March 26, 2007

FedEx
I felt homesick, a bit, this week.

So much so that I wanted to hug the FedEx guy when I saw him in our lobby. “FedEx!” I said. He said, “Yes, we’re here.” I restrained myself from hugging him. I do still have some common sense.

It takes me ten hours to find anything in the grocery store. “Tomato sauce – do you have – for cooking?” That’s how I ask. And some strange Swahili accent comes out of my mouth and helps the Kenyans understand me. I am led to the “ketchup” (remember, the stuff that’s not really ketchup). I stand forever reading packages and labels in Arabic, Italian, Kiswahili… feeling lost.

I saw post-it notes for sale in the grocery store. That made my day. Homesick.

The culture still shocks me. I really don’t enjoy walking through the streets by myself. I feel as if a giant spotlight follows me. I feel white and rich and vulnerable. I put my game face on, trying to look comfortable and unperturbed, though I’m praying to God to be walking beside me.

I want to invent a new word for homesick, for how can you be grieved over a place that is no longer home? Home is here and now. Home is wherever I am.

Easter
My first holiday without family and friends is approaching. I’ll be house sitting for an acquaintance from the embassy over that weekend. Hanging out with her brown labrador. I said I would do this, but then got depressed thinking about Easter here without my family.

I need to do zero backwards glancing right now. “Let your eyes look straight ahead, fix your gaze directly before you.” (Proverbs 4:25)

I’m past the two month mark now. I am home. I am in the home of God’s choosing. And I do love it. But I do still struggle with some things.

cross-cultural chameleons
Two little boys caught a chameleon – a pregnant one – and brought it into my house. (Isn’t that thoughtful? ) I was sitting there pondering my stressful walk home from the Ya-Ya Centre and the fact that I’m called to assimilate as best I can. Sort of like this chameleon – changing colors to adapt to her environment. Short of painting my skin, giving away all of my money, and living on a dollar a day, there’s only so much assimilation that can happen. I’ll always be, in a sense, a foreigner.

street children
I went last weekend with a church group to a home for rehabilitating street children. It was 90 minutes out on the road to Mombasa. Rural. Desolate. Poverty-stricken. The kids wearing rags. The little girls wearing what looked like tattered Easter dresses for their everyday wear. There were 90 former street children living dormitory style. It depressed my spirit.

What’s depressing me? The enormity of the situation. The children wearing rags for clothes. Dust on their faces, dirt on their clothes. And the donations we bring? One pair of pants fell out of the bag – it was all shredded and messed up. I guess that I’ve never seen or imagined the children who would one day wear the clothes that I donate to charity.

I wondered, Do I bring tattered rags as an offering to You, Lord? I know that sometimes I do. Sometimes I am not sacrificial at all. It’s me first. New clothes for me – my old clothes for God’s children – and ultimately for Him. Whatever you do for the least of these, you do for Me… I love what Mother Theresa said about the lepers and dying people whom she served – how it was like discovering Jesus in “His indescribable disguise.” God is in the children whom we dress in our old rags. (Matthew 25:37-40)

good-bye outfits
They dressed toddler Eunice up in a pretty new dress and patent leather shoes and little girl lace socks. Her good-bye outfit. The people from the Rafiki Foundation (a home for older children who have not gotten adopted) came to get her. She’s legally their child now, with no hope of adoption. She followed Mary (founder-director) around and didn’t want to go.

The passing of children from one set of hands to the next…It’s a bit painful to let them go into another children’s home.

I don’t know why this grieves me so deeply, but it does.

I know that I’m not the solution, but something in me (ego perhaps?) wants to hold Eunice and tell her it’ll be alright. And that same something in me wants to go back to that home for street children and give them a list of foundations and corporations that might help.

But I can’t fix the mess, the mess, the mess. It’s a God-sized problem.

dust & ashes
Last Sunday I went with Shosho (Grandma) Mary to the slum church in Mtumba that she serves in. There were about 70 people meeting in a little shack of a building. Singing their hearts out. Seventy-five percent of the congregation was children!

People burn their garbage on the sides of the road, and in the dirt alleys. They cook and congregate in alleys, out in the open. They scoop up water flowing through the streets and boil it. Every time I turn on my faucet and clean water comes out, I am cognizant of the fact that my running water separates me from 70% of the people in Kenya.

“He raises the poor from the dust
and lifts the needy from the ash heap;
He seats them with princes,
with the princes of their people.”

Psalm 113:7-8

There’s something comforting in the fact that these words were thousands of years old. The poor were down-trodden in the dust then, and they’re down-trodden in the dust now. The needy were crouched in the ash heap then, and they’re still crouched in the ash heap today. But the promise of God stood then and it still stands today. God will seat the poor with the princes of heaven. God will raise them up from the dust, lift them out of the ashes, and give them the riches of heaven. The poor on earth who seek Him will not suffer poverty forever.

Daybreak
“Have you ever given orders to the morning
or shown the dawn its place,
that it might take the earth by the edges
and shake the wicked out of it?”
- Job 38:12-13

I love the idea of God taking the earth by its edges and shaking the wicked out of it. I wish He’d do that here! I feel terror, wicked, and evil descend in greater force with the night here. It’s so strange. We go from one guard to two. The noise level on the street does not decrease. The prostitutes and their clients come out. The slums don’t sleep, for there’s no rest within them. We batten down the hatches, lock the doors, and the gates; we sleep behind barred windows and high compound walls. The poor are not so protected.

God,
Nairobi needs a permanent daybreak!
Show the dawn its place
that it may permanently reside
here. Give marching orders
to the Son – do not allow
His departure for
we crave continual light
light light…
enlighten us with Your
DAY BREAK –
take this earth by
its ragged edges
and shake the wicked
right out of it!

Command it
and it will be so.
Please.

I’ll close with that prayer, knowing that you’re with me in praying for and bringing about a permanent daybreak in this country and in this world.

Kwaheri na Afrika,
janay

P.S. If there’s any baby that you want a report on, please let me know!