To our readers, please pray for our friend Kent Brantley, a physician living and working in Liberia amidst the Ebola virus outbreak.  He has contracted this deadly virus.  He is a husband and father.

These are stories of tragedies.

Joseph was a young man of 28, a husband and father as well.  He suffered a motorcycle accident and a fractured femur (long bone in your thigh), an everyday story here.  His leg got infected, and when we first saw him, he was hanging on to life by a thin thread.

"There is a stat consult from ortho" I heard walking through the ICU on a Thursday morning.  And then he lost his pulse.  We coded him intermittently for about four hours, buffering in boluses the overwhelming death that was coming.  This young man was a fighter, and despite the failure of almost all his organs, he pulled through the day.

Like clockwork, the organs that failed him returned: he awoke (brain) started breathing on his own (lungs) maintaining his blood pressure (heart) making urine (kidneys) and blood cells (bone marrow).  It was a marvel of the created human body, like a re-do Garden of Eden.  We took this picture to illustrate this moment.

Because we knew he would never walk, the femur was gone, we found this wheelchair, complete with the hand crank, and the tires to handle the African village life.  We put it together in anticipation.

But this isn't the Garden and I warned you that these are stories of tragedies.  After four weeks in the ICU, Joseph was unable to get enough nutrition to rebuild his strength.  Over the course of about a week he wasted away, the will was gone, or was it his strength?  He died on my weekend off.






This is a man named Richard, and his children (all 7 of them).  The setting for this story is about 2 hours' drive off the paved road, a road I got to take because of the work that Katie does with a women's group called Tabitha Ministry.  The backstory is one that I'm all-too-familiar-with from Tenwek.  His wife suffered complications in pregnancy and died giving birth to these twins 2 years ago.  He is a widower, and with his community and with his mother-in-law he cares for these children.




We got invited to a ceremony to dedicate a house given to him by some donors from the US.  Mud and sticks and tin roof and all.  That's me (the white guy) in a somewhat-ridiculous African shirt that the Tabitha ladies gave to me.

The weight of tragedy that we see in everyday life at the hospital is the greatest challenge of living here.  Often I wonder, "what's going to happen to these people?" and without an answer I move on to the next patient in line.  Here's a community, a church, that has joined together to support this man in his tragedy.  We have a great deal to learn about community, about suffering, and endurance, and about hoping in the resurrection.  And these are our teachers.




And so, when we don't know what to do, or what to say, we speak the Good News, that God rescues sinners from death.  We treat the sick with compassion and thus fight an insurrection against the powers of this world: sickness and suffering,  and we plant a little bit of that news in this African soil.

a view from driving by

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 Hiking up a dirt road with motorbikes whizzing by, their loud music flattens out with space.  So to, time and distance make my stories feel flattened like that.  They were too sharp, too dangerous to publish earlier.  So today we have invited some guest bloggers to give you a glimpse of what it looks like to visit Daktari life.  Here's what they have to say:

A few years ago at our beloved home church in Birmingham, Alabama we had the privilege of meeting Mike and Katie Davis—connecting immediately because we both have strong family ties to Kingston, Tennessee—we worshipped together, celebrated welcoming Annie to the world and were sad when they moved to Jonesboro, TN but kept in touch as we could via Facebook.  As our family made a big decision last January to spend a month in Kenya, we reached out to Katie to ask for advice, guidance and prayers as we navigated this mission trip with 3 teenage girls.  Katie was 100% joyous in her response…in fact, her very response was “My first time to Africa was when I was 13, just be ready for them to fall in love with this place!”  Midway through our trip, our family descended into Tenwek—smack on top of this amazing, dear family.  Mike is changing lives, touching families and stretching his heart and brain to negotiate the medical needs, wants, challenges and successes at Tenwek Hospital.  Katie is changing lives, touching families and stretching her heart and brain to negotiate cross cultural dynamics, kids’ lives and now…our unwieldy family.  With grace, calm and welcome, the Davis family absorbed us into their mission lives here.  I’ve posted some on facebook (Rachel Estes)about this rhythm but want to share some here.  To a family with constantly hungry teenagers, I’m noticing Mike and Katie anticipate, savor and celebrate food.  Each bit of food is deeply and intimately connected to someone’s life here.  Joseph is selling eggs to have funds for an orphanage…Amos walks two hours to sell carrots on Sundays for his school fees…every piece of food is a story.  That translates into this family.  If you finish all the eggs on Friday, you need to wait until Tuesday for Joseph to come…what a concept for our American-paced family.  Meals are about relationships and connecting…savored and enjoyed.  If there is something from this whole mission that we bring home to our house, I pray it will be this anticipating, savoring and celebrating of food.  I’m watching Katie connect in the community through ministries that have her driving far away on bumpy dirt roads…bringing the Bible story (yes, the WHOLE BIBLE) to a gathering of women on a Saturday morning-she helps connect the neighborhood kids with activities, she weaves people together to strengthen the community and she does it with beauty and God’s love.  Driving us out to an orphanage today, Katie spent her own time and energy making sure that our family had a very Kenyan experience.  Mike comes home for lunch with prayers of joy and of sorrow for those whom he serves at the hospital.  He knows their stories, their families and despite many sad moments, he sees miracles. 

Mike and Katie, Josiah and Annie are having their hearts broken and widened by all they are experiencing here…they are changing lives…those they serve and their own.  What a blessing for this community and all future communities in which they serve this family will bring.  Below are three reflections from my daughters:

We went to the hospital to check out what is going on there, there were many sick people there and we saw all the doctors and nurses working diligently to help each person.  Every day Mike comes home and tells us what happy, crazy, or sad thing that happened that day. While Mike is working day AND night to help the residents of Tenwek hospital, Katie is working to keep the kids happy. Yesterday the whole neighborhood was over at her house and she managed to keep all the kids engaged (which did not look easy!) and she seemed calm the whole time. They both work really hard at their VERY different demanding jobs and still come home to their kids with a big smile on their face.

-       Lydia Estes (12)

I have loved getting the amazing opportunity to spend time here in Tenwek. Learning their amazing way of life, from their great relationships with their community, to their always-helping hearts and hands. I have loved getting to help many parts of Kenya, so it was fun to see another side of Kenya in a more day-to-day lifestyle. It was really cool just to see what its like to live in Kenya. I am truly blessed to have gotten this experience with this great family.

-        Isabel Estes (14)

Today my family and I went to an orphanage in rural Bomet. When we first got there some of the kids were lined up to shake our hands and greet us. We then got a tour of the place and almost everywhere you looked you had an amazing view of the land and mountains. My two sisters and I each shared a scripture verse with the kids. After all this we went outside and played with them for almost two hours. I played volleyball with some of the older kids which was really fun while my parents were turning the jumprope for some of the younger kids. We then went down the road a ways and had chai with the pastor who ran the orphanage and his family and we talked about the joys and challenges of running an orphanage. He then invited us to go back tomorrow and play volleyball at the high school where he taught.

                                                              -      Virginia Estes (16)