On Saturday, July 9, we are on the ground at Nairobi International at 6:10 a.m. Our group of eleven checks into the Carmelite Center, where a quick shower temporarily washes away our jet lag. By 9 a.m. we are en route to Holy Cross Parish. For the third time in four years, we have traveled from St. Monica Parish in Santa Monica to be with our sister parish in Dandora, a suburb on the east side of the capitol city of Nairobi, in the country of Kenya, East Africa.

For nine days, our vans travel back and forth across Nairobi. The roads produce a constant massage of pothole concussions. People are walking along the dirt shoulder or pedaling bikes, transportation vans called "matatus" are scurrying everywhere, and thick pollution chokes the roadway. Rusting shacks and small kiosks selling grilled corn or bottled soda line the road.

We reach the edge of Dandora, and as we turn onto the main drag, we behold an image like a nightmare. The dump of Nairobi borders this neighborhood, smelling sour and looking like a war zone, replete with fires and scavenging creatures --- an arrangement of huge marabou storks, pigs coated in mud, a cow, goats and human beings rooting through the trash and refuse. Our drivers will not come to Dandora after nightfall, and we are told that it is a dangerous place.

This is the backdrop to most of our journey --- an endless skid row of suffering and despair. But from this squalor, unimaginably, surprisingly, emerges a great light. It bathes me, and I find myself acclimating to what was previously inspiring thoughts of escape, medication, or denial. Here is an environment where people cannot hide from death and resurrection, where their faith is no small pastime. It is a living, breathing spirit that produces warmth, hospitality and smiles in places that otherwise would have been thought to issue only destruction.

Like the palms of an oasis, the steeple of Holy Cross rises above Dandora. The church seats 2,000 at each of their three Sunday Masses. A second church is packed for three liturgies as well. On the parish grounds, the Brother Andre Dispensary serves more than 200 patients a day. Their grade school, St. James, is educating approximately 250 students, has produced its first sixth grade class, and is growing.

Their Boma Rescue Mission pulls in children who were living on the dump, and reintegrates them into families that will care for them. There is even a Volunteer Counseling & Testing clinic that tests and administers to those suffering from HIV-AIDS, which afflicts 1 in every 20 men, 1 in every 11 women, and 1 in every 6 pregnant women in Kenya. At the base of this community are small faith-sharing groups that cast a broad net back into the neighborhood, welcoming, caring for, and serving their neighbors.

It is in these various places that we encounter something much greater than ourselves. In low-income housing courtyards, not unlike the catacombs, we see lay leaders speaking with such charisma and faith as to elicit images of Paul or Peter. The boys and girls of Boma dance and play drums in performance for us. And there is the simple, almost perfect peace of a nurse who leads us through the dispensary.

Our trip is over before we know it. We return to Santa Monica, our lives predictably changed. Some do not yet know what the journey means for them individually. But amidst the hardship of Dandora, what we remember are happy, dedicated, holy people.

The work of our Africa Ministry is renewed, and our parish committee now discerns the deepening of our ongoing relationship with Holy Cross Parish and the third world. Over the past few years, funding has produced new classrooms at the St. James Primary School, ongoing scholarships for students in both primary and secondary education, and computers for the education of adult parishioners. This year, continued assistance will go to the Brother Andre Dispensary for the purchase of much needed healthcare supplies and medical equipment, in addition to support for their HIV-AIDS clinic.

It is a challenge to avoid being judgmental of country and society in light of suffering elsewhere, or even in our own backyard. But awareness is the road by which we arrive at a greater and more active compassion for self and others. This is what I feel I have learned, and through this awareness, that I am called to live in solidarity with my brothers and sisters, both at home, and abroad.

I confess to you that, disturbed, I recognized them, and they me, and Christ was alive and among us on the other side of the world.

Jason Farmer is the communications coordinator for St. Monica Parish Community in Santa Monica: www.stmonica.net