Simon's Nairobi Diary - Archive 36

26 March 2007 10:01am

The students of the seminary went on strike last night. We had an emergency meeting in the chapel at 6pm and everybody came who could. The various reasons were given as to why the meeting was announced, and the student council quietly discussed the possibility of not sitting in todays exams in protest. The vote came and 90% voted for the strike, while 10% abstained. I raised my hand in favor. Though I didn't really have as much of an understanding as the students who have been here much longer, the most thought out and sensible African students I know quietly raised their hands in favor, so I did too. Then the student leader of off-campus housing called and said that all the off-campus students had thrown in their support to our decision.

The strike was against one of the directors in particular who has been abusive, firing widowed cleaning ladies who had worked here for twenty years at $60 a month while himself maintained a tremendous salary. Janitors, gardeners, and ours security guards have all been quietly disappearing, the school growing in disorder, so the student council met last week and forced the director to abstain his "sackings" or layoffs until the school's president returns from his trip abroad. Instead, this director took advantage of the president's absence and fired another round of low-level staff.

You don't mess with the "mamas", as elderly ladies are called here. For this director to fire the matriarch of the school who has known many of the students here for ten years, a lady whose husband died building the student block, a lady who earns $120 a month in income but has to surrender half of it to pay rent on the house her husband built on campus for her, who had to have her release letter translated for her, well that was the last straw. "This school preaches that we must uphold the values of integrity, community, and justice," one student said last night, "and so we must now stand up for the Mama." The director entered his office today, but students drove their cars into the square and up to his office door, giving him five minutes to leave. The rest of the faculty asked for and received an extension, called a meeting with him, and asked him to vacate NEGST until the president returns. He just left.

I am so proud to join this student body, to stand with those who do not make their faith a subtle comfort for death but grab it, endanger themselves, and proclaim their faith on behalf of the widows and poor. I was thinking today how strange it is that a seminary was the first place I've ever gone on strike, but then I realized that the strike happened today because NEGST is a school that studies God. Abby said last night, "How can we graduate in July with a Christian masters degree while never having stood up for Jesus and his kingdom he tells us to bring. I would rather not graduate knowing I did the right thing than leave here, diploma in hand, but knowing I denied Christ when I was called to be at his side." We prayed before and after and this morning again. Hide it under a bushel? No.

23 March 2007 10:15pm

Fridays are 'grace groups'. The staff join together with the students, plumber with the doctoral candidate, and all sit with each over tea and discussion. This week we had chai and mandazis. And our leader prayed that God would bless the chai before we drank it. Its real here, the gratitude. I sat at the cafe last week and watched a father I know bow his head over his lunch, a bowl of fries, and he did not raise nor stop his lips for what seemed a hundred paragraphs. Eventually he straightened, inhaled, and began to dab the ketchup very deliberately.

These grace groups sing, sudden sometimes, usually hymns. But I have to remember what hymns were for me back then, before now. Back when they seemed chortled lumpy foreign-vocabularied chores. Back when it was like reading Plato. But now someone starts to sing without warning, starts to tap his palm against his trousered knee. And the room swells and heavies like a sponge. The chorus is joined by somebody harmonizing above to my left, and somebody harmonizing below across. The group sits circled on terse wooden chairs, the beat is pounded like a march, and the ardor of an a cappella "How Great Thou Art" becomes cushion enough.

I was walking home yesterday and a small child was standing near a house entrance and dancing to himself. I stopped, closed near, and listened for the music, but there was none, so I left him to dance.

When George died, the main hymn was in Swahili and I bent low to Tom who was holding his cheeks in his palms. I quietly asked, "what does the song mean?" "It says," he replied, "Christ you are our strong rock."

Its hard to remember who I was when I first rattled the key through the keyhole of my room at Q7. I think I was ok. But I can't help but feel that the Spirit here in Africa, the strength within the eyes and hands I've met here, the celebration and freedom and potency in my environment has steeped an inch inward through my soul. I sense difference when I look at who I came as, and I think its backbone.

17 March 2007 12:24pm

Your rod and your staff, they comfort me. Because I need a Savior who stands unaffected from my ever-shifting determination, who is valiant, who loves the good and moves unhindered to burn every evil to the ground:

"The presence which we voluntarily evade is often, and we know it, His presence in wrath. And out of this evil comes a good. If I never fled from His presence, then I should suspect those moments when I seemed to delight in it of being wish-fulfillment dreams. That, by the way, explains the feebleness of all those watered versions of Christianity which leave out all the darker elements and try to establish a religion of pure consolation. No real belief in the watered versions can last. Bemused and besotted as we are, we still dimly know at heart that nothing which is at all times and in every way agreeable to us can have objective reality. It is of the very nature of the real that it should have sharp corners and rough edges, that it should be resistant, should be itself. Dream-furniture is the only kind on which you never stub your toes or bang your knee." - CSLewis Letters to Malcolm 75

So let me continue to search and hate and harshly abandon all in me which stands contrary to you God, since your hand pushing all through time causes such things to only fracture and crumble. You are Solidity, and anchored to you alone will I endure.

13 March 2007 10:19pm

The lady who hosted our group had a pet galago (or bush babie). The leftover bitesized hotdogs were given to it. And the other night I picked a rhinoceros beetle out from the doorstep. It was heavy as an egg and strong. I put it in a DVD case, but it used its horn and broke the seal to get out. The distance, again tonight, had drums and people singing. Never a square beat either. Syncopated. And the icecaps are melting. And Ethan sent me a stretchy rubber workout thing in the mail, so I'm at it, strengthening my rotator cuffs so I won't have to have surgery in the summer. Emma's birthday is tomorrow. This week is the last week of class, and so I have three papers to turn in before Friday, so I am busy every day and am eager for a rest. I want to visit a church in Iran. I want to write a science fiction novel. How come everybody has birthdays this week? A moth as big as my palm just flew over the keyboard and back out the window. How come evil is easier than good?

9 March 2007 4:28pm

Shade: the land of this area is involved with two types of it. It has the kind it dishes, and it has the kind it stomachs. They antagonize each other, one's absence means the other's presence, and either cannot vacate too long or else everything does. Both must have their time for all else to have any.

The first is most common, partly since it is most sought. And it is cut in Kenya, like fabric, like a curse word. The view is bathed in the brilliance of its source. It is the kind preferred to dwell in, since it is associated with warmth and peace of mind and praxis. This kind is often wished only upon the eyes, while the rest of the body is held away from it. Its umbrellas are more polite, historically even frilly. And most defining, it is loved only because of the nearness of its absence.

The second kind is less polite, more smuggled. A front of it innocently pitches across Kenya's plain, and nobody has any say in the matter. Some say ok, but it doesn't matter anyways. All is shuttered secure, seeking refuge against this type's affections. It's umbrellas are a barrier, a boundery. The futballer stays inside, pent and pacing. The ross turaco no longer calls from Raman's tree. Masai Mara takes a seat. Actually this type's drummings can soothe, but only if one is not being stung by them, at its mercy, herds without their herder. Eventually, after this type has raged and ruled, you begin to spot its absence approaching, distant and unmoving when watched, but eventually quietly regaining itself. Like reaching the surface.

Both will be dealt. Both must have their time. Because one with Kenya to itself washes or waxes everything away. The first kind is just as capable to cause ruin as the second, only it is slower and more crept. Three years and the Turkana have to weave a new house of reeds, since the old one has fallen to fragments, and not from rot. And though the building takes weeks, there isn't a choice, because to not have shelter is to not have the first type at all. Take the igloo.

And too much of the second is a world cut loose. The houses, your footing, the roots of the maize. Whats more, the regular shelters which make the first type never green, since the chlorophyll has no food. The scenery turns to paste, like urban winter.

I've never so seen these two till now. I've never understood the good of having the first because of its proximity to where it abstains from. I've certainly never felt the good of receiving the second, deliverance from the first's overdose. 25% of the nomadic population's wealth was lost last April, dying in their hoofed tracks from the first type's wrath. And when the second type came, wow, it rolled forth as prayers answered.

Here I am learning the joy of shelter from the second, that we sing during these times as a single, communally battened together.

I wish either had no sting, remaining in their original goodness, that both had not become tainted to neutrality. But I am learning the rhythm and prayer that is held underneath each, that the perfect Incarnation drew them both overhead (storm be still! vs not my will!). And I'm learning to do the same. Because back home I felt so washed in the one, and here is inundated and flooded in another. But I feel now fallen on rich soil - to grow deeply rooted please, learning the necessity of being bathed under both kinds.

7 March 2007 9:21pm

Ten things I am growing to love 2007 in Kenya:

2. vegetables

3. solar energy

4. the book of Job

5. ethiopian food and coffee

6. organization & timeliness

7. ethnicity

9. 'Bitter Lemon' soda

10. classical hebrew

Ten things I miss about Michigan:

1. fresh snow

2. seth & daisy concerts

4. bug-free sleep

5. apple cider

6. mom's wholewheat pancakes and Harrietta maple syrup from Butch's sugar shack

7. being home for birthdays and troubles

9. microbrews

10. being able to call people

5 March 2007 9:41pm

A curtain between a God and a man was torn from top to bottom the other day. A close friend spoke words to me the other day which filled me with hope. 'Simon,' he said. 'I remember in that cramped Chicago flat where you said something like the following:

"Hey I just found this seminary in Kenya!"

"Yeah. I'm going to go there."

"I just have to get straight As this last semester of Calvin and I can meet their requirements."

Then you did. And then you did. And now you are.'

I remember now. The Maker of yesternight's lunar eclipse brought me through all that to get here? And then there was that. And then that other thing. And the whole time, that which was being brought, it was ... me?

Good folks always are asking that question 'How do you know when God speaks.' Well I turn to look back at the road and the newly faced direction brings my eyes refocused and my ear into contact with a voice, saying words at barely one a day. The tone (the tone!) of the message conveys strength and joy more than its words, "Courage! Look behind and see what a distance has been gained! Remember? What a rift was crossed to reach this heavy-stepped marsh! My hands are at each side of your waist, so reach!" And I am literally lightened by this confidence in me.

The perspective broadens my vision. My horizon grows to fit it all in, like walking closer to a window. And the hand at the end of my arm is reminded of the blood in its tips, its bones inside, its ability again. Oh how this shattered world wraps our vision in such heavy blinds, our vision diminishes to a pinhole, our world grows dark and our God grows distant. 'Throw off everything that holds you back,' He once said. 'I have come that you might have life, and have it to its zenith.' He did. And then I did. And now I am.