The Greatest Field Trip Ever

By Jessica Pratezina

Photo: Kathryn GrayI bumped into the blog of a sister parishioner at Little Trinity and was immediately struck by gripping photographs of her two small Canadian children frolicking in Kenya. They ate sugar cane by the roadside, hung out with chickens and cattle, and played with kids their age on the other side of the world. Looking at those photos, I knew I needed to connect with Kathryn Gray, their mother, and find out what made her decide to take her children, by herself, to Africa for three weeks. 

Gray, 34, sits on a Toronto park bench and tells me her story between admonishing her five-year-old daughter Anna to keep her shoes on and her three-year-old son Joseph not to throw sand. 

"Street-involved people in urban centers in North America have always been my gig."

Kat had been working with marginalized people for the last ten years in one form or another. But this changed with her decision to home school her two small children.

"As a home-schooling parent you're looking for opportunities to expose your children to the world. My approach to home schooling is to let the kids explore and experience the world. 

"Being a mother opens your eyes to children and mothers all over the world, so that's probably where it started. I began to think about the state other women raise their families in all over the world. I began to be interested in Africa because, as a continent, it seems to be riddled with almost every social ill. I began reading about development. I like to understand problems and look for good solutions.”

Gray is not happy just doling out money to aid organizations, though she has done that.

“I started reading up on economics and looking at comprehensive solutions for Third World countries and I started to get excited about it, which is funny because economics is not at all my bag. I spent a year and a half reading and talking about social justice and hammering out ideas.  And I just felt like it was time for me to put my hand to something. I'd been retired for two years and I felt it was time to do something."

The opportunity to do something came when friends who operate a small, non-profit organization which focuses on supporting orphans and vulnerable children called ReACT Kenya, asked her if she would like to go to Kenya with them for three weeks.  Kat said, "Yes, but I want to bring my children." 

In an age where we don't let our kids cross the street alone, this woman was carting her children off to the other side of the world. 

"Needing to bring the children is hard for me to explain but since having the children, my experience with people living in poverty has been enriched.”

Gray has people living in her neighbourhood whom she used to know when she was Assistant Director at the Salvation Army Gateway. They now stop to talk to her about her children. 

“I'm able to connect with women living in Regent Park because we have children the same age.  I knew that if I took them to Kenya that my experience would be enriched. I would see things through their eyes and be able to connect with people faster because I have children."

When children are small, even a trip to the grocery store can require a lot of preparation. But Kat wanted to stay laid-back. 

"My approach to the whole trip was to not prepare them a lot. If something became difficult we would deal with it. I think sometimes we want to caution our children too much and we actually make them anxious. But if you let them just roll, for the most part they roll.”

The only thing Gray really spent a lot of time preparing them for was the two-day plane trip. But beyond that she didn't tell them a lot. 

“I didn't want them to have preconceived notions or stigmas. I didn't want them to notice that they were different from everyone.” 

Gray and her children stayed with Daniel Lipparelli, the founder of the non-profit organization Transformed International. He owns a compound that had space available and was able to give the three of them a bedroom, a tree-house and a see-saw. Each child took a book, one stuffed animal and colouring pencils. The kids had a blast. 

"That's all they had for three weeks and they were in heaven."   

But as enchanting and as exciting as Kenya was, with its immense flatness, bustling urban centres and rides on a boda-boda (bicycle taxi) there was still the heartbreak of a country that is struggling to stabilize its economy, politics and society. Only now, four months later, has Anna started talking about Kenya on a deeper level. She's starting to ask questions about the slums. The other day Anna asked “Why don't we build them houses?”

“I was so stumped because that is such a complex question. And there is no real answer. This would happen to me when I was working at the shelter. People would ask me 'What is the solution to homelessness?' And I couldn't answer them.”

In the end, Anna decided she wanted to send money to Daniel Lipparelli, the man they had been staying with in Kenya. 

“I hope that these experiences will foster in them a thirst for justice and a motivation to do something about injustice. But I also hope that they learn how complex these problems are and that just shipping some money off to Kenya isn't always the best thing. But for us sitting here in the West, it's the easiest. I'm not saying people shouldn't send money, but I am saying that we can't just send money."

But being an adult with a firmer grasp on the larger world and the principles at work in the suffering she saw around had a different effect on Gray.

"There were difficult things. I tucked it all away and all these months later I'm still processing.  The good thing was that the children didn't see anything really difficult. I went on a tour of the slums and didn't take the children. Most of the difficult things were hearing people's stories.

 "I'll admit that at times I don't always know what God wants of us. What I know is that God's heart is for justice. You can't ignore that. Christians love to compartmentalize and say 'we need to save souls.' And I kind of shrug my shoulders and say that if someone doesn't have enough to eat, no place to live and can't live safely... that's not okay. I try to look at everything holistically.” 

It took the young mother a long time to realize that Christianity is something that's meant to be lived out in community with other people and it's more holistic than just one’s 'soul.'

“God has called me to seek justice. Realistically, I'm just a stay-at-home mom who's trying to figure out how to be involved in my community and my world while I raise the children God gave me. Figuring this out with the kids is an ongoing process. And it does slow me down. When I was in Kenya I couldn't be just 'go, go, go' and be meeting people and exploring as much as I wanted to. But I wouldn't trade it for the world.”  

You can learn more about Transformed International at www.transformedinternational.org and ReAct Kenya at www.reactkenya.com