Simon's Nairobi Diary - Archive 40
10 October 2007 9:23pm
Another inauguration of the year choma two nights ago, children and students encircled round the bonfire, all hands holding roasted meat, diced tomatoes, and boiled maize flour. Everybody fetch their own plates to feast with, and the pulse was heightened with live music till late. I had chili simmering in my kitchen that night, but when tried the spice made me wince. My recipe, I discovered, was for using US chili powder. Aghast, I had purchased red red Indian chili powder and added the recipe's 7 table spoons. Mis-take. Ate it today by swiftly alternating spoons of Kenyan yogurt – 25ksh a bottle.
Supine and bruised, I recently read this: “Life is difficult. This is the great truth, one of the greatest truths—it is a great truth because once we see this truth, we transcend it.” - M Scott Peck. These writings (The Road Less Traveled) have helped me to collect my strength, ah just enough, to cease my anguished yammerings and engage the difficulty. Correspondingly has been poured such a sense of liberation. 'One extends one's limits by exceeding them,' Peck says. And I realize that being against the ropes here is not out of helpless circumstance, but because I'm being extended to be fitted.
Gratitude, Blessed Jesu, for I’ve been handed, shining with strength, a single sparkling lens to tease apart this tangle. I listened to sunrisen children laughing outside the window. And surveying the hope gilded morning: today I got up on time.
3 October 2007 8:13pm
He invites me to his house, eyes spilt with such eagerness that I can hardly refuse, especially since we're old roomies. But since his family has arrived he moved into one of the flats, and I too am ushered into it with such pride. The wall is adorned with a poster of a bible verse from Thessalonians. His marriage picture rests on a concrete shelf, a younger version of him but still that grin.
He is so happy to have me he barely speaks. With hesitant tumbling English he says, "Let me show you my wife." I am left alone on a padded chair that doesn't squish and a table with a doily in the center. As he moves to the kitchen I take count of the room: poster, wedding picture, three chairs, doilied table. That's it. And from the kitchen I hear a brief muddled exchange.
Then emerges what he meant, his darling whom he has been talking of for ten months. She short steps into the room, tidy and Polynesian influenced like him, and stands with his straightened posture. Can't speak a lick of English, so we have no mutual method of greeting or introduction. I just look at her and nod and she reciprocates. "Let us have some tea," he says. A Malagasy exchange and she is off brewing, he and I sitting on the stiff foam discussing the two months apart. Something is different from when he lived alone on my floor. Returning for his final year with his marriage in proximity has put such an anchor in his spirit, I can see it through our hobbled dialog. Something so simple as the arrival of a loved one who gets him has created a palpable ardor of stability. I am so happy for him.
Its six thirty when I leave, the sky changing colors, the sun just sinking below the scaffolded acacia leaves. I am so taken by the wholesomeness of the moment, it's sheer impenetrability, that I take a seat on the concrete step and just soak in the day's crescendo.
29 September 2007 7:52pm
An old man is stooped in front of me, his head checked to the side and his grey hair long. He is muzzling words in the ear of a tight dressed girl. The old man is white, the girl a young African. He straightens up, eyes locked to hers, lids halfway down. He is wearing the slightest smile, but its a strange one. He then drapes his arm behind her swivel stool, clasps the back, and shakes it and keeps his smile. She doesn't move aside from being shook, but in a moment she is standing, and the wrinkled aged man with his long grey button-up untucked is walking now with his hand leading hers. She walks to follow.
I am sickened by the prostitution I see here. I sit with my friends trying to enjoy a Bitter Lemon soda but I can't enjoy it because what is going on in front of my eyes. I wish she was pleading for him to stop, that she was looking around frantic for help against this gross man, but she doesn't. In fact, she doesn't even look disinterested, she carries a look of satisfaction. Is it the money? Is she happy to finally score some cash for tonight?
Its not just men either. Retirees of both genders seem to come here for unadulterated access to cheap relationless copulation with teenage African boys and girls. Mombasa Tiwi beach, with its expensive resorts, is filled with white females in their forties and fifties laughing and holding hands with a young "beach boy", as they're called. And the boy carries the same look as the girl: satisfaction, not torture as I wish to see.
I ache against this, against the dehumanization of it all. That the person who is precious in the eyes of God is reduced to an item, a walking piece of epidermis. The only cause of prostitution around the globe is one thing: poverty. From the red district of Amsterdam, to Nevada's hinterlands, to Kenya's bars, prostitutes are simply poor girls who need money. And with Kenya's government pocketing between 10-20percent of the GDP, jobs and wages stay scant. The solution to this horror? Well-paid unbribable policemen and good jobs for the populace. Rehabilitation programs may help, but really those are the main two.
Instinct wraps my mind in sickness as I watch it happen, and I know God is reeling too, hating prostitution in his guts. And if poverty is the cause and economic resurgence is a solution, then I am learning in Kenya how wonderful and holy healthy employment can be.
22 September 2007 10:02pm
It's on again: citi hoppas, roasted roadside maize, child howayoo's, sidewalk jikos. The matatu attendee doesn't even ask but takes my newly emptied husk and throws it out the marred fickle plastic sliding window. The coin clicks again, a whistle, the last press of soggy brakes and I pop, unfurl more, from the van slider. The attendant knocks the side twice, the driver knows to hit the gas. Purple velvety exhaust sprays and diffuses from its tail. I walk through the gates, HabariGani the guards, and walk around today's new termite holes. A man is in the trees to my left, stringing a rope around a branch to raise a saw. He hugs an upper branch and saws a lower one. They are clear cutting the forest, and I've never seen it done this way. Like the furniture, the houses, the farming. It is accomplished simple but longer.
I can't finish a sleep, the lag has its hold. I wake frusted at 4am over again, leaving these tepid naps till its time to move. They say one night of adjustment for each time zone East. Well it was seven, and its been 15 days. I'm saying again tonight's bedtime: first full sleep Si and you get a guiltless guacamole burger.
I left the room yesterday and swore I could smell coffee, toasted brown bread, boiled eggs: a smell that lingers in the Michigan kitchen after my mom would do her routine out the door.
A handful of tough days lately, all from alighting here and learning this year's unique swing. Admittances regarding the next 10 months weigh me down, down to more raw-edged reliance that I was brought here to graduate and that this all will be solidly meaningful. Hard times are the pains are when the kinks are worked out of living. And what an environment am I. Points of anxiety, doubt, callousness towards my neighbors. These things wax with poor diet, poor sleep, work load. Even the weather. The sun arrived finally five days ago. Steerings on the right, so my passengered left shoulder peeled from a car ride. Yeah, the gorgeous blue and shine arrives and I swear my attitude improved accordingly. The solar heated shower finally has zazz, so I was clean to boot.
I will endure, slow and focus. Christ above Christ below Christ around, dropped to depths and anchored. Tugged, tried again, lifted to a static jolt, but all this difficulty is eternal vanity. See, a bitter doubt, an attempted untangle from His intricate care, and it leaves me known now the more: the stand of God, its concluded valiant embrace and I am fast within.
12 September 2007 5:52pm
Another scene swept me away in its familiarity, seated in class: the sky turning from brilliant shine to coal in a moment, a peal of thunder, a falling cascade of water seen out the window. People hiking their step for the overhangs. I forgot how that happens, how look away a moment and the sun is covered and the drops shake the stead where you're at.
But it wasn't the first familiar thing. First, I saw my toilet paper had been stolen over the summer. Probably around 20 cents worth. I stared at the blank storage spot and thought, 'oh. right.' And there were muddy child footprints on the lid and the tank cover, what tiny toe dots. It had been used, at some point in July or August, as a thing to reach the window. They scramble to do this because they like to call out the windows to each other, and a window is above the tank. Shrill "kuja"s.
The first chapel brought around the verse where God tells his people to pray for rain. Shucks, what burden and how hard it has been to remind myself, not only to thank God for what he gives, but to first ask for it. Am I supposed to sit at my dinner table in Michigan and pray for food to be please provided for tomorrow? Because I assume it's coming anyway. How does this disable my need for His arm, this mildly-innocent negligence of asking for what I need. Because I am watching my friend from Nigeria sing near the clunky piano, and he prays for what he needs because its not always been certain if it will come, but: here he stands still today, brought this far by his Maker's consistent passionate intention. What an obvious work of love he has spun into. I am so blessed to live with friends such as these.
11 September 2007 5:15pm
A dizzy exit. Gave myself two hours to pack, accidentally leaving the steelslide and the hebrew book. Left the room messy for the parents to mull over, like a chump. Arrived in Cherry Capital Airport, such a favorite, and talked and prayed with Dad before the boarding call. Look at this woodwork, he showed me.
Walked around the Detroit airport for awhile, running into my Sudanese classmate from NEGST. "Simon!" I heard, walking down the C concourse. Turning around was my friend, skin pitch black, white Anglican collar, swinging crucifix. Huge smile. We talked about his trip, this his first visit to the States. He was drinking Coke, perhaps the only thing familiar in this scene of shining dustless surfaces and smooth pavement. Entering the US had been a very difficult process, since his passport is in Arabic. But he got through the international connections and only had a domestic flight to Tennessee left. You're done with the hard parts, I told him. He looked relieved. We shook goodbye, he entered the boarding ramp, and I felt so good because he knew me from over there and likes me. I felt validated by him in a way nobody here was able.
Blank memory until I woke up over the UK. The man seated next to me had his feet propped on a washbasin. How long had I been asleep? The man remarked on my reading Mother Teresa's new book. He said he was a professor of radiological physics, going to give a lecture in Spain I think. Actually interesting listening to him describe the dangers of fully enveloping cancer victims in radiation, versus the healthier but less understood option of localized radioactive treatment. He said, don't get it in this one part of the brain (something thalmus) or you get dementia. He said, you are aiding the soul and I the body. I didn't know what to say.
Schipol now, guested by the prof into the KLM lounge eating cheese and crackers. Talked with a guy going to India who develops software for insurance companies. Lounge showers were occupied, so I went to the free ones outside, next to the "meditation room" with its arrow in the carpet pointing east. Thanks to God, I found a dizzily packed towel and soap. Boarded final flight to Nairobi, gate F5. The crowd with aid workers and vacationers in large leg-pocketed pants, trim suited Kenyans, monogrammed polo-shirted mission trippers. The 747 flew over some mountains in Italy, gorgeous: cut and snowy and vacant. A quick view of a town, then just electric blue water. Pulled the shade and crashed again. Woke up to Spiderman3 on the overhead, no thanks. Then the sun was down, burning forest fires over Thika, a short circle and a squeal of wheels. My phone buzzed with a text message even before the front wheel rested.
Got all the stuff I brought for people past custom's paws, a delirious entry into the school gate 40 hours since Harrietta. Tacos at Ben and Christi's. Asleep uneasy 20 minutes later.
Awoke to the glossy ibus, just like in 2005, hawing and glawking outside. I felt God's heart full of strength, providence, knowing. I'm yours, I said looking out the window bars. A quiet peace draped on my worry. Breakfast.
