Finding True North #35: The Kenya Interns

What some of my gentle readers may not know is that I am actually one of four Duke interns connected to North UMC this summer. You haven't heard much about the other three because, well, they were in Kenya for 7 weeks.

I did blog about the Global Interfaith Partnership, the organization that attempts to collaborate with various faith communities here in Indiana as well as with churches, schools and communities in Kenya. It is through that group that several Duke students travel to Kenya each year to work with the Umoja Project. This summer, Lindsey, Lydia and Camille focused specifically on the issue of the girl-child, gathering information and building relationships around women's empowerment as they visited churches, schools and more.

The Kenya interns came back to Indianapolis about a week and a half ago, and ever since then (and even before) I have constantly been asked about what they did in Kenya. But honestly, even though I've spent my share of time working in the conference room with them since their return, I didn't really know. I sporadically had kept up with their blog, but I didn't really know specifics.

However, last night the trio gave a presentation on their pilgrimage, and it gave some profound insight into their experiences. Each of the interns focused on a concept that had emerged as central to them individually over the course of the summer—for Camille, it was openness; for Lindsey, it was presence and trust; and for Lydia, it was empowerment. They showed pictures of the people they had met and the places they had visited, shared about what the Umoja Project is doing in communities and how it can better partner with people in the spirit of its name (which is Swahili for "unity"), and at times made themselves vulnerable to us as they described challenges they faced while in Kenya.

Perhaps most interesting to me personally was Lindsey's reflection on race. Lindsey was the only white intern, so she had some experiences that Lydia and Camille did not. Having struggled myself as I've considered international missions, it was helpful to me to hear Lindsey reflect on the ways in which she sometimes encountered different treatment because of her skin tone, from innocent things like children wanting to rub her arms to more intense experiences like someone suggesting that perhaps Jesus was a "mazungu" (white person or foreigner) because Jesus loved the children as Lindsey did.

It seemed to me that although the Kenya interns left a lot of their own questions unanswered, that was precisely how it should be. They closed essentially with an invitation into umoja—unity—not only in this particular project but in our lives as a whole. Although I am more than happy to have been "the intern who stayed," I have benefited from the connection with the Umoja Project through the other interns and will continue to do so as I return to school with these three incredible women.