Thursday, May 22 2008

Thursday May 28, 2008

Clothes Washing
I hit the spot where I could foresee that drying time would necessitate that I wash cloths. I went yesterday and bought laundry detergent. Last night I soaked my clothes in a basin. After breakfast I washed them in soapy water and then rinsed them.
When I first got here I was excited to see the sign for the laundry. Upon inspection I found that it was just a room with two sinks. I wish it had a wringer. I hung my clothes up inside because it had been raining. When I got back to Flora I moved them to the outside clotheslines, but I don’t have any clothespins.
I hope by tomorrow they will be dry.

To Tangaza
Today everything worked great. Then van was late picking me up, but I called them on my phone that now works, so I was OK. I got to class and we had four sessions today.

Session One. Leadership in African Society.
This was a very interesting talk by two different Africans on the principle of leadership in African culture. The core is that leadership is earned over time, it is based upon moral standing, it is based on perceived wisdom, and the person must be seen as just. Finally, the leadership is considered a sacred duty. There are few African countries were Kings or single leaders ever ruled until the modern era. Instead, elder councils are the norm. This means that what elders say is almost always followed and the communities await the decision of the elders. This is one of the primary reasons that Democracy has not flourished here.
They don’t have the concept of individual decision-making, it is almost all group consensus. They need to know the outcome to the election before the election, so they can know who to vote for.

The Pillars of Culture
Dr. Katola continued in my main course.
Two things stuck out for me today.
One, what we think of African culture makes a tremendous difference in decided what we want to do in African culture. He outlined different mission strategies. Most have been almost a direct attack on African culture insisting that to come to Christ one must reject African culture. The resistance to the movement is very strong in Africa.
Two, family relationships are very different. When he asked to the class to define security one of the Americans said, money. The Africans said family. The Africans can’t believe what they hear about the treatment of the Elderly in our country. They would say it is in human. They wonder how they could be put I homes to be away from family.
During our prayer time we made a long chain and did a chant that was in response to a lead singer. She sang a line and we responded, “I’m going to get on that train” She lead the long chain of people around the prayer area (Christian Conga Line). The train was conducted by Jesus and headed for heaven.

Political Crisis in Kenya
Many people were concerned early in the year when Kenya was in such turmoil. I have talked some of the students about it and it has been very hard on some of them. After lunch we had a lecture “The Present Economic and Political Situation in Kenya” by Odur Ong’wen. It was a fascinating description of the conflict, the election, and the background of the crisis. Primarily it is a land dispute that stems form the Colonization period in which huge areas of land we taken from the tribal people who are now displaced. It’s a huge mess and you could tell there was a lot of energy in the room. Worst of all the politician on both sides are some of the large land owners and don’t want to share their land.
The weirdest part is that during independence (1963) Britain left, gave them the country, and loaned them the money to buy the land back from the settlers that the British government had taken from the Kenyan people. They are still paying back this loan.
In addition America got caught in the turmoil. Some think that Obama was working with one side against the other.

Interesting People
I came back to Flora on the bus and had a great talk with a sister who is working in a neighboring country doing very similar things that we are doing in Ethiopia. She has two Ph.D.s and knew Henri Nouwen.
I also met Tom. He was a professor at the Berkeley School of Music in Boston for four years, but is now working on a Bible translation team, also in a neighboring country.