The second chapter of the Book of Acts

I'm back on US soil! Well, US pavement. I'm not sure I've seen any soil yet. I'm in New York City. After arriving at JFK airport yesterday afternoon, I got on the Air Train to the Jamaica Station in Brooklyn, where I got on the E train and rode for about an hour till I ended up at 23rd Street and 8th Avenue on the Lower West Side. Amazing how that works. From there, I walked about four blocks to the Desmond Tutu Center at the General Theological Seminary where I'm staying for two nights, and where the wedding of Adam Shoemaker and Courtney Davis will take place on Saturday. Just couldn't bring myself to pay $50 for a cab from JFK (how many orphans in Burundi would that feed for a week?) when I could have such an incredible New York experience for $7!

But what a shock! Miles and miles of pavement -- and tracks. More than most African countries right here in one city. Thirteen miles in all of Sudan. How many in NYC??? Mind boggling.

I had been up for about 48 hours when I arrived in New York. Short little catnaps on the plane (actually planes -- three of them), but that's all. From Kigali I flew to Nairobi, where I had a seven hour layover. That was a long time in the Nairobi Airport. Then the flight to Amsterdam, where we arrived at about 6 am on Thursday, Amsterdam time, and where I would spend another seven hour layover. But seven hours in Amsterdam is enough time for a mini European vacation, so that's what I did. I got on the train into the city, and helped Amsterdam wake up. I walked several miles through its charming but slightly trashy streets (what a contrast to Kigali where they are swept and pristine). I ended up in the Leidseplein area where I got some breakfast at a local pastry shop, then walked over to the Van Gogh Museum; but I was too early to get in, so I went a few blocks to the StayOkay Youth Hostel where George and I had spent a couple of nights last year, brushed my teeth, charged my phone and PDA and read for a while. Then back to the Van Gogh, where I found a long line of screaming schoolkids waiting to get in, and a line of big people, too. It was going to take a half hour just to get through the line, and I only had an hour left by this point until I could safely leave the museum, get back to Centraal Station, and on the train back to the airport in time to make my flight -- so I missed the Van Gogh this time. Except for the large prints that decorate the outside of the building. Oh well. It was fun to be in the city all the same.

And then the long flight back to the US.

You're probably wondering why I named this post "The second chapter of the Book of Acts" by now. (Just to get you hooked?) Actually, it's what I woke up thinking about this morning. My mind is racing, actually. I woke up around 4 am (that's 11 am Kigali time). Carolyn arrived from Andover last night around 10:30 pm, and we got to bed a little before midnight. It was so wonderful to see her after a whole month apart. When I woke up, I realized that I had been dreaming about Africa all night -- at least it felt that way. I'm despairing of ever being able to adequately process the whole experience, and am realizing how much harder that's going to be here. I'm in New York City, for God's sake! It's a different world! And I'll soon be back in Andover, playing with puppies, preaching sermons, pastoring people, and puzzling over capital campaigns. How do I do that?!

One possibility is this blog, where (I'm told) a few people have been looking in from time to time during my African experience. I'll confess, however, that it's a little intimidating to think of people (some of whom I don't even know and who don't know me) looking in on my thoughts here. But I guess that's what anyone who writes (whether blogs or books) has to face. And it's probably why I've never done either until now. I'm terrified that I'll express an unperfected thought, and someone will discover me for who I really am. (Oh no!!!) Or come to some conclusion that I would want to express in a different way if I were in a two-way conversation with them. (Yikes!!) People might fail to grasp the subtlety and the brilliance of my complex mind. (Arghhh!) But this is part of the growing experience for me. I'll get over it.

Back to Acts 2 for now. On Sunday I was asked to preach in a church in Bujumbura, Burundi. It's a new church, n0n-denominational (or perhaps they would say post-denominational in a post-colonial sort of way), and very international (in a sort of post-modern kind of way). (I'm also terrified that readers won't get my terrible and not always very funny humor.) This church is post-everything, in other words. But not really. They have the "worship team" that so many American evangelical churches have. (That's a group of people who stand up front with microphones in their hands leading praise choruses at the beginning of a service, for all of you Episcopalians and other folks who don't know about these things). It's very non-liturgical (post-liturgical?), and (to be honest) a lot like the churches so familiar to American evangelicals back here at home. But the pastor, Emmanuel, has a vision for a different kind of church in Bujumbura. He is concerned -- and rightly so -- about the lack of education and training among so many people starting churches in his country, and his vision for this new church is to create a community among younger, well-educated people, who will get theological education and training in church leadership through an institute they want to create, and then go out and help raise the level of knowledge in the churches in their country. Otherwise, many of these churches are simply mimicking the worst of what they see from American TV evangelists preaching a "prosperity gospel" message.

Anyway, Emmanuel told me that during the season of Pentecost they're working through the Book of Acts, and he had preached on Acts 1 just the week before. So he asked if I would do a sermon/teaching on Acts 2, which I was happy to do. I know that chapter. Almost by heart (at least a few choice verses of it). Acts the second chapter formed the whole basis of the soteriology and theology (that is, the understanding of salvation and of God) in my Pentecostal background. There's a lot more to say about that at another time.


So, I preached on Acts 2 this past Sunday. Emmanuel had told me that many of the people in his church, who have come from various backgrounds, are very focused on the gifts of the Spirit as experiential phenomena, but that he is trying to help them see things from a broader perspective. I took his cue, and spent my forty-five or so minute sermon -- yes, Christ Church folks, they WANTED me to preach for forty-five minutes! :) -- to talk about not only what happened at that first Pentcost, but what it meant. The failure of so much of pentecostal teaching is that it goes over from the "descriptive" to the "prescriptive" -- taking what happened as recorded in Acts and making it into something that has to happen for everyone who wants to be saved -- and in the process, perhaps even missing the whole point. So I steered away from the spectacular elements of the story to focus on the meta-narrative -- how the Pentecost story becomes a new "framing story" not only for the church, but for the world God is seeking to re-create. It's the counter-narrative to the Babel story from Genesis 11 -- where God confuses the languages of the people of the earth, who try to set themselves up as God. If Genesis 11 is part of the etiological myth (as biblical scholars say it is) -- (that's just a fancy word by the way for "how things got to be the way they are"), then Acts 2 forms part of the new myth of how we're getting from where we are (confusion of languages, cultures, ethnicities -- all the things that divide and separate us as the people of the earth) to the new kind of humanity God is bringing into being. Confusion of tongues turns into "everyone hearing the good news in his or her own language." People being divided and separated into groups and categories turning into "all being of one accord in one place" and "having all things in common with one another" and "distributing the proceeds to any as they had need" and "breaking bread with glad and generous hearts." It's a picture of the new humanity envisioned in Jesus' message of the kingdom of God.

It wasn't all that brilliant a sermon -- pretty basic, really. But it did give an opportunity to introduce a different kind of biblical hermeneutic (sorry, "method of intrepretation") to people whose tendency it is to create doctrines out of details. But Emmanuel loved it!

Now what really is sort of post-modern in his approach to church is that after the sermon, there's a Q&A time. He's trying hard to get people thinking, and out of the mode of blind acceptance of what a preacher up front says. He threw out some questions, and had people stand and give responses to how this understanding of Acts 2 might help shape their own lives and the life of a society that has been so divided between Hutu, Tutsi and Twa. It was pretty amazing, actually, to see and hear how they were really getting it, and what they thought they might do if they were really to begin to live into this new "framing story" and away from the old one defined by Babel.

On the plane yesterday, I dipped back into Brian McLaren's book, Everything Must Change: Jesus, Global Crises, and a Revolution of Hope, now that I have gotten to know Brian personally through the Amahoro conference. (As I said in a previous posting, "Read this book!") In the early chapters he writes of his first experience in Burundi a few years ago, and the challenges of helping pastors there come to terms with the social dimensions of the gospel. He writes eloquently of the problem with religion that focuses on how to get to heaven without ever addressing the systemic social and global realities of injustice, poverty, and the ecological crisis; the hollowness of doctrine apart from the the context of real human lives; the futility of any sense of salvation apart from the lived realities of people on the planet right in the here and now. And those issues are certainly not unique to Africa. It is a knockout book drawing on some of the best contemporary biblical and theological scholarship, as well as some of the best critical thinking on our social and global challenges. And yet it is written in an accessible style that even I can understand. When Brian gave his talk toward the end of this year's Amahoro conference, one of the panelists seemed almost stunned. He said, "You must have been thinking about these things for a long time!" He has.

Better post this before I start rambling. ("Start?" you say!) It's the jet-lag. That's my excuse anyway.

Heading home

Tomorrow's the day. I'm leaving Kigali and beginning the long journey halfway around the planet for home. As eager as I am to get home, I'm feeling kind of sad about leaving this place. I really do love it here in Rwanda.

Since my last posting, I have also been to Burundi for two days. That was a very moving experience. Going from Rwanda to Burundi is something like crossing the border from the US to Mexico. Burundi is the poorest country in the world. But I had a wonderful time there. It is also one of the most dangerous countries in the world -- at least until today, when a peace agreement was finally signed with the last of six rebel groups, the one that has been staging attacks on the capital in recent weeks. I like to think that my presence there this weekend had something to do with the sudden outbreak of peace. It's much more likely that the people I was with who are building peace from the bottom up had much more to do with it. The people of Burundi are tired of conflict, and they have suffered much. They deserve to live without fear, and with hope for their future.

I have never felt more welcome anywhere than I did in Burundi. After driving for hours and hours, we crossed the border, bought our visas, and immediately faced crowds of people crying "muzungu, muzungu, give me money." You get used to looking at people and smiling, but then quickly turning your attention elsewhere, knowing that giving something to them is as likely to create more problems for them than it will solve. We watched as one person in our group gave some money to one little guy, who was immediately accosted by about three others. He became the object of resentment and hostility until he finally agreed to let them in on his windfall. It was the equivalent of about 20 cents that he had received. He thought he had struck the lottery.

One of our hosts in Burundi said to us, "Burundi's problem is not poverty. It's not violence. Those are the symptoms. The problem is bad leadership." One of the most encouraging things I observed everywhere we visited was the focus on leadership development. From the orphanages that take in infants to the Youth For Christ program we visited, to the churches that are being planted throughout the country, everyone is talking about developing a new generation of leaders -- leaders who have integrity, character, the independence to tell the truth, and a selfless devotion to the people of Burundi.

Having said that, poverty and violence are real. One of the roads we traveled on several times was considered to be the most dangerous road in the world -- especially between 1993 and 2003. It is still patroled by armed military about every 500 yards, which is the only reason it is still not the most dangerous road in the world. On that road people walk, and walk, and walk -- from village to village, to and from markets or from home to church as they were doing on Sunday. The women wear the most beautiful, brightly colored dresses, with bundles balanced on their heads -- walking for miles and miles along this road. The road is still closed from 6 pm till 6 am every night.

We visited two orphanages with children that just steal your heart! The first one we visited had 24 beautiful little children, dressed nicely, who were awaiting our arrival. They greeted us with big smiles and lots and lots of hugs. Sweetest little kids you can imagine. I wanted to bring them all home with me.

Bujumbura is the capital. It is a city on the western edge of the country, right on Lake Tanganyika. Across the lake you see the mountains of Congo across the lake to the west, and Tanzania as you look south down the lake. I first heard about Bujumbura in a Michael Palin travel video a few months ago. (He's one of the original Monte Python guys -- played Brian in the Life of Brian. And he does really great travel videos). This was the one about his travels from the North Pole to the South Pole, traveling all the way down the continent of Africa by land. He comes to Bujumbura, from where he gets on this unique boat and sails all the way down Lake Tanganyika to Zambia, I believe, about a thousand miles. When I saw Bujumbura on that video, I thought it was absolutely one of the most exotic places I could imagine, and never imagined that I would actually be there only a few months later. But here I was. We ate lunch at a beach restaurant on the Lake, right where all the local Burundian yuppies were hanging out, playing volleyball on the beach and having lunch. It was a marked contrast to everything else we saw in the country.

That evening we were welcomed to the capital by the same youth group that had provided entertainment at the Amahoro conference in Kigali -- traditional Burundian drummers that you would not believe. They did the same kind of welcome ceremony that this group or others like it would have done for their king a century ago -- highly aerobic dancing, to the most amazing rhythms coming out of very large drums that they carry on top of their heads in procession. Each drum weighs about 50 pounds, and I haven't a clue as to how these guys balance them on top of their heads, while playing them with big sticks waving out in front of them, and even kicking their feet up over their faces to hit the drum. This was the Youth For Christ drum corp. Not like the Youth For Christ group I belonged to. We received a solid hourlong (at times frenzied) display of dancing and drumming. I have no idea what the neighbors thought. We felt very special.

In addition to our wonderful Burundian hosts, we met lots of Canadian, British and other ex-pats working in Burundi as missionaries doing everything from church planting and evangelism to peacebuilding programs that are making a very big difference in the lives of people there. Some truly amazing people. I also got to see our own Massachusetts Episcopalian, Jody Mikalachki, in her new home here. Jody is working for the Mennonite Central Committee teaching in a school out in the mid section of the country. This former tenured professor of English at Wellesley College and former nun has just arrived a few weeks ago for her latest adventure, and is now learning Kirundi and will be starting teaching in the village school in the next few weeks. Her fluent French will certainly be a big help here. Almost everyone is fluent in French in addition to Kirundi.

I preached at a new church on Sunday that opened only a few months ago. Without saying a whole lot about that experience (which was a really good one), there was a young man who was translating throughout the service for the people who attend from various backgrounds. He was equally fluent in Kirundi, Swahili, French, and English (and perhaps others, but those are the ones he used on Sunday). From his accent in English I was sure that he had studied in the US. I asked him after the service, and not only has he never been to the US, but he has never been out of central Africa. He studied English at Bujumbura University. Amazing. And he is not unique among Africans I have met on my journeys this month. It is not uncommon for people to speak four, five, six languages -- fluently. I feel so stupid.

It's past 11 pm here right now, and I haven't even gotten us back to Kigali. And I've barely talked at all in my blog yet about the conference that was one of the main reasons I came to Africa. There is so much to say, I hardly know where to begin. It will take me a long time, much longer than I can take right now.

When I wake up in the morning, I'll do some final packing, and be headed to the airport by about 11 am. Taking off from Kigali will be bittersweet. I have fallen in love with this place and these people -- in both Rwanda and Burundi. It is hard to imagine never coming back. I have developed relationships that I know will be lasting. I feel as if I have a new home.

But, for now, I must say goodbye to Africa. :(

Just a few snapshots

I've grown impatient -- with this computer in the conference center lobby. It's painfully slow, which is why I haven't blogged in a couple of days. Takes an hour just to check email. I'm also at a bit of a loss for what to write tonight -- there's just so much to say. And, I think I'm running out of steam, too. I'm very aware that within the week I'll begin to focus not on my next African destination, but on home.

Meanwhile, there's still so much to absorb, so many people to meet and talk to, people with whom this may be the only chance I get in my lifetime to know and to connect with. Every new person I engage in conversation has an incredible story to tell and I want to hear them all. The speakers here at Amahoro have been really interesting and challenging, but I'm getting just as much out of the one-on-one conversations I have with people from all over Africa, Australia, and North America. Oh yes, and there's one Japanese guy here, too. I went to introduce myself to him yesterday, speaking Japanese with him for a while. Meanwhile, he had been sitting there next to an Ethiopian couple speaking Amharic with them. He lived in Ethiopia for nine years. He's fluent in Kinyarwandan, too, and has lived here in Rwanda for the past three years. Just one example of the interesting people you meet here.

Most of them are Africans, of course. Too many stories to tell here, however. You'll all have to come yourselves and have this experience!

Yesterday was a very challenging day. We had one session with an incredible Rwandan woman named Frida. She spent about an hour telling us the story of her life in 1994, the year of the Rwandan genocide. It was absolutely the most fascinating, terrifying, gut-wrenching story I have ever heard, and one that is ultimately inspiring as well. Without going into all the details here (she has published her story in a book however, named Frida), she is a victim of the genocide, having lost all of her family members. She, too, was thought to be dead and was buried -- alive -- only later to regain consciousness and scratch her way out of the mass grave in which she had been thrown. Her story is one of survival, hatred of her Hutu neighbors who had betrayed her and her family, and ultimately forgiveness. The grace and poise with which she tells her story is amazing. She was the only person in the room not in tears.

Later yesterday, we heard from a Hutu woman who has come to terms with the reality of what her people did in the genocide, and has become a controversial and outspoken voice from the Hutu community for admitting their collective guilt and asking for forgiveness of the Tutsi community. She is from a prominent political family, some of whom had been involved for years in planning the genocide. She is engaging in this very public campaign of truth-telling as an act of confession and reconciliation, even in spite of the fact that the Tutsi-led government encourages people not to identify themselves any longer as Tutsi or Hutu, but just as Rwandan. Most people here no longer say whether they are one or the other.

Today we heard from a member of the Burundian Parliament who is from the Batwa ethnic group. They are a marginalized group in Rwandan and Burundian society (derisively called Pygmies), and he spoke of the need in these societies for reconciliation among all of the groups, including his own, which is easily overlooked. Tonight we heard from a group of three really interesting Latin American church leaders drawing on evangelical and liberation theology models of church in an unlikely kind of synthesis, but one that is really creating transformational communities of faith.

Lots of music and dancing here! One of Africa's award-winning musicians who has received three of Africa's equivalent of the Grammy is leading a lot of the music in our daily gatherings. We also were led in our morning worship today by Richard Twiss, an Oglala Sioux Indian from Oregon, and have heard from a variety of groups from Tanzania to Ethiopia to South Africa. At last night's dinner we had entertainment from a dance and drumming troupe from Burundi. Amazing stuff. I've got some of it on video.

Today we had some free time, and some of us went into the city center to do some shopping for souvenirs, sip lattes at a coffee shop, and then go to the Hotel Rwanda -- the one about which the movie was made.

These are just barely a few snapshots of my life here the past couple of days. I'm either too tired or maybe just too full right now to do very much serious reflection at this point, but I'll do my best to take advantage of the experiences I'm having, and let them sink in as deeply as I can. I know they are changing me -- I hope for the better -- and I'll do my best to share it all as I am able.

On Friday some of us will be traveling to Burundi. I'll be preaching at a newly established church in Bujumbura on Sunday -- an intentional community that is forming among the city's educated young professionals and expatriates. Had a really fascinating conversation with the pastor this evening at dinner. One more of the hundreds of amazing people here, many of whom will, I'm sure, be friends for life.

Amahoro

Amahoro means Peace in Kinyarwandan -- in the same sort of way that Shalom means peace, or Salaam, or Paz, or Heiwa, or any of the other hundreds of languages in which people express their deepest yearnings for being at one with the universe. It's the name of the gathering I'm now part of here in Kigali, Rwanda. And they are calling this a "gathering" -- not a conference -- because it's all about the conversation we're having with one another from all over Africa and many other places around the world. People have been gathering for the last 24 hours, and just this evening we had our first "conversation." Actually, there have already been hundreds of conversations -- interesting, challenging, enlightening conversations -- all day long. It's going to be a great week.

Amahoro-Africa is the result of the desire among a whole group of African church leaders (mostly from independent evangelical and pentecostal type churches, but also some Lutherans and Anglicans and Presbyterians thrown in) to move beyond what they refer to as the "evacuation gospel" to the gospel of transformation and reconciliation. In other words, take the focus off of "how do we all get to heaven some day in the sweet bye and bye" and turn our focus instead to how we bring heaven to earth right here where we are -- to pray and work for (as Jesus put it) "thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven."

This is a radical shift for some of these folks. It's the shift I started making over 30 years ago when I went through my own theological transformation. I'm really happy to be here supporting the effort and am learning a tremendous amount from all of them -- already! Last year was the first of these "gatherings" in Uganda, and this year here in Rwanda. Some of them expressed this evening how important it has been to them to have those of us from the West here to listen and learn -- not as people from the West have usually done which is preach to them and expect them to do all the listening.

The focus this year is on the gospel of reconciliation -- and the place is so important because of what Rwanda has been through and is still going through. We had some very poignant reminders today of just how tragic the history has been. We visited the Rwanda Genocide Museum, and then we visited two churches where people were killed en masse as they sought refuge in the churches. The museum put the Rwandan genocide in the context of the 20th century's other notorious examples: Armenia, Nazi Germany, Cambodia, Bosnia, and Rwanda. I've been to a number of Holocaust memorials, including Yad Vashem in Jerusalem and Auschwitz itself in Poland -- all of which have been extremely powerful experiences.

This one was right up there. Mind-boggling inhumanity. So incredibly difficult to imagine how human beings can be overcome by a group psychosis that allows them to engage in such brutality. The problem is that these acts have not been carried out by monsters, but by regular people -- regular people who have bought into fear: fear of "the other", "the enemy within."

We visited two churches where there were massacres, one a small Roman Catholic Church out in the countryside where Tutsi from the area had fled to, believing that surely the bands of murderous people roaming their area would not come into a church to kill them. They were wrong. Over 5,000 people were brutally hacked to death with machetes inside this church. The second church was worse. Not only were there substantially more people killed there (over 10,000), but the church leaders were actively complicit in the murders. Now, I had known that the church had bloody hands in the Rwandan genocide, but I had imagined that it was in a more passive way, just getting caught up in the hysteria of the moment with preachers exhorting people to defend themselves against the enemy, etc.

Wrong. This church was actually built with a death chamber under the sanctuary where even prior to the 1994 public genocide, for the few years ahead of that, the church leaders participated in the extermination of the identified enemies (the Tutsi) and had their bodies placed in a mass grave -- under the church. Murdered bodies, right under the very place where people gathered for worship. And behind the church were several large chambers built into the ground that looked almost exactly like the infamous barracks at Auschwitz that I saw just last year. This one, however, still has the skulls lined up inside to make the point even more graphically. A church that was every bit as much a part of the death machine as the godless Nazi concentration camps across Europe were a generation before. It was hard to imagine.

Rwanda has come a very long way in the last 14 years. A new government and a new constitution following the genocide, and a people who seem determined not to let this horrific past define them, have come together to try to heal this nation of its shameful past. There have been prosecutions of perpetrators, but some have gone free. There is also something like the South African "truth and reconciliation" process, which goes by a slightly different name that I'm blanking on at the moment. People sometimes still have to live side by side with the people who tried to kill them or who in fact were involved in killing their families and neighbors. Every Rwandan we have met, even those at the sites today whose family members had been killed, seems determined to move beyond the past.

This is the context in which we are here meeting to have conversations about what the gospel of reconciliation means. The Kenyans here are so painfully aware of how close they came in the past few months to such a scenario. I am here as an Anglican, very painfully aware of the divisions within the Anglican Communion around issues of human sexuality. I see the Rwandan demonization of the Tutsis as a cautionary tale for us when it comes to the gay and lesbian people in our midst. That goes not just for the Anglican Communion, of course, but for any group that wants to scapegoat gay and lesbian people. That's probably another topic for another blog.

It's pretty amazing to hear the stories already of the work people are doing in churches all over Africa and elsewhere around the world, doing grassroots work to build the kingdom Jesus talked about.

Gotta tell you (any of you who read my depressing account of my Goma experience yesterday) about the young Congolese guy I met here tonight. He is the only person here from Congo as far as I know. I went to him after the session to tell him I had just been in Goma. He grew up in Goma. He's 25 years old and working in student ministry in Uganda. I would give anything for an audio tape of our conversation, because he taught me so much. 25 and so filled with wisdom. I can't begin to capture it here, so I'm not going to try tonight -- but I am going to go back and have some more conversation with him, this time with my notebook in my hand. I turned 53 today, but I'm happy to be learning from a 25 year old who sees the world through the lens of his unique background and has so very much to teach me. If I can really learn it, I just may have a shot of creating a little more amahoro in the world. Gonna sharpen my pencil for that conversation!

Goma

Okay, now my heart is really broken. I've been to Goma and back, and I'm going to have to be careful what I write, because I'm not going to be able to describe what it was really like. It would take a better writer than me. And I'm not sure I want to try anyway. Or that anyone reading this would want me to either.

I spent a "dark night of the soul" last night after having spent the day going from one place to another all throughout the city with my host, visiting in people's "homes" and driving on its lava rock streets. I was depressed, angry, heartbroken. I didn't have internet access so I didn't blog, but I did write in my journal, so I'm just going to quote some parts of that here tonight. I've cleaned it up for all of you (expletives deleted). Here goes.

I came back to my room at the Bird Hotel after a very long day of visiting rhoughout the city -- and wept. I don't know how it is that places like this can exist on this planet. I'm tempted to feel that even God has abandoned these people. Hell was thrown up from Nyirangongo and spewed across Goma [this is a reference to the volcano that erupted here in 2002 -- you might remember a soundbite about it on CNN] -- and now these people are scratching out a living on top of hell's vomit.

I guess I knew that Goma would be difficult, but I had no idea.

Don't get me wrong. I met some very sweet people today. All the worse that such sweet people would have to live like this. The only people I can think of who would deserve to live like this are those who have stolen Congo's wealth. They deserve Goma. [Congo is one of the richest countries on earth when it comes to its natural resources. Unfortunately those riches have been stolen by colonialists and their successors.]

Martin wanted me to go to Zion Temple and to meet the pastor, Innocent Mundjiya. Innocent is doing some wonderful things in his care of widows and orphans in the city. Members of his church have taken in about 40 orphans -- and Innocent helps them, often out of his own pocket from the sound of it. He earns money by doing translation work for various NGOs. [His English is quite good. It's a good thing, because I don't speak French, Swahili or Lingala -- the three languages that almost everyone here speaks.]...

Charcoal everywhere in this city -- burning in the streets, being sold in small chunks by old women. Smoke in the air. Absolutely Dickensian -- but worse. There is nothing soft about this place.

Is anybody talking about family planning??? Babies and young children are everywhere. And the women are pregnant again. Six children in a home is normal -- in a home where no one has a job.

Seeing neighborhoods rising on the lava fields was more than I could handle. Miles and miles of people coming and going. Carrying water to places that have none.

Haven't even mentioned the IDPs yet [that's internally displaced persons -- refugees in their own country]. Went to a camp, just at dusk. Police officer was angry with Innocent. I thought I would at least have my camera confiscated -- thought I had insulted people by wanting to show their misery to the world. Innocent and others in our group were taken apart from me to get a lecture from the officer. Turns out he was reprimanding them for bringing me here, because it was not safe for me -- Mzungu (my new name -- "the foreign white guy"). Said I could be robbed, etc... Nice to be cared for by a Goma cop. We turned around and went back into Goma city, where we spent the next 2-3 hours after dark doing more driving, occasional stops to visit, etc. I was ready to be somewhere else.

I feel so much anger, at all the things that are wrong with this place. People aren't meant to live on top of lava!!! They can't grow things. There is no water. Cars are SO out of place here -- bumping over lava boulders everywhere.

On our way back into town we paid a visit to Apostle Petros' church (the World Harvest Mission Center, I believe) to borrow a PA system for Zion Temple tomorrow (as if they actually needed one -- they wanted it to be special for me, I think.) We went in (after dark and I'm beginning to feel uneasy in Goma) while a group of young people were singing in preparation for tomorrow's service. Arms were raised to heaven, sweet music coming from their mouths and their hearts. It was the one moment all day when I felt anything like the "presence of God" in this city. There really was peace in that place, and I was glad it was there. Apostle Petros and his wife were lovely people. He spoke good English and was very welcoming to me.

Ended up the evening at the home of Dominique, a very sweet man who is widowed with five children (one of them an orphan he took in). He fed Innocent and me a home cooked meal. Rice, beans, and a green salad and rabbit meat (both of which I passed on, as did Innocent). His hospitality and generosity were genuine. Lovely man, and his kids were as sweet as they could be.

"Mzungu" was cute at first. But I have to say, I'm getting really tired of it. I have heard it hundreds of times today. I'm very conspicuous in this place. I hear it from children and adults, too... The only other mzungu are UN people flying overhead in all the cargo planes that land at the airport.

I will go to worship with my hosts tomorrow at Zion Temple. I will carry many conflicted emotions with me as I go.

[end of quote]

I did go. Loud music, dancing, and very exhuberant preaching. Three hours' worth all together -- 9 am till noon. He asked me to speak to the people for a few minutes (I had declined to preach when he asked me yesterday, telling him I really preferred to experience their worship as it normally happens). I brought greetings from their brothers and sisters in Christ back home, and spoke of my deep gratitude for their hospitality. I assured them I would carry them in my heart always.

God has a really strange way of waking me up sometimes. After my "dark night of the soul" last night, I got up early for my morning prayers, after having slept about 4 hours. The first Psalm was 146:

Hallelujah!Praise the LORD, O my soul! * I will praise the LORD as long as I live; I will sing praises to my God while I have my being.

Put not your trust in rulers, nor in any child of earth, * for there is no help in them.

When they breathe their last, they return to earth, * and in that day their thoughts perish.

Happy are they who have the God of Jacob for their help! * whose hope is in the LORD their God;

Who made heaven and earth, the seas, and all that is in them; * who keeps his promise for ever;

Who gives justice to those who are oppressed, * and food to those who hunger.

The LORD sets the prisoners free;the LORD opens the eyes of the blind; * the LORD lifts up those who are bowed down;

The LORD loves the righteous;the LORD cares for the stranger; * he sustains the orphan and widow, but frustrates the way of the wicked.

The LORD shall reign for ever, * your God, O Zion, throughout all generations. Hallelujah!

And then, the first reading was Job 38:1-11, 42:1-5. Read it. It knocked my socks off, as it always does. It was there for me, just in case I might have imagined I understood or had a right to feel righteous in the face of the mysteries of this world and of creation.

Funny how the versicles and responses sound different from here, too:

V. Show us your mercy, O Lord;
R. And grant us your salvation.
V. Clothe your ministers with righteousness;
R. Let your people sing with joy.
V. Give peace, O Lord, in all the world;
R. For only in you can we live in safety.
V. Lord, keep this nation under your care;
R. And guide us in the way of justice and truth.
V. Let your way be known upon earth;
R. Your saving health among all nations.
V. Let not the needy, O Lord, be forgotten;
R. Nor the hope of the poor be taken away.
V. Create in us clean hearts, O God;
R. And sustain us with your Holy Spirit.

I don't understand Goma or very much of what I experienced there. I do know that in spite of my lack of understanding, and my horror that people must live as they do there, I did experience some measure of grace in the people who themselves found reason to look beyond themselves, to help those even more desperate than they themselves. I have a lot to learn from them, which is probably why I was supposed to go there.

I was glad to leave Goma, and step back across the border into Rwanda. I got on the mutatu (24 passenger bus) headed for Kigali. After a short distance we stopped in the middle of Gisenyi to pick up additional passengers. A controversy broke out on the bus, and voices began to be raised. I'm not sure what it was all about. There were two of us on the bus (a woman from Uganda and I) who didn't speak the local language and so missed the fun part. To make a long story short, the bus never left. I made attempts to get on two other buses, and finally made it onto one when someone realized there was no one seated up front beside the driver. So I got to ride shotgun for the three hour drive to Kigali. It was a beautiful drive, and I was VERY happy to get back into the city, where I got a cab out to the hotel where I will now be for the next 8 days at the Amohoro-Africa conference. Had a great meal when I got here, and I'm meeting really neat people from all over Africa. I really am looking forward to what's in store here.

Rwanda

Just the name is likely to send shivers up and down the spine of people whose only knowledge of Rwanda is what happened here in 1994 -- 100 days of absolute mayhem and killing, at the end of which a million people had been hacked to death -- the infamous Rwandan genocide. And it was genocide, by any definition. It was calculated, planned, and carried out with a specific intention to rid Rwanda of its Tutsi minority, against whom the majority Hutu had nursed hatreds having to do with the privileged status (perceived or real) of the Tutsi minority. As a percentage of the population killed, it was the worst known genocide in history. In addition to the one million deaths, there were at least as many internally displaced persons (IDPs) and refugees who fled across the borders to Congo and other surrounding countries. Others have missing limbs as reminders of the barbaric methods used to do the killing.

If you didn't know any of this about Rwanda, you would never in a thousand years guess that you were in that kind of place just by being here -- at least until you dig a little deeper, begin to have conversations with people, or (of course) visit the genocide memorials. Martin and I flew into Kigali last night from Uganda. The airport is a modern, beautiful place. Everything is clean in Rwanda. Its streets are swept. They have outlawed plastic bags to protect the environment (what do you think about that, Liz?!). I know, because when I arrived at the airport last night, I was carrying a couple of souvenirs I had picked up in Uganda -- in a plastic bag. I was not permitted to exit the airport with that bag in my hand.

I can't tell you how exquisite the natural beauty of this country is. I'm not sure I've ever been in a more picturesque place. Rwanda (at least all I have seen today while driving across the country) is a country of beautiful, rolling hills, cultivated in neat patches, with terraced hillsides that are just lovely. The people are busy, busy, busy -- working their fields, carrying their things to market, building roads -- and in the city, living their urban lives in much the way we do at home. Speaking of the roads, they're amazing compared to anything I've seen so far in Africa. We rode today on a mutatu (that's a small 24-passenger van/bus) from Kigali to Gisenyi, which is on the border with Congo. We arrived here on the shores of Lake Kivu, just in the shadows of Nyirigongo, the volcano that towers over Goma and Gisenyi -- yes, the one that unleashed its fury over Goma in 2002. What a beautiful lake! With beaches, and lovely parks, and a beautiful drive along the shore road with magnificent hotels (one of which I'm actually staying in tonight). Sitting in the garden of the hotel watching the elaborately plumed cranes dance around our table, looking out over the lake at sunset, you would have thought I was in some exotic tropical place fit for royalty.

I am. This is also Africa, lest I have left you with the impression that it's only about starving children, political violence, and lack of adequate schools and good governance.

Most of the rest of my time in Africa will be spent in Rwanda. I will learn a lot, I know, that I don't know about it yet, and I fully expect to see, hear, and experience the legacy of its incredible tragedy. Today on the mutatu, I sat beside a 37-year old Army commander, a Hutu (nearly all of the army are). We talked for over half of the 3-hour journey. He was very eager to share his knowledge of Rwanda with me, which was considerable. And even though he was eager for me to experience the peace and beauty of this place, he did not avoid its recent history. As we went through one town, he told me that ALL of the people in this area had been killed -- one of the most violent areas of the entire nightmare of 1994. He showed me the barracks of the army, from where the killing had been orchestrated. And yet, this town is now a bustling, beehive of activity. Hutus and Tutsis live together here. He emphasized how hard they are working to recover a national identity that does not break along ethnic lines. And lest it seem that this might be the self-exhonorating perspective of the perpetrators, I see the same feelings on the faces of the Tutsi. (And yes, you can tell the difference between the two groups based on visual characteristics.)

This is the very un-nuanced perspective of someone who has only been in Rwanda for 24 hours at this point. I know it is all infinitely more complicated than I can possibly perceive from my limited experience. The book by Peter Uvin that I'm reading is making that abundantly clear. All the more reason, then, to look forward to a conference here on reconciliation, which I will be participating in beginning on Monday. I'll have stories to share, I'm sure.

Meanwhile, I will be saying goodbye to Martin at 6:30 in the morning. He has to get back to Dadaab where the Somali refugees continue to pour in. I will be going across the border (just a few hundred yards from where I am now) into Congo with Innocent Mudjinya, the pastor of Zion Temple in Goma, who will be my host for Saturday and Sunday. His church has a specific focus on ministry to the most vulnerable members of Congolese society -- refugees, widows, orphans -- all the folks that Jesus said we should look out for. We'll be going to a couple of camps, visit some of the orphans they support, and do some sightseeing as well. On Sunday I'll be going to his church for worship, and then head back on another mutatu to Kigali (solo this time). Can't wait to do that beautiful drive again. Just hope I get a window seat this time!

Some questions for my readers

Today has been a travel day. We spent half the day in Yei, Sudan, doing a variety of errands with the NESEI staff, having espressos and cappuchinos at the Yei version of Starbucks, meeting and greeting a whole host of people on the streets, and getting ready to welcome a group of about 15 Americans coming for the grand opening of the school on Monday. We did meet them, including Atem Deng (one of the Lost Boys, who returned to Sudan today for his very first time), and Robert Lair, one of the founders of NESEI. Most of the folks were from Vermont it seemed, but one of the young women with the group, Mari, was from Ipswich, Massachusetts. I had spoken to her on the phone once before, and it was nice to meet her in person.

One of the last people I spoke to was a young guy named Sixbert. He is a Rwandan, working in Sudan. He was our driver yesterday and is driving one of the vans to and from the airport today. He told me that both his father and mother were killed in the Rwandan genocide in 1994. I think he said a brother also. Sixbert was left to be the head of their household and take responsibility for his brothers and sisters. He was trained as a nurse, but he can actually make more money being a driver in Yei, Sudan, than he could being a nurse in Kigali. Hard to imagine how that works, but that's part of what we've been observing here in South Sudan -- just how "booming" it all is with the heavy presence of the UN and international NGOs causing prices and wages to skyrocket.

Martin and I took off in the same plane that left the group off, headed back for Entebbe. Our visit to Sudan was only two days, but it felt like we had packed at least a month's worth of learning and adventure into it. Amazing. Once we got back to Entebbe, we booked a flight to Kigali, Rwanda, for this evening, where we have now arrived. We spent part of the afternoon and evening, however, back at our hotel in Entebbe having some dinner and picking up the suitcase I had left there a few days ago. Then back to the airport, and off to Kigali.

With all the traveling we did today, Martin and I had a chance to begin talking a little bit about that book he wants us to write together. We want it to take advantage both of his extensive humanitarian work throughout Africa and his wide-ranging knowledge of the politics of conflict areas -- and my experience as a newcomer to Africa, but one who has been interested in Africa for a long time -- to create a book that helps explain Africa to Americans. One of the things we talked about today was the fact that even the mention of going to Africa creates anxiety for a lot of Americans, even people who are happy to travel to other parts of the world. We would like to try in some small modest way to de-mystify Africa for Americans.

So, here's where all of you come in. We'd like to know what your impressions of Africa are. We'd like to know what feelings the idea of going to Africa evokes for you. If you were to rate all the continents on the earth in order of priority as to where you'd like to go, where would Africa rate? We'd like to know (if you've been reading this blog) what things interest, excite, frighten, confuse, or appeal to you in the experiences I have described. Or choose any other verb that describes the emotions you have had or might have when you think about Africa. Do words like hunger, violence, and disease come to your mind when you think about Africa? How about corruption? What are your impressions of American or international humanitarian, relief and development efforts in Africa? Do they help or hurt? Have you ever been to Africa? Would you like to go to Africa? What do you think the major barriers are for Americans to get to know Africa better?

Send us your comments, questions, ideas for a book. You never know, this could turn into a serious project!

We're in Kigali now. What a lovely place. The hills are beautiful. The streets are clean. The airport very modern. The people are friendly. It's just unimaginable to think of what took place here in 1994. And I can't understand how Sixbert would have to leave this relatively highly developed, sophisticated place for Yei, Sudan, which is at the total other end of the scale -- to make more money to send back here to support his siblings' education. There are many ironies in Africa.

Tomorrow morning we're off for Goma, Congo, where we'll be visiting a couple of the refugee camps. Martin leaves our journey to go back to work at the Dadaab refugee camp in Kenya on Saturday. I'll be in Goma until Sunday, when I will come back here to Kigali to begin the Amahoro-Africa conference. I'm not quite sure what to expect in Goma. I do know that even experienced Africa-travelers have been saying to me, "be careful in Goma." I will.

New Sudan School of Health Sciences

I thought I knew a fair bit about the recent history of Sudan, particularly the South, where a brutal civil war was being fought for the last twenty years. I knew about the forced Arabization of the South by the North, the attempts at Islamicization of the Christian and animist populations, the racist policies that favored the northern Arab populations over the black African populations of the south, and the official or unofficial policies that permitted (or at least turned a blind eye to) the enslavement of southerners by northerners. I knew about the 1972 Addis Ababba Agreement which had given Sudan its last decade of peace until war broke out again in 1982, and the two million or more killed or displaced persons who were victims of this horrific conflict.

And yet, I was still somehow not prepared for what I have experienced here in South Sudan -- the extraordinarily primitive (for lack of a better word) conditions in which the people now live, and the lack of very basic infrastructure that I assumed even the most undeveloped places would have. Yei is now a city of about 100,000 people (many more than the very small dot on the map would suggest). But most of these people have recently arrived (or returned) from refugee camps on the Uganda side of the border. They are not all native to this area, which is Kakwa territory, but come from various parts of Sudan. During the civil war, the Sudan People's Liberation Movement (SPLM) and the army that supported it (SPLA) used Yei as a base, and many of the Dinka people who were prominent in the SPLM/A moved to this area. Because it is not far from the Ugandan border, and because it is in more of a jungle territory than the desert that is most of Sudan, it was considered to be a good outpost for rebel operations, both political and military.

So, when you walk around town today, you see Kakwa, Dinka, Nuer and other Sudanese, as well as more recent additions from Somalia, Congo, and other African countries -- as well as the UN peacekeepers from Russia, Bengladesh, and a variety of other countries. I'm told there are 1,000 Bengladeshi troops alone in the area. We saw them today driving road graders and doing some much needed road repairs. I hope the road to the airport is better by tomorrow!

Roads. As I mentioned before, all of Sudan (which is the largest country in Africa -- larger than the state of Texas) has only 13 miles of paved roads, all in the capital, far from here. Most of the people in this country do not know what a paved road looks like. Today on our trip to the NESEI school, which is about 13 miles and one hour by car from town where we are staying, was filled with some of the most brutalizing, body-pounding, nerve-wracking driving I have ever experienced. I did two round trips today, so four times down that 13 mile stretch. Only had to push the vehicle twice, I'm happy to say, and they were both after the driver kept digging us in deeper by thinking he could simply put on the gas more to get us out. Ay yay yay. Tomorrow a whole entourage of Americans is arriving and will make the same trip to the school -- including a bunch of first-timers from what I understand.

But we did make it to the school, and it is great now to have a visual image of the place I have been hearing about now for over a year. Like the rest of southern Sudan, it is (by our standards back home) quite primitive. There is a borehole (well), but it will be quite some time before they have running water anywhere but the manual pump itself. There is a generator for electricity, and there are plans in the future for perhaps a small dam on the river on the property to generate some hydro-power, but that's going to take a while. The accomodation for the boarding students and the faculty and staff are very, very basic. The classrooms are generous in size, but right now just cement floors and bare walls. The first students are arriving on Sunday from various places around South Sudan.

It would be easy for an American to look at what's happening here and ask, "so what's the big deal?" The big deal is that this is the first secondary school in all of South Sudan. Until now, anyone who got a shot at education had to go all the way either to Khartoum, the capital of the north, or to Uganda, Kenya or some other country. Many of the Lost Boys, of course, ended up finishing their education in the United States, and it is in part their desire to bring the gift they received back home that has created the New Sudan Education Initiative (NESEI). The school in Yei is the first of what they hope will be twenty new secondary schools by 2015. This first school will be the New Sudan School of Health Sciences, and will focus on preparing its students for careers in health care. One of the other "big deals" at this school is that it has a farm where most of their own food will be grown. Many of the crops have already been planted, and they are already working on plans to grow not only much of the food for consumption here, but also for sale in the local markets to help generate income for the school.

It was a lot of fun being at the site today. The workers come from Kenya and Uganda mostly. And yes, Martin, bumped into somebody he knew here, too, just as he has every single place we've traveled to. There is quite a crew working, some building buildings, some planting and tending crops, others cooking and serving food. The first group of students to attend will arrive on Sunday, and they will all be girls who will undergo a "transition" semester to get them on level before regular school begins.

The backpacks we sent from Christ Church were scheduled to arrive at the airport today, and will probably be released through Customs (that same shack that Martin and I went through at the airport, I'm sure) tomorrow. I actually brought a couple with me from Andover, however, that arrived after the others had been boxed up and shipped, so I presented one of them today to the new young math and science teacher who just arrived from Uganda a week ago. He moved into a tent on site at the school today, and was thrilled to receive his new backpack.

I'm here to see a new secondary school open, but I have to say that the littlest children are the ones really stealing my heart. They are adorable, and they just smile and come right up to me on the street. Everybody shakes hands with you in Sudan, including the children.

Two days here is very brief. But I will carry some indelible memories with me when I leave tomorrow. I hope I'll be able to come back in the future and know that this school and the incredible people who are making it happen were part of the transformation of war-torn Sudan into a country that built peace through education. I really believe it can happen.

Martin and I will leave Yei to fly back to Entebbe, Uganda tomorrow sometime. Martin has been called back to Dadaab, the refugee camp on the border of Kenya and Somalia, where they have received 5,000 new people just since he left a little over a week ago. A crisis is underway there and they need him. He has to be back by Sunday evening at the latest. So, I may be going to Congo by myself, where I'll meet up with a friend of his who will show me around for a couple of days. We've had some incredible times together. He wants us to write a book together -- a book about Africa for an American audience. If I were ever going to do such a thing, he's the guy I would want to do it with.

Yei, Sudan

Martin and I got up at 5:30 for a taxi to the airport this morning, where we thought we were going to meet other muzungu (that's white folks in Swahili) from the US who were going to Yei on the same flight. No one. We got on the plane anyway, imagining that they had already gone, or at least that someone in Yei would be at the airport to meet us. It is because I am an irrepressibly hopeful person that I think such thoughts. Things do not always work out that way, however. This morning's events would have reminded Carolyn of the time a year after we were married when we sold all our possessions, moved to Japan to work in the church there, and when we got to to the airport in Tokyo, looking around for the banners welcoming us, there was nothing. Nor was there anyone. Fortunately, we had a phone number tucked into the wallet, which we called to announce our arrival. Turns out that the letter with our arrival information hadn't arrived. (Carolyn swears I never sent it. She's probably right. Hey, I was 23 years old and irresponsible.)

I had a phone number in my pocket this morning, too. The only problem was, the phone didn't work. Now I have to set the stage just a bit. This was no Narita airport in Tokyo. We're in the middle of the jungle here -- a dirt airstrip, with a little shack for a terminal, enough space for two heavily armed soldiers and about two people at a time. We had to go in first and get our South Sudan visas. I grabbed one muzungu woman just before she got on the plane we had just disembarked and asked her if she knew anything about NESEI. She'd never heard of it, but she did let me use her phone to try to call someone -- unsuccessfully.

Martin and I looked at each other. Most of the 16 or so passengers on our plane had already been whisked away, some on motorcycles, others in various cars. Martin, being an old UNHCR guy, talked to a couple of local guys in a UN vehicle and asked if they could give us a ride into town. We figured we had a better shot of figuring this thing out in town that we did out here in the boonies. We jumped in the back of the truck and off we went down a red dirt road that made Kenya's roads look like a superhighway. Potholes three feet deep. I was sure we would have to get out and push a couple of times, but these guys know all of these holes pretty well and managed to get either through or around all of them without slipping off the side of the road. We tried our best to let them know who and what we were looking for, but none of it rang a bell. I told them I was an Episcopal priest, and the Episcopal Church was very familiar to them, so we agreed if we didn't find anybody else who knew about the school, we could go to the church where there might be someone who had some connection to it.

The drive into town was fascinating, potholes notwithstanding. We drove for several miles through some of the most primitive country I have ever seen. The houses are neat little tukuls (square huts with conical thatched roofs on top). It's the only kind of house I have seen since I have been here, either out in the bush or in town. Very egalitarian. The courtyards around each house are dirt, of course, but swept beautifully. There, amidst the banana palms and the other vegetation, these little homes, all nearly identical, make one of the most picturesque sights I have ever seen. As we got closer to the town, things got more and more busy, with lots of people on the street, shops that were as primitive as the houses, charcoal fires burning in the street. More and more institutional life the farther in toward the center we got. Still, only dirt roads. In fact, I learned today, that in the whole country of Sudan there are only 13 miles of paved roads, all in Khartoum, the capital of the north.

We eventually did end up at the Episcopal Church compound after stopping at several other places for me to jump out and ask people if they knew anything about a new secondary school being built. Turns out that Yei is the seat of the Diocese of Yei -- makes sense. There was a nice man in the health center which the diocese runs who had heard about some people from the school staying at a place nearby called the Crop Training Center (CTC). He drew me a map, and we headed off to find it, which we did in a matter of minutes. When we got to the center, the director of studies told us that yes, indeed, there were people from NESEI staying here, so we breathed a big sigh of relief. Within a few minutes, Anita, one of NESEI's on site people had greeted us (she's a United Methodist woman from Knoxville, Tennessee) -- surprised as she could be that two people had made their way from Entebbe and actually found her. And very apologetic that someone had not met us. She had heard there might be visitors coming, but Robert (her boss) had not confirmed it with her. (Yes, Honey, I had talked with Robert before I came and told him exactly which flight we would be on. In fact, he's the one who told me which flight to take because they would have people coming over on it, too.) It was all fun -- and quite an adventure.

This was just the beginning of our day today. We were here by about 11 am at the center, and soon we were off seeing the town, stopping first for some lunch at the Green Mango. (I had what they told me was chicken, but it didn't taste -- or look -- like chicken back home. It was some larger kind of fowl, gamier and tougher.) Anita took us all over town, including back to the Episcopal Church compound, where the bishops of the Episcopal Church of Sudan just happened to be meeting. I talked briefly with the Bishop of Rumbeck, offering greetings from the church back home. They were all there for a course on business management for non-business people. I won't bore all the non-Episcopalian readers of this with all the gory details about the state of relations between the Church in Sudan and the American Episcopal Church (or the internal politics among the bishops in Sudan for that matter). Suffice it to say that our relations are strained at best at the present time, even though some individual dioceses, both here and at home, have managed to stay in relationship with one another. I am here on a strictly private visit (not an official one), but I did want to take advantage of the opportunity to pass our greetings along. We visited several programs that the church runs here -- vocational training programs, the health center, etc. Very impressive indeed.

Lauren is another staff person on site. She's the 4WD-driving recent UVM grad who got involved with NESEI through one of the Lost Boys of Sudan whom she knew in college. She has been very involved in work in the developing world in other countries and is getting ready to start graduate school at NYU in the fall. She took us to the market, and made lots of other stops on her round of activity to get the school ready to open next week. Drives almost just like the locals, and is doing a great job of learning to speak both the local Arabic and the local tribal language.

On our walk around town with Anita, we met one of the local priests of the Episcopal Church. Rev. Mathaya Hakim Samuel is an elderly man who served here as the Provost of the Cathedral. He is about 4' 8", but with a ten foot tall personality. He invited us into his home and shared with us some of his concerns, particularly about the women in the community. Many of them have recently returned from refugee camps, some as recently as the last few months. This town became a ghost town during the civil war, and people only began coming back after the Comprehensive Peace Agreement of 2005. Many of the women, he told us, are widows whose husbands died in the struggle. Some of their sons were carried away to fight and have never been heard from again. There is a lot of depression (PTSD related), and he shared with us his desire to develop a ministry to them which would give them basic skills in setting goals, looking to the future, and gaining some business knowledge so that they could begin to put their lives back together and make a future for themselves. He envisions a 3-month training course that would be community-based, while still giving the church an opportunity to reach out to them with the gospel. Three women, one of them his wife, sat in the room with us as he spoke. I prayed with them before we left, and assured him that I would be praying with him about his vision.

We passed an elementary school run by the Episcopal Church. They were just getting out of class as we were passing by. The children were just beautiful, all in their uniforms, and all eager to get their pictures taken as they one-by-one began to peel off to the huts that were their homes alonside the road. At one point in the afternoon we stopped by the local telecom business for Anita to buy some phone time. Martin walked in the courtyard of the place, was looking around. A Sudanese guy who worked there saw him, looked at him, and came down and said to him, "I've seen you somewhere." As they talked, it didn't take long to realize that he had been one of the 15,000 Lost Boys, and of course he had known Martin at Kakuma. Just amazing. So we had to tell him, of course, that we had been at Kakuma only a couple of days ago. He wanted to hear all about it. He and Martin had a lot of fun reconnecting and exchanged phone numbers and email addresses.

Can you believe that out here in the middle of the south Sudan jungle, people have email and phones? They do. There are a couple of internet cafes in town, and many, many people carry cell phones. Thatched-roof huts ain't what they used to be.

I could go on. The day started off looking a little iffy. Turned out to be yet another gift from God in so many ways. I guess that's probably one of the things I'm really experiencing on this whole African adventure. I'm learning to be open to what presents itself, without expectations and without anxiety, and finding every single experience I have to be such an amazing, wonder-full, spirit-filled, experience. I hope I can remember to be that way when I get back home.

Tomorrow we go to see the school!

At the border

Monday, May 12, 2008

I'm writing this from a bus on my handheld Pocket PC at the Kenya-Uganda border. It has been important to me not just to "fly over" Africa but to be with the people, in their homes, seeing and experiencing their lives -- the joys and the frustrations -- from their perspective as much as possible. Buses are a really great way to get some of that perspective, believe me. You can't believe how bad the roads are. We've been rattling along for about 12 hours now on this bus, and we've got about 3 more to go. I honestly don't know how this thing is still in one piece given the kind of beating it has taken today. It's Japanese built, that's why. It's through the miracle of modern technology that I'm able to do this at all -- but I'll bet you're getting some typos with this one. It's dark, and it's bumpy here!!

Typos are the least of one's concerns here. A revolt on the bus against the driver last time we all hit our heads on the ceiling is a little more like where I am right now. I'm going to have a sore neck tomorrow, I'm sure.

We just finished sitting at the border for well over an hour, part of it through a downpour. I brought a slicker with me, but of course it's not in the bag I have inside the bus with me. We had to get off the bus twice -- once to go through Kenyan immigration as we left the country, and once a slow mile or so later, waiting in long lines of trucks making their way through enormous potholes with torrents of muddy water rushing through them at Ugandan immigration. I had to get a visa for Uganda, which was a surprisingly simple, non-bureaucratic process. The officer put one of those full-page sticker-type visas in my passport, filled it out, collected my fifty dollars, handed it back to me and said proudly, "Welcome to Uganda." No Homeland Security checks, nothing.

Back out into the rain to make my way across the huge potholes (fortunately I have some sturdy workboots on.), find my way to our bus, and wait on the rest of the passengers, so we can wait some more for all the trucks in front of us to move. Now we're on our way again, and the Ugandan roads seem to be a lot better than they were in Kenya. Well, the driver is driving a lot faster anyway.

The sun has just set, but I can still see the huts near the road amidst the banana trees while a beautiful sunset looms in the distance. We'll get to Kampala late, then an hour taxi ride to Frank's Hostel in Entebbe. A nice cool shower to wash the day's grime away, and then a few hours of sleep before our 6:30 am check-in at Entebbe airport fr the flight to Sudan with the NESEI folks.

Another day full of sights, sounds, and experiences that will forever be a part of me.

Note: When I pressed "send" on the above post from my handheld, nothing happened. Apparently, the miracle of modern technology is not a miracle at all -- it's all very dependent on electrons doing the thing we want them to do, which they did not do for me last night. My phone service is not working in either Uganda or Sudan as I was told it should, thus this slightly late addition to the blog. Turns out that that additional 3 hours to Kampala was more like five. The taxi we had arranged had left when we got there, and we had to go looking for one at midnight outside the Kampala bus station. The driver, though, didn't know Entebbe as well as he promised us he did, so we didn't get to our hotel until the middle of the night sometime -- had to wake people up to let us in, etc. We did get that shower, however. I said to Martin that a good shower after a day like that nearly solves all the world's problems. Slept like a baby.

Pentecost

"When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place... All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages as the Spirit gave them ability... Dinkas, Nuers, Ethiopians, Somalis, Rwandans, Congolese, Burundian, Kenyans, and even one lone Muzungu, speaking about God's deeds of power" (a paraphrase of Acts 2:1, 5-11).

Today is the Day of Pentecost, and I spent it at Kakuma Refugee Camp. Kakuma is a microcosm of Africa -- people of many languages and cultures, but sharing in one way or another the tragedy of having been uprooted from their homelands, usually because of civil unrest. Most of them were on the wrong side of a political fight and were chased from their homes. In order to qualify under the international protocols for refugee status, it has to be something that caused you to fear for your life and makes it impossible for you to return to your home. In those situations, the United Nations, and NGOs that work with the UN, provide people with a safe place to live until conditions change and they can either return home, or until they find another country that will accept them.

Martin and I got up this morning, and after having some breakfast in the Lutheran World Federation compound where we spent the night, ventured out into the camp. Martin lived here for nine years when he worked for UNHCR. He left seven years ago to come to the US. I was amazed at how many people he still knows -- both UNHCR and NGO staff people, as well as the refugees themselves. Some people have been here for a very long time -- some since the camp opened. I had always imagined that being a relief worker was something one would do for a year or two or three, and then move along to something else. But there are some really amazing human beings -- true humanitarians -- that have lived and worked in this place for many, many years. There is very little turnover, it turns out, and I was privileged to meet many of them. Martin's return visit came as a surprise to everyone there, and they were all thrilled to see him.

As we began to make our way around the camp, he pointed out where the Lost Boys of Sudan had lived. All the houses they lived in are gone now, and that whole section of the camp has been closed. Nearly all of the Sudanese have now either moved to the US or other countries, or (since the Comprehensive Peace Agreement of 2005) returned to their homes in Sudan. You still see occasional Dinka or Nuer peoples (two of the major groups from Sudan), but many of the Nuer have actually come from Ethiopia and are therefore still at Kakuma for other reasons. There are many Ethiopians and Somalis, and lots of Congolese, Rwandans, and Burundians. As we made our way around the camp, we passed the churches of the different groups. We saw the Sudanese Episcopal Church, where we heard their Pentecost service in progress, but did not go in so as not to create a distraction. There was a Worldwide Church of God, a Pentecostal church, from where we heard singing coming (I'm not sure what language). There were others holding services, too. We even passed by a very noisy Somali madrassa where the children were learning the Koran.

We ended up at the Ethiopian Orthodox church where the liturgy in the Amharic language was coming to a close, it turned out. Martin saw a good friend, Anteneh Demelash, as the service was ending, and he told us their worship had started at 4 am for the daily prayers, and most of the people had been there since around 5 or 6 am. It was now about 10 o'clock. The singing was beautiful, as were the people. I was trying to discreetly take pictures, but the children saw me and wanted to get in them, which was just fine with me! We were invited to come into the parish house where a lunch was about to be served. After standing in line for the ritual washing of the hands which takes place before a meal, they invited us to the head of the serving line where we were served a typical Ethiopian meal of of injera, which includes some rolled-up tortilla-like pancakes, into which goes a stew of goat meat and vegetables. To eat it you tear off pieces of the pancake and pick up the stew with your fingers. It was fun to be invited in as we were and made to feel so welcome. Anteneh is a man in his early forties, I would guess. He has been at Kakuma since it opened in 1992. He is a leader, not only among the Ethiopians, but for the whole camp, having been in charge of all the elementary schools, of which there are about 16, for the past several years. While we were eating he pointed out to us a local Turkana woman who had been converted to Christianity through their ministry. She sat near us and was showing us how to properly clean our plates wiping them with the last little piece of pancake. Meanwhile, I had been trying to discreetly avoid a large gristly piece of goatmeat that I wasn't sure I could get down. I'm sure she was absolutely incredulous that I wasn't going to eat it.

"Day by day, as they spent much time together in the temple, they broke bread at home and ate their food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having the goodwill of all the people. And day by day the Lord added to their number those who were being saved." (Acts 2:46-47)

Anteneh invited us to walk with him to his home, where we visited for a while. It was a tin shack in a long row of similar dwellings. Very rough inside with dirt floor. This is a very intelligent and knowledgeable man, with a wife and two young daughters, who has not left this camp in over 16 years. He has no idea when he will ever be able to leave. He walked with us around the camp, updating Martin on changes that have taken place since he left. Many of the schools, it turns out, are closing -- partly because the camp has shrunk from over 100,000 people when Martin was there, to now only about 40,000. But the biggest reason is that the schools were something that the Sudanese particularly had wanted, and many of the groups that are there now are not as keen to send their children.

I could go on with stories of the people we met. We spent time with a Congolese family with several little children. I wanted to bring them home with me. Adorable, cute, fun children! They loved mimicing me, and I have no doubt that they would be speaking English within two weeks they were so good at it. The kids and I had lots of laughs while Martin and Anteneh spoke with the two moms about political and other issues in their homeland.

These people's resilience is absolutely amazing. I observed the conditions they live in, the hardships they endure and the uncertainty about the future that lingers for all of them, and I wonder how they keep going. I learned a lot at Kakuma about the strength of the human spirit. For many of them that strength was nurtured in the thriving faith communities that dot the camp. We saw them alive and well there today.

"But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth -- even to Kakuma." (paraphrase of Acts 1:8).

After a lovely lunch at the home of some friends of Martin's, we took a final drive through the local town market area, alive even on Sunday with the local Turkana and many of the refugees, and then got our taxi with armed guard to make our hour-long drive back to Lokichokkio. There was a lot of activity in Loki following the killing a few days ago of the World Food Program country director. An Italian WFP dignitary was arriving at the airport just as we were leaving. Our flight to Nairobi was late, and we missed our overnight bus to Uganda -- so, we're back at Alice's for the night, and up at 5 to catch the next bus to Kampala.

It was a unique Pentecost, and one that I will never forget.

The end of the earth

I am, right now, almost literally at the end of the earth. At least it seems that way. Somewhere near the border of Uganda in the northwest corner of Kenya, far from even the faintest signs of civilization, is a refugee camp called Kakuma. That's where I am.

This morning we met Martin in Nairobi and ran a few errands. Downtown Nairobi isn't all that different from any major metropolitan downtown area. Nice sophisticated shops, fancy high-rise buildings, smartly dressed urban sophisticates, banks -- the whole thing. But once we left on a propeller plane from Wilson Airport for Lokichokkio, we entered another world.

You don't have to fly far north of Nairobi until there is little evidence of human habitation. Within a half hour or so by air you enter Turkanaland. The Turkana are a proud nomadic people -- herders who move their cattle, goats, sheep, camels and donkeys from place to place, depending on where they can find water -- which is almost nowhere right now. Americans might recognize the Turkana from National Geographic Society articles with pictures of statuesque people, women with brightly colored layers of rings around their necks -- usually only half-clothed. Women cover the bottom half, and men only the top. (I'm sure there's a good Darwinian or anthropological reason for this that I do not know -- somethine to do with fertility or the propogation of the species, undoubtedly!). We couldn't see them from the air, of course, but once we landed in Lokichokkio (or Loki as the locis call it), and began our drive to Kakuma, the Turkana appeared everywhere -- sometimes out of nowhere -- walking through the bush, alongside the road (or not), some herding animals, others walking to or from the market 20 or 30 miles away.

But let's go back to Loki first. It's a town of about 30,000 or so people, in the middle of NOWHERE -- very near Kenya's border with Sudan. Loki is an outpost for lots of NGO's (non-governmental organizations) doing humanitarian relief work in Sudan. It was also an outpost for the rebel SPLA during Sudan's long and brutal civil war in the south. Lots of interesting characters here -- from African warlords and mercenaries, to American evangelical missionaries, to international relief workers and bush pilots - and of course, the Turkana. If you want to get the flavor of Loki, read a novel called Acts of Faith by Philip Caputo. It's got lots of twists to it, showing just how fraught with seen and unseen dangers the whole business of relief in a conflict area can be. Sometimes very well-intended people end up doing a lot more harm than good.

Lots of UN or NGO types use Loki as a gateway to Kakuma, about 100 km away. Martin found us a ride with some LWF (Lutheran World Federation) folks and off we went. From Loki you always go in a convoy with a couple of police escort vehicles. I didn't really want to know why -- but when the vehicle we were in had a flat tire, and we had to stop along this desolate road out in the bush, all the vehicles circled around us, our driver got busy changing the tire, and the police with their firearms stood on guard. I'm not sure what we had to fear from a bunch of scattered, half-naked people, but apparently someone knew something that I didn't. I felt very safe -- hoping only that one of those guns didn't go off accidentally.

I can't tell you how dry this area is. All the riverbeds -- the "lagas" in Swahili (of which there are many) -- are bone dry. During the rainy season, however, the waters come rushing down from Uganda through these channels in sometimes violent torrents of water. Martin described them as fast-moving lakes. In one of them we saw the rusted carcass of a lorry that hadn't made it across, now half buried in the dry riverbed.

Thoughout the desert landscape there is scattered scrub brush, but little that looks even remotely edible for livestock or human. And no water. One of the more interesting features on the landscape are these large, sometimes as high as 15-20 feet high, earthen phallic formations. Your imagination can go wild out here in Turkana territory -- cultic objects for a fertility cult??? No -- they are anthills. Little tiny ants -- not big jumbo-sized ones. Just goes to show what you can do when you work together.

Well, I haven't even gotten us to Kakuma yet. Kakuma Refugee Camp was opened by the UN in 1992 -- after the so-called Lost Boys of Sudan entered Kenya (all 15,000 or so of them). They had arrived at Kakuma's predecessor camp just outside Loki, but the Sudanese airforce attempted to bomb that camp (the bomb missed its target), after which the UN and the Kenyan government decided to relocate the camp farther away from the Sudanese border, and put anti-aircraft missiles in the area. The Sudanese government considered the camp a recruiting ground for the SPLA (they were right about that). But it turns out that most of the Sudanese boys were much more interested in education than they were in taking up arms in the struggle -- although some of them did that, too.

Martin was working at Kakuma as a protection officer for UNHCR (United Nation's High Commissioner for Refugees) at the time when the 15,000 Lost Boys arrived from Sudan. Afier their 4-5 year saga of wandering through these harsh terrains, enduring unimaginable dangers from civil war, lions, and lack of food and water, and some of the harshest weather conditions on the planet, Martin met them as this cloud of skeletal, starving, naked, shoeless boys approached the camp. He asked them, "What do you want from us?" (as all humanitarian workers are trained to do). The boys said, "We want to go to school."

Martin Masumbuko has lots of stories. I don't have time for all of them tonight. He achieved rock-star status among the Lost Boys, and they all still get a big smile on their faces when you mention his name. He helped those who ended up in the US get there to begin their new life.

More about Kakuma tomorrow, I hope. It really does feel like the end of the earth -- but, strangely, also like the beginning of a new life for many of the tens of thousands of people who have fled their homelands in Sudan, Ethiopia, Somalia, Congo, and other places to be here. I always thought it was so strange that Martin spoke so fondly of a refugee camp at the end of the earth. But now, being here myself, I'm beginning to understand why.

Give me patience, Lord -- and fast!

Life operates on a different kind of clock in Africa than it does at home. It's not uncommon to see someone standing by a tree along a road. They are waiting for someone who said they would be there to pick them up -- sometime late morning or midday, let's say. Eleven o'clock comes -- nobody. Noon -- nobody. Finally at one, the person shows up, and all is well. They explain that the traffic was bad, or that they had to stand in a queue at the bank. Everything's fine. No one is upset. There are no "you could have called me" or "that's the last time I'll depend on you!" kinds of comments. Everybody's pretty relaxed about the whole thing. They understand that stuff happens. Stuff happens all the time in Africa. You can spend a whole day going around to pay three bills, which you still have to do in person in many cases here, in cash, and you have to stand in a slow-moving line at each of them. Ugggh.

I've spent the last three days waiting -- waiting for Martin. I'm too far from the city to do anything on my own (apart from going to the museum yesterday). And I don't really want to stand in line with Alice to pay the bills. So, I've been hanging out here at the house, nursing my (mild) cold, and waiting. It's a very different pace than the one I am accustomed to! Of course, there's plenty to do while you wait. Fortunately, I brought some good books -- some related to the experience I'm having here in Africa, like one I spent a good deal of time with today on Rwanda called Aiding Violence: The Development Enterprise in Rwanda, written by Peter Uvin, who was one of my professors at Fletcher. It's a fascinating treatment of the conditions in Rwanda -- economic, political, historical, ethnic, etc. -- that led to the creation of an environment in which genocide became possible. I've had this book for months, planning to read it before I came so that I would be knowledgable about the situation I will encounter in Rwanda. Of course, I never got that time, so the book went in the bag with me. I'm also very interested in what's happening among certain evangelicals who are taking the challenges of our post-modern reality seriously, and engaging their minds, their lives and ministry at a new and deeper level, forming a new consensus that gets beyond the old denominational and conservative/liberal categories -- the so-called Emergent Church (or Emerging Church) movement. It is their conference on reconciliation I will be attending in Rwanda and Burundi, so I've brought along a couple of Brian McLaren's books (one of which I mentioned yesterday) so that I can have a better idea of where he and others in the movement are coming from. I'm liking what I read and wish I had written it myself. I look forward to my conversations with Brian in Kigali. I also brought along a novel of Gail Goodwin's, Evenings at Five, which also provides a nice diversion.

It has been tempting today to feel impatient, however. Too much sitting around, waiting! Argggh! Boring! But it has opened up a space for other things -- time to read, time to pray, time to nap, time to live life at a different pace. I think that might be part of what I'm supposed to learn in Africa.

Martin is back in Nairobi, finally! We've been on the phone all afternoon making flight arrangements for the next few days. Tomorrow at noon, we'll leave for Lokichokio in northwestern Kenya. From there we'll take a taxi to the Kakuma refugee camp, where we'll spend the night and part of the next day. I think that's where I'll be going to church on Sunday morning this week. All Saints' Cathedral in Nairobi one week -- a church in a refugee camp the next. Wow. We'll come back to Nairobi on Sunday evening, and head the next day for Entebbe, Uganda, on Lake Victoria, where we'll spend the night at Frank's Tourist Hostel (I'm not joking!), then fly to Yei, Sudan, on the 13th, where we'll be visiting the newly opened school of the New Sudan Education Initiative. I look forward to seeing kids wearing all those backpacks we sent from Christ Church!

Well, that's the news from Lake Victoria (almost). Three countries in three days. It's Tuesday, it must be Sudan. I know, I know. It's not sounding very much like a slower pace of life.

Oh well, I'm trying.

Karen

I mentioned yesterday my "colonial-like surroundings." Kenya was, of course, a British colony before independence was gained on December 12, 1963. From the late 1880s when the British East Africa Company arrived here until independence, British influence was widely felt in Kenya. English is used extensively here; anyone who has been to school speaks it. Virtually all signs and billboards are in English. It's the language of business and government. Foreigners easily get by here in English, even though Swahili is the primary language people speak on the street.

From the 1880s increasing numbers of British subjects went "out to Africa," some to make their fortunes, others to run away from problems at home and start life over. And along with the Brits came assorted other Europeans claiming a piece of the action, among them the Baroness Karen Blixen (aka Isak Dinesen), a Dane who married a penniless Swedish aristocrat for his title, but divorced eight years after their marriage. You know the story from her book, Out of Africa, or the movie by the same name. It's my wife, Carolyn's all-time favorite movie. One of my favorites, too.

Today I visited Karen Blixen's home, now turned into a museum after the Danish government bought it and gave it to Kenya as an independence gift in 1964. It looks just like the house in the movie. The movie, I learned today, however, was filmed in a slightly larger version of the same house just down the street. It has a lovely view of the Ngong Hills out the back, part of what attracted Karen to this particular place and made her want to spend her life here after her arrival in 1914. When you walk through the house, there sits her dining room table layed out with her precious Limoges. And her books, together with those of her lover, Denis Fynch Hatton, sit on the shelves just as they did nearly a century ago. My guide, Rosemary, took me through the house with a well-rehearsed speech detailing Karen's life story, including her failed attempt to grow coffee here where everyone but she knew it would not grow.

Rosemary stuck to the script pretty well, until she could help herself no longer: she told me I looked like Robert Redford. (Carolyn, I can just see it, is now afraid I will let this go to my head, and she's probably right.) Rosemary blushed (at least I think I saw a trace of red in her black skin), because she has a huge crush on Robert Redford, she let me know. Ahem... When we went into Karen's bedroom, she told me that everything was just as Karen had left it -- all the pieces of furniture were original. Only one thing was not: a pair of boots standing next to the chair. She told me that Meryl Streep had given those boots to the museum after she had worn them in the movie. Well, now I had to confess that I've always had a crush on Meryl Streep -- a near double for my own stunning wife! We had some fun with it.

The town of Karen is named for Karen Blixen. Her house, as I mentioned in my post the first day here, is just a short distance from where I am staying, an area that continues to be home for many expatriates living in Nairobi. After I had spent some time walking around the grounds and the museum shop (and buying something special for someone special to me -- don't tell her!), seeing the coffee processing plant that burned, causing Karen to go bankrupt, and taking lots of pictures of this idyllic scene, I walked the two miles or so back to Alice's house. I found myself wondering, as I passed people along the road, including a whole herd of cattle and sheep, just what the Masai and Kikuyu who lived in this area must have thought of such a strange woman moving into their neighborhood. And I wonder if she ever really took the time to try to understand them. If Edward Said, the post-colonial theorist, is correct, then Karen and others like her hardly took an interest in the countries they inhabited that was far from their status as British colonies. Sad.

But Karen is remembered fondly here all the same. She did some good things for the people, even if she sometimes seemed eccentric by local standards. A museum to her memory seems like a benign tribute to a colonial past. Colonialism's legacy, as we know, however, is less benign. We learned that in the recent violence here in Kenya, brought on largely because of land disputes that go back to the ethnic cleansing that was also part of colonialism's legacy.

You never know, your own romantic image of a bygone era just might be someone else's nightmare.

Air and Water

Ah yes, have I mentioned the smoke-belching vehicles in Nairobi? Any of us who are over about 40 years old or so (pre-catalytic converter, pre-emissions standards in the US) will remember (or not) what it used to be like when we were kids. My best friend in 5th and 6th grades was Terry Richardson, and he used to love to run behind city buses as they took off from the corner, sniffing wildly because he loved the smell of bus fumes. It's not one of the loves we shared, but still, that smell was normal when we were growing up. Hard for me to believe now.

But here I am in Nairobi where it's just like that, everywhere. It's not as bad as Istanbul, or Cairo (from what I've heard). The sky is blue here, unlike the smog filled skies of Los Angeles. But on the ground, on the street, sitting in traffic, it's awful. Traffic is very congested, and you sit behind smoke-belching buses, trucks and cars, sometimes for hours, breathing in the fumes. You can roll the window up, but it gets hot quick. And I'm not sure that the nice SUV Alice drives has air conditioning. She doesn't use it if it does.

Well, after five days of breathing in toxic fumes, I'm feeling it today. Had a bit of a sore throat last night. Began sneezing some. Today I've had a runny nose, and a scratchy feeling in my throat. Fortunately, I was able to stay in today for some rest. Did some reading (Brian McLaren's Finding our Way Again: The Return of the Ancient Practices -- go buy it and read it!), prayed, journalled, napped. Did my laundry in the sink and hung it out in the sun to dry. Blew my nose a lot.

With all this time on my hands, I couldn't help thinking about where I was yesterday -- Korogocho. One image kept coming back to me that I didn't write about last night. It was in the second school we visited -- the Rehabilitation Center was its name -- a nursery through 8th grade school. After visiting the youngest children, we went down the street to an annex of the school in some additional rented rooms. That's where the 5th - 8th graders go to school. We walked into the dark building, very rough, corrugated tin held up by poles an inch or two in diameter. The last room we visited had all the 6th through 8th graders in it. The reason given by the teacher was that he was doing a special lesson on water that he wanted all the students in those grades to hear. I suspect he is the only teacher for all the grades in this part of the school. We saw no others -- only a few fifth graders sitting in a classroom all alone while this was going on. In the 6th - 8th grade room, students were packed like sardines, almost on top of one another. The teacher explained to us that they were learning all about water, where it comes from, why it is important, how it is connected to and sustains life.

Here in the beautiful house where I'm staying, in its colonial-like surroundings in Karen on the outskirts of Nairobi, there is no on-demand hot water (the burner has to be turned on to heat it first -- a minor inconvenience, but still unimaginable to most Americans). We also have to drink bottled water here -- just to be safe. But those kids in that schoolroom don't know what clean water is. There is none in Korogocho. They've probably never seen a clean stream of water or a lake. How I wish they could take a field trip -- just to experience the clean water they're learning about in school.

As I was thinking about all of this I saw Kevin walk by the window with a hose in his hands for watering the gardens. Kevin is a very sweet young man that Alice employs. He takes care of security and the grounds. He also does a mean shine on any shoes that happen to be left right outside the door -- first shine my boots had had since I took them out of the box about 10 years ago. I had been listening to him working in the garden all morning, sometimes whistling, sometimes singing, mostly just being very quiet and going about his work. He must be in his early to mid 20s, a Kikuyu (I would guess), and seems to be very happy to be here working for Alice. She tells me that he has her put about half of his pay each week in a savings account that he uses to pay his sister's school fees. The rest he sends to his parents in western Kenya to help them. Kevin has designed and built such beautiful flower gardens here in the enclosure. Rocks, flowers, rosemary shrubs, and hedges of lavender -- all in a dark, rich soil that doesn't seem to even need mulch or fertilizer.

Yesterday when we returned from Korogocho, he opened the gate for us and stood close as he always does to be helpful in any way as we unload the car. As he and I were walking in I told him where we had been. He doesn't usually say much, but he looked into my eyes, his brimming with tears, and said, "thank you."

It made me wonder about where Kevin has come from, and what he must think of the wild contrasts between that and where he is now -- even if there isn't an instant hot shower.