Despite a close call fighting a huge baboon for her lunch while on safari, Brenda Walker Beadenkopf enjoyed her visit to Africa.
At Kariobangi Friends Church in Nairobi, she had her photo made with Sunday school children and teachers outside while wearing the typical white headscarf Quaker women wear to church in Kenya.
Nearby, a grenade was thrown into a church, killing one and injuring 16.
“Too close,” the Edwardsburg resident said. “The Taliban claimed credit for the deed. We in Michigan do not live with this threat day to day like that. I felt bathed in prayer the whole time I was overseas.”
A Quaker is in the running to be the next president of Kenya, Musalia Mudavadi.
Beadenkopf returned May 7 from about a month in Kenya as a delegate and workshop leader to a Quaker World Conference at Kabarak University near Nakuru in northwest Kenya.
Beadenkopf went as a delegate from Philadelphia Yearly Meeting, but Indiana Yearly Meeting strongly supported her as well. She is a member of both Yearly Meetings, as she belongs to both Penn Friends Community Church in Cassopolis and Concord Friends Meeting near Philadelphia.
She is writing a biography about her father, Quaker activist and expert in non-violence Charlie Walker, who worked in the civil rights movement with Dr. Martin Luther King.