Light in the Darkness

This past week we spent working and serving in an IDP (internally displaced persons) camp about 30 minutes from Kijabe. We partnered with a team of doctors and nurses (both African and American) to see and diagnose patients, provide emotional and spiritual counseling, and distribute a variety of medicines. I know what you're probably thinking right now...I am not the least bit trained as a physician, a psychiatrist, or a pharmacist. True. But this past week was excellent proof that with God on our side and by our side, anything is possible! With our combined teams of nearly 40 people, we were able to provide medical services and medicines to over 1,000 people in just 4 days. Praise God!! I spent most of my time in the "pharmaceuticals department" (others from our team did counseling and triage.) The first day we scrambled to understand the different medications, decipher the physicians' abbreviations on the prescription sheets, and figure out how to effectively communicate to each patient the proper way to administer each drug. Luckily, we had an actual pharmacist named Ebo (a jolly, energetic man from Ghana) helping us, and by around day 3, not only were we filling prescriptions practically with our eyes closed, but we were explaining to the patients IN Swahili how to take each medicine. Two days of "medical school" and you're a trained professional - now thats what I call cost and time efficient! (And in the U.S., what you call malpractice...) Anyways, overall working in our little tent pharmacy was a fun and incredibly rewarding experience.

...It was also, though, one of the most sobering and emotionally draining experiences I've had in my life. The IDP camps consist of rows and rows of UN refugee tents and tarps and small concrete cubes that serve as houses for thousands of people who were violently driven out of their homes and off of their land due to tribal conflict resulting from corruption beginning during the 2007 Kenya election and continuing through today. Poverty and desperation hit me like a ton of bricks. The physical pain and problems that troubled each person all of a sudden seemed minor and easily curable after I talked to a 30-year-old man named John who had been separated from his wife and two young children for over a year due to the fact that he and his wife are from feuding tribes. I was feeling pleased and content when providing pain killers to a young mother until she told me her story of how her husband had abandoned her and their four children in the IDP camp and she was left alone to provide and care for all of them...some way and somehow. My heart hurt and my soul cried out over and over as I saw the desperation in many of their faces or the disheartened posture of their bodies as they walked away from our tents holding nothing more than temporary drugs and pain relievers. And while I praise God for what He did these past 4 days in providing for these people and giving us the opportunity to serve in this way, my heart still feels heavy and burdened by the injustice and hopelessness plaguing these people.

(photo credit: Casey Edwards)

While I'm writing this out and feeling this weight, I'm reminded of the lyrics of "My Glorious" - God is bigger than the air we breathe, the world we'll leave / And God will save the day, and all will say "My Glorious, my Glorious"! The light in the midst of all this darkness IS the Lord. He is bigger than our pain, bigger than our problems, bigger than the very air we breathe and the world we live in. He is big enough to comfort us, to provide for us, to carry all our burdens. In Him we find a hope that no one and nothing else can give us. And in that hope I will continue to rest, and will continue to show and exemplify as best I can to these amazing, beautiful Kenyan brothers and sisters I encounter.

The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it. - John 1:5