Coming Into Africa

When you are 33,000 feet in the air you notice the grandeur of our planet, although not always in the ways you might expect it. On the flight to Nairobi, all of which was going quite well. I looked out the window and saw the Sahara desert. From 33,000 feet the Anza-Borrego and maybe even the Mojave are just sandboxes compared to the vastness of the Sahara.

At first the sands were reddish, broken so frequently by rock outcroppings that I thought I was over a delta with numerous rivers struggling to get to the Mediterranean. Those hundreds of miles were just the warm up for the vast sandiness of the Sahara itself. Probably a third of the time we were over Africa we were over the Sahara. There were occasional rock outcroppings, the rest were just the dunes and the wind ridges of sand for hundreds of miles.

Then I looked out and saw the Nile snaking through the Sahara. It looked like a drunk had dragged a stick through the sand; I was amazed that it could make it to Egypt at all. From 33,000 feet even the war torn Sudan looked lovely as we sailed between Khartoum and the Darfur Mountains.

I was covering ground that had taken humans millennia to fill and other humans’ years to cross and map on foot. Odd as it may sound, suddenly this part of my sabbatical became real and the rush of the adventure filled me.

Africa! I was getting ready to land in Africa. Tijuana was the only part of the third world I had been in and France the most alien, but now I was about to land in the cradle of both the geologic and human foundations of existence.

Nairobi Airport was as efficient as any other, although one of my bags went missing for a while, but was found finally for a late night ride to the Anglican Guest House. Think 1950’s Catholic seminary dorms. But nice serviceable rooms and very welcoming people. I lucked out with a really nice taxi driver Mr. Stephen Kinyanju of Jambo Taxis who took me right to the Guest House and picked me up early Saturday morning to get to my plane.

Out of the Clouds and on the Ground

The grandeur of the flights lasted about 10 minutes on the ground. As we drove away from the Kisumu Airport I was astonished at the traffic on the road. Not cars, but the people on foot, on bicycles, pulling carts or in Watatus (Honda Vans used as public transportation). It was 10 a.m. Saturday morning and there were hundreds of people out going somewhere, half or more in their Sunday best. It was not yet hot, but the women were in full-length dresses and the men in suits, walking along the side of the road.

Before I got to ask where they might all be going, a cyclist on the shoulder to our left took our breath away. Across the back rack on his bike was tied a very small child’s coffin. He was undoubtedly taking it home. It was a nicely done piece of woodwork, not just a pine box, but suddenly the Africa of the present moment became very real.

And all those well dressed people? Funerals. We see our share of funeral processions head out to Ft. Rosecrans, but imagine if Rosecrans Street had funeral processions moving north and south as routinely through the day as the bus does.

Nancy took me to the theological school and I got settled into the guesthouse. It is another serviceable set of rooms where I can relax and reflect. I unpacked a bit and then we headed off to two of the parishes that are sponsoring the clinics for AIDS orphans. Kwanda parish was set back behind several other schools. Every Saturday there is a program for the parish’s AIDS orphans, about 500 of them. They organize them into classes, have devotions and spiritual development time, play games and sing and then feed them.

The children (watoto) were electric. Welcoming, shy, laughing, looking at the new mzungu (white guy wandering around), and then rejoining the activity. You would not have guessed that these children were not only orphans, but also pariahs in their communities, unwanted non-persons.

On our return I got to nap for a while and then Bishop Oketch stopped by to welcome me and check whether or not I was comfortable. We had a chat about the Sunday service and then he headed off. The group got together at Nan and Gerry’s before supper. There is a nice group of folks here from around the US. Two Lutheran ladies from Wisconsin here for a week or so, an undergraduate from PLNU, two seminarians (one Episcopal and one UCC) from Episcopal Divinity School, a seminarian from Yale, a medical student from U of C and me.

First Sunday

The Bishop had been clear that we should be at the prescribed place at 9 am to have breakfast before the service. So we bundled into the Land Bruiser and took seven of us off to Church. The road down to the church was narrow, but the Bishop had someone at the turn to direct us into the house of the widow of the deceased bishop of Maseno. That is where we would be having breakfast.

A selection of Maseno clergy were there already as was the Bishop. Everyone was standing around chatting and I was wondering why we were not heading into breakfast (time moves on of course!). The Bishop told us we had to wait till the widow invited us in. Even the Bishop had to wait. In a bit the Bishop had us line up two by two and then a procession of women came from the house singing a song of welcome and bearing wreaths. The Bishop and Mrs. Oketch were wreathed then me and then Ann the Yalie, and then every one of the new guests as we were led into the living room. It was a lovely warm room that had been thoughtfully prepared to feed a lot of us. After a bit of chatting we were called over to wash out hands before the meal and then we had a breakfast of hard-boiled eggs, bread, nuts, chipote bread and a few other tasty treats.

Monday was a quiet day after the rush of the weekend. Went to Kimusu in the evening to get money and pick up bags belonging to one of the seminarians. Sadly the bag did not arrive.
Tuesday

Got breakfast and then went off to the Ekwanda parish to do home visits. We set out on foot to visit homes where AIDs orphans had been taken in by neighbors or families. In home after home I heard the same story again and again: parents had died of “that” and now their kids were with grandma who was usually a widow. Of the twenty or so homes we visited and prayed in there were perhaps three with intact families. Their problems are immense.
There is the isolation that is not really isolation. People live in one small plots of land connected by narrow paths. No roads. In essence they are trapped because it is too far to walk to any central place and were it possible to get to a town center there still would be no jobs. Even if they produced an excess of a crop on their land it is a long trek to any kind of market.
The land is somewhat poor. The soil appears red, and the greenery is abundant, but the local people say that it is hard to produce enough maize on the quarter acre lots to sustain a normal family much less one with added mouths to feed. I saw people harvesting their maize very early just to have food for dinner.
Older children are being forced onto the land as early as possible, taking them out of school because there just aren’t any adults to work it and the mammas are too old.
Isolation, disease, diminishing crop yields, absence of adults, lack of jobs, etc. combine here to create the severe poverty.
However, the people are as hard working in the face of adversity as any human could be. They have not given up and there is no “welfare” state to fall back on, you either work or die. There is little that is wasted, what they don’t eat themselves they feed to the cow or sheep or chickens they might have. The homes are pretty tidy given that they may have dirt or mud waddle floors. In the face of all that the people were hospitable and thanked me for coming.
As we walked back I invited the ladies to ask me questions. Florence a young woman became their spokes person, asking or translating questions and then translating answers. I had begun the day with three guides, but by the time we had gotten a little way upon the path it swelled to six and sometimes seven.
The wanted to know whether or not we had any areas like their villages. They were surprised to learn that the entire US is not paved over, giving us lots of rural areas. They wanted to know what we did with orphans, so I explained about foster care and adoption. They asked if we had poor like their poor and I had to answer that almost no one was a desperately destitute as their villagers were, that a variety of programs provided a pretty extensive support network. I explained how the government collected taxes to make these programs possible. But since there are almost no jobs, there is no income to tax to speak of and a property tax would just steal people’s land.
We talked for maybe an hour and a half about wages and what people had to live on. They could hardly believe that poor in the US would get the equivalent of 100,000 shillings a year, more than all but the wealthiest Kenyans.
Florence pointed to a man mixing cement for work on the vicarage and asked if we had people who worked like that. I said yes we had people who were bricklayers and construction workers and chose that for a living. She asked how they were viewed in the society and I told her that trades people of all sorts were valued. She pointed to the man again and said that he was way over-educated for the work he was doing but this was all there was. She told me that is they were to announce that jobs were available 1,000 people would be here in the morning to apply for that job.
I left the ladies and returned to the school, filled with the images of the day. I did not take pictures because it felt too invasive, although on the next trip out I will.
Tuesday evening I showed the film Levity with Billy Bob Thornton, Morgan Freeman, Holly Hunter and Kirsten Dunst. It is a film about reconciliation and forgiveness and whether or not we can manage to forgive ourselves. This is the week of Repentance in Kenya so the film seemed to fit.

Wednesday

Wednesday I led a class about the movie and we discussed the theological, pastoral and ritual dimensions of forgiveness. Student here are not particularly talkative, one has to pulllllll responses out of them.
I then spent several hours meeting individually with students who wished to speak with me about various issues. The conversations ranged from personal issues to strategies for leadership. The model of leadership here is very top down and the formal power structures are male dominated. Kenya allows women in ministry, but as our equivalent of Deacons, there are none yet presiding over the Communion service.
In explaining my own leadership style, discovering what the energies were in the parish and shepherding them the first response was, “how is that leadership.” So I had a long discussion about whether top down leadership is as much fun or as effective as my more sideways form of it. I am not sure people were convinced, but at least we got the issue on the table of how in the US (in most places at least) we look for leadership from all the baptized with the Rector more as the orchestra leader than the micro manager.
Later in the day I met with Bishop Oketch to sketch out where I will be preaching and celebrating the next few Sundays.
By the evening I was coming down with a cold. As usual my sinuses are collecting all the new pollens and with the help of all the wood smoke my “wildfire” rasp has returned. After our evening debriefing I went to bed.

Thursday

Most of today I wandered about with cotton in my head. I was wanted at a nursery school dedication here on the property, but not given the right time. I was off somewhere else when it was happening, but my absence was noted. I spent most of the day feeling the real onset of a cold and took it easy, but my stomach was also in a little rebellion against all the carbs I was eating. One meal here includes more carbs that I am used to eating in a month and they are making me sleepy and tummy grumbly. So I skipped the lunch of beans and rice and slept most of the afternoon.
Late in the day Fr. Zak came by to greet me. He is the lecturer in Church History and teaches African Traditional religions as part of that. He got his D.Min. at the University of the South and has toured with Deacon Anne, to whom he sends his greetings.
I helped greet the new crew of arriving med students from Harvard (one is a SD native) and basically sniffled my way through the evening and then went to bed.

Friday

I woke up feeling ok, and hoped that the decongestant and the sleep had settled my stomach. But I skipped the official breakfast and slept in, just to give it more time. Then I got a call from Kathleen telling me that the car had been towed by a ball park shark and they would not release it to her unless there was a notarized statement from me, the registered owner. I just had to laugh inside, even though I was steaming. Since it was 8 am my time and 10 pm hers I told her to call the local politician and then our attorney who could help facilitate a statement over the phone.
I was feeling even a little better and got talked into going to the Internet Café on bicycle! Sadly, the link was down at the café so we came back. But I was exhausted and realized I had made a mistake in using so much energy. Then I made the mistake of trying some of the beans at lunch. Again I thought they might be ok. Following lunch I met with a graduate and a library worker to discuss various things. But I was starting to feel punky, so grabbed some sleep before I had to put the sauce together for pizza. See I had already committed to provide pizza as a snack for the movie night.
Dinner was one of the boiled meat entrees of which I ate some, but stayed away from the carbs and cabbages. A crew including one student had helped make dough, so between dinner and the beginning of the film we made pizza. It went over very well, everyone said they loved it. I prompted them to tell me the truth, but they all insisted it was good.
By the time I got home I was sweating and I think feverish. I got myself to bed, but knew I was in for a night of those bowel horrors I sometimes get.

Saturday

I stayed in bed till almost 1 o’clock to get up enough strength to go to a Mother’s Union Meeting. I had a little peanut butter earlier in order to take medicine and at lunch had a little plain rice.
We met with 28 Mothers at Ekwanda, many of whom make the crafts for our Christmas Arts sale. These 28 ladies not only work during the week, take care of their homes, take in orphans, but then they spend all day Saturdays doing programs to educate and support the orphans. 430 had been there today.