Mexico to Kenya

It’s 9:00pm in Nairobi, which means it’s 1:00 in the afternoon back in Mexico, people are just getting home from church.
  Kibera is strangely quiet at night for over 1,000,000 people.
  There are no roosters here to keep one awake at night, but the constant trips to the
choo (loo) seem to do that just fine.
  If in Mexico it’s Montezuma’s revenge, what is it in Kenya?
  It seems that
wazungu (white people) get revenge taken on them somehow almost everywhere in the world that was subject to colonization.
  I didn’t realize that Kenya became an independent country just 43 years ago – there are still people that remember the struggle for independence.

Here in Kibera, the largest slum in Africa, Muslims, Christians, the odd sects and the non-religious live together in peace, the common enemy being the thugs (gangsters) that run the streets at night.
  I have been feeding my biggest obsession here, trying to learn as much Swahili as possible.
  Who wouldn’t want to learn new languages?
  (The obsession was awakened on the plane here, sitting next to a lady from Belarus that knew Russian and German…between her German and mine, we communicated hilariously well.) Necessary Swahili words?
Hapana – no
. Asante sana– thank you very much
… and
Pole sana, sisemi Kiswahili – I’m very sorry, I don’t speak Swahili
.
  Mungu ni mjema.
  God is good.


So Africa. I don’t even know where to start.
  The first day I was here, a guard named Jackson came by in the morning to inform Allie of why he couldn’t come to work.
  He had been keeping watch over an orphanage here in Kibera and some thugs didn’t appreciate his presence in the neighborhood, so they beat him with pipes and machetes. We prayed for him, and Allie sent him home to rest with some pain med.
 That afternoon I met a beautiful muslim girl named Aradha, a friend of Allie’s, and a lovely Christian lady named Consolata.
  Both run small general-goods stores, trying to supplement their family’s tiny income. The next day I held now-happy babies at another orphanage in town, most had been abandoned and/or stricken with AIDS. 
 

My senses are assailed in so many ways every day.
  Stunning clouds, strange trees, myriads of flowers, ragged street boys (playing soccer with a new ball provided by the team here), a haunting call to prayer from a near mosque in the early morning, the acrid odor of sewage and of piles of garbage as I walk down the railway through the middle of the slum. There are streams of people, some with vacant eyes, some leering, some with burdens on head-top, men holding hands (common and acceptable), uniformed school boys and school girls (separate, of course) that shout “
Mzungu! How are you? How are you? How are you?” as we pass.
  One of my favorite scenes so far has been when Joe, a FYM, took a school girl’s jump rope during recess (held on our street) and jumped to the screams of laughter of the 60-some girls there. 
  


Friday Allie and I accompanied some friends of hers to Nakuru, a 3 hour drive from here to experience Safari.
  Our driver, also named Jackson, is a 29 year-old Massai who was extremely informative as to landmarks, culture and safe driving techniques. His father practiced polygamy, he himself hasn’t paid dowry for his wife yet, and he knows 7 languages.
  We saw the Rift Valley from heights of sublime splendor, saw many zebra (after the 4^th sighting, the novelty wears off), a lake full of flamingos, grazing water buffalo, warthogs, rhinos, and impala… but sadly no
simba (lions) or
twigga (giraffes).


Tomorrow? Tomorrow I have the privilege of teaching on Acts, taking a walking tour of Kibera with pastor Timothy, an ardent evangelist from what I understand, making
Chipoti (sorta like a tortilla) with Consolata, then off to dinner with the family we accompanied to Nakuru.


If you pray for me today, pray also for Kenya that the people will see the glory of the Lord, that Kibera will come truly to life as it is found in Christ alone, and that the change of hearts will see the beginning of the end of corruption, the end of tribal suspicion and separatism as the people are united in one Spirit.