Susan Hendricks stands with Maasai Warriers–in–training, Kenya’s Maasai Mara, at Maji Moto Widows village Mzungu—that is what the people of Kenya and Uganda called the pale visitors from across the ocean. It is a common Swahili term for “white person.”

“But it wasn’t a negative word,” Nancy Truluck said. “A lot of people were just curious to see a white person.”

Truluck and her friend and traveling companion Susan Hendricks were on the adventure of a lifetime to the strange lands of Eastern Africa. As they traveled through Kenya and Uganda, the women began to realize how skin color and geography could be the difference between life and death for a woman.

It was an excursion sponsored by Dining for Women, a national philanthropic organization founded in Greenville by Marsha Wallace. Dining for Women encourages groups of women across the country to gather one night a month for a pot luck supper. At the end of the evening the women donate funds—likely what they would have spent eating out—and that money goes to a grassroots organization that serves women.

M-LISADA orphanage residents with the women from Dining with Women Both clinical social workers, Truluck and Hendricks were interested in the concept, and Hendricks agreed to host an event at her home. The party raised money to establish administration funds for Dining for Women. Previously, the group had donated every dollar to the chosen charity, but as the organization has grown, administration funding has become a necessity.While in each country, Truluck and Hendricks, who were joined by 16 other women, would visit many of the small organizations that benefit from Dining for Women funds. “I had the opportunity to meet and interact with women on the other side of the globe whose lives are very different from mine,” Truluck said. “I was able to experience things that I would never have encountered as a tourist.”

Nancy Truluck with orphan at M-LISADA The month–long trip tested their comfort levels and their ability to deal with the face of extreme poverty that simply isn’t seen in the United States. Kenya

Kenya is situated on the Eastern coast of Africa, south of Ethiopia and Somalia and north of Tanzania. It is home to 38 million people of various tribes and a wealth of wildlife. However, for many women in Kenya, life is often one of hardship, degradation, and suffering. Women are considered property, and it is tradition to trade daughters for livestock, which directly leads to the widespread problem of early marriages. Girls 12 and 13 are married to men decades older who have the necessary wealth to provide their fathers with many cows.

Susan Hendricks and Blessing Bahati at Friendship Village, a women's village sponsored by Bead for Life, near Mukono, Uganda. Female genital mutilation (FGM), although outlawed in Kenya, is still a tradition— one that is extremely painful and in many cases can lead to death. Women who refuse early marriage or FGM often run away and seek refuge at a few charitable places. For women who accept their life, it is no guarantee of safety; life as a widow can be equally harsh. Several of these organizations were stops on the trip.

“It makes you stop and think about the freedoms we have here,” Hendricks said. “In Africa (a woman’s) worth is three or four cows.”

When Truluck and Hendricks arrived in Nairobi, the capital of Kenya, following a nearly 24–hour trek from the United States they were met by Kathleen Colson, founder of the BOMA fund. BOMA is not an aid organization—at least not in the traditional sense. The program funds business and entrepreneurial training for impoverished women in the Laisamis and Karare regions of north Kenya. Business mentors, local community members who volunteer their time, are each assigned a small group of women who are given $50 seed money to start a business. They must write business plans and follow them. If they meet their goals they receive more money.

Woman sorts beads for sale at Bead for Life in Kampala, Uganda “A woman can move from food aid to feeding her family,” Hendricks said. “It’s not about giving people things. It’s helping them help themselves.”

Colson is known to the people of Kenya as Mama Rungu because she carries the traditional Maasai warrior staff called the rungu, something generally reserved for men. She arranged all the transportation for the group while they were in Kenya and guided them from location to location.

Rose, spokesperson for the women, with Nancy Truluck and Susan Hendricks in Umoja Village, Samburu Region, Kenya Their first stop was the Umoja Village, an all–women village for those seeking safety from early marriage and FGM. There the group was given an enthusiastic greeting from the women who were in traditional dress and wore the brightly colored beaded necklaces they sell to fund the village.

“Just about every place we went we were met with singing and dancing,” Truluck recalls. It was the generosity of spirit and joyous attitudes that struck the travelers. Even while living just a meager existence, these women could find happiness.

While in Kenya they also visited the Ujima Foundation for training and development. The organization houses about 60 teenage orphans and teaches them skills in the hospitality industry. When they are ready they work at the Maila Sabab Camp, a tourist lodging that serves as the fundraising arm of the organization. It is at the Maila Sabab Camp where BOMA’s business mentors shared their stories with the Dining for Women travelers. Although they do their volunteer work in the northern region of Kenya, they chose to come to the women since travel to their region is considered too dangerous due to rugged terrain and bandits.

There were several other stops in Kenya. The group toured the Mountain Lodge, home to Oils of Africa, a business that employs local women to gather herbs for all natural products and the Sekenani Camp located on the outskirts of the Maasai Mara Game Reserve. However, one of the most moving visits was to the Maasai village Maji Moto, home to the Enkiteng Lepa School founded by Hellen Nkurayia. The sign on the gate is a reminder of the school’s mission. It reads “Don’t exchange girls for cows, give them education.”

Enkiteng Lepa is both a school for local children and a refuge for girls and women. Nkurayia related her struggles of being threatened and beaten by tribal leaders who disagreed with her mission. Colson recalled the conversation in her blog about the trip. Nkurayia told her, “Just the day before I came to America to fundraise, the men of one girl’s family came to the school. They were beating me all along my shoulders and arms and when I arrived in the U.S., I was covered in bruises.”

Uganda

Uganda lies west of Kenya and is bordered in the south by Lake Victoria that stretches over 26,000 square miles. The travelers arrived in Uganda via plane and into an environment that the two describe as vastly different from what they experienced in Kenya.

“It was definitely more challenging,” Hendricks said. “The accommodations were sparse, and we were eating more native food.”

This leg of the journey was organized by Bead for Life, a non–profit organization that teaches Ugandan women how to make beautifully colored beads out of recycled paper. Their beads are then assembled into jewelry that is sold around the world thereby creating a business by which these women can support their families. Before Bead for Life, many of the women worked in quarries breaking rocks by hand for about $1 a day.

While in Kampala, the capital, the women visited the Bead for Life headquarters and met many of the women who are in bead– making training. They stayed for several days in the Friendship Village, a grouping of homes owned by Bead for Life participants. Through their bead making the women can afford monthly payments on these modest two–bedroom homes. There is no electricity or running water, but for women who used to live in unimaginable poverty, these homes are major accomplishments.

“We each were assigned to stay in a home,” Hendricks recalled. “We would follow them throughout their day.”

The stories they heard were amazing. Some women were raising not only their own but relative’s children. A few were victims of rape or other abuses. Truluck remembers the young son of her hostess being enchanted with the idea of a “mzungu” staying in their home.

“In Uganda you definitely had the sense of being different,” Hendricks said. “There were far fewer white people.”

Other stops on the Ugandan tour included the Boomu Women’s Group that works to better the lives of the people in their community through various projects such as handwoven baskets and the Infectious Diseases Institute at Makerere University. Like Kenya, they also took in the wildlife at the Budongo Forest, Kaniyo Pabidi Ecotourism site, and the Bwindi Impenetrable Gorilla Park.

But the one experience that really stood out was the group’s visit to the M–Lisada Music Life Skills and Destitute Alleviation. The group was founded by eight street children who wanted to start their own brass band. They eventually found a donor to provide them with used musical instruments. The funds they received from playing and other donations went to build the John Dickens House, now home to more than 70 orphans.

It is a heartwarming story, but one that is not without its daily struggles. “They took us on a tour of the house and showed us a tiny pantry that was basically bare,” Hendricks remembers. “When asked what they would eat for lunch the response was ‘we will not eat lunch today.’” The tour members went out and purchased food to stock the pantry.

Despite such dire circumstances the children were thrilled to meet their new visitors. “The minute we arrived we were surrounded by the children,” Hendricks said. “They were embracing us and looking at us the whole time. It put a real face on extreme poverty.”

The trip had a profound effect on many of the visitors. Upon returning some of the participants sent money back to pay for school fees for the children and to buy the orphanage a piano.

Both Midlands women were touched by their experiences in different ways but both agreed it was a trip unlike any other they have taken.

“It turned out to be much more than just an adventure,” Hendricks said.” The experience challenged all of my previous self–imposed limitations going beyond what I thought I could do physically, emotionally, and mentally. I'm glad I went and was very glad to get back home, too.”

Truluck walked away with an expanded knowledge of international aid and what does and does not work—in her newly informed opinion smaller is better—and local is the best. But it was the spirit of the people of Kenya and Uganda that touched her most.

“I thought ‘how can humans live like this?’” she said. “But it was paired with an enormous sense of generosity. These people who had nothing would still offer us what they had. It seems the more we have, the more tightly we hold on.”