Simon's Nairobi Diary - Archive 15

23 January 2006 5:38pm

In the words of the modern day prophet DangerousJ: I've got the sickness. It started slowly and today its entrenched itself within the arteries. The immune system's working overtime and I'm doing what I can to assist, but for the most part I'm grounded onto the mattress.

While I attended class for one hour today I passed by some guys taking a dead and dangerous tree down with a chainsaw. One guy climbed way up high (30+ ft) and then another guy threw him a rope. He slung the rope over a branch and they raised a chainsaw up to him and he cut off big branches from 30ft up. Then they slung a second thicker rope around the very top of the trunk of the tree and four guys pulled the top in one direction while a fifth guy cut the trunk at the base. Since they were pulling this big rope the tree fell in the direction they wanted. I don't know why this was so peculiar to me, perhaps my history of gathering wood with my dad for the stove off dead trees with the chainsaw. This big dead tree, with all these big ropes over it and a guy chain-sawing inside the branches was just strange I guess.

19 January 2006 6:42pm

Going to town today, the car I was in had to brake in the middle of the road because of a herd of crossing Masai cows. The cows, as the passed, surrounded the small old white VW on all sides. They became quite pressed and suddenly began to shake the little car as they jostled around it. I sat in the passenger seat front-left and let my hand out the window to watch the Brahmas as they and their humps passed nearby. Finally, after the shaking had stopped and herd had passed, John readjusted the outside mirror and brought the car back up to speed.

18 January 2006 6:27pm

The creation just radiates the passion of its creator!

17 January 2006 8:16pm

Sunday we revisited that church in Kibera slum. Myself and a married couple from here were guided by a fourth student through the maze of skinny trash paths, ducking low to avoid the edges of the eye-level metal roofs. The gelatinous grey water that was always next to you was made sorer by the children playing nearby. More seen this time were the businesses throughout the area. Fruit stands, water supplies, flour mills, hair 'salons', everything. All cramped in these low single-room shops that fell in line with the rest of the rust-encrusted metal and mud structures. Chickens and ducks walked about, and one man was wading calf-deep in the sewage scooping out shovel-fulls of the awful 'mud' to rebuild a part of a house.

Half-way through the entry walk I stopped. I realized the whole life that is present within this inner city of Kibera. And I forced myself to breathe deep. Deeper into my lungs came the scents of trash and sewege, deeper into my vision came the shoes and legs and faces and shops and signs in Swa. I saw the speckles of grey on my toes and felt with my fingers the metal siding and the dirt walls. I flung my cognition onto reality: their reality: that man's reality. He lives here, and so I took another deep breath through my nose, because of respect for him and his every-day place. A desperate grave lavish of honor from a boy born in Michigan to a man in Kibera.

16 January 2006 7:44pm

Today, Simon, will you be brave? Will you be honest? Will you, this day, love the light and hate the darkness? Will you fight yourself to be with those in despair?

Its hope they'll see, you know. Hope that things are ok, that this isn't all there is, that love makes as much sense as they thought it made. As much sense as you thought it made, and after its gone you will see its finally here. To be loved is to love with all your heart. You know?

13 January 2006 6:14pm

Two thousand and six. I can hardly feel it as a real fact. Two thousand and six. I remember when it felt normal to say 1992, though it was 1995. And now, it feels more normal for 2004 not 2006. Its a number really. I know its supposed to signify 365 sunsets and moon rises, but this count of celestial cycles is having a difficult time sitting in the brain. I'm supposed to look at this number - 2006 - and understand the turning of time, but for me its better seen in soap not sunsets. Two weeks ago my complimentary soap bar from the Hotel Allegro ran out. My program put me up at this hotel at the start of last semester in Chicago. The tan colored bar loses its edges, then one day its the size of a quarter. Then it is gone and I'm in Kenya. And there are a jumble of other ways to grasp this movement: bank statements, bus and airline tickets, encouraging letters received and written, different beds (couches), disposed razors, changed guitar strings, crushes, the spinning inside of the cd player, the memory of a friend's face quietly fading, toenail clippings, coffee grounds, a dream turned real...

These are what I can see and understand. And yes, looking to things like carried complimentary hotel soap bar, I see the sun has been setting a lot lately.

11 January 2006 8:18pm

One of the seminary students told her story in chapel today. She was born out of wedlock and her mother married somebody other than her father. This man hated her for how she was born. He told her she was worthless, and physically beat her. She was only a small girl. This continued on and the her life became miserable and she remembers going out to the back of the house and asking 'whoever was listening' to take her away. Ten days later her brother died. The funeral was at her house, and (still with no understanding of a Christian God) she prayed out loud for someone to save her from this life. She then ran to the gate by the road and stood as the people left the funeral. As she stood there, her Christian aunt came up and asked her, "Do you want to come home with me?" She said yes.

Her story spoke of a God who is deeply compassionate, who sees and has a heart for the all suffering on the surface of the globe. She just cried out an offering of her misery to a half-perceived Unknown, and this Creator moved in solid beauty and brought her escape from awful living. She didn't know anything about Jesus or the disciples or whatever, but she was saved in a event steeped in the divine. A loving God was as undeniable as the nearby road. And I honestly believe that, if not for her story and others, I would leave this faith. If this Christian life was just rules and dogma and ritual I'd be out of here in a second. But, because of the experiences and encounters I've seen of people remolded from despair to brilliance by the One of life, I'll give my heart and live my life for this Jesus.