Kenyan woman finds new purpose after moving to America
By John Quinlan, Journal staff writer | Posted: Sunday, April 20, 2008
Susan and Tom Smith work in Ida Grove, Iowa, but work as missionaries in Kenya. (Staff photo by Jerry Mennenga)
IDA GROVE, Iowa -- Six months pregnant, newly widowed Susan Smith was thrown out into the streets of the dirt-poor village of Nanyuki in AIDS-stricken Kenya by her angry ex-in-laws. Her husband's kin kept her property but had no use for Susan because she wouldn't re-marry within the family, wife inheritance being the custom. Multiple wives, too. She was a Christian, and their plans didn't jibe with hers. Yet to them, she was no better than a prostitute for rejecting their plans.
As it turned out, the fellow she was to marry eventually disappeared and presumably died of the AIDS epidemic which has ravaged Africa in recent years. Kenya's official HIV/AIDS prevalence rate is 5.1 percent, and since 1984, AIDS has killed at least 1.5 million people in the country, resulting in millions of orphans. One contributor to the spread of the disease, experts note, is the custom of wife inheritance.
"It was hard for me. I was kicked out of the family ... and you lose everything, the farms, anything you have with your husband. You lose it," Smith said.
But she didn't lose her faith. Nor her hope that things would get better.
"It was hard because I was about to die, for real," she said. "That's how I came to have that thing in me because I felt how they feel when you sleep outside on the street, eating garbage."
"That thing" is the missionary zeal to make things better for the orphans living in the streets of her hometown of about 7,000 near Mount Kenya. It is a zeal that she took with her to America where she met and married an Iowa National Guardsman (and widower) named Tom Smith and moved to a modest home in Ida Grove. It is the second marriage for both of them, who each had six children from their first marriages.
But back when she was sleeping in the streets of Nanyuki, marriage was the furthest thing from her mind.
"The in-laws were so bad to me that they started talking bad things of me," she said. "Nobody talked to me. I was ostracized.
"I got so skinny like everybody was thinking I was going to die, and they did not care because 'she refused to get married.'"
Susan had a brother in Nairobi, but lacked the money to get there. So the street kids for whom she had been begging for food pooled their savings after a week and offered her 10 shillings to make her escape. By then, however, her brother had heard of her troubles and gone to get her.
Three months later in Nairobi, her daughter Janet, now 8, was born, and Susan knew that she had to go back to her village. "So I told my brother, 'I need to help those kids. Even if I have nothing, you can start from scratch, going around asking for food from people.' And that is exactly what I did," she said.
She begged for food, then cooked it for the street kids in her house, where orphans slept on the floor. What became a sort of unofficial orphanage occupied her life fulltime for the next few years in a large ghetto area called Rikii next to Nanyuki. It's about 5 miles from Susan's former family farm where the Smiths are working to grow food for the orphans. Getting the farming operation up and running has been another priority.
Eventually her son Martin, a minister, moved into the "orphanage" building, converting it to a church operation where orphans could come for one meal a day, care and shelter as needed. As a licensed orphanage, the taxes would have been prohibitive, Susan said.
It is where she expected to live out her life, not knowing that her future was in Ida Grove.
Smith Outreach Ministries
"So even when I came to America, I not have any idea of marriage," she said. "But God works in mysterious ways ... because when I met Tom and he talked, I thought, OK, God has a plan. And we married. And now we are getting along so good and we are helping thousands of people in Africa."
That help is coming through Smith Outreach Ministries of Kenya, an unaffiliated, non-profit organization the Smiths started in 2004 when they returned to Kenya as missionaries -- Susan continuing work she had already begun there. She has been doing missionary work her whole life. It was something she learned from her father, who had been converted by a European missionary.
The Smiths met in 2003 when Susan flew to Kentucky to visit one of her daughters, who lived there, and Tom was stationed at Fort Campbell after being activated by the Guard. As a cook in a helicopter repair company, Tom's service in Iraq was deemed unnecessary. So he was shipped to Kentucky while many of his buddies were sent overseas. He and Susan were married in a Baptist church in Clarksville, Ky., at year's end, returning to Ida Grove when Tom retired from the Guard.
This is not, however, one of those big-ticket, heavily funded missionary enterprises. Smith Outreach squeaks by mostly on the income from Tom's fabrication job at GOMACO Corp. and Susan's housekeeping work at Horn Memorial Hospital. Tom sees it as his way to help Susan pursue her dreams.
They both traveled to the East African country in 2005, but the travel expenses sometimes make it impossible for both to make those annual trips.
To cut expenses at home and save for the orphans, the Smiths eat one meal a day, a Kenyan tradition. But the food is in the American tradition. Tom said he tried a Kenyan meal once, but with everything being cooked in one pot, once was enough.
Their last trip together required a bank loan. Then when they tried to return, they were stopped at the Nairobi airport because Susan's green card had expired. By then, of course, they had given away all of their money (and extra clothes) and had to wire some friends in Ida Grove for financial help. They had to wait in Kenya 10 more days. Tom's military I.D. helped them open the doors they needed to get the OK for Susan's return to Iowa, she said.
Next time, she will be sure her green card is current. It will be a couple of years before Susan qualifies for U.S. citizenship.
First brush with death
Susan's sad time on the streets of Nanyuki was not her first brush with death in Kenya.
She said her mother was pregnant with her as her countrymen were fighting for independence from Great Britain, which was won in 1963. Her mother was a prisoner of the British on a work farm when Susan was born prematurely and dumped in a large room with all of the workers' children while their parents tilled the fields. And there was nothing to eat. Many children died.
So her mother started chewing the bark from trees in the nearby forest.
"And Mom was coming with bark again and chewing it with her mouth. And because she does not have nothing in her boobies, like milk, she was feeding me from her mouth, that bark thing. Like a bird," she said. "So I was a little thing dying, and God, he found me, and I did not die. Other kids were dying and I am still alive. I say, 'Thank you. Let me work for you forever.'
"That's why I say, God can make miraculous because now I'm a big girl in a very big country like this."
To which Tom added: "She's even kind of pretty."
Not pretty was life in Kenya as Tom experienced it on his first visit. It's a part of the country that doesn't see many tourists.
"I expected to see some poverty but not to the extent that I saw," he said.
Though admitting she has had "some sad history in Africa," Susan said her return to Nanyuki immediately paid dividends. She has found an acceptance she didn't have before, and when the Smiths visit these days, they are almost treated as visiting royalty.
On their first joint visit in 2005, more than 500 people from the village -- "the very village that kicked me out" -- came to greet them with singing and dancing. "And the boss is a chief, and this guy came running, hugged us and started crying," she said. "He told us, 'We need you here. We need you right back here.' I was kind of scared going back there, but now I feel..."
Good is the word she couldn't find, tears welling in her eyes.
But not everyone would apologize. Her former in-laws still refuse to acknowledge her, so unlike her late first husband who was "a great Christian" with whom she used to do church work.
The work she started with her father she now does with Tom.
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As it turned out, the fellow she was to marry eventually disappeared and presumably died of the AIDS epidemic which has ravaged Africa in recent years. Kenya's official HIV/AIDS prevalence rate is 5.1 percent, and since 1984, AIDS has killed at least 1.5 million people in the country, resulting in millions of orphans. One contributor to the spread of the disease, experts note, is the custom of wife inheritance.
"It was hard for me. I was kicked out of the family ... and you lose everything, the farms, anything you have with your husband. You lose it," Smith said.
But she didn't lose her faith. Nor her hope that things would get better.
"It was hard because I was about to die, for real," she said. "That's how I came to have that thing in me because I felt how they feel when you sleep outside on the street, eating garbage."
"That thing" is the missionary zeal to make things better for the orphans living in the streets of her hometown of about 7,000 near Mount Kenya. It is a zeal that she took with her to America where she met and married an Iowa National Guardsman (and widower) named Tom Smith and moved to a modest home in Ida Grove. It is the second marriage for both of them, who each had six children from their first marriages.
But back when she was sleeping in the streets of Nanyuki, marriage was the furthest thing from her mind.
"The in-laws were so bad to me that they started talking bad things of me," she said. "Nobody talked to me. I was ostracized.
"I got so skinny like everybody was thinking I was going to die, and they did not care because 'she refused to get married.'"
Susan had a brother in Nairobi, but lacked the money to get there. So the street kids for whom she had been begging for food pooled their savings after a week and offered her 10 shillings to make her escape. By then, however, her brother had heard of her troubles and gone to get her.
Three months later in Nairobi, her daughter Janet, now 8, was born, and Susan knew that she had to go back to her village. "So I told my brother, 'I need to help those kids. Even if I have nothing, you can start from scratch, going around asking for food from people.' And that is exactly what I did," she said.
She begged for food, then cooked it for the street kids in her house, where orphans slept on the floor. What became a sort of unofficial orphanage occupied her life fulltime for the next few years in a large ghetto area called Rikii next to Nanyuki. It's about 5 miles from Susan's former family farm where the Smiths are working to grow food for the orphans. Getting the farming operation up and running has been another priority.
Eventually her son Martin, a minister, moved into the "orphanage" building, converting it to a church operation where orphans could come for one meal a day, care and shelter as needed. As a licensed orphanage, the taxes would have been prohibitive, Susan said.
It is where she expected to live out her life, not knowing that her future was in Ida Grove.
Smith Outreach Ministries
"So even when I came to America, I not have any idea of marriage," she said. "But God works in mysterious ways ... because when I met Tom and he talked, I thought, OK, God has a plan. And we married. And now we are getting along so good and we are helping thousands of people in Africa."
That help is coming through Smith Outreach Ministries of Kenya, an unaffiliated, non-profit organization the Smiths started in 2004 when they returned to Kenya as missionaries -- Susan continuing work she had already begun there. She has been doing missionary work her whole life. It was something she learned from her father, who had been converted by a European missionary.
The Smiths met in 2003 when Susan flew to Kentucky to visit one of her daughters, who lived there, and Tom was stationed at Fort Campbell after being activated by the Guard. As a cook in a helicopter repair company, Tom's service in Iraq was deemed unnecessary. So he was shipped to Kentucky while many of his buddies were sent overseas. He and Susan were married in a Baptist church in Clarksville, Ky., at year's end, returning to Ida Grove when Tom retired from the Guard.
This is not, however, one of those big-ticket, heavily funded missionary enterprises. Smith Outreach squeaks by mostly on the income from Tom's fabrication job at GOMACO Corp. and Susan's housekeeping work at Horn Memorial Hospital. Tom sees it as his way to help Susan pursue her dreams.
They both traveled to the East African country in 2005, but the travel expenses sometimes make it impossible for both to make those annual trips.
To cut expenses at home and save for the orphans, the Smiths eat one meal a day, a Kenyan tradition. But the food is in the American tradition. Tom said he tried a Kenyan meal once, but with everything being cooked in one pot, once was enough.
Their last trip together required a bank loan. Then when they tried to return, they were stopped at the Nairobi airport because Susan's green card had expired. By then, of course, they had given away all of their money (and extra clothes) and had to wire some friends in Ida Grove for financial help. They had to wait in Kenya 10 more days. Tom's military I.D. helped them open the doors they needed to get the OK for Susan's return to Iowa, she said.
Next time, she will be sure her green card is current. It will be a couple of years before Susan qualifies for U.S. citizenship.
First brush with death
Susan's sad time on the streets of Nanyuki was not her first brush with death in Kenya.
She said her mother was pregnant with her as her countrymen were fighting for independence from Great Britain, which was won in 1963. Her mother was a prisoner of the British on a work farm when Susan was born prematurely and dumped in a large room with all of the workers' children while their parents tilled the fields. And there was nothing to eat. Many children died.
So her mother started chewing the bark from trees in the nearby forest.
"And Mom was coming with bark again and chewing it with her mouth. And because she does not have nothing in her boobies, like milk, she was feeding me from her mouth, that bark thing. Like a bird," she said. "So I was a little thing dying, and God, he found me, and I did not die. Other kids were dying and I am still alive. I say, 'Thank you. Let me work for you forever.'
"That's why I say, God can make miraculous because now I'm a big girl in a very big country like this."
To which Tom added: "She's even kind of pretty."
Not pretty was life in Kenya as Tom experienced it on his first visit. It's a part of the country that doesn't see many tourists.
"I expected to see some poverty but not to the extent that I saw," he said.
Though admitting she has had "some sad history in Africa," Susan said her return to Nanyuki immediately paid dividends. She has found an acceptance she didn't have before, and when the Smiths visit these days, they are almost treated as visiting royalty.
On their first joint visit in 2005, more than 500 people from the village -- "the very village that kicked me out" -- came to greet them with singing and dancing. "And the boss is a chief, and this guy came running, hugged us and started crying," she said. "He told us, 'We need you here. We need you right back here.' I was kind of scared going back there, but now I feel..."
Good is the word she couldn't find, tears welling in her eyes.
But not everyone would apologize. Her former in-laws still refuse to acknowledge her, so unlike her late first husband who was "a great Christian" with whom she used to do church work.
The work she started with her father she now does with Tom.
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Edgar wrote on Oct 18, 2008 8:02 PM:
janet wrote on Oct 2, 2008 10:43 PM: