What do you DO?

Just for the sake of my mother, who is constantly asking for "boring details" about life here. Here is a rundown of my day today (Sunday).

Church service at the Anglican church down the road that me and Rebecca have been attending starts at 7:00AM and goes for an hour. We normally eat breakfast after we get back. Today, that meant "Weetabix."

Apparently it's a British thing. It's super dry and crunchy (it comes out of the box in "cakes" that are a little bigger than my palm, and you're supposed to eat two to form a serving :-/) until you put milk on it....then it tastes like soggy cardboard. Really not sure who thought this one up. Needless to say, it requires a lot of sugar.

After breakfast I took care of my plants in the yard, had some Jesus time, listened to the newest Bethel podcast, and washed two loads of laundry by hand.

Each of us has one day a week that is "ours" to do laundry, since we only have enough clothesline space for one person at a time. Sundays are my day. We also rotate through a chore list, so, after I did some catch up stuff on the computer and talked with my mom on Skype, I swept and mopped the front half of our house.

Rebbeca made some noodles for lunch, so I snitched her leftovers, then washed another load of laundry -- I was lazy last week and only washed a few things, so there was a lot today... :)

I'm writing a blog post now (about 2:30PM), and, when Ashley gets back to the house, we're going the market to do team food shopping. After we get back, I have Ephesians homework due for class tomorrow and a ministry plan for the week that needs to be written up. At some point I'll make dinner -- probably a tuna sandwich -- and try to Skype my family before they take off for church, then I'll read/write/hang out with my team until we all head for bed/the boys go home.

Other days can vary incredibally from week to week, but that's a fairly steryotypical Sunday.

Bored yet, Mom?

Always Learning

Now that we no longer have official Swahili classes, things in the language learning department are starting to look a lot more varied amongst the different people on my team. All of us are learning just be being, by talking with people and by trying to listen in on other people’s conversations, but, because the Swahili here is so rough – imagine trying to learn “grammatical” English from someone in the deep south, or from a recent immigrant who has constantly been surrounded by other recent immigrants – we’re also doing a lot of independent study.

We have a couple of Swahili Bibles, a first and second grade Swahili textbook, and an English-Swahili Swahili-English dictionary that is getting well worn around the edges. We’re constantly being told that Swahili is not a “rich” language, like English is, and it’s true. It was invented to be used as a trade language, and, even still, it lacks the depth and variety of vocabulary that is really needed to talk about anything other than matter of fact daily events.

There are very few – relatively speaking – adverbs or adjectives in the language. For instance, the word –kali can mean loud, hot, spicy, bitter, fierce, harsh, and probably several other things that we haven’t run into yet. That…can lead to some interesting translation issues. (There is gate down the road from us that is painted with the words, “Mbwa kali” – fierce dog – but the “translation” into English painted below it says, “Hot dog.” Oops. Lol!)

Even still, though, there are tons of words that we don’t know. Every once in a while, someone will pop out with a sentence where, although you understand all of the grammar, there is not a single actual word that you recognize. At which point, you stare blankly; the repeat themselves; you continue to stare blankly, and…the conversation lapses into English as they try to explain what they just said.

It’s amazing to me the amount of information that can be crammed into a single word. For instance, walioitafuta means “they who searched for it” and walipomwendea means “when they went to him.”

Wa-li-o-i-tafut-a = noun prefix for 3^rd person plural-past tense prefix-emphasis marker meaning “who”-object marker for “it”-verb stem “search”-verb cap

Wa-li-po-mw-end-e-a = noun prefix for 3^rd person plural-past tense prefix-time marker for “when”-object marker for 3^rd person singular-verb stem “go”-passive tense suffix “for or “to”-verb cap

Yep. And, almost all of those pieces, plus every other part of speech, change depending on the noun class you are in and whether a word is singular or plural. (And there are twelve noun classes!) At least the rules always apply – unlike English! Lol.

Trash Burning

Video Blog

Smart

I think that I've mentioned this before, but, English in Kenya is very different from English in America. The slang and vocabulary are totally different, but the grammar itself is different too.

Little words like "it," "up," "a/n," and "the" tend to just disappear from sentences. Words like "he" and "she" are avoided as much as possible, because they don't exist in Swahili, so people get them mixed up all the time, etc.

They are subtle little things that, sometimes, you barely notice, but we have stared picking them up more and more, even when we are speaking "American English" to each other in our own houses. For example, see if you can adjust these Kenyan sentences back into "normal" sentences.

1) The bus will pick you at 6:45.
2) You can pick the bus at the matatu stand.
3) I would like Mala if you have.
4) This one (nodding towards a girl who is dressed nicely) looks smart today.
5) What is your best color?

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Starting Early

School in Kenya starts way earlier than it does in the States. Here, kids that are going to "get a good education" start school when they are three years old -- some places as young as eighteen months. (Can you see the littlest girl in the front row? That's about how old she is.)


Little kids who are so tiny still that they have to be lifted on and off of the bus, because the steps come up to their waist, catch the bus at 6:00 in the morning and don't leave school until 4:00 in the afternoon.
I'm nineteen years old -- almost twenty -- and I think that that is a long school day. It's crazy to me that they go to preschool for that long every day. (They do get to take a nice long nap in the afternoon, though, which doesn't sound half bad...lol.)

Shame

One of the biggest differences (and the hardest for us to watch without saying anything) between the school system here and that in America is the way that students are disciplined.

The entire culture here is based on shame, and as a result, the discipline system is shame based, as well as relying almost entirely on corporal punishment. Teachers are allowed to cane students, smack them on the cheek or the back of the head, hit them on the top of the head or the shoulder, make them kneel on the floor, pinch their cheeks, ears, or the bridge of their nose, etc, and some of them do it quite liberally.

It's not just for misbehaving, either. A student who doesn't know an answer that they "ought" to, or who gives a wrong answer, can be smacked repeatedly until they get the question right. The punishment is never harsh enough to actually harm the child. The intent is simply to shame them into working harder.

Needless to say, I did a lot of tongue biting in the process of watching classes. There is something gut twistingly wrong (at least from my Western worldview) about watching a child who obviously struggles with numerical dyslexia have his ear pulled until the teacher gives up on getting the right answer out of him -- an answer that he is incapable of giving even if he wanted to.

They love their teachers, (I don't want to give the impression that these people are monsters. They are simply teaching the way that they have been taught to teach.) but it is really hard to sit there and watch the kids throw up their arm and flinch away from the expected blow -- especially because you know that many of them are beaten far worse by their parents when they are at home.

A few of the teachers are absolutely amazing, though. One of the male teachers in particular is careful never to put down the kids, hit them, or shame them in any way. It is an amazing relief to watch him teach, and, guess what? Even when he doesn't shame them, there is better order kept in his classes* than those of just about any other teacher.

*Each grade has their own classroom, but the teachers from grades four through eight rotate so that they have a different teacher for each 45min period.

Back to School

This last week was our first “practical week,” meaning that, instead of having classes, we were out doing ministry all day. In this case though, we ended up in classes anyhow – just not our own!

Every morning we caught a school bus at 6:45 and rode out to school with the kids.

One of our friends is the school’s director, and our site supervisor works in the same compound as the school, so they decided that we should get to know the students and teachers better than we already did (Some of the girls go out every Sunday to join the boarding kids for Christian Union – kind of like Sunday School).

From 8:00am to 5:00pm, we sat in classes with the kids, ate lunch with them, and learned playground games.

A few highlights of the week:

~I got to teach class three social studies – nothing like teaching social studies in a culture you’re still learning…

~One of the class six boys came up to Laura and told her, “Chuck Norris is my grandfather.” (cue an endless stream of Chuck Norris jokes running through all of our heads :P )

~One of the teachers introduced himself to Melissa as, “My name is Mr. Hassan. I’m single.” Really…good to know. Not interested. Thanks.

~We got to eat lunch with our fingers the first couple of days – apparently, you’re supposed to bring your own spoon. Oops.

~We each learned at least six different Kenyan playground games

~At least four of those have songs involved that get VERY stuck in your head – whether you understand what all of the words are or not

~Me and Melissa taught the class fives how to make puppy dog faces with their fingers and, in the process of drawing eyes on some of boys’ fingers were told, “Teacher, it’s no good. They are black already.” …That led to an interesting conversation about how the palms of our hands were close to the same color as theirs…

~I was asked by several different classes for the names of Obama’s family members. (Anyone know his father’s name? Cause, I certainly didn’t J)

~In the process of trying to convince Laura that he was an American, one of the class seven boys told her that his last name was “Smith.” (Not bad for a kid who’s lived in Kenya all his life…)

~We all realized just how Kenyan our English is becoming

Adventures in Trousers

Prudence and her baby brother

Hanging out with Ellie, Kalin, and Nevaeh

Playing ultimate frisbee

Playing with the baby

Chilling in our room at the guest house

Nairobi makes your feet dirty, even with shoes on :P

Rebecca having Jesus time

Ummm...yes...don't use these bushes...just in case you were wondering...

I Would Kill You

Wow. I haven’t updated this thing in forever. Sorry guys.

We’ve been learning all sorts of things about living in this culture – specifically about operating as a follower of Christ in this culture.

There are just things that we don’t have to deal with in the States, because the underlying culture is so different. For instance, a young man that they old team was discipling asked Bryce one day – in our hearing – what would happened if he decided to become a Muslim again. He wanted to know what the Christians would do to him. Bryce asked him, “Well, Josh, what would you do if I became a Muslim?”

Josh, who can’t be more than sixteen or seventeen years old, looked him straight in the face and said, “I would kill you.”

For Josh, who has grown up in the Muslim faith that permeates this region, that was simply the obvious answer. If someone is abandoning their faith, you are honor bound to deal with the heretic, even if it means killing them.

Bryce had to try and explain that, when Jesus said that we are to love our enemies, that means not killing them, even when they do something as “unthinkable” as changing faiths.

Conversely, this area is unique in that, although 98% of the population is Muslim, believers, so long as they come from traditionally Christian tribes and are not Muslim converts, are allowed to carry Bibles openly and meet and worship however they desire without being harassed.

There is actually an unofficial “network” between the sheiks and the pastors that is designed to prevent any religion based violence from cropping up in the area. The level of peace between the two, without either feeling like they are compromising their convictions, is actually quite incredible and totally a God thing.

Preparing Dinner

What should we do first??

They don't look like this when you buy them from the grocery store...

You want me to dip the chicken in that water??

These feathers are really slippery!

Now what should we do???

We could chase Melissa with a chicken...

Or, we could make earings...

A Mile Wide

I don’t know how many times I have heard the phrase, “The church in Africa is a mile wide and an inch deep,” but I am starting to realize more and more just how true it is.

It’s not just that pastors and leaders don’t have Bible training or that they are trying to study and preach in a language that is not their mother tongue, although that is a huge issue. (One of our friends said that her pastor recently preached a sermon encouraging women to “hang in there” and remain faithful and obedient when their husbands beat them, without ever addressing the husbands or mentioning that they perhaps shouldn’t be beating their wives in the first place.)

The church in Kenya is shallow, though, even in places where the pastors have had training, good training.

Even in Nairobi, where a HUGE majority of the population claims Christianity, only 16% of people actually attend church, and many of those will tell you that, “I am a Christian, but I am not born again.” Church elders in some places don’t even claim to be “born again.”

They fully understand – or think that they fully understand – the implications of that statement, but it doesn’t seem to bother them. Pastors in every church that I have been to since getting here have started their message with, “Hello. I am Pastor/Bishop/Brother such and such. I am a Christian, and I am born again.”

In America people might tell you, “Oh, yes. I’m a Christian. I believe that there is a God.” Here they tell you. “Yes. I am a Christian, but Jesus Christ is not my personal Savior.”

Part of the reason that there is so little Christian witness in the North Eastern Province is that the Christianity that is in the rest of the country is so weak that it stands no chance against the Islam that is so completely a part of people’s lives.