Jez Smith with young Friends from the Chwele Yearly Meeting youth choir at the Young Quakers Christian Association Africa Triennial in western Kenya Photo: Photo: Chwele Yearly Meeting youth choir.
We are family
Jez Smith visited Kenya in December. He shares the inspiration for going and what he found when he got there
I have stories to tell. About Friends from another part of the world, their lives and about how we interact. I want to write of how we’re all part of one big family, united by our use of the name ‘Friends’. About how we in the minority are connected to people in the majority world through our religion and about how we need to build bridges.
This isn’t a sudden revelation story. Revelation is a slow ongoing process. There are occasional rays of new Light, but for the cliché that this is, the Quaker journey goes on. For me, there won’t be a ‘Quaker Meeting is like coming home’ moment. Instead, the journey is it.
I hadn’t intended to travel to Kenya. In fact I hadn’t even intended to fly any more. That was one journey that I hadn’t intended to be a part of. And yet, off I went to Kenya, having flown from Heathrow on the day that so many of my friends were taking part in the pre-Copenhagen Wave demonstration in London. Had I sold out?
I had long wondered about how the Friend could develop regular content from Friends around the world. But no specific ideas had formed. We had hoped that our then news reporter, Oliver Robertson, would go to Kenya in 2008, but the disruption caused by the post-election violence early in that year put paid to any plans for him to go. As it was, the post-election violence had a significant impact on my trip, almost two years after it occurred, but more about that later.
