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Lost and Found

When people are gone for a long period of time here, Kenyan friends and family generally greet you with, “Where have you been? You’ve been lost for long…” I haven’t looked it up, but I’m thinking maybe it’s a Kiswahili translation that comes out a little differently in English. I knew right where I was the whole time. I could point it out to you on a map, but this isn’t exactly what they’re talking about here. I wasn’t lost, myself, I was lost to them…the community notices the absence, and the question posed is one of concern and care.

It has made me question the literalness of their question, though. I think I have been feeling a little “lost” as of late in the sense that they mean. I’ve been lost in my own thoughts, mostly about my future. I’ve been lost from home (home) and family (family) for a long time now. But even as a grade school kid, I realized that the best part of getting lost was finding a new way back… In this case, I’m being found…

I was in Kisumu, the western part of the country, for the National Drama Festivals when a kind stranger provided my first example. I was looking around in the evening our second night, hoping to find a cheap place in town to stay when I bumped into someone who immediately said, “you look lost…” I laughed inwardly, and said that I wasn’t lost, I was just looking for a place to stay, and did she know any? She mentioned her hotel and the price, which was too much for me, so I thanked her and thought I was moving on when she promptly told me I wouldn’t find a place at that hour and to please follow her… She whisked me away in her vehicle, found an empty room where she was staying, and decided to sponsor me for the night. I later learned that she worked for the ministry of education and also that she decided to sponsor me for the rest of the week- meals included, no charge. I didn’t really know how to take all the kindness in. My first reaction was to question it, “are you sure this is ok?” “I can really find a cheaper place to stay…” “Is it too much trouble…?” etc. She was a little taken aback by my questions and used the opportunity to tell me, “You see, though Africa is changing a lot, we still operate with a village mentality… when someone is lost and not from here, we have to take them into our village, to provide for them…It is our way.” I reluctantly accepted this new-found way.

Another example was when I “lost” my phone. I’d like to point out that clearly and unmistakably, my phone was stolen, but people over and over kept apologizing for my “phone getting lost…” As soon as it happened though, a search team quickly banded on a red hot hunt. My phone was never recovered, but someone let me borrow theirs until I replaced mine, and I made some friends along the way… The community was again taking on my loss as their own.

Things that I’m now losing as a result of my experience here is my tendency to bare loss on my own, or to not admit when I’m lost and need some guidance. Things are rarely done alone here, and their unwillingness to let me “suffer in silence,” reaffirms what I actually believe: that we are only truly found in community, in relationships with others. It was around Easter time when all of this took place. The holiday that evokes new life, of joy…of accepting a gift of life undeserved and then letting this gift be transformative in your own life. I know these beautiful gifts of hospitality I’ve received all throughout this year are working their transformations in me…

"What is our community, and how might that community be reconciled with our freedom? How far do our obligations reach? How do we transform mere power into justice, mere sentiment into love?... I find myself modestly encouraged, believing that so long as the questions are still being asked, what binds us together might somehow, ultimately, prevail." -Barack Obama, Dreams from My Father

What's UPdate

-The first term of school has been really busy, and I’ve been mostly consumed with co-directing the school play and taking it to various level competitions

-I moved to my own house on our school campus, nearest to the boys’ dormitories- who like to knock on my door to play UNO at odd hours

-I became a class teacher of Std 6. We are a class of 9 and they have really improved over the course of the term. I threw them a party

-I went to Kisumu near Lake Victoria for the National Drama Festivals. We didn’t place, but it was definitely an accomplishment to make it to the competition. I was so proud of our little ones. They really did their darndest.

-We took a boat ride on the big Lake (second largest freshwater lake in the world, only to Lake Superior) as a group and ate some freshly caught (like 5 min ago) fish

- I was able to take a day trip on my own in Kisumu and road on my first motorcycle (piki piki in Kiswahili) and got a special boat ride to see some hippos swimming around

-I got accepted to McCormick Theological Seminary in Chicago, and I’m now heavily weighing all the factors in going next year

-After my trip west, I went to the east coast, Mombasa and Malindi on the Indian Ocean, for some R & R with a fellow YAV teacher

-Went swimming every day on the coast because it was too ungodly hot to do much of anything else…developed a nice sunburn

- I’ll probably head back to Meru in the next couple days to teach those who want some extra assistance in the April holidays

- I’m a bridesmaid in my Kenyan friends’ wedding- a marathon ceremony will ensue on May 1

- Finding it hard to believe that come July 25^th I’m leaving Kenya… Only about three more months…

My Musings

Hey all. Apologies for not writing this month. It's been kind of a whirlwind, mostly because of our competing in the National Drama Festivals. It's all coming together this week when we head to Kisumu (in the western part of the country) for the final competition. I've had a real blast co-directing...

Below are some musings inspired by other YAV blogs- the brothers Josh (Kenya) and Tyler (India) Orem. I added to Josh's list below...

You know you're in Kenya when...

-the kiosk on the corner= you instant friends
-the polite "you go first wave" in traffic does not exist
- everyone can and does sing- on pitch- is a completely different story
- it'll be above 90 degrees and people still wear fleece
- a shoat or a geep is a hybrid goat/sheep and is fun to say
- if it smells like a burning rubbish heap...it probably is a burning rubbish heap
- Ugali= food staple consisting of corn meal and water: solidified on your plate AND in your stomach
- turns out, elephants don't live in their backyards, but you might pass one on the road...
- trousers= pants. pants=underwear. so it's best not to say silly things like "I got my pants all wet!"
- Intercessory Prayers during church sometimes become a shouting match over who can admit sin the loudest. The one with the mic usually wins.
- Who needs African acapella harmonies when you have a keyboard synthesizer and midi tracks? :(
-Rain= mud bath on your way to work the next morning
- Kenyans don't like cheese. So don't invite them over for dinner if you're having cheese pizza (lesson learned the hard way)
- That piece of colorful fabric can and is used several different ways: skirt, apron, baby holder, seedling spreader, picnic blanket, towel...
- Loving things made into other things! : bottle caps into jewelry, plastic bags bundled into soccer balls, tires into sandles...
-The peace sign means that one is abstaining (or "chilling") from sex, so it's important to know the context in which one flashes the symbol
- dubbed over Hispanic soap operas are primetime TV
- using God to advertise your business is effective marketing
- if you leave your shoes on the porch, someone might sneak by and clean them for you
- there is always always time for another cup of tea
- being on time is early, being a little late is still early...
- eating out: a hearty meal prepared with completely local foods probably costs $1.50
- everything is eaten with either a spoon or your hands- forks and knives are auxiliary

More to come most likely...

Much love from here,
D

Kenyan Monks and Merton

I spent two consecutive weekends in Benedictine monasteries recently. First with the kids for camping and scouting in Nanyuki (near Mt Kenya, cold, wet...). Then, in another place with the other YAVs for our bi-monthly meeting (also cold and wet, but very green---should I be complaining about cold? I'm not really...). Anyway, it's funny how feelings can transcend borders, and I definitely felt the same air of peace and tranquility that I did at the time I spent in the monastery at Gethesmene where the infamous activist and contemplative Trappist monk, Thomas Merton, lived. I was kicking myself over not bringing some of his books along with me, but I was not left completely void when I found this in my little YAV handbook. Maybe you will like it too...

Thomas Merton's, "Letter to a Young Activist"

Do not depend on the hope of results. When you are doing the sort of work you have taken on, essentially an apostolic work, you may have to face the fact that your work will be apparently worthless and achieve no result at all, if not perhaps results opposite to what you expect. As you get used to this idea, you start more and more to concentrate not on the results but on the value, the truth of the work itself. And there, too, a great deal has to be gone through, as gradually as you struggle less and less for an idea, and more and more for specific people. The range tends to narrow down, but it gets much more real. In the end, it is the reality of personal relationships that saves everything.

You are fed up with words, and I don’t blame you. I am nauseated by them sometimes. I am also, to tell you the truth, nauseated by ideals and with causes. This sounds like heresy, but I think you will understand what I mean. It is so easy to get engrossed with ideas and slogans and myths that in the end one is left holding the bag, empty, with no trace of meaning left in it. And then the temptation is to yell louder than ever in order to make the meaning be there again by magic. Going through this kind of reaction helps you to guard against this. Your system is complaining of too much verbalizing, and it is right.

…The big results are not in your hands or mine, but they suddenly happen, and we can share in them, but there is no point in building our lives on this personal satisfaction, which may be denied us and which after all is not that important.

The next step in the process is for you to see that your even thinking about what you are doing is crucially important. You are probably striving to build yourself an identity in your work, out of your work and witness. You are using it, so to speak, to protect yourself against nothingness, annihilation. That is not the right use of your work. All the good that you will do will come, not from you but from the fact that you have allowed yourself, in the obedience of faith, to be used by God’s love. Think of this more and gradually you will be free from the need to prove yourself, and you can be more open to the power that will work through you without your knowing it.

The great thing after all is to live, not to pour out your life in the service of a myth; and we turn the best things into myths. If you can get free from the domination of causes and just serve Christ’s truth, you will be able to do more and will be less crushed by the inevitable disappointments. Because I see nothing whatever in sight but much disappointment, frustration, and confusion.

The real hope, then, is not in something we think we can do, but in God who is making something good out of it in some way we cannot see. If we can do His will, we will be helping in this process. But we will not necessarily know all about it beforehand . . .

Up and Down Prayer Mountain

I was definitely apprehensive about hiking up a mountain with a bunch of children who were fasting and praying all day. I was imagining all the whining I would have done at that age had that been my task for the day. Strenuous exercise in the hot sun not eating all day? Forget about it.

However, the tenacity of these children surprised me once again. Not only did they not complain about their rumbling stomachs, but they led the way racing up and down the mountain in flip flops and school uniforms, starting the praise songs wherever we went. I started to think about the other ways the children are leading me and what sorts of prayers were on their hearts and minds that day… Their strength extended way beyond hiking up the mountain, that’s for sure.

What has been called “Prayer Mountain,” dates back to pre-Christian times. I live in Meru, which is in the foothills of Mt. Kenya, the second highest peak in Africa next to Mt. Kilimanjaro. Prayer Mountain is one of these foothills, and offered some incredible views. The various tribes used to climb the mountain ritualistically every so often. There was a certain spot that has been lovingly nubbed into the ground where it is said that if one stands there and prays, the prayers go directly to God and are answered most- assuredly. People used to stand there day and night shouting their prayers to the world below and heaven above.

There was my bright-eyed standard six pupil who was determined not to go three steps faster than me, always looking back to make sure I hadn’t stumbled, and when I did inevitably stumble, she was always there with an emphatic, “pole! (sorry)”. As we went “slowly by slowly” as they say, we talked. She was beaming after a recent lecture she had given to her fellow pupils on HIV/AIDS after she had gone through a special peer-educator training program. I was given the highlights of the talk which also touched on girls taking extra safety precautions to avoid rape. I mentioned that even when a girl is taking precautions, sometimes bad things happen anyway and it’s not and is never her fault. She turned to me very earnestly and said, “Teacher, I know, even me, I’ve been raped, but I can’t let it stop me. I have to keep going and reaching for my dreams.” On top of this, the man who raped her was a family member who also infected her with HIV. The news was a huge blow to me. She was among the most welcoming when I first arrived, bringing me random bouquets of flowers every so often, always handing her assignments in early. If that was the prayer I had on my heart going up the mountain, I’m pretty sure I would be crawling. But she kept going, and keeps reaching.

She wants to be a counselor or a doctor in the future. Later, I saw her enveloped in the circle for people with “special concerns” on their hearts. I realized again that none of these kids has it easy. There’s my smiley and shy standard eight pupil who was on an orphan scholarship from a foreign donor. There’s my guy in standard seven who recently lost his father to complications related to alcoholism. A lot of loss, a lot of trauma in these young lives. Maybe that’s why being a part of their education system is a valuable position as a YAV. They believe in this power of education to transform, to enrich, and to empower, and it’s been a privilege to watch some of this occurring.

I’ve been trudging my way through the Old Testament as of late, and I couldn’t stop thinking about Moses as I was up on that mountain with the children. God speaking to Moses in a cloud made more sense to me having this experience. God speaks in a dark mist, in disorienting circumstances…It must have been beyond difficult for Moses to sense God amid all the haziness of the directives to liberate the Israelites. Likewise, I can imagine my pupils in these dark clouds of their own lives, wondering what they’re doing on the mountain, how God could speak through the grey mist. And then, Moses comes down from the mountain transfigured, his face shining…

I wouldn’t say they were shining back down at the bottom of the mountain, but they proudly patted their hungry stomachs and smiled at me. Something had been released, something had begun to work in them…and me.

Restreating in Zanzibar

“So don’t worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring its own worries. Today’s trouble is enough for today.” –Jesus, Matt 6:34

I’ve told quite a few now about how I found my new favorite place in the whole wide world in Zanzibar. The beaches were beautiful, the food zesty with fresh grown spices, the history rich and interesting, the architecture refreshingly simple and different, and on top of all this I’m still asking, what made it such a special place?

Our YAV group is given the opportunity to go on retreat two times during our year, and this was our first and proclaimed “most spectacular” retreat. It was good timing for our group. Half of us teach and were gearing up for the rest of the school year, and the other half were coming off of the Christmas holiday also looking back and looking forward. There wasn’t a lot of structure to our retreat. I think our site-coordinator, the lovely Rev Phyllis Byrd-Ochilo, knew that the island kind of forbade it, sort of an unspoken rule made by the flow of things there.

I thought I would have a chance to sort everything out in my head while I was so removed from everything (there wasn’t even any electricity on the island to distract me). The deadlines for applying to programs for next year are fast approaching, my first four months in Kenya went extraordinarily fleeting - though I know I changed somehow? And then there was my immediate future of going back into teaching: a profession I find extremely humbling and still somewhat intimidating. All these things were roaming around in my head, which doesn’t know where it belongs. Half of it is back home and half is still here trying to process how it was I came to be here and not there…and…

I think my expectations were a little over-zealous for this type of trip. The waves on the ocean and the solitude you might feel while floating freely on it don’t help put things in order, but rather help you to be at peace amidst that disorder. I eventually felt at ease that I wasn’t going to figure it out, but that in the moment, my job was to appreciate the accumulation of events that led me exactly to this place. Then my job was to trust that this force that led me would somehow mysteriously continue to do so. We’ll call it my hammock epiphany. It seems simple, but I do need reminders about life being largely beyond my control. And so: I rested, and I’m learning to trust.

As to the question about the island being kind of a magical place for me, I think it was (added to the above) the hospitality of the people. Sure, it’s largely a touristy place, but there’s something genuine in their greetings. The only Kiswahili they think foreigners will understand is, “Jambo. Karibu. Hakuna Matata,” which means (if you need the translation), “Hi, welcome, have no worries.” Though cheesy, there was truth there. I didn’t really have any worries. I felt free and safe on the island. The minute we stepped off the ferry, many were there to greet us and walk us to our hostel at no charge. We made fast friends with locals that we ate and danced with, and were sad to leave by the end of our trip. When you rode on the crowded public transit, people passed you their baby to hold onto so that they could find a seat. If someone was eating fresh plums, they offered you one. We walked around at night through the winding streets without a flashlight and knew somehow we would come out on the other side right where we needed to be. Slowly throughout the course of these two days that turned into four because we couldn’t leave, the hospitality of the people, and the freedom that it creates, got under our skin. There was an unspoken agreement that this place was to be appreciated and revered, and that we could all stand aside in that glow together. We didn’t feel like big tourists by the end, but felt part of the place-free to BE, and to be happy.

Inwardly, I’m still freaking about whether or not I should go to seminary next year, if I should put if off for other things, if my relationships will be the same or different when I get back, how much I know I’ll already miss Kenya when I’m home, etc… and part of me still wishes I would have gotten some resolution on those issues. But I did get clarity that it will come together when it needs to. What I want to walk into the new year with is a simple appreciation for getting this far and gratitude for the present in which the future will become clear. I have at least that much faith.

“By the time I recognize this moment, this moment will be gone, but I will bare the light pretending that it somehow lingered on…”- John Mayer