Simon's Nairobi Diary - Archive 24

10 May 2006 4:23pm

I am leaving today with one of the local NGOs to do food distribution in the northern part of the country. We will be traveling to Kisumu, continuing north to an area near Lake Turkana, and then home by Sunday.

Anything north of Eldoret is not exactly friendly. We will be traveling with armed guards in a convoy, but there still remains that chance. This is a bad road. I am nervous about the danger, but when was the last time that helping people did not involve any risk? When you notice a person is down, even asking how they are involves the risk of being offensive. Life is risk. As for this trip, we are doing it all the safest possible way, not being idiots. Delivery of food to drought-affected rural places simply offers no alternative. And what about the your kingdom come, your will be done. Mild relief from famine is a touch of the kingdom, as it is His will and desire. So then this is.

Anyways, I have some sweet Seth Bernard to listen to, Greek passives to study, and interesting persona to travel with. Rain or shine, this will be a good thing.

Please pray for no shenanigans.

9 May 2006 8:41pm

My roommate looked out my window and immediately gawked at the neighbors cows. "Simon," he said, "those are very nice cows. You know if somebody owns such a herd they are very wealthy." I looked, and sure enough, the cows out my window across the hedge were different than the traditional Kenyan ones. He said that type of cow is very expensive because it gives out twice as much milk as the regular ones people have. I guess it was interesting to hear of the cow hierarchy.

My patience ran out with some of the guys on my floor. For two terms they had been greeting me with "yes". It drove me nuts. There is simply no acceptable response for this. Not "hello to you too!" or "hey brotha! or "what's the haps?". Nothing works, thus the insanity. "Yes Simon". Usually I choke out something like, "Yes, uh, Ameduwe." Well, anyways. I finally asked the main dudes of it to stop the yes-greetings. I asked them, "Could you please stop greeting me with yes?" It was awkward.

8 May 2006 7:25pm

The best part of the day was sharing an umbrella with Thomas.

5 May 2006 6:24pm

In absolute blinding honesty, I admit I have always been a pursuer of God. I could give little examples from when I was five, or six, or whatever. Questions that pounded through my brain when I was barely old enough to understand the rain cycle. It is who I am, this chaser of the Holy wind. It is a beautiful thing at times. How many counsels of those in confusion have ended in clarity from the God that shines outward from within? Clarity of wisdom as well, often seeing the naked worthlessness in things that steal a person and leave them ruined at the roadside. And always, always, no fear. I have no fear of the future or losing anything, mostly from because what I hold most valuable is also unlosable. But what awful things surround this appointment. And why was I given this thing? What pre-life factors caused this mark to be written on me? Because, in the purest of honesty, this thing brings as much pain as it brings happiness. People find one of 'these' too opinionated, too accepting, too open-minded, too judgmental, too conservative, too liberal, too quick to love, too quick to hate, and far too serious about following Jesus. I have sometimes wished my faith was a soft detail, like many others. It would have made it all so much easier. But this is not how it happened to be. This 'pursuer of Jesus' is as a part of me as the need to sleep at night. And nothing else is worth waking for. Nothing. All experiences only confirm what I've suspected all along, that only God can satisfy - has satisfied. Seeking Him drives me to walk the edges of what I know. It is haggard, endless, windblown, tear stained, and helpless.

But I'm not regretting what I was made to be. To suffer for the name, to endure these deserts is blisteringly honorable and quietly lovely at all times. All times. And always it has that priceless steadiness. I would not have any of it any other way. Perhaps this longing is, as my professor says, a mark of the priesthood.

4 May 2006 7:42pm

Hordes of termite flyers cover everything. The stores and eateries in town, the homes and chapel, even the library. I studied last night to the sound of turning pages and papery wings, the insects covering the library's ceiling lights, even darkening the room a bit. They fly into the mailbox holes and sit on the book shelves. The class room halls are literally a sea of their wings, and the worms (once wingless) follow each other about in head to tail lines. Outside it is even more serious, with the flourescent lights absolutely lavished with the trembling termites. It is as if the rains have unlocked the land. Flowers and bugs and greenery have simply exploded from their previously inert condition.

3 May 2006 8:55pm

The students came together for a big nyama choma today. Nyama means meat and choma means roast. The meat is usually goat. Six goats in all were grilled. But with the constant rain the students had to find somewhere else to hold the roast, so we had it in the chapel. People brought their husbands and wives and children. Everybody gathered and waited for the line to begin serving. The smoke from the outside grill came a bit into the building, filling the ceiling space and making everybody's mouth water. Finally, the line began serving and I realized that the ugali, salad, and choma were all being served without silverware. I think I was the only one who noticed. So just I got my goat, salad, and ugali and sat with some friends. And I looked around and saw my friends and their families, this entire school, sitting in a smokey chapel eating goat meat and tomato salad with their hands and enjoying each other's company. A boombox played some traditional drum music. Children leapt to catch the flying termites. I couldn't help but feel that something beautiful was going on. And I realized, then, that the chapel had become a sanctuary. I've never understood how a church, let alone a modern one, is designated as God's house or consecrated or whatever, but it seemed to me that the chapel today was made holy, baptized even, by the precious sticky-handed smokey community inside.

2 May 2006 6:20pm

When I was at Forest View Elementary we played the rain game. Well, I know this was as popular back then as it is now, but I remembered it from then. The rain game at Forest View went something like this: kids were instructed as a group to snap their fingers, then pat their knees, then clap their hands, then stomp their feet. The room of us energetic ADHDers would listen in awe to our mimicry of the noise of growing rain. Start soft, end in downpour leg stomping.

Today, it was (finally) sunny and warm outside. Kids were shooting hoops, glossy ibises were perched on the soccer frames looking for eatage in the lake the field had become, and people were hanging up loads of laundry to dry in the precious momentary heat. The reason I remembered the rain game today was because it didn't happen. One moment it was golden shine and vista, and the next it was that feet stomping stuff. Switch. Wham. Like a wave. Like a curse word. Women ran out to their lined laundry with umbrellas, desperately wrenching patterned sheets, trousers, underwear, and whatever else. They gave up soon enough. I stood at window, the rain against the pane, thinking how the finger snapping and knee slapping was skipped.

There should be a second version of the game. Equatorial rainseason version. Everybody stomp your feet.