I wrote this on the airplane before falling asleep, thinking about how I would explain my reaction to people when I return to the States:

"36 hours ago I was holding the hands of my Kenyan mama accepting her prayers for my well being in the middle of the biggest slum in the world. I'd known her for less than a week; it was completely sincere; It was my normal.

6 months ago, the film industry was a carreer I completely rejected. (I just finished production of a documentary film.)

I just learned what love really is, but there's a sense of longing that lingers.

I feel love
hope
pride
community
concern
growth
sincerity
joy

...And I'm afraid I'll forget it before long for the sake of re-acclamation. I can only retain the lessons learned though my lasting relationships with friends and family.

"Life is not about time, but about relationships."

Lessons learned.

I want to help. I want to support every initiative I learn of to better the lives of the other Kenyans in their communities.

- That is so strange to say. Because who am I? I'm a 25-year-old college student. I'm a improvisational documentary film director. I'm a lover. I'm a fighter. And I'm tired of the "me's", "I's", and "mine's".

For now I am revisiting the home of Emmanuel Leina Tasur and his family in the village of Oronkai in Transmara District, Kenya. Having left my volunteering experience here last year, I received a text message from Emmanuel while en route back to the States. "This is the beginning of a long and fruitful partnership," he said.

Three days ago I returned to my old hut. The messages that me and my hut-mate (and now dear friend) Chris wrote on the wooden partition are still here. Traces of memories I thought I would only recall in reverie now presented to me in vivid reality. Days before we departed Oronkai, Chris and I each grabbed a piece of chalk and wrote.

“Separation Anxiety”

“It’s always the simplest answer… before you let the words turn to dust”

“Time exists just on your wrist, so don’t panic”

And my personal favorite: “Take of your gold coat and you will see hope and feel love” - A testament to our month-long sojourn in Transmara, campaigning with Emmanuel last year for his run as Member of Parliament for his constituency. We spoke of an end to government corruption, building international partnerships, and bold leadership. Our words translated into Swahili or Maasai for hundreds of Kenyans to spread to thousands more.

Tomorrow we will go to Kilgoris Town, where Emmanuel stood at the election polling stations in December 2007. In the sitting area of his home, lit only by a kerosene lantern, I ask Emmanuel about that day. He hangs his head and I watch the solemnity slowly wash over him. He tells me it was chaos. He tells me about how he and the group of voters were tear gassed by police and how the polling station was burnt down.

These small moments resonate within me. Emmanuel decided not to run again when a repeat poll was announced. Instead he rallied the other candidates together and decided to vote the old MP back into power. “Better a devil you know, than an angel you don’t,” he summarized. When I ask him how he looks back on it all he bears no regret. “I was completely honest,” he says. His Vision Launch in Kilgoris last year brought out 5000 residents from the area. Kenyans far and wide came out to support him. Because he was completely honest.
Having taken a welcome respite from Kenyan politics and the corruption is suffers from, he has managed to begin building his dream from the ground up: The Sirua Aulo Academy.



Once completed the Academy will be the first boarding Academy in the rural area of Transmara. The school started out will 40 students learning under a tree on the empty plot of land. Now 82 students are enrolled, being educated, fed daily, and 15 are already sponsored for only $365 a year.

Last night he said, "We are digging the foundation for the next two classes with the faith that funding will come." When the rains are heavy, construction comes to stop. The ditch they must cross to carry supplies fills with rainwater making it unpassable. Children are learning in temporary while construction crawls along. Yet, parents are plucking their children from their schools to enroll them at Sirua Aulo.
So how can I help, I ask myself. By using the same tools Emmanuel employs: education. I have to say, I have my doubts, insecurities, and uncertainties about the whole thing, but I'm just going to follow this path and see where it leads.
____________

Later that day:

"Human beings are human beings. Despite our small differences, there is nothing that is so different that it should be divisive. Relationships are what are most important. People need people."

The smatterings of a die hard optimist. These words came in fragments out of my mouth. I was seated in the sitting area of Meshak and Leila, neighbors of Emmanuel's in Transmara. The both silently nodded there heads before directly them downwards, as if to pray.

When my words, at once tired and true, were spoken and a tacit accord reached, I looked at Isaac, Leila's 1-and-a-half year old boy cradled and asleep in her arms; I looked at their eldest daughter Resieto and the way her smile never leaves her face when she looks at me. And I thought to myself, "Where do I come up with this stuff?" As I said before, "It's always the simplest answer, before you let the words turn to dust."

“We think of you as Gabriel. The angel, God's messager. You are a messager of our people. God has sent you to us.” Seated in the administrative office of Sister Freda’s Cottage Hospital she tells me that I have been sent to Kenya “by divine appointment.” Hearing her voice in my head as I write brings me to tears even now.

Saying goodbye today was not easy.



Walking down the dimly lit corridor of the modest hospital I turned back from the rooms of the patients I had grown attached to over the past two weeks. If I entered one room I knew I would find Boaz, the 17-year-old boy with cerebral palsy. I knew that he would be curled on his back with his chin at his chest. I knew that when he saw me that huge smile would flash across his face, he’d let out a breathy laugh, and reach out his curled hand to greet me. I knew if I enter another room, I would find Wangila on his mattress on the floor, coloring in his coloring book. I knew that when I greeted him, he would say nothing, but rather look at his mute mother who never let him leave her sight as if for consent to greet me back. I knew that Colletta, his mother, who look at me, smile with her front tooth missing, tilt her head back and grunt her own kind of greeting before signing to me that I should take her home.

Although I turned back and forth down that hall, hesitating to say goodbye, I went through the same routine of greeting each and every person I met. Because I knew that it was my presence alone that made the most impact. And I can say that without an ounce of conceit. You start to realize that you can’t do it all. You can’t treat, heal, or even love everyone. But what you can do is show up. Present yourself without fear, without judgment. Show those in need everywhere you go that you are present. Listen and respond, observe and absorb what you can. If Sister Freda thinks of that as my “divine appointment” than it is one I have accepted. Because it is that banishment of fear that inspires me to inspire others.

Our last in Kitale began as usual. Sister Freda picked us up with her husband, Richard. She slowly emerged from her seat, cradles me hands in her, bows her head and says “thank you, good morning, Tyler.” Once packed up and out the gate, however, Sister Freda tells me that we are going to a couple of villages. I had mentioned that I would like to meet some of her patients in their homes, so we were going to pop in on two on the way to the hospital.

“She has just given birth. Even… ten minutes before we arrived!” says Sister Freda as she exits a darkened mud-dung hut. She is gleeful. She rushes to the car to fetch a cloth to cover the mother. This is Caroline’s third child. Before entering to hut, I greet about seven children who have all gather to greet Sister Freda and her “visitors from the U.S.” I duck my head inside to find Sister Freda bent over on the dirt floor of a household of 11 people no bigger than my mom’s walk-in closet. In the corner is a pit for cooking, a few feet away in the other corner are scraps of firewood. And on the floor in front of Sister Freda is a woman who has just given birth. “Just now?” I ask in shock. “Yes,” says Sister Freda. “You see. You have to just leave it up to the higher power and he will provide.”

My heart swells.

Sister Freda takes the newborn in her arms. “Is it a boy or a girl?” I ask. She stand up with the child in her arms, unwraps his coverings and reveals a new life, so new the umbilical cord has not yet been removed. “He is a boy, you see.” His eyes are not yet open and his face is brown and squished. Ten minutes ago, this child was in his mothers womb and now Sister Freda is there to help him take his mother’s milk. And I am welcomed to be part of all of it. Why? I hear Caroline’s mother speaking joyfully in Swahili and I recognize the word “Baraka” meaning “blessing”. “She says she has been blessed with a new child and with nothing to feed her family, she is blessed to have you as guests to aide her. I tell Sister Freda I have none to give. “It is still a blessing to have you here,” she says. She looks down and the child in her arms, radiating with joy and says, “This is what I love. Seeing a new life.”
We get back on the tarmac, down a dirt road, and another narrow path to our next home in another village. “This is the HIV+ patient who had the HIV- child I told you about,” she says to be from the front seat. “I hope she is at home.” Just then, Catherine, the patient arrives from fetching water. She carried a jerry can on her head, gripping it as she carries another jug in her other hand. She’s smiling. We enter to find her friend carrying for her young, healthy, jovial baby boy, Isaac. When she sees him, Catherine lights up. He smile is sweet as she admires him from afar.
In a short interview she points to two mounds in the grass. She tells me that her husband and her daughter are both buried there. Later she tells me about the night before her husband died, the same husband from whom she contracted HIV. “He was very ill,” she said in a small voice, her eyes rarely making contact with mine. “It was late at night and he got up. He walked just out that door,” she said, indicating the front door of the brick home her husband worked tirelessly to build before he died. “He walked right to that place and said he cant go on. ‘Burry me here,’ he said. He died right there. And in the middle of the night, with the help of my friend down the road, we buried him.”

The image of her carrying her husbands frail body struck something in me. I began crying. Streams of tears strewn down my face. I couldn’t flick them off fast enough. I thought of my Dad, another death in the middle of the night. Another frail body. Another wife and mother – my mother. I thought of these parallels, these moments in my family’s personal history, which I thought were so private, so intimate, were all being shared – and I couldn’t stop the tears. The woman struggles every day, to see her son and first-born daughter succeed just as my Dad did with his cancer for years to see his sons grow up. The moment seized me. I told her of our shared experiences, took her hands in mine, squeezed them tight, and as one final tears slipped into the corner of my mouth I said simply, “You are very strong.” With a 7th grade education, she sells milk and maize to support herself and her family. She smiles unabashedly, sings, and prays daily for strength. As she says a prayer before me leave, we all stand around the room, heads bowed and silent. She rattles her prayers in Swahili and gasps for air between each prayer, and I can feel the strength in her voice building each time. Then I realize with my head bowed, fighting back more tears, that over my twenty-five years of pain, joy, discouragement, fear, and love, I have crossed continents, oceans, borders, and boundaries to realize that we are all the same. One human family.

We all struggle, but not in vain. All you have to do is show up. Even if you have to fight to stay alive, just like Catherine and my Dad, you can find joy in life and strength in love.

(and my heart swells once more… in Kenya)

Among the dense green forest of Mt. Elgon, four Americans are guided by two armed Kenyan soldiers in full uniform.



Their pleasant demeanor and patience contrasts their otherwise intimidating appearance.

The ride through the forest is breathtaking. Literally. I found my breathing getting shorter, more shallow than usual. Later, when we reached the elephant platform, we were looking over miles upon miles of the Rift Valley as it spans from province to province.



Isaac, one of our guides turns to us and smiles. His AK 41 rest casually over his shoulder, with one leg outstretched and the other bent supporting his elbow. “We say that in Africa, life is natural.”

I take a moment to absorb each word.

Last night I looked up at the stars, today I hiked to over 6000 ft. above sea level and saw Kenyan sprawled before me. The sounds of monkeys, cows, wild birds and some children playing in the distance. Both moments afforded me a unique opportunity to realize something: we all have a time to be small. Japanese monumental landscape painters rendered their natural lives as dwarfed by the crags and crevasses of the mountain ranges and the strokes of native trees darting into the sky. Once in a while I would look up at the moon, the stars, and imagine life on those surfaces, light years ahead of me. I remind myself that I am one person. I am one small fraction of this planet and spec in this universe. My fears, my insecurities, the uncertainties and complexities fade away, if only for that moment. I try to find the right moment to tear myself away from this meditative state, but cant, and always end up tearing away sooner than I’d like. I want to enjoy my time to be small.

In Kenya I’ve realized some things. Any time we think we are not good enough, we can find comfort in knowing that we are all part of the same system. We all make our own contribution. I may not be healing anyone, changing anyone’s life, or building someone a future, but I’m doing what I can to be part of the system of life. Anytime you think you aren’t good enough, remember that you are helping by virtue of just being here. Because in the end, love, home, and happiness cannot be measured by what’s around you, but by who’s around you.

So in those moments when you’ve lost your origin, and you cant find love, home, or happiness, look up, take a deep breath, and give yourself, some time to be small.

For those of you interested... I have a cell phone.
(Vanessa - it looks just like your old bunk one you loved so much.)

If you want to text OR call, dial:

(001) 254 714 960 241

001 - to dial internationally
254 - country code
the rest - my number

Pretty sure thats right. It would be great to hear from you. And of course I can get messages here for by email at:
tyler_batson@achanceforpeace.com.
*I just may not be able to respond right away.

International texts are about .40 on your end, and 10 Kenyan shillings on mine - so no big.

Calls on the other hand can get spendy - for you. But theyre free for me! Lol.

Talk to you sooooon...
xx
tyler

If I don't feel well, if my mind is racing and my heart out of synch - there's a reason.

Finding a balance in Kenya is not easy. Finding the truth about Kenya is harder, because there is not one truth. You cannot sum it up into a "dream" as we tend to in the States. Because what happens here is no dream. It is a battle. A daily struggle which I cannot even fathom to completely understand.

What I do understand is my role and what my heart is telling me. When I arrived I thought that this was my mission, if you will. Perhaps it is, but I know now what I was too naive to know on my first trip to Kenya. Kenya is not all warm welcomes and pure hearts. It is also rife with hate, with anger, with abandonment, and pain. While children do often smile and play, they are fighting through their pain. Living in a slum when sometimes your only comfort is the mud in which you sleep, you have to laugh, and smile and play.

Many adults don't have this luxury in Kenya. We may say that we are aware that we cant count on the next day coming, or that we are living "hand to mouth", but rarely do we feel the pain of slowing dying or know the uncertainty of life.

Today I found myself in Kipsongo - the shantiest slum I could have never imagined - turning away from that pain. Homes made of plastic bags on a stick skeleton, mud and trash filling the path to a pit latrine beside the other garden they have. People through from their land and discriminated against with nowhere else to go. And one man, who I later learned lie dead of pneumonia in his plastic bag structure.

Last year, I realized I had two motivations for coming to Kenya: I felt I had a lot of love left to give, and I wanted to know what pain people felt in this part of the world. I wanted to know what it meant to fight for your life. Now, I've come closer to having an understanding of that struggle. More so, I have an understanding of the struggles that good-hearted people go through to try and aide that battle. People like Sister Freda, the Hope for Kibera youth group in Nairobi, Emmanuel Leina, and countless others who want nothing more than to lift up their people, and find peace once more.

But the question still lingers: What is peace? The answer so far is having the basic resources that make life sustainable: food, shelter, clothing, and land. Since I have all these resources, all I want is to love and to be able to share that with those I hold dear. I don't want to pity, I don't want to feel discouraged, and above all I don't want to feel pain - inheritted or otherwise. My motivations were in the wrong place. Instead of sharing their pain, so far removed from my experience, I should use what I have to break that cycle, if only for one moment.

We all fight our own fights. Why should I add to the mire when life is still so uncertain? Better to smile, laugh, and play than create pain for myself that isn't there. Better to use my strength, like those Kenyan children use theirs, to bring something new to the fight - hope.

The deep azure of her eyes clung like a halo to her pupil. Her eyes pointed up toward the sky as she spoke each word. “You are welcome. You see, just as the doors were open when you arrived today, they will be open for you always.”

Sister Freda welcomed us for tea this morning. I had heard such great things about her, but nothing to explain the grip she has on those that have come to know her. “You have to meet Sister Freda when you are going to Kitale!” “Cool, why?” I’d ask. “You’ll know. Just meet her.”

When we arrived at her round breakfast table she and her British expat husband, Richard, were hosting two visitors, a man and wife. Graciela has been to Sister Freda’s six times! She has brought her 71-yr-old husband, Ron, with her for the first time. Graciela grew up in Guadalajara, Mexico. She looks at her life as a mission of God. When she shared that she lost her father at age 10, I reached my hand across the table to hers, clasping hers and gave her a knowing nod of the head. She smiled at me as she continued talking. When she lost her father, she and her siblings had to fend for themselves. Scratching at the table she said, “I would dig. Through the trash to find something to keep the hunger away. I was a happy girl. I would play and play and then go find a piece of bread or an orange that had been squeezed, eat that and play some more.”
She, her mother, and her siblings eventually crossed the US border on foot, wading through the cold river water up to their chests. “Now go to school!” her mother told her when they arrived. She did and after treating her husbands widow as a physical therapist, she finds herself with us at Sister Freda’s in Kitale. Giving Sister Freda a massage every night to relieve some of the tensions of her everyday.

At the end of her story, Sister Freda, rises from her chair and rests her elbow on her chair. She closes her eyes and lays her hands palm to palm. “There is so much need,” she said. “So we welcome you and we will help you in your mission to stop the fear so many people feel about Africa, to come and see how beautiful our country is.”
She opens her eyes, we all take in a deep breath, and I wipe the tears from my eyes. She returns with a beaded necklace. A single strand with the colors of the Kenyan flag – green, red, black, and white. “These are made by a womens’ group in Kipsongo, a slum here in Kitale. You will meet them.” I thank her and lay my fingertips over the beads like its gold. “Thank you so much, Sister Freda.” Less than an hour of knowing her, I’ve been welcomed, gifted, and cried. This woman is amazing.

After meeting up with Michele and Caroline, both from Seattle, and friends who I volunteered with last year, we picked up some other volunteers from Ukraine and Uzbekistan and we head to a camp for Internally displaced persons affected by the post-election violence. They have no home and land to return to. Kenyan military is on guard at the gates. I ask them what they do there. “We can do nothing but provide security.” When I asked if we could take video, I was told to only take pictures of the “decent” tents at the camp, not the ones fashioned out of potato sack and sticks. “You see, it is an embarrassment,” he says. "For the government."

After getting a few shots of the camp I realized I was fulfilling one of my life goals – to visit a refugee camp. My purpose was much different than I had imagined it, but the goal is fulfilled nevertheless. We interview Sister Freda, and as we carry on, we encounter a man limping toward us with a makeshift cane. “This man is very eager to speak with you," she tells me.
Sister Freda helps translate his story. When the “skirmishes” were going on, and explosives were running him off his land, he says his blood pressure went up and he had a stroke. His entire left side is useless, he said. “Even my eye,” he said as he indicated the puss and tears forming. “I’m worrying that I am too old. I am 40-years-old with 6 children. Who is going to toil the land for them? I am worrying I wont be able to provide them with an education.” I asked Sister Freda to ask him what it is that keeps him going, where he gets his hope. “From the higher power,” she says.

When we walk away I thank Sister Freda and she says, “Thank you, I believe you were meant to be here to share these stories.” She calls on a divine power that I’m still having trouble wrapping my mind around, but my heart feels like its been inflated by this woman, the people she’s touched, and the places she has taken me.

We carry on to the man’s tent to meet his family when Graciela approaches him and takes his crippled left hand. She sits him down after I had walked him, step by step holding his waist across the camp of 600 people. “When did he become paralyzed?” she asked. “January”. Her eyes widen as she stretches his fingers in her palm.


“He can be healed. With some exercises, he can regain the use of his hand.” She hurriedly takes out some creams from her bag, massages his arms and whispers, “In Jesus name I pray, in Jesus name I pray.” She gave him some exercises and I asked her, “Why don’t you show his wife how to do it?”

As we walked away, Graciela says to me, “Sometimes you don’t know what you are here for today, and then God shows you.”

After the IDP camp, we head the Sister Freda’s hospital, a wonderful, although incomplete, medical care center, all provided by the kind donations of individuals, churches, and business men and women. It is run by Sister Freda and her small staff of five.
Walking with Graciela, she gives us a tour and we arrive at the room of Boaz, a 17-year-old boy with cerebral palsy. He lights up! She tells me that she has only been working with his about 2 weeks, but she has already got him on his feet. “He wants to so bad, but no one knew he could!” Instead of being stuck behind the camera, I immediately got down on the floor when he was seated, surrounded by pillows and hunched over. His eyes pointed up as he drew out a big smile. Instinctively, Graciela and I drew him on his feet, each of us taking a side. Someone took a balloon and set it in front of him. He was kicking, and communicating, grunting, and laughing, and his feet would not stop moving! “Mzuri sana, Boaz!” I said, cheering him on as we drew him down the dimly lit corridor, chasing the balloon in our own makeshift game of soccer. He didn’t want to stop. Two weeks ago, he was a shell. Left at home to suffer in silence. Now he’s got hope, he’s got strength; he’s got his legs! That smile, that laugh. It’s the strength of the human spirit. It’s something I have found nowhere else. The sense of empowerment and the knowledge that some people out there are still willing to fight when hope seems lost.

There is so much more to share, but you have to see it for yourself, you have to feel it. And I’ve realized, when it is your time, you will.

I just took one of the best showers of my adult life. (The other being that which took place at the Jinja Nile Resort in Uganda.) Hot water? Water that I can drink and brush my teeth with? A toilet? That works!? All of this in a little place called Britanny House, Kitale



I swear to God, the shower was big enough to waltz in. Which I did. Alone. (Wow, maybe I shouldn’t have shared that.)
Anyway, it couldn’t come at a better time.

Yesterday was fun. I got in a car accident. Why do these things follow me around? Like it’s just a friendly reminder from the almighty that I’m suppose to stay out of and away from motor vehicles. It was possibly the most stressful day in the slum so far. I know, you’re probably thinking, “Well, yeah, it’s a slum.” But everyone we met in Kibera was nothing but generous, warm, welcoming, engaging, patient, and of course, curious. Once they knew our intentions, and the work it took to get here they were more than supportive.

At church I even drew applause from a youth group. That was unexpected.
But yeah, it was our last day. Crammed for time, surrounded by at least 7 kids at a time, all talking at once, and racing the sun. It was rather trying, lets say.
I feel like I’m rambling. Let me break it down.
This is a matatu:







You have to be a friggin’ acrobat to get into one (especially with a tripod, boom pole, and camera gear pack), and you have to be a fucking maniac to drive one.
So…
Kibera: Matatu to City Center Nairobi: not bad, traffic jam, yes, but at least we didn’t run out of gas. Again.
City Center: Taxi. Haggled from 1200KSH to 800KSH to 850KSH. (Don’t ask. I was desperate.)
Taxi gets blind-sided by a matatu and struck from behind by another matatu. My neck hits the head rest and the taxi driver tells us to wait for another car to come and pick us up.
Yeah. Sure.
So another matatu pulls up next to us. Its headed for Donholm, where we are staying. Its 8pm and we are still in the middle of the street, dirty, sweaty, and smelling like human fecal matter. (Oh yeah, I slipped in Kibera. My left foot submerged in their sewage.) PS: im not complaining or disparaging. "It's just the way it is," as I've learned.
The new matatu has no lock on the sliding door. Its held together by a black rubber band. So, naturally, I feel confident and secure.
New matatu not only rides the sidewalk and almost runs over tens of people, but also, defying all reason, goes against traffic in a roundabout.
By the time we arrive, I feel like Nairobi is kicking my ass out.
… and into a palace called Brittany’s House in Kitale, where we are now. Showering like kings.

The mosquito nets are literally galloping over the full size bed! I have a fuckin MINT on my pillow. And its huge! (OK, fine, its a bar of soap.) A balcony, garden, and rooms themed to different Kenyan tribes. (We’re Kisii’s!) Not to mention 7 adorable kids from age 3 to 14 to play soccer with, pick and eat fruits from the trees, and watch bootleg DVDs with.

What’s alarming, is that just down the road is a camp for internally displaced Kenyans (an IDP camp.) We are going there tomorrow with Sister Freda, an amazing woman who runs the local hospital, cares for 7 abandoned, orphaned, and disabled children, and feeds over 100 kids a day with maize and beans from her own fields. She also grows and sells coffee on the side, is starting a nursing program, and accepts international volunteers. And tomorrow, we are going with her to pick up drugs to take to the IDP camp for distribution and informal counseling. She struggles to get by herself for the benefit of others. Amazing woman. I want to hug her everytime I see her or hear her voice. Too soon for that though.

She's just another person I know I will be blessed to know; another experience I can already feel rushing through me. The human quality of selflessness, strength, and generosity I’ve witnessed here brings me to tears. And yet so many people are afraid to come here. War, poverty, AIDS, famine. How did a continent with so much to give become so narrowly defined?
Next time you read something in the news about Africa, remember that there will always be people out there inspiring a chance for peace for all of us.

Right now it's quietly overwhelming me. It's the kind of love that impairs you, but for the betterment of you. The kind of pain that takes a special understanding to remind you of what you will gain on the other side.

"Don't be afraid of a little bit of pain/ Pleasure is on the other side"
(A song to summarize my thoughts).

____

Lately I've felt embattled. Not wanting to voice my frustration from repeated disappointment, I've felt stifled. Getting to this point, not even just getting to Kenya to shoot A Chance for Peace, but getting to this point in life - it is my pleasure to be on "the other side".

I've spent the past week in Kenya. One week to last me a lifetime. Meeting people, you get something from them that you don't find everywhere: their truth. The good, the bad, the drunk and disorderly, the god fearing, the weary, and the hopeful.

The Kibera slum, where we have been going everyday since we arrived is, despite its grave shortfalls and tragedies, a home. Kibera is home to 1.5 million people. Kenyans, refugees from Ethiopia, Somolia, Sudan, Uganda, and even a vacation home to some "mzungus" - that's swahili for "white people".

That is what has hit me most. Kibera is home. Kibera is shelter when there is no other shelter to be had. Kibera is opportunity, Kibera is ones business, church, office, school, hangout, market. This isn't just some horrible place where only the truly unfortunate people live. This is where people survive.

Yesterday we were walking through the community of Mashimoni where our 12-year-old friend Alan Wasonga lives.



I saw how people survive. Some women have bound some timber in thistle rope to make a table to sell their wares - 5 avocados, 3 passion fruits, and a few bags of laundry soap - all they can get since losing so much in the fires and violence from Dec to April of this year, not counting the rising cost of food and food insecurity. Then I wonder, "Where did those come from?" There are no fields in Kibera, only shanty shacks built mostly of rippled sheets of tin and wood. They had to buy those from someone. Their small profit will go toward payment of their rent - about 12 dollars a month - and their childrens' education, food, and clothing.

Interviewing Alan's mother, Margaret, in a bombed out and burnt down space in the middle of an open market she says something I haven't heard yet. Interrupting her boisterous husband, Rev. John Wasonga, she says, "You know, it is the women who suffer the most." My tired arms had to swing the boom mic around in a hurry. My heart gasped and quickly returned to its normal pace. "Because who do the children come to when they need food," she continued. "Clothing? Books for school?" Her emphatic postulation seated beside her husband drew my eyes away from her to study his own gaze, which lie distant, then downward as he hangs his head.

Earlier that day, Frank and I arrived at Alan's one-room home. One room for 14 people, yet they welcomed us in for tea with pride. The door opened half-way and stopped, cramped by the couch and chair inside. Even now my eyes are welling with tears. One room for 14 people. It's not the lacking or squalor that inspires me to tears, it's the fulfillment they get from so little. And the pride they take in what they have created for themselves.

That is not to say that all Kenyans are this way. Some lie, cheat, and steal elections, which is the other side of the coin. Is it a tribal issue? Some would say yes. Most will assign particular traits and judgment to particular tribes. "Kikuyus are more interested in money" aka "Kikuyus are thieves"; or "Nubians keep their friends close" aka "Nubians are drunkards".

After Margaret serves us tea, we head to the Free Methodist Church with Alan and three of her other children. The church is attended by maybe 20 people. First we stand to singing and dancing. I lean the tripod against a pew and lay my open palm on Alan back beside me, waiting for him to smile, but he only smirks at best. I look around as Frank tours around the small room filming. Chunks of cement are missing from the walls, scars left from violence that ceased only 4 months ago. Then I look at the faces of the dancing children, clapping, not caring if they are carrying a beat, singing the words, or staying in place. Then I remember what they've seen. They witnessed so much tragedy. Police shooting their own kinsmen, friends bound and beaten, mothers raped, children stoned. And I see no judgment. If only for a couple hours, God is good and nothing else matters. Then I think of all the people I have seen on the dirt roads throughout Kibera over the past week. All of them, men, women, children, the young and old - they all bore witness to this. And they all live with it. They all survive.

"What is it that will bring peace to Kenya?" I ask Rev. John later on in the day, back at his home. "Counseling and prayers," he says. "That is the only thing." "Did you take part in the violence," I ask, at which point Margaret's empowered yet weary voice breaks through once more. "Of course! We had to protect ourselves. You see, my husband was not at home when the violence began. I had to protect my home, my children, our lives." Her son, Raleigh Walker, named after his Canadian education sponsor, chimes in with a smile, "I stoned someone coming into our home. In the head." I look back at Margaret and she lowers her eyes: "What would you do?"

I would fight, too.
There's a reason love hurts. You have to protect it. When your life and the lives of your family are in danger, "what would you do?"

right now, I am sitting in the Doonholm Savannah area of Nairobi. We have been here for a few days now getting to know people and making our way around town from one matatu to the next. A matatu us a 14-seater van and literally hundreds of them clog the very few paved roads you will find in Nairobi, and which are filled with up to 20 people at a time.

The past couple of days have been a whirlwind of matatus, people, traffic, making phone called, breaking a key in a door lock, and so on. I started to notice that my senses were not quite as sharp as they were last year, the first time we came here. And even when they are, I find myself still planning in my head what we are to do next, constantly asking myself, "what do we have time for." Finding myself back in the Kibera slum today, I noticed that begin to disipate.

When we arrived, we arrived about 4 hours later. In "African time" as they say with a laugh before stating simply, "This is Africa." As we sat in the back of the bus, Frank, our cinematographer angling his camera out his window, and I, craning my next out the other windows, a young man named Charles struck up a conversation with me. "Your friend should film out this side of the vehicle" he said with a warm and welcoming grin, pointing to the high rise building in the Nairobi city center. After introducing myself, he told me about his opinion of the political structure in Kenya. Everyone is so far quite willing to discuss this matter, which I initially treat as a sensitive subject. Most Ive spoken with, including Charles agreee that the government is to blame. the political elite are caught up with their own gains, using tribalism as a platform to gain votes. I tell him, however, that Americans find it difficult to understand why kenyans would kill other Kenyans. So far I have gotten the simplest, and perhaps most poignant answer, from a friend named Victor. On a taxi ride back to Doonholm, in the shroud of night, he tell me, "You see, people were angry. And perhaps, when one is that angry, they do not consider the consequences of their immediate actions." Charles told me, that the violence itself can be seen as a good things, as well as bad. When asked why, he said that it encouraged peace among the tribes. Markets and businesses and homes were looted. People who had so little, now have less, because of the disappointment they endured from a presidential candidate who use tribalism against them. After a leader who you have invested your future, your health, and your prosperity in has the election stolen from him, your chance for peace has been stolen, as well. After accepting tribal rhetoric from this leader, accepting a political divide that extends past party affiliate and into the blood that runs in your veins, and that of your shared ancestors, who do you blame? Who do you fight? What would you do to find peace and prosperity?

Now, it seems that the Kenyan people know that they cannot depend on their political leadership to create peace. So they are creating it themselves. Youth groups have united and created events like "Mr. and Mrs. Peace" in Kibera, music festivals, and soccer tournaments that take the first step toward reconciliation: communication. Men, women, and children from all tribes are connecting, airing their grievances, and creating agendas for peace.

So when I asked Victor, is there a chance for peace? He says, "yes. But we are taking the first steps." Can the political leadership create peace. "They are trying. They are sharing the power, but they have not done a lot."

In a bombed out government housing office building in Kibera we found toilets, phones, broken glass, and blown out windows framed with soot. Another friend from the slum, Toto, points at my feet and tells me, "three people died there. The police shot them, just like that." A young boy approaches, after shyly meandering around the grounds picking up things off the ground, and tossing them languidly. His name is Alan. I sat him down in one of the room, littered with glass, dung, exposed wires, and ashes. Among other things, i asked him if he thinks this kind of violence will happen again. he stops his fidgeting, steadies his eyes at the camera, hangs his head and says, "yes."

And yet he continues to visit the building. Alone. Twelve-years-old and his hope is shattered, just like the fragments of glass that clutter his feet.

I ask him on our way out if he will ask his parents if we can meet them. before I finish my sentence he looks out ahead, and says, "I will tell them that you are good people." He smiles, and I bring him in closer to wrap my arm around him. Never has the word "good" meant so much to me, coming from a boy who has such a unique, albeit tragic, perspective to know what good really is.

32 hours later and we have arrived!

The smell of the earth and the dust rising and bellowing into the airport was a familiar welcome. The ill ease that I had felt all along this process of getting here has slipped away. It almost feels like I have come back home after a long vacation. The people and places bare resemblance to my first experience in Kenya. But I know that there is still so much to learn. The distinctions will soon become evident. New faces, new characters in this story will come forward, and a new understanding will be made.

This is not me. This is not my story. The story started long ago - long before the ashes fell and the dust settled. Long before a rigged presidential election, and long before Kenya was Kenya. This is a human story. One from which we can all learn; one which will examine the value of life, the power of love, and the strength of hope.

Still sweating the stress off my back of the past year, I still have to question: am I ready?

The clarity will come.

love you (because I love to),
Tyler

Hey guys -

Sitting here in Minneapolis waiting for my next flight to Amsterdam (and then Nairobi), I find myself surprised by my sense of calm. Maybe it hasn't hit me yet. (That's not true.) Truth is, I feel a great sense of relief. After all the hard work, after all the emotional roller-coaster that this has been, I can only find myself to be "calm".

I've never shot a documentary before. This is usually the point in my travels where my heart races and I ask myself, "What have you done?" or "Who do you think you are?" Now I understand that I am only the tool, the conduit through which more poignant questions will be answered. I am not a leader, I'm still a student - a student of life, of the Kenyan experience, and of peace.

(I want to cry).

But I wont. All I can feel is calm. Like this is meant to be.
Two days after my Dad's birthday - he would've been 56 - I find myself living up to his credo: "If you're going to half-ass it, don't do it at all."

Hi, my name is Tyler Batson.

I have committed myself to filming a documentary film in Kenya called "A Chance for Peace."

I'm not exactly sure what will happen. I've never done this before. It serves as an extension of the volunteer work I did in Kenya in 2007 and will serve to EDUCATE those on the recent post-election violence, its impact on Kenyans, and the peace processes we never hear about.



I have been fundraising with the help of friends and family and I'm as ready as I can be to take on what is truly the most challenging experience of my life.

See what we have done so far, on the grassroots level in Los Angeles:



Learn more at www.achanceforpeace.com
Help us educate others! Spread the word and become a part of the ACFP Community!

...and stay tuned to find out what happens in Kenya during our production of A CHANCE FOR PEACE!