Simon's Nairobi Diary - Archive 28

26 June 2006 6:09pm

The ostrich chicken eggs that the school harvests and sells to assist in graduation costs, the ones I used for dinner today, they take over nine minutes to fully boil because of the high elevation. Wierd. And I learned today how to crack a boiled egg on my elbow. It was awesome. Here are some moving song lyrics I found written on a scrap of paper in the library.

To the one who made all that we know,

Who are we, that you should hear our song?

To the one who our entire lives we owe,

We have fallen short for so long.

Yet you patiently give to us your mercy and grace,

And we do not pretend to understand,

We only stand amazed.

We stand amazed.

24 June 2006 11:40am

A man sits on the steps of his block with his family. His two kids are positioned in obvious expectancy around the bucket between his feet. The mother sits to his side. The glow of the 10am sky gives the panga blade shine along with the glossy nearby meter tall stalk of sugar cane. The father begins to peel the stalk skin with the blade, scooping an incision and working the cut down the length. The thready skin is tossed into the bush, and the bucket remains for something else. The bottom half of the cane stalk finally is pale yellow bare, and the tots are getting wide-eyed.

The chop finally comes to the butt of the stalk. The panga blade flashes, a pop, and the stalk gives a tremble. Each time the panga lands on the stalk it brings a circled section of the cane into the bucket. And, of course, the chop gains a solidness and a rhythm as so many things here do.

The father sets the blade, with its wrapped short handle and long edge, on the cement and offers the bucket to the children. Their hands shoot to its contents and bring a circle wedge of cane to their lips. The father has sat back to watch them.

I'm propelled 15 years back to a dining table in Lansing, where my father is opening a canister of frozen juice. Three teaspoons lay nearby next to a green glass teaspoon jar. He is peeling the white opener off around the can to bring the metal lid away. He, my brother, and me take turns with our tiny spoon, scooping away a piece of ultrasweet fruit ice. The rush of the frozen and the sugar is felt by and between us.

It is harmony, these times. The scriptures speak of this, and people have somehow ended up calling 'living correctly' righteousness, but its really harmony. It is the image of God that I see woven through those people in my mind's eye. We are made, this way, in the image of the Remarkable, and it is too.

22 June 2006 9:44pm

Only one thing is on everyone's mind here when the homework is finished and its not yet time for the lala(sleep): World Cup. I'll walk by the "TV room" late in the night, and I'll see twenty or thirty people all crowded around the set. The image is really fuzzy because its through a rabbit eared antenna, plus the TV stations here are weak signaled, but it doesn't matter. The sound comes through pretty cleanly and you can see who has the white ball, and people get all pumped up when the corner kick occurs. African teams are really really really popular on campus. I think Ghana just beat the US, so I'm sure people are celebrating. Its funny, because the library will be empty for hours, then a group of people will come in all at once, and you'll know its because they were watching a match.

Rural villages might not have much, my friend Johnny tells me, but they usually go to great lengths to get one TV. It will have its 250V plug attached to a row of precharged car batteries, and the antenna will pick up the weak signal across the flatlands. During the World Cup, the whole village comes together and watches these futbol games. Its a scene, man.

21 June 2006 8:03pm

We had an "end of the year" party in our pragmatics class today in the house of our professor. All the students of the class: Kenyans, Côte d'Ivoires, Ethiopians, Zambians, an American, we all sat on the padded wicker and ate chili. Sometime during this all I was mentioning (forget how it got here) that my cat back home will climb up to the balcony of my parents second story bedroom and meow until it gets fed. My Kenyan friend Mzimoye responded by asking, "Do cats yell differently if they are American?" Though most were laughing, I was only sobered by the unspoken reaction of the story. It was during the description of how our house has a second story that I realized that I hadn't really been in a two-story house since arriving. I was thrown. In nine .5 months I have never been in a Kenyan two story house, and this seemed to explain the reaction.

In the mind of my classmates, they are amazed by a house with so many rooms that it needs to stack rooms on the first ones.

I have never, in my entire speaking life, felt so outrageously wealthy.

When I used to hear really heavy statistics about world hunger, like how 30,000 kids die of starvation each day (2006), I used to feel guilt. I mean, what the heck did I do to be born in affluence, and what the heck did the dead three year old girl do to be born in an area of starvation? Nothing. She and I had not previously existed, so we did not cause this. As a result, I used to feel heaviness. But then I heard a speech by a Brit named Clive Calver that went something like this:

"Brothers and sisters, God made you people of the United States to be the wealthiest country in the world, and not because He wanted you to be rich, but because He trusted you." - 2004 (ask me for the MP3)

I can live with that. God gave us this wealth, and he has too, so that we might offer it to the ones he is passionate about, and so they might accept it from us. In doing this we might, as humanity, become one as Jesus and the Father are one. I think we're to use this part of us, not to be complacent to keep things how they are and further destroy life, but to urge us on to a lifestyle and a worldview that nurtures it.

20 June 2006 9:44pm

I locked my door through its keyhole and was met again by our househelp Mary cleaning the floors. She had her hair in a wrap again, and was thinly singing a kikuyu song. I greeted her and asked if she had something to read today. Often she will have long breaks during the day and I so I'll get her a magazine to read. I know her English is probably poor, but its full of stuff to look at, and she really enjoys this part anyways. "Habari za asubuhi?" I asked.

"Fine," she said.

"Kuna kiti kimoja kusoma leo?"

"Yes I have, thank you."

"Sawa sawa. Kwa heri."

"Bye." Its funny because she likes to try English and I like to try Swa and so we always cross each other over.

I always wonder what she thinks of when she looks at the photos like those in TIME and sees the US. This is a woman, 27 years old, who usually makes it into Nairobi about twice a year. Mostly she stays in Dagoreti, down the road from the school, in a very poor area. TIME will have all these advertisements of hotel lounges and blackberrys and Cartier watches, and so I wonder if looking through these pages of opulence is like looking at a fairy tale or an alien landscape for her.

I stopped my walk to class this day to join two children in tossing the chunks of gravel over a hedge, but they stopped me. "Ka-meol-ay-own!" one gestured, and sure enough, a bright green three horned chameleon was doing its shaky walk through the bush branches, right at eye level. How different all this was from anytime in the US. The air was tropically hot, this large lizard was at eye level, and those two Kenyan boys dressed in shorts-made-pants and ripped tees were exuberantly forming the big rounded-vowel speakings that I have grown to love. I sort of waved my hands in front of the chameleons face, its beady eyes pivoted almost backwards, and it jerky waddled out of sight into the bush. It was all just a really solid moment.

17 June 2006 11:07am

It is difficult to focus on this last remaining week of class with homecoming so nearby. Every day closer to July7, when I board that plane, comes with a stronger and stronger mental wind in my face. I don't think I've ever wanted to come home so badly. Its not as if that house in Harrietta is heaven on earth or anything. I mean, my brother and sister and I have grown up in a place of natural beauty and tranquility, but also one of huge distance away from the nearby town where our friends lived. This happened all the time growing up:

"Justin, you want to hang out today?"

"My mom says your mom has to drive both 30minute distances."

"Alright. Maybe next time."

But, aside from this, there is some sort of peace that the house and its view has over me. I think I'm going to get home and sit on the porch with my parents early in the morning and just exhale for an hour. And so I'm trying hard to work this last week, get these final papers in, and take that final Greek exam, but really I'm thinking of my family and our house. I pray (will you join me) that these last three weeks finish well, that homecoming is an unparalleled sabbath, and that I return to this school recharged for another year.