Kuliko Jana

It’s 3:00 p.m. on Thursday, Sept. 14, 2017, and I just purchased season tickets for next year’s Dallas Summer Musicals. As a new season ticket holder, I am now guaranteed tickets to see Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Hamilton when the show comes to Dallas in 2019. Two years is a long-time to wait, but the good news is next year’s lineup features some all-time classics, including a childhood favorite of mine: The Lion King. My brothers and I probably watched the movie more than 100 times growing up. To this day, I still remember the words to songs like “The Circle of Life” and “Hakuna Matata.” Hakuna Matata means “No Worries,” and until recently, those were the only Swahili words I had ever known.

Visiting Africa had always been a lifelong dream of mine. In fact, when my twin brother and I co-founded our education nonprofit, Impossible Possibilities, we even incorporated an international program named “Past the Periphery” with a long-term vision to build schools overseas. It seemed far-fetched at the time, but 10 years later our vision came full circle when we partnered with an organization named Inspire Spaces to help build a school in a remote part of Kenya.

We spent the first five days of our trip in a small town named Emali located several hours southeast of the capital city Nairobi. It was a dry, arid place with a rusty-red landscape and sparse vegetation. Clouds of dust followed our 20-passenger bus every time our driver turned off the semi-paved highway and onto the red-dirt roads of the African countryside.

Our team was a mix of Texan and Kenyan volunteers who quickly bonded over a Swahili worship song named “Kuliko Jana,” a phrase that means “more than yesterday.” It was one of several songs we learned during our very first drive across the sun-scored lands of East Africa to the Kyanni Primary School 45-minutes away.

We received quite the greeting from the village mothers who celebrated our arrival with a traditional African song and dance. The principal then gave us a tour of the area and showed us the school that we would be replacing, which was nothing more than a small mud hut with a sheet-metal roof. Heavy winds had toppled a second hut just weeks before and there was no way to know how much longer the remaining one would last. We had our work cut out for us to say the least.

Over the next five days, we built close to 100 desks from scratch, constructed a roof for the new school, and literally moved tons of dirt with little more than a few wheelbarrows, shovels and picks. Most of the saws on site were dull, and all of the mortar used for the school had to be mixed by hand in a painstaking process that made you appreciate all of the amenities we often take for granted in the States.

The work was physically challenging but spiritually rewarding. Each of us volunteers was assigned a group of students that we worked alongside and mentored throughout the week. My group consisted of seven girls and one boy, ages 14-16, all with thick outer shells as difficult to break through as the stubborn red clay we were digging in the fields.

Each student had a story to tell, but I quickly realized I would have to share my own if I was to earn their trust. Only then did our conversations evolve into a much more meaningful dialogue. I listened to their heart-wrenching stories of poverty, sickness and broken families and started to see a much clearer picture of what life was like growing up in a developing country. The fact that any of them was there was a miracle in itself, which made it worthwhile for me to positively impact their lives.

I went out of my way to memorize both their English and Swahili names, prayed for them daily and told them I loved them as often as possible. In exchange, they revealed their career aspirations of becoming nurses, pilots and even journalists—their dreams extending far beyond the African backcountry.

Several years ago I designed a few bookmarks that I carry with me on all of my trips. One side has a picture of my main character Maven, who you know by now is a raven, and the flip side has either a picture of Tallie, a peregrine falcon, or Perce, a scarlet macaw. I explained to the girls that peregrine falcons are fierce birds with razor-sharp talons and an ability to fly upward of 250 miles per hour and, similar to Tallie, I told them they were as beautiful on the outside as they were strong on the inside.

And to Wambua, the lone boy, I explained that macaws are one of the smartest animals on the planet and neither he nor Perce should ever be taken lightly because they were both battle-tested warriors. I passed out the bookmarks and encouraged them to work their hardest and never give up on their dreams because Philippians 1:6 says, “He who began a good work in you will carry it out to completion.”

It was an unforgettable experience and one that I’m thankful to have been a part of. Moving forward, when I think of Africa, a new soundtrack will come to mind that does not include the words “Hakuna Matata.” If anything, my trip to Kenya has taught me that the only way to truly have no worries is to remember that “Yesu unipende leo, kuliko jana” (Jesus loves me today, more than yesterday).

Follow me on Instagram at @Joshua_Maven or @HonchotheVan, on Twitter @MaventheRaven or Facebook at Facebook/TheLastImperial.