Mission Update 9: Contemplations in Kapsowar, Kenya

I was dreaming about all the possibilities of my future; college, career, marriage, starting a family - then the present literally hit me as my head knocked into the car window. I fell back asleep, until another pothole threw my head back into the metal safety bar behind me. There were mountains rising up out of a dusty brown landscape, and potholes trying to contend with the mountains. The only reason I was even attempting to sleep on the Kenyan roads was because I had stayed up the whole night before to finish my important early college applications*. After saying “ouch” in my head, and probably out loud too, I remembered where I was. I was traveling northwest in Ted’s white Land Rover, with his family, to the mission hospital in Kapsowar, Kenya to film a personal video for one of the doctors, while Andy was staying in Nairobi to finish scoring the music for the Rwanda video. After recollecting my thoughts, I realized just how much my head really hurt. Fortunately, I shook off the pain and was still tired enough to fall back asleep.

Halfway there, I woke up as we stopped in a town for lunch. When we entered the restaurant, there were a few older AIM missionaries that the Rurups knew, just about to finish their meal. After being introduced to me, they remembered my name because they had been praying for me when I came to Africa. I knew I was in good company there.

We were excited to see that the menu had fajitas, with tortillas and guacamole, so we ordered three for Ted, Liisa, and I, while the kids stuck to chicken and chapatis. The first sign of trouble was that the waiter kept calling the fajitas (Fa-Hee-tuz = Correct), fajitas (Fa-GEE-tas = Cultural misinterpretation). The second sign of trouble was that they made the fajitas on Kenyan time, so by the time they brought out anything, the kids were already done eating their meals. The third was that they never actually brought out the tortillas. Instead, they brought out a bowl with the inside part of the fajitas. In fact, when we asked if they were going to bring out the tortillas, they said yes, then brought out the guacamole instead. When consumed, the fajitas tasted more like a greasy sweet and sour pork dish that one finds at a cheap chinese food joint in the mall. So we ate our sweet and sour non-tortilla fajitas, and were thankful that they actually brought us any food

I was awake for the rest of the trip, since a partial hungry state helps that kind of thing. Besides, the Rurups were having so much fun singing, “On the Road Again”, which was quite entertaining with the almost 2 year old trying to join along, although he didn’t know any of the words. We drove through part of the Rift Valley, passed through the equator, and then started swerving up one of the mountain ranges. At the top, we could look out at the valley from both sides. At this point I could make an analogy about life and the vastness of the rift being like the future ahead and past that I could reflect on with a little bit about us climbing the hill together for emotional effect, but then we started going down hill for a while, and that makes the analogy both uninspiring and really pretty depressing. We did start another long climb up another mountain range though, so the analogy isn’t all that bad

It was dark by the time we were getting near the town, and we were on a very creepy road that swerved through the hills. We passed a random car that was attempting to drive through the pitch black forest without any lights on. We slowed down so that they could follow us into town. Then we arrived at the Africa Inland Church (AIC) Kapsowar Mission Hospital. Alysia, the wife of Dr. Paul**, met us at the gate to the hospital housing area. We unloaded all the equipment into the house where the Rurups were staying. Then Alysia showed me the house where I was staying

We walked through the pitch dark towards a light coming through a window. The house, which we entered, was larger than the one I was currently staying in with the Brown’s. Basically, I had gone from a crowded home of 6, to a loaded car of 7, to a completely empty house that felt huge. I had not been in such a quiet environment for a very long time. To be completely honest, I was creeped out. So, after some self reassuring, and checking every room in the house for dead bodies, I happily settled down in the servants quarters, after double checking the locks and putting my knife close enough for comfort. Throughout the week, the lights would go out without warning, causing me to expect a group of thieves or bandits to break in and attack me.***

The next morning, I walked out of the house, and looked out at the green hills that overlapped each other until they reached a mountain range in the cloudy distance.

In this part, the audience cries, “Tim put an analogy about how you didn’t see the view the night before because your vision was shrouded in darkness, and that is somehow like your life!”

I naturally reply, “I’ll spare you. I think that had more to do with the fact that it was night time and I was tired.”
“But that’s not very poetic!” “I know, sleep deprivation is about as poetic as greasy sweet and sour non-tortilla fajitas.

Not much happened that day. We toured the hospital and met Paul. He is an American, but he grew up in the UK so he has a British accent, which for some reason is more interesting than a British man who lived in the US and has an American accent. Later that day there was a going away party for Dr. Steve, who was moving to Machakos to teach at Scott Theological College. I told him to watch out for the purple-sweater-wearing kissing man, then told him it was a long story when he gave me a strange look. Overall, the party was extremely photogenic and emotional considering that I had deep relationships with everyone there. Ted had to tell me to sit down and calm myself before I got stuck in a group of overexcited doctors who may accidently break some of the camera equipment.****

That night, we ate a Kenyan dinner in honor of Dr. Steve. Surprisingly, Rae from Pearl River (see update #2) was there, visiting different ministries going on in Africa. I brought her up to speed on what I had been doing from last time we met. Considering that I was still sleep deprived and she was jet-lagged, I don’t think either of us remember what was said.

We went to the Kapsowar AIC that Sunday. It was filled with Kenyans from the town and nursing school that is a part of the hospital, so we took the opportunity to get more footage of African churches. Unfortunately, the battery died on one of the cameras, so I had to run and get the one that was charging at the house. While running, I realized that the altitude in Kapsowar is at least 3,000 feet higher than Nairobi. Which is around 8,000 feet higher than normal for me. So simply put, with the combined increase in altitude, the running uphill, and all the mud I was attempting to avoid, I realized why so many good long distance runners come from Kenya. Fortunately, I also realized that my lungs were used enough to the altitude that I was able to keep running both ways. I still felt like one out of shape mzungu as I sucked air and changed the battery on the camera, but I got back before Chara and Julianna, Paul and Alysia’s little girls, sang for the congregation. Mission accomplished.

That night, as I entered my big, dark house, there was a scuffling sound in the bathroom, and the light was flickering. I peered in, knife first, and saw a bird wildly flying around, running into the light and mirror. Images from Alfred Hitchcock’s “The Birds” filled my mind, and I chuckled as I grabbed a broom and a bucket. I closed all the interior doors of the house to contain the creature, during which I found a layer of freshly strewn soot; where the bird had entered through the chimney. Then, started a long operation of chasing it up and down the stairs until I finally managed to corner it upstairs and trapped it under the bucket. I then realized that I was upstairs, and couldn’t take my foot off the top of the bucket without the bird tipping it and starting the whole process again. So I called Ted to come and rescue me. He found a metal sign hanging on one of the doors, and we slid it underneath the bucket, then carried it to the front door and let the aviary invader free. The bird, being a very intelligent animal, flew to the bathroom window and sat looking through. Maybe it dropped a contact or, more likely, its brain.

At 5 something the next morning, I got a call from Ted, “Get dressed and over to my house! We are filming a surprise C-section!” I was up before you could say, “Caesarian”. Paul and a nurse were wheeling the mother from the regular delivery building to the, “theatre”, also known as operating room, which was uphill and also an entirely different building. We put on scrubs and asked if it was safe for us to come in the operating room yet.

Obviously, there had been some miscommunication because when they told us to enter the room, the woman was as bare naked as the baby that was about to come out of her. After a few awkward moments, we went back into the staging area to wait. The next time we asked very explicitly, “is she covered yet?”, then re-entered the operating room and started filming. We decided to interview Paul in the middle of the surgery, asking him complicated questions about the hospital and his future plans. I am entirely joking here, of course, we did no such thing. I was, however, filming Paul at work when suddenly a newborn baby appeared in the camera viewing screen. I did a double-take and saw Paul hand the nurse a baby. It wasn’t that I didn’t know she was having a baby, but the suddenness of the situation caught me off guard. At one moment, there was a few doctors, two media guys, and a pregnant women with an unborn child in the room. Another moment later, and there were the same amount of people in the room, but one of them had, in a moment between thoughts, gone from unborn to newborn. “Its a girl”, Paul said quite disinterested. It was his third C-section already that morning. The woman had requested that Paul tie her tubes because it was her 8th child, but according to Kenyan law, he couldn’t do that without consent of her husband. The response from the front desk came just in time for them to start,

“thou shalt not touch”, which I am sure isn’t one of the 10 commandments. Paul and the other doctors looked at each other in frustration.

“Does he know that she requested it?” Paul asked the nurse on the phone.

“Yes, he says he wants to try for another boy.”

Paul rolled his eyes and started the process of stitching up the women’s uterus. He turned to us after a few long minutes and told us that everything interesting was done. We left, taking off the scrubs, and pulling on our muddy boots. We walked back to the house. “Well”, I turned to Ted, “that is one way to start a Monday morning.” The rest of the day was as uneventful and boring as any other Monday.

The next morning, Ted sent me with Liisa, Alysia, her oldest son; who was only 2 years old, and a few Kenyan ladies to visit one of the first Christian women in Kapsowar, Mama Fifi. I was running both the Nikon and the video camera, so I had to anticipate which device would gain more beneficial media for OFM. It felt good to be trusted with expensive equipment and the responsibility to collect usable material. The main purpose of the short trip was to interview Mama Fifi for an article about the effect of the hospital on the surrounding community.

Considering I didn’t know a lot of Kiswahili, or any of the local language, the trip was mostly uneventful. I did learn, through translation, that Mama Fifi was the first woman to become a Christian in Kapsowar, after the missionary hospital arrived, and then also the first mother to decide not to circumcise her daughters, which was against the cultural tradition of the time. Her house was a stately, almost British style house, but she slept in a small hut down the hill, on a traditional mud bed.

The contrast between the beginning of a life the morning before, and the story of a life near the end the next day invoked some intense reflections that I will not attempt to repeat in this format. On a lighter note, Kenyan hospitality is even more important out of Nairobi, which meant that in any house we entered, the host was culturally obligated to provide chai. Any potential hosts also felt committed to inviting us into their homes. Also, when a guest is finished with their first cup, the host will fill up their cup again, even if they ask, or in my case, plead for only, “kidogo”, a very small amount. This cycle meant that I consumed around 8 cups of highly caffeinated and sugar-saturated chai, as we hiked up the hill back to the hospital. Needless to say, I was wired.

We used the rest of the afternoon spending time with, as well as filming, Paul and Alysia’s family. Including their twin baby boys, Jacob and David; which I must admit, were adorable. Ted and Liisa’s kids enjoyed their time. Jonathan and Collin played football, only known as soccer in America, with a group of boys from the town. Teah, who refers to me as, “Mr Tim”, played with Chara and Julianna. Little Timmy, the Rurup’s youngest, played with Stephen. That night, after filming a women’s Bible study, it began to rain heavily. Ted and I started to run back to his house since we didn’t want the equipment to get wet. I was following right behind him, when suddenly he jumped sideways. In that instant I saw the two posts with a single thread of barbed wire between them, practically invisible in the rain. I just managed to change direction fast enough and not slip into the wire, but it snagged my shirt, and ripped a substantial chunk.

On Wednesday, November 5th, 2008, Ted and I went to film the chapel time at the nursing school. At the beginning, they announced the election of Barack Obama, which the resulted in a volley of excited shouts. The student announcing continued by saying, “Now that Obama is the President of America, he will be moving to the White House, which can now be the...”, one of the Kenyan residency doctors interrupted him, “the Black House!” The room erupted in another volley of laughter. Later that day, I laughed again when I had my first opportunity to check e-mail that week. Everyone who sent me e-mails that day told me the election results, even though I had probably found out a few hours before them. Unless, of course, they stayed up all night; which would not have surprised me considering the significant nature of the election.

Although Kenyan President Kibaki announced a national holiday, the work at the hospital continued, due to the fact that people don’t stop getting injured or sick on national holidays. Considering our work being tied to the hospital, OFM also worked that day. We interviewed Paul, which involved walking backwards through the mud with the steady-cam, and went to Pastor Charles’ house, who is blind.***** That night Ted and I went to a community prayer meeting, where the church and community leaders met. Afterwards, Salie; one of the Mama Fifi’s daughters, invited us to have a cup of chai at her house. I smiled and tried to drink my cup as slowly as possible. It was late, and it started to rain, so we said goodbye, and her husband showed us to the path back to the hospital.

We walked through the drizzling rain, thick mud, and deep fog that surrounded us. As much as we try to anticipate the directions the road will take, in the end, the thick darkness ahead strips foresight to chance. Yet, we know that there is a finish to the journey; a place of warmth, with friendly faces, and rest. The promise of that goal is why we endure, marching in the elements, knowing that things might get better, but not knowing exactly how much bull feces we trudged through, before we get home and see it all over our shoes.

We celebrated Little Timmy’s 2nd Birthday the next day. I was the honorary photographer. Then, on Friday, we returned to Nairobi, with a quick stop for me to take a picture that inspired me. A silver sky, reflected by a silver lake. It reminded me that in all my plans for the future, God is greater and has a better plan.

Although I had built up a lot of stress about my future at the beginning of that week, a few months later my fears were quelled, when I found out that I had not only been accepted to my two top schools, but the University of Michigan had also presented a substantial scholarship to me. The day before my birthday on Feb 9th, I also received notice that my Marine option NROTC Scholarship was reinstated. As I wrote this update, I thought about that picture.

*Which took especially long since the internet was so slow that e-mails would take at least 10 minutes to send, and web pages would take 20 to load.

**We were making the personal video for Dr. Paul and his family before they returned to the states.

***You could call me paranoid with an overactive imagination, and I wouldn’t call you a liar.

****Ted actually did tell me to sit down, but it was because he didn’t think we needed any more footage of doctors making speeches. Especially since we already had an exclusive interview with the guest of honor.

*****Literally, not figuratively.