Fullness

“Inside, Ellie, go inside!” Pastor ushers me alone into a small clay church to witness the happening.

The church couldn’t be more than 12x20 feet. A very presentable room. My eyes only take in the bareness. There are a dozen small tree limbs waiting to be used by the respected elders as seating. Even with the limbs, the space looked wanting.

The congregation coils around the door to catch sight of the transformation. Young men from the watching crowd enter, gleefully transporting the limbs from the floor to the outside firewood pile. Others needle through the crowd with new benches into the hollow room. Benches for the entire community! Finally, the people squirm in to fill that empty room with bodies, prayer, dancing and praise. The church body and the church structure transformed.

In a region with more material scarcity than material things, the 14 benches delivered by Pastor give a reason to witness this community’s fullness.

And full we became.

For hours we gorge on spiritual food, word and fellowship. Our physical bodies begin to quake with the lack of sustenance. Still, our celebratory feast continues. This community has nothing to eat. Why not fill the heart, mind and soul? I muse.

To my surprise, food comes. Beset before us is a traditional Kenyan welcome, a goat slaughtered to celebrate the gift of benches. Out of the lack of this community, they slaughter a goat in our honor!  

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My Kenyan brother peers down at the dish before him with hungry eyes. I watch his face and expect mine to exude the same anticipation, but when my eyes examine the contents of my bowl, I wish the praise and fasting would continue.

I smile at all watching the food they prepared yet will not eat on the account of our arrival. My frantic fingers search for meat as I jovially speak with the church members. Calm face, Ellie. Kind eyes, Ellie. With one I hand I massage a baseball size chunk of ugali into proper eating texture. This buys time to steel my stomach for the intriguing contents before me.

Stew, a safe starting point, always accompanies coastal meats. As I dip the cornmeal ugali into the broth, there is not a tomato or vegetable to be found. Solely comprised of goat fat, the stew is slowly congealing as it cools. Better slurp fast!

My palate identifies an abrasive complimentary flavor amidst the goat-fat stew. As I feared since that first gaze into the depths of the bowl… matumbo.

Somewhere, hiding within this meal is goat intestine. The more ugali used to mop up the stew, the less besieged my stomach feels by the heavy fats and the tamer the taste of bile-flavored intestine. However, I can not avoid the solid chunks any longer. The hungry hosts are waiting to see if I enjoy their delicacy. My fingers dive into the greasy depths again.

LIVER, Whew! Although the taste is not one I desire, I am comforted by this recognizable Kenyan treat. I consume with an honest smile on my face! The only items remaining feel furry, tough and rubbery to my searching fingers. No time like the present. I raise a mass of blood vessels, cartilage and goat hair to my lips knowing this is NOT the time to refuse THE MEAL these people will see today. My incisors can not cut through the elastic veins. The hair is scratching the back of my tongue. The taste of intestine warming my throat.

I smile at the onlookers as I chew my cud and play off gag reflexes as swallowing. I will the entire mass down the hatch and have to breathe deeply once it passes. LORD of all creation, keep that thing where it belongs, not as a second lunch in my bowl! With shaky hands and a plastic laugh for the hosts, I robotically continue the process of consumption.

I reassure church mamas pushing lung into my bowl that I have plenty to work with. I give myself a good nose scratch so I can whisper SOS to my Kenyan brothers. Only eyes can convey the gravity of my tenuous stomach situation. I fear speaking and making any sudden movements. Peter and Daniel jokingly jostle me to finish my portion. I flare my nostrils at them and widen my eyes while shoving more ugali into my face, only hoping the ugali will act as some sort of wall between the churning intestines in my own intestines. “sawa sawa, weka.”

After a quick check for watching eyes, I plop the remaining solid bits into my brothers’ bowls.

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On the bumpy ride home,

Pastor comments: the church is now full of benches.
Daniel comments: that church is full of the Spirit.
Peter comments: his stomach is now full of sweet goat.
I am full of an ethereal force which bridles my overwhelming urge to regurgitate.

Roka Secondary School

I suppose it was only a matter of time ‘til I found myself where my missionary journey began, on a construction site. Two of my Kenyan brothers and a pair of the village’s Mzee, respected older gentlemen, were commissioned to build a classroom at a nearby secondary school. Daniel, the older of my brothers, had ecstatically accepted his first contract in hopes of establishing his budding construction business. Every morning as I pushed a hot cup of tea into his hands and every night as we stared into the jiko’s coals, he regaled me with progress and problem solving of this premier job. At every meeting, he requested I go and see for myself how he is getting on.

Without much commitment, it became a biweekly behavior to travel with the men of my community to the construction site. The work itself was efficient, not wasteful and creative. We sang, danced and drank sodas as we re-shaped used nails, tap-tap-tap. We climbed trees and chatted as we leveled the tall columns. The men used their bare feet as hands while tying rebar and nailing. Slowly, slowly, they let me participate in the cement mixing, mortar laying and painting.

For now, we are a fixture of the school, just as the new classroom will be. The school day begins, we change into work clothes, and continues as a local Mama delivers steaming beans and mendazi (Kenyan donuts) for breakfast. I chat with the coy school girls in Swahili and begin to make friends. Even with my regular attendance and Giriama(the mother tongue) greetings, the students openly gawk at the white girl. “Even me, I have never painted like that”, one student admits. “You know! You can do…well?! ”, some say.

Daniel, Peter and Mzee Philip remind me, “You are changing the image of the white man. Most think Mzungu men don’t know how to work. And you…you are a LADY!”

My final day at the work site we are chattering about Dallas, Tx. So many questions arise from the group. My brothers have never seen a map of where America is in the world. I rustle through some classrooms to find a globe, we are at a school after all.

We huddled together to see the journey from Dallas to the Kenyan coast on the globe. I told stores of international air travel as I traced the distance from one home to another. Feeling a bit sheepish that I had the money to make such a flight, I looked up at my exclusively foot traveling Kenyans. Mzee looked back at me with such emotion in his face and urgency in his voice “Journeys are difficult and stress and costly. But you came here. Your journey preaches. Serious.”