Flash Floods

I don't think that I could begin to count the number of times that I have tried to explain to people here that, during the hot season, my place in America is hot like G-town. G-town in hot, dry, dusty, mostly sunny, and often windy.

Sound familiar?

There is, though, one difference between Tri-town and my other desert home. Here, when it rains, it rains hardcore, and, if it comes down for more than a few minutes, there is a good chance that it will flash flood as the water pours downhill towards the river and then overflows its banks.

Our house is high enough that the flooding does not affect us (minus an unexpected overnight at the house where I was babysitting, because the road home was flooded), but the boys' compound and house get a decent amount of water, and the floods made a nice mess out at one of the primary schools that we have been very involved with, knocking over portions of the fence and filling the boys' dormitory with almost 2.5 feet of water.

By the next morning, the waters were gone and only mud was left behind, but can you imagine if this happened every time that it rained in the Tri-Cities?

Western Kenya

We spent about two weeks in Kenya's Western Province, taking a class and doing a little bit of site seeing. All in all we got a much better idea of why the Kenyan government considers a post in North Eastern Province to be a disciplinary measure. Lol.

In contrast to our skirt wearing in the desert, we spent a week sitting around in the grass in jeans -- shorts for the guys --and essentially not wearing shoes, unless we left the compound to go to town. (We did wear skirts to church on Sunday, and, just for the record, riding side saddle on the back of a bike in a long skirt is not as easy as it looks!)


"Picnics" on a patch of cool grass and scattering across a compound for morning quiet times haven't exactly been normal internship experiences up until now, but we took full advantage of them for a week and a half.


Basically, we got to enjoy acting a little more like Americans than we do in G-town (minus the flush toilets and running water that we do have here, but not there), with all of the games of ridiculously silent Capture the Flag, tag with the neighbor kids, and general running around like crazy people inside of the compound that go along with that.


The day before we left, we took a bus out to the Kakamega rain forest, where the twenty-three of us -- plus guide -- walking through the forest pretty much scared away anything that wasn't a monkey or a butterfly. Although, we learned some interesting facts about why the Blue Monkey is called a Blue Monkey. Ask me when I get home...

And, a group of us hiked a little farther up to a view point, where we suddenly went from rain forest to bare rock and pine trees, definitely a strange sensation. I don't think that I've been that high up on anything since our first Amazing Race in Nairobi, back in last January.

After much bumping along -- or alongside -- more wonderful roads, we got to Kisumu and Lake Victoria. The lake is not know for its great cleanliness, so we spent more time taking pictures of it than actually touching it. That and watching two of the guys climb a huge tree with ridiculous thorns/horns -- and catching one of the new guys when he decided to do a trust fall out of said tree.

The cold nights (at least, cold compared to our air conditioner-less desert) were well worth the exchange for jeans, "grass" -- that was really cheat grass and ground cover -- and fresh, fried fish from the Ugandan portion of Lake Victoria.

Even with all of that, though, we were more than a little eager to get back in town for our last couple of weeks of internship. The Kenyan government may consider this place to be a disciplinary post, but we're rather fond of it. :D

Plans

So…I promised that I would let you know what my plans are for after school.

Honestly, when it comes to the long term, I’m not completely certain, other than that, at some point, I'm headed to Nicaragua – let me know if you want to come with and work with street kids! Lol.

Short term, though, I have a much clearer picture.

Since long before internship, I have been passionate about social justice issues and the idea that the church, for its own health and survival, needs to actively be engaged with the world’s injustices. There are few subjects in the Bible – both Old and New Testaments – that receive more attention than the subject of justice.

There has to be more to Christianity, more to life, than what the American church generally has to offer. Social justice isn’t just justice for “the poor,” it is also justice for “the rich,” in that it brings reality to the consumer driven life that has so enveloped our culture.

Some of you have seen my thoughts on the subject pinned down on paper and ink, but I believe to the core of my being that my response needs to be more than that. For at least one month this fall, I need to live and breathe social justice issues and invite other people to live and breathe them with me.

Imagine, if the passion that comes after a ministry trip could be sustained and tempered for just long enough to form into cool conviction. Imagine if there was more to being a Christian teen than doing "church things" on Sundays and Wednesdays. Imagine if it cost something to follow Christ.

Imagine if the cost was worth it.

Detox

As I was talking with my mom a few weeks ago, she mentioned how she felt like she was running in circles, trying to go a billion directions at once, as she attempted to keep on top of one social justice issue after another.

Really, she was right.

Trying to take in everything at once, trying to change every facet of your life to reflect justice, is kind of like finding out that you have a build up of toxins in your body, and then trying to get rid of them by throwing up your internal organs.

Just like ejecting your stomach out your mouth would essentially kill you, “fixing” everything about your life in one go is a good way to essentially kill off any passion for social justice. The problem isn’t that everything that American culture has ever taught you is wrong, the problem is that your system, my system, has been numbed by a slow build up of injustices.

Our consciences have become toxic.

The body is detoxed slowly, by introducing healthy replacements for the toxins and allowing the system to clean itself out slowly and naturally. By slowly, one decision at a time, introducing justice into our consciences, by introducing mercy and compassion, by replacing inaction with simple actions, we can detox consciences that have become toxic with injustice.

Today, do one thing to help your system detox.

Find a physical or email address for someone with whom you haven’t spoken for a while and restart communication.

Social justice means considering the welfare of your neighbor, even in something as simple as sending an email or putting a letter into the mailbox. It won’t take long today, and, in the long run, it is far more pleasant than spewing up your stomach.

Imagination - take two

While we were at one of the local primary schools, waiting to start Bible club, a friend asked us to print some things off for her. They were just lesson schemes, and a simple worksheet for each of the kids to fill in. But, it was the first printed worksheet that I have seen used in a classroom in my thirteen and a half months here, and it was a strange shock of, "Oh, yeah. That's how people teach in America."

I had to fight with myself for a minute, against a very American response of wanting to "improve" their school by getting them more things. After spending so much time learning to gradually see both the strengths and the weaknesses of the school system here, and to just take it for what it is, it was surprising and more than a little disconcerting to find myself, however briefly wanting to make them like Americans.

It took a few minutes to figure out what it was that I was really wanting.


It wasn't a matter of getting them "real" posters, or putting in classroom bins full to overflowing with school supplies. or even printing off worksheet after worksheet for them to use in class. Hand drawn posters can be used as teaching aids just as effectively as store printed ones can -- perhaps more so, because they can be tailored to match the things that the students already know and don't know. And, creativity can happen without access to construction paper, pipe cleaners, and tubs of glitter -- no matter what the sellers of such items might try to tell you. :)

Places don't have to look like a well funded American school in order to be good schools.


What was bothering me, turned out to be the same thing that has been bothering me since the first time that we took a tour of the school. Somewhere in my mind, computer printed worksheets are connected with teaching at CHECK. And, CHECK means using the imagination as part of the learning process.

While there is a place for financial support to help pay the school fees for sponsored students, the "thing" that I was wanting to give them, wasn't a "thing" at all. Unfortunately, imagination and a love for learning are not exactly something that I can go to Nairobi to buy, or have sent in a package from America. We've done a lot of work in that department, but it takes time to change the entire ideology behind an education system, and time isn't exactly something that is in excess on a sixteen month internship .

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Crash Course in Culture

I know that I already took you on a tour of where I live, but, it’s about time that I gave you the resources for another crash course in culture.

Ready? This one is a little more work on your part, and a lot less work on mine – ignoring the fact that I have spent thirteen and a half months, so far, trying to figure all of this out.

Read The Translator and The Crescent Through the Eyes of the Cross and watch the opening scene of The Fiddler on the Roof. Then, try to mush all three of them together in your imagination into a single culture. None of the three are actually descriptions of what life is like here, but, in different ways, they all are.

The Richland and Mid-Columbia library systems both have The Translator, although neither of them have The Crescent Through the Eyes of the Cross -- a church library might have a copy, though.

Enjoy.

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Home to Tell Stories

So, not that we have a running total or anything…but, in seven more weeks (give or take a few days), I will be home, and able to tell you guys all of the stories of cool things that God has done that, for a variety of reasons, I haven’t blogged about. And, believe me, He has done some cool things, that I’m excited to tell you about face to face.

I’ll be back in town from Wednesday, April 28th through Sunday morning on May 8th, and, for once, you might end up wishing that Jessica would just shut up already. Lol!

After that, I’ll be back at school for four months, until I graduate at the end of August, when I will once again be back in Tri-town, for longer this time, with my crazy ideas about social justice. :D

Be excited.

(More information about the things I am scheming up for this Fall is on its way…)

Poverty

Numbers this big are hard to visualize. Faces are hard to forget.

More American's

Last week, we had another team from the States come to work and to see what it going on here – actually, all from the church that is on the same campus as our school in Minnesota. They worked to lay the foundation for a church / girls primary school just down the road from us and did to test run to gauge the desire for adult literacy programs in several of the local tribes.


Only a few of us, myself not included, were really involved with them, but, from the stories that my teammates have told me, it seems like things went well, and God used a variety of circumstances to open several villages to the possibility of further adult literacy training (ALT), even by Christians – who would, hopefully, be able to build bridges of trust and friendship with their students.


Four of the team members, though, were actually the son, daughter in law, and grandchildren of a couple who came from Indonesia to teach classes for us. The girls, who are three and four, stayed at our house for one afternoon, while their parents were working at the ALT sights, and they entertained us with a “juggling show,” as well as discovered all sorts of ways test out Ashley’s new found comfort with children. (She may or may not have been licked on the face by a “puppy.” And, she may or may not have a thing about slobber and germs…lol!)


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Identity

It’s easy enough to pick Americans out of a crowd, not so much by sight, but by the sound of them. Just listen for the loud boisterous ones. (Not saying that that is a good thing or a bad thing, just that Americans are loud in a way that people of other nationalities don’t tend to be. It’s just the way we are.)

It would seem strange to us, though, to be able to tell at a glance, before a move was made or a word was spoken, whether a person is a US citizen or a Canadian, no passport or paper id required.

Not so much in East Africa. Here, a persons forearm can, literally, tell you whether they are Kenyan or Tanzanian. Both countries administer a childhood vaccination for tuberculosis that leaves a scar, maybe half an inch long by a quarter of an inch wide, even through adulthood, but, while Kenya vaccinates in the left forearm, just below the elbow, Tanzania uses the right arm.


In Kenya at least, it has become so much of an identifying mark, regardless of age, culture, or tribe, that there are actually “clinics” in this area where refugees, both the legal and the semi-legal, go to have a doctor scrape away at their arm, just so, until it forms a scar almost identical to the one from the vaccination. Just like that, a small scar can identify you as a citizen and help protect you from the police when they start looking for people to deport back to their home countries.

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30 Second Justice

While the polices and social impacts of aid food make it both a lifesaver and a blight on the local economy, there are other, potentially more just, ways that you can use your internet time to propagate small acts of justice.

Sites like this one use your clicks to support the literacy programs that can literally change lives both in the US and around the world.

Literacy opens doors to knowledge, and knowledge gives the power that people need to change their own lives, which then provides opportunity to perpetuate the cycle of justice.

Even on the relatively slow internet connection that we have here, this literally takes thirty seconds out of my day. Besides, who’s going to argue against reading, right?