Kenya

Those of you who know me well know that I lived briefly in Kenya before moving to Indonesia. And even more than that, you know how much of my heart I left there. When something happens that hurts Kenya, it hurts me.

Saturday, al-Shabaab militants - the same Somalian Muslim extremist group that kidnapped my former co-worker, Jess, and held her hostage in the desert for 3 months - stormed a mall in Nairobi and basically barricaded themselves in Nakumatt, a supermarket that  I frequently shopped at while living there. So far, 68 civilians are dead - many of them children since the mall had been hosting a children's day - and nobody knows how many people they are still holding in the mall. We're in day 3 of the siege now.

I got news yesterday that 2 families from the school I worked at in Kenya were trapped inside the mall. I got news today that they are all out. Two students were wounded and one parent was killed.

I don't personally know those families, but I think how profoundly a death in our community would affect us here, and my heart breaks for my old school. When you live overseas in a small international community, you become a support network for one another - a lot like extended family.

I have friends, Kenyan and American both, who are teaching at two different schools there, and members of both schools have been affected directly by this situation. When kids ask questions in hard times like these, I know that I don't have the answers. So my heart goes out to the families who have lost loved ones, to the families still waiting to hear, bracing themselves for the worst, and also to those who now have the arduous task of helping hundreds of young ones process all of the whys that go along with any tragedy.

Please pray with me for Kenya.