Instant Refugee Camp

Many of you have traveled with me through the years up to the Kakuma refugee camp in northwest Kenya where 100,000 Sudanese and Somali citizens are living in limbo. Picture Kakuma in Kitale. There are at least 50,000 displaced people at two sites...Cherengany hills about 20 minutes out of Kitale and Endebess. Over the last two days James, Juma, Jeffrey and I have given out wool blankets to thousands of folks stuck in these encampments. No where to go, no homes to return to and most people are separated from their family and friends. During the day they roam through the encampments looking for relatives or any familiar faces. At night, they huddle under tarps provided by the Red Cross and lay in the dirt and mud waiting for the light and the warmth of the next day. When I call this place "camp," don't get me wrong...this is NOT Hume Lake or Forest Home. This is a "Grapes of Wrath" type scene with people just trying to get by the best they can until things stabilize here. I met with the pastor who is in charge of the spiritual life of the 20,000+ people at this Cherengany camp. As you can guess, he's a bit overwhelmed by the task of caring for all of these people with virtually no resources. The people are not starving, but have to wait 4 hours for water and it's nasty water at that. They get a little bit of maize flour to make up some ugali and some beans and that's it. No one is starving but no one is well-fed either...it's survival mode. It's impossible to send the photos because they take an hour to upload, but I'll bring home photos of the camp life.
But here's the basics:

• People sleeping in the dirt.


• Four+ families to a tiny tent.


• At least 6,000 children separated from their parents. Tiny kids wandering through the camp crying out for their mommy and daddy. Their parents just ran to spare their own lives but left their kids behind.

I wish Dean was here with me today to help organize a soccer game in the field next to the camp. 6,000 kids...3,000 on each team. There's a sight for you...just choosing teams is a day long event. Tonight I've been invited to preach a message around a bonfire we're going to build...a message of reconciliation and hope. So, please pray for me...I'm digging deep.

Psalm 27:1 "The LORD is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear? The LORD is the strength of my life; of whom shall I be afraid?"

Eldoret to Kitale

Through the years at Saddleback I've had the opportunity to see people in circumstances of distress. Beslan, Russia, Phnom Penh, Cambodia, Oaxaca, Mexico, New Orleans during Katrina, but I've never seen such heartbreaking circumstances as what I've seen in the last 2 days. I was able to catch a flight from Nairobi...that's the good news. The only place I could fly to was Eldoret...that's the bad news. Stonic and Allan drove Stonic's Landcruiser through the night. The route he took I'll never really understand, but he was stopped at least 50 times by gangs looking for fleeing Kikuyu. Stonic met me at 10a.m. on Saturday morning at the Eldoret airstrip and we proceeded northwest toward Kitale. All along the journey there were Kikuyu shops and kiosks that had been completely destroyed or burned to the ground. The sheet metal roofs, the steel doors and windows just ripped out and nothing left but ruble. We saw maybe 200 of these businesses. At one point, we were stopped by a group of men who wanted to know what I was doing and I asked where the Assemblies of God church that was burned was located. The leader of the gang asked, "Do you want to go there?" And Stonic and I both said at the same time, "Why not?" So, this gang leader got in our van and escorted us backwoods to the church that had become the symbolic "ground zero" for these tribal clashes. It is disputed in the press, and even among tribal elders, just how many people died. But, the number really is not important. Two tribal elders escorted me to the site and the 1st thing that caught my eye was the burned-out wheelchair of a grandmother who was trapped inside the church by the murderous gang outside. What happened that day was a disgusting standoff between an angry mob bent on revenge over the election results and fear-filled villagers inside the church unwilling to come out and face the mob that had now grown to over 1,000 people. Whether they chose to face death by flame as some say, or they were forced by the rioters to stay in the church may never be resolved. But, between 35-50 people died that day in Eldoret. We also went by a Baptist church about 500 yards away that had been torn from its foundation and burned. The village elders took us to 5 homes that were also looted, destroyed and burned. I did get some photos that I will share with you when I get home. The village was completely eerie in that everything was abandoned. No children, no possessions, no cattle, nothing. Everyone has fled to a refugee camp to avoid episodes like what happened here. I wish I had something perfect to say here, but honestly, I'm just tired and aghast and trying to filter through exactly what I've seen today. There is no way in a million years I would have made it to Kitale without Stonic and Allan. STONIC IS THE MAN! We've always known that but today we saw it. He just faces down people and plays his Maasai card very well.