As this trip draws to a close, I offer some reflections from 30,000 feet:
One of the important developments in missions work over the past 20-30 years has been a shift in focus and strategy. The older model largely consisted of white foreigners descending upon an impoverished third-world country and dispensing aid of some sort to the needy and incapable locals (at least, that's how the mission workers saw them). The newer, much-improved emphasis is on coming alongside denizens of a region and empowering them to be change agents. The mission workers are striving, whenever possible, to step out of the spotlight and to avoid doing the heavy lifting themselves, instead offering whatever resources they have to facilitate strong, capable, vigorous local leadership. We Western (and usually white) visitors ought to be leery of our own tendency to indulge in the heady jolt of pride at having the deprived masses sing our praises and tell us what awesome saviors we are.
I'm really grateful for this change in focus; it's a critically important one. So, the question is, how did our team do?
From my limited perspective, I feel pretty good about our team's accomplishments, though I can't help but see some lingering presence of the old ways. Our medical team brought a tremendous amount of direct relief to communities who lack regular quality healthcare. On the one hand, much of the relief was temporary: de-worming medicine and antibiotics will last only a few months at best. On the other hand, I'm excited by the ways in which lasting impact occurred. First, at every step, we were joined by members of Mavuno church. They came in large numbers to the remote camps. Mavuno is like the Chapel Hill Bible Church in that many of its members have advanced degrees and training and are therefore in a position to offer much to impact the local slums and impoverished surrounding communities. What's most important is that they are Africans and are thus promoting the idea of Africans being the primary change agents in solving Africa's problems. Furthermore, they don't have to travel 9,000 miles at great expense to offer aid. Sustainable relationships can easily grow.
How could this observation affect our own commitment to local mission work? There is need both across the globe and at our own doorstep. The value of seeing firsthand how effective the folks at Beacon are using fewer resources than we would expect cannot be overstated. We should not simply save up this good mojo for use again in a year when the next Kenya team is preparing to go. Just like Beacon clinic director Mike Oloo does after every remote medical camp, we need to actively seek a sustainable project or goal informed by what we have learned here.
Our support of Beacon of Hope is another highly sustainable model. Beacon is in the drivers seat; we are coming alongside an already highly capable institute of excellence. We do have a lot to offer, though. Our health care providers have been blessed to come from an area that provides some of the best medical training in the world, and they spent much of their time teaching and training the medical staff, who gulped down the material with eagerness and zeal. Beacon plans to found a nursing school on site soon, and the possibility of our playing a significant role is a dizzying one and would fit right in with the new model.
I'll offer a couple of quick personal thoughts about our work with the school. We left Beacon Academy with a lot of long-term assistance. Laura McPherson, our team leader and a special education teacher, brought with the team a lot of material to help the academy develop concrete ways to tailor their instruction to meet the wildly varied needs of their students. As we read with different kids over the weeks, we saw first-hand how "all-over-the-place" their skills were. A number of our team members also signed up to sponsor specific kids at the Academy, and we were also able to visit and get to know kids who are already sponsored by Bible Church families. That, in my estimation, is a lot of good fruit.
My personal experience at the Academy was mixed. I can hardly express the joy I found in getting to know the kids - Sharon, Elijah, Michelle, and Safari, to name a few. Likewise, they were overjoyed to have us and treated us like celebrities for the week. It's the celebrity treatment that made me feel a little weird. How much of a bad dynamic is that? Why all the adoration? Is it just because visitors came who delighted in these kids and whose sole mission was to hang out with them? Or are there still remnants of the old "white savior" dynamic that linger? Are we promoting that pattern by showing up, or am I reading too much into what should just be savored as a beautifully warm interaction with people from across the world?
These questions genuinely vex me, and I honestly don't have any clear answers yet. I do sense that a critically vital component of particularly successful mission trips is humility and a commitment to observing and listening. That's how Beacon of Hope started; Jane Wathome, answering the clear call from Jesus to care for the poor and underprivileged, went to them and listened, and then listened some more. The resulting ministry was a response to what she heard. What a powerful example for us all.
