Simon's Nairobi Diary - Archive 5

11 October 2005 8:09pm

Gavade is a 38 year old Ethiopian on my floor, somewhat middle eastern in appearance. I was bustling through the hallway when he called my name. "Simon, Simon. Karibu sana, karibu sana!", he said (welcome very much). I entered his room, and it was so very sparse, almost to the point of emptiness. His tiny suitcase lay on the floor, his bookshelf holding one book, his bible. A couple sets of clothes lay on his bottom shelf. He also had a small hot water heater, for hot drinks, solely occupying his desk. "Tea?", he asked me through broken english and a smile. My mind reeled back to the image of my room that I broke away from 10 seconds ago, clothes strewn about the floor, a plant on the windowsill, two guitars, some snacks, a mosquito net bed covering, pictures covering the walls, my laptop, my plethora of books... "Tea?", he asked again through his mustached grin, tearing open the only package of anything in the room. "Yes", I replied, quickly warming to the One within him, "I would love some tea."

Truly, I am an insect among giants.

10 October 2005 7:49pmFREEDOM!!

I eat oats and raisins (sometimes currants) every morning. The company that I buy my oats from has been using the same mill since the 1600s. And I found a source for locally grown organic Kenyan coffee, which compliments the oats and raisins to make breakfast consistently enjoyed. Its common to be driving past fields outside the city and see those shoulder height coffee plants, with their green clusters of caffienated goodness. They really look more like berries than beans. And the eucalyptus trees are also a common sight, all this so very different from Harrietta foilage of my home. I miss the blue spruce. The conifers here are awful.

First rain today since I've arrived.

Sunday church at Nairobi Baptist was pretty lame. I went with Dr. Frederik (Korean), Tynere, and Edward (Liberian). The chairs were movie theatre quality in this luxerious megachurch. The whole service was so very dry, void of community, and polluted with comfortable inexpression.

Ugh. It was a chore. Is it not understood? The Maker is life, not death. He is the reason to rise in the morning from the mattress. My joy is not some individual expression, but a reaction of being cut loose from doom. This is a joy that voids the insecurity of the grave and sends upright/respected individuals scampering up sycamore trees. Its freedom that the Christ offers to me, freedom that these short 75 years of living are not all that there is.

What a relief.

8 October 2005 8:40pm

Basketball tonight was such a blast. It was just chock full of laughter and intensity, ball steals and compliments. Just the five of us: Matthew from Ivory Coast, Richard from Sierra Leone, Paul and Trent from Kenya. (Richard looks and sounds like a young Will Smith, and yes, it is still the willinium). Soon it got dark, but we kept playing anyways. The blackness really began to settle in, to the point where it was dangerous to charge the lane because half the time you ended up running into people you thought were not so close. But the laughter and shots stayed consistent. Eventually it was Matthew's dinnertime that ended the whole event.

Why did we play to the point of ridiculousness, where you could barely see each other let alone make a basket? I mean, we play again tomorrow, so whats the big deal? I imagine it is just because the thing we were doing was just so much fun. If the playing would have been lame we would have quit probably an hour earlier, but since we enjoyed it so much, we kept sweating, jumping, charging the lane, and laughing till we almost caused ourselves bodily harm. As I live this ζωη (life), I need to keep enjoying it, since it will keep me going uptil the end when I can barely see. And when I enter that other side, I hope I'll be breathing heavy and sweating and laughing about what a blast the whole ordeal was.

At the bottom of the 'Favorites' section (on the left) was added a list of dislikes.

7 October 2005 10:36pm

World Relief has its African HIV/AIDS headquarters located on NEGST's campus. I visited it today and inquired about volunteering on Mondays since I have no class that day. I cannot wait to work with World Relief and experience the love and grace that the Father feels for his suffering body. As I was walking to the office I was just overcome with the beauty of the earth and the sky. The blue was so deep, the sporatic cumulous clouds were so defined, the dirt is even a beautiful shade of red. Silvery blue birds were in flight and the flowers and the vegetation was so lush. I had no choice but to admit that it was a symphony I was experiencing, a part of even. The clouds and the blue were tenor and bass of sky and the ground and the greenery were the harmony of earth. Throughout it all there flew fowl and butterfly. And the centre of it all was the body of humanity, off key and struggling to find the tune, but there none the less. In the midst of its chaos and dissonance you can just barely pick it out... there it is! Its the melody: Love and unity and adherence to the Conductor & Composer. It is He who moves his baton with compassion and it is He who reaches out his hand to bring myself and the rest of his beloved melody back to union with the chorus of existence.

6 October 2005 9:54pm

Yvette is a student in her late forties from California who is earning her MA in Missions here at NEGST. Today I had the pleasure of dinner at Java House (real hamburgers!) with her and some other students. Lisa is Armenian, Patrice is Hungarian, Jenny is United Statian. Yvette allowed me to drive everybody in her jeep to the restaurant. This wouldn't have been a big deal, except that the steering wheels are located, like British cars, on the right side and not the left. No big deal I thought, until I also had to drive on the left side of the road, not the right. Right turns became torture, left turns were pumpkin pie. Half an hour of intense matatu-plagued night driving and I arrived at the eatery much less hungry than before.

Anyways, Yvette has spent the last twenty years running a (quite successful) law practice in California. She left it all for the sake of the call (que cheesy wonderful Steven Curtis Chapmen song). She just felt herself living in mediocrity in her current situation in life. In August she booked a plane ticket, spent a week or so preparing her practice for her departure, and then left for Kenya. She likes to say that God called her to Africa when she was younger and now she has finally done it, it just took her "thirty years to get here". She told me her story today, and I am in awe of her faith in God. The practice was corrupting her values, ruining her happiness, and impacting her spiritual life - so she just left it. She left her life in California to find it in Kenya. It is an honor to study next to her.

5 October 2005 8:44pm

Random experiences from the day:

Locking my room this morning through a keyhole, in chapel singing 'Great is Thy Faithfulness' as a result of receiving a large book shipment from the US, having a little girl giggle when I greeted her with 'Jambo', eating sukuma wiki for lunch and chapatis (a large grilled tortilla) and soy beans for dinner, listening to a heated debate today between students on whether the apostle Paul was married, greeting a fellow student today in Sheng and feeling really hip, receiving a postal letter from Kalamazoo and feeling loved, not knowing a cockroach was at the bottom of my coffee cup till I filled it with fresh JavaHouse coffee (I rebrewed), introducing Steely Dan to a friend, reading the (fairly solid) historical proof from the Roman historian Tacitus that a man named Jesus was crucified by Pontius Pilate, wiping the maroon dust off my sandaled feet, feeling the sun warm my face as I exited class, getting an invite to visit the home of my Ethiopian friend Ferdinand - who treats me like family but knows nothing about me apart from our common faith in Christ.

4 October 2005 9:25pm

I finished a bag of peanuts off while talking about kiSwahili vocab (the different words for rice) with my flat mate George, and felt a weird sort of tension. Oops, I forgot to offer some peanuts. These cultural differences have become more identifyable as I leave the identity of being a 'guest' of Kenya and enter into the communal mutuality of being a fellow student. I am becoming less able to attribute my identity as a foreigner as an excuse for failing to fall in line with cultural practices. If you have any food or candy or anything, people just assume you will offer to share. Why don't they just ask? I'm happy to share. But asking is impolite. My lack of sharing the peanuts resulted, hopefully only for the first time, in George frustrated at my selfishness.

Another large cultural value I am learning to adjust to is greetings. When I say 'hello' to people I pass by on the paths, the common response is 'fine'. Wha? Supposedly a greeting always infers a sort of 'how are you'. Also, when I politely say 'hello' to people on the paths, many stop to shake my hand while I keep walking, since I forget the required elongated procedural 'how are (you, family, etc.)' that come with greeting. I greet people quite often, since I find passing by a familiar classmate without some sort of word exchange uncomfortable and impolite. Passing silently by a familiar face without a word exchange is totally acceptable within this culture, but usually I make it to class leaving a small trail of bewildered unconversed 'hello' victims in my wake.

Today is the one-month mark of arrival. Dr. Xavier said it best when describing the mindset we should seek during these tumultuous three years: discovery. Not confirmation of our preconceived ideas and not confirmation of our abilities and intellect, but discovery. This is a big God, with His wisdom as unceasing as His love.

I'm here my Maker, pour it on.... pour it on....