Simon's Nairobi Diary - Archive 38

18 May 2007 8:26pm

To worship and live for God is to anchor ourselves to the one solidity that exists, the one flawless. Sufjan Stevens has this great song where he compares God to superman, saying "only a steelman can be a lover". How only a flawless and unflawable god could ever fully be our all-in-all. Annie Dillard once said, "I know only enough of God to want to worship him." Its like a lot of things I suppose. I need only to know my parents love me for me to call them on the weekends. I only need to know God as unflawable and lovely towards my possible state - to worship him. That's it. Sold. Nothing else really matters. My heart, which was left adrift on a placid lake, burning under the sun, gets its torn sail patched and a breeze in its belly. Soft swish towards the shore where I can find my family.

16 May 2007 8:17pm

In August of 2005, about a month before I was leaving for Kenya, I sat down for ice cream with a friend of mine who had just returned from a year in Senegal. She had spent the year in a somewhat similar fashion, a single person going to Africa without any awaiting friends. I remember being there seated on a round picnic bench outside this rootbeer parlor, she was shivering from being unclimatized to the Michigan fall chill. Anyways, I was grilling her about what I would need, since she had just spent a year in a place and situation similar to where I was going (though East and West Africa are truly different parts of the world). My questions were all mechanical. I asked about food. I asked about ATMs and banking. I asked whether my electronics would work. Ridiculous. I remember how flustered she became, since such things were the least of the difficulties she encountered living in Africa.

A year and 2/3s later I'm still here. Haven't gone home in disarray. But my food and my banking and my electronics situation has been the least of the hardships I've found here. The struggle here is emotional. The hardest part of being abroad Isn't having to figure out how to convert 110V US devices to using 240V Kenyan electricity. Its how to have friends. Its where you celebrate, like Thanksgiving. I think I would have packed my bags long ago if I never found people here for when I was weak, homesick, culture-shocked, disillusioned. I would have left within a year if I would not have entered a fold with God, a sustaining spiritual grace which envelopes me like a cloud during the worst of my weekly minutes.

Jesus told people not to worry about what we might wear, what we might eat, and it seems all finally something understood. Because these immaterial and spiritual heart issues are not only what have given allowance to be here, but have been what make study in Kenya remarkable. It is because of such things that I am not only remaining, but dreading the leave.

14 May 2007 3:26pm

Saturday Brian McLaren came to NEGST and had a sit down convo with about twenty of us, talking through his post-modern vision for the church. Him sitting in classroom 03 and chatting with us all was a bit surreal. I think after about hour two (of six!) most of the African students were fairly lost, but I was so fired up. The time passed too quickly. I'm not fanatical about McLaren, but I really found his heart for the future of the church appealing. Some of his ideas got me thinking and some of the questions in the discussion were interesting.

I'm at a point right now where I need to embrace an organized life or really suffer some consequences. I got my report card for last term and it was 2B+s, an A-, and a C+ in hebrew. I can continue to get tepid Cs in Hebrew, but I would rather get on top of this semitics and graduate with great grades as well as the ability to do devotions in the original languages. That is my vision. I feel its a possibility. I'm going for it.

5 May 2007 4:37pm

Yesterday a group of us went and saw Hello Dolly, a play put on by a high school in Nairobi. It was such a fun time. Went with Daylan and Kayla, driven by my Hebrew prof and his wife. I was impressed by how well the costumes were with how little they have here. Plus probably a dozen countries were part of the cast; Dolly was Madagascaran. I'm struck by how difficult it is in Nairobi to get out and do something fun, since often the only options that exist are either restaurants or the NuMetro cinema (which shows such high quality flicks as 'Soldier' [starring Marky Mark] or Bollywood films [a guy came back to life again?!?]). Even these are difficult to do since past dark its too dangerous to travel in public trans, so the play was a welcomed hilarious exception.

Photos from Mount Kenya's Chogoria Route were updated. View by clicking the 'photos' on the left.

2 May 2007 4:54pm

The matatu driver was chewing miraa, also known as khat, a green leafy plant classified by the US DEA as a narcotic, but legal in Kenya. It has amphetamine like character, a stimulant with a smidgen of euphoria. The drivers love to chew it because it keeps them going, keeps their senses awake if they are tired or hungover. When we were coming back from Mt. Kenya, we were driving through a place where miraa is grown. The plant is championed for its freshness, so jalopy Toyatas, loaded to the gills, continously streamed around our jeep on the way back home. They were chewing it themselves, pushing themselves to drive fast because they are paid more for how quick it arrives. Of course, the drawback is that they, and whom they pass, almost die on the way to Nairobi.

Anyways, it was just a moment of panic. I saw the speed before the khat, because the matatu (public trans van) I was in was flying down Ngong road much faster than the legal 80km/hr - a speed which is supposed to be controlled by a governor under the hood. Ug. In the front seat, flying down the busted tarmac, I glanced at the driver and noticed the leaf stem sticking out his mouth, the green film at the corner of his lips. Ug, I said. I reached for my seatbelt and couldn't find it. Looking down at the seat, I saw the belt buckled, but without a strap. I pressed the release button and the buckle came off loose in my hand. I showed it to the driver, who stared at it and not the road a bit too long, he smiled and turned back, turning the stem in his teeth. Ug. I hung onto a handle, 'ok, lets do this.' I arrived five minutes early. Woo hoo.

And yesterday I starting 'seeing' a girl for the first time ever ever. And apparently its May.

30 April 2007 9:51pm

I woke up from a nap around 3.30 in the aft, not to my alarm but to a strange humming that was overpowering my senses. I did the half-awake bumbly roll to my right side and shouted suddenly, seeing the entirety of my room swarming with hundreds and hundreds of angry bees. One came under the mosquito net, because a corner near the foot had caught around the mattress. I squashed it with a Wendell Berry book (chap3) and fixed the net's opening. Then I sat and waited and drank some stale green tea and read Berry's "What are people for?" some more until the buzz died and the room was less viscous, then I skidaddled. When I came back later they were gone.

24 April 2007 9:47pm

I'm beginning a more permanent work position within one of the orphanages near the school. A week ago I was reading an intake sheet of one of the boys who had just come in. The form said, "Father: I never met my father." "Mother: I left her house because I was hungry." It went on to describe his life, how he left his mom because she had no food, and began to sleep on the streets of Nairobi. Meals? it asked. One meal a day - french fries - 20ksh (30 cents). Income: begging @ 60ksh/day. Addictions: bangi (marijuana) 20ksh & glue 5ksh. His intake picture showed him smiling with a group of other boys, his nose completely crusted by the glue addiction. He is 12 years old.

It is hard for me to see a child who is living so miserably, and I'm cynical that some written pixels will convey the knot in my throat.

They pointed him out to me at the home, and he was talking and laughing with the others. I stood water-eyed and stilled, thinking of my childhood of abundance - not so much wealth, but the lovely parents who raised me and the wonderful environment that birthed me. I collected butterflies, my father read books to me at night, I rode a bicycle and ate home made popsicles from fruit juice. I was hugged and kissed and told every and each day by my family how unbelievably precious I was, how much they wanted my success, and how nothing I could do would make them love me less. Frick, my mom made my Halloween costumes from scratch.

Shaken awake God, you have my attention. The day was filled with hard apprehension, but I'm ready now Jesus to love those despairing, to take up the cross - live richly by caring. Because I saw Wednesday a boy badly needing, and to seek my own life now seems oddly misleading. Let me be an arrow towards heaven above: to be ablaze, filled with hope, and thick brimming with love. Please.