Simon's Nairobi Diary - Archive 34

17 January 2007 8:15pm

Once you have lived in any place for an extended period of time, you begin to see what things are truly culturally iconic. For instance, when people think of Africa they usually establish an image of naked people (especially the topless lady) living in huts and dancing around a fire. Its true such an image is still here, but only in the rural areas. Nairobi, where I live, has no topless hut ladies. Iconic for Nairobi is tinny radio music, greasy diesel engines, soldiers holding machine guns, slim African men in collared shirts and belted blue trousers.

Today I approached my student flat and saw a woman removing chaff from a bucket full of maize. She stood with her legs at shoulder width and hefted the yellow heavy bucket high in the air. Her hair was in a wrap, her dress brightly patterned, and her lifted bucket was tipped to spill the large white maize kernels into the bucket on the ground. The chaff was caught in the wind and lifted away, while the maize fell unheeded. Once the bucket was empty, it was placed on the ground and the now full bucket was lifted and repeated with the same pattern. Each time, less and less chaff swirled into the air.

This image, the woman purse-lipped draining maize from one bucket to the other, chaff swirling at her waist, has become to me one of the most African images I know. Its determined simplicity stopped me today, made me thankful for the privilege to be here.

13 January 2007 8:45pm

I have the lag. Travel of eight timezones to the east took the midnight to 8am snooze pattern and hit it across the temple with a five iron. All of a sudden bedtime becomes 4pm EST and the sun comes up at midnight. The cure, so they say, is one day of adjustment for every hour you switch. Thus, eight crazy nights here and I should be back on track, ready to rock, so they say.

Till then, of course, its a different story. Bleary eyed and unbushy tailed, I walk a lurching zombie across campus to my 2pm classes. Sitting at a desk, bloodstream induced with a double portion of Doorman's coffee (gelatin viscosity), I struggle with that cute and timeless student crossroad of whether to give in and pass out over the wooden desk or attempt to keep my head up eyes open and not hear anything anyways. Pass out: medium class embarrassment (chance of desk drool) but ultimately very productive towards snagging some solid snooze. Stay awake: chance of no embarrassment but equal chance of doing the 'determined but failing to stay awake' headbang (utmost embarrassment), an action that should impress others because of its foundation of ambition but usually only serves a more entertaining classroom oddity than being fully passed out.

Monday I opted for the stay-awake during my 3pm class. Dangerous, I know, but hey, I'm a risk taker. 6pm rolls around and I make it through without nodding.

But the best part of having the lag, worth all the 12am/2am/4am wakeups, is the ability to get up early. This is quite a revelation for a late-to-bed/late-to-rise fellow such as myself. I have found, and these results are quite preliminary, that one can actually wake a few hours before the first scheduled morning appointment. This span of hours I have found to be quite extraordinary. Yesterday, for instance, I did an hours worth of homework and cleaned my room before class had even began. Unbelievable.

9 January 2007 9:08am

To meet Oliver and Andrew in Chicago by lunch, I drove from Harrietta to Michigan City, IN and took the South Shore train into the loop for $6 (free parking). On the way in, the train hit a car. Some guy was trying to beat the train and only ended up removing the entire back end of his car. He was fine. Strange though, that when the car was hit I was in the front traincar. And I felt only a bump, different from the normal ones, but only a soft bump. Then the train hit its heavy brakes and we stopped while it was all figured out.

I think its now, when its hard, that it is when its made. Before was ok, exciting anticipation exploration inspiration was the engine for my attitude, that each day was a shining gift from the heavens. But now its not like that. And so I believe that now is when Kenya and NEGST will begin to really change me. If I was done today with the whole thing, I know it would have been a good thing that happened. If I get isolated and hardened and come back home after this term, unable to live so alien in a foreign land (go mom!) I know it would have been a marvelous and unregrettable time overall. But, ugh, I don't want that to be it. I don't want this whole thing to end in shining pictures and splendid story.

I have something here, for the first time, and its fear. I fear not succeeding this term. Sordid Hebrew grades, loneliness, hardening towards the difference between others and myself ("yes, my family is fine. who are you?"). The fear isn't panic, its more solid than that. The fear is a pebble in my shoe, small and solid and mostly unaffecting towards the day. Will it push me forward?

Now, Jesus, is when I need you more than ever. Only that you would be my god, my sustenance - unperceptable mixed apparent. That this time would be an exodus for me from hardship to wonder, from poverty to brilliance. That for the rest of my life I could look back to the first part of 2007 and be lost for words.

4 December 2006 6:19pm

I put shoes on today, and it feels unnatural. Its the first time in three months, put on because soon the ground will be snow. I'm half playing with the thought of wearing sandals anyways, just to be difficult and ridiculous. I packed three pairs of pants, the only pants I have here, and left the twelve pairs of shorts on the bottom shelf. I don't even have a jacket, so i'll bring along a sweatshirt. Will it be enough? Hard to measure, and even more difficult with today being ninety degrees outside. I took a hot solar shower around noon.

I met with a few honest (even vulnerable) professors these past days, discussing this entire shebang, what it will give, what I need to do. All I can say right now is that my eyes are more opened now than anytime in the past fifteen months. Nothing like a crisis to make us realize the actuality of our lives.

Yesterday my Justice and Reconciliation professor was talking with me and I mentioned how my flight was KLM 10:45pm Dec 4. He said, "you too?". We're car pooling.

2 December 2006 1:31pm

I was sitting for a coffee, cappuccino only $1 a cup if you know where to go. The sugar is cane sugar, the cream fresh. In the eatery is also a fitness club, called "Temple Fitness" that shows the pink outline of a muscular female and a blue outline of a musc man. Below the figures and above the title are four Hebrew characters, and I recognize the Hebrew word, though the vowel pointings are absent, as hey-chal. I must have done something right this term. It means temple, a place where God beckons us to separate ourselves from our world and rest with him, and the steam from my cup is like incense from the alter. 'See Him soothing you', I ask myself? 'Why have you not recognized the word until now when you needed it?'

Its difficult to talk about difficulty, since it focuses on a self, selfish. Its not wrong, but just self focused, and all this selffocusing gets overwhelming. Like how people with mononucleosis get tired of being tired. Its like that. But it has to be talked through, at least somewhat, or else it digs deeper.

The social isolation this term has been the worst I've ever known. Not focusing on blame or whatifs, but it just was.

The level of intimacy between friends in the US verses here is almost opposite.

I was sitting and having lunch and a professor and his wife joined me and we began talking of the difficulties that come through being the youngest student who is also from the West and single. After listening closely they began to laugh with big eyes, my dear professors from California. "Sorry about laughing Simon," one said lovingly, "but its amazing how you're describing a textbook picture of culture shock."

Well, now it makes sense. I am shocked right now, deadened to a degree, by the isolation and cultural divide that nips at the heels of all simple social actions I attempt. Truth be told, I have become almost too haggard to attempt another term.

A week ago, not getting As for the first time this term, I realized I needed home and family and friends. Not as something convenient, not a i'll-swing-by thing, but a real grounding in comfort or love where my brain can stop spinning on its base and my eyes can close for more than a moment. Where life is not a fight.

I will be coming home for Christmas, a necessity if I am to survive here. There will be wild game, a Christmas tree (!), a Christmas service, home cooking, people will be hugged and hug. New Years will not be with just a dog this year (though a wonderful one she was - Happy New Years, Mocha). I can barely contain myself.

24 Novembre 2006 7:14pm

Nothing has so altered my mind this year than exposure to rural African societies. When we landed on the dirt in Kurmuk, took the jeeps over thirty miles into the wilderness, and set up camp in an enclosure of wood and mud, I realized I was about to be a privileged witness to one of the world's remaining rarities. The outhouses were two mud huts with grass cone tops, a hole in the floor. I got inside kneel-walking, into this domain of the insects, but not before hitting the hut with some serious DOOM killspray. All of the buildings we saw were like this, mud and grass. Only the health clinic had poured concrete floors and metal siding.

Surrounding the structures were a random assortment of donkeys, wiry chickens, and goats. Every night, as children sang and beat drums in the dark distance, the donkey's brayed and brayed. I had always thought donkey brays to be the fun hee-haw, but it was more a massive violent grumble echoing throughout the area.

The furniture mirrored the structures, being functional and well done with the most basic of materials. The wood structure of a chair I sat in was rubbed smooth pieces of wood that were notched and wound together around a woven rope seat. The beds were the same. Demonstrations of massive amounts of time and skill, handmade, void of any metal or gluing.

But what really changed my world was encountering a people absolutely completely removed from popular culture. They don't know about the internet, cannot understand electricity, have no idea who Britney Spears is. And its not like rural African culture romanticizes me (life is very difficult there) so much as I find it illuminating what is basic to our humanity, and basic to being this being formed as imagery of God. How often have I only understood a good life as one containing progression? That we are better/faster/smarter/richer than yesterday, that the market is climbing. But rural Sudan seems stuck in time. Only: wood, mud, grass, singing. Some things seemed to have changed, like the dusty evening soccer games or the machined clothing of the people. But the rest of the sights and actions, the huts and herding, may as well have been from five hundred years ago.

To simple cultures like this does much of the bible make its fullest sense. The Hebrews existed in a similar shepherding state when they were promised to be led to a land of wonderful existence in Deuteronomy 8, a land that speaks towards our heaven, a place we can hope for through trusting and following God in our lives today:

For the Lord your God is bringing you into a good land, a land with flowing streams, with springs and underground waters welling up in valleys and hills, a land of wheat and barley, of vines and fig trees and pomegranates, a land of olive trees and honey, a land where you may eat bread without scarcity, where you will lack nothing, a land whose stones are iron and from whose hills you may mine copper. You shall eat your fill and bless the Lord your God for the good land that he has given you.

Saturated in affluence can make a picture of 'eating our fill' in 'a land of wheat and barley' not really sound all that lucrative. But after experiencing rural Mayak, well, these words have truly gained an incredible weight and luster.

23 Novembre 2006 4:47pm

When I attended a session during undergrad study that discussed vocation, the speaker told us to find where the world's greatest need and our greatests gifts collide. Though this makes good sense on an individual level, this past week helped me to see it on an organizational level.

The world is hurting in many places, and Sudan is one of these. The people of the Mayak area of Sudan are in need for health, as theirs is poor. Additionally, they are in need to hear about Jesus and His ability to make life magnificent. The area is deeply entwined with Arabic culture, though the SPLA's tolerance of missionaries make the creation of churches and believers a possibility.

Throughout the week I worked in the "pharmacy", a plastic table we carried around and set up jars and jars of medication on. The doctors would sit inside the tinshack clinic or mudmade hut/tuku and see patient after patient, who were then referred to our pharmacy. We were short on translators, so the only option was to slog through their vernacular of Arabic and try to crudely describe how to take medication every six hours. I saw that this group had done this before, since the little plastic bags of pills I handed to them included four boxes with pictures of the sun rising, high, setting, or the moon. No clocks here mean they have to judge their medication intake by the sky.

"Wahid saba, wahid nos, wahid misa," us pharmacists told them. One morning, one noon, one night. "Kalas," I was told to say once their baggies were given. This meant finish/goodbye, and they would calmly nod and gather their various children (also holding multiple med bags) and wander off into the horizon.

The Sudanese we served came from everywhere. The villages we went to were small, perhaps a hundred people per area, but the region was large and the public word quick to run and soon the precious 90degree shade in our area was packed with bodies escaping the sun and eager for health.

It was great need addressed by great giftings, and it worked.

Photo page updated with Sudan pictures on the left.