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.

Mission Update 3: Six Wazungu on a Matatu

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.