Trip to Kenya changes A&M student

Patsy Pelton
Today’s Catholic

Van Sciver worked during her six-month stay in the preschool class.
Photo provided

    “It was very hard to come back to the United States,” shared a pensive Laura Van Sciver following a six month stay in Kenya. “Some of my friends just could not understand that. “But,” she added, “I fell in love with the children, the simple lifestyle and the peace I found there. I would go back in a minute if someone handed me a blank check for my expenses!”
    Reflecting on her return to American culture, the Texas A&M student was distressed that “People are so obsessed with their own self-gratification — whether that means what kind of car they drive, getting a manicure, or whether Paris Hilton is going to jail. They lose their perspective on what is really important.
    “What’s really important is that there is so much suffering in the world, so much poverty, so much corruption. I can’t ignore it any more. I can’t turn my back any longer on these problems. I have to be involved; maybe I can make a difference,” stressed Van Sciver, a parishioner at Our Lady of Perpetual Help in Selma.

    She decided to visit Kenya after taking an anthropology class she so enjoyed. After investigating opportunities via the Internet, she contacted the International Cultural Youth Exchange (ICYE). She then began raising nearly $10,000 in order to travel to Kenya. Through the ICYE, she found work at the St. Brigid Nursery School, located outside the capital city of Nairobi.

    She had wanted to stay for a year. Her mother asked her to try the experience for six months. “I agreed to my mom’s request because I knew it was going to be hard for her to let me go so very far away. Everyone was glad I could still keep in contact via the Internet. In order to get Internet access, we had to take a ‘matatu,’ (mini-bus) into town.”

    When she traveled to Kenya in January, she met Erin, her roommate from Oregon. Van Sciver recalled, “When I first met her, Erin professed to be an agnostic. After she got her master’s degree in public health with a focus in HIV/AIDS prevention and awareness, Erin worked at St. Brigid’s clinic.” The mission of the clinic and the school, both run by Capuchin priests and brothers, is to provide affordable health care and education.
Both young women, despite being very different in nearly every way, formed a great friendship. During Holy Week, Van Sciver had a life-changing experience. She walked through the Mathare slum for three hours on Good Friday to pray the Way of the Cross. After Easter Sunday Mass in a tiny chapel, Van Sciver knew her perspective on life would never be the same. Even Erin professed to have felt quite a sense of peace through the week.

    “In the midst of the odor of raw sewage, flies and piles of filth in Mathare, nothing disturbed the reverence of the people as they prayed and walked with Jesus through his Passion and suffering, even as they walked through the suffering in Mathare. The church was packed on Easter Sunday as Mass lasted two and a half hours! People were praying, singing and dancing. It was incredible!”

     Van Sciver worked during her six-month stay in the preschool class. She was particularly impressed by Father Peter Mwanzia, who showed her the attitude, “despite the fact that we have many political, education and medical problems, we have the faith that God will provide.” She nicknamed him “Father Happy-all-the-time,” which he remained even when a terrorist sect, the Mungiki, came and destroyed the slums which the people call their homes. Father Mwanzia has enlisted Van Sciver to help him raise the $23,000 needed to build a school, rebuild the church (where she attended on Easter Sunday), and to rebuild tin-roofed homes for over 200 families.

    Van Sciver has returned this semester to Texas A&M. “Now I need to discern what God wants me to do with my life now after this experience. My immediate focus is to do whatever I can to raise the money needed to help the good people of Mathare.”