Ministering at the displaced persons camp

We thought carefully about what to wear this past Sunday. We observed the local pastors in suits, ties, and dress shoes earlier, so Jim dressed accordingly. Out of respect for local customs and expectations, I wore a long skirt. Our friends' four-wheel drive vehicle lurched and bumped down the red dirt road. Jim, a wife and her children, three nationals and I held on. The nationals--a young couple expecting their first child and a dedicated young preacher came with us to minister to these desperate people. The further we went, the more obvious the effects of the drought became. Close to the valley, local farmers' crops were failing. A wheat field was hardly recognizable to an Oklahoma girl. The crop was scraggly and hardly knee high.

We turned on to the Mombasa highway and traveled a short distance to the camps. Glen steered his truck on to a scorched plain, past row after row of quonset hut-shaped tents. Each tent bore the blue letters "UNHCR". Habitat for Humanity had begun to build a few small stone huts for these displaced persons, but these incomplete dwellings were in the minority.

We drove up to a weathered acacia tree with bird nests hanging like sad, tattered purses from its branches. The ground was bare save for tiny blades of grass struggling on. Children and a few care worn adults gathered by the tree. Some benches made from slabs of wood four inches wide would serve as our pews.

Jim began to panic a little, for it looked as though his audience would be mainly children. How was he going to convert his message into a Sunday school lesson? No worries, for as soon and the children and youth began singing and playing a drum, the adults came to worship.

My friend and I sat by the cu-cus (shoo shoos), the grandmothers. A little boy sat next to me shivering in a thin gray wool blazer and sweat pants. Both his plastic sandals -- the blue and the pink--were broken. I put my arm about him, but his bony little shoulders shivered still in the chilly, dusty wind. One little girl bore her baby sister tied onto her back with a blanket. My friend said the older sister was probably six years, but I would have guessed four. Kind, pregnant Margaret took the baby and held her the whole service. Strictly segregated, the men sat on one side, the women on the opposite.

The service began and group by group they sang and praised God with abandon -- the little ones, the youth, the men, and the women. Finally Jim spoke with John the Kikuyu pastor interpreting. What could Jim say to the poorest of the poor, the most desperate of all?

He spoke of God shaking the kingdoms -- America and Kenya, and of the Kingdom that can never be shaken. He spoke of our place of refuge in Jesus. Hebrews 12:25-28. Heads nodded as Jim spoke. There is a Kingdom that no one can take away.

How can I explain this camp? Imagine that groups of southerners, disgruntled with our presidential election took out their displeasure on "northerners" in their community. Attacked these outlander neighbors and looted and burned their homes. Imagine that the survivors wound up on parched farmland near your home -- and that no one there is particularly glad to see them.

Pray for this land and these souls. Pray for rain. Physical, spiritual rain.

Miscellaneous Matters: Plants and Oddities

Gale's Ongoing list of Plants
In Our Yard:

Hibiscus
Wandering jew -- Not in a hanging basket. Ground cover!
Rosemary --Three bushes -- two are 4 ft. tall.
Candlelabra tree -- Has trunk similar to elm tree, but succulent foliage. Sap is acidic and will burn. Horribly painful if it gets into eyes.
Two rare cedar trees -- some of few left in Kenya of this size. Cedar of Lebanon size
Acacia tree
Some sort of daisy.
A purple daisy-like flower that closes at nighttime.

Oddities
You know you're in a different place
When you can confuse the ruts in a road with ditches.

When it's not a groundhog at the side of the road, but a mongoose.

When there is a listing for "Sheepfold residence" in the Department Contacts Sheet.

Jim and Gale's New Outpost

Once you get past the ruts and bumps on the road to our station, you come to a gate guarded by Masai young men. These tall, handsome young men with striking white smiles intend to keep us all safe on the upper station as they man the gates and walk the chain link and barbed wire perimeter. As you enter our gate, you see stone school buildings, chapel, and homes. Ours is a duplex that we share with another couple. Our home is small but comfortable.
We heat with a fireplace that we use early in the morning and just before bedtime. Electricity is fairly dependable, but brownouts and blackouts can happen. The gray water from our washing machine goes directly through a pipe through the wall into a barrel and is used for watering our yard and flower beds.
If you are a courteous guest, you will call out "Hoodi" as you open the door and come in, and then you will remove your dusty shoes. Jim and I will greet you in our slippers, because we don't wear our shoes covered in red dust inside either.

On our way to Kijabe

Sunday morning we went to Nairobi Baptist to find the vice president of Kenya and his visitor, singer and song-writer, Ron Kenoli in attendance. Kenoli led the music worship and the choir and instrumentalists joined right along. But still, we were all staid Baptists and not as animated as Bro. Kenoli would have liked. Beautifully dressed people in both traditional African and western professional dress filled the large auditorium.

Our dear friends took us to an outdoor Ethiopian restaurant where we ate Ethiopian flat sour dough bread. We tore off pieces of the rolled bread and used it to pick up meat, greens and a garbanzo bean dip. We had to ignore the frank stares of the other restaurant patrons. Jim and I were pink and different. Stares are not considered rude or unusual.

After lunch, we shopped at a NakuMatt -- Wally World in Kenya. Different packaging, different prices, adjusted expectations. Our sugar was brown -- we like that. An attendant weighed each vegetable or fruit before we took it to the checkout. Our laundry soap came in a clear plastic jar.
Our friend gave himself plenty of time to get us home before dark. We would have to go through three checkpoints before we turned off to Kijabe. We drove past securely gated affluent homes and squalid slums. Each shanty town had its small church buildings. Grazing goats, donkeys, and sheep were staked by the roadside. Somehow farmers kept flocks of geese and turkeys there as well, but you wondered how many strayed in front of speeding vehicles. As we topped the escarpment, we saw colorful stands at scenic overlooks offering Maasai blankets and other tourist fare. We turned left and worked our way to Kijabe station.

Entering Africa

I kept watching the personal screen provided for me on the British Air 767. I clicked through the various entertainments offered, but I always returned to the map option that showed us where we were in airspace, how long to our destination, how quickly night was covering Nairobi. We landed, and all of our AIM contingent whizzed right through immigration and customs, though it took 2 hours for all the luggage to appear. The Nairobi winter night was cool and damp as Jim and our drivers loaded the baggage. Soon Jim, our AIM friends, and I were tearing down the Mombasa Highway to the the guest house while Jim and our driver bantered and joked.
The next morning we woke to the cries of an Ibis. We soon found that in the Kenya winter wonderland there are flowers everywhere and on a scale that West Virginia gardens cannot match. Lantana shrubs, bougainvillea, mother-in-law tongues (lush in beds, not pots), cannas. Our walk to nearby Nairobi Baptist confirmed that. Flowers simply everywhere.