Just the Beginning

Well hello everyone! Welcome to my little blog about my mission trip to Africa. This will be a place where anyone can come and sort of keep tabs on the trip from America. My hope is to update this page roughly once a week. I can't promise I'll get to it every week, and there might be stories I just have to post so you'll just have to live with the inconsistency.

Anyways, an introduction to my trip for starters!

I'm going to go ahead and designate August 17th as the beginning of my trip. It's not the day I left for Africa, but it is the day that I began to fully invest in  my mental preparation for it. On Aug 17th, I flew into Charlotte after a bomb.com couple of days in the Southern Florida/Naples/Miami area for my birthday and Danny McGiffin's bachelor party. Got a ride from the airport to Belmont Abbey, and, from there, my pre-Africa retreat began.

Basically the retreat has consisted of: waking up early to pray with the monks at vigil, small nap, lauds, breakfast, nap, midday prayer, mass, lunch, nap, vespers, dinner, nap, troll the quad, sleep.

Now that's not completely it of course. Brother Elias has been gracious enough to give us about an hour of his time a day just imparting his wisdom on the Benedictine Tradition. He is a relatively new monk, and he'll be going back to seminary at the end of August. Additionally, we've gotten the opportunity to do some random work around the grounds Brother Tobia. He's a man of few words, but he's definitely got some funny things to say if you commit to spending time with him.

Also running concurrent with our retreat at the monastery, freshman orientation is going on down in the dorms. I've had the chance to go wander around and meet the new freshman. I'll have you all know, this is the sixth orientation that I've been to in a row. Some people might say that I shouldn't spread that around, maybe they're right. Nonetheless, I really enjoy meeting new people, and hanging out with old friends while school is still out of session. Nothing like it.

Next, where am I going and what am I doing. Quick answer. Just outside Nairobi, Kenya and working in a school/center for disable children. Do you want more? Thought so.

Ok so here's the deal. I'm taking Swiss Air Economy Class from JFK to Zurich to Nairobi. Getting picked up there and being taken out of the city limits into what is known as "The Little Vatican". There's a ton of different religious orders and communities there. Why would they choose that space of all places to settle? Because they happen to be snuggled up right next to Mathare which happens to be the third largest slum in all of Africa. Some 250,000 people in hundreds of high rise buildings with no electricity or running water. In this area, I'm specifically going to a place called the Amani Center. It's funded and hosted by a Benedictine Monastery not too far away. It's a retreat center that has between 4 and 6 monks present at any given time. I will be living there. From there, I will walk 30 minutes into the Slum and work in a school for the mentally challenged and the physically handicapped. There's no real understanding of how to deal with people with disabilities over there. They either get abandoned or locked in a back room. About 25 years ago, one woman decided to take the whole slum by storm and basically build a home for these under privileged people. That's where I'll be going. On a side note, I'll be working with children of a local orphanage and surrounding schools teaching them sports. Most likely basketball since my other sport, swimming, doesn't seem to be very attainable when the only water source, a local river, happens to also be a local sewage dump...

More than that, I don't know because I haven't been there yet! But when I get there on Friday afternoon after 22 combined flying hours, I'll be sure to update y'all on what I see and hopefully with some pictures!

I hope to be joining the monks there in prayer for everyone back home, and I hope you'll do the same for me. Swimmancer signing off for the evening...

-Harris Moriarty