Building Hope in Githurai
Domenic Cusmano
In Githurai, a suburb of about 100,000 people northeast of the capital Nairobi, the new Consolata Church has just been completed. Githurai Catholic Parish is a sprawling circular building with a great deal of land around it. I can hardly imagine that such a large church is ever full. Father Lukas Juma, IMC, is the parish priest. We go inside the rectory, and Father Lucas pours us a cool glass of water. I tell him how impressed I am by the grandeur of the church building. It has seating for over 2000 people, he tells me.
Among the Luo Near Kisumu
Domenic Cusmano
The city of Kisumu, the heart of the Luo ethnic group, lies on the eastern shore of Lake Victoria, about 300 kilometers northwest of Nairobi. Its relative proximity to the capital and to the Ugandan and Tanzanian borders, and the fact that it is surrounded by water, might suggest that Kisumu’s half-million people enjoy a relatively high standard of economic and social development. Instead, the region is fraught with severe poverty, non-existent infrastructure and the scourge of AIDS. (The Luo is also the tribe from which United States President Barack Obama traces his ancestry.) The Consolata missionaries working and living in there midst have their work cut out for them, as they try to bring hope to some of the most vulnerable people in Kenya.