In 1988 while on active duty in the Army, I helped with a humanitarian expedition in Kenya. The participants were mostly college-aged men and women from Britain and America who had paid their own way to be part of the effort.
The expedition was divided into groups that were assigned projects in various parts of the country. One of the projects I supervised was at the Limuru Boys Centre.
The Centre taught agricultural skills to boys so that they could become employable and help support themselves and their families.
My group at Limuru consisted of four young men and three young women. We were white, working at an all-black school. The school was thrilled to have us and we were thrilled to be there.
One of the projects we took on was to pour a rough, gently sloping concrete slab for cows to be washed on. It needed to be rough so the cows wouldn’t slip on the wet surface, and sloping so the dirty water could run off.
The slab would be constructed using hand tools. None of my group had any construction experience, but they were excited to learn.
The project consisted of five steps: remove the vegetation; hoe, rake, and slope the ground; compact the dirt; build low wooden frames to hold each section of wet concrete; and hand-mix and pour concrete into each section.
The members of my group had soft hands and no gloves. Blisters would abound. Nonetheless, they took to the work with enthusiasm – hoeing and raking and tamping. We worked in the mornings and late afternoons, avoiding the heat of mid-day.
I told you all that so I could tell you this.
One morning, several of the group were using tampers to compact the earth, preparing it for concrete to be poured. A tamper consisted of a heavy iron disk fastened to the end of a long handle. The handle would be lifted vertically, bringing the disk up to about knee height, then slammed straight down onto the ground.
It was intense, repetitive work. Arms and shoulders soon ached, and sweat made the handles difficult to hold. Every 10 minutes or so, the tampers would be handed off to others in the group who would work for 10 minutes, then hand them back.
During these efforts, a group of black men in suits gathered at a nearby wooden fence. I was called over to meet them and explain our project. The men expressed thanks for our help and shook my hand.
One of the men, a religious minister, held onto my hand for a long moment.
“I never expected,” he said, “to see the day . . .”
He paused a moment to get control of his emotions, then continued. “I never expected to see the day when white men would do such work as this. And do it for blacks.”
My group and I thought we were building a cow-washing slab. Turns out we were also building hope.
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