Chasing the Wind

December 31, 2005

Today’s Swahili phrase: Mungu aku bariki, meaning “God bless you.”

Woke up this morning and fixed a group breakfast. Staying in a compound with very considerate Christians is a blessing – every helped with breakfast preparation and cleanup almost to the point where were were tripping over each other. We were almost too helpful. Afterward we had a 30 minute devotional to start our day and began with Philippians. It was a good choice for our devotionals; Paul is writing in Chapter 1 about preaching God’s word and regardless of why Christ is preached, whether false motives or true, that it is still cause for rejoicing.

Before I go on, let me fill in some pictures from yesterday. Here’s a picture of our bunk bed / mosquito netting / duct tape engineering. I’ve learned a new trick today – just click on the image if you want to see a larger picture. Saves on bandwidth. 🙂

Hey, not bad. Mosquitoes (pronounced ‘mo-skwit-os’ here) generally suffer from a lack of education and probably won’t be able to figure that out.

We piled into the van which is now far more comfortable since all the luggage has been removed, and we headed to Deliverance Church. I didn’t know it at the time, but this van was home more than the compound we stayed in.

When we arrived at the church, we were all stunned at the reception. Children had lined up by the hundreds and were cheering and applauding when we arrived. Here we are inside the gate, while the children wait outside.

During the month, the Deliverance Church fills their water tower from a local well that was dug during a previous mission trip. The church now has outdoor showers and toilets, and they provide bathing water for these neighborhood children, many of them orphans. The very young, 5 and younger, need help getting in and out quickly, so we have bars of soap and burlap rags to scrub the kids. After, the church leadership provides a little dab of petroleum jelly for them to rub into their skin to help with the dry, ashen color their skin takes on during the month. We spent the whole morning here; I think someone estimated 500 children but I think that was a little on the high side.

Afterward, the church cooked up a big pot of ugali. Ugali is sort of a corn cake; it’s made by boiling water and stirring in crushed maize until it’s thinker than mashed potatoes. To me, it sort of tasted like a very weak corn tortilla with the texture of a very think cornbread. Here’s the minister’s wife and you can see the pot of ugali behind her.

Serving the ugali was interesting. The ugali was scooped out of the pot and plopped on a plate which was handed to a volunteer who handed it to the next volunteer and so on, starting with the back of the room. Maybe 15 people handled the plate passing it from one to another, starting at the back of the room. They didn’t have enough plates to go around, so the kids ate quickly and handed their plates in so they could be reused for another plate of ugali for another kid.

Afterward, we took a tour of the neighborhood behind the church. We caused a commotion – mzungus (white people) don’t visit Kitale often, and certainly don’t visit the housing areas. And English isn’t widely spoken, but all the kids know a few phrases like “How are you?” and “I’m fine.” It was quite a sight to see 50 children running up the hill toward us, waving their arms above their heads, yelling, “I’m fine! I’m fine!” And when we whipped out a camera, the kids almost trampled us to get in the picture.

Although later we would visit people in even more need, we were struck by the living conditions. No water or sewers, no electricity, no services of any kind. These houses were some of the best construction in Kitale.

After the tour, we headed off for dinner at the Pine Club (we had a choice of either Chinese or Indian food again), then to rest for a couple of hours.

But it’s New Year’s Eve! So late that evening we piled back in the van and joined the church for a midnight rebuking and encouragement. I have to admit I hadn’t acclimated to the accents yet so I had a lot of trouble following the sermon. The sermon is preached by two people, one of who translated instantaneously. The preacher may preach in either Swahili or English and the other person translates on the fly. It’s a very vocal service. We found out that New Year’s Eve is one of the most crowded times for the church as everybody wants to come and be forgiven for their sins over the last year and make a fresh start on next year.

We arrived at the bunk house tired and decided to sleep in late before tomorrow’s New Year’s Day service.

I probably already mentioned this, but I’m typing all of this from sparse notes and memory. I know there are Kenyans and missionaries reading this, so please feel free to drop a comment below correcting my memory or adding even more detail. I’d appreciate it very much.