I lost my father at a young age and
was soon abandoned by my mother as
well. So at the age of 11, I lived
with my 13-year-old brother and
5-year-old sister. We found ways to
survive, selling plastic bags of
water to earn money for food. But we
regularly dropped out of school.
My life changed when a pair of
pastors—one Kenyan, one
American—started a children's home.
When I was able to live there, I
knew my life had changed forever.
One day, after a few years of living
there, I met two young American
women who were traveling through the
area. They had blonde hair that hung
in their eyes, and they talked to me
in a grown-up way I'd rarely been
talked to before.
They lived at my orphanage for a
year, starting a non-profit called
Hope Runs, and ultimately bringing
me to the United States. The book
Hope Runs: An American Tourist, a
Kenyan Boy, a Journey of Redemption
tells the story of the strange,
makeshift family we have formed.
At first, though, I was wary of
them, and so were my friends. Living
in an orphanage, I'd had many
experiences with missionaries who
came to help over the years. Some
had done just that, ultimately
changing my life and the lives of my
peers. Some had only added to our
hardship (more on that later). White
people—mzungus, as we call
them in Kenya—had not always been
the best visitors. What would it be
like to have this pair of girls
around for so long? With time,
though, I grew to know, trust, and
love them.
Over time, I understood in a way
that many of my friends did not,
that mzungus couldn't drop
their lives in the U.S. to live with
my friends and me in our orphanage.
I saw, eventually, that sometimes
good things could happen in those
few days when missionaries were
there.
"Focus less on
"helping," and more on
cross-cultural exchange"
Years
later, I would gain a much more
comprehensive perspective. When I
came to start high school in the
U.S., I felt that my American peers
saw me like the missionaries
did—like a needy orphan. With time,
though, I learned to walk and talk
and think like my new high school
friends around me. Most important, I
learned what it meant to be able to
extend resources to others.
In my senior year of high school, I
ran a campaign that made the local
news, collecting thousands of pairs
of running shoes for my peers in
orphanages back home. The year after
high school, I took this concept of
service a step further and spent a
year volunteering on a service
project in Ecuador. For the first
time, I saw what it was like to walk
into a community and be the one
offering the help.
Although these experiences have
given me a more complete perspective
on missionary work than I ever had
growing up in my orphanage, many of
the thoughts and feelings I had as a
child about the strange white people
that came to visit still ring true.
Here are five things I have learned
about being a good missionary from
being on the other side, the side of
the beneficiary, the one being
helped.
1. Rethink the goals of your
short-term mission trip.
In the orphanage, I saw many
short-term missionaries come and go.
Again and again I was amazed by how
many of them were completely focused
on "getting things done" during
their time with us. Whether it was
building a chicken coop, painting
the dorm rooms, or fixing a
borehole, many missions teams spent
the few days they were with us
doing, doing, doing. And most of the
time, the doing was manual labor or
unspecialized work.
I was thrilled they wanted to help
us, but I always wondered about the
particular activities they chose. In
Kenya, for example, we have rampant
unemployment, and there is literally
an endless supply of Kenyans who
would do such menial labor for very
little money. If a missionary is
going to spend so much money to fly
and visit us, shouldn't they be
doing work that only they can do?
Again and again, I found that the
missionaries I most connected with
were those who realized this fact.
They saw that the thousands of
dollars they had spent to come visit
us could be best used in building
relationships, both with the
students in our orphanage and with
the elders as well, not in painting,
building, or manual labor that
Kenyans could do.
It was in these relationships—when
I learned about the wider world, got
to practice my English, and built
some key connections that would last
a lifetime—that I saw the real
benefit to having short-term
missionaries come to the orphanage.
If there is one thing I could tell
short-term missionaries, it would be
this: focus less on "helping," and
more on cross-cultural exchange, and
becoming friends.
2. Don't try to get too close too
fast.
I'm still a teenager, so I can't
speak with the authority of a
psychologist on this, but from what
I have read about orphaned and
vulnerable children who grow up in
situations similar to mine, I know
that there are problems with
attachment that come when you're
raised like I was.
"Try to remember that the
trip isn't over when you
get back home"
Although I loved seeing missionaries
get close quickly with many of the
kids at the orphanage, I sometimes
worried about the younger, more
emotionally vulnerable children.
There were many young girls and boys
at my home who would latch on
quickly to a missionary who was only
there for a few days—holding her
hand and not letting her out of
their sight for 72 hours. And then
they'd be devastated when she
inevitably left.
I want short-term missionaries to
show love and care, but it's
important to be aware of this
difficult reality and to proceed
carefully, knowing that you—the
missionary—are the adult in the
situation. Kids are particularly
vulnerable to short-term visitors,
and they often don't understand the
reality of your life back at home
and why you really have to leave
after a few days. It may not be fair
to you that a kid is disappointed
when you only stay a week (which is
a long time off work for you!), but
as I saw again and again, many of my
peers just didn't understand the
concept of traveling so far for such
a short time. These visits can be
good, but proceed with caution.
3. Learn what the partner needs.
One
day I was coming back from running
practice, and the bell in the dining
hall rang, meaning that all 170
children at my orphanage were
supposed to gather together into the
central courtyard. When we did, we
came face-to-face with 20 smiling
mzungus.
"We couldn't stop
laughing. Another white
person who thinks we
don't know how to brush
our teeth!"
After one of our elders introduced
the group, she said that the
mzungus had a presentation for
us. A middle-aged American woman
with a bottle of hand sanitizer
strapped to her waist gave a
15-minute talk about how to brush
your teeth. Then she passed out
toothbrushes.
As we filed into the dining hall
afterwards, we couldn't stop
laughing. "Another mzungu who
thinks we don't know how to brush
our teeth!" We added the new
toothbrushes to our stockpile. We
had dozens, of course, from all the
other white people who had come
through that year apparently
concerned primarily about our teeth.
The lesson here is that
understanding what a partner needs
is essential if you're trying to
offer valuable support. In this
case, the group was at our orphanage
for only a few hours, and they
assumed that in that short time it
made the most sense to focus on
tooth brushing. They were wrong.
Ask, ask, and ask again.
4. Don't forget the money.
People don't like to talk about
money, but when it comes to
orphanages that constantly struggle
financially, we have to. Of the many
problems related to short-term
missions that I saw play out again
and again, problems with money and a
lack thereof topped the list. Here's
a classic example:
After months of coordination
between the orphanage and a U.S.
church, a group of 10 comes from the
U.S. and stays for four nights in
some extra dormitory rooms. The
orphanage van (the only vehicle)
goes on an 8-hour round-trip journey
to pick them up at the airport, and
another 8-hour trip to drop them off
at the end of their stay.
They bring with them a dozen bags
of donated clothes and books. During
their time at the orphanage, they
are served special meals with things
we kids don't get to eat—meat, fresh
vegetables, milk, and sugary treats.
During their stay, the three
full-time staff at the orphanage are
on-call the entire time, helping
with the constant questions and
issues that always come up when
people travel to an unknown (and, to
them, primitive) place. The
orphanage takes the group on
frequent rides to local shopping
centers, tourist places, hospitals,
and the like every day. When the
group departs, they may leave a
donation of $2,000.
From the church's perspective, they
have fundraised incredibly hard and
already spent more than $30,000 to
bring a group of 10 to Kenya. For
them it seems reasonable to make a
donation of $2,000. The orphanage,
in contrast, feels exhausted, used,
and frustrated. That $2,000, even in
Kenya, is not a lot of money to pay
for all of the orphanage's expenses
and staff time. Three years later,
the orphanage hears from the group
again, saying they had such a great
time, they want to make another
trip.
There are variations on this story.
Sometimes the group leaves no money
at all. Sometimes the orphanage
never hears from the group again.
Sometimes the group promises a large
donation or offering upon returning
home and showing their photos and
videos to the congregation, but it
never materializes. And sometimes,
of course, a church becomes a
long-term partner. But long-term
partnerships are the exception.
Year after year, the cycle
continues. The orphanage accepts
short-term missionaries because it
is always hoping for that long-term
partner who can really help. In the
interim, though, they are using up
resources that should be going to
the children on an endless stream of
visitors.
If you're a church considering a
short-term missions trip, please
think about the implications of the
time and resources the orphanage
will spend on you.
5. Follow up, follow up, follow up.
What a missionary does once he or
she goes home is often far more
important than what happens at the
site. Following up is everything.
When I talk about some of the great
relationships I built with
short-term missionaries over the
years, I know that the only reason
those relationships worked was
because the missionary followed up.
As an orphan, I didn't have money
for a stamp to send a letter (and
Internet access, both then and now,
is unusual in many children's homes
in Kenya). But if a person I met
wrote me, we could develop a
friendship. Some of my greatest
mentors and friends to this day are
people who first came for just a few
short days to my orphanage. On the
larger scale, follow up is the only
way that the orphanage and the
church can truly build a mutually
beneficial long-term partnership.
Ultimately, try to remember that
the trip isn't over when you get
back home.
In the years since I left the
orphanage and began to have
experiences of my own helping
others, I've learned a lot about
what it means to extend help and how
difficult it can be. Aside from my
year spent on a service project in
Ecuador, I've also now taken part in
several short-term volunteer
experiences with international
missionaries visiting orphanages and
nonprofits in Kenya. In all of these
experiences, I've served as a
bridge, the rare person who knows
both sides, and who tries to provide
advice on how each side can better
understand the other. I'm glad that
the missions field has changed to
emphasize understanding
on-the-ground partners, but there is
still much more work to do.
I
believe the core of the issue has to
do with better communication between
missions groups and partner sites,
in hopes that we can bridge the
vastly different cultural and
financial expectations and
assumptions that each group has.
By
working closer, we can help one
another.
Claire
Diaz-Ortiz is Twitter's manager
for social innovation and
coauthor of
Hope Runs: An American Tourist,
a Kenyan Boy, a Journey of
Redemption
(Revell, 2014). Claire is the
cofounder of Hope Runs, a
nonprofit organization operating
in AIDS orphanages in Kenya.
Samuel Ikua
Gachagua was born in rural Kenya
in 1992. After losing his
parents at a young age, he
struggled to survive until he
was placed in an orphanage in
Nyeri, Kenya. In 2009, he
received a full-ride scholarship
to Maine Central Institute,
granting him a rare U.S. visa
and the chance to begin his
sophomore year of high school
under the guardianship of Claire
Diaz-Ortiz. After graduating
from high school, he spent a
year serving in Ecuador as a
fellow for Global Citizen Year.
He is an up-and-coming
motivational speaker.