May 7, 2007

the graves are not yet full

“There’s a joke among expatriates in Sudan that once you have drunk from the White Nile, you’re infected for life. In spite of myself, I had to agree. There was something about Africa that got into my blood and stayed there.”

- Bill Berkeley in The Graves are not yet Full: Race, Tribe, and Power in the Heart of Africa

I met a missionary named Joy who was staying with her family in Nairobi, attempting to “take a break” from their work. It struck me as ironic that they would vacation in the heart of Nairobi – which is the center of stress and chaos for me. Everyone’s center of stress – different. Their center of stress is in Southern Sudan. She showed me on the map – placed her finger on a tiny bend on the White Nile river and said – We live about an hour and a half from there. No roads, no infrastructure, no nothing out there except people. But there are groups – NGOs (non-governmental organizations), FBOs (faith-based organizations), churches – building a hospital out there in the middle of no-mans land. While Sudan is still at war after so many years, still at war.

I sat with a “Lost Boy” at dinner, too. Sudan’s lost boys made famous by war. Surreal.

Sudan is Kenya’s neighbor to the north. They say that a country is only as stable as its neighboring countries.

I’m reading The Graves are not Yet Full, trying to get a better understanding of the macro-level forces at work to create the chaos known as Africa. (If you’re into political history, I’d recommend it.) And I agree with Berkley’s comment: There’s something about Africa that gets into your blood and stays there (despite its obvious problems).

nose picking

Funny cultural thing – the Kenyans pick their noses like no others – better than five-year olds digging for gold.

So, we taught the Children in Crisis curriculum with a second group of teachers this week at our New Life School in Ruiru. I’m standing at the chalkboard discussing the most somber and serious of topics – formulating intervention strategies for children in crisis – and this teacher-trainee has his index finger so far up his nostril that his nose is sliding sideways and up and down his face. A grown man! I just kept rambling on.

God is so good, though. He helps me to hardly notice these things. I stay on track and only remember and laugh to myself five hours later.

New Life has a school that educates 100 children (3 - 9 years old) just forty-five minutes outside of Nairobi.

school of teachers (SOT)

The teacher training went really well. It’s easier to teach a curriculum the second time around. This is an area of ministry to be expanded and developed. Potentially, a pair or team of teachers coming in every quarter to teach new concepts, methods, etc.

names

The teachers at Ruiru gave me a Kikuyu (kee-koo-you) name. Each tribe has settled in certain areas of Kenya (there are approximately 39 different tribes in this country). And the Kikuyu are the majority tribal/people group in the town of Ruiru.

So I am Wamboui (wom-boy-ee).

This naming ceremony took all of two seconds, as they only have 10 possible names to choose from. Apparently, Kikuyu women can only be named one of ten names because there were 10 original, tribal daughters.

Imagine in the States – Jennifer, Amanda, Sarah…. Jennifer, Amanda, Sarah…

Oh, wait, we sort of have the same issue, don’t we?

bird watching

The Kenyan birds are amazing! People come to visit Kenya just to bird watch, or so I’ve been told. (I can’t imagine ignoring the elephants and lions, but hey, whatever floats your boat.) Kenya has one of the most diverse bird populations in the world.

After teacher training ended in Ruiru, I went back to the place where I was staying. I sat out on the edge of the field, quiet and still. All these different birds started swooping in, feeding, chatting, taking baths on the red dirt basketball court – some dirt bathers skidding in like crazy-haired maniacs. I’m sure some of you could bust out your bird books and tell me the names of these marvelous creations, but I can’t tell you much more than that. I was smiling inside, unwinding, after teaching about recovery, restoration, rehabilitation, the cycle of violence, attachment disorders, art therapy… blah, blah, blah – heavy things. And I remembered a bit of advice from this Self-Care in Mission class that I took at Fuller Seminary: “Bird watching is therapeutic” or something to that effect. I thought at the time – What an old geezer thing to do! And then, there I was, in Africa, doing just that.

thoughts on machetes

As I’m sitting out on the edge of this property in Ruiru, not another soul in sight – just the birds – along comes an African man carrying a machete in one hand. I think – OK, he’s a weed-wacker. And I noted that he was wearing some kind of uniform. But then he turned and started walking straight toward me. For a split second, I wondered, you know? When he saw me, he dropped his machete in the dirt, then he picked it up and walked past me and grinned a friendly “I’m-not-a-killer” grin, said something, and kept walking.

I find my judgment being constantly challenged, examined, and turned over here. My assumptions often proven false. My trust in God stretched.

Only in Africa do you wonder or have opportunity to wonder what that man approaching you might do with that machete he’s holding. A machete! It just appears so primitive, so violent. A weapon with a long, sordid past on this continent.

Kenyans use machetes to cut hedges, weeds, and tall brush.

But my western mind thinks of the genocide in Rwanda – (Hotel Rwanda) – in which the Hutus hacked the Tutsis to death with machetes. Or I think of Sierra Leone, where the Revolutionary United Front amputated people’s limbs in their diamond mine conflicts.

I am grateful when my assumptions and stereotypes – when the fears that keep me boxed into a small life of small-mindedness – are challenged.

third world rage

Ever seen the movie The Constant Gardener? Most of it was filmed in Kenya, including in Kibera, the second largest slum in Africa. I recently watched it for the second time here and watched the “special features”. They spoke with the director who is a Brazilian (City of God) director. His socially conscious films are often infused with a passion people described as “third world rage.”

third world rage –

I think it’s an inevitable sentiment that you pick up after having lived in or experienced the developing nations of the world. If you allow yourself to look around, if you allow yourself to listen, if you allow yourself to look under rocks and open dark closets – third world rage ignites. It boils over at times and, for me, can turn into depression. Or it just sits there, beneath the surface, constantly pushing me to press on in the fight against the injustice and despair that I am sensing around me. I mean, you have to do something with this rage that you feel or else it will consume you like a fire. The world is unjust – the eyes of my eyes are open – the ears of my ears are awake!

So I write to you about it. Hoping you will come to Kenya and that this third world rage will awaken in you a desire to rage against the unjust too…