After a wonderful Christmas with my Kenyan family, Stanley and Sylvia Mutangili the journey out of Nairobi began…on the wild and often terrible Kenyan highway system. Christmas was celebrated sans Christmas trees or holiday lights, snow or my own family from Lincoln, Nebraska. Love you.
I have spent only two Christmas’ away from the comfort and care of my own family, and both were in the home of Stanley and Sylvia. Their comfort and friendship has radically changed my life. A unique relationship in the making which the Lord has been sewing together for the better part of four years now.
No place I would rather spend the day of our Savior’s birth.
Early on the morning of the 26th the three of us awoke and packed the little white car. We left and drove two hours to the nearby, and large, city of Nakuru, Kenya. Upon arriving we met up with my South Sudan team leaders, Phil and Linda Byler, and their son and daughter-in-law. We hugged goodbyes and the five of us began the long journey north into the desolate area of North Kenya. As we drove it became apparent that we would not have the time ( daylight hours ) necessary to reach our original night time destination.
As we all felt fatigued and the land rover’s headlights were failing anyway, we decided to stop in a remote area of Northern Kenya called Marich’s Pass. We turned right, from one dusty road onto another dusty road, and headed into an unknown stop. The Bylers were familiar with the story behind Marich Pass.
I was not.
A British man started a training center and school for the local Kenyan tribal group called the Pokot. Over the seventeen years this facility grew into a large, but hidden, campus with many nice facilities for overnight stays and small guest houses and rooms and a kitchen. Nestled into the Kenyan woods was a story book looking village that overlooked a dried out river bed river. We stopped and met the woman who operates the facility. Hidot was an Eritrean woman who had married the man who founded Marich Pass. And she had recently become a widow. Her husband who’s vision grew this sweet paradise, had been killed earlier in the year after being struck by a Kenyan passenger vehicle called a Matatu. His loss meant that her family, from all over the world, had gathered at Marich Pass to comfort their mother and help her mourn during the Christmas season.
We met Hidot and talked. She was still very hurt from the loss of her husband and wept openly over his loss as we spoke. Hidot would be the age of my mother, and my heart hurt for her. Had this been my mother… can’t imagine.
Thankfully, her family and extended relatives had arrived from all over the globe to be apart of this Christmas time. It was this group of family and individuals which really made the experience at Marich Pass stand out.
Hidot’s family, and friends of the family, had ties to the following nations and American states: Eritrea, Uganda, Miami, Nebraska, London, England, Switzerland, Juba, Sudan and of course us; We had Pennsylvania, Massachusetts and Nebraska covered. Never before have I had a dinner with such an eclectic group of individuals. There were the young Eritrean men who operated a night club in Kampala, Uganda, the British journalism student Lee from London and his girlfriend Ruth from Eritrea. There was Dempsey and his wife, now living in Miami but with a long history of extended relatives who lived and operated a bank franchise in Lincoln, Nebraska. Small world huh? Hidot’s son, Paul, was an Eritrean national but moved to Marich Pass, Kenya from Zurich, Switzerland to help start a non government foundation. There was Robin, an elderly British national who has lived in Africa since 1947! All of these people were having an evening dinner of spaghetti and salad and became friends for an evening….very interesting conversations.
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