Re:Creation

A few Fridays ago, when the always-sketchy Internet here at Tumaini began hiccuping, we didn’t think much of it. It was normal. Almost two weeks later, we know better.

The first few days, we attributed the lack of Internet to environmental causes, like the weather. Or perhaps the guy who holds the data tubes together had fallen asleep. When we run out of water for strange amounts of time, I wonder the same thing.

Then, we began to ask the computer room teacher, Ann, what was going on. She asked us if we’d seen “those wires in the street.” I thought for a moment–yes, running earlier that day, I’d seen some wire coiled up in the street. “The problem is those ones,” she said. Apparently, that was the phone line for the area. And yeah, that would be a problem.

In what seems to be typical Kenyan fashion, every day we asked Ann whether she’d spoken with the communications company and if they were going to fix it, she said, “Yes, they’re coming tomorrow to fix it.” ‘Tomorrow’ kept one day ahead of us, however, and so Thanksgiving passed without e-mail contact.

We took bets on when the Internet would be back. We were all wrong! I began to worry–all my online projects might have suddenly failed and I wouldn’t even know.

Finally, all the ‘tomorrows’ coalesced into ‘today’, and a Telkom employee came to fiddle with something this morning. The Internet works again! I can catch up on more days’ worth of e-mail than I’ve had to in over 10 years. We can write blogs again–and stay tuned, because a lot of great stuff has happened in the past few weeks. Apologies for our absence!

Like water and electricity, the Internet has truly come into its own as a utility…

“I used to look after some cows,” the conversation began. Christopher, about 17 years old, had just seated himself on our couch and was twirling our massage stick in absentminded circles as he began to talk in a rambling way about his childhood. We hadn’t asked any particular question; he seemed glad to sit and felt like talking, so he talked.

Christopher shared easily, with obvious confidence in himself, and with an even didactic air, knowing that what he was saying would be interesting and maybe shocking to us: pampered visitors from a posh and indolent country, who count even the most insignificant inconveniences as severe trials.

An hour later, after listening to the disconnected but always fascinating anecdotes, we were left, as you’d expect, with nothing to say. Apart from our periodic courteous mumblings of attention and empathy, Christopher had carried the conversation entirely by himself. Of course, we never heard another word about the cows.

Instead, we learned about the tribal wars between the Turkana and Samburu in Christopher’s earlier years, how he had seen it break out, and the lives he had seen it claim. He told us of finding high school students dead in the thorn bushes, after being given guns by the local clan leaders–gifts for being in their final year–and asked to kill the enemy. He told us that when they searched the bodies (a practice he took for granted), they often found graded papers, returned that day by the teacher, and perhaps on their way home to be shown to parents.

He told us of the helicopter he saw shot down (“killed”), how it crumpled “like paper” and burned, with nothing to salvage. The men who shot it down, he said, had killed so many people they no longer thought it would be a bad thing to do. Then he looked at each of us and explained sadly, “Some times you can do so many wrong things that after a while your conscience doesn’t know it’s wrong anymore.”

I agreed, realizing he knew a lot more about it than I did.

Interspersed with other random anecdotes (some, thankfully, much more lighthearted), we learned why Christopher had last cried almost 10 years ago, at the death of his grandfather. He had seen so many people die, that he said, “I can feel sadness in the heart, but it will never make it to my eyes.” He agreed, however, that it is good to be sad.

All the while, Christopher’s attitude and body language bespoke an unworried and unhurried mind. Every story of trial long-past was followed by one of thanksgiving. He prayed to go to secondary school, and, after his parents could no longer take care of him and he found himself admitted to Tumaini, he did. In another year he’ll graduate. He prayed fervently that one day he would be able to play a drum set, and the church recently purchased one. Christopher now plays it every Sunday, untutored, but with natural ability.

His childhood was, we would say, defined by poverty and death. But simply because he’s able to go to school, and can play a drum set that he doesn’t even own, Christopher thinks God must love him. Christopher knows and feels God’s love, in those simple gifts.

(Oh, how that shames me and my arrogant doubting! A churlish fool in such a cloud of blessing as I have been placed!)

But even words of thanksgiving don’t stop him from telling yet more stories. And so shame is pushed aside as I struggle to parse Christopher’s Kenyan English. We listen with surprise as he tells us that his father is accustomed to walking from Nyeri to Nairobi (a distance of about 150km) whenever business requires. Why pay the equivalent of a few dollars for a bus ride when you can walk for two days?

Apparently, it’s a family skill Christopher’s father wanted to pass on: when Christopher was in junior high, his dad woke him up one day and asked the boy to accompany him to Karatina and back (about 85km total). We asked Christopher why they went. He doesn’t know, but he has a guess: “He just wanted to see how well I could walk.” Not surprisingly, Christopher is now one of Tumaini’s best marathoners.

Tumaini is such a wonderful place, we often forget that each of the 175 children here have stories much more like Christopher’s than like our own. It is good to be reminded of that, when we have the capacity to hear it.

Since I moved to Kenya for 6 months, I’m keeping a blog elsewhere, and writing in it more frequently along with my friends who are here with me as well. Check it out!

• Hello! Fine.

Mere days after arriving here at Tumaini, Emilee, Michael and myself have found ourselves thrust into (somewhat dubious) positions of ‘authority’ as ‘leaders’ of the Three Houses of Tumaini.

I don’t know where Eunice, the manager, got the idea to split the children into ‘Houses’, and I’m pretty sure it wasn’t from Harry Potter. At any rate, she thought it best to have three houses (rather than four)–one for each of us volunteers to manage.

The point behind splitting up into Houses is still a bit vague. As far as I can tell, it’s only going to be officially relevant during certain competitive athletic events we’re responsible for organizing. Still, for myself, I hope the House mentality takes deeper root in the every aspect of Tumaini life. I want different colored t-shirts (you know, like the scarves in Harry Potter), a good-natured (but seriously-taken), constant battle between Houses for no apparent reason, and mythical importance attached to the House namesakes.

I’m not sure why I want this (especially since I think nationalism, tribalism, and any other ‘ism’ that divides people arbitrarily are patently absurd). Perhaps it derives from childhood in Papua New Guinea, when our school would have sports days where we were divided into teams–Pirates, Vikings, and Lions–and I was a Viking. (We had red shirts).

Eunice, predictably, required that the House names be Biblical in some way. That ruined plans for “Cheetah/Lion/Leopard” and such cool totemic trios with obvious mascots. In the end, eschewing ideas like “House Mishpah” or “House Hezekiah” (because who knows when the home will admit a child named Hezekiah?), we settled on 3 of the great rivers mentioned, at least in passing, in the Bible: the Tigris, Euphrates, and Nile.

In a sophisticated process involving the numbers 1-3 and a pen, we divided all the children up into these three Houses, and each picked our river. Emilee went for the catty Tigris, Michael the erudite Euphrates, and for myself: the all-powerful, monstrous, hypnotic, Nile! I win, at least in length, I think.

But now, we have to figure out what exactly what any of this means, besides getting a million knocks on our door every day which betoken the sudden appearance of unhappy children wanting to know if they can be in their friend’s House.

In Swahili, Kenya’s lingua franca, one of the standard greetings is the question “Hujambo?” This is a contraction of the phrase, “Huna jambo?”, meaning literally, “You don’t have any problems, do you?” The standard reply is “Sijambo!” — “I don’t have any problems!”. Most people shorten both of these even further, such that the exchange is more like: “Jambo?” … “Jambo!”.

Anyway, when Kenyan children learn English, they obviously learn (paralleling Swahili) that the standard greeting is a question-and-answer: “How are you?”–to which the reply is “Fine.” Here’s how we know:

Just as any language-learners would do, the children seem to take any greeting we give them as this (standard) one, of “How are you?” The other greeting “Hello” seems to have been assimilated into it, such that, almost every time we greet a child with a warm “Hello!”, we get back a cheerful “Yes, fine!”

This is very funny.

“Hello!”
“Fine.”

Of course, it is just one of the many idiosyncrasies of the place we are calling home for almost 6 months–the Tumaini Children’s Home, outside of Nyeri, Kenya. Apart from us 3 white Americans (and all caucasians are classed as Wazungu, or “Europeans”), the orphanage is home to about 200 children, who have been admitted for a number of reasons (the primary one being the death of parents due to AIDS), and a small handful of staff.

I (Jonathan) spent a few months here earlier this year during the formation of Hope Runs, an NGO started by some friends. Hope Runs uses running training to educate the children and provide them with opportunity, while raising global awareness of issues surrounding orphans and vulnerable children.

The three of us (Emilee, Michael, and myself) decided to come to Tumaini for a while, to keep these programs going, to start various others, and primarily to be friends to those here, while at the same time living as an extension of the intentional Christian community of which we are a part (located in Palo Alto, California).

Over the next few months, we hope to take turns writing little windows into what’s happening here, from cultural notes to (hopefully funny) stories, and also to share some photos. So stay tuned! Because “Hello! Fine.” is just the beginning of the conversation. The rest, we’re sure, will be just as nonsensical!

In a move reminiscent of Christ himself, my favorite e-zine, The Holy Observer, is back! This is Christian satire and parody at its finest. Perfectly irreverent and hilarious, they put their finger on everything that makes us cringe about Christians and their culture.

A few years ago, the site went down without any explanation, so in their own tradition I wrote up a fake news article about what had happened. I never got around to posting it, but now is the perfect occasion. Looks like I may have been wrong!

Anyway, here it is:

PLYMOUTH, MI – Marcus Crosby, founder of the online newspaper The Holy Observer, was discovered dead in his apartment early this afternoon. While local authorities have not released any autopsy data as of yet,the police officer who responded to an anonymous tip and found Crosby (himself speaking on condition of anonymity) informed us that it looks as though Crosby had been dead quite some time, possibly weeks.

Suicide appears to have been ruled out, since Crosby suffered a number of massive blows to the head with some large, flat object that was removed from the scene of the crime. Our anonymous source also said that there were curious gold dust sparkles left in the impressions made in Crosby’s skull, which may be meaningful evidence for the crime scene investigators.

While authorities are calling it murder, Crosby was indeed known to be somewhat of a recluse; we spoke with one of the tenants in his apartment building, who said that Crosby would often stay in his apartment for days, working on articles for his Internet newspaper, and only leaving to go for a jog around the nearby park from time to time.

When asked about The Holy Observer, Crosby’s neighbor replied:

“Yeah, I knew he worked on that paper. What I couldn’t figure out is how he could write so many news interviews without ever leaving his apartment! Maybe he always took the red-eye. Anyway, I haven’t read [the news site] much myself, but I know it wasn’t really popular with some folks, you know, the Fundamentalists and all. I bet you that’s who’s done him in; now I come to think of it, isn’t the Fundamentalist Threat Level at “High” or something these days? Crosby must have been a ripe target…he obviously didn’t take the right precautions.”

Crosby’s neighbor left off speculation there, but continued to say that he wasn’t too worried about himself or his daughter, as they went to a nearby mega-church and were doing a good job at pretending to be “regular Christians”.

“It’s just not worth it these days not to believe, what with the religious and political climate in this country, and so many Fundamentalist leaders willing to call for assassinations at the drop of a hat! It’s crazy–they must not be reading their Hezekiah very closely! Aren’t we supposed to observe the news of the Lord?”

A homeless woman who had been spending the nights in the park across from Crosby’s apartment proved to be a valuable resource for local authorities. While they were initially inclined to regard her as delusional, due to her reports of “glorious silver laptops” appearing under nearby trees when no one was looking, she has provided the only sliver of a lead they have. Apparently, earlier in the week, she was woken by the sound of a door closing and looked across the street to see someone run down the stairs from Crosby’s apartment, jump into a white 15-passenger van, and drive off.

She said she took no notice of the event because she thought it was Crosby himself leaving. Crosby did not own a vehicle, however, and so law enforcement believes this woman might have caught a glimpse of the killer and getaway vehicle. Initial reports also indicate that the vehicle was not entirely nondescript, but appeared to be a professional service vehicle of some kind, as there was a phrase written across the length of it. Despite prodding from police psychologists, however, the homeless woman has not been able to remember the words, though she has said that it was not a delivery van, such as FedEx, and instead looked like a passenger vehicle.

Crosby’s next-of-kin are not known, nor is it known whether there were collaborators on his website project, which evidence indicates he was preparing to update with a new issue of The Holy Observer. Unfortunately, his Apple laptop was destroyed, and authorities have found only sketch-drafts of the to-be-published articles. They are now perusing them in the hopes of finding some incriminating evidence the killer might have been trying to prevent being published.

Authorities are also scouring The Holy Observer online (which has been left unchanged since the end of 2004) for clues, and are hoping to add a few names to the suspect list, since Crosby was in the habit of making public vitriolic and/or ignorant feedback e-mails and then commenting on them. We were informed that the most promising lead is one “Carol”, who said that Crosby was a “blight on [the information] highway”, and who might have a grudge against Crosby and The Holy Observer, or other motives for revenge.

A team of analysts has reportedly been set to a somewhat different task–discovering if there are any others who worked on The Holy Observer–with the goal of warning them of and protecting them against similar attacks. Plymouth police chief Frank Cassano has received special confirmation from the FBI that they will be invited to accept the asylum of the US Witness Protection Program, which has a high degree of success in potentially-serial cases like this one.

For now, readers are advised to be aware that the Christian Fundamentalist Threat Level is indeed at orange, or “High”, and to restrict activities which might bring attention from the Religious Right. Furthermore, if you have any information regarding this crime or anyone connected to The Holy Observer, you are asked to please contact Chief Cassano.

My car

When I decided to go to Africa for 6 months (and do who knows what after that), it became increasingly clear that keeping my car was not going to be easy. Insurance payments and finding a place to store it just weren’t options. And so, somewhat grudgingly, I began the process of trying to sell it about a month ago. At that time it was a very practical and financial decision, and I didn’t think much of it. Now I’m sitting here with the fattest wad of cash I’ve ever seen, no car, and surprisingly strong emotions.

I feel, for whatever reason, as if I’ve lost a friend or a long-loved pet. It can’t be the wheels themselves–if anything, having a car has been somewhat of a burden with gas prices being so high, having to worry about maintenance, etc… For the most part, I didn’t need a car in Palo Alto, and I certainly don’t need one to get around here in San Francisco. So why do I miss my beautiful white Civic?

I think a lot of things are wrapped up in it. It was the first car I ever bought, during my junior year at Stanford. I can remember being with my parents at the car lot, learning the tricks of the car buying trade, knowing what I wanted but knowing I couldn’t afford it, and finally finding a good (if expensive) match in my little Civic. That was a somewhat momentous process in and of itself, and the car loan was the first monthly payment I ever had! Definitely “coming of age”.

But fundamentally, it has to be the memories. Memories of adventure, companionship, solitude, of joyful or tearful singing in the only place I could go where I didn’t have to worry about anyone hearing. Memories of driving a girl to dinner (and trying to be all cool because I was driving stick), or memories of the drive up the 280 to San Francisco, hitting the steering wheel and crying in frustration because I’d fouled up yet another romantic opportunity. Memories of driving cross-country with David and camping in a deserted Joshua Tree, or tackling the winding 140 before dawn with Dan dozing, on our way to a climb in Tuolumne.

For me, the car was never something I got into to take me to work–never anything I dreaded. Sure, I used it for grocery shopping and day-to-day errands, but the vast majority of the 40,000 miles I put on it were road trip miles, adventure miles, real life miles. So tonight, as I watched the new owner drive away, it felt somehow wrong, as if he had stolen many of my favorite moments from the past four and a half years. I wanted to run after and say, “No! I take it back!” I think we both got a fair deal out of the transaction, but something inside says that I sold the car (“her”, if you want to anthropomorphize) far too cheaply.

Well, at the end of the day, she’s just a chunk of metal and gears, however pretty she was. And I’m not meant to care that much about a chunk of metal and gears. The memories will have to find another repository, and I’m sure they’ll last much longer than the car, however the new owner treats it! For now, I need the money to pursue the path that I’ve chosen. I could spiritualize the moment more than is necessary, and claim that it was for the kingdom of God (and who knows, maybe it is), but that’s not the point. Whatever the case, I just sold my most financially valuable possession. Not quite “everything”, but it’s a start.

So, in honor of the car’s exit from my life story, I thought I’d post a few (chronologically ordered) pictures to commemorate the role it played in a lot of really important moments for me. Of course, it’s not an exhaustive album, but it will have to do.

Goodbye, Little Car!

Continue reading ‘Goodbye, Car’

I had the opportunity to spend a week with my parents in Costa Rica recently, and wanted to share some photos from the trip. They’re primarily from San Jose, where we spent most of our time, but a few are from the Tabacon hot springs up near the volcano Arenal.

Simply click on the photo below to see the whole photo set at Flickr:

The world is a flood, a roaring flood
Of different voices and experiences
Each a call, a clamor for justification
Each drowning out all else

The song is shrill, fingers in ears
Eyes closed, mouth working
Streams that shatter instead of flow
(Just one sperm gets the egg)

Cast in the torrent we sink or swim
And in both the drift inexorable
Downward in the great dissipation
A waterfall of pure selfish Shout

By some chance an eddy forms
A silence outside the current
A strange vacuum we find, and
Hear ourselves for the first time

My great contribution to the world
My voice in its endless streams
Now in the beautiful stillness
Is heard as a strident “me, me, me”

In the clatter my voice was my own
As a puppet may be unique in all respects,
But still moved by the same strings:
Essence of chains though seeming free

In these backwaters there’s no need
To scream ourselves deaf in isolation
But listening together, a voice ex nihilo invades
Low frequency song from eternity past

The song was there in the flood
A hum of bass or treble dance of stars
But in the quiet heard for what it is
The tale of a different Stream altogether

Then a snake of a current grabs ahold
The quiet corner is no more
We disappear back into the noise
The striving to tell right from wrong

And we forget the sound of the voice
That alien song of still, deep pools
But we remember the memory,
And hope that by its magic
We might spin free from the flood once more

My community spent a week in the wilderness recently, trekking from Mammoth to Tuolumne in California’s Sierras. It was an incredible journey, filled with fun, rest, and even a few challenges along the way (including some adrenalin-pumping encounters with bears). Sadly, my camera broke on day 2, but I did manage to capture a few shots, and the last ones these lenses did see were, quite frankly, astounding. The colors involved in alpine sunsets are fantastic!

Just click on the picture to access the photo set.

Backpacking in the Sierras