Simon's Nairobi Diary - Archive 29

7 July 2006 5:32pm

Three weeks ago I was woken up around midnight by my floormate pounding on my door. He is very big and very pentecostal, and I have been a bit intimated by his these 10 months. "Si-MON!" he shouted. "Wake up!" I woke up. Getting out of bed, I stepped into water that was covering my floor. What had happened was that the gravity fed water tank that lives in the ceiling decided to crack and drain a hundred litres of water down our walls and into our rooms. Thankfully I had a palm reed mat that had my stuff on it, so nothing got ruined except for some old papers. My flat mate and I woke up the fix it man and he came with his three story ladder to climb on the roof and disable the refill into this tank. Then we all ran throughout the three floors of our flat, waking people up, getting them to open up their faucets full blast so we could drain the tank down the drain and not into our rooms. We sat past midnight and listened to the tank empty itself, laughed a bit at the situation, and hung out till it was all over.

I am so impressioned by this way of living, the amazing combination of the reckless and the good-heart. Things here (cars, toilets, computers, other stuff) seem on the verge of busting and people simply laugh along the way. Don't get me wrong, there are drawbacks to this way of life, but I am so deeply impacted by how natural life seems to happen here, and how little the bad things seems to be able to impact it all.

The ride is here. Gotta run.

6 July 2006 8:00pm

I guess I've realized my passions lately by what I love and also what I hate. I know we're supposed to find 'what we love' and do that the rest of our lives and all, but I think what we hate can have the same implication. I mean, we hate things because they aren't a different way, but doesn't that also mean we wish it to change? And doesn't this mean we have a passion to change it?

It has become that way with me and the church, preaching, pastors, the Christian religion. I cannot describe in words how much I love good church, but also how much I have a fire-filled belly full of malice towards corrupt church. I mean, to me, there isn't anything more beautiful than a bunch of people absolutely unified in God's spirit and care for each other, raising their voices in worship. Then I will read about how the slum pastors here in Kenya report the largest incomes of any pastor in Nairobi. I'm just seeing through all of this how passionate I am about the church, not only for how much I love it, but also for how much I dislike it when its awful.

I leave Kenya tomorrow.

5 July 2006 6:07pm

The space ship Columbia was blasting off from Cape Canaveral yesterday. It was about 10pm here and I had a live feed off NASA pulled up in the computer lab. James and Francis came over to me, and we all stared at the ship and its massive boosters as the supporting arm was removed. The countdown ended, smoke was thrown from its tail, and it soared skyward in a molten glaze. It was, too say the least, awesome.

I am so blown away by a dichotomy that was made apparent by this blastoff. We send people to other planets, but we can't fix the one where we live. I can stand in the Turkana desert, hold a plastic object to my ear, and talk to my family seven thousand miles away, yet I have a person near me begging for water. We can decrypt ancient Sanskrit, recreationally jump from airplanes, separate conjoined twins, and cure Magic Johnson's HIV, yet our own world seems to be more tired, deprived, hungry, diseased, and disconnected than ever.

I love technology. I really do. I love being able to talk on a phone with my parents and tap some plastic keys around to blog experiences that people enjoy reading. I am not about some sort of reversion back to a pre-industrial state of things, as if some point in human history we have had it all figured out and life was a fuzz covered peach. But I do wish, sometimes, that people would be less focused on being extraordinary, less focused on the stars, and more driven to help the world where its hurting here. After all, doesn't being a Jesus follower meaning we hold splendor, not in rocket boosters, but in loving the person nearby?

4 July 2006 4:52pm

I sat across the desk from Dr. Kizomuzi, explaining how I would enjoy hearing his life story for a missiology paper, the 73mhz monster on my lap clicking away. "My young days," he explained while thinking, "were before anyone in my tribe had seen a white European. We lived in a village in Akamba land, about 200km east of Nairobi, and wore only animal skins."

"What did you eat," I asked?

"Every day of the week we ate millet and milk, although sometimes we would kill and eat antelopes and other animals." He quieted his speech and said, "Sometimes, when a drought had been long and no meat could be found, we had to boil and eat our leather clothes. Those were the hardest moments of my life." A missionary station opened up near Dr. Kizomuzi's house when he was 18, and he left his village, his family's role as the village's spirit diviners, and his friends to give his life to Jesus and enter gradeschool at age 18. Eventually he finished graduate school in the US at Columbia University, and then he received his Doctorate at Trinity.

"Personal salvation aside," I asked, "what did the missionaries positively change in your Akamba culture?" This has been a consistent focus in the missiology class.

"Before the days of the missions, our village was completely at the mercy of evil spiritual powers. They kept us afraid by terrorizing us anytime they desired, knocking us down in the dark or cursing our fields. They kept us poor since our village was spending so much money on the African traditional priests who had the ability to appease these jinns and evil spirits. Then missionaries came with the gospel, teaching us that having Jesus in our hearts ends the domination of these evil spirits. It was liberation. We could send them away, for free finally, and Jesus grew in our hearts to make our village full of love."

"This is all very strange for me to hear," I said, "since this dramatic level of interaction with evil spirits has never been a part of my culture or church, at least not in the obvious manner you just recounted."

"Be thankful," he said with incredible intensity. "Those were terrible days, and I thank the God for delivering us out of them. Every day. I am thankful every day."

This is Dr. Silas Kizomuzi. He is an Akamba Kenyan, a professor at Nairobi Evangelical Graduate School of Theology, and he speaks through a cloud of grace.

30 June 2006 8:07pm

I said hello out between the metal bars that cover the open window. They both looked up with big eyed unease. Two small girls who had been let through the gate by the Masai guard to snag some fruit from one of the nearby trees (passionfruit I think). One was high up in the tree and the other was on the ground catching the fruits as they were thrown down. They saw I didn't care about their escapade, so they relaxed and one talked back while the other bit. So cute. I asked them if I could have one, and one nodded smiling, but I was behind the bars and had a naan bread on a pan, so I only said goodbye.

29 June 2006 8:34pm

Something like 10 percent of the families here at school just recently had a birth. Must be something in the water. In many African cultures, especially in Kenya, a woman is not supposed to leave her house for three months after giving birth. Apparently she is given this time to recuperate, and as a result many of the wives who have given birth have simply vanished for this entire third term. My mzungu friends (mzungu means 'european' but is used for anybody white - similar to the west african toubab) just had a bouncing baby boy and shortly afterward the wife attracted a lot of attention on campus. Five days after giving birth, she left the house to walk across the road and buy bread from the school store. This being unthinkable to the rest of the people on campus, and everybody knowing she had delivered, she was stopped five times on her way by people absolutely aghast that she was up and walking around.

I'm blown away, from stories like this and my own experiences, by the ability of Africans to relax and just be. This has been a big difference between me and my classmates. Leisure for me is action: watch a movie, travel somewhere on a bus, or go to a book store in Nairobi. Leisure for most of my African friends is talking under the avocado tree on campus for four hours at a time. Then they will go and make chai and sit for the remainder of the day.

I wish I could be that, but I can't. I've really tried too, since it would also be so cheap (sitting i mean), but I just end up grinding my molars.

Pictures added today from when a group of us hiked to the top of Mount Longonot, a dormant volcano near Nairobi in the rift valley.

28 June 2006 8:25pm

In the fruit tree below the window I watched a male and female parrot use their hook beaks to peel back the hard fruit skin and gorge themselves on the yellow content.

Fireflies are out these days. Neon mint flirtation.

The children in the school were practicing a very African dance in a field. Kept the feet still and lightly lifted each knee to step forward. Shoulders left then right. Clap.

On the matatu coming back to the school my sandal rubbed against the drive shaft and they melted a little.

27 June 2006 9:54pm

Tonight was the last night to be with some of the closer friends I have made here. We tatu-ed out to Habesha and shallacked down some Ethiopian injera/wat and said our goodbyes. Was that six months? Already? For these recent points in life, the friendships have this awkward balance of wonderful and temporary. Grand Rapids - Springhill - NEGST. Some of the closest and most Creator-filled people are met and loved and grown with. And six months later they're gone.

It would be worse if I had little hope, if it was like a grain of dust in the palm, stared at in tumbling desperation. Its not though. We have this thing together, this faith, this 21st chapter of the last book of our texts that point to a remarkable reunion that will make even the most brilliant pieces of this earth dull. This year and those before and after are so full of tilt and static, but a solidity is nearby.

If I look hard, I can see its sliver edging on the horizon. Second star to the right and straight on till morning. There doesn't even need to be a sun because God is finally something seen. And between us there are only hellos.