Anti-borrowers?

I was talking with a friend today about the concept of the Borrowers and why they would be blamed for the disappearance of small objects, (Apparently, that piece of culture never made its way here.) when it struck me for about the billionth time, just how much stuff I have collected for the Borrowers to potentially "steal."

I am fairly positive that I only got off the plane last January with one suitcase -- well, actually, my suitcase came on a different plane. Lol -- but, in the thirteen months since then, I have collected an amazing number of books, additional clothing, and just plain additional stuff. (Convinced that the Borrowers' long lost cousins live in Kenya, but were confused by the change in culture and have taken to depositing things under my bed.)

It really begs the question of just how much stuff is necessary. I have essentially worn the same two black skirts for thirteen months, so it is obviously possible to live without a huge wardrobe, but, at the same time, I have gone from my original three shirts to enough to go two weeks without washing or re-wearing a single shirt.

Now, when I don't feel like doing laundry, that's great. But, it also means that the mountain that needs to be washed the next time is that much larger, which... basically defeats the purpose of having more clothes in order to avoid laundry.

I think that it is about time for the Borrowers to come visit their long lost cousins and steal some of the things that have been deposited, because, at this rate, I'm going to need a dozen extra suitcases to get home. (Okay. It's not that bad, but...)

As an American, I count as one of the global rich, with access to huge amounts of resources, and I have to wonder how much is "enough."

What would I really need to live on?

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Justice for Haiti

It make have been five weeks since the earthquake in Haiti, but the rebuilding process is still in a state of semi-limbo, a state where it might be possible to right some of the injustices that have haunted the island nation since its independence.

Finding a solution to injustice, though, often means listening to all sides of the story.

Unlocked

After thirteen months of making you all sign in every time that you want to check my blog, I have finally decided that it will be easier to simply be aware of what I say and how I say it, rather than forcing other people to go through another step, so that I can be lazy about what comes out my finger tips.

In that vein, both of my "Kenya" blogs have been combined into this, single, unlocked blog, and my more social justice focused blog will remain separate - and also unlocked.

All of that to say...you get to skip a step. :D

Enjoy.

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Slow Drip Justice

Guys, social justice doesn't have to be some huge, terrifying sort of thing.

Yes, it means large scale change and letting the government know that we want them to use their power to act against global atrocities, like the genocide in Darfur.

But, it is also small things, intentional lifestyle changes, that make a difference in the same way that a steady drip from a leaky faucet will fill a bucket over and over again. (Yes, I currently have a water spigot in my back yard that does exactly that. It makes for an interesting reminder every time that I look out the back door and realize that the bucket is full again.)

That steady drip of justice can be things like my dad filling empty bottles with rocks and putting them in our toilet tanks at home.

It can be one of my friends, who read my book, decided that she wanted to know more, read the books Under the Overpass and The Hole in Our Gospel, and ended up sponsoring a kid through Compassion International.
It can be any number of different things. Eventually, slow drips do make a difference.

Ministry Update

The curriculum that a friend and I have been working on for the kids at this pre-primary school is "finished." (Read, "it is sitting on my computer, waiting to be proof-read and then brought to town to be printed and bound.)

Being finished with a project is always a good thing, but, it's meant that I have had to find other excuses to walk down this road almost every weekday morning. Luckily for me, even with six teachers, a school of ninety pre-school and kindergartners is pretty much always a good source of work.


They don't have easy access to a copier, so the daily "homework" assignments for each of the kids -- shapes numbers, letters, reading, math, etc -- have to be handwritten in each of their notebooks, as do any classwork assignments. Normally the teachers do all of it, thus the ratio of two teachers to each class of thirty, but, one of the teachers and I have been known to sit down and write in 150+ notebooks all in one shot. :P

Lately, the teachers have been working to create new posters and visual aids for their classrooms, so, Jessica has been drawing posters as well.


This one is supposed to be of "everyday" English words (and required an entire pencil eraser to complete! Lol.).


Good news was, I knew exactly how to draw a desk, because we spent three days building desks for two different schools when the short term team was here last November. Definitely not the secondary use that I thought I would get out of all of that hammering!

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You Know....

You know you have been on the Kenya internship for a while when:

- You show up at school and are immediately put to work at a table that has just recently been cleared of the books that your parents brought*, books that are now sitting on a shelf in the corner, with the memory verse posters that the other girls on your team have made

- Your team mate has perfected the art of skillet cookie making

- You tell kids that you are going back to your house, and they look at you with huge, worried eyes, asking if you are going on an airplane

- People don't believe you when you tell them that you can't draw, so they put you to work drawing posters anyhow**

- You realize that you have been wearing the same single pair of flip flops and the same two black skirts for thirteen consecutive months

- All of your conversations about "when we go back to America" center around food

- You have conversations about "when we go back to America"

- You hesitate every time over the words color/colour and airplane/aeroplane

- You find yourself telling someone that their keyboard cover, "will keep the ants from crawling into their computer," as if that were the normal reason for purchasing such an item

- The kids at "your" school use your name as a general term for white, brown haired, females

- You follow a cow to school until right before the village, where it shies off into the "forest" by the river, and the only odd part is how fat the cow was

- You answer to "white person" and "teacher" just as often as you answer to your name

- It feels like it can't possibly have been an entire year since last Lent, until you realize that you are thinking of Ramadan, not Lent

- Random men ask you to watch their donkeys***

*(books at school)

**(clothing poster)

***Melissa was standing outside of a shop, near one of the primary schools that we have been involved with, waiting for a matatu (public transportation van), so that she could get back to our house, when a man came up and asked her to watch his donkey and cart while he went in to buy a bottle of pop.

So, she did...a random American, standing by the side of the road, holding the lead rope for a donkey cart, that belonged to some random, skirt wearing man, who was inside drinking a bottle of pop.

Sometimes, I think that we don't realize how strange our life is.

(not the donkey or cart involved in the story...)

Adventures in the Desert

So... sometimes, people do things that are blog worthy, just after I have written a post about a particular subject.

In this case, Melissa decided to spend her past-curfew, evening hours cooking chocolate chip cookies. Yes. Cooking them. As in, in a skillet, on the stove, she made cookies for us. (See, we do do useful things during our "non-ministry" time... just give me a few minutes -- or maybe days -- to figure out how making cookies helps to spread the kingdom... lol.)

Luckily for me, she blogged about it herself, which gave me time to write about other things.

Totally unrelated picture of a mosque along the road between here and Nairobi.

The Backbone of Justice

Looking at the situations that humans have created across the globe, it can become easily overwhelming to try and sort out any type of potential solution. But, there are ways to break down the situation into smaller, more manageable chunks.

Justice has a backbone, and every vertebrae must be in place in order to create a solution that can stand on its own. The vertebrae are:

SUSTAINABILITY: “Simplify; simplify; simplify.” – David Thoreau
If there are not enough resources on the planet for every person on the planet to live the way that you are living. It is unjust for you to live that way.

ACTION: “Washing one's hands of the conflict between the powerful and the powerless means to side with the powerful, not to be neutral.” – Paulo Freire

RESPONSIBILITY: Our daily actions and choices have consequences that go far beyond us. We ought to be living in a way that owns those consequences.

COMMUNITY: In order to impact other lives in a way that is long term positive, we have to be touching other lives.

GENEROSITY: If we give only what we have to spare, there will never be any hope for an equal distribution of the world’s resources.

MERCY: If we give only to those who “deserve it,” all that we are doing is feeding into systemic injustice that will continue to pull people into its cycle.

SERVICE: Human values are only spread through human contact with other humans. Skin touching skin is an acknowledgment of the other person’s humanity.

EDUCATION: Without the vocabulary, the questions can not be asked. People generally don’t act unless they have something to react to. Tell them.

If you can honestly address each of those vertebrate, the odds are incredibly good that you have found a viable and just solution to the situation.

About His Father's Business

I was reading in the second chapter of Luke this morning, and I was struck in a new way by the section where the twelve year old Jesus was left behind in the temple.

How often do we, as Christians, do the same thing as Jesus' mother and father? How often do we go with Him on "spiritual" business, maybe a yearly missions trip or conference, and, when we are finished, simply turn around and go, expecting that Jesus will come with us, that the depths of His presence that we felt will stay constant, no matter where we are?

It is never long, maybe a day or a week or a month, before we realize that He is not where we thought that He was. He has no followed us, not back into our accomplishment focused American lifestyle. He has not done what we thought that He would.

Like His parents did, we search for Him until we find Him, back in the place that we came from. We chide Him and show him the bruises on our knees from constant prayer and the well worn pages of our Bibles, thumbed over in day after day of faithful reading, all of it our anxious attempt to search for Him. We expect an explanation, surely He meant to come back with us, and something merely hindered Him.

But, instead of comforting us or commending our faithful search, He simply looks back at us, our frazzled, worried selves, and asks two simple questions.

"Why did you seek me? Did you not know that I must be about my Father's business?"
--
Next time that you feel like you have lost Jesus somewhere along the road, go back, and look for Him among the last, the least, and the lonely. He will be there, going about His Father's business.

Luke 2:41-50

Battling Boredom

One of the interesting things about having a new team of students here is getting the chance to watch them go through some of the same things that we went through, one of those things being a cultural difference in the understanding of time.

Unlike in America, where things are -- ideally -- always scheduled out and there is always a plan in place to get as much use as possible out of each moment of the day, life here tends to happen when it happens, and there is nothing wrong with an afternoon spent simply sitting and not "doing" anything other than passing the time.

As crazy as it seems to them now, they will eventually get to a place where a morning spent taking pictures of our supervisors' kids is a good morning.

(All pictures belong to Laura)

And, where getting a picture of Jessica not making a face is an exciting accomplishment.


For now, they still need things like slip n' slides in the desert (not such a good idea as it sounds like...packed dirt is hard) to keep them occupied and entertained -- we still enjoy such things as well -- and I can't say that I blame them. I was bored enough when we got here that I wrote a book in order to keep myself busy. Lol!


Slowly, though, perhaps without them even realizing it, they will adjust and grow more comfortable with boredom.

As evidence of the fact that our perception of time has changed, Laura, originally one of our most time conscious, "go, go, go" type personalities, has been known, in recent months, to spend a good hour sitting on the floor in our front room, tossing a candle back and forth, as a small group of us talk about "nothing" while we wait for the power to come back on (Believe it or not, there actually is logic to the timing of the rationing.) so that we can finish the things that we are "supposed" to be doing.

(things like updating blogs, writing newsletters, prepping for ministry, writing papers, and researching for various projects)

It will be interesting to see what we do with ourselves when we get back to the States, where there are not nearly the same number of stray hours to fill.

Do One Thing

In his book, The Translator, Daoud Hari describes a refugee camp on the Chad-Sudan border of the Darfur region in this way. 

“Familiar smells and the low rumble of a great crowd greeted us as we rolled down the windows: babies crying but also children laughing and running after us, stretching out their fingers to touch ours, mothers calling for their children to be careful, the crunch of bundles of firewood being unloaded from the backs of donkeys, the braying of those donkeys, the smoke and smell of a thousand little fires, of spiced and mint teas brewing, of hot cooking oils and overheated, dirty children. A gauze of this sound, smoke and dust extended over the tangled nest as far as one cared to look, except where the women wore their beautiful colors, which stood out through the sticks: clean and bright reds, oranges, yellows, brilliant blues and greens. The women of Africa, as the world knows, have a genius for color, and they decorated this place with themselves, as they always do.”

With the world's focus on Haiti, it can be easy to forget that other crisis situations across the globe have not righted themselves overnight.

For the month of February, do one thing to help Sudanese families living in Chadian refugee camp.

Save a jar or a plastic water bottle that you would have thrown away, and use it as a collection bowl for stray change. $15 in loose change can provide an energy efficient stove that helps protect refugees from the violence they face simply trying to gather wood for cooking fires.