Monday, June 2, 2008
Maurice Ogalla
Maurice, my field assistant, is coming to Flora to show me how to get to the suburb where he has a small room. I feel bad because he has to leave home, come all the way into town, get me, then turn around and go all the way back.
Since being at Flora I have mostly gone West during my explorations. I have not gone downtown. To get the bus we take leaves from the train station that is downtown and to my east.
Maurice is married and has five children. He trained for the priesthood, but did not complete that process. He left school, but eventually returned and completed a degree and a master’s degree at the Catholic University. He teaches adjunct classes at the University and is praying that eventually he might be hired there full-time.
His wife teaches school and lives at the school where she teaches. The youngest child is in 5th grade and stays with the Mother. The other children are older and I’m uncertain where they stay. He is able to see them once a month when he goes home.
We will make the journey this weekend. We will leave early on Saturday and travel West toward
Sovereignty Day
It is not quit Independence Day, but a big holiday here in Kenya. The date was actually Sunday, but like in America they celebrate by closing all the offices on Monday. The streets were very quiet. There were celebrations I saw on the news in the stadiums and a few people got arrested for protesting the high prices of food and petrol.
New route
With my map in hand I have a much better idea of where I am going. I had drawn an internal map that was all wrong because to get to Tangaza we actually go too far and then turn around and start coming back toward town. As soon as I saw it on the map I understood. This new bus route goes almost due west out of downtown and skirts the edge of the national park.
Ongata Rongai
Maurice lives in an area just outside of Nairobi. He has a small two room apartment and I mean two rooms, no bathroom, no kitchen, just an outerroom that is 7’ by 8’ and an inner room of about the same dimensions.
I’m the only non-African face I see. We arrived and then waited for our interview. At the appointed hour we went over to an outdoor dinner (every image you have right now is wrong, it is a tin roof attached to the side of a building with a grassy lawn area, like a café in a field). Henry Onunga is an elderly Lou man. He was very knowledgeable and happy to talk. We talked about 1:15 minutes and then went to Maurice’s for tea.
After the interview Maurice saw me to the bus stop and I headed back to town. On the way I saw my first truly Africa sight. A baboon was walking down one edge of the road. People were on the opposite side of the road, cars were passing, and no one seemed to notice.
Unlikely meeting
The bus let us off at the train station in downtown Nairobi. It just happens to be on the opposite corner from the former American Embassy. Destroyed nearly ten years (August 7th, 1998), the place is now a memorial park for peace. When I had been here last year they drove us past the place, but I wanted to look the place over.
They show a movie at 3:00PM each day about what happened so I decided to buy a coke and eat my lunch (a protein bar I had brought) in the memorial park. It has nice benches, cost about a dollar to get in and has quotes from famous people about peace. There is a black granite wall with the names of the people who were killed in the blast. Almost all were Africans.
I was sitting under a tree drinking my coke when two white guys came into the park. I watched them for a little while wondering where they were from and what they were doing. As they got closer one of them was wearing a shirt that said, “North Village: Baylor University.”
As they got very near me I said, “So, are you really from Baylor?”
They stopped and smiled, “Yes.”
I spent the next hour waiting for the film with Nick Deere a Junior at Baylor studying international development and math. He is from Houston, but his parents like in The Hague working for some multi-national company. Ben Carroll is finishing Baylor and is a religion major. He is from FBC Longview and knows all my friends there. His dad was to be on the Ethiopia trip that goes two weeks before our trip. Both were on a Baylor trip to Rwanda and then came to Kenya.
In Rwanda they stayed at “the hotel” there and met people from the area. They mostly were introduced to the country and to peacemaking and reconciliation. During the process they met Brian McLaren ( a semi-famous Christian author) who was leading a conference they attended.
Ben was an intern here with City Harvest Church, connected to McLaren, and came to help with the children for a week. Nick will be staying for longer and will be mostly by himself. I am going to try to call him a couple of times to encourage him after Ben leaves next Monday.
We watched the movie, and learned a lot that I did not know about the bombing and its aftermath.
Flora
I headed back to Flora (about a 35 minute walk). And started to study. I wrote the notes from my interview, wrote on the research paper, reviewed my Henri Nouwen cards, cleaned my desk, brainstormed the Christmas musical script (that did not go well, say an extra prayer), and read until about 11:00PM. I stopped for dinner that was the best yet-pan fried potatoes, mystery meat, and carrots.
The internet places were closed for the holidays, so I could not communicate that way, but I did get a new phone number, Nicks, so I felt a little more connected by the time the day was over.
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