Day 27

Monday, June 16, 2008

Breakfast

Its always interesting to see the new people at breakfast. If they are from the area, they seem to know exactly how to act. If they are from the US then they are confused. I know I was surprised by the simplicity of breakfast. A piece of bread, a cup of tea, and sometimes a fried egg, but if you don’t get there early or right on time then its, “No egg for you!”

The largest group of Americans to come to Flora arrived in the evening. There are 9 and they are headed to a mission trip. They are from Pheonix AZ from Grace Church. We had an interesting conversation about their work. It sounds similar to what we are doing.

I continue to find people who are in Africa trying to alleviate the suffering and difficulty of the situation. I don’t think one can come for the West without the firm conviction that something is seriously out of balance in the two worlds and that those of us with resources must extend our efforts to help others. But Nouwen said that guilt is not a good enough reason to try to help others. If it is guilt, then our tendency is to sooth our guilt with little concern for the actual accomplishment of real help. At the end of the day we feel good about what we have done, but we don’t ruthlessly evaluate our thinking or our results.

The trouble with this for us is that what might feel good to us, what might make us feel less guilty, might not be what is needed nor what is helpful. The West has invested money into Africa, but has not accomplished much. That is our real dilemma.

AIDS

I met an AIDS educator at breakfast. He is part of a program in Western Kenya and is in Nairobi speaking at a conference. He was articulate and passionate about his work. He told me that AIDS and violence go hand in hand and that there had been an increase in AIDS cases since the violence after the elections.

He said before the violence they had been seeing some successes. He invited me to come see there work, but that will have to wait for another trip. I really hope I can interest someone from Buckner into getting the training and helping develop strategies for us to use in Kenya and Ethiopia.

He was very interested in my paper and took a copy at dinner to read. We have an appointment to talk about it on Tuesday.

Obama

Obama mania is in full swing. Not a day has gone past without someone asking about him. Everyday there are multiple articles about him in the paper. He was mentioned in church Sunday. I see his picture in mattatus and in shops. The newspapers here even printed sections of the speech/sermon he gave last Sunday in Chicago on Father’s day.

The Christians here are so excited. They think Obama will help so much to counter the influence of Muslims. People here are excited to have such an outspoken Christian leader who reflects the racial complexities of Africa. Even if he does not win, they believe he helps represent the face of modern Christianity which looks less and less white and more and more racial diverse.

Museum

I went to the natural history museum. The last time I was in Nairobi our hotel was just past the entrance to the museum and I kept wondering how I could go see the inside. I never made it. I decided to make it a goal for this trip. In reading my fieldwork notes it suggested going to a museum so I gladly put this on my agenda. I met Maurice downtown and we walked to the museum, probably an hour journey. The walk through downtown was great. We stopped at the Catholic Cathedral (very modern) and it has a tall bell tower that I decided to come back to later and hike up for the exercise and view.

The museum has undergone extensive renovations and is very good. It has a section on the animals of Kenya. It looks like a Bass Pro Shop Taxidermy shop. It shows all the different adaptations that animals have made to their environment. There is a section on the history of the museum where there is information about the Leaky family and their legacy of knowledge about Kenya.

The display on fossilized remains found in Kenya is very interesting and shows comparative analysis of skulls.

The area of natural history I was most interested in was the section on birds. The history section said that the museum got its start from a group of bird watchers who were making a through collection of the birds of Kenya. This massive collection has hundreds if not a 1,000 birds. I looked through cabinet after cabinet of birds. I told Maurice that God was in a great mood when birds were being created--the incredible diversity, the beauty, the oddness, the joy. They could have all been blackbirds, but no there are amazing varieties.

Upstairs was an exhibit that was perfect for my class. It was as if they had been attending our lectures and then went out to get artifacts from communities that illustrated the ideas. Then they made a video about some of the rituals. We watched the whole thing. It was like getting to travel all over Kenya at just the right moments to witness the cultural being lived and taught. I am going to make a strong recommendation to anyone attending the program to start in this exhibit. Its like a fast on-ramp. There were also two very good photographic exhibits. The last exhibit was about stone painting and stone art very informative.

Like so many things we find in the great museums (British Museum, Louvre, Field Museum) they have been taken by the West as the spoils of conquest. The cave and rock art is being taken by the new conquest of Africa, materialism. People from the West are buying it from the black market. Much of it is being destroyed in the process of “recovery.” While in the exhibit and they are showing examples of the destruction it made me feel embarrassed for the greed and selfishness of our culture.

Archives

After finishing the museum we walked back downtown because I had seen a building called the national archives. Maurice had not been to either place so he did not know what the building contained, but I wanted to go and see. It had a collection of art and artifacts from all over Kenya. It was at the core someone’s private collection that they gave to Kenya on their death. It showed the broad diversity of art and artifacts in Kenya. There was a picture gallery telling the history of Kenya from the late 1800’s until the modern day. I found the section on the Mau Mau uprising to be the most interesting.

Internet

I went to the fourth floor of a building near the Archives and the Hilton where I had been told a good Internet café existed. There were probably 40 computers all with flat screens (the key board was still broken and the connection slow). I posted email and the blog read my income mail and it took the standard hour.

Finalizing the paper

I reread my paper, made additions based on my interviews and experiences this weekend and then printed out my paper so that I could share it with my friend. Immediately I found several errors so I have to go tomorrow and buy more paper because I am down to one sheet.

Out of Africa

After two days of trouble my DVD drive started working again on the computer for no apparent reason. I had been waiting to re-watch Out of Africa because Karen Blixon’s house is here very near Tangaza and I was going to see it after my last day of class. I decided to watch the movie while the computer was working. It’s a sad movie and even sadder now that I have been here. The problems that were ushered into Africa at that time have taken full root. People displaced from their own land by force have been marginalized and still must ask for permission to have a place to live. The west tried to turn Africans into proper “Westerners” which makes them not fit in either location. Trash has become a huge problem. Morality and its consequences have just switched from STD’s to HIV.

I finished the evening trying to get through another section of the book on S. Africa’s truth and reconciliation commission. Story after story of horror followed by the dignity of people who have every right to be vindictive, bitter and hateful, but instead have found room for grace, generosity and forgiveness.

Preview of Tue. Hold the lion