Amani ya Juu - Nairobi, Kenya – 27 January 2010

They served lunch at Amani today. Women arrived in higher numbers than usual, because it was the end of the two-week pay period and time to close the books. Lunch provides a chance to share a meal with friends, especially since not every woman comes each day, choosing instead to stitch at home and save the bus fare.

We sat in the shade and ate our maharague and mchele (pinto beans and rice) off of big aluminum plates with fat spoons. Next to me, a cluster of women who had come with their babies alternated bites for themselves and their children. To the other side, one woman loudly acclaimed that the kitenge wrap her friend was wearing was “smart.” Everyone finished off her meal with a hot cup of chai.

Both before and after lunch, the hum of sewing machines in the stitching room was a bit louder than other days. This bright room on the top floor of the Pamoja House, the main building standing tall behind the Amani café and shop, contains rows of all types of sewing machines. Many were occupied today by women with stacks of products to submit for payment. I sat with Margaret for a while as she changed the trim on her coin purses. She had used the wrong fabric, so Quality Control had returned them to her. We chatted about her children, the tailoring work she did before Amani, and the joy of working hard.

Mom was put to work straight away Monday morning making sample pillows out of scraps. (Finding useful occupations for the loads of scraps that are taking over the Amani center is a common goal these days.) She finished her first one today and made progress on the second. Her eagerness to get to the stitching room and work on her project is evidence of how much she’s missed stitching in recent months. Plus, it affords her the opportunity to chat with old and new friends while she works alongside them.

We’ve both been able to step into the “other side” of our work in very helpful ways this week. Mom spent time in Export getting a better sense of what it entails for that office to ship boxes to the US. Experiencing the process herself gave her a deeper understanding of the system she’s relying on as she schedules volunteer boxes from month to month.

I’ve gotten to sit in on some helpful meetings and talk at length with the administration here in Nairobi. Saturday’s Kenya Board meeting gave me a profound appreciation for the care that the Board puts into guiding Amani. I appreciated the opportunity to listen to their discussion of where Amani Kenya is headed in the coming year and present a report on Amani US. Also, I was invited to attend the monthly Administration Meeting today, which brings together the department leaders to update and think through current situations. In a way, that meeting is the counterpart to the many meetings we have informally in DC.

Sitting with Amani’s Kenya Country Director for a few hours on Monday morning, a sense of refreshment washed over me: we are not alone. There is a community of women here in Kenya searching for the same balance of ministry and business, battling endless system breakdowns, and imagining peace among brokenness.

Some pressing communications projects have needed more time than we’d like to give them, and each day we find ever present that old truth of working for Amani: there’s always so much more to do than we can feasible undertake. So we continue trying to strike the balance between being diligent and savoring the moments. These days are precious. We marvel together at the growth we see in our sisters since we last saw them and wonder how they find us changed.