Simon's Nairobi Diary - Archive 37

22 April 2007 9:05pm

Glory be to God for dappled things--

For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;

For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;

Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches' wings;

Landscape plotted and pieced--fold, fallow, and plough;

And áll trádes, their gear and tackle and trim.

All things counter, original, spare, strange;

Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)

With swift, slow; sweet, sour; a dazzle, dim;

He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:

Praise him.

G.M. Hopkins

20 April 2007 3:44pm

In the 16th century, Martin Luther was asked the question: "What would you do if you knew Jesus was coming back tomorrow." The father of the Protestant Reformation replied, "I would plant a tree."

In this way is hastened the Lord's return, for today I planted a mango tree.

18 April 2007 8:52pm

Sometimes there are single moments or even weeks where it is so rewarding to be a student. This isn't always true, like last year when I had to write a thirty page paper on something *cough*christianeducation*cough* I cared little about for a professor I didn't enjoy. This is the game of school. Sometimes you have to buy Baltic. But sometimes it goes the other way, like today.

I had worked on a paper for my systematic theology class (as if anything about God is systematic), and instead of doing the regular thing I wrote on a topic which was a little different and unconventional - a big-picture paper on the Holy Spirit and government. I worked a bit longer than normal, I wrote on something I was passionate about, and I got it back today with a "this is a great paper Simon" comment from my Ghanaian prof. It feels so good to work hard on something and to have the hard work pay off and validated by the instructor.

Sometimes I play the game and focus on the better parts of being here (the living and the people), but sometimes I love being a student.

16 April 2007 6:52pm

Today was the first day of another new term. Harder classes this time through, so I throttled down to only 13 credits, trying to actually fit a consistent volunteer job inside this term. Last term was such a haul that I'm eager to have something a little different and a little mellow. And the break in between was so good. Not only did it include a wonderful trip south to see my cousin in Arusha but also I was able to climb Mt. Kenya, a goal I've had since arriving here.

Sunday I was sick in bed, even missing the Easter church I was looking forward to, but by Monday morning the worst had passed and I packed, met with the group, and drove up to about 10,000ft to a cluster of bandas (cabins) on the mountain's edge. Elephants and a water buffalo were spotted around us, and the mounds of boulder shaped dung around our cabin made walking at night something to avoid. I saw the mountain's snowy peak in the distance, covered in snow and layered with a semi-permanent haze, and it was hard to believe I was going there. The game warden got drunk that night on Guiness, and was attacked by an elephant. He would have been seriously hurt but our guide got him to safety.

Monday we had a short hike to the trail head, walking on a path where we spotted waterbucks underneath the mossy hung treelimbs. We set up our tents, and almost immediately after came what would become a theme of the trip: rain. The reason our entire trip was almost totally void of nearby hikers was that we had chosen to ascent the peak in the rainy season, and this became very obvious as the time went on. After a nap in the tent, the group of us took a hike to a nearby waterfall and cave, walking down to the base of the eighty foot falls, the spume and blowback from the falls billowing our raingear and stinging our cheeks. Just as amazing was a misty bamboo island in the center of a nearby canyon, the rocks and canyon walls coated with a thick moss.

We awoke the next morning and hiked the largest section of the Chogoria route, the longer more scenic route up the mountain's eastern side. To our left came a massive canyon, two towering cliffs on each side of the canyon coming together in the distance to make a large waterfall between them Vivienne Falls. The falls are a product of a large nearby lake of mountain meltoff. We continued on through heavy rain, then sleet, and finally we arrived at Minto's camp with the sky snowing, difficult for me to rationalize with the mountain nearly centered on the Equator.

We threw off our wet packs and coats once we arrived at the guide station at the camp, though the dirty foul-smelling hut where the guides and porters sleep was not very welcoming. Four of five stoves were already boiling water from the nearby lake, and they served us plastic mugs of tea and instant coffee, the steam from the water joining the steam already pouring off our jackets. I set up my tent in the sleet and snow, though the weather ended just as I was finished, and the sun came out to dry our clothes for the hike coming up the next day, where we would ascend the peak.

The guide woke us at 2.30am, though I was hardly sleeping. The altitude made rest very difficult, and our tents were pitched at 13,000ft. But we got up, geared up, and turned on our headlamps to begin the ascent. An early climb was necessary because of the weather getting worse as the day begins. The final hours of our climb were in the snow, my mesh hiking shoes were freezing cold, so I had to continuously knock them against boulders as we climbed. Finally we were within twenty minutes of the top, but the altitude was so difficult that each step was probably only half a foot or so. As we climbed up the final steps and sat on the mountains peak, people got out their cellphones. Bill said to his friends in the US, "I'm calling you from 16,000ft on Mount Kenya." Our guide finally stopped singing his climbing songs that we had listened to during our hike, opened his backpack, and withdrew a thermos of Kenyan tea. I let my breathing slow and sipped the steaming liquid while taking in the brilliant sun, just rising with ourselves over the layers of clouds below.

I am so thankful to have experienced such an adventure, even though I was the idiot in the cotton clothes. Mount Kenya was the most beautiful scenery I've ever seen. The night before we climbed the peak I couldn't sleep from the altitude, so I got out of the mummy bag, unzipped the tent, and went outside. The stars were blazing hazy through the mountain's mist, so I put in my contact lenses. The ghosted scenery of still lakes, craggy rocks, and mottled plants looked so wonderfully strange that I had to pause and pray for a lesson to be sunk in me, to see that God has made the world as a very different and beautifully complicated place, obvious here, but just as true everywhere on earth.

5 April 2007 9:50am

Arrived and met up with the cuz and aunt, sweet people they are. We drove out to the family we were staying with and had coffee and tea on the veranda facing Mt. Meru with Kilimanjaro behind it. The acacia trees and clear sky was astounding, and it was so interesting to meet a family of Americans who truly have no need to move back. Are you missing anything, I asked incredulous. No, they said.

So now we're at the International Criminal Tribunal for the Rwandan Genocide, and its quite a thing to see.

What a time this is, early twenties and traveling, feeling so full of young idealism and vigor, when ideas for the world's living are stewed over and flexed and measured so that the day to day life of all things might take on the exuberance of Jesus. This hope for a new coming world and the idealistic dreams in my mind's eye are so copiously carbonated in my veins that at times I am shamed in my youthful ignorance. But it glows despite me. I can't look away. This vision offers such good radiant hope that the dreary Spirit-stifled realities which rule here are only birth pains towards paradise, where truth exists physically - like honey from the comb, where solid balanced unshakable fabulous existence seems not only the end plateau of humanity's endless upward crawl but that it also seems available and achievable with enough blood, sweat, and tears, through taking up His cross and following Him. I read and imagine a reality where it really is better to give than to receive, where people love God with every ounce of their being and love people the same, where the honest work and ordinary living we have now is redeemed into the most thrilling experience partakable by man. Where is this but earth, that towards which we are girded to bring a kingdom come through his Will and his Way being done through us and in us. This is the kingdom that has now arrived in glimpses but will be polished off in a thunderclap. This world is that whose fields we now plow and whose streets we now work beside, all as a prologue of the good and terrible coming conclusion and beginning of everything we see this hour, when our bruised hearts, cracked buildings, and soured ethnic relationships are mended and our tears dried, where we are finally the perfect union that we rebelled against, joined with God and all the world's tribes and tongues. The mountains and the hills will break forth in singing and the trees of the field will clap their hands. A new earth is then peeled, a radiant metropolis decends, and we are joined all and ageless with our new Sun.

3 April 2007 5:38pm

Alli and I were standing for a bus to take us back to Karen, and it was late, but usually the buses from this point of the city are well lit and easy to use. A crowd of people waited farther down for a bus as well, and because of the time we had seperated from them. All of a sudden there was some shuffling and Alli mentioned something about somebody getting robbed, then people were running, and a gunshot, and I said something usually inappropriate and Alli and I ran for the nearby gate. "Let's take a cab," she said.

Today I was up at 5 and was on the bus to Arusha, Tanzania by 6.30am. Salis dropped me off, and volunteered to do so, wudda guy. The bus was the same as it has been before, except for the immigration work at the border. I had to pay extra because my visa was paid in Kenyan shillings and not US dollars. But the road into Tanzania was smoother than anything, and the rocky terrain with sporatic scrub brush looked like any previous bus ride.

I'm in Arusha. It seems softer edged than Kenya, and the Swahili has become beautiful and eloquent. An ATM took my 5/3 card and gave $20 in tanzanian currency (20,000 shillings), Mt. Kilimanjaro is here too, and I'm going to relax behind a cup of coffee and the autobiography of Dorothy Day. Tomorrow I meet up with my Dutch cousin and aunt for some R&R. Thank you God for all this. Press your good palm against my face and let me rest in you.

1 April 2007 10:38am

The strike was over quicker and quieter than I thought possible. At one point we were stressing over what would happen if the admin would refuse our reasons and we would fail this term, but then it was Monday morning, the day after our vote, and the admin had already agreed with our reasons and exams were restarted with barely a hiccup. Throughout the day professors and staff quietly told us words of gratitude. Good job they said. Friends who had been fired reappeared, the groundskeepers returned, and the school became preoccupied again with exams. The entire ordeal was actually not much to behold, despite the fact that it had really happened, and that at one time, yes, the entire student body refused their exam day on Monday.

Now the second term is over, and I can barely believe it - not so much the strike, but that this difficult and pain filled term has drawn to a close and did so gracefully. The exams were difficult but doable, homework was caught up, and the two week break came and is now and I feel so lifted by the lack of responsibility.

To top it off, Alli here to visit from Addis Ababa, a friend from the Grand Rapids days. What a priviledge to talk without having to reach. Restful more.

Last sunday at church an announcement was, "Anybody with palm fronds in their backyard please cut some for the children tomorrow", and today was the Sunday before Easter, and the hands of the church were full of these fronds. We took communion, and I was brought deep into the Truth that this world is not it. I feel at peace and good, also crossed and mildly singed, but so very good.