New People!

The new team is not in town yet, but they have officially landed in Nairobi and are getting ready to take a bus here tomorrow morning.

Meanwhile... we have been concocting a miniature Amazing Race for them to complete on Wednesday morning.


Maps are a little scarce around here, so we drew one for a class a while back. Of course...our mad ninja skills at eyeballing distances, mean that it is precisely according to scale...or not. Lol.

Do One Thing

Learn.

Everyone knows that Reservations operate under different justice systems -- after all, that's how get the "good" fireworks for the 4th of July, isn't it? But, what do you really know about tribal justice systems?

Today, do one thing. Set aside thirty minutes, and honor America's first neighbors by showing that you care enough to learn.

A Little Explanation

Underlined words like these are hyperlinks that take you to other cool places. If something I say doesn't seem to make sense, look for underlines.

Odds are good (in theory) that there is some sort of an article that will give a better idea of what I'm trying to say.

For instance...

In the case of the chocolate bar, it is not the fact that you are eating chocolate when someone else might not be able to that is injustice.

It is the fact that Hershey’s has documented human rights abuses, that include the use of child and slave labor, and they have not yet moved to find a way to address those issues. So, if I sponsor a World Vision kid AND buy Hershey’s chocolate, I am essentially speaking out of both sides of my wallet.

With one side, I am saying that children deserve the right to go to school and to play and to be protected, but, with the other side, I am saying that they only deserve those rights if my rights to free trade (not FAIR trade) chocolate are taken care of first. Obviously, that’s not what most people are thinking when they buy a chocolate bar, but, regardless, that is the message their actions are sending, and, intentional or not, that is a form of hypocrisy.
Justice doesn’t necessarily mean that we all live exactly the same lives. It means that me trying to get what I want is done while making sure that I am not taking advantage of your position and hurting you.

Moral of the story? Hyperlinks are cool.

Stories

It’s crazy, sometimes, the stories that people have.

On Thursday, my team got to go and meet with a man who was, for many years, the head elder of the Munyaya tribe (one of the unreached people groups in this area).

He was in an accident early on in our internship, and we were able to help pay for some of his medical bills, but we still had not actually ever met him.

In the common style, three of the walls in his front room were taken up by upholstered, FIRMLY stuffed couches – enough seating for the eleven us of us, plus himself – and the fourth was covered by a large, cabineted (Is that even a word?) entertainment center with a small television and a drape blocking the view into the back bedroom.

We sat and drank chai (tea) and watched a video of a ceremony where he was granted a religious honor. (I think. I was sitting near the end of the entertainment center, so my view of the screen was…not.) And then, he told us stories.

We learned that, if you are ever going to shoot an elephant, you have to hit it right between the eyes, any higher than that is, “just like hitting the radiator.”

And, he told us how he remembered the hills near one of the local schools being formed by bomb blasts as the Italians and the British fought during World War II, with the smaller planes coming down “like rabbits” to drop their bombs and then jump back up to safer altitudes, long before there were any local schools.

After the war, he joined the army as a sharp shooter, back in the days before Kenya had earned her independence and, even though he was not educated and did not speak English, was repeatedly promoted.

Eventually, after a stint of leading hunting parties for foreigners, he ended up back here and, basically, took it upon himself to bring his people up to the same standards that he had seen in other parts of Kenya.

He built schools, brought in teachers from other tribes (the British, as well as the early Kenyan government, had intentionally neglected the development of this area as a way to prevent uprisings by the majority Somali populations), and started an irrigated farm; and one of his thirty children was the first of any of the Tana River peoples to earn an university education.

How's that for an impressive life story?

An Extra Picture, Just Because We Can

Lest you think that I am living in some uncivilized sort of a place...

...we're so civilized here that even the goats know how to use the toilet.

And So We Come to the End of the Week

1) - 5) Hanging out before and after the Christmas meal
2) The green things are the bags of food staples that we prepared on Christmas Eve

Saturday

1) - 4) Enjoying the smell of food while the Christmas meal was being prepared

Friday

1) Chopping meat for pilau
2) Stirring Katchumbari in a laundry basin
3) Serving up the meal Somali style in large dishes
4) Eating off of one of the large platters

Thursday

1) & 2) Enjoying a ride in the school van on Christmas day
3) The mosque across the street from our house

Confessions From a Twenty Year Old

I've discovered over the years that my gut instinct is generally to not look too far ahead in life. The future just kind of sits there, half forgotten, something to head towards but not examine too closely.

Somehow, though, I've always had a next step, always known where I was going.

Recently, the fact that I will be leaving Kenya in just a few short months has finally begun to sink in, and I've realized that I'm not sure what my next step is.

God has been clear that I am supposed to stay Stateside for awhile, but I have been wrestling with Him quite stubbornly -- and ridiculously. Who am I to tell an all knowing God that He doesn't know what He is talking about? -- when it comes down to the details.

Obviously, I am still learning the lesson that Mary seemed to have understood.

“Just imagine what Mary was actually saying in the words, ‘I am the handmaid of the Lord … let what you have said be done to me’ (Luke 1:38). She was saying, ‘I don’t know what this all means, but I trust that good things will happen.’ She trusted so deeply that her waiting was open to all possibilities. And she did not want to control them. She believed that when she listened carefully she could trust what was going to happen.

“To wait open-endedly is an enormously radical attitude toward life. So is to trust that something will happen to us that is far beyond our own imaginings. So, too, is giving up control over our future and letting God define our life, trusting that God molds us according
to God’s love and not according to our fear. The spiritual life is a life in which we wait, actively present to the moment, trusting that new things will happen to us, new things that are far beyond our own imagination, fantasy, or prediction. That, indeed, is a very radical stance toward life in a world preoccupied with control.”
—Henri Nouwen

Wednesday

1) - 4) Weighing, bagging, and tying bags of beans, maize flour, and sugar on Christmas Eve, to pass out after the Christmas meal in the village