anna-kenya

2011-03-09T10:53:00.001-08:00

I'm gettin' married!

2011-02-21T06:40:00.000-08:00

The Facebook, A murder and Prison: A fictional story of true events

2011-02-21T06:34:00.000-08:00

Pious Onyango Ombede awoke with facebook on his mind. Most mornings he woke up with chai on his mind, or school fees, or occasionally, in the life he left behind, it was the headache in his mind from the drinks the night before. But unlike most mornings, the somewhat mysterious and coveted something, “the facebook” seemed to lure him out of bed with such curious intensity that he arose, dressed and left his house immediately. Although he claimed to know nothing of computers, he also knew that if he wanted the facebook, a computer would not help. The closest internet café was all the way in town, which is an unreasonable distance for a reasonable man. But phones on the other hand, were a common commodity. Everybody had some kind of Mobile. How else would someone “MPESA” money to their family? How else would someone “Flash” their friend to say hi? Having a mobile was a must. It made up for all sorts of woes in the world.

Alice, his wife, stood bent over the fire blowing at the milk to avoid a spillover. She glanced upside down at his blue sandals shuffling his feet along the freshly swept dirt. He was shuffling right past his breakfast and she wondered what he was up to.

Although he felt a quickening in the usual pace of his heart, there was no change in his perpetually relaxed way of getting from one place to another. At 5 feet 8 inches he looked precisely his age, and his face possessed that rare quality of precisely portraying his life. This morning he looked decidedly well rested with a hint of apprehensive curiosity. “Will I really find a mobile with the facebook for 2,000 bob?” he wondered as he pressed on.

As he reached the roadside he wove purposely through the regulars who were setting up their wares for the day. Godfrida with her pastel wash basins, Mama Martin with mounds of clothes spread in disarray over old feedbags, Boaz straddling a stool selling nothing but trouble and a radio. As Onyango thoughtlessly avoided a chicken and her entourage, he came to the conclusion that yes, the facebook would be a bigger investment than just the cost of the phone. Connections, a whole other world, a better life awaited him.

Ah! At last. “Eh! Oyoure?” he called a good morning over at Isaac, the fat phone dealer straining his old eyes over the padlock. Owning a shop next to the mandazi dognut maker is too much a temptation for anyone to bear and he had given up the resistance long ago. “Oyowre a enya…..Sema?” he asked, finally standing up with difficulty and a deep grunt from the arduous opening of the lock.

As Onyango explained his pressing desire for the facebook, Isaac shook his head in dismay…”Ah, bro…you don’t need one of those! Look here, what I have, if you need a new phone I’ll give you the best price. You and I have been friends a long time, don’t worry, I’ve got something for you.” “No Isaac, I have a phone. I just want to see this here, the facebook. You don’t have? Kweli?” A sudden stab of disappointment hit him in his chest and his face reflectively cringed. “tss tsss…Aye buana, sure?”

The fat man nestled his body comfortably in his shaded stall and pointed his lips and his eyes in the direction of Boaz, still slouching on the stool. “You know, I saw Boaz trying to buy a mobile with the facebook from a guy just the other day. Couldn’t pay you know? 2,000 bob for that thing. But kweli, that is cheap. It must have been broken.”

Now that sounded promising. And after further inquiry, the man in possession of the facebook mobile was still willing to sell for 2,000 shillings! Boaz gave the directions somewhat jealously and followed him with a mouth chattering away on Onyango’s shoulder until at last he was distracted by a woman garbed entirely in purple heading to town with a suitcase on her head, a purse in her hand and a high heal stuck in tangled barbed wire.

Onyango sidled slowly into the compound and looked around to detect any signs of life. All was still and even after he wrapped on the wooden door, it took several minutes for anyone to answer. Just as he began to walk back, the door opened and a man with glossy eyes looking far away stood there expectantly. Onyango tirelessly explained for the third time that morning his desire to have a mobile with the facebook and this time, there was an affirming smile spread over the blind man’s face. “Ah!” he said. “ Come in. I have just what you are looking for. Will you take tea? Yes, of course you will, and bread? I have bread.”

The mobile immerged from the back room, sleek and dark as a black mamba, and just as poisonous too. Onyango unknowingly held and carelessly caressed the venomous thing, easily imagining how casually he could whip it out of his pocket and possess all the good things that could come of it. His motives were honest, pure, innocent and harmless, yet he knew not its sly power, nor where it had come from.

The deal was made and the phone was monetarily half his and wholly in his hands. He thanked the man, taking his phone number to MPESA him the other half of the bill when his own pocket would allow.

Two weeks passed with no detection of the evils awaiting him. The phone sat in a drawer, waiting for the last payment to be made. “I better not use it until it is completely mine, then I will feel right to use it” he thought. On the very day he made his last payment he came home from work early. He had been welding at Nehemiah, feeling that the day was normal. His face was bland, a bit sweaty from the bicycle ride home, and his lips stuck to his teeth with dry, viscous saliva. He called for Diana, his daughter, to fetch some drinking water. He sat down with his head lowered to his chest, resting outside of his house and waited.

He awoke from a doze by the sound of footsteps, and thinking they were his daughter’s, he cheerfully looked up at her. But it was not Diana he saw, nor Alice, nor anyone familiar. A policeman armed with an AK-47 and duplicated 7 times behind approached with hand cuffs and a frown. Onyango’s eyebrows pulled together in puzzlement and his bewildered cheeks rose in honest protest. “Are you Pious Onyango Ombedde? You are under arrest.”

“Why did you arrest me?” Onyango retorted fiercely.

“Where’s the phone?” the policeman stabbed back.

“The phone? The one with the facebook? Inside.”

All 8 of them marched inside tearing the house apart and taking anything of consequence. His tape measure which Boyce gave him, his leatherman knife, his new grinder, all supposedly stolen, as was the receiptless phone they found in the drawer. Onyango, the thief, no, the murderer they said as they filed him passed his wife, passed the overthrown table and into the car.

The black mamba bore his teeth, and pierced him. “What is my crime? “ he wondered. “How did they know I had the phone?”

The police customarily took him to the elder counsel for a background check.

“No,” the elder said firmly. “Onyango is not the sort to do such things. I have known him many years.”

His crime was described to the elder as follows: The man who stole this phone killed the original owner. Because of the high technology of this phone, we were able to track him to Mamboleo. We will take him to the prison in Siyaya to be tried for the theft of this mobile and the murder of so and so, that one politician’s son.

The murder of a politician’s son? Mobs, political violence, theft and murder….Onyango never dreamed that this would be the new world of connections his new mobile with the facebook would bring. But there he was, handcuffed in the dark of night, travelling to his needless imprisonment. “I have made a mistake, I admit I made a mistake, the worst mistake….I didn’t even have a receipt.” He moaned hopelessly to himself, half confessing to Jesus, half pounding himself for not being smarter.

Eighteen of the longest days he ever spent went by, his face sagged along with his foggy mood and the horrors of life inside with the inmates were too unspeakably burdensome to the mind as to cause him never to tell of them again and therefore will remain unknown to us.

However one of those 18 days held an unexpected surprise which saved him. One of the Kenyan Nehemiah board members made a phone call.

-Put him on the phone, I want to speak with Onyango.

-Unheard of. You can’t speak to him.

-I’ll speak to him

The details of the bail are uncertain. But one thing is true: Kenyans know how to take care of each other in a pinch. The anti-venom for the black mamba facebook phone took Pious Onyango Ombede by surprise, shook him up and put him flat on his face in awe of life, and of God (“I would never have made it out of there without God.”)

Pious Onyango awoke with the facebook on his mind. Still curious. Humbled, doubtful, and more than ever aware of the fragility of a day. He shuffled again across the freshly swept dirt in his blue sandals and sat with Alice, sipping chai.

Proverbs 31 and your average Kenyan woman

2010-10-25T06:22:00.000-07:00

Many Kenyan women I know are very much like the Proverbs 31 Woman. They consider fields, they rise before dawn to care and prepare for their families, they save for the servant girls, give to the poor, they’re good money managers, business women…Their children call them blessed and so do their husbands. Their arms are strong for their task and so is their neck.

Life in Bible times is much more accessible to my mind and more palatable to my understanding since tasting Kenya. In Kenya, you don’t need to weasel your way into this passage and spend time thinking about how it translates into your life. A Kenyan woman often considers fields, and when it belongs to her family, she digs and digs. She prepares the shamba with rhythmic, forceful swings of the jembe. She raises it above her head and releases it down with a noise that resonates out of the ground and changes depending upon the last rain. Black cotton soil cracks in the sun and makes short, struggling chlink chlink sounds as the metal edge picks its way through. The sound of wet soil is more of a shlink, shlurp, suctioning sound. The wet soil is like a hostess who quickly and warmly welcomes you in, but then clings to you, hanging as you make your way to the door, not wanting you to leave.

Many families have house girls who are usually a younger relative like a niece or a cousin or a sister who want a change of pace from their home or need a sure meal and a place to sleep. They take girls, and often treat them like daughters in a way.

“Her husband has full confidence in her and lacks nothing of value. She brings him good, not harm, all the days of her life.” This makes me think of David and Meshack, the two fathers on the farm, and how they love and trust their wives, Anne and Susan. They adore them and respect them and are always being thoughtful towards them. The word “confidence” is the perfect word to describe their stance toward their wives. They make decisions together a lot more than other couples that I see in the area and they also like doing things together. I am delighted when I hear things like this: David says, “ Oh, let me just pull over here and buy some tomatoes for Anne, she will be so happy.” Meshack says, “You won’t mind, what I am gonna do, is to stop and pick up some bananas because my wife loves to eat bananas.”

“She sees that her trading is profitable, and her lamp does not go out at night.”
I think of Anne Isuvi measuring their milk out to people who come to her kitchen to buy. I think of Rosalyn and Juliet who have little shops in their homes where they sell the essentials: soap, Roico seasoning, little yellow balls of cooking fat wrapped in plastic, sugar, salt and matchboxes and kerosene. I see Rosalyn’s head balancing a load of firewood, which she traded by giving an old Mama some beans to plant. Her trading is profitable; she knows what her family needs and what she has to give. They trade buckets of maize for a day’s labor of weeding in the field and trade vegetables for vegetables.

“She opens her hands to the poor and extends her hands to the needy.” I see Rosalyn wrap up a hot chapatti in a torn corner of the flour sack and send it home with the lady whose house burned down last year. I see her piling mounds of popped corn, hot off the fire, into the cupped hands of the little raggedy boys sent to her to fetch their family’s milk for chai. They sit on stools and stuff the popped corn into their mouths with both hands held close to their face for easy access. Their teeth and the whites of their eyes match the popped corn and they all work in unison to fully satisfy Rosalyn’s generosity.

Sizco sits shredding greens for Anne and the next minute is helping Kimae prepare chapattis for the apprentices to bring for the potluck. Nancy is bending thoughtfully over Lucas’ math problem, explaining his confusion away. Anyone who comes to chat while you’re in the middle of something, will automatically take up the task with you and talk for a bit. Kenyan women actually do get up while it is still dark and rarely eat the bread of idleness. Susan does make garments and sell them, and the women I know watch over the affairs of their household with a care and dedication that leaves little time for the distractions of luxury.

Nehemiah families begin to have a higher propensity to honor instead of blindly expect the dedicated labor and noble character of the woman of the house. “Her children arise and call her blessed; her husband also, and he praises her: Many women do noble things, but you surpass them all. Charm is deceptive and beauty is fleeting, but a woman who fears the Lord is to be praised.”

Saturday Celebration

2010-10-25T06:19:00.001-07:00

Saturday October 23, 2010

(A graduation party for Josphat, our children’s department head)

David, in his playfully formal manner, stands up to welcome us and give a sort of agenda for our gathering. He says something to the effect of, “I think we all know why we are here; because Josphat has invited us to celebrate with him. He has done a noble thing in graduating with high honors and we are all very proud of him. First I’ll ask for a prayer, then we will sing a song, and eat…we have plenty of food. After that we will have some speeches from various guests, and from the man of the hour. Then we shall sing again and close our evening with another matter that concerns us.”

The afternoon leading up to the gathering in the church was spent busily preparing at the Isuvi house. I sat on the cement patio peeling potatoes for two hours while all around me the boys swirled in and out with pots and firewood, cabbages, chicken feathers and armfuls of tomatoes. David pops in and offers me cooked bananas and strong tea for lunch and then darts away again, gathering helpers to slaughter Josphat’s lamb. After seeing signs of the slaughter carried past, (knives, buckets of water, buckets of blood, a skinned sheep’s tail…) I finally see Ken (our lab technician) walking over with a huge grin and a bucket with protruding hooves and carved delicacies. “I am a slaughterer!” He tells me jokingly and swirls the bucket around as I peer inside. The joyous bustle culminates as all the other woman come to the kitchen to help make chapattis. I am in awe of Josphat’s generosity and ask if we should have just done it like a potluck where everyone contributes a dish. But he says no, he wanted to bless us and have a way to thank us all. And besides we were helping in the preparation anyway. I can’t but think how much this meal will set him back, but in true Josphat fashion, he thinks more of others than he does of himself.

We are all satisfied and full of rice and meat and cabbage, licking the grease off our fingers and finishing the last of our bottled sodas. The florescent light of the church is only available because of the generator, noisily groaning with the tractor outside. The power is out but our milk needs chilling and our party needs light. Voices slide away silently and our faithful M.C. rouses our attention for the speeches. “ I am just going to call upon a few people to say something about Josphat. Fidelis, you’ve been with Josphat, what can you say to him?” Fidelis stands, smiling as always, pauses with decorum and proceeds: “Good evening, we want to thank Josphat for being with us and caring for us. We love him and we need him.” The speeches went on and on, as David randomly and surprisingly gave each person present the opportunity to affirm Josphat. Anne made jokes about him as her “first born son” in a manner worthy of a mother, Jeanie encouraged him to start looking for a wife, friends told how much Joshphat had encouraged them. The boys all thanked him, and there was not one person with any thought but joy and gladness that we know and have Josphat among us.

I can’t stop smiling and even crying for how beautiful and life giving those words are to Josphat. The openness of the Kenyan heart shines like I’ve never seen this night and we aren’t waiting for a funeral to praise a person. He also stands and gives each one of us a word of gratitude and friendship. Josphat has no supportive family apart from Nehemiah, but he fears the Lord, takes advantage of opportunity in humility, and loves people, which gives him great success. He was honored with the highest position in his psychology and social work program and received many offers from organizations, but he knows he is called here for now. This family celebration is truly the first of its kind here at Nehemiah as we have never honored and appreciated one person in this formal and intimately united of a way. The overarching sentiment is that Josphat is bearing fruit. Fruit that he has shared and blessed us with.

Songs are sung and prayers are said and one last item remains. David hands the floor over to Meshack who stands and begins with reminding us of the purpose of families. He says something like this in his melodically loud and eloquent way: “ We come to share together our joys because it concerns us, and we are happy together when one of us is rejoicing but when something bad comes, we also want to share in it because it concerns us. Tonight we want to bring to the community’s attention, something disappointing. But when one of us is gone astray, we want to bring him back because we care about him. Solomon would like to give a confession.” Solomon stands in front of us, solemn and pressed. He strains to confess over the noise of the generator, but his volume is not satisfactory. Meshack translates his volume and forms such an interrogating voice that he would be more appropriate in a court room. Solomon confesses publicly, although some of us are aware, that he snuck out of the fence and slept with a girl in another house. By doing this he has broken most of our rules, namely, sneaking out, having a relationship, and dishonoring and lying to his parents. He asks for our forgiveness. The floor is opened to various people for responses. He is forgiven but not trusted, for regaining trust takes time and is up to him. Please pray for him as he is so well loved, yet rarely repentant to the point of changing his behavior or heart in other similar cases.

The mood with which we leave the church is an entirely opposite atmosphere than the way we entered. In some ways it seems odd and inappropriate to me to have both agendas smudged into one evening for the sake of convenience and timing. Yet in another light, I see the goodness and grace of being able to hold two things in our hands at once; to pair our joys and sorrows together as any family would. The foundation of love in the first half epitomized and peaked the beauty of our community which set the tone for loving discipline, although it was not facilitated perfectly, it seems right to be capable of handling opposites in such a way that reminds us who we are as a community and how in all ways, we want to help each other grow.

Last Week in Kolanya

2010-07-12T15:29:00.000-07:00

Those Good ‘Ole Luo Days

2010-06-26T07:20:00.000-07:00

I am involved in a widows and orphans group in Ohero, off the Nairobi—Kisumu rd. One day the group got together to bead bracelets and while we beaded we storied. “Tell Anna about the olden days around here,” says my friend to Alonso, the Mzee (old man). Mzee leaned forward and stared into his bowl of beads for concentration, for composure and after a pause to rewind the years he slowly began to speak.

“Oh yes, I’ll tell her. I was born in 1939. I remember how the community members used to be together. They could sit and discuss in a forum, they talked about their welfare, or plowing; they discussed everything so at the time of harvest, no one would have to beg and everyone would have harvested. Those who had animals could herd, others would go for wrestling as recreation—the best wrestler would be chosen—then they would invite another clan to compete.

I was ten, and I saw how everyone was together. I saw how they armed themselves in defense of other clans like the kipsigis. Those clans were coming to raid. In meetings they planned how to defend from external attacks and cattle raids. They were using arrows and spears. But we Luos were not planning attacks, just defending. … It prompted the Luos to remove the lower six teeth—for identification—in a war we’ll see if you are one of us, or one of them. Also it was nice for passing medicine to someone whose mouth refused to open. The space was helpful, but now we don’t do that anymore.” I told him to open up and let me see. He smiled to reveal his toothless lower gums.

“I’m seeing differences in how we were together then, and how we are together in present. A long time ago they were loyal and faithful to each other—they were serious—the difference between the older generation and now, they’re just not serious. Now people back on their agreements and want to do things on their own. But you see here this group of ours, it isn’t so new in theory of course. Our purpose is just a little bit different from those days. Now we believe that the Government is defending everyone, so now our group has a different role. We come to share new ideas and to agree. Being in a group makes people know each other. I went to such and such a place and saw that, can we try it? Will this work? You share a lot, you find out if people are sick. When I heard he was sick, they called me, we collected money and sent him to the hospital and now look at him, he’s recovered! We see that this friend of ours is needing new thatching on her roof, you see how it leaks when the rain gets in? We arrange and build her a new roof. That’s why we have groups now. “

Now we turn to Mary, his wife, her hands deftly stringing beads as she muses over the past like sucking on a cherry pit---The tart and sour taste of those memories are gone, but something solid is left. She begins mildly, her age roughly 14 years less than her husband’s, but still a grandmotherly type—a “Danni”. “There was a method of marriage back then—eloping. When I was 13, I came to visit one of my relatives here. We went to the market to buy some vegetables. The men were sitting, and then all of a sudden they forced me to go home with them. If you refused, they cane you or carry you there. Those men were friends of my husband’s. They were sent to bring me home to Alonso because he had seen me in the market. Then they guarded the door so I wouldn’t run away. They were ready to fight my brothers who would come. Once you go into that house and become a woman, a wife, you can’t go home, so I stayed. Then the dowry was all arranged—that’s how we did it back then.” The happy old couple look at each other and that is that.

Churches and Hospitals

2010-06-14T03:56:00.000-07:00

June 13, 2010 Sunday Morning 8am

The chapel is in the middle of our compound and through white iron shutters I can see the apprentices coming down the road that leads from the dairy. Other family members are coming late, but immaculately dressed after spending the morning hanging up a line-full of dripping fresh clothes. Nancy, my roommate, gets up to lead the service and urges us to get up and say, “Welcome to the house of the Lord” to our neighbor. She says, “ I know we all live together, but maybe you have not greeted everybody yet this morning, maybe you can just stand and ask how someone slept and just say hello.” I love the orderliness of our Sunday services, which separate the ordinary, sporadic greetings of every other morning. I love being directed to inquire after someone’s sleep, and seeing work clothes replaced with tucked trousers and pressed dresses---even though the church consists of our small Nehemiah community and only a few people from outside, it is a morning where we are all in the same place at the same time and there is a uniqueness about it that I love. It reminds me of the feeling I get when my family is all home at the same time, but what I want most is for us to just sit in a circle in the same room and just be altogether.

A few people get up to lead us in singing and the room is filled with the sound of intricate clapping and muted drumming from the buckets covered in animal skins. All songs are lead out and followed with repeating choruses by the congregation, who join in seamlessly from one song to the next. You let the leader sing, and her sound fills the whole room until it is half drowned with a crashing wave of echoing and agreeing voices. The songs are never planned, just sung. And when the songs get slower and the harmony comes stronger and the sound softer, you know the singing will cease and Nancy will say, “Just come before the Lord, pour out your heart to him, tell God who he is…” and everyone whispers his own prayers.

We all sit down and anyone who has something to share is given a chance to come forward. “If anyone has an encouragement from the word, a song, a memory verse, a testimony---we welcome you” This is one of my favorite moments in church, either lasting 5 minutes, or half the service, you never know. This particular morning is memorable to me because I realized it is a platform where the question “So what’s God doing in your life these days…” is openly communicated, showing us more of who God is and what he is doing in our midst.

Lucas: Praise God. (Amen) Praise God again. (Amen). I am thankful for God’s healing power today. On Wednesday while I was at school I became very sick, I was just lying behind the school vomiting, even blood, and I couldn’t walk home. I was feeling headache and hot and then I started to get these bumps all over my arm. When school was finished Robert told this man to give me a ride home on his bike because I was walking so slowly and painfully. I was then taken to hospital and admitted for Malaria. I just want to say that God’s plans are not the same as man’s because the doctor said I would be there for five days but after two days I was healed. I remember praying on the second night and when I woke up, I was completely fine. I am now just a bit week. I came home physically the same as normal, but spiritually, I am different. Thank you. (Amen’s dabble the benches)

Meshack and Susan: Ok praise God! (Amen) Bwana safiwe tena! (Amen). I just have a testimony with my wife Susan, the Lord is really doing something in our lives. We haven’t been here for the service for a few weeks and as you can see we are changed, Susan is looking different on the outside and we are also different inside. As you know, two weeks ago we were blessed with a baby boy. But that baby boy had a problem. His intestines were not fully inside him and the doctor gave him some surgery, but he could not handle the second surgery and he went home to be with Jesus. But I was at the hospital with a man who had to bury the wife and the child, and I am praising God that he has spared me my wife, that we will continue well in life with another chance, with more children to come. We are seeing this, our first child, as a firstfruit, that it is not the end. We are thankful for how we were supported by all of you during this time! Susan do you want to say anything? Yes, but first I want to sing a song… “We give all the glory to Jesu..” (her song was swallowed up by her hands shoving the tears back and Anne Isuvi took up the song for her and the rest of us joined in, but as soon as Susan started crying I lost it and cried too.) Then, Meshack and Susan, swaying in a side-hug, led us in “What a Friend we Have in Jesus”

What a friend we have in Jesus,  All our sins and griefs to bear!  What a privilege to carry  Everything to God in prayer!  Oh, what peace we often forfeit,  Oh, what needless pain we bear,  All because we do not carry  Everything to God in prayer!

Have we trials and temptations? Is there trouble anywhere?  We should never be discouraged— Take it to the Lord in prayer.  Can we find a friend so faithful, Who will all our sorrows share?  Jesus knows our every weakness;  Take it to the Lord in prayer.

Are we weak and heavy-laden, Cumbered with a load of care?  Precious Savior, still our refuge— Take it to the Lord in prayer.  Do thy friends despise, forsake thee?  Take it to the Lord in prayer!  In His arms He’ll take and shield thee,  Thou wilt find a solace there.

Blessed Savior, Thou hast promised  Thou wilt all our burdens bear;  May we ever, Lord, be bringing  All to Thee in earnest prayer.  Soon in glory bright, unclouded, There will be no need for prayer— Rapture, praise, and endless worship  Will be our sweet portion there.

Anne Isuvi: I just want the visitor to come help me sing this song. (Her sister makes faces from the pew and says, “me?” with her eyes as she reluctantly joins Anne to sing a hymn)

Kimae, Gordon, Fidelis…all get up to share verses…

Friday June 11, 4pm St. Monicah’s hospital

Josphat. Lucas, Sizco and I all sit on a hospital bed, talking, not talking, praying, waiting for Sizco to get an IV. We had come to pick up Lucas, and admit Sizco. I was struck by what an amazing thing it is to have a community like ours. Sitting there with these three in silent solidarity made me aware of the uniqueness of our “family”. Here we were, all from different tribes…Sizco’s a Nandi, Josphat’s a Luhya, Lucas is a Luo and I am…What tribe am I from anyway? I am a Washingtonian? Yet we were answering the doctor’s questions as brothers or sisters….”No she hasn’t eaten anything today…She is 22 years old…We will pay in cash….She is applying to be a nurse…She is our sister…Josphat is a pro at women’s hospital wards. Everyone in Kenyan hospitals needs a caretaker who can stay with them and help them eat or go to the bathroom holding the IV bag, or running to get the nurse etc… Josphat saw a woman in the next bed, thin as stick bug trying to pull her food closer. He went over and helped her eat, ran somewhere to find a straw, talked to her, came back…”You know she doesn’t have anybody staying with her. I spent a month with my mom in the hospital before she died, I just slept next to her and helped to take care of her, but everyone else in the room needs help too. I saw a lot of things in that month. I got used to it. People would roll out of their beds at night and nobody is around, so I pick them up, or someone’s IV is up and I run for the Sister. “

I stayed with Sizco that night and the next day and experienced something I’ve never done here or in America. All day you watch all the rest of the patients in the room. You get to know them, even if you aren’t talking, you get to know their caretaker of a sister or daughter just by looking at each other for long enough. Various mama’s or sons would come in and out bringing tea or fruits for their old old mother acting like babies in a grown up crib. All the patients are at various stages of recovery, some walking around as if they’d been living there for weeks, but didn’t need to be there anymore, others with catheters and constant sickly sleep. Even at this nice, clean hospital, it is all open air hallways and walking outside to the toilets, and at any given time there were 4 small cats in the room, crawling under the beds and lollygagging about the wards. I didn’t bring anything because I didn’t know I was staying over, and I could hear the other ladies in the room discussing it in their kind way. Then they gave me one of their wraps and a sheet so I wouldn’t be cold. “Si baridi” I am not cold, I said. “Utaenda baridi asabuhi!” You will be cold in the morning they said. While I was sleeping one of the patients got up and put another scarf of hers over my bare feet! I couldn’t believe this kind of environment! Everyone is looking out for each other, even the patients were looking out for me, and I wasn’t even sick! Night life in a hospital is an interesting thing…being a caretaker too. It was fun getting to know the doctors and nurses and mostly precious spending time with Sizco.

2010-05-10T10:43:00.001-07:00

2010-05-10T10:26:00.000-07:00

April

Every morning around 8:30 (a half hour early) a troop of children come up to the library for our little class. I can hear them coming from half way down the farm as they run and yell excitedly past the other houses and through the field. Four of them are siblings and one is an only child. They immediately start singing as we gather and their little distractible bodies float in and out of song and speech and anticipation to enter the library and hear the story of Jonah one more time. Every day they ask to hear the story about Jonah and how he did not go to Nineveh at first and how the big waves came on that boat and how he prayed inside that big fish…”Jonah pray in fish kubwa!” It is their favorite story, and for some reason we have several story book versions with different pictures inside. (American Christian publishing companies have gone wacko with some of the drawings, the varieties are endless, it is amazing they can still follow the story with Jonah looking like 5 different people from a fat white old man to a young dark and ruddy fellow…) Their enthusiasm for one story over and over is endearing and makes me laugh every day. We are working on the cardinality of numbers---that counting has a one to one correspondence and the last number you say really indicates the whole amount in the set. Because they age from 2—8 in age, it is fun to see the different development stages. Letters are a big deal. We are learning how those letters represent things when you put them together. It is hilarious engaging them in this when English is their third language and they don’t speak it all that well if at all, because they will recognize a picture and say “Yes, Yes! A for ndege! (Ndege is airplane and bird in Swahili) Pictures are quite confusing you know, H for hen easily can be H for chicken and then the correspondence isn’t strong. Using their names has proved powerful in noticing letters and comparing and observing---“Wow, look, David has a big D in the beginning of his name and a small d at the end of his name…they look different but they sound the same don’t they?” The tri-lingual school system here is quite impressive. Even though they all grow beans and have seen them in the shamba their whole lives, they still race to measure our beans we planted and can’t believe how tall they’ve grown, after studying insects they can’t wait to point out all of them even if they’ve past them by in the past--Maybe they are seeing ordinary things with new eyes, which is my hope for them. Investing in the smallest of children can seem so relatively insignificant on a daily level, but is so eternally crucial.

Story Telling

2010-04-14T11:56:00.000-07:00

One of my favorite authors, Annie Dillard, writes, “The thing is to stalk your calling in a certain skilled and supple way, to locate the most tender spot and plug into that pulse. This is yielding, not fighting. A weasel doesn’t “attack” anything; a weasel lives as he is meant to, yielding at every moment to the perfect freedom of single necessity. I think it would be well, and proper, and obedient and pure to grasp your one necessity and not let it go, to dangle from it limp wherever it takes you…”

The tender, live spot for me is in a person’s story, in writing it and witnessing it in every way. I found out that Nehemiah really needed someone to record life here, to capture Nehemiah through the mosaic pieces of each person’s story, which come together to portray Nehemiah—a place trying to be so many things at once, a place so hard to describe without the people who put flesh on the bones.

I recently went to Kolanya to visit the Mboya family, who used to live on the farm. They are an example of Nehemiah’s goal to have our community members move on to start their own small farms, to share their knowledge and become lights and leaders in their communities. I learned so much about their lives that I didn’t know before, and I was able to witness and record how God has changed their lives through Nehemiah. It was wonderful to get a feel for their new life, the challenges they are facing in their new community and with their farm and the progress as well. I have included bits and pieces of their story below. E-mail me if you want the whole thing (it is to0 long to put here).

Basically, Tom and Rosalyn come from really hard backgrounds, they didn’t go to school, Tom was a drunk who misused his family terribly and Rosalyn was calloused and cold. A pastor befriended them and they began to change their lives and follow Jesus. They ended up at Nehemiah….

The transformation from that moment to the present is so overwhelming that Nehemiah’s story cannot be complete without the testimony of how God fulfilled the vision of Nehemiah International in the Mboya family ---the vision to help people grow and to rebuild a generation after God’s own heart. His mother doesn’t recognize him for he is a new man, those who knew them remember their bitterness, and harsh life and thought them the most unexpected couple to turn out so faithfully full.

Fatherhood

Tom

Everyday that I was there little pieces of their life slipped out and found a new place to connect to what they told the day before. One evening, after supper, Brian sat studying with a kerosene lantern while Rosalyn, Benson and Tom finished a hearty laugh over a funny snippet on NTV—national television—broadcasted on their black and white TV hooked with jumper cables to a car battery. The screen fuzzed out and Tom stood up to adjust it and then changed his mind and turned it off. Their laughs together and playful comments to each other reinforced what Tom remembered next. “I ended up with Lucas, Solomon, Isaac and Martin. It was so hard at first and they were fighting all the time. They were not from the same tribe and they were being so bad! I knew I had to make them work it out, otherwise I would have failed to be a good father and this was my task and I couldn’t send them away. You know, we started having parent training at Nehemiah so we would know how to parent orphans, but that is the time I learned to be a father to my own children also. They are no different. I was just so careful to follow all the advice, to take to heart all that we were learning. We didn’t take short cuts, and in persevering, we were greatly rewarded. “

Their family became quite close. “I can’t believe I was able to be a good father—They just came running into the house calling “Mommy! Daddy!” I don’t think any other family had that happen. I couldn’t believe that we made it! I don’t see mistakes as a bad thing, that is just learning, but to repeat a mistake is very bad indeed.”

One example of Tom’s seriousness in being a dedicated father is his learning English because his boys needed to learn it and he wanted to be able to learn with them and help them. Over the years Tom and Rosalyn both became fluent in English and now his new neighbors say he is just lying when he tells them they only went to class 3. “They are just seeing me as a University man!”

Motherhood

Rosalyn

In the evening Brian and Benson lay on the bed in the dark kitchen watching their Mom stir sufrias of ugali or beans----all food from their own shamba! The boys tut tut all the little chicks under the bed and the chickens and proud rooster daintily step over the threshold and make their way to a huddle in their make-shift roost. Benson loves to sing and Brian loves to boast so they make a little game of out-singing each other. Benson starts a song and Brian begins another and continuously begins new ones while Benson fumbles in his brain for a different song. “Ahhh! See, I can think of more songs than you!” teases Brian. The confusion, loudness and friendly banter of the boys may have irritated any mother, but not Rosalyn. Today she is smiling at them and urging Benson on. “Louder Benson, use your voice!” She encourages.

Their new home…

Kolanya is a small Teso area in the Western Province of Kenya, close to the border of Uganda. From Kisumu it takes about 3 hours to get to Bungoma by matatu . Matatus vary in luxury and maximum capacity regardless of their outward monotony. It all depends on the passengers and their wares and destinations. If the gentleman sweating in a black suit and tie wishes to alight with his large suitcase from the rear seats, perhaps the mother with the decorated little baby sucking a lollipop will half stand half sit on the lap of the old Mama next to her to let him pass. The old Mama doesn’t notice much, but looks out the window in cramped familiarity. The wooden slatted seat put in to the opening is removed along with which ever unfortunate passenger sat there and the man will now pass out the sliding door with a bit of a tumble to the roads edge. The conductor hangs on in the open doorway and clinks a coin on the roof to say, “Hit the road!” and the matatu moves on. Once in Bungoma, a fairly large city, it takes about 15 minutes on another matutu to arrive at Kimaete. The fastest piki piki (motorcycle taxi) from Kimaete will arrive in Kolanya about 45 minutes as well as many markets, potholes and puddles later.

Kolanya nestles little houses between wide fields of bright, broad tobacco leaves and tall slender maize stalks with beans growing at their bases. (Maize and beans “Guidere” mixture is a common Kenyan dish. Amazingly the two foods spend their whole lives together side by side!) Tom and Rosalyn’s home is about two kilometers away from the little main hub that dabbles either side of a ten foot wide dirt road containing a large primary school, and little “dukas”—kiosks selling the necessary sugar, oil, kerosene, soap and whatever else one needs. The pathways around the area are lined with tall trees that Mzee Johnston plants. Neighbors greet each other in Teso, which Tom is picking up here and there.

The Mboya’s are Luo and are still learning many things about the Teso culture. “The problem here is that people don’t believe in God, they just believe in alcohol. Everyone is drinking so much changa (illegal maize liquor)—even the women. They even give their babies when they are first born—their first taste at their birth celebration. They are just raising very nice drunkards! But it is good they see me—I don’t drink and they see I don’t have the problems they have anymore. They see my wife and I have so much peace in our marriage and they are asking me why and how they can have peace with their wives also. I tell them it is very simple, we don’t drink and we love each other. We talk now instead of fight, because if you fight, you still haven’t solved anything. We are trying to be a light here. The view of women here is terrible. They pay so many cows for the dowry that they just say, ‘I’ve paid so much for you, now you can work!’ “ Rosalyn chimed in from the kitchen “slaves!” Tom continued, “They have a backwards view. The men just sit in the market and drink and the women work very hard. If you have a lot of daughters in Teso land, you are seen as a very wealthy family because you can sell them for a very nice dowry.”

Despite the general drinking culture, the Mboya’s neighbors and daily lives seem blessed with friendly neighbors who drop by to buy milk, provided by the Mboya’s cow “Gift”, or to trade vegetables. Even the boys, Brian and Benson, light up the community and host little football gatherings in the yard after school as well as raise rabbits to trade for chickens with the neighbors.

Future Hopes and Prayer Requests

They would love to keep orphans again and to continue blessing others as they have been blessed. They are not concerned about the food, but they want anyone who stayed with them to go to school and are not able to afford school fees at this time. Pray for a way for them to set a radical example in their community and be able to be a father to the fatherless and a mother to the motherless. Pray for wisdom in their farming and for innovative ideas to scale up their farm, take risks and find a steady market. Pray for the continuing safety of their cow, who has been fed hidden metal objects wrapped in leaves by jealous neighbors. Pray for deep friendships and trustworthy people to share life with. Pray for their continual protection against sickness, especially Malaria, which they have experienced frequently since the move.

Final Thoughts

Tom: “We learned so much from Nehemiah, I remember everything that Jeanie has taught us and everyone else. I remember especially the time she told us that people have hard stones around their hearts and that ministering to people means to remove those stones one at a time. That was me. I had so much hardness in my heart, but now it is gone. I realized that it is a sin not to value yourself and to have low self esteem. I lost so many years thinking I was a nobody, but God knew I was a somebody. I can’t believe what he’s done for me.”

__________________________________________

The Grandmother and the Egg (a silly story for Heather…)

There is a grandmother here whose chickens lay one egg a day. She has so many grandchildren she doesn’t know who to give the egg to. She also really likes to eat eggs herself, so she tells the children that the doctor prescribed her one egg a day to be eaten with her eyes closed to keep her in good health. I asked why she had to close her eyes—she closes her eyes so that she doesn’t have to look at all the sad children’s eyes watching her eat the egg! Clever huh?

Speaking of eggs…

I have been teaching a small class of little children from 2 years to 9 years. However, they all have lots to learn and love everything we do (even learning to recognize and write letters is wildly exciting to them—I wish I could remember what it was like not to remember which was which!) Back to eggs…We dyed some hardboiled eggs to learn about what happens when you mix certain colors together. That was all well and good, but the real joy was when they discovered we were going to eat them! I loved watching them glory in the taste. Eggs are my favorite food so of course I was just as happy to be eating an egg with them and hearing them sing the little song we made “E double G spells egg!” We read story books and Bible stories and learn about how the world that we live in works, what it takes for seeds to grow, why the rain comes, how to count all the fingers in the whole circle (whew!) They also lead in songs---Yes, even Terry, the three year old, is as bold a leader as any Kenyan Mama leading a service.

Other fun happenings…

· I have been making homemade yoghurt from our delicious milk. You should all try it, it is soooooo easy!
· I also made homemade gingerale, which becomes bubbly by putting a bit of liquid from the yoghurt or whey in your mixture and letting it sit at room temp for a few days. It is delish.
· I know how to milk cows now
· The weaver birds have moved to the thorn trees by the pond (see pic at top of blog)
· I got to go on a bike ride with my friend Josphat on Sunday afternoon to visit one of our boys, Martin, who went home to be with his Grandmother for a while. We rode on the classic Kenyan archaic and heavy contraptions that take work just to hold them steady. It was so fun to ride all over through the villages of Kano and Obumba and visit other friends as well.
· I am continually impressed by our apprenticeship meetings---I’ll write more about them another time…
· The students in Form school are back on the farm for the month of April, so the farm is fuller and more lively at the moment.
· My dad sends weekly updates about what’s going on at home to all his girls who are away from him. I love hearing your news, thanks to those who have e-mailed, I love hearing from you and will try to be more prompt in writing in you back!
· On Sunday Paul, one of our boys in 9^th grade, was welcoming people to the front pews of the church but nobody moved. He told the whole back bench to switch to the empty front bench, to encourage them he said, “I think when Jesus comes we will all just want to be sitting in the front row, so why don’t you just come now?” It was really funny.
· Last night I taught Nancy how to say, “Goodnight, sleep tight, don’t let the bed bugs bite”—(I told her bugs are insects). “How do you say it?” she asked, “Goodnight, sleep well, don’t let insects bounce off your beds?” Then I realized it is a silly (but extra appropriate) thing to say, but it is so catchy I can’t stop!

Karunga

2010-04-10T11:25:00.000-07:00

2010-03-30T13:49:00.000-07:00

March is going by so fast!

2010-03-15T06:01:00.000-07:00

February 26 A small picture of something very big…

Today Nancy came into my room and decorated the walls with tissue paper streamers she cut and posters. I had been so excited about having my own 6x6 space to keep however I wanted—a haven. I had been enjoying the simplicity and beauty of staring at flowers in an old water bottle on a stool and the blank wall. What a picture of classic cultural exchanges that occur in the other direction so often. I am most cautious about imposing ideas I think are wonderful if they are not initiating them or invested. Now it is my turn to feel the consequences of an imposed idea. I see how easily they can just keep quiet to please you, and then abandon the idea as soon as you leave. I feel the same way--how can I take these decorations down when she has so thoughtfully invested her love, time and resources to bless me? Yet if she leaves I would abandon these decorations the same day.

February 28 No, I am not a cannibal…

Baada ya mkutano wa kwanza, nita enda mkutano wa pili. On and on I struggled with their assignment of detailing what I would do that day. In the end I managed to say all that I would do. We threshed maize which I’d never done before. We whacked the dry maize ears with a fat stick and made the kernels fly everywhere around the small cement room—down my shirt, in our hair, up the walls. Then we sat for hours and days prying the kernels free with our fingers. It works best to slide the rows sideways but if they are large and dry you can twist your hands around the whole ear and they will easily fall. During these hours we make three part harmonies in which the base and soprano always fail laughing and the alto always wins. We also talk and on this occasion I said, for the third time this week some sort of innuendo in Swahili that I was a cannibal. It all started while we were slashing in the orchard. Sizco told me how she first came to Nehemiah in Form One. She was afraid to come because she had heard that Mzungus ate other people. We fell down laughing at this and she recalled how another girl was about to come with her, but chickened out at the last minute. “It was just the Lord that brought me and I am so thankful now, and see how funny it is.” The next day while relating what I would do during the day I said, “Baada nitakupika” which means “Later I will cook you” (I used the infinitive instead of nitapika –I will cook. I didn’t think I said anything wrong but because of our earlier conversation Sizco could not stop laughing! Later, I honestly mistook the word “girl” for the word “lunch” while translating from a book. “Sizco, Msichana means lunch doesn’t it?”

March 7 The best welcome

I went to Kano today to see Milka and her family. I went alone, and felt so free with no one in sight and the wide expanse before me and behind me. I waded through knee high streams and drenched grasses and kept my shoes off through the rest of the thick mud. Claudia always says.. “Matope ni nyingi” Now I know how to say “There is so much mud!” I passed several houses of plastered smooth mud with iron sheets or thatched grass. I know many of these families vaguely but I was on a mission to find Milka’s house. I headed in the direction of Kao School, past the railroad tracks, past the river flowing with chocolate milk and Rooibos tea, and past the newly expanded school buildings. I greeted people as best I could along the way and eventually heard Milka shouting “Anna! Anna! from beyond an irrigation ditch and a row of banana trees.

I was so excited I misjudged the depth of the ditch and figuring it was about knee high, I plunged in. To my surprise I fell in to my hips and was pulled out, laughing hysterically, and surrounded by Milka’s intense embrace and the rest of the family (Grandchildren, sons, daughter in laws…) who welcomed me like no other welcome in my life. I noticed a round-bellied cabbage patch girl standing naked in the gathering who was immediately whisked away into an oversized yellow frilly dress that dragged behind her like a proper princess gown, snagging on thorns and becoming less yellow every minute. She was brought back and introduced to me as Anna Schuler (Shoolay)—my three year old namesake! She smiles all the time and has a magnificent rounded overbite, that, combined with her all around brown round pleasantness, reminded me of Mrs. Beaver from Narnia. She followed me around most of the afternoon and we became good friends. Even when the mzee would wave his tired hand to shoo the other children out of the house, she would stay as they scattered.

When I first entered, Milka excitedly presented me to her 8 sisters and cousins who were squished together on the wooden couches. We came clapping and dancing and they all joined to slap my hands and kiss my cheeks. “Ide Nade?”---“Adi maber!” ----“Eh! Oyoure?”----“Oyoure a enya” I passed along the Luo greetings but that is all I know. Everyone is so encouraging about languages. They make you think that if you surprise them with casually saying Good Morning in mother tongue with no trouble that you will be fluent in no time. I think it takes a lot longer.

They were all gathered to have their monthly merry-go-round, which is a loan sharing money pool where you contribute to one person each time. They sat there in their pretty dresses and head -scarves for awhile, then they got ready to go. The ladies helped one sister assemble her wig—She finger combed it before, then they helped her by being the mirror. Then they smoothed it with body lotion till it was sleek and black. They each pool 200 shillings, which is less than $3 but adds up when everyone contributes.

Later, when they returned, they agreed at my plea for them to sing. Sisters always know how to sing together—even if they are silly songs. I had no idea what that would turn into. It starts like rain—one drop—one voice thinking of a song out loud—quiet, timid and affirmed by another voce and then the first livens up the lead and you can hear it now coming in a throng and then the claps begin just like the thunder claps and then mmm mmm we’re all on our feet and since I don’t know any of the words I start to move a little and they love it and start moving too. But the roof is too low and the mud walls to confining and the low wooden table is hitting our knees so she leads us outside to the rhythm of the claps and the 50 or 60 year old sister lady club and I duck under the doorway and circle in the sunshine. I can tell they are loving it just as much as me—I always knew dancing was the way to people’s hearts around here. The leader still leads and the rest sing a repeating phrase. I have no idea what it was about but the booties were flying and the waists were bent and the bare feet kept time in the moving circle. I suppose the rain and thunder dance storm is now in tornado phase. They kept laughing at each other and the rest of the family just sat under the eaves and watched. Lilililililil’s and Lylylylylyly’s throttle the tongues in high trills and when it was over they piled firewood on their heads and went back to their husband’s houses.

Kano is a place of intensity—happy and flamboyant as well as intensely remote with terrible hygiene and sanitation practices, intense poverty and hospitality. A few days later I returned and spent the night and came down with a high fever. It was quite an experience being so vulnerable and open with letting other people take care of you when you are way beyond self- sufficiency. At first I was praying it would just go away and when it hit harder than ever I was annoyed. Then I came to realize that maybe God wanted to use them to be his “hands and feet” and to have us experience the joy of their own ability to love and care and see their prayers answered.

March 12 George

I never think about death as much as I do in Kenya. Partly because people are constantly going around praising God because they are so happy to be alive this day, and partly because death is prevalent, public, common, practiced over and over again. It is at the tip of the tongue. In a way the frequency eases the pain. “It is just Ok, everybody dies, it is a part of life!” she says the week before her husband dies. There is a hand written poster entitled “Time Wasters” in the Miwani Estates teacher’s lounge. Item # 1 long meetings, item #2 long tea breaks, item # 10 weather conditions, item #12 sickness/death.

I just returned from our dear friend George Ogola’s transitional funeral. They were transporting his body from the mortuary, to his house for a “practice funeral” and on to his mother’s property for the proper funeral and burial. He was one of the original farm fathers who used to have Shebby and Robert and Dominic and Bonface living with him. He and his wife Juliet have two daughters, Jeanie and Claire. They are almost 5 and 3. It is hard to even fathom.

The herse came in the form of a big black bus---dull, matted and chalky black, not shiny limo black. We could hear the referee whistles blowing and the wailing and singing coming down the rocky, red road to the house from a far distance. The procession from the mortuary was awaited by a few teachers and family friends who stayed behind to prepare chai and bread and guidere—a maize and bean mixture. I was luckily friends with the ones preparing and was soon put to work serving the refreshment. The mother, step mother, solemn Juliet, frilly Jeanie and Claire and all the rest stepped out of the bus. The men opened a compartment under the bus and pulled out a shiny wood coffin and carried it inside. One by one the wailing women old and young passed through the yard and into the house yelling “George, Moyo oh mOyo! La la!” and tossing there hands in a grief as old as their traditions and as new and fresh as their genuine loss. However, sometimes it is hard for me to tell the difference. I am the only one trying to distinguish between them and I suppose I don’t need to.

The whole procession was video taped. Everyone gathered around the open casket with only a glass separating the altered George who is no longer George. He was already home. We sang and prayed and the men sat under a tent for shade and the women went inside to sing hymns led by Juliet. I knew all the hymns by their tunes, not by their kijaLuo lyrics. I listened to them as I cut bread outside. (The picture is of Jeanie)

2010-03-04T09:29:00.000-08:00

2010-03-04T08:52:00.000-08:00

2010-03-04T08:20:00.000-08:00

The Story So Far...

2010-02-27T04:04:00.000-08:00

The Ostrich in the Vineyard and other sights and incidents in South Africa

February 6, 2010: on the plane from Atlanta to Joburg
We were so fortunate to make the flight from Seattle to Atlanta and now, because we flew standby, they put Eric and I in business class to Johannesburg! 15 hours of giddy luxury are in progress; menus, wine, ice cream sundaes, noise cancelling head phones and hot face towels are only half of the pleasures. I keep thinking, “This is the last time I’ll get to__________.” What contrasting modes of transportation I will have. Who knows what the busses and trains will be like! I am blessed with versatility to move easily between the grandeur and rugged; the ability to delight in good gifts of all sorts and enjoy each for its own without diminishing the beauty of each with feelings of longing or guilt.

February 7, 2010: Eric’s friend Lisa from L’Abri
Lisa picked us up from the airport in a small grass green car—very chic—which she warned Eric not to make fun of her for. She couldn’t stop smiling. I like Lisa a lot. She is lively and interesting, and very fond of Eric. Her mother lives in a beautiful white house with a pool and many rooms with flowers and libraries and paintings. She is Dutch and I am I am enjoying hearing her story. Eric and I had a nice time not sleeping because of jet lag. We read, talked, laughed, wondered whether it would ever be light, had morning prayer together and listened to more morning birds than I have ever heard.

February 8, 2010: The train to Capetown
“It’s friendly, it’s safe, it’s Shosholoza Meyi”---the train billboard
Flocks of little delicate butterflies frolic white in the grass, faster than the train, but directionless.
Man running down the platform in short rugby shorts which Lisa tells me is declaratively Afrikaan.
I wake up from a nap to the smell of hot, grey, rain. My calves are crusted with a pillowcase of dirt from the open window and little tuffs of white dandelion seeds swirl inside the carriage.
The stars covered the entire sky over the Free State with no other lights interfering
In the morning I watched the sunrise over the desertous stubble of the Karou. The night transformed the endless lush of yesterday’s view.
We went through damp, stony smelling tunnels lasting 5-10 minutes each. When we emerged from under the mountains we came out into vineyards surrounded by cliffed mountains. There are Ostriches in the Vineyards!

February 9, 2010: Capetown and hectic slang
Tidbits from the thatched bathroom of the Rhodes Memorial: small graffiti for huge historic tension.
“Cecil Rhodes needs to come off his throne. We will not celebrate empire anymore!”
In reply was scrawled:
“The Empire strikes back! If it weren’t for Cecil Rhodes you would still be living in a hut the size of this toilet.”
Cecil Rhodes was the British man who owned most of the gold mines and developed a lot of South Africa. “He was a bit of a racist asshole in my opinion”—Lisa
S.A. slang lesson
Hectic: Epic, crazy, wow, cool, rad, uh huh, hmmmm (can be used by University students anytime, any situation)
Ex: “I am headed up to Kenya next week by bus and train” ---“Oh hectic!”

Vibey: Containing good vibes.
Ex: “It’s just such a vibey place---you’ll love it!”

Digs: Any sort of house (not flat) that college students live in.
Ex: “We love our digs. It is the best place we’ve ever lived in together.”

Digsmate: Roomate
Ex: “Anna, let me introduce you to my digsmate, Nox.”

Capetown
We had such a holiday in Capetown. I went swimming at a different beach almost everyday. (You can even swim in the Atlantic Ocean and Indian Ocean on the same day!) We hiked to the top of Lion’s head and overlooked the Cape. We also went salsa dancing and hung out at several fabulous coffee shops. I am leaning towards putting Capetown down as the most beautiful city I have ever seen, however, I am taken aback by the huge poverty gap and cultural exclusiveness between the white South Africans and the black South Africans. A lot has changed since 1994 (which I think has been quite hard for the whites) but it still seems that everyone is racist. Everyone lives in fear of theft, robbery and who knows what (possibly for valid reasons) but it is no way to live life in my opinion. We drive by the townships and nobody even talks about it. There is still so much I don’t understand about this place and I was just plopped here almost by accident. Being white in South Africa means something totally different than being Mzungu in other parts of Africa.

The Hectic (in all its South African slang and literal meanings) Journey North

February 13, 2010: Johannesburg Park Station Greyhound to Bulawayo, Zimbabwe
The bus took off at 8:30 pm. Joke (yokay), Lisa’s mom sent me off and I shuffled through luggage lines and passport checks in the dimly lit parking lot. I was seated next to Inkosi, which means King, who is a 29 year old Zimbabwean man who works with orphans. We were fast friends before the bus left the station. He was the answer to our prayers for this leg of the journey. He guided me throughout this part of the journey and took care of me well. When we got to the Zimbabwean boarder about 3 am, there were already hundreds of trucks and busses in line, piled three times as high as the roof with food supplies, diapers, sacks of maize, huge striped plastic bags with zippers, building materials, yellow jerry cans---for the last few years, everyone comes over to S.A. for certain supplies that are not being produced in Zimbabwe right now. We had to take all of the afore mentioned items out of the bottom of our bus and open them all up for hours of inspections.
I don’t think Inkosi had much faith in my ability to make it around on my own, which challenged my pride and my independence, but was, I am sure, much needed and helpful. When we arrived in Bulawayo, he walked me to the train station across town, where I was able to book a ticket and store my bag. Then he took me to his church—a huge mega church with ten services at least 500 people each. I was the only mzungu and it was totally natural (for everyone else, not for me, I was soaking it all in, noticing every minute detail). The worship leader held a pink silk hankie to wipe the sweat off the microphone and his forehead. The girl in charge of leading the intercessory prayer time knew her scripture like no other. The songs were in several languages, Zulu, Debele, English…I don’t even know…but I like it when everyone dance walks with the little shake and sway and up go the hands in a little clap. When anyone is in agreement with the preacher they raise their hand—it’s quite funny to see hands shooting up like watered flowers here and there throughout the brown headed soil.
I had been praying for astounding hospitality from those whom I would meet along the way, and I received it. After church, I went on a matatu to Inkosi’s mother’s house outside of town. We spent the day visiting his neighbors and walking around the area spying on beautiful sounding church choirs and running into old friends.
In the evening we headed back to town where I boarded the 8:00 train for Victoria Falls.

February 14, 2010 Train from Bulawayo to Vic Falls
Everything was dark, the sky, the platform, the inside of the wood paneled Bitish compartments, everything. I found my compartment 1068 B and slipped inside with two women already relaxing and chattering away, clinking their spoons on the tin enameled bowls as they ate. This lazy clinking and chattering was a familiar, comforting sound and I soon sat down and introduced myself. “Oh, Anna, the mother of Mary…and I am Miriam, sister of Moses, and this is Martha, sister to Lazerus’ in the Bible.” Said the elder of the two sisters. Martha exhaled a sigh of pleasure and said, “Oh, I like our Bible names!” in her high, nasally way.
These two Catholic gems were traveling to Namibia to sell clothes. (They spend half of each month at home sewing, and the other half in Namibia selling.) I couldn’t make out their faces in our small, dark compartment, but I sat next to their big, friendly, Zimbabwean bodies and all doubts of strangers and thievery left me. In fact, Inkosi had just warned me about women thieves, don’t even trust women, he said. And soon they were in turn telling me, “Just trust women, I can’t believe you are doing this Anne, it is so far, but please, you just ask women and they won’t cheat you.”
Another woman joined us, Mrs. Zulu, a 65 year old Zambian women in a semi-ragged skirt and head scarf with a quiet, wise demeanor. After feeding me supper (which was the first meal I had all day) they embarked on some sort of “Can you imagine! Oh wow, mmmm...”.sort of womanly conversation in Dbele which I don’t understand, but I had fun guessing what it was about based off the responses and intonations of the listeners with their sighed-out “ehhh’s” and inhaled, up stroked “hey’s” and tut tuts with the toungue and head shakes. A few English words stood out: Dutch Reform, Maria, The Blesseds, Catholic…..I asked her what they were talking about. Miriam explained they were discussing her oldest daughter who has come back from school and refuses to go to the same church. “ She is disrespecting me and shaming me for respecting Jesus’ mother, Mere and I ask her what she’s learning in that church of hers and she can’t even tell me… Yes, Anna, we are discussing the problem of youth these days.”
When we settled to sleep I asked them to sing. Martha lead with her high, youthful voice, Mama Zulu occasionally drawled out a base line and Miriam and I joined somewhere in between them. It wasn’t very harmonious or beautiful, but it was the exhale of all the weariness or troubles of a day and an inhale of “Thank you Jesus, Hosanna, Aleluia Amen” which can’t but help to oxegenate peace inside you. When we were finished Martha said as natural as anything to a cabin of strangers “Let us pray, everyone pray for yourself.” Everyone started a monotone run-on of fervent prayer in different keys while my prayers were slow and had more difficulty coming out. The last few days have been prayers uttered constantly inside a quiet cocoon; theirs were colorful, beating butterfly wings. I love sleeping on trains.

Feb. 15 (my half birthday) Bus to Lusaka, Zambia
As soon as we stepped off the train in Victoria Falls, the baboons began running throughout the cars, in and out of the windows, up on the roof—everywhere. Victoria Falls seems beautiful but I didn’t spend much time there. Hopefully I will get to spend more time there later. I walked across the bridge and saw the Zambezi River winding through the canyon and the falls spilling over out of the grey sky. Then I headed straight for immigration with Mrs. Zulu. I ended up changing plans to travel with Mrs. Zulu to Lusaka by bus instead of catching a train to Kapiri Mposhi. I decided that I would travel as far as I could with people I knew (sort of). This way, I could be sure to catch the long train out of Kapiri Mposhi the next day and not wait several days for the next train. When our bus seemed like it was entering Lusaka, I became curious about where I would go. It was dark and I didn’t have any plan. I hadn’t planned on coming to Lusaka at all so I knew little about it. Mrs. Zulu thought I could spend the night in the bus since I had to catch another early bus the next morning. I have been learning not to fear, because God hasn’t given us a spirit of fear, but of sonship, by where we can cry “Abba Father.” However, I’ll always remember the intensity of arriving in big cities (Lusaka is only one of them) in the dark of night with nowhere to go—the bus would pull into some station swollen with people yelling outside, waiting to swallow you up in their taxis. Others lay around the dirty cement with bright, worn fabrics crunched all over their waists.
Once outside, I evaded all the taxi men and was fluttered about by Mrs. Zulu’s relatives who rushed me off with their nephew (who was also a taxi driver) to a Backpackers. I was very thankful. I met some interesting people on my dormitory porch. “Hi, my name is Doh, like doh, ray, me, fa, so…” said the sausage eating, whisky drinking, smiley Korean. He was impressed with the only Korean phrase I know, which, apparently is only used by the grandmother generation, meaning, “Oo la la,” or ‘Oh God!” Another guy from Demark, Anders, sat fiddling with a computer. “He has come to be Che Gavara” said the Korean, lifting his glass in a toast aimed his direction. He is interning with a radio station to give people a voice and an opportunity to hear all sorts of news. The other guy, a German, has been cycling from Germany since last May and is on his way to Capetown!

February 16, 2010 Kapiri Mposhi and the train to Dar es Salaam
Kapiri Mposhi loomed like another big city in my mind; I was wrong. I was the only person to get off when the bus pulled to the side of road amidst a one street town bustling in a classically African street market sort of way. I had passed hundreds of these little towns in the past few days. They usually only last about 42 seconds outside the bus window. I was so delighted by the prospect of spending the day in a low key wandering way in a place akin to the area I stay in Kenya. The train station was a bit hard to find because it was about 5k out through sandy trails lined with green stalks taller than I am. I dragged my little carry on suitcase and made slow snake tracks behind me.
Much to my surprise, the station was huge and slowly by slowly filled with people and wares waiting for the train. I was wearing a Chitenge around my dress like every other Zambian woman-- so many people made comments to themselves or to me-- “I just saw you wearing this and I thought I wanted to talk to you…” ….. “ I just saw you and you are O.K.” …… “What I was saying earlier to that lady, was that you are a real Zambian lady. It is very good you are just putting on like us.” I think that kept me out of trouble and in a false way said I knew what I was doing. (Of course I didn’t know a thing.)

February 17, 2010 Two days of solitude on a train
They put me in a compartment all by myself, (after moving me around three times) which I had prayed for. Even though I love being with people, I really wanted to be alone for awhile. I am relaxing and reading and praying and painting, but my attention is only long for looking out the window. I can stick my head out the window for hours without tiring and I enjoy just staring more than anything else. I see lush green hillsides of Maize and trees and sometimes red mud and thatch houses. At present, thunder sounds from the yellow-grey sky and the green land stands out—brightened more by grey storm than by blue sky bright. This place has maximum fertility. We stop at all sorts of cute little stations and some bigger ones. Occasionally women and men will run to the tracks to sell doughnuts which are displayed in dark brown circles on round trays balanced on top of the women’s heads. Men sell boxes of water and peanuts. Children throw their hands forward to beg or just to talk. When we crossed the border to Tanzania the next morning, I could speak to them in Kiswahili which they thought was funny. The manager of the train keeps coming to check on me and other train workers or passengers I’ve met stop in sometimes. There are a few other Mzungus. A Swiss couple and an American guy are all in my car. I feel a bit blank. Not dim or sad, not excited or scared, but being alone and aloud, I am nothing in particular—like sleep, I can just be. At times, when the compartment door is closed, I don’t even have to react to anyone or anything.
It is a funny thing…once you cross the border on the train, you cannot use Kwacha anymore. You have to start using Tanzanian shillings, even to get water on board. I am weary of holding 5 currencies in my head at once and trying to get them is another story.
The immigration team came on in their blue uniforms and informed me that the transit visa was more than I expected and they didn’t like the slight rip in my 5 dollar bills and would not accept them. I told them I didn’t have any others to give them so he took me to see his boss. He was definitely the head hancho—a huge man sitting in the “office” compartment of the train surrounded by other uniformed officials along with Zambian passports and bills spilling over the little table. “See look—that American paid.” Finally they stamped my passport with a note informing the next border to make me pay on exit. When I exited Tanzania the visa was even less expensive.
Two Tanzanian women named Hilda and Grace were added to my compartment on the second night. At first they were shy but they enjoyed my Swahili attempts and soon we were able to talk and be comfortable. Grace and I stayed up long into the night exchanging songs and singing the ones I knew. I wasn’t very good at singing the new ones on my first try and she laughed at me a lot.

February 18, 2010 Getting mixed up with the police in the Dar station
I hustled my bag in front of me and tried to squeeze my way through the aisles to the coaches on the platform. Michael, a 19 year old Adventist student missionary from Oregon, was leaving his sight in Zambia to meet some others in Nairobi. We decided to figure out the busses together and had arranged to find our way to Ubungo Station together. When we were on the platform a taxi man began harassing us with prices but my friend Drasilla was willing to take us there by public. The taxi man was insistent on getting our business and began to fight Drasilla, bringing the police woman into it in a Swahili shout match saying she could not be trusted with Mzungus. I trusted her much more than this man, but in the end, the policewomen made us go with him and I was able to cut his outrageous price by 3/5.
I felt more helpless this day than any other. I had to use an ATM to get Tanzanian shillings, but my card wouldn’t work at any ATM. We stopped at little gas stations in the dirt and large corporate banks inside hotels—nothing worked and I couldn’t get a hold of my bank. I had to save my U.S dollars for the next two visas, otherwise I would have exchanged them. Luckily, I was with Michael who was able to pay for everything until I could make the phone call to the bank, which in itself, proved difficult. If I were not with Michael, I would have been really stuck, not even able to make a phone call. When I finally paid a guy to buy a SIM and let me use his phone, it was in the midst of a power outage and the discovery of all of Michael’s money stolen while we were gone at the beach. I had to stay on the line with the bank lady! Even though all of this craziness was going on around me in the dark, I had to try to answer her questions about my recent activities in order for my ATM to work. They hadn’t set it right when I called them from the States and they needed my driver’s license etc… “On which day last month did you_______...” In the end, it worked out well. Since he had paid my bus fare, less of his money was gone and now I could get some shillings to pay him back.

February 19, 2010 The Spider Bus to Nairobi
5:30 am Ubungo Station
There are 100s of busses of all sorts crowded together in the crowded dark of early morning. Our tickets were given to another bus line because ours broke and we would never have found out, but a man breathlessly reached us through the crowd and directed us to the Spider bus, which was a dodgy red piece headed to Nairobi. The bus stayed in a jam for 2 hours before making it out. “Do you know what jamming is? Yes, we are very much in a jam” said the ticket man. The bus continued to fill with people even last minute deals were cut and people threw their stuff under as we were moving slowly through the jam. The bus had a dirty cream-fringed curtain in front. If you’ve ever been on a bus with a fringed curtain, you know what sort of bus this is. It is called the Spider and has a huge spider covering the windshield and little spider stickers plastered inside and out.
A light rain fell and was absorbed into the thick, sweaty air. I felt uncontrollable tiredness and heavy eyed submission to sleep. While I lay out the window in a conscious slumber, I could hear a man rebuking and admonishing various persons on the bus up and down the aisle. He was a bold voiced Swahili preacher only tonally amusing my half-observing self. I could hear people outside the bus saying, “Ongalea, Mzungu na lala” Look, look at that white girl sleeping! I slept to avoid impatience. When I could manage my eyelids I saw a girl in the bus jam next to us casually drop a lock of extension hair out the window into a puddle. Now a background of African music mixes lightly with the rattling window, which the man in front can’t stand—he keeps trying to adjust it and shove papers inside to brace it. The keyboard and drums and chorus of voices roll on and on as the bus starts and stops and makes its way 20 hrs North passed Kilimanjaro and the Pace mountains and a place that looks like a western movie desert.
The evening traded places with the day and didn’t care who we were—all of us silent passengers crossing the border---all subject to pre and post border hours of flying off our seats through the acacia bush on dirt roads. Lightning flashed the silhouetted trees through the cold, dust-caked glass and the jovial keyboard and chorus played on. At one point I thought we were trying to evade the border. It turned out to be my imagination enjoying the suspense and drama of this excellent ride. We soon reached Namanga, the border, which I have crossed before. It was now at least midnight and I assumed we would reach Nairobi by 8:00 pm. The whole bus had to wait for me while I convinced and prayed for the officer to accept my older version of a $20 bill. “Eh! What is this? We only accept the 2000 series.” The bill was a brand new bill that I took off of an origami dollar shirt my grandparents had given to me when I graduated from highschool almost seven years ago. They decided to take it anyways.
A few hours later we arrived in Nairobi where I was to get a ride with Michael’s friend to a place I was going to stay before heading out to Kisumu in the morning. In the end, we couldn’t find it and I stayed with these Adventist missionaries at the uncle’s house. It was a very interesting time hearing and observing the perspective of this family who has lived all over Africa for the past 20 years. The uncle owns a luxury resort in the Masai Mara (which I am invited to visit anytime). The nephew, Jared, lives out in the Mara building an orphanage. He took us out rock crawling in his 4-wheel drive truck up on top of the Ngong hills. If you have ever read or seen the movie “Out of Africa” you know the Ngong hills. The town is named Karen, after Karen Blixen and I even saw her house. At this point I had been traveling for at least a week both night and day and I was glad to run around and be tossed about by forceful, refreshing winds. It doesn’t feel like it, but Nairobi is around 6,000 ft. in elevation and I was looking over the whole of it on top of the hills.
The next morning I took the Easy Coach to Kisumu. It was the easiest bus ride I have ever taken. I used to look forward to this ride from Nairobi to Kisumu as a long entrance and reintroduction to Africa; This time I had to be convinced by my seat mate to get off the bus in Kisumu because I didn’t recognize the new station and I thought we couldn’t possibly be there so soon! John and Jean were there to welcome me and take me back to the farm. I was so happy to be there and felt overwhelmed with the familiarity in contrast to so many days of stimulation and uncertainty.
I made this pilgrimage because I love Africa and I wanted to see God’s faithfulness. Not as a test for God to show himself necessarily, but as a practice for me to trust God with my life—with something that took faith and was so much bigger than myself. Underneath it all, I could not control everything or possibly succeed on my own. I am praying that this journey will be an alter or an Ebenezer in my life reminding me of when God has been so faithful, so that when I pass through the waters, I will know my anchor will hold, and that Christ has delivered me and will continue. Thank you for praying for me. I was reminded of your prayers in every conversation and when I met each person we prayed would be there to help me. Na tosha—Nitakwambia kuhusu maisha yangu na Nehemia baadaye. (This is enough for now….I’ll tell you about life at Nehemiah later!)

En Route

2010-02-04T15:14:00.000-08:00

Tomorrow my younger brother Eric and I head to the Sea-Tac airport at dawn to catch a standby plane to Atlanta and then on to Johannesburg. Lisa, Eric's friend from L'Abri, will pick us up and we will train to Capetown the next day to spend time with her family. On Saturday the 13th, I leave them to begin the journey North to Kenya. Take a look at the map below to trace the overland route of trains and busses. I start with a Greyhound to Bulawayo, Zimbabwe, then take the Bulawayo--Victoria Falls train. The next morning the train will stop before the falls where we will all get out and walk over the bridge into Livingstone, Zambia. The next leg is a train from Livingstone to Kapiri Mposhi. The longest train leaves Kapiri Mposhi and arrives in Dar Es Salaam 45-72 hrs after leaving :) After Dar, I will Akamba and Easy Coach all the way home to Kisumu and on to Nehemiah.
www.seat61.com/zambia.htm
www.seat61.com/Map-southernafrica.htm
www.nehemiahinternational.org

2010-02-04T15:11:00.000-08:00

Moving back to Kenya soon...

2010-01-28T14:43:00.000-08:00

why I love kenya

2007-07-24T07:47:00.000-07:00

I came home from Kenya about two weeks ago. In the midst of popping back through the wardrobe as it seemed to me last time, I’ve been thinking about why I love Kenya so much and what I hate about it. Perhaps it is a mesh of the two that makes it real. I love knowing deeply enough to hate some things. Things that happen to people, things that people hold on to so tightly, things people are never taught…But sometimes what I love most about Kenyans springs from the effect of something I hate.

Death. There’s death all the time, all around. I hate that there are
Sicknesses people won’t sacrifice to treat but claim a pricey funeral. The traditions around death make me sick. My friend Kevin who came to the farm and I went to Milkah’s house a few days after her daughter-in-law died. This was the second funeral I’d been to in her village. Relatives and friends come from all over and camp out around the compound. The family slaughters a cow which perhaps they paid a year for. Everyone sings all night and sits around all day, eating the family out until the food’s gone. I hate the collection of money demanded of hard workers in the family to pay for funerals. Yet I love the community, I love the family dependency (to a certain degree it is beautiful, but somewhere along the line it becomes outrageous, disgusting and debilitating.)

The mud on one house cracks with age as the walls of another are just drying. Last week when we were visiting, her son was just finishing throwing the mud, Kevin got to help him. “Nyumba yako ni mzuri kabisa!” (Your house is so good!) I say…I am in love with the genius use of cow dung:) I miss her family especially. Milkah and I don’t even speak English together, but we love each other so much. I carry with me her 5 minute hugs after showing me her dead daughter’s body under the shady branches, her hugs everyday for that matter. I carry her wet cheeks and unabashed sorrow when we said goodbye in my room, when the rest of us were wiping and holding back ours.

Death, I love the way it demands a life of honest thankfulness for today because you were given the grace to see it! “So, I’ll see you in a couple years I hope… “ “Yes, it’s only that life which we are praying for, then we will be able to see each other again.”
My mind can’t genuinely comprehend that I might not be around in two years, let alone tomorrow. I’m hoping to learn, so that I can live in sincere appreciation!
Death, I love that it is the worst end of man yet we don’t have to fear it—such is freedom.

Wickedness
“Moreover I saw under the sun that in the place of justice, wickedness was there, and in the place of righteousness, wickedness was there as well. I said in my heart, God will judge the righteous and the wicked, for he has appointed a time for every matter, and for every work. I said in my heart with regard to human beings that God is testing them to show that they are but animals. - Ecclesiastes 3:16-18”

Sometimes I become discouraged by wickedness, sometimes I feel it pervading the culture—lying becomes as natural as breathing. Not just Kenyan culture but everywhere. The shortcomings of others are novel and shocking, but it’s just because we’re all at home with our own maladies—but we all have them. I’ve talked to so many people who say how hard it is to move forward in life when everyone can’t stand to watch you get ahead, pull through with your ideas, or be better than them. This angers me more than a lot of things. Instead of building by leaning on each other and using one another as support beams and foundation for the building, everyone tears it down and tries to stand tall and be something as a single beam. Even just at the school level, I always encourage people to compete in a good and supportive way, not in the typical “knock ‘em all down and be the tallest” kind of way.

Perhaps everyone goes through phases in their life when the evil of the world mulls on their tongue more than before. Again, back to the mesh of love-hate feelings, the sweetness of grace accompanies the mulling bitterness of evil. I can think of nothing lovelier than these words in Jeremiah…after everything Israel did to provoke the anger of the Lord.
“You are saying about this city, ‘By the sword, famine and plague it will be handed over to the king of Babylon”; but this is what the Lord, the God of Israel, says: I will surely gather them from all the lands where I banish them in my furious anger and great wrath; I will bring them back to this place and let them live in safety. They will be my people, and I will be their God. I will give them singleness of heart and action, so that they will always fear me for their own good and the good of their children after them. I will make an everlasting covenant with them: I will never stop doing good to them, and I will inspire them to fear me, so that they will never turn away from me. I will rejoice in doing them good and will assuredly plant them in this land with all my heart and soul.”

I love strolling down the road outside the farm and being greeted by roaming bicyclists, strangers and old friends alike. Here in America it is noticeable how no one seems to have an overwhelming urge to talk as they pass just inches from each other on the sidewalk.

I love living in a community. We see each other everyday, we flutter around between houses. We are a 60 person family, working for the same purpose.

I love learning Kiswahili songs from Nafula in her kitchen.
I love watching Mello and Jeanie—2 and 3 year old inseperable friends.
I love Timorna and Rhoda’s discussions about how they will “make their hair to be so smart” (braiding extensions in the most attractive fashion) and listening in agony to the number of hours they had to sit there, or laughing with Timorna as she knocks at my room at 5:30 am to borrow a bandana to cover her half finished hair before she goes to school to teach.
I love potlucks where I actually understand the love of Jesus more by the way we love one another. The joy in eating together, playing silly games, singing in a circle, traditions, speeches, babies falling asleep, excitement in a soda, nicknames, fireflies on the walk home.

The other day Marit, Kata and Lexi and I decided to write some “You know you’re in Kenya when…”s. Here are some I thought of. They hardly touch the treasury of all of them in my head or the others they wrote. They either won’t make sense at all, or will give you a better glimpse of what it’s like.

You Know you’re in Kenya when…

-You arrive in Jomo Kenyatta airport and henceforth notice everything is named after the first president, who named himself after his country.
-At any moment you could be held up by a herd of cattle, horns and all, lazily trodding in the road.
-You say “hello” to a passer-by and they reply, “I’m fine, fine” with both hands raised—pushing the fine-fines, when you didn’t even get to the how are you.
-Sometimes all you can think of is the lady on the radio’s voice saying in that lovely Kenyan accent, “Safaricom, the betta option”.. or “Celtel—making life betta. Giving you a chance to win, not one, not two, but seven houses…” advertising mobile telephone companies.
-Once or twice a week is excessive hair washing and people always comment, “You’ve washed your hair?” if it is wet. “ When I’ve plaited, Anne, I’ll wash after 4 months. Imagine!”
-Timorna refuses to carry our fish back from Kolang in a see-through polythin because, “You know Anne, some old Mama just sees you with that fish and puts a curse on it, then when you go home and eat it, you just find yourself so sick.”
-Chai appears on the low table within minutes of your appearance in Nandi.
-You can’t sleep at night because the symphony of night noises never ceases. When the bullfrogs break for five, you say to yourself, “Quick, I need to fall asleep right this instant before they start again!” but of course you cannot and then the restless heifer lowes and the chorus of piccolo mosquitos sounds dangerously near your ears.
-“Owe Are YOOOO?” are the three sweetest words.
-When a Hornbill floats to a branch above the little clearing under which the entire primary school and Karunga community sits and begins the ceremony with…”Without wasting much time, since time has already been wasted…I would just like to welcome Mzee Joseph to say a few words. But keep it short.”
-When you are told to “feel free” so many times by Cusmus Tikoi that you begin to feel uncomfortable.
-You realize you could buy anything you needed outside
It could go on forever, but I’ll spare you this time.

I love Kenya. There’s so many daily adventures I never had time to write about, so many funny conversations and letters the kids wrote me. Perhaps I’ll write again later, but for now, my heart is full, and my head is full and my eyes are sleepy. I am so blessed to know with confidence that I love and am loved.
Kuonane

June

2007-06-13T11:43:00.001-07:00

I had a great time visiting my dear friend Janet, whom I used to live with here. We sat around waiting for the rain to stop late at night, telling tales with her mother in law and her neighbor. We took turns; they telling Luo tales and me racking my brain for any fairytale, revolutionary war story or whatever I could think of. Although I got stuck a few times during Rumplestilstskin and Repunzel, I realized it didn’t matter if I made it up, because they have never heard it before. Let me tell you a Luo story I heard twice over the course of the weekend, from different people, slightly different versions.
This is the story of Aluga Mager.
A long time ago, the Kipsigis and the Luos were fighting. The Luos had a warrior who was able to kill so many people and fight so bravely. Yet, this warrior could never be brought down. Nobody could kill him. One day the Kipsigis decided to offer peace by presenting the warrior with a beautiful lady from their tribe to be his wife. He accepted, but little did he know that they sent her to be a spy and find out his weakness. She took good care of him and earned his trust. Then one day he had a terrible headache. As was custom, they would make very small slices in the skin near the temple, then crush local plants inside to cure the headache. Aluga Mager, the warrior, told his wife to come to him and slice the temple of his shadow instead of his real head. She did so, and blood came out. He gave her the herbs and she rubbed them in the shadow’s wound. Immediately he was better, and she knew that her husband’s strength and weakness lay in his shadow, not in his physical body. So she went back to her tribe and told them. The next time they were in battle, the Kipsigis pierced his shadow with spears and he fell face down and died. His body turned to stone and still remains, half sunk in the earth at the base of the hills. I drove past the area and someone pointed out where he lay.
“Ooh last night we really storied didn’t we?” Clement said the next morning, telling me he would never forget the stories about the mermaid, or the lady with the baby, or the tiger butter or any other story I told.

Guavas
I can’t quite see them because the underbrush is so thick—taller than my eyes. But I can hear them shaking the branches, followed by a dull plop, plop, thud thud, bub bub of over ripe guavas hitting the ground. More branches move, sounding like the shake of a newspaper under the nose of a crosslegged, bespectacled man. They’re moving from tree to tree. They’re no thieves. There’s plenty and no one goes to these ones. They’re on the other side of that little wire fence which separates the farm from un-stomped and unconcerned vegetation. It’s no crime to go guava hunting, although perhaps it is more exhilarating to think so. Sometimes instead of monkeys, it is boys running hunch backed through the tall grass to the shelter of the first tree. Then the second. I am standing, watching from a distance—hardly able to escape noticing the red tee shirt darting through a mass of pale honey colors.

Recently in Kenya
There has been a lot going on here recently. Last month, it was tribal clashes over land. Fighting up near mount Elgon. A bombing in Nairobi on Monday. Now, as you may have heard in the news, the Mungiki sect has been instilling fear in many people because of their beheading people in Nairobi, then the police force, in it’s effort to control them, has killed many suspects and innocent people. The newspapers are full of articles about the power of group mentality and oaths, and how bold it makes people when they feel they are supported by a group. It is interesting to listen on the radio to BBC’s Focus on Africa, where Kenyans were calling in, talking about what should be done etc… If you’re interested in info on the presidential elections happening this year, or the Mungiki sect news, check BBC international news.
I was sitting at my friend’s place in Karunga when a helicopter noise sounded in the distance. “ The president! He usually takes a helicopter.” My friend said, looking out the door.
“What?” I said in awe. “ The presidents of Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda are coming to Kisumu today.”
“I’m going to find them of course!” I declared as I went outside to catch a matatu. I needed to go to town to find some baby nappys (diaper cloths) and baby things for my brand new little friend. Unfortunately I missed their speeches, but I came to a street crowded with people waiting for them to drive by. The police cleared the road of bicycles and overflowing vehicles, pushing the people to cue on the side. We waited and waited. I thought there might be some sort of parade. I asked a lady if he was coming. “Yes, yes, the problem is just we don’t know when. So we are all cued up like this just waiting.” “Ok, I’ll wait with you.” Eventually some fancy range rovers passed, some other important dignitaries, and police, but never the presidents. The police were taken away, and the people murmured their disappointment to each other, and dispersed dejectedly. So, I almost saw the presidents. Oh well.

On Sunday, some of us hiked to the river in the rain. We took off our shoes and waded in the muddy path past Karunga and up to the base of the hills. We knew the river, but not this part. It flowed swiftly with milky orange water from the red earth. On the way home from our wet adventure, a gazelle ran right in front of Steven Kitoto. He could have touched it. Immediately we were in the middle of a hunting party crossing the path. Men chasing the flying legs with dogs, spears and stationed arrow men who calmly greeted us as we ran out of the way!

Baby John
I saw Milkah heading home across the field. “Habari, Milkah?” I yelled from a distance. “Mzuri—Jane, mtoto hapa!” She yelled back making swishing motions down her front to say that Jane’s baby was born.
“What? Hapa leo—sangapi?” Now? Today? What time? I was so excited, I ran after her and Milkah, Laoclaudia and I all went straight away to Jane’s in Karunga to see the baby. We came into her dark room with the bicycle and the water containers and the little wooden table—then, from behind the curtained bed, she brought forth baby John, who she had had all by herself the night before. Now I go every morning to help Jane and watch baby John. He is so little and has soft curly black whisps of hair. The same day she had her baby, we had been talking about pregnancy with all the Mamas in our discussion group. Jane was not there. I had just asked them if anyone was pregnant, or if anyone wanted to tell their story of having a baby. They mostly described themselves being alone at night and delivering. Some of them are not even 17. Tuesday afternoons. The path goes above the river where they are always bathing and washing. Some babies are clinging to Mama’s legs in the water. I go down to help, hoping it will allow more of them to come quicker. There’s no time and no hurry, but it always takes at least an hour for everyone to gather under the tin overhang where we meet. They told us they wanted to know about sexually transmitted infections, our systems and pregnancy, so that is what we have been talking about for the last 3 months. Some don’t know much about what’s going on inside them, except that they’re belly’s getting bigger, then after several months, a baby comes out.

On Saturday…
I was just waling to the choo when I ran into Tom and Peter and Fred who gave me their usual Habari ahsubuhi’s and other morning greetings. I saw Tom pulling a rope with a ram tied on the other end. This is not an unusual gesture for Tom, but this morning I remembered something which made me eye them closely and hurry away. “You’re not going to watch?” Fred, the aging and forever smiling watchman called after me. “ I don’t think so.” I replied, already on my way. As I stepped farther and farther away, I had more and more of a mad possession to turn around and go back. “ Why did I tell myself last night I wasn’t going to? This doesn’t happen in my life everyday. I turned and headed toward them. By now they were tying the rope to a tree. The tree happened to be in the middle of a garden I had been preparing. “Where will you do it?” I asked, thinking of all the blood.
“Right here in your shamba!” Fred said grinning. They tied his legs tight up in the air, his back resting as a helpless hostage on the ground. Tom had a knife which he now sharpened, making that brushing metals noise. “Shlink…Shlink, Shlink…” went the blades. “RaaBllaa…baaa….arg blllaaa!” struggled the ram and the people were quiet. Fred and Peter held the body. Tom tilted the ram’s chin backward, baring the dirty white throat. I had my hands close to my vulnerable eyes—for some kind of protection, although I;m not sure why we shrivel to this position thinking it will somehow help us endure to watch. One deep cut at the jugular vein and out shot a heavy hose of blood wetting the grass. And covering Tom’s hands. They all stepped back a bit to let it come. Funny noises emerged from deep in the ram’s gut. Soon Fed took his ponga and hacked the exposed spine through the neck. It didn’t break. I’m not sure if it was supposed to. One by one the ropes were untied; having fulfilled their shady purpose, they were uselessly tossed aside. First they skinned the legs, making long slice down one side and peeling back the hide. Then a shallow slice was made just to penetrate the skin, but not to damage the muscle or fat. And this ram was so fat! With one hand you hold taught the first half of the belly skin and with the other, slice free inch by inch. Quite a delicate process to keep the flesh from sticking to the hide. It was no longer bloody, just fleshy and a bit foul stenched. Now I had already stayed and supported this slaughter so far, so I decided I might as well have some of the shame or glory or whatever it was, on my hands too. “Of course you can help” he says as he hands me the knife. It was a good thing I already detest sheep meat, because this may have ruined the prospect of our ram feast potluck. Later at the potluck Susan looked at me as I transferred some to her plate. “It has defeated you?” –a classic Kenyan term for “you don’t like it?” or, “you can’t eat it?”

May Day and More

2007-05-17T08:24:00.000-07:00

Habari Zenu!
Last time I mentioned that I was frustrated that not everything was sinking in. But I did not do a very good job telling my favorite part of the last few weeks, which is surprise surprise, the opposite—when it does sink in. When they are going around singing the continent song, knowing where they are. When Judy tells me a story as we sit by the pond, and after my gullible self believes her, she says, “that part I was just using my imagination, isn’t it?” When Robert asks me to explain something again because he didn’t understand, instead of just pretending everything was OK. When Frederick jumped up and down with joy when he guessed the closest amount of footsteps measured the perimeter of the field—I really am so impressed with everyone and I am kind of sad that they have to go back to regular school now, it was such fun.

Yesterday was May Day, which is also a Kenyan holiday (Moi Day, the second president) and Labor Day. We wanted to have a fun school day. On May Day when I was little, we used to put flowers on people’s doorsteps and ring the doorbell and hide in the bushes! So that is what we decided to do. We made a whole bunch of bouquets, and went around to everyone’s house and knocked and yelled, “Hodi!” which is what you say upon your arrival at someone’s house. Then we left the flowers and ran away. Then we decided to go for a swim in the pond. The nice part about swimming is that it takes no preparation, we just decide to go, jump in with whatever clothes we’re wearing, then dry off in the sun. It was the best class we ever had. We fought with swords made of reeds, practiced our floating, even had a math lesson as we sat around half in the water. They’ve never paid such great attention. We had story problems and whoever knew the answer would burst out of the water. Who would have thought swimming could facilitate a math class so well? Now we do swimming lessons almost every afternoon. Nancy who is in highschool has never been in water like this so the whole experience is awesome and awkward and she doesn’t even want to get out! The boys are a bit fearless, splashing and dog paddling, but are now practicing floats and strokes, looking adorable of course. I basically have no idea what I’m doing, or how to teach swimming lessons, but with lots of grace and head counting, teaching on the spot, splashing, and turn-taking---it works!

“We are not simply the final destinations in the flow of God’s gifts. Rather, we find ourselves midstream, so to speak. The gifts flow into us, and they flow on from us.” –Miroslav Volf

We have been having these really neat community meetings recently to evaluate Nehemiah. I wanted to share some of the things we discuss and value. This is what you can pray about when you pray for our Nehemiah community.
-A culture of mutual respect manifest in: fellowship, relational integrity, being comfortable with each other, trusting each other, having each others interests in our heart, how we greet, visit, share, feel free with each other.
-confronting issues in love and resolving them in a timely manner
-A willingness to overcome personal comfort in the interests of the bigger picture
-praying together
-hospitality
-a passion to overcome our propensity to gossip
-Never lose the focus on everyone being a learner and in training
-Remain an innovation center with a focus on ongoing innovation
-teaching the children about God, the values of the kingdom
-Let our lives be a harmony containing all the elements of a beautiful sound to the glory of God.
-Constantly improving how we communicate: opportunities, initiatives, and in general, what is all going on.
-Using your voice and not keeping quiet when something needs to be said
There are many more, but I can’t remember them right now. But I am overwhelmed with the difference in conversations and ability to discuss since I was last here.

The other week the students had a mission weekend to Kanu, a community about an hours walk away, where some of the people training here are from. It was amazing. I used to have this fear and skepticism around big evangelistic movements or crusades. I thought it would turn into a big emotional hype with no foundation. Even though I wanted people to know Jesus and have that abundant life and freedom, I guess I didn’t want it to happen that they would have tons of people just left. But who am I to tell God how he should do things? Who can deny a healed person, or not rejoice? I am learning that God works in many many ways, and sometimes they don’t seem like they all fit together, because Christians dispute so much on the “right way to do things” but opposites don’t bother God like they bother us. The women who went to Jesus’ tomb “ were filled with fear and joy…Jesus was fully man and fully God…” We may say, “How can you be filled completely with two different things?...” It doesn’t bother Him, and I am feeling so free that I don’t have to decide or judge, but just trust God, and rejoice in what he does. When people went around praying for families at their houses, a women who had been blind for five years was healed. They said, are you just saying that you can see? What are these letters on this shirt? She couldn’t read, so she just said, this one looks like this…and made the motions with her fingers! Another girl had been sick for a year and a half and God healed her until she was even laughing. About 1500 people came to see the Jesus Film, and many are now starting to meet together. I have been going a couple of times to gather with some of the families and it is so cool.

I went to a funeral in Kanu a couple of days ago.
They buried her in the backyard, not two meters from the door. I saw them dig her grave yesterday and today they laid her there—dark brown skin in a dark brown box under dark brown soil. With a flag on top. Hours passed and even her husband’s Luo words were translated into louder Luo—his own too feeble from grief. All the women wore white dresses and head scarves with red crosses on top. The men wore the robes and caps—the Legion of Maria…A sort of irony or what? Wasn’t it black we always wear to funerals? It reminded me of that “band of angels comin’ for to carry me home” A white passage, sending you into heaven. That is where she is, I know. Where was she going when she died? She finally knew the answer to that question, not two days before she died. Then—it came suddenly, just a headache, meningitis they think, no warning. Only 17, her husband much older. Her babies much younger, and much sadder then all the happy dancing and singing women outside after the burial. The family stays in the area for 3 days mourning and playing drums all through the night and all the guests eat away the village, turning the whole affair into a social and political platform…Even though I couldn’t understand most any of the Luo burial ceremony, I did hear “Kibaki, and Railla..” thrown in somewhere, which gave me the heads up that the speeches were not purely in memory of Moreen, but a presidential elections pitch as well. But really I can’t blame them--there were a lot of people around.

On Wednesdays I go to Jue Kale, in Miwani, to a little nursery school. It is a tiny room where they meet. I love them so much. There teacher, Marian, is so creative; she even molded all the letters for them out of mud and baked them in the sun. We learn about animals, I bring a story book, we sing songs and learn many other things.

“Never be afraid of your own faintheartedness in the endeavor to love, nor even too fearful of any bad actions that you may commit in the course of that endeavor. I am sorry I cannot say anything more comforting to you, for active love compared with contemplative love is a hard and awesome business.” -Dostoevsky
I am so behind in writing to you all, and I can hardly write about everything, but I am having a splendid time, and I hope you are also doing well!
Much love, Anna
Hakuna mungu mwingine, aliekama wewe

2007-04-25T00:13:00.000-07:00

Students
We are now in the second week of tuition (like summer school). It is so fun to teach, and have a class of students; it is also so challenging and frustrating. I think the most frustrating part is having so much energy and excitement about teaching and learning all these cool things about our world, and knowing that it is not all sinking in. But as Marit reminds me, this is the first time they are learning like this, perhaps the first time hearing some things, and like little kindergarteners, they’re not supposed to understand everything they are read in books, but by no means should that mean you don’t read to them. It may not be the first time around that something clicks, but the exposure to creativity, to science and writing… that is a small wonder we can rejoice in. The school system in Kenya is run by these small booklets for each subject with the same little drawings etc… All the primary teachers teach out of these books and there is no variety, hardly any imagination, story books or other resources or science classes. It has been so cool to see the libraries that have been started and how revolutionary and amazing reading can be! So far, with the help of people in Washington and others, enough books have been sent to start a few libraries in the local schools, and here on the farm. A resource library was created a few months ago, and is hopefully going to be a huge tool for all the seven primary schools in this district. The dream Marit and I have is to help the teachers somehow know ways they can use other books in their teaching, and to get the books out of the cupboards!! The saddest thing would be for libraries to be created and then be so strange and valued that they are not used kabissa.
Some highlights from last week included: learning the parts of the flower and dissecting some, planting seeds and watching them grow, going on a “field trip” to one of the shambas and having Fred explain how certain plants grow. Also we spent a whole class day learning about the inside of the earth and volcanoes, then going outside and making one out of vinegar and baking soda and soap and water; we buried the volcano in a bud vase at the top of a heap of soil so it was quite exciting, but the eruption was a bit anti-climactic. The other day I was so thrilled when I looked at all the kids in my class sitting under his own tree writing a story inspired by a picture they chose from a National Geographic. They are never ever alone. They eat and sleep and walk everywhere with each other, and so to see them alone for 20 minutes (of course this takes a lot of coaxing) is a beautiful sight. I am learning that I want to learn and teach about the things around us also, it is so cool to ask and understand why there is lightning and thunder every afternoon, what soil is made of etc...

Older Students
There are also other students here that are of varying older ages who are attending the Bible school that moved here last year. They are from all over and it has been fun to get to know them a bit. Koma and Daniel are two guys from Sudan. They met at a refugee camp in Northern Kenya. Over the school break Koma went back to Sudan and reconnected with his family for the first time in 16 years! Even communication was difficult during that time. He was saying that he was trying to get his birth certificate and identity papers there but it is so corrupt. “If you make any mistake on the form, the officer makes you pay and he pockets the money. They even can make $300-500 extra in a day!” I wasn’t sure if Sudan’s currency is also called a dollar, or if he was referring to the American dollar, anyways wow. “There are two governments really, the government of the hearts and the government of the people. But even if the government of the people is for peace and anti-corruption, how can we fight against the corruption of our country when the corruption is not out of the hearts of people? How can we fight against that? We need the holy spirit to guard and guide our hearts, to change our hearts. Otherwise we can just forget it and go back and hide in the bush like the last 20 years.” He said. Grace, my roommate from Rwanda has lived most of her life with her family in Uganda. Her father was killed in the 80’s and her brother was killed in the 94 genocide. It is boggling for me to be in the midst of the history I have studied, and to glimpse the heart of its effects-- I really want to know more.

Washingtone’s wedding
My friend Washingtone (Ben Moore’s roommate) got married last weekend! It was my first Kenyan wedding—So fun. He married a women from New Zealand so the mix of her few friends that came out, and Washingtone’s whole extended, extremely Luo family was so neat. At the end, his family did this parade of loud clucking and singing as they brought in envelopes with money, chickens that had squacked in a basket during the ceremony, and a coffee table over the shoulder…all as presents for the newlyweds. One of my favorite parts were the speeches. The parents and different friends welcomed each other into the family, people shared beautiful things about the character of the bride and groom, so you know that the marriage will be good, if you did not know one party. So that was a really fun day and ended in a huge downpour that filled the trenches!

the latest

2007-04-13T07:46:00.000-07:00

School’s out for April
I went to Karunga’s closing ceremony. I must say that now I know what “too much of a good thing is not so good” means. It was so good that this ceremony happened, but it was so drawn out and like my friend Dismas says, “We Kenyans like to say the same thing in our own voice. Everyone just says the same thing.” It is true, people like to say the same thing using the beautiful melodies of their own voices  We sat outside in the shade, but as the speeches went on the shade kept moving. Everybody must have moved at least four times. Until after four hours, the originally organized seating looked more like a meteor had dropped in the middle and dispersed the people, leaving a crater of sun scorched grass in the middle.

The village Mzee (elder) was there with his whitened hair and chin stubble, and his cane, which, after seeing him dance and clap around—I don’t know how he has trouble walking. He was a very dramatic, humorous man and we all hung upon his words. Not because his age demands respect but because he has lived long enough to know life is to be enjoyed and laughed at. It made no difference to him whether others were laughing at him because he was making a fool of himself or because he was funny; for he himself was laughing at life. It seemed that everyone gave him their awe because they all knew he had earned it. He had been there in that time of life when decisions are serious, when troubles are heavy and now they let him be a bit free.

Mouth and Foot Disease
I vaccinated about twenty cows the other day! I was just watching and then David said, “Now it is your turn.” So I did most of the rest. The floor is covered with cows and manure and urine. You have to catch them first. They slap the back hip loudly ad say, “Shaw tzz tzz…” He whistles a slow note and slowly slips a noose around her neck, quickly pulling it and wrapping the end around the side board. She jerks in protest until two brown fingers snatch her nostrils to still her. I place my hand on her neck to check her reaction, then tilt the syringe toward her body and jab the needle into her tense skin. Sometimes she is still and I push my thumb down and the pink liquid disappears. Other times she whacks my hand into the board and we rush to resume our holding positions; A tighter grip, a racing dart for the dangling needle.

Passion Week
We celebrated passion week almost as an advent time for Christmas, but instead, a waiting, preparing, and thinking about Jesus’ life, death and resurrection. One thing I didn’t know was that the word passion also means passivity, it means the opposite of action. When I heard this, at first I thought, “Why would it be called passion week if it is a passive word?” It is also means fiercely emotionally attached, and strong affection for something. Isaiah chapter 53 is my favorite Easter passage. It explains to me why we call the week of Easter, “passion week.”

Egg Hunt
We had a hard boiled egg hunt on Saturday and then an egg eating party with everyone! It was really fun because eggs are quite a special food. It is hard to imagine, since we buy a dozen eggs for the same price as a cup of black coffee.

I live down in the heart of the farm, right by the dairy. I live with a girl named Grace, from Rwanda who just came back, so I have only met her for 2 minutes. I also live with the “cowgirls” from Nandi, Evalyn, Mary and Rose. They are awesome! We are also with Alicia from America, and a Karunga teacher, Timona. We all live in what used to be the chicken coop which they now call “the girls dorm.” We have a small yard where we have a cooking fire and a wash line. We have to go somewhere else to use the latrine and don’t have a shower, so we “basin bathe” in the yard when it is dark in the early morning or at night. I love living in this way, and learning to live a more typical Kenyan women’s lifestyle. My favorite part about living down at the end of the farm is that we are only a few steps away from the pond.

I have been here a week now, and still, I can’t stop being grateful that I am here right now. It has been the best time so far. I have several families that are my family and several new people that I am growing to know more. Everyday people say, “ Anne, why don’t you take breakfast with us tomorrow?” or “ Anne, you are coming for supper tonight?” or “ Anne come help me with the goats…” so I have been spending a lot of time working in the goat shed with Jane, cooking, talking to many, many people—renewing lots of friendships. One especially fun thing is that I live so close to the Wakhungu family, who have been great friends. The father, Dismas, used to tell me all the time last year that he was going to come running with me, but he never actually would. This time, he and his girls and I have a little evening or morning run everyday! They also teach me Kiswahili and I tutor them in math. Next week actual tuition starts so I will have the 4th and 5th grade class.

Cerebral Malaria
I got really sick. More strangely sick than I have ever been in my life, luckily the worst is over and I am feeling much better. I went to lay down one afternoon because I felt a bit feverish. A few hours later I was so hot and sweaty and cold. It got worse and worse very quickly but it was raining so hard I couldn’t tell anyone. It was the weirdest experience. I look back remembering everything, but feeling so different now, that I know I was in some weird half-consciousness. I remember wailing and uncontrollably crying and rocking back and forth for probably three hours. Later, my head hurt so bad, and I lost the feeling and mobility in my arms and legs. The ladies that I live with came home and tried to help me. They kept telling me to stop crying, but I thought I was going to stay paralyzed. I was in such a weird delirium that I remember not being able to control anything I was saying. It was as if I was saying exactly everything I was thinking and exactly how I was feeling, but being a helpless child. My hands were all stiff, cold and distorted as if I was born without the ability to spread my fingers. I made them walk me up and down so I could assure myself, that even if I couldn’t feel, they would still go. They went to get help and someone came in a car and brought me up to the Kruegers house. Jeff had to carry me inside because I couldn’t walk. Everybody’s voices were so distant and foggy, and I was saying nonsensical things, but I remember most of it, and remember laughing at myself for the things I was saying, but not being able to control it. I had a 104 degree temp and they gave me lots of drugs and wrapped me with wet wash cloths. I kept falling over in sleep but, I know that there were a lot of people in my room praying for me and taking care of me in the night. After my fever broke, I was in such a different mind set, and felt aware and sOOO much better! So now I am recovering quickly and sleeping a lot. It is kind of strange to get it when you have only been here a couple weeks, but it looks like I have all the symptoms for cerebral malaria. So I am so thankful that is over and that I recovered so fast!

Arrived!

2007-04-03T13:26:00.000-07:00

I felt overhwelmed with joy at the Nairobi airport. I was back, I was actually thrilled to stand in line to talk to the visa man, secretly pleased to recognize words that some people were discussing the meaning of in the other bathroom stall and the whole ride into to the city I could not stop smiling; I just couldn’t help it. I am most struck by smells I know are exactly Kenya, but I have not smelled them in a long time. It is like seeing an old friend you would recognize anywhere. It is not that I know what makes the smells, I just know them. I know I smell it on the air, next to the latrine :) , in the dust, on my hands after I have washed with the “Imperial Leather” soap they use everywhere. Mostly it is in a hug. You may say, duh…that’s called body odor, but I suppose it is still something that catches my attention as distinct and welcoming.

I can hardly believe I’m here. I don’t think I actually believed myself when I would tell the little boys I would come back to visit them soon, or someday. I never imagined it would be now. Hallelujah it is. I stayed in a room across from the Easy Coach bus station in Nairobi. My room overlooked the street. I was told it would be very loud, so I was surprised to arrive in an empty street at 10:30 at night. However, I took an “afternoon nap” from 1-4am and awoke to a rumbling, honking, bustling, bursting city street which entertained me for the next couple hours. I really like cities in the morning—any city. Everyone’s off to work, I always wonder where they are off to.

It was a grey and misty morning with orange mud puddles. My bus left and I was settled into my usually silent trance of looking out the window. This time I noticed details, I was taken back into memories, and funny stories and conversations. I noticed the blue and grey striped socks of the school children, I could name some of the food growing inches from the road (How it tastes good with all the truck exhaust, I have no idea). There was a massively intense handball game going on. I saw dirty roadside markets with heaps of mangos and tomatoes, potatoes, a little pick up piled with pineapple. Typical clusters of shops with rusted tin ripple roofs and brightly painted, but washed out and worn walls sunk into the dirt everywhere. The names on the signs are always the best. “Eunice’s look pretty hair saloon” or “Nameless Inn” and even “Coffin shop” It is a little taste. It is so pretty and lush right now. Railroad tracks and power lines slice through the growing ground. The road travels up and overlooks a huge valley with a little plateau coming up out of nowhere in the middle.

I am loving being around Kenyan English. The phrasing and intonation is so different than American English. “ You want what?” “Eh! I’m COMing.” Everything is pronounced with all the t’s and dropped all the er’s and turn them into a’s.

Now I have arrived back on the farm outside of Kisumu and have spent my first whole day. I’m having so much fun. It was a beautiful day. In the morning everyone meets at the church for prayer. Then the kids go off to school and everyone else goes about their work. I helped clean out the calf stalls with Lynette. There are currently 8 calves and around 61 cows total now! So many! It is so fun to bump into my friends one by one at various points in the day and join whatever they are doing. I went with Milkah, and weeded in the maize field, washed milk pails in the milking parlor with Evalynn, and went to Karunga for the weekly mama health discussion group, which I will have to tell you all about later.

leaving

2007-03-26T10:58:00.000-07:00

Hey friends!
So, as you may have heard, I am going back to Kenya this week until mid July. I am currently in Santa Cruz, Ca at the public library with my brother Kurt and his wife Nienke. I am enjoying a few relaxing days with them before heading out to New York city early tomorrow morning. I am looking forward to visiting my dear friend Valerie, who I have known since I was 3 years old! This saturday, March 31st, I will board the plane for London, then on to Nairobi.
I have been thinking a lot about how different it will be arriving in Kenya for the second time. It has been almost exactly a year since I left Kenya last spring. The Nairobi airport has a funny floating body odor smell to it, that I remember trying to label as soon as I walked off the plane last time. The bus ride from Nairobi to Kisumu last year was my first exposure to Africa. The 7 hours of staring out the window, jiggling up and down to the rythm of the potholes, not knowing much about anything I was seeing, was like an introduction, a welcome. I am looking forward to another welcome of the same sort, but this time it will be less foreign, although I am still a foreigner but now it is so familiar and natural, and I can't quite predict my reaction to it yet.