Ahrens

I’m on my way home from the slums of Nairobi, Kenya after working on our second documentary film. I’m exhausted, and my head is continually spinning. To put it simply, as with every Africa trip so far, I will not be the same.

I was hoping to post every day while there, but with limited web access and two great writers, Bob Davidson and author Kelsey Timmerman on the trip, I decided to simply photo blog (via Facebook) and spend the majority of my time trying to run the crew as best as possible and fully soak in the experience.

It’s hard to explain or express what an experience this trip to Africa has been. Filming a documentary in the slums is bound to change you, but I was not expecting this. I had been to Kibera (Africa’s 2nd largest slum) and Mathare (Nairobi’s oldest) before, but not up close and personal.

We spent seven straight days trying to get to know the slum residents, seeing what they see, walking, touching and smelling their environment. The location was different than our last documentary project (This is My Home), but sadly many of the same issues exist, all of which are simply not right. Dangerous living structures, no roads, unhealthy water, no sanitation, no waste removal, lack of education, no health care, crime, fear, HIV/AIDS, loss of hope, and the vulnerability of children to simply name a few. It was a rare day when you didn’t turn your face to cry for a few minutes.

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In the states, it is extremely common for a person to ask another, ‘how are you?’ We do this as greeting.

I’ll walk into a 7-11, look the cashier in the eye, and say ‘Hi, Ruthie, how are you?’ I really ask the question to be polite and she answers with an ‘I’m fine’ to be equally polite. The truth is that we don’t really know each other well enough to ask the question, or to respond, honestly. After this brief exchange of niceties, we’ll go about our business and part ways – either of us not any different because of the interaction. It’s fine. I’m fine. She’s fine. We’re all just fine, thank you very much.

Somehow, this shallow politeness has manifested itself among children in the Nairobi slums. When a white person walks through, or even drives through the slums, children sitting and playing along the roadside will stop what they are doing, look you in the eyes and yell, ‘HOW ARE YOU!?’

Taken back, most of us would simply reply, ‘I’m fine, how are you?’ Most of these kids haven’t been fully versed in the response, so most simply just keep repeating ‘HOW ARE YOU’ until it almost becomes a chant. But some, who have obviously interacted with outsiders before, will reply, ‘I’m fine.’

I’m fine.

If you spend enough time in these communities, the words will ring in your head. I would liken the sensation to lying in bed the night after being on a cruise ship. In the same way your body sways though your bed is still, my head rings with ‘How are you – I’m fine’ as if I’m standing next to these children, though they are nowhere to be found.

Sure, after watching these children living in the slums play together and run wild with joyful exuberance through the contaminated waste water, one could easily conclude that these children are, in fact, ‘fine-er’ than children in the USA who sit around, get fat, whine and watch tv. I’ll give you that one, but I’d argue that these American kids aren’t fine, either. We’re not fine, none of us. I’m not fine, and neither are these children. Ruthie at the 7-11 isn’t fine either. This is easier to articulate in the slums than it is in suburbs, but ultimately, we aren’t fine as a condition of the brokenness of this world.

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There are very few books that I re-read, recommend to others, and even quote from, but Dispossessed: Life in Our World’s Urban Slums by Mark Kramer is such a book and I would strongly encourage you to pick up your very own copy today.

Mark Kramer is an author, free-lance writer, and professor who specializes in the art of ‘creative non-fiction’ writing. In Dispossessed, Mark tackles the reality of slums all over our world (Manila, Mexico City, Nairobi, Bangkok, and Cairo) in a thoughtful, transparent, and dignifying way.

You may not have realized it, but rural to urban migration is happening at a staggering rate. More than half of the world’s population lives in an urban context, and just fewer than half of these ‘urbanites’ live in slums. In fact, I write to you from Nairobi, Kenya where 75% of the population lives in slum context.

As often happens with statistics, however, we tend to lose the humanity and reality of the daily struggle that faces those living in the slum environment. In Dispossessed, Mr. Kramer is intentional about ‘re-humanizing’ the slum context in a way that both inspires hope and breaks your heart. He does so using a first-hand person narrative that makes you feel as though you are walking the streets of the slums with him.

With our second documentary film project at hand, I’ve been trying to glean as much information about the history and context of the Nairobi slums as I could get my hands on. Chapter Three of Dispossessed (Nairobi – Colonial City, Then and Now) has been particularly helpful in bringing to light the historical elements that established and have served as the foundation for the slums as we know them today. After reading this book, and spending a fair amount of time listening to the life stories of those who live in the slums, one will quickly realize that the ‘challenge of the slums’ is much more complex than what meets the eye. But, the author doesn’t leave the reader hopeless or guilt-ridden by the prose. He continually points to local churches/leaders who are bright rays of light in these extremely dark places.

In the spirit of full-disclosure, Mark is a friend of LIA and donates the royalties from Dispossessed to the ministry of LIA. With that said, I hope that you’ll take the next step, pick up Dispossessed, and better understand the reality facing those living in our world’s slums. Perhaps, by better understanding the slum reality, we may better carry the burden of those living in such places.

“Carry each other’s burdens, and in this way you fulfill the law of Christ.” (Galatians 6:2 NIV)

Today marks the start of filming for our second documentary.  Over the past few months we have shared about our vision for the film, while asking you to partner with us through the production process.

We have told you that we want to use this film to tell the story of survival in the Nairobi slums, raise awareness for her people, and raise the money to facilitate transformation in these slums.  We have told you that our first documentary helped us raise over $300,000 allowing us to fund not only the featured street children project in Merkato, Ethiopia, but also add a second community partnership.  We have shared with you our excitement for this opportunity and the financial need to make it happen.

Today however, I want to be truthful and share with you what this film means to me.  I want to share with you how I have been challenged in preparing for this film, reflecting on the current state of the slums that I have more recently been spending much time in.

To be honest, it is easy to say that the poor will always be poor and there is nothing that can be done about it. This is especially true if you see the tremendous needs that are present in Africa in light of and the tremendous amount of resources that have been poured into the continent over the last twenty years. At the very same time, this disposition also comforts those of us who are looking for a self-justifying way of not being involved with the plight of the poor, though few of us would probably admit to it.

Even me, as I walk the streets of Nairobi with my wife and children over the past few days, my gut reaction is indifference and apathy rather than compassion and grace. Naturally, I want to walk as fast as I can through these ‘uncomfortable’ alleyways with the implied purpose of ‘getting my family out of there as fast as possible’. ‘These streets are dangerous,’ I further reason, ‘these cars could easily hit and kill my toddlers’, or ‘these men could easily abduct my wife and do who knows what to her’ are the thoughts raging through my head. My body sweats, my heart pounds, my alertness seemingly suffocates any form of rationalization. This still happens to me and I have been working among the world’s poor for the past five years!
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