I did some laundry, washed the floor, answered some mail and listened to some music. I didn’t go to the school today. I met with Mwololo and we discussed the cost and dimensions of a closet for the classrooms to store the supplies sent by IHM. A “fundy” or day laborer will build it for about 10,000 shillings ($125) It costs more since there is no soft wood in the town and will have to be made using better grade lumber. I feel like I am spending a lot of money these days and the funds are low. But the money does no one any good sitting in a bank. More will come, I pray. Tomorrow I head to Nairobi for school supplies and to pick up MS OFFICE from a friend. Mwololo’s computer got a nasty virus. All the letters of every page of anything are strange symbols or wingdings. I had to reinstall Windows and we lost OFFICE. So anyway, today I had some time to think. It also rained hard, which helps me think and adds to my melancholy. It always comes down to my thinking about what I am learning. As these three quick months have now passed, what has God been trying to teach me? There have been times when things were more obvious. I am still convinced that God realizes I am not that smart and things need to be made simple for me to “get”. I find consolation in Jesus’ choices of apostles, not the “sharpest tools in the shed” I am guessing, The disciples would get His point and then loose it, see what Jesus was doing and teaching and then ask questions that proved they missed the point. I can be like that. So what did I learn? One thing I learned is that there are degrees of poverty. When you feel you’ve met some truly poor people, there are those who are poorer. I thought initially that the children with AIDS in the Children’s Home in Karen were the poorest of the poor, Then I went to the Village in Kitui and thought these children who were brought from nothing were worse off. I spent time in Kibera and saw the mud and muck and wondered how people could live like this. Then I met the Masai in Athi, with their houses made of cow dung, their hygiene deplorable and water undrinkable, Then I traveled to the north – to Turkana, where people are naked and starving silently and no one knows or seems to cares. There are places I have never seen in Kenya, places in other countries like Sudan and Somalia where there is no doubt more sickness, and more violence and paralizing fear. I know these places are there. In Africa I have been able to go deeper and deeper into the pain of the world. But even in these places of pain and fear, there is somehow life and there is love. I have gotten accustomed to not having the THINGS, those nice things that make life easier. But with or without them, life is about more than the stuff. Like we already knew, life is about the relationships. Life is about Mary and Naomi, Rachel, Benerd, Daniel, Chris and Fred, Jonah, Benson, Diane and Gladys, Judy and Zach and Lomori, Joseph 1,2 and 3. It is about Erin, Mickie, Spence, my mom, Mwololo, George, Paul and Pascal, Moses, Moris, Eunice, Mwendwa, Pastor, Kathy, Karen and John and Ngumbu. It is about all the people I know and love and have let just pass by. That is what I learned and what I know and what I live on each day. These relationships are important - like food. I need them to survive and without them, I am not alive. Without them I am not human. I took/take them for granted. If you do also – stop it. And so I come to the end of another segment of my African adventure. There is sadness in leaving these people again, but yet a sense that I will return and that these relationships, that have been such a gift to me, will live on and on. My family increases, not bound by age, language, nationalities or class. They are a part of me now and when they are in pain, I am in pain. Maybe it is called the Body of Christ.
I have learned more about death. There seemed more deaths this year – at home and around me in Kenya. It happens and will happen to me – sooner than later. I better be about living these days and let go of anything that sucks the life from me.
“What do you want to be when you grow up, little boy?”
“Alive.”
I have learned more about death. There seemed more deaths this year – at home and around me in Kenya. It happens and will happen to me – sooner than later. I better be about living these days and let go of anything that sucks the life from me.
“What do you want to be when you grow up, little boy?”
“Alive.”
