Rain drops keep falling on our heads

In East Africa there are two rainy seasons: the short rains in December and the long rains in March and April. This year the short rains were very sparse, but then some heavy rains followed in January, normally a dry month. Just before we arrived on Jan. 10 there had been serious flooding in several areas, with homes destroyed and about a dozen people drowned. Those rains caused backed-up water in the gutters of the tile roof to leak into our flat, too. There’s discoloration of walls and ceilings that still needs to be addressed.

And then—baffling everyone—more rains arrived in the past week, beginning with a short, intense shower last Wednesday evening and then returning on Friday evening in torrents. And our roof, unfortunately, was not ready for the challenge. It leaked through electrical fixtures in both the bathroom and the toilet room on Wednesday night. Then during the night on Friday things took a dramatic turn for the worse: water dripping from several places in the ceiling, water pooling on the floors, the toilet room light flashing like a strobe although it was turned off, and—at about 3 am—an alarming noise which proved to be half the ceiling of the bathroom falling into the tub.

In the morning we alerted the Daystar guest housing coordinators, who got several maintenance people to come and survey the damage later that day while we were out on a service project organized by the US Embassy and the American Women’s Association. Clambering around in the attic space, they discovered that the water tank—a necessity here, since the mains water doesn’t always flow—was deteriorating and leaking. So they shut off the supply, and for the weekend we had only one source of water in the house, the cold water tap in the kitchen, which for reasons I don’t quite get is connected not to the outflow from the tank but directly to the mains supply. So we’ve been boiling water in the kettle to do dishes, carrying buckets of water to flush the toilet, and using neighbors’ showers since Saturday. But on Monday, we were assured, a new tank would be installed and everything would be put to rights again.

Which it was, almost. The new tank is in place, has slowly filled up, and does not seem to be leaking at all.  We now have water in the toilets and upstairs lavatories again. It was a remarkable job to observe, beginning with the mode of access to the attic: a wooden school table with a stool on top, from which you could just clamber up into the rafters. The old tank was a tall galvanized rectangular affair, and had several inches of brown sludge at the bottom—the source of an ugly brown line that had seeped down the wall last Wednesday. (We never drink the water until we filter it.) The new one is molded plastic, with a larger capacity (500 litres), but short and wide, designed to slip through rafters, which it did only after several attempts. All of this kept a crew of about 8 people busy from 3:15 until dark, about 6:45—though it was sometimes hard to know who was working, who was supervising, and who was just enjoying the entertainment.

This is getting to be a too-frequent recurring theme in our lives! In spring 2009 we found water leaking through the roof near the chimney of our house in Michigan and paid someone to patch things up. He assured us all would be fine, but the next rainstorm created a waterfall down the inside of the east wall of the house, and we hired a contractor who told us just what the problem was—the lack of a “bird’s beak” to divert water from the uphill side of the chimney—and repaired it, at considerable expense. This may have been part of the problem, but when it leaked in just the same places after the next rain, we finally zeroed in on the major source of the problem—deteriorated grout on the stone chimney—and had the entire chimney rebuilt above the roof line. It cost a fortune but, at last, solved the problem.

But water wasn’t done pursuing me. Just a week before departing for Kenya, I arrived at my Calvin office one morning to find a couple of inches of water on the floor and a cascade of water flowing from the ceiling down my bookshelves, ruining books on each shelf (some of my medieval philosophy, some of my peace studies books, some of my Kant, most of my Hume, etc.—whatever happened to be in the same vertical line). Even worse, the pool on the floor had turned a dozen boxes of stored files into a sodden mess. I spent several days discarding most of the papers and sorting out which books were salvageable. Just what I needed with one week to finish up a million things before departing for five months.

This time, we are concerned that the problem that was identified and fixed—the leaking tank—was only part of the problem. We have not received a satisfactory answer to why, if it was a leak in the tank and not the roof, the water stopped leaking into our bathroom after the rain stopped on Wednesday and started again on Friday about an hour after the second round of rain showers. We have posed that question to the Daystar maintenance personnel, the contractor, and the consultant. That is a good question, they have responded, and it has been carefully considered. But when they explain how it has been addressed, they start discussing it among themselves and switch to Kamba, and we don’t understand a word of it. Today, the crew is coming to replace the ceiling in the bathroom. In a month, when the long rains begin (or sooner if the weather keeps surprising everyone), we will find out whether they have really addressed the whole problem.

Return to the Rift Valley

The linked photos include shots from both of our visits to the Rift Valley.  See: http://picasaweb.google.com/dhoekema/ReturnToTheRiftValley?authkey=Gv1sRgCKr9nLTew6jp3wE&feat=directlink

While Beverly was visiting, we made a return visit to the Christian Community Services (CCS) office in Mai Mahiu that we visited first with our Calvin students on January 11.  CCS  is the community development   arm of the Anglican Church of Kenya and a partner in many areas with the CRWRC.  Our driver, Peter, got us out of Nairobi in record time, affording us time to stop on the rim of the escarpment and peer down into the dusty Rift Valley.  In Mai Mahiu, we met again with Kennedy, whose work focuses on conflict resolution and the Water for Peace initiative; Catherine, who has a degree in environmental education; and James, a nurse who focuses on sanitation issues.  We received more information about the environmental initiatives they were supporting and got an update on the peace and conflict resolution work that Kennedy is facilitating.  We also learned that the funding for the office will end in March.   Kennedy had been told that this is “due to the world-wide financial crisis.”  (The main source of funds for this CCS office has been an Australian diocese.)

Before the six of us squeezed into Kennedy’s double cab 4WD pickup to visit project sites, we did a little shopping for Maasai beadwork from a woman who had dropped by the office.   She told us that she worked with CCS in her village, where she is her husband’s third wife.  Dressed in bright clothes and many layers of beads for her trip to town, she produced more beadwork from her bag and then took careful notes of our purchases to insure that the various women who had made the pieces were correctly paid.

Our first stop was a tree nursery in a small village right next to Mt. Longonot, an ancient volcanic cone that is now a national park adjacent to Hell’s Gate, where the Calvin students hiked and saw lots of wild animals—giraffe, zebra, gazelle, and baboon.  Unlike Hell’s Gate, Longonot and the hills across the valley have been totally deforested.  The tree nursery project has organized a group of women, many of them widows, who have learned how to grow indigenous trees from seed and nurture the seedlings.  Catherine said that the deforestation has occurred in just the last 15 years.  When she was a girl, growing us  in the Rift Valley, the hills were covered in forest, and she hopes that they will again be forested in her lifetime.   We visited not only to admire the work they’ve been doing but also to deliver about a dozen fuel efficient “rocket” stoves, made of cast terracotta and installed with a surrounding hearth of cemented-over rocks.  The women had saved up the money to buy these stoves over several months after seeing how much more efficient rocket stoves are and admiring the two-stove set-up installed at the home of one of their members.

Our second stop was at an organic farm in the Rift Valley that we had visited a month earlier.  It had rained in the Rift Valley the day before our first visit but not in the month following.   As we approached the farm, we were struck by what an oasis it was, the only patch of green in a dusty, barren plain.  But when we went to check the progress of seedlings that had just been transplanted on our first visit, we were appalled to see the cabbage, peppers, and amaranth all being devoured by locusts.  The established fields, planted in corn, cow peas, squash, and sugar cane, still looked good and were at least 6 degrees cooler than the surrounding plain, but the farmer was worried that the locusts would spread.   It’s a localized infestation of huge, flightless locusts.  Kennedy said the government agricultural service is trying to find a way to repel them and kill their larvae, but nothing seems to work.  Unfortunately, the farm’s chickens won’t eat them.

The bone-dry conditions in f the Rift Valley were even more evident as we drove to the Maasai school in Eluai that we had first visited with the Calvin students.  The faint track that we had followed as a detour because a bridge had just washed out was now a wide gash through the fields, so thick with dust that we couldn’t see rocks to avoid them.  As dust devils raced past, we frantically raised windows.  Whenever we stopped, the dust washed down the windows in sheets. 

On our way to the school, we stopped at a small Maasai settlement where Catherine showed us how the scrubby thorn bushes ubiquitous on the floor of the Rift Valley can be made into shade trees by propping them up with sticks, inducing the bushes grew trunks,  and producing trees tall enough to give shade in a short time.  We also stopped at a huge water tank near the school that CCS helped bring to the valley.  It holds drinking-quality water, piped from a mountain stream on the escarpment down to that dusty valley.

We also visited the family with the rocket stove that the Calvin students helped to install inside a mud-walled Maasai dwelling on our first visit.  The stove was in operation and the house was full of visitors—a pregnant woman and a new mother with her two-week old baby and a toddler—who were using the stove because they were unable to gather enough firewood for conventional cooking.  The interior of the dwelling--tiny, not tall enough to stand, divided into three minuscule rooms, almost completely dark, smoky and stifling hot—somehow also accommodated David, Beverly, Catherine and me.  The owner told us, through Catherine as interpreter, how much she appreciated her new stove.

Our last stop was the school.  A young man showed us the school garden, where they were growing beans and irrigating them with the piped water.  The Maasai traditionally did not farm at all.  They are pastoralists, who formerly moved often to provide their herds with good grazing.  Now they are confined by lack of available land and are being forced to adapt to living in one place, keeping it clean (James has been spreading the word about rubbish pits and latrines), and diversifying their diet.  The skills of all three CCs team members contribute to easing this transition.  Providing water through the Water for Peace project reduces ethnic strife over water and land.  Catherine’s environmental work includes encouraging farmers and pastoralists to learn from each other.  It’s not only Maasai learning to grow food from farmers.  When we visited the tree nursery, the farmers there showed us the patch of grass they are saving to provide for their livestock in drought, borrowing from a Maasai practice.

Nomadic cattle grazing is often regarded as an anachronism in modern Kenya.  But the pastoralists many be wiser than their critics.  A story in The East African, Feb 22-28, 2010, reviews a newly published book that found nomadic cattle rearing on dry grasslands in Africa to produce better quality meat and generate more cash per acre than US and Australian cattle ranches.  See: http://www.theeastafrican.co.ke/news/-/2558/865642/-/pv5sthz/-/index.html

We left the Rift Valley with a strong appreciation for the work the CCS team has been doing and concern for the challenges the people of the Rift Valley face due to drought, population pressure, deforestation, and conflict.

The linked photos include shots from both of our visits to the Rift Valley.  See: http://picasaweb.google.com/dhoekema/ReturnToTheRiftValley?authkey=Gv1sRgCKr9nLTew6jp3wE&feat=directlink

Crossing borders between worlds

We have been crossing a lot of boundaries between worlds lately. The academic world of East Africa, first of all, is different in so many ways from that of the US, a point brought home to me this week when my department head, Pastor Patrick Musembi, asked me to assist in “moderating” the exam for the course I am teaching, Philosophy 111, Introduction to Philosophy. The practice here, and in most African (and many European) universities, is to set a single exam for all sections of a course—something that we tend to do in the US for multi-section biology and calculus courses, but never in history or philosophy or religion. Exams must be approved by all faculty concerned and submitted to the registrar early in the semester.

Patrick showed me a draft exam prepared by another instructor, a part-time lecturer offering the course for the first time. I was taken aback by the breadth of the questions, such as these two:

“Discuss the contributions of Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle in the history of Philosophy.”

“What would be your response to the Major Problems of Philosophy?”

Patrick was just as concerned as I was by these suggestions and agreed that we need to give the students more direction. But he was shocked to learn that, at Calvin and everywhere else in the US, each professor writes and grades his or her own exam. How do you ensure consistency, he wondered? What if someone leaves out large areas of her subject that don’t interest him? How do you ensure that one lecturer’s B is the same as another lecturer’s B?

In Kenyan higher education, final examinations normally count for 70% of the course grade, and all course grades are reviewed—at another “moderation” session—by all departmental faculty. Each is free to challenge someone else’s grades if they seem too high or too low, and everyone must approve the grades before they are recorded and released to students. The American and the African system begin from implicit assumptions that strike a very different balance between instructor autonomy and student mastery, between learning as a process and knowledge as outcome, and among the institution, its faculty, and its students.

The culture of the academy is dramatically different, too, outside the realm of grading and examinations. Students are far more deferential toward “lecturers” and more reluctant to speak up in class, especially if they might appear to be challenging something the instructor has said. (I have a few students who aren’t inhibited in this way, but only two or three out of 60 in the class.) They dress conservatively for class, albeit less so than when I was here in 2001. Women students wear slacks now, even blue jeans, but skirts and blouses are more common. Among the guys, there are a few polo shirts and T shirts among the dress shirts. But no one, male or female, would even think of attending class in shorts! (I should add that a detailed dress code in Daystar’s student handbook prohibits short skirts (too revealing), long skirts (too informal), and low-cut tops for women, ripped or torn clothing for anyone; and men are forbidden to wear their hair in braids or dreadlocks. A few students seem to set out to violate as many of these rules as possible, but most comply.)

And yet there is a spirit of mutual care and concern between faculty and students, I find, even when most classes are large and most faculty are greatly overstretched. Faculty try to accommodate students who can’t register because of overdue fees, for example, making sure they stay current in readings and assignments. (In my class of 60, five weeks into the semester, only 46 are formally registered so far.) The twice-weekly chapel services, mandatory for students and well attended by faculty and staff, help hold the community together. Last week (on a day when we were traveling) the campus suspended all classes for a day of prayer, faculty and staff and students gathering on each campus at a central meeting place. Once in a while we encounter a student who is rude or insensitive, to us or to others, but this is very rare. (A woman student in the very cramped “Executive Canteen” this noon kept trying to give my seat away to her friends while I was collecting our plates of food, speaking right past Susan as if she didn’t understand English.) Much more often students go out of their way to be helpful and accommodating, to each other and to lecturers. (Last week on the way to class my large stack of student papers slipped from my hand and scattered on the ground, and in an instant a student was helping me gather them up, saying, “Excuse me, sir, may I assist you?”)

The faculty colleagues whom I have met, moreover, invariably greet me warmly, offer their help and advice, and are eager to talk about how to engage students more actively in learning. This is true at Calvin, too, of course, and in many other academic communities. But there’s a stronger sense here of engagement in a common project, undergirded by a deep commitment to higher education as preparation for service to church and society. The needs here at Daystar are great—classrooms are crowded, library resources meager, salaries low, faculty overstretched—and yet there’s a wonderful spirit of gratitude for the opportunity to participate in such an exciting and rewarding venture.

Susan has just written about another border crossing—from the dusty overgrazed scrubland of Maasailand to the game-filled savannah of the reserves. Living for a few days at Keekorok felt like jumping into a time machine, back to the days when African servants anticipated every need and desire of European masters. I recall feeling this much more strong in 2001 at the Mara Serena lodge, however. At Keekorok not just the waiters and drivers but all the managers and supervisors are African, and their relationship with the guests was friendly and informal, not subservient. And the “Happy Valley” picture of carefree British aristocracy on the ranch hardly applies when the guests are Iranian and Japanese and Korean and Kenyan, with a smattering of Brits and Americans among them. We can’t afford to spend more than a few days in that world, but it was delightful as a brief escape.

Another boundary was traversed yesterday when we drove across town to Gigiri in the northern suburbs, a drive of just 30 minutes if we wait til after 9 am, to the US Embassy. It was our third attempt to get the ID cards that were supposed to be issued to us on arrival, with which we can be admitted immediately to the compound. Until we have them, we must wait outside in the hot sun while the guards try to contact someone in the Cultural Affairs office to meet and escort us. Yesterday they were all attending a farewell tea and no one was answering the phones, and we waited for 30 minutes until someone finally returned the guard’s phone call and gave permission for us to enter. Whereupon we learned that the ID card machine had broken down once again, and we would have to return next week and try again!

Most of the Embassy staff are Kenyan nationals, but when walking through the halls we felt surrounded by now-unfamiliar American accents. We tried to buy a stamp for a postcard to Susan’s aunt in the US but could not, because we had no US currency with us. The Embassy is a world of its own, physically but not psychologically or culturally located in Kenya. And it seems to be trying to outdo Kenyan bureaucracies in inefficiency and inaccessibility, and succeeding.

But I need to balance that by giving due credit to the extraordinary hospitality that has been extended to us by the Cultural and Political Affairs staff, especially Fulbright liaison Justus Mbae and his colleague (and successor, for now) Ken Wakia. Justus is leaving the embassy staff after 17 years to become Deputy Vice-Chancellor for Academic Affairs at the Catholic University of East Africa, where he once taught philosophy. We were honored to be invited to his farewell reception Wednesday evening at a hotel in the center of town, where he was given appropriate credit in what I think may be the most heartfelt and moving set of retirement tributes I’ve ever heard at such an occasion. Justus received it all with gracious modesty—and he didn’t even breathe a word of complaint that the Embassy had scheduled a farewell party for a devout Catholic on Ash Wednesday, a day of penitence and fasting.

The trip to the hotel was as memorable and moving as the event itself, moreover, because of one of those delightful conversations with strangers that occur so frequently here. Since taxis are expensive, and I don’t drive the Daystar car after dark, we booked a taxi for our return after the reception (and then for Bev's trip to the airport) and decided to use the city bus system for the first time to travel downtown at 6 pm. At the bus stop near Daystar we asked a young woman about the route, and she confirmed that we were in the right spot. Then she introduced herself as a marketing manager for a nearby hotel and urged us to come and visit her hotel soon. She'd also be happy to arrange a good rate for a weekend getaway at their tented camp near Mt Kenya at our convenience, she added. We exchanged cards, and she spoke highly of Daystar, though she has never been able to attend university herself.

She sat beside Susan on the bus, and when the conductor came round she paid all three fares. When Susan described how many improvements we see in Kenya since 2001 she was delighted to hear it, and she added that she recently joined a prayer group that concentrates on praying for Kenya. And a couple of days later she followed up with an email, wishing us all the best in our work here, inviting us to come over and see her at the hotel, and hoping she might be able to welcome us to her home before we depart so that we can meet her children too.

Tomorrow morning we will cross another border between utterly disparate worlds. We will join the “American spouses” group and the Kenyan Fulbright alumni (i.e., Kenyans who have studied in the US) for a service project at a school on one of Nairobi’s 180 slums, painting and cleaning and fixing up classrooms. It will be an interesting chance to see the living conditions in which far too many Kenyans dwell and also to get better acquainted with a fine group of people, some of whom we met at the recital and the farewell reception. And it can't be as hot as the two days we spent mixing and slinging concrete in Ulungu!

Kenya's Wild Places

We have two sets of photos linked to this posting.  For the game in Maasai Mara, see: http://picasaweb.google.com/dhoekema/MaasaiMaraKeekorokLodge?authkey=Gv1sRgCI7Wj6q9m7zxGw&feat=directlink

For views from the plane and van on the trip back from the reserve, see: http://picasaweb.google.com/dhoekema/OnTheWayToTheMaasaiMara?authkey=Gv1sRgCM3_tpyBpI3ptAE&feat=directlink

Our second outing with Beverly was to the Maasai Mara, a game reserve on Kenya’s southern border that is an extension of the Serengeti plains of Tanzania.  Beverly flew out to the reserve a day before we left.  We attended a recital on Wednesday evening that started just as Beverly concluded her first game drive.  The recital was in the beautiful garden of the US ambassador’s residence and gave us a chance to meet Ambassador Ranneberger, some of the other Fulbright scholars here this semester, and a member of the Permanent Presidential Music Commission of Kenya, who invited us to a conference on Kenyan music in April in Mombasa. 

The next morning we traveled to the Maasai Mara by road—riding in a 4-wheel drive van with a pop-up top.  The top stayed down for the drive there, which was mostly on a smooth new road to Narok.   We felt a real appreciation for the new road.  Immediately past Narok, we started dodging potholes, and before long the pavement ended and we traveled on dirt and rocks for the last 100 kilometers.  The trip involved about 5 hours of driving and 35 minutes of negotiation at the park gate.  David requested that we be charged Kenya resident rates because we qualify for residency for the semester and the paperwork is in process.  The park officials insisted that we needed the official permit in hand.  After much patient inquiry on David’s part and pleas by our driver, who brings many guests into the park, a compromise was offered and we paid the Kenyan rate ($14) for one entry and the non-resident rate ($60) for the other.  I remained in the van during these negotiations and could have spent our saving stwice over if I had succumbed to the sales pitches of the Maasai girls who crowded around my window, offering bead jewelry, carvings, and the opportunity to take a photo.

Entering the Maasai Mara is entering another world in many ways.  The overgrazed plain suddenly becomes verdant grassland, where herds of cows and goats and the red-clothed Maasai herdsmen no longer dot the landscape.  Instead, there are elephants, antelope, beasts of prey, and a great variety of beautiful birds.   In the reserve, the roads are better maintained, as are the vehicles.  Instead of battered, wheezing, smoke-belching matatus—mini-vans with an extra row of seats squeezed in selling rides on established routes—the vans are well-maintained 4-wheel drive pop-tops with tourists and camera lenses peering out.

Keekorok Lodge, where we stayed for two nights and Beverly stayed for three, is a wonderful place, with attentive staff and excellent food.  Almost all of the guests were from outside Kenya, but only a couple of other small parties were from the States.  The resort had many guests from Great Britain and India, several from Europe, and large parties from Iran and East Asia.   One of the highlights of the lodge was a boardwalk through the woods that afforded great bird watching and brought us to a game-watching blind over a hippo pool.  We spent a lot of time watching the hippos and hoping they would climb out of the water.  They never obliged us while there was still enough light in the sky to take photos.  But at about 3 am our first night, I was awakened by very loud deep breathing and snorting right outside our window.  We looked out and saw a half dozen hippos grazing on the lawn between our cabin and the pool.  Our cabin had a Dutch door, so David was protected from death when he leaned out to get photos.  (Hippos are high on the list of animals that cause death to the unwary—we were told it’s not a good idea to get between a hippo and its lunch or pool.)

We saw many predators on our game drives.  We were very lucky to see, on three different excursions, the one African predator we had not previously seen in the wild—the leopard.  We also saw many lions, a couple of cheetah, and a hyena.  On the other hand, we saw very few of their prey.   There were lots of elephant around, but only small herds of antelope, no zebra, and very few giraffe.   We started worrying that the predators were going to go hungry, although the ones we saw all looked sleek and happy.  This morning we read in the newspaper that the ecosystem of the Maasai Mara is under threat for several reasons and that one of the most critical, diversion of water from the rivers that sustain its grasslands, was causing decreases in the populations of herbivores.

It was good to travel by road and see the contrast between life in the park and life in the Rift Valley, where the inhabitants are suffering from persistent drought, the grass is eaten to the quick, and almost all the trees are gone.   It’s hard to begrudge them the water diversions.   Kenya’s national parks and wildlife bring substantial revenue into the country.  Park fees alone total almost $10 million a year.  But the people who no longer have access to land that is reserved for game parks are not receiving much benefit from tourism.

Again, we have two sets of photos linked to this posting.  For the game in Maasai Mara, see: http://picasaweb.google.com/dhoekema/MaasaiMaraKeekorokLodge?authkey=Gv1sRgCI7Wj6q9m7zxGw&feat=directlink

For views from the plane and van on the trip back from the reserve, see:http://picasaweb.google.com/dhoekema/OnTheWayToTheMaasaiMara?authkey=Gv1sRgCM3_tpyBpI3ptAE&feat=directlink

Welcome to our Nairobi Home

Here's a link to photos: http://picasaweb.google.com/dhoekema/OurHouse?authkey=Gv1sRgCNLg6_rQnrbIUA&feat=directlink

Let me introduce you to our temporary home here at Daystar University. We occupy one of four furnished flats in a sort of row house—a bit like Klaas and Krista’s home in Mount Airy, in north Philadelphia, but on a much larger scale. Unit 1 contains the offices of Daystar’s “Resource Mobilization Department,” which seems to mean “Care and Feeding of Visitors and Donors.” We are in Unit 2, a three-bedroom apartment with well-maintained dark wood floors downstairs, linoleum upstairs. The walls are concrete (making the rooms echo), the ceilings a sort of plasterboard (extensively discolored upstairs from the heavy and unseasonal January rains—repairs are pending). Downstairs is an L-shaped sitting room and dining area, with a couch and several upholstered chairs at one end, a large dining table and chairs at the other. The kitchen and a small toilet room adjoin the dining room, with a small refrigerator, a brand new electric/gas combination cooker (replaced after we arrived because the old one was not working very well), a small microwave oven and a toaster. And quite a bit of counter space, especially after Susan reorganized and moved some unneeded things into the back of the large pantry.

Unit 3, very much like ours, is occupied by Bill and Julisa Rowe, longtime visiting faculty members at Daystar, and their two sons, aged 10 and 5. They are the best neighbors that anyone could possibly wish for. They’ve shared their pots and pans and spices and recipes, taken us shopping, advised on the expectations and habits of Daystar students, fed us dinner, and more. And we’ve been able to return their kindness by babysitting when both parents are occupied and their house help cannot be there. And then there is Unit 4, where I stayed in November—larger than any of the others, with four bedrooms, and reserved for short-term visitors. These were privately owned units adjacent to Daystar’s Nairobi campus, and after they were purchased the campus security perimeter was expanded so that they are now inside it. There is a vehicle gate and a walking gate just in front of our units, attended 24 hours a day by at least two guards. We also have heavy bars on all our windows, and a hinged iron grate protecting both front and back doors. When we are in the house we keep a padlock in place on the grate, and when we leave or go to bed we also set a heavy deadbolt.

Which is confirmation of what you already know, and what worried Calvin administrators and parents of our Interim students: Nairobi is a city with an alarmingly high crime rate, and we have learned to be very careful about where we go and at what time. But longtime residents, both Kenyan and American, have confirmed the impression we have after our first few weeks: living here is like living in any city in South Africa, or in the urban areas of any major US city. You stay off the streets after dark, avoid certain areas even in daytime, and watch for any unusual activity when you are out and about. And then you go about your life as usual. There seem to be waves of crime: two years ago carjackings occurred nearly every day (mostly in the affluent suburbs on the other side of town), but now they are infrequent. Foreigners draw the attention of con men and pickpockets, here and everywhere; but police and security guards are thick on the ground in most of the areas where we shop. We’ve heard sobering tales from a number of Nairobi colleagues and acquaintances about being confronted in their cars or homes by young men with guns who demanded their money, mobile phones, and computers.

This is certainly not as safe an environment as Accra, or Grand Haven. But the habit of noticing your surroundings and staying alert is quickly implanted, and then you stop worrying. Few thefts involve physical injury, and we heard some remarkable tales in our security briefing at the US Embassy of carjackers who gave the car back when they realized its owner needed medical help, of another carjacking team who promised to return the car to a shopping center parking lot in a few hours and did so, of street thieves who made sure their victim still had enough money for a taxi home. And this is the other side of the ledger that has to be considered along with the high crime rate: most of the Kenyans whom we have met in any context—security guards, shopkeepers, fellow customers, church attenders, even those who happen to be walking in our direction on the street—have extended a warm greeting and a handshake, inquired how we are enjoying our stay in Kenya, and asked whether they may be of any assistance. This is a city of three million, in short, where the people we meet behave more like those who welcomed us to Iowa farming towns of five hundred souls when we rolled into town on the RAGBRAI ride last summer. There are too many criminals and too few police in Nairobi, certainly; but there are also about 2,999,000 helpful and hospitable people, black and white and Asian.

A ceramic water filter is provided in each flat, but we have put it away and are using instead the microfiber filter that Susan purchased at a Partners Worldwide conference last fall, which we have inserted into the bottom of a 5-gallon plastic pail. It’s been working beautifully and is much easier to use than the ceramic filter, which requires first boiling the water and has a very low flow. On our trip to Ulungu Village, where we worked on concrete construction projects for two days in unrelenting heat, having that filter along was a lifesaver, since we would have had to drive nearly an hour to find a shop with bottled water to sell. We’re told that Nairobi water is seldom really dangerous—it is chlorinated and treated—but there are lapses now and then. Kenyans and visitors alike stick to bottled or filtered water, to be safe. And although the water from the tap usually runs clear, every once in a while it’s dark with sediment and sludge.

Upstairs is a back bedroom where we sleep, and next to it a toilet room and a bathroom, with a large tub and handheld shower. Water pressure is never very high, but it’s nearly always available—we’ve had only a few water outages, never for more than a few hours. There’s an electric water heater in a closet that we turn on when needed.

And then we have two guest bedrooms, which have served at times as our offices, then housed our guests. We have internet access thanks to Bill and Julisa’s decision to invest in a radio receiver and wireless transmitter, whose range extends into our flat. So we are sharing the cost. My computer’s wireless card is not working, so we’ve strung a long Ethernet cable from bedroom window to bedroom window. And apart from occasional outages the connection is comparatively fast—not as fast as our cable modem at home, but a great deal faster than the campus network seems to be, when it’s working.

All in all this is a lovely place to live. We have two good supermarkets within a mile’s walk, and a variety of small shops (hardware store, Scripture Union bookstore, florist, a rather dingy grocery store that carries the basics) even closer. The lecture hall where I teach my classes is so close that when I give the students a 15-minute break I can go home for a cup of tea.

And the two guest rooms are being put to good use! Beverly Dezan arrived last Tuesday and is spending two weeks exploring Kenya with us. Richard Prins, son of our friends Rick and Connie and frequent visitor to East Africa, came up from Tanzania last week and spent the week with us before going off to a village in western Kenya for a friend’s wedding. Wednesday nights we provide overnight accommodation to the two children of an American couple who live on the Athi River campus, so that they do not need to take that arduous journey after an evening orchestra rehearsal. Next weekend one of the students from our first Ghana program, visiting from his work in Ethiopia, will stay a couple of nights. It’s great to have enough room to extend the sort of hospitality that so many have given to us over the years.
Again, the photo link:http://picasaweb.google.com/dhoekema/OurHouse?authkey=Gv1sRgCNLg6_rQnrbIUA&feat=directlink

Trip to the Coast of Kenya

To see photos of our trip, go to http://picasaweb.google.com/dhoekema/MombasaAndVipingo?authkey=Gv1sRgCP6EmqOsycDKZA&feat=directlink


Our friend Beverly Resnik-Dezan is visiting for two weeks and we are taking some time to visit more of the country.  Our first outing was a four-day excursion to the coast—to Mombasa and points north along the Indian Ocean.  We began with an overnight bus ride Wednesday night and returned on a daytime bus Monday.  The trip is billed as an 8-hour drive, including a 20 minute rest stop halfway—in fact it was closer to 9.  There was a road diversion on the way and heavy traffic in Nairobi on our return.   There are six or eight bus companies serving this route, and it’s the way most Kenyans travel, since it’s a lot cheaper than flying (less than $20 each way, compared to $110).   The folks at Daystar we consulted about our trip had lots of advice on which buses to take, and one of them said we must be sure to use the company that hires Muslim drivers, because they are much less reckless than Christian drivers.  (We tried both, and we would agree.) 
   

David got quite a bit of sleep on the way to Mombasa, though the air conditioning wasn't really working, and the bus driver and attendant favored us with a loud and very badly made American post-apocalypse film to while away the hours.  Beverly and I got caught up on sleep in the car that met us at the bus in Mombasa and drove us north along the coast.

We spent Thursday exploring the ruins of Gedi, a Swahili city built in about the 13th century and abandoned in the 15^th.  There were dozens of such cities up and down the coast, but when the Portuguese took most of the coastal trade away from the Arabs, their residents moved on.  Swahili culture is identified with African Muslims on the coast who built cities and lived by trade, in sharp contrast to the surrounding African peoples (Mijikenda and Giriama), who cultivated the land and lived in villages in the forests.  

Next to the Gedi ruins was a community development project to collect butterfly eggs from the adjoining coastal forest, raise the caterpillars, and export pulpae.   The knowledgeable guide enjoyed talking with Beverly, an expert on butterflies.  We recognized several of the butterfly species they export as ones that we’ve seen at Meijer Gardens in Grand Rapids.

Our driver (hired for the day) was somewhat nervous about our plans because our destination was the home of some friends of a friend of Beverly’s that none of us had ever visited, and our directions included only a few notes I had jotted down about looking for a signboard after two speed bumps.  But everything worked out smoothly and, as he helped us unpack the car he murmured to me, “You are very lucky people.”  Lucky indeed!  We had come to a lovely sprawling bungalow in a clearing in the coastal forest, near the beach, surrounded by beautiful flowers and flowering trees.  The wonderfully hospitable owners, whom none of us had ever met, welcomed us with such warm hospitality that we felt as if we were their own long-lost children.  They had insisted, when Susan first contacted them by phone last week, that if we came all that way we must stay three nights with them—no trouble at all, they assured us, and they seemed truly sorry that we held to our plan to return on Sunday.

And what a treasury of memories and stories they provided!  Peter is a third-generation Kenyan, but he attended boarding school in Britain and then went up to Cambridge.  His wife Carissa moved to this seaside property in 1949 when she was about 5 and her father was already 60.  The family was living northwest of Nairobi at the time but had purchased a completely untouched tract of forest that the colonial government had just decided to open for settlement.  Her stories were amazing--slashing their way through the brush and camping out for the first year in a clearing in the forest while they built the house.  There were elephants, leopards, Cape buffalo, hordes of monkeys, and half a dozen varieties of venomous snakes in the forest, with no roads and no paths to the water’s edge.  Moreover, the local residents insisted that they could not begin building until the local deities, who lived in the caves, had given their approval—and the first two times they went to inquire on their behalf the gods were not ready to agree. At last Carissa’s father insisted on accompanying the elders and talking to the gods himself, and this time they were ready to work out an arrangement (an arrangement that includes—to the present day—permission for the Mijikenda to use the caves for prayers whenever they wish to). 

The family’s ties to the past were particularly evident when we visited the Moslem merchant in the nearby village whose father supplied Carissa's parents with needed goods.  And also when we were supplied with a proper cup of tea before breakfast every day and every afternoon around 4!  The drawback of being on the coast is that it was extremely hot and humid--very hard to sleep at night, brutal at midday.  But what a place to live!  In addition to the caves, which we explored one day with their gardener, there's a 15^th century Swahili ruin on their property, baobab trees many centuries old that six of us could not begin to reach around by linking arms, fountains of bougainvillea flowers and flamboyant trees, and, at the end of a short path through the woods, a beautiful white beach on the Indian Ocean.  

Mainly we relaxed, but David and Beverly got in a morning of snorkeling on reefs at the Mida Creek Marine Reserve near Turtle Bay.  The minute they leaped off the boat into the water, they reported, they were surrounded by fifty varieties of brilliantly colored tropical fish, including zebrafish, parrotfish, angelfish, trumpetfish, gobies, large groupers being groomed by tiny wrasses, and more, over beds of anemone and coral. 

On Sunday, we joined our hosts for the Eucharist at a small Anglican church in Nyali, just north of Mombasa island.  It’s a small congregation, mostly African, and we were surprised to find that both the dynamic young vicar of the parish and the deacon who delivered the sermon were women.  The Kenyan prayerbook, revised in 2002, has some beautiful responses and prayers that have a contemporary ring and yet are formal in tone.  We bought at copy at the church. 

Then we caught a taxi onto the island of Mombasa, left our luggage at the hotel, and went out exploring.  We toured Fort Jesus, a coastal fortress built by the Portuguese in 1597 that has an amazingly bloody history.  A popular revolt in 1631 killed every Portuguese soldier or officer in the fort; but the Sultan of the town soon abandoned it to the Portuguese again.  At the end of that century Omani Arabs raised a siege that lasted 33 months, until nearly all the Portuguese soldiers and 1500 loyal Swahili residents were dead of starvation.  Control of the fort changed hand six more times in the next two centuries.  Finally in 1875 the British leased Mombasa and the coastal strip of what is now Kenya and Tanzania from the Sultan of Zanzibar.  They used the fort as a prison until 1953. 

Wilting with heat after our tour in the noontime sun, we found a coffee shop with low tables, cushions, and strong ceiling fans and enjoyed spiced Swahili coffee, flavored with cardamom and cinnamon bark.  Then we wandered through the narrow lanes and back alleys of the old town, soon joined by several eager young men who brought us to shops selling bright printed cloth, spices, and luscious tropical fruit.  They offered their services to bargain on our behalf, which of course meant that they would quietly get a minimum price from the vendor in Swahili and then add their markup.  Beverly proved to be an even more determined bargainer than we are.  We’re sure the merchants are still scratching their heads wondering why they sold to those tourists at half their cost.

We stayed in one of the oldest hotels in the central city, newly restored and reopened, which had very helpful staff, a memorable buffet breakfast, and very clean and comfortable rooms.  Well, some of them—Bev’s was fine.  In our room, the air conditioning made lots of noise but did absolutely nothing.  After two different experts visited our room and confirmed that, indeed, it was doing nothing, we were moved to another room—very cramped, insufficient light for reading, but an air conditioner that brought the environment from steamy to frigid in minutes, and could not be adjusted.  We did sleep pretty well in our cold locker, thanks to the thick blankets provided. 

We were struck by the strong Hindu presence as well as the Arab and Muslim influence that were visible all along the north coast.  Mombasa feels very different from Nairobi in culture, climate, and pace.  It was a good visit, and yet it felt good to return home to Nairobi’s cooler, drier days and cool nights.  


To see the photos again, go to:http://picasaweb.google.com/dhoekema/MombasaAndVipingo?authkey=Gv1sRgCP6EmqOsycDKZA&feat=directlink

Setting out for the coast for a few days

Just a quick note to say that we're heading off to Mombasa on an overnight bus, then spending a few days with our dear friend Beverly Dezan exploring the North Coast: marine parks, butterfly farms, an ancient city, and a research center/lodge run by A Rocha, the international Christian environmental organization. Beverly arrived last night from New York, via Zurich, and will be with us for a bit more than two weeks.

My class at Daystar is going very well, I think: it grew from 22 students the first week to 52 the second week, but in the third week it seems to be leveling off. I am in the middle of grading the first written assignment ("What does Socrates mean by living an examined life?") and am finding the students mostly quite proficient in written English, highly varied in their ability to catch the heart of the philosophical enterprise. In other words, just like my Calvin classes! They tend to listen very closely and write lots of notes, but in each class a few speak up with interesting questions--some of them very perceptive.

One feature that is very different from home is the distance I have to commute between home and classroom. From "Lecture Hall 4" I can look out the window onto the back balcony of our flat, and when I give the students a 15 minute break in the middle (all undergrad classes here meet for one three-hour block each week) I can drop in at home for a cup of tea before it's time to resume. Rather different from my 37-mile one-way commute back home.

The abstract becomes concrete in Ulungu

(Please see the photos for this posting in a separate photos-only entry.)

The last and most extended field trip arranged by our CRWRC contacts was to the small and isolated village of Ulungu in Kitui District, located far from any main roads a third of the way from Nairobi to Mombasa. The new Athi River campus of Daystar is 40 km down the same road, so when I was asked to come to Athi River to meet the Acting Vice-Chancellor and other new Daystar faculty for tea on Thursday, a day when our only scheduled activity was travel to Ulungu, our schedule fell into place perfectly. We made an early departure from the YMCA in order to attend the 8:30 Daystar chapel service, and afterward—to my surprise—the entire Calvin group was invited for tea with the VC. As of January 1, when Godfrey Nguru stepped down, that’s James Kombo, a theologian whom I met last November who wants me to work with him on a number of curricular matters. (Unlike most Kenyans—and most Americans—he got my name right the first time I said it. He told me he studied, and greatly valued, my father’s books when studying at St. Paul’s Theological Seminary here in Nairobi.) James is a wonderfully welcoming host who made the students feel like honored guests. 


Also present were Mike and Kristen Paulsen, who are living at the Athi River campus and are the only other new visiting faculty couple this semester at either campus. He’s a law professor at St. Thomas University (St. Paul), here to help launch an undergraduate law degree; she’s an architect; and their two children are with them, one doing home schooling and the other attending Daystar. Their morning walk opportunities are very different from ours: for us it’s buses and matatus belching clouds of exhaust, crowds of pedestrians, and broken sidewalks, while they can walk into the Lukenya Hills for broad vistas of grassland with giraffes and zebras grazing nearby. Still, we’re glad we are living in town, not needing to travel 35 km on one of Kenya’s most heavily traveled highways and 5 km on a rough dirt road to get to Nairobi.

From Athi River it was three more hours, much of it in heavy traffic, to the town of Kitui town in Usikamba, home to the Kamba people, and the very comfortable hostel of the Kenya Forestry Research Institute. In the morning we met Rev. Ben Motie, rector of the two Anglican church at Ulungu, in the Kitui cathedral, a modest concrete block church with a corrugated roof, and then set out for the village over 10 km of deeply rutted and sometimes almost impassable dirt roads. The Kamba sell their carvings and baskets in Nairobi craft markets, but we saw no sign of these crafts in Ulungu, perhaps because it is so isolated.

Our plan had been to work on expansion of the clinic, but since that project wasn’t quite ready for us we went to work, along with men and women from the village and some secondary school girls in their uniforms, on a new church. Piles of sand were already in place on the ground around the new building, which so far consists only of a low foundation wall, with grass and shrubs still growing where the sanctuary and classrooms and offices will be—all in all four times the size of the church now standing. First we hauled bags of cement from a shed and mixed it in with shovels; then we loaded up wheelbarrow loads of aggregate, not gravel but rough volcanic rocks the size of marshmallows, and mixed them in. Measurement was approximate: run the hose (from a nearby tank of water) until the mix is wet enough, add sand if it seems too sticky, throw in another wheelbarrow of rocks if they seem too scarce. At one point a woman to whom we had not been introduced—later we learned that she is an evangelist who works in one of the two Anglican parishes—came and stood next to Susan in the portico of the church, watching the work. Suddenly she barked out an order: too much sand! you need more rocks! and the crew immediately followed her directions.

The Calvin women in our group did all this hauling and mixing, along with men from the village, while our two male students helped the crew foreman put up the forms for the columns that we were going to create to support the roof.  They used very rough and much-used planks, roughly aligned using a plumb bob, lined with black plastic with strips torn from the concrete sacks stuffed in any visible cracks.  The planks were nailed together, with barbed wire wrapped around as reinforcement.

Now things really got moving:  we created a bucket brigade line to carry large metal saucers of wet concrete from the spot where it was mixed over to the first column ready to be filled.  From hand to hand they passed—wet, sloppy masses of concrete that spilled on hands and clothes and shoes, from an American student to a Kenyan girl in her school uniform to an American professor to a Kenyan mother with a toddler at her feet.  One of our students liked the pole position, handing each hod up over her head to the crew foreman who would slosh it into the top of the form, and she didn’t leave her post til her clothes were soaked in sweat and covered with splatters of concrete.  Ulungu is at a much lower elevation than Nairobi and nearer the coast, and the heat of the sun was brutal.

When one column was full our line moved over to another—unless the forms had sprung a leak, which happened several times.  Then several village men would spring forward with torn-up cement bags and narrow pieces of wood to stuff the cracks and more barbed wire to wrap around, all with bare hands, til the concrete stopped oozing out onto the ground.     

And so all our talk of about development as “coming alongside,” our readings about “doing with” and not “doing for” a community, our reflections on why development goals must come from those most affected—all these abstract notions suddenly became concrete.  (Did you really think I could resist that one?) 

In midmorning we had a tea break in the shade, and in early afternoon we were served lunch by the women of the village.  We did a little more work in the afternoon, but we needed to wait a day so the forms could be removed and rebuilt to make additional columns.  At the clinic next door, we heard the remarkable story of its HIV/AIDS work, strongly supported by the church.  Voluntary testing is done right there, with results in just 15 minutes.  Those who test positive are given counseling, and they receive ARV drugs free of charge through a government program.  Some of the students wrote in their journals that they sat in the waiting room and tried to imagine what it would be like to wait there for your test results.  The head of the clinic said that nearly all adults in the village have now been tested—a heartening sign of success in facing up to the disease.  (Background facts:  HIV/AIDS incidence in Kenya was estimated at 6.7% in 2003, and declining; in 1997-98 it had been twice as high.  That’s much higher than in West Africa but much lower than in southern parts of the continent.  In Kenya and across Africa, unlike other regions, the incidence is twice as high among women.)

There is a group of mostly women who are “living positively with AIDS” in the village, we were told.  On our second day in Ulungu we met several of them, first on a morning walk that some of us took from hut to hut near the village, where one of the women in the group introduced us to her children and to her 96-year-old mother, who is a traditional healer—but who did a little dance of praise to Jesus, for the pastor’s sake, to show that she is a Christian.  (Unfortunately she never comes to church, he said.)  In the afternoon, Edith came to tell her story to the whole group.  Ten years ago, when she was in her late 30s and already a widow caring for several children, a test confirmed that the reason for her declining health was HIV/AIDS.  After the test result her family shunned her, and other women in the village wanted nothing to do with her.  But she began taking ARVs and eating lots of fresh fruits and vegetables, and gradually her health returned.  She decided to speak publicly about her status, along with other women in the village.  Today she is healthy and strong again, farming her shamba and taking an active role in the community.  God has given me so many blessings, she said:  although I know I will die from this disease, my life like everyone’s is in God’s hands.    

There is no government school in Ulungu, with a population of several thousand.  But the community has organized a nursery school, which children attend up to the age of 8.  Then they walk to a primary school 5 km away.  For secondary school there are no options nearer than Kitui town; but adjoining the nursery school in the village is a vocational school that trains girls in sewing and clothing design.  The students there greeted us with songs in Kamba and then insisted that we sing some songs for them. (Our Calvin group is outstanding nearly every way, but choral performance is not its strong suit.  We managed a verse of “Amazing Grace.”)  The school also has a garden plot, which we visited.  Part of it is shaded by a huge  mango tree.  Up went some of our students and some of the villagers, high into the tree to shake down the ripe fruit.  Evidently that’s the usual method of harvesting. 

These were small fruit, oblong and about four inches long, green turning to dusty red as they ripen.  Other varieties in the markets right now include the larger ones we see in supermarkets in the US, about 6-7 inches, also rounded and also red when ripe, and several other varieties in different colors and shapes.  All of them are dripping with juice and sweet beyond words, and the stringiness of their flesh seems to dissolve as they ripen.  Each time we cut one up at home (which is several times each day), I decide once again that heaven will be eternally living in the tropics at the height of mango season.   (I think there’s something about this in the book of Hezekiah.)

Our workload the second day was light, with just a few more columns to pour.  After a second lunch—a delicious and generous serving of rice, lamb stew, and greens—we organized a football match (soccer, for Americans), with one Kenyan and one American as captains picking players, 10 or so on a side.  The game was great fun, with barefoot Kenyan 10-year-olds often showing up the American university students with their ball handling skills.  The game looked like so much fun, though, that soon all the young boys who had been watching moved onto the field, not much caring which side they were assisting.  When there were 40 players on a field one-fourth the size of a regulation pitch, halftime was declared, and the second half proceeded with reduced forces.  Meanwhile some of the Calvin women students sat down with village girls to play “Duck Duck Goose” but ended up learning a very similar Kamba game in which the “duck” and the “goose” must run in opposite directions.  Lots of chaos and gales of laughter accompanied their attempts to learn the new rules. 

We returned to Ulungu once more on Sunday, after eight of us made a stop at Nzambani Rock, a gigantic and isolated outcropping between Kitui and Ulungu that is probably the core of an ancient volcano.  It’s a strenuous climb, first on a rough path and then on a metal staircase that rises straight up into the air.  The Calvin women were all dressed for church, but that didn’t faze them.  It’s the first hiking expedition I’ve ever led with most of the participants wearing long dresses.  Gorgeous views from the top, although the haze was too heavy to see the ocean in the distance.

After our climb we made a rendezvous with our second van and divided into equal groups to attend the two Anglican churches in the village.  At Rev. Ben’s church, the Calvin students were asked not just to stand and introduce themselves but to sing something, then to dance with the congregation for some of the hymns.  At our church, the smaller of the two, a deacon named Nicholas approached me when we arrived and asked whether there was a minister in our group.  No, I said, unfortunately not—thinking, rashly, that I was off the hook.  No way.  Five minutes later he returned to say, “It is an honor for us to invite our guest to deliver the word of God this morning.  Will you please do so?”  There was no way out of it this time! 

The deacon found me an English Bible (I bought a small one this week so I will never without one when attending church in the future!), but his lectionary was from last year.  So I selected my own lesson (the calling of Samuel—I gave a chapel talk on it once) and began jotting down some notes.  After the rest of the group was ushered into the church, I was invited to process behind the two priests or catechists assigned to this parish and a large group of children who sang a lively introit.  Their status wasn’t clear:  Rev. Ben is the priest assigned to the village, but I’m sure one of these two would have given the sermon if the Lord had not sent an unexpected substitute.  The service, conducted entirely in Kikomba except for my part, was a very loose adaptation of Morning Prayer, so no one celebrated the Eucharist.

Seated by the altar, I caught sight of a 2010 lectionary and found the day’s readings.   But it was fortunate that I had already chosen my own text, because in the end only one of the lectionary passages was read.  I kept jotting down more notes when I could, and when it was time for the sermon I had my thoughts pretty well organized:  Samuel was an answer to the prayers of  a childless wife and dedicated to God’s service, but he did not recognize God’s voice; Eli was a priest who served God but could not hear God calling to Samuel; yet he was able to tune Samuel’s ear.  Where do we hear God’s voice today?  From the young?  From the old?  How can we prepare our ears to hear?  I spoke of what we have learned from Kenyan church and community leaders about what it means to listen and to serve.  And Jane, a woman from the parish, quickly and fluently translated everything I said into Kikomba.

I kept trying to think of what my father might have said about the passage!  The students and Susan thought it went really well, and the audience responded with affirming noises now and then.  But I’m sure my delivery was far too dull—all I did was stand and talk.  Rev. Ben, reported the students, did the announcements in his normal voice, and then kicked it into high gear to preach, shouting and gesturing and moving all around the church. 

Two offerings were collected in a basket at the front of the church.  Most brought coins, a few brought bills (meaning they gave a dollar or more), others brought mangos, an egg, or a soda bottle filled with fresh milk.  At the end of the service Nicholas went up and down the aisles selling these items—auctioning them, really, because he usually waited for a second or third offer—to convert them to cash.  Some of the mangos and two of the eggs didn’t go, so he placed those at the feet of one of the catechists; and then he in turn offered them to me.  I declined the eggs, which seemed unlikely to travel well (one was actually cracked already) but was happy to accept the fruit.

Monica, the woman who directed the concrete workers on Friday, orchestrated much of the service, keeping the children in line and reading one of the lessons.  She also made certain that it started and ended right on time, since she knew we needed to depart by 1:00 to be sure of getting back to Nairobi in daylight.  So she kept the opening song service brief, and made signs to the leaders to end the service right after my sermon and the second offering.  Then she sat us down on benches in the sacristy (just a bare room adjacent to the sanctuary), and within a few minutes we were being served another delicious lunch:  rice, chicken stew, greens, and a Komba specialty, mixed boiled beans and maize. 

Another woman came in to ask whether we had a bag with us, and Susan gave her a nylon shopping bag she carries in her purse.  Not big enough, she said, but we will see what we can do.  As we boarded the bus, Nicholas came hurrying out with Susan’s bag, stuffed full of ripe mangos, and a cardboard carton full of mangos and a papaya.  There must have been 20 kilos of fruit there—the most unusual speaker’s honorarium I’ve ever received.  We gave some to each driver, to Chikka, to the students, to our neighbor, and to our housekeeper.  And still—a week later—we have plenty more for snacks every day. 

The drive home was very long and very hot (no AC in any of our vehicles here), but this was a wonderful way to wind up our field trips.  Only one day remained for the students before their departure, a day when CRWRC staff gave us a very thorough and informative overview of their work, highlighting environmental issues that are of particular concern in East Africa.  It was the first time the students met others beside Chikka from the office here—Fred Witteveen, country director, and Stephen Lutz-Zents, who oversees environmental programs.  Susan and I look forward to seeing more of all of them in the coming months. 

Photos with the Calvin students

I'm not sure whether it's our slow connection or the inherent mental deficiency in the Blogger editor, but combining text and photos has been  an unending source of frustration. The new plan: photos in one post, text in another. The previous group are all from Ulungu: the 96-year-old grandmother, the football game, the construction project and crew, and David preaching. Here is a group photo from the Aberdares, plus two pics of the group that climbed Nzabani Rock before church last Sunday.

Photos from Ulungu trip

An exceptional group of young men and women

Nearly a week has passed since they departed for home, and before any more time passes I want to post some pics and some words about the fine group of young men and women with whom Susan and I had the privilege of spending the month of January: the students enrolled in my Calvin Interim course, IDIS W-41: “Building Communities in Kenya.”

This course arose from happenstance more than planning. Originally—in late 2008—I simply agreed to help a Calvin colleague plan an effective Interim, in cooperation with CRWRC staff,that would highlight effective church-based development work in Africa. We wanted to make certain that the students’ experience abroad would motivate them to share what they had learned in the short term—with their home churches, dorm floors, youth groups—and plant some thoughts about pursuing such work in the longer term. After discussing whether Kenya or Zambia would be the better site we decided on Zambia, and my colleague expected to be the instructor. But then she decided the timing was not right, and I received the Fulbright appointment—so both the instructor and the country had to be changed in early 2009. I revised the description to focus on a topic that especially interests me: how communities in Africa build a stronger sense of accountability and participation when they work together to meet their most urgent needs, and how differently this works when identity has less to do with autonomy and more to do with relationships.

Several complications ensued, however. The CRWRC Kenya staff position of “bridger” was open, and planning went slowly until Chikka Yambo was hired and got right to work on all the details. Kenya then proved to be far more expensive than Zambia, and the course budget was already approved and published; so there were endless emails back and forth looking for affordable but safe and clean lodging options. (Susan just finished our financial report, which shows that we had $34,500 available and spent $34,497!) State Department travel warnings in effect for Kenya necessitated several additional layers of review and approval at the college, in response to all the details of our travel plans and an elaborate program for security precautions and emergency procedures. I did not receive final approval to offer the course until a couple of days before we had to pay for our nonrefundable airfares in early December! But everything you undertake in Africa, after all, requires a degree of trust that, to use the Quakers’ language, “way will open.” And open it did.

The twelve students who departed from Grand Rapids with us on January 8 (two fewer than planned owing to a couple of late withdrawals for weighty personal reasons) didn’t know each other at all, and I knew only two of them as former students in my introductory classes. Ten were female, two male; ten were US citizens, one Canadian, and one Korean. We had met each other at fall semester planning meetings and in two days of on-campus classes in January, where we reviewed some readings on Christian approaches to development and on the role of the churches in Africa (David Myers, Walking With the Poor, and Samuel Kobia, The Courage to Hope) and acted out simulation exercises led by Mary Dykstra from CRWRC. There was still a certain wariness in the group, I think, as we spent endless hours on the plane and in Heathrow airport. But once we hit the ground in Nairobi that quickly yielded to a wonderful spirit of mutual care and support, in which no one was excluded and everyone’s observations and feelings were heard by others.

The students were curious, venturesome, and eager to learn. They were respectful of local mores—the short shorts and tank tops appeared only for relaxing at the YMCA, and the women probably wore dresses more often in three weeks than in the previous three years. And they were cautious without being fearful. Nobody set out to explore Nairobi at night, for example, which is very dangerous; but after we learned more about safety in the downtown area they were happy to venture out in larger or smaller groups, never solo, to shop for food, attend church, and visit the craft market.

Most important, the students showed and expressed their appreciation for the warm hospitality we received everywhere, and they accepted the inevitable delays and changes of plan cheerfully. Perhaps the most dramatic demonstration of their resilience came on our third day, when a washed-out road delayed our arrival in a Maasai village. Lunch did not arrive until 4 pm—in the form of roasted goat, little chunks of meat and gristle and bone all chopped up together. The students smiled, gnawed away enthusiastically, and thanked our hosts graciously. It made me proud of Calvin’s students—and grateful to the parents who have raised them so well. We were truly sad to see them all off at the airport Monday evening.

I don’t fault the college for its precautions about safety, I might add—though I do fault the State Department, whose warning is too general and too ominous. Staying safe in Nairobi requires the same sort of attentiveness and savvy as staying safe in Washington DC or Chicago, after all. In our pre-departure classes I repeated (with his permission) an extremely pointed and helpful security briefing given to departing Fulbrighters last June by the head of security for Save the Children, which stressed that personal safety has everything to do with alertness and cultural awareness, very little to do with physical defense. And, thankfully, our group had no untoward incidents.

Well, hardly any. They were the victims of a brazen daytime robbery while they were eating a picnic lunch in Hell’s Gate National Park. But the perpetrator was a baboon, and all he got was a large bag of potato crisps. He is believed to be still at large.


(Last photo is a class meeting in our living room with Fritz and Carol Rottman.)