Last Week in Kolanya

Those Good ‘Ole Luo Days

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

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.

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

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.”

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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