Without Hope we have nothing

     I find it hard to believe that I am nearing the end of my first full week in Kenya and am at the end of my second day at Our Lady of Grace school. Our hike up Mt. Kenya was one of the most challenging and humbling experiences of my life. We lost ourselves in the beautiful and harsh landscape of the mountain. The human will is a powerful force. I really do not know how I was able to push myself to the summit, 14,900 feet, to see the sun rise. I looked down on the sun for the first time that morning as it crested the hills in the morning haze. Its blood red and vibrant orange dye slowly seeping into the slate blue dawn skye. I cannot express how overwhelmed I was by my insignificance. There I stood, after a four day hike through the rain forest, hilly shrub land and rocky valley ridges dotted by odd looking stumpy trees, an accomplishment that, I thought would make me feel larger than life, left me crouching on a rock, my heart pounding in my ears, thinking, "Dear God I am so small."Although I am proud that I made it to the summit, I will never forget how the mountain's enormity swallowed me, how her wind and rain drove through my skin, how her bitter cold cut me to the bone, her seemingly impossible incline stopped me in my tracks, heart pounding in my ears and mussels shaking. She beat me. And, how only God knows, she still brought me to her summit and showed me the world.
      A long drive and a short flight later I landed in Kisumu Kenya, my home for the next five weeks. While I am here I will be working at Our Lady of Grace school. The school began in the aftermath of the  2007-2008 post election violence that tore apart the country. The Dominicans, and those running Father Tom's Kids, a sponsorship program for poverty stricken students to attend school, decided that they could no longer safely send students out all around the country, or even in the local area to different schools. It has come a long way since its first days when the students received their first lessons under the trees on the Dominican compound. OLG, founded in 2008, now has an upper and lower school. The school, still in the early fazes of development, faces underfunding, understaffing, a lack of quality facilities for the students and little to no frame work from which to plan for the future. The school now has 200 some odd students who come from varying degrees of broken homes, beyond our own comprehension. Almost all of the students at Our Lady of Grace school come from traumatizing backgrounds, which sometimes manifest themselves in dishonest and sometimes criminal behavior. The staff at OLG has taken on the task of inculcating a character of discipline, independence, responsibility and hard work in the students.
    Although the students come from a culture shattered and scattered by years of oppression and crippling poverty, I see in them a desire to better themselves and their country. A lot of them are stuck in a cycle of dependence, lack of self worth and a twisted sense of how to get the things they need.  Many rely on their ability to beg and swindle to get what they want. Despite the harsh reality of the environment in which they live, I cannot help but see goodness, joy and above all hope in their eyes. In my first two days here I have grown to love and cherish hope. With a situation like the one OLG faces, if  we do not have hope we have nothing. I cannot stress enough the beauty, resilience and faith of these people. "There is hope" they always say, "We must have hope."  Hope drives the staff and volunteers in all they do. Through hope, I have begun, barely begun to see beyond the anger that foams at the surface of many students and see their hopes and dreams for a better future. The motto of the school, "Sow a character reap a future"cannot be more appropriate for the task at hand and what OLG seeks to accomplish. We have an empty field that needs some weeding, a firm but gentile hand to sow and tend to the crop which, by the Grace of God, will flourish and bare fruit. The people of Kenya face a chaotic barrage from internal and external forces trying to rip her to pieces. But her people, especially those at Our Lady of Grace, will fight for the beautiful Kenya they love and, if we have hope, can see in the eyes of her young men and women.