Nitaenda!!!!!

I have about 18 hours to prepare for my coastal move. So, how am I spending my time?
One word: SKYPE.
The packing, last minute purchasing, cookie eating and laundry will certainly get accomplished. It’s the joy of seeing faces that’s taking precedence.

A 12 hour bus ride on Good Friday stands between Nairobi to the village. What am I most looking forward to?

Journeying the landscapes of the in-between while mentally journeying to Mount Cavalry.

Leaving Nairobi and Rose compound after 1 month! What will I miss most?

My language learning helper. We cooked, went to market, shopped for clothes, drank countless chai, watched movies, played uno, read the Bible, played guitar. She is an irreplaceable friend.
AND
The compound relationships! Thanks to the expertise of a young boy on the compound, I am departing with a whittled spoon and fork. My volleyballing, therapist, cinnamon roll eating buddy. The badminton gauntlet. I’ll miss the Easter tournament! My banana frying, sweet singing neighbors who fed me on numerous occasions.

Merely 5 months of service in the coastal village. What builds my anticipation?

The promise of mango trees, milking cows, and Swahili immersion. The coaching of PE, relationships with the coaches, squatting (in a skirt) in the maize fields while I work the land.   
 

 

4.18.2014 will begin my technological brown-out. Please be patient with me as I respond to emails as timely as possible.

 

Prayer:

Danielle’s (my American housemate) transition to having an American buddy
Patience with Swahili
Relationship with Pastor and Mama
Transition in to my ministry role

Anglican church service in Nairobi…HOLY HECK!
 
In an SIM meeting, an acquaintance of mine mentioned having a husband who is the rector at Holy Trinity Church in Kibera, a slum of Nairobi. Poor woman. After learning of her church background, I directed question after question toward her: husband? family? the church? the congregation? Etc? etc? etc. So, naturally, I asked for her number and arranged to attend with her the following Sunday.

WOW different, but WOW the same:) The Sunday I attended, we celebrated mothering Sunday, not the most traditional of liturgies. We celebrated in both English and Swahili, my attention rapt, during prayers and liturgy, for words I could recognize. Very unusual for Kenyans. The women, especially mothers, were CELEBRATED with intention and vigor! Women led the entire service, preached, offered skits, song and dance in thanksgiving to their mothers after the readings. All of this to recognize the underappreciated (in Kenyan culture).

 

Prior to the service, the rector (the husband of the co-worker) welcomed me into his office for tea and mendazi, Kenya's donut. We sat in his small, austere cell and discussed being Anglican. He was very curious about Church of the Incarnation, so I gave him Bishop Burton’s name at the close of our conversation. I learned he studied at Wheaton and Mennonite Eastern in VA and had travelled far and wide for the Church! As we chatted and laughed deep from our bellies, Kenyans have very big laughs, the choir voices welled up in practice in the adjacent room. I started tearing up (he didn't notice. dark room, whew). The moment, the music, the donuts, this man’s familiar collar were all so Good and so distinctly Kenyan.

The choir was on fire during the service and a rail thin baritone led the congregation when we all sang together. Funny that such a thin person produces something so low. During the offering, someone presented a chicken as a tithe. They made me, the muzungu=white girl, stand up at one point and introduce myself to the congregation. Before the Kenyan faces, I felt so foreign and so familiar.

Afterwards, the mammas swept me out to the courtyard for chai hour. In a flurry of hospitality, I soon had more chai and mendazis in my hands along with a gaggle of ladies pecking at me and my story. While still digesting the mendazi and eagerness of the blue dressed women, I was led to a lunch cooked in honor of those who served. Steamy stew, orange rice, and cabbage slaw shoved into my mouth. Yet, the rector and wife would not let me leave unless I took 3 bananas.

Good people.

Adventure Pride School

I was tired that morning as I meandered into the slum. There were glass paned butcher windows butted up to the key-hole doors in the mud and stick houses. There were chickens and kittens picking through the trash in the narrow lanes. Women with large drums of grain atop their heads and broad cars somehow managed the same tight space between mud storefronts.

I didn’t truly wake ‘til I met the bright eyes of a woman rolling out chapatti, a round flat-bread. Seated in the center of the road, she prepared her bread over open flames without taking note of what her hands were doing. Her head oscillated up and down the lane.

“Habari” I muttered, pushing out the greeting so she wouldn’t hear my poor pronunciation.
“MZURI, SANA!” she beamed. There was no need for her affirmative reply. Her eyes had excitement and peace while her hands continued what they had always done.
Continuing, I felt jarred awake and somehow grounded in Kibera (a Nairobi slum) myself, excited for what my expedition of the day had in store: a visit to Adventure Pride School.
 

Students poured out of the weathered, yet well-constructed church building. I slipped inside. Its high ceilings, in respect to surrounding mud houses, and white washed walls were the first hint of the uplifting intention this school invested in the lives of these students. The ethereal energy amongst the focused students remaining at their desks and the solitary light bulb in the center of the great room, was hint number 2. Good things are happening here!

After being ushered into an adjoining 4x4 mud office where 2 smartly pressed headmasters gave me the facts*, I was allowed to freely interact with each class. Budding off the great room were three mud classrooms. The first mud classroom I entered, baby class, was full of 4 and 5 year old faces gawking at the white girl. I bit my lip to keep from chuckling at the wide eyes and adorably chubby cheeks. I listened to a bit of “wind, sun, sky” parroted in high pitched voices---English class. The students in each mud-room sat at low wooden benches regardless of the class age. They were tightly packed side to side on each bench and long wooden tables butted up against the backs of the preceding row of students. In one of the classes in the great room, this room houses 6 classes total, the students stood to greet me with, “Hello Madam!” I led an interactive question game for a bit with this boisterous group.

On the way out to the final mud-room class, I passed a 20 gallon tin pot bubbling over hot stones--- Lunch! (some of the students’ only daily meal). I asked the final classroom, 14 year-olds, what they wanted to be when they grew up. A surgeon, a teacher, an astronaut, a trustworthy politician!!! In this little mud room, lit by the early morning sun, these teenagers have a deep understanding of where they are in the world, TRUE hope in where they CAN go, and an honest joy in the process.

“And, madam, what do you want to be when you grow up?”, an earnest face asked:)

 

*THE FACTS.

-the school hours are from 8:20am-3:30pm. However, they open their doors at 6am to receive students and close up around 6. Most students spend these 12 hours in the safety of the school walls! This is family.
-6 core subjects are taught: English, Kiswahili, Math, Science, Social Studies, Life Skills/Bible Based study
-the school purifies their own water using the sun, corrugated tin and water bottles-GENIOUS and sustainable:)
-Thursday is the one day of the week the students have P.E. Throughout the year they will put on dramas, and enjoy other creative arts.
-the school hopes to buy new uniforms for its students and is in desperate need for expansion.
-the headmasters were slum children themselves. They both have lived with want, schooled, went to college and now pour all of their lives and resources into these children.