The exchange visits between Christians Aware and the Kenya Anglican Youth Organisation began in 1980 and have subsequently taken place every year either in Kenya or in Britain. Practical work is always involved. This has included the building of four teachers' houses for a new primary school and in the semi-desert Mukogodo area of Kenya. In addition to British Christians Aware members and Kenya Anglican Youth Organisation members there were the local Maasai people who, notwithstanding the language problems, in working alongside their visitors, became genuine friends. British and Kikuyu people alike were given the exceptional tribute of being invited into homes and being present at an afternoon of singing and dancing.'

Other work-camps in Kenya have entailed the building of a youth centre, a youth worker's house and an agricultural centre.' Tree planting has been shared with local people in Kenya and in Tanzania. Work camps in Britain have involved a children's holiday camp in North London and farming, gardening and general help in a Yorkshire village for handicapped people. ' The Yorkshire work camp included twenty seven Kenyans and visitors from six other countries.

Our experience is that the work-camps provide an excellent opportunity for human barriers to be broken down and for friendships to develop which in the more usual circumstances of an overseas visit would take much longer.

Our experience is also that understanding and friendship are more likely to grow if the practical living arrangements on an overseas visit are those of the particular country the individual or group is in. It is almost impossible for visitors to a country to meet people, to learn about the culture and to develop friendship if they are living in a hotel and travelling around in a coach, shielded always by a plate of glass from the real thing, the real people. Christians Aware visits and exchanges usually include a tented camp or dormitory accommodation together with the host group, and also a time spent in a family. In this way, after detailed preparation, participants are involved in washing clothes and in preparing food and cooking in local conditions. They usually come to understand local problems and shortages, sometimes including shortages of fuel, water, and protein and vitamin foods.

There is also the interminable time spent in simple everyday tasks. They also come to appreciate local skills, recipes, customs, reflections and understandings. They listen to stories and they are the richer. They receive kindness, generosity and understanding from people who are usually materially far poorer than they are. Illustrations include a meal of egg, bread and jam in a Moslem village in New Nubia, Upper Egypt during Ramadhan when no one else ate. a meal in a Maasai community in a remote area of Kenya, of tender and delicious goat; special sweets shared in a Calcutta bustee; a variety of tasty fish dishes in Calcutta and Sri Lanka and the open-handed way the people of Sri Lanka lent clothes and sheets to a group which lost its luggage on the air journey.

Honest friendship can never be one-sided, all must somehow be givers and receivers. When British CA members visit overseas communities and groups they are sometimes surprised by one-sided relationships. Local people recall that visitors have talked at them and have offered unsolicited advice. CA groups and individual members regularly visit Calcutta as guests of the Young Men's Welfare Society, a multi-faith development community involved in primary education and health care, and in community work. During one visit to a local bustee, Mr. Annisuddaula, a member of the bustee committee, explained that in the eleven years of its life the committee had produced a local team of community workers and had started a number of development projects, including a health centre, a leprosy care programme, an eye clinic, mother and child clinics, a women's adult literacy c-centre, a development education and leadership training programme and many cultural activities. He said that when some of the projects had been helped by experts from outside the community, the local people had not been involved in the planning, and the projects had almost failed. This seems to have been mainly because the local people had been made to feel inadequate in the face of so much knowledge.' Now the only outsiders who are welcome in that community, and many like it, are those who go to listen, to share and therefore to encourage the people in the unearthing of their own resources for life.

Christians Aware has no experts and hopes to be able to share listening and talking, receiving and giving, in all its work. Members are encouraged by Ronald Wynne, who worked with the Hambukushu people at Etsha by the Okavango River in Botswana. He lived with the people and learnt their language and culture, and gradually became part of their community. He did not attempt to share his Christian faith during his first six years in Etsha, and when he did so he began with the Exodus story which the people had themselves endured. He said of his learning experience in Etsha, "One never goes to a place where God is absent." 1£s advice to Christians Aware is, "Do not try to teach anyone anything until you have learnt something from them. "

Nowhere, is listening as well as talking, receiving as well as giving, more important than in multi-faith dialogue. Christians Aware overseas visits and exchanges frequently include dialogue with people of other faiths. Individuals and groups have visited Sri Lanka as guests of the multi-faith Centre for Society and Religion. Members are invited to multi-faith Christian and Buddhist places of worship and development work. They are introduced to work in which leaders and members of all the religious groups meditate together and work together in seeking a way forward for their island.' One example of people of faith working together is in the World Solidarity Forum for justice and peace, founded in Thailand in 1990 with representatives from 19 countries. A Peace Memorandum has been produced from the work of people at all levels in society, and from all faiths in Sri Lanka. It is a challenge to people in Sri Lanka and all over the world to act positively for peace and justice for all.

Many Christians Aware members believe that no person can be considered to be outside God's love, grace and salvation, as all are created by God and have the spark of God in them. Peter Seem Ole Matunge, a Christians Aware Maasai member, is continually trying to awaken Christians to the reality of the Maasai awareness of God through their traditional religion, and to persuade them that there is a lot to learn as well as to share.

It is only by approaching others in the humble way of learning that meeting them at a deep level is possible. This meeting may lead not only to personal enrichment and to new awareness of other people, but also to new awareness of God, and therefore to new commitment to the development of all the people of God.