- Dorothy Day
So, it has been a little over a month since the last time I wrote and since Adam and I have been in Malindi. A lot has happened and hopefully I can try to fill you in on some of our adventures. This has been a difficult post to write, not only because it is likely my next to last one, but because I thought I had nothing to say. Instead, it seems that I had a lot to say, but I didn’t really know how to say it. So I apologize for the length and possibly the disjointedness of this post, but I hope it is informative and entertaining.
“Sports Ministry”: Adam and I have been working hard to start sports ministry here in Malindi and along the Kenyan coast. It has been a difficult, fun, and slow (pole pole) process. To be honest, I think we may be taking on something that is bigger than us, and we may be in a little over our heads, but we know that God is faithful. A lot of what we have done has involved various meetings with different people and churches to talk about the idea and gather ideas and suggestions from them. Some of the meetings have been more productive than others. We have encountered the usual “problems” (I use that loosely) with the church here. By problems, I mean that the church and the culture here doesn’t exhibit any sort of urgency. Not that what we want to accomplish is urgent, but our time here is limited. On the one hand, I really enjoy the laid-back aspect the “no hurry in Africa” (hakuna haraka) attitude; but, on the other hand, when you are trying to accomplish certain goals it can be disheartening and discouraging that it takes three weeks or more to achieve a simple task. But, I will also be the first to admit that this may come from my own Western-centric views of how things should operate. But, it can be frustrating nonetheless.
However, despite the slow pace, things have been productive. We just finished a meeting yesterday with several people from various churches who are all interested in starting sports ministry in their various communities. It was a good meeting with many questions and a good boost to our morale as well. We were able to clarify the vision and goals to everyone and answer most of their questions (except one: someone asked if skits were okay as a subsitute for a sport? I’m not sure where this idea came from, but we were a little dumbfounded for a response at first and informed him that skits aren’t exactly what we were looking for). Also, we met the other day with two great contacts, one with SIM’s Sports Friends and the head coach of Kenya’s National Women’s football team. Both meetings went really well and things are looking good for the possibility of sports ministry in Kenya’s future. Lastly, Adam and go out to the beach every Sunday morning after church to play football with many of the locals. It is awesome to play in such a beautiful setting and see the 5 or 6 games going on all the way down the beach. It has also been a humbling experience to see just how terrible I am at football compared to Africans. But, it has been fun to get out some energy and make some friends.
“The Malindi Tourist Market”: Many of the days during the week, I go down to the local curio/tourist market. At first, it was difficult, because everyone would try to convince me to come to their shop to buy something, thinking I was a tourist. But, after many trips down I have made a few friends (Jeffa, Benard, Emmanuel, and Juma), and everyone knows that I have lived in Kenya for a few months and I work here. My friends all run different shops down in the market, selling various souvenirs to tourists. It’s a large market with many shops, full of all kinds of African trinkets and mementos.
However, due to last year’s election violence in Kenya, tourism has been at all time low. Unfortunately, what used to be a very lucrative business for many of these people, especially in Malinidi, is now fading. Most of the hours that I spend down at the shops, no one comes through; and, when an mzunguu does make it down to the market, they never buy or they buy from one of the many other shops. It’s become a difficult and dying business for everyone there, and it is sad to walk by many of these shops and see them full of items that won’t be sold. But, it has been a fun community to join.
Recently, I was down hanging out with some of the guys and they were letting me look through their photo album. It was full of pictures of when they were younger and the years past at the market. I could see how popular the market used to be; it was full of tourists and everyone looked extremely happy. Many of them have pictures hanging out and sitting with the tourists, even visiting them at the resorts. But, now, those packed stores are empty and the smiles have turned the faces dull by long and lonely hours. It’s sad to see a place so full of life once, now dying. It’s also sad, because I have become close with many of the young guys that work there. Soon, however, many of them are going to be forced to seek other employment, because they are making no money and have to pay for food and school fees for their children. On top of this, the shops are only open during “high season” which is right now (Septembe through March). But, in April, the rains come, and the tourists leave and the shops close for five months.
“Jeffa and Friends”: So, I have been spending time with these guys, just helping them pass the hours. Most of them are Rastafarian or at least “Rasta” by name. None of them actually practice the religious aspects; instead, they don dreadlocks, love reggae music, and oddly enough some of them have Jamaican accents (or at least attempts at Jamaican accents). So, we have gotten to talk some about faith, as well, and Jeffa has come to church several times. All in all, the guys are great and a lot of fun to spend time with, and I think they really enjoy me coming down, because it helps them pass the hours. We play a lot of chess and talk about life. I answer all of their questions about America: music, technology, geography, politics etc. And, they teach me some Swahili and Kenyan culture. I actually got several funny questions the other day. One buy named Benard was talking about American movies and asked what the phrase “chilling out” means. I explained that it was like relaxing and hanging out with friends, similar to kupumzika in Swahili. Then he said that he was watching a Jean ClaudeVan Damme and some one tried to fight him, so he said, “chill out”. At first, I laughed, because I misunderstood how the phrase was used, but more so at the quality of American movies that has been exported here. Then he proceded to ask me what the word p-i-m-p meant as he spelled it out in the sand. Needless to say, I laughed a bit, again, because I knew that he heard it from gangster rap, and I tried to figure out the best way to explain something that has become a part of American slang. So, I did what I could do and explained the actual definition and the one used by most rappers. It was an interesting and comical conversation to say the least, but such is life with curious Kenyans.
“The poor will always be with you”: It has been a struggle the entire time we have been here to figure out how to handle and grasp the crisis of abject poverty in Africa. It’s very difficult to weigh the outcomes and situations and assess the real needs and whether to hand out money or food. It is everywhere, not just Africa. But, the scale here is so much larger and ovewhelming. It has bothered and disturbed us all. I have constantly been reminded of Mother Teresa’s quote, “In the poor, we meet Jesus in the most distressing disguises”. I have tried to keep this idea in mind that each one of us is a child of God. When Jesus lived on the earth he was homeless spent much of his time with the poor, and he commanded us to treat the poor and “least of these” well (Matthew 25:40 ).
Some of the same issues have been a struggle now with the tourist market. Many of these people are now my friends, and they never ask for money, unless they are trying to sell me something in their shops or if they are really on the outs and need a buck for a little food. Either way, I struggle with how to help these guys and many others. Part of me wants to just give them money the money they need to do different things. The other part of me doesn’t want to feed into the ideology (so common in Africa) that all white people have lots of money and they will just give it out. This not only feeds into a stereotype, but it also creates a detrimental dependence on the West that already exists on a larger (country) scale throughout Africa.
Instead, it has helped me a lot to approach each situation with these guys the same way I would with my friends at home. Since I have become pretty close with some of these guys, it has helped to view it this way.
“Lamu”: We went for a few days to the island, Lamu, north of Malindi. It is a beautiful and historic island with cystal clear water, old dhows, and rich Swahili/Muslim culture. The only mode of transport, besides boat, is donkeys, and there are many of them. The “streets” on the island are, essentially, alley ways with hotels and shops on each side. We saw many mosques, and we walked a few miles to a beautiful beach on the opposite side of the island. We, also, got to enter an old fort and get a bird’ eye view of some of the town. Lastly, Adam and I each bought a “siwa” (old wooden and tusk “trumpet”) historically used by Muslims to call togther meetings and prayers. We have both attempted to play it, but to no avail. It was quite an isolated place, but beautiful and full of culture and friendly people.
“Alice”: One of the pastors we met with in Lamu was a kindly and older woman named Alice. She was one of those people who seemed to be full of wisdom and she was a great story teller, kind of like Morgan Freeman in any movie he narrates. Anyway, she shared a breif story of her experience befriending a Mulsim lady in her community. She said one of the Muslim women that is a friend of her’s came to hide and stay in her home one night, because she fear her husband beating her. So, Alice took her in and took care of her. She let her stay until she felt safe. When the woman returned to her community, her friends asked her, confused, “You chose to stay with a Christian women when you had problems and not in your own community?”. They woman replied, “Yes. You all just add fire to my already burning problems. She is a dear friend and helps comfort me.” The story was simple enough, but the picture was huge and beautiful.
I couldn’t help but thinking of how beautiful a picture it was of how we should look as Christians and the Church. We should be a place of welcoming, refuge, peace, and a place of comfort. We all too often get caught up in judging, condemning, or making light of someone’s problems, when sometimes we should just be silent and love.
