It has been a while since I have written an update (for that I apologize). My week of orientation went very well, although most of it was spent in a state of partial unconscious jet lag which took me much longer to get over than I expected. On Saturday, September 13th, I went to the Nairobi Giraffe Center. It was exciting since usually Giraffes in the zoo are far away and caged. In Africa, things are slightly different...Not only is the barrier only large enough to keep the Giraffes from trampling the people, but you can also feed the animals from your own hand, and if you are not careful they may try to head-butt you too.
I had a battle with some mosquitoes one night. I could hear them buzzing around, waiting for the exact moment to strike. As one would dive toward my head I would fling my covers around my head to keep them from getting me. Eventually I was focusing so much on the timing of my cover that I realized I was not sleeping at all. So I turned on the light and found two very frightened mosquitoes hiding on the wall. I found out that compassion is not a very abundant trait in an annoyed, jet-lagged American. I finished them off faster than a little kid with a "fun" size candy bar; two enemy casualties, no injuries, only a few hours of precious sleep lost. After that night I started using the mosquito net. Unfortunately my sleep cycle had been set off for what turned out to be at least another week of sleeping problems, so I had won one battle, only to lose another.
Going to church at Nairobi Chapel was a very interesting cultural experience. The church meets in a few very large tents on the land that they own because they did not have enough money to build any kind of permanent structure after purchasing the land. Inside was a portable stage with a mural of a backyard painted on a back drop behind the band. The music was very Kenyan, and a few songs were even in Kiswalhili. They even had a youth step team that put the Herndon High School one to shame. The message was good, although it was about marital conflict so I won't be needing it for a little while.
Afterwards, we went out for lunch in this Chinese restaurant surrounded by a wall of tall bushes. It had a red forbidden city like gate into the 7 car parking lot and Chinese garden lamps hanging around the exterior of the outside lawn where everyone ate. The food was delicious and no one was expecting anyone to leave quickly. Everyone enjoyed their time and conversations. In fact, we stayed for so long that by the time Andy and Lesa drove us back to the guesthouse, we only had an hour before the early 5:00 dinner!
On Monday, September 15th, we began the orientation sessions which included more specific culture training, a Kiswahili lesson, and a transportation lesson. The group I was going through the process with was really great. Trevor and Andrea are a young couple from a fairly northern part of Canada. Trevor is working at the mechanic shop at the International Services (IS) hangar while Andrea is planning on working with Children's ministry, possibly in the slums. The other couple was Chris and Sandy; they are from the states and Sandy is going to work at the Tumaini Counseling Center as a Psychiatrist while Chris is going to explore different ministries in art and also study African art in the process. Then there was Fiona; she is a lovely older Scottish woman who is also working as a Psychiatrist at Tumaini. With me, as the young and single guy, the group had a lot of variety.
- The transportation lesson was the highlight of the day by far. James, the Kenyan man who runs the guesthouse, was kind enough as the expert of public transportation to take us out for our lesson. We went on a matatu, a widely used form of public transportation in Nairobi. Basically a Matatu is a mini van that has been painted over with mismatched themes, including one I saw with a poster of Jesus on one window, next to a pop culture star on the other. Talk about random. Some matatus even have bad rap music cranked up to the level of a headache, others with the correlating crude music videos of the songs, and almost all of them accentuate the horrific "gangsta" culture that will be the downfall of all intelligent society. Funny how the most negative cultural thing I have seen since arriving is actually from US teen culture. Matatus are also usually crammed to the teeth in people who smell like they just stepped off an airplane. So there we were, six Wazungu in a Matatu (As many of you may have been wondering, a Mzungu is a white person, white people (plural) are Wazungu*.), getting pummeled by the same uncreative beat and the bumps in the road from speeding through traffic. After that sensory overload, we were all very grateful to pile out and get back our bearings.
Then we went to the place that had been for the most part an unseen mystery as we drove past it's entrances. The place that I had most wanted to capture with my own eyes ever since I had arrived; Kibera. It was a place that one cannot "prepare" for, one can only enter and let the sensory overload begin again. At one of the entrances stretched a railway flanked by long rows of wooden stalls filled with random assortments of used products for sale. I asked James if this was the largest market in Kibera and he said "No, this is just the entrance" although we had already been walking for at least a quarter of a mile. The ground was covered in trash. I saw shoe soles, candy wrappers, plastic cups, and anything else you could imagine. I could only make out what things were based on the shapes that I could recognize, mostly because the were all the same color on the ground; either black or reddish brown. The slum had the kind of smell that makes a matatu feel like a leather-covered limousine sprayed with French perfume from New York. People were everywhere; sitting at stalls, walking to work, cooking outside their houses, sweeping the dust off their dirt covered floors, and even picking up the few objects left from a fire that had destroyed many stalls before they could tear down enough to stop its spreading. Children's faces lit up when they saw us. They playfully repeated the universally taught phrase greeting for Americans, "howaru!?", and then lit up even more when we replied with the desired response, "fine! how are you?". They were happy just to be greeted by a Mzungu. Everyone, not just the children, was staring at us.
James took us farther into the slum. He pointed out a Catholic school, that provided inexpensive education for children, as we walked past it and then stopped near a large blue metal gate. He turned and said "This is my church. It is a Church of God, but it also has a school and an orphanage." As we stepped through the gate, the transition was breathtaking. The ground was still the same reddish brown dirt, but it wasn't covered in trash, and there were gardens with vegetables. It was quiet there, as though the problems and heartache of the outside world were somehow comforted in this place. There was the start of a church structure near the far wall. James said that they were slowly building it as they received more donations. He showed us the classes full of young wide-eyed students who were either too shy to speak, or yelled in unison "howaru!?". Next, we met with two of the pastors, they talked with us about the school, church, and future plans. They were incredibly thankful that we were coming to help and they told us about a church in the United States that had provided food for them to feed people during the election crisis. After we had left, I learned that the church they were talking about was actually my church. Suddenly the images from the video they had sent us flooded my mind. I recognized the pastor and remembered how we had raised support to purchase food for many people living in the slum. I hadn't meant as much to me until I had seen it with my own eyes. The seeing made it much more real.
The next day we had another transportation lesson, but this time we went by bus to downtown Nairobi. It was much quieter, smelled better, but it was much slower than a matatu. The city was like most western ones, except for the advertisements in Kiswalhili and the police with submachine guns and AK-47s. We weren't stared at by anyone, except for clever business owners who would invited us to come in and buy their souvenirs. In the windows I saw many bootlegged copies of DVDs that had mismatched titles and covers (think "Castle Escape 3" with the cover of "The Princess Bride"). Matatus are not allowed in the downtown area, probably because the city officials enjoy their soft music and courteous driving as much as I do, which meant that at the farthest boundary there was a line of them stretching around at least 2 city blocks to pick up customers to take into the outer city bounds. We walked a little farther to get one to take us back. The 15 minute bus ride there took the matatu 5 minutes to get us back.
The group decided to venture out of the guesthouse compound to one of the local shopping centers before dinner that night. A line of six Wazungus traveling down the street; young, old, married, single. If I was a Kenyan, I would have stared too, and they did. They did.
The next two days flew by as we finished up our orientation sessions and language classes. We toured the International Services hangar which is the headquarters of IS that all of our ministries fall under. There I saw the AIM Air fleet and met with Allen the director of IS. We were having such a great discussion that Lesa had to make us stop to finish the tour. The next day we saw the OFM office in Upper Eagle's Nest at "The Compound", where I will be working. We also visited the Eastern Region office that all is in charge of AIM in the eastern region (funny how that makes so much sense) and Tumaini where Fiona and Sandy stayed to settle into their offices. I went out to lunch with John and Joy. We went to a food court which was much different since you sit down and then each food place sends a server to your table. It became confusing when I had five menus to choose from and each server would step up and ask me what I wanted if I began to look at their menu, or even if I didn't. Accidently I ordered a Coke (which do taste different) from one place and my food from another. No one seemed to mind though, probably because half of us made the same mistake too. After the meal I was take back to the OFM office where I began my first day of work.
My first day of work consisted of loading Final Cut Pro onto my computer and being connected to the network. Then I went home with Andy and unpacked in my room. Then re-packed for the Men's retreat that weekend (which I shall describe later).
Thanks to everyone for your patience and support!
*Mzungu actually isn't a racial slur because any Asian-Americans or African-Americans are still called Wazungu (In fact Indians are called Asians by Kenyans). It technically means "wanderer", which is slightly humorous in relation to tourists or even colonists.
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