A Few Words on Kenya from an American Passport

It is hard to tell of my relationship with Kenya without talking of its culture. It is difficult to relate to its joys without inherently giving warning. It is messy, it is intertwined, it is unclear and jumbled together; it is a day of my life, and it is real life. It is cross-cultural, it is simultaneously simple and mysterious, safe and dangerous, comfortable and familiar. It is home.

How am I supposed to go about explaining the nuances that stand out like red on green, the small things that seem to fit so perfectly, but give need to adjust your position? The stone houses with tiled roofs, barred windows, banana trees, and water tanks all fit; they make sense in a more clear way than row after row of wood and stucco houses, with high ceilings and hidden piping, heating, and water. In Kenya the systems are as simple as looking: You can see where the water heater is mounted on top of the house, you can see where the pipes run down the side and enter to the kitchen, you can see where the sewage runs out and into the city system; you can see. But the endless rows of plaster homes that take a month to build, you can’t. There is no way to see how the water gets hot, nothing telling the common observer what happens when you flush the toilet.

I think this may be what I have learned the most, and also the greatest difference between the two cultures. In Kenya and most of East Africa, the culture is very open. There isn’t fear of observing someone else’s life, and everyone lives with their lives observed. But it isn’t intrusive, people don’t look to be malicious, they just look because it’s open. You don’t need roadsigns pointing the way because the way is clear. You don’t need a thick web of telecommunications because it’s easy to find one another. Instructions to turn left at the big tree make sense, because there are only a few places to turn left and only one big tree. It’s easy to see, your vision is as large as the horizon.

The roads match the lifestyle. It’s bumpy and it’s slow. It isn’t boring by any dimension of the word; there is always something that demands or intrigues your focus: The herd of cows blocking the road or the distant herd of Grant’s Gazelle leaping through the savanna grasses. The bumps and ruts and general lack of “road” slows you down and makes the journey thrice as long as it may seem to need, but it isn’t a bad slow. Transportation is an integrated joy and part of the culture, and so much of who the people are is reflected through it. There isn’t the annoyance found on American roads, because getting from point A to point B isn’t viewed as an annoyance as it seems to be here. Its part of the visit, its part of the being that makes life the exciting and slow pace it is. It makes life open. You wave to the shosho sitting by her hut, you observe to feed store’s most recent sale as they load it onto a lorrey, you watch the kids kick around a tightly wrapped jumble of plastic bags as though it were a soccerball. But as you wave to the old woman you dodge a pothole that would swallow a horse; and as you watch the workers load a big truck you weave through three others, one which is tipped over on its side in the roadway; and as you watch the children play in the grass beside to road you avoid two donkey carts overloaded the produce and get passed by three matatus. It’s all a part of your visit to the supermarket, or of your trip to the game park.

And it is so relational. Every fiber of the social, economic, and environmental cloth is woven with thick threads of relational importance. The weakness this creates is catastrophic in the mind of a Westerner as it almost virtually annihilates “equal opportunity” employment, and it cripples financial transparency due to the responsibility to your family and tribe. Its all about who you know, but it doesn’t even stop there: its all about who you greet on the street, or who you have over for chai, or how long you stop and visit. Simply knowing isn’t enough, you must be their friend. But it isn’t difficult to be friendly, everyone is and everyone expects you to be their friend.

There are very few cultural formalities, but the ones that exist are based on how to relate to people. The way you greet someone is most important, but it isn’t even what you say that makes it important. It’s the attitude. If you are hasty or uninterested in their lives, the conversation will go poorly because you’ve already offended them. Everything that happens does so because the most important cog to turn the wheel of Kenyan culture is the interest given to the people you are relating to. Work always comes second to relationship. It’s not about units produced as it is so much about relationships built and maintained. It is a slightly off-kilter idea to an American, and has historically caused a lot of damage between the two cultures although the Westerners are always invited back, simply because our pockets are so full of money. But there have also been excellent relationships built; the Americans learn the importance of relationships and the Kenyans learn the importance of scheduling and financial responsibility. It can be a great relationship between the cultures if each is willing to learn from the other. And I think it’s easier for Kenyans because they are so familiar with Westerners now. Its been over a hundred years since their country was colonized, but there are so many Westerners who have never taken the time to visit their culture whether for lack of interest or money, I don’t know.

The final thing I would perhaps give warning of is the food, and the culture around food. To be honest, there is very little culture tied to food. Some tribes must feed you if you come to visit, some are very hesitant to be hospitable in that manner. But what is most important is just being with the people, eating or not. If food is on the way, most Kenyan food can be –and historically has been—eaten with fingers as opposed to utensils. And it is very starchy! Lots of potatoes and cabbage and sukumo wiki and maize meal. It is good in its own bland way. It is certainly filling! And since everything is so open, it is fun sometimes just to sit there and watch as they stir a large pot of stew over a little fire that we would consider just embers and ashes. There is no pretense of something that isn’t there, if they are accustomed to fixing food in a certain way they will continue to do so regardless of who is present. But it is so interesting to be able to see that even though Kenya is one nation, it is made up of 38 tribes. And it is so fascinating to see the different mannerisms the tribes have towards food, even though they all seem to eat very much the same food.

And the same is true for how the approach all parts of life. Looking in from the outside it may seem that every Kenya regardless of tribe or social level or place of living will act and respond the same way to another individual, but as you get into Life you begin to see more and more mannerism that are so specific to a place or a people that it always leaves just that much of life spicy and unknown.

An Hour Past Noon

>>This post, and the post titled "A Few Words on Kenya from an American Passport" were written to my engineering professor as he asked for my reflections on Kenya and some advice to give if another student were to follow me. Just thought I'd share it with you all.<<

What have I learned since being in Kenya? Has it grown me? As I look at the broad but brief span of my life, how has this trip to Kenya made an impact? Has it damaged my vital systems? Has it informed me of some unseen danger or perhaps of some greater treasure to pursue? Has it merely been an near-miss, leaving me and my crew shaken, but otherwise unchanged?

As I sit here and think of what to write relating how I’ve grown and changed since being in Kenya the most pressing questions seem to be: How has Kenya not changed me? and How do I untangle myself to be able to point to one distinct part and say, “This is from Kenya,” and to another and say, “This is not.”?

I could say I learned to be relational from Kenya, but America isn’t devoid of relationships, they just do it differently. In America it is sometimes seen as a form of weakness to take gifts of hospitality or guidance from people considered strangers, but in Kenya it is seen as the beginning of a wonderful social advancement. In Kenya if you simply worked all day you don’t always go home and proclaim that you’ve had a productive day, but if you make a few new friends you make sure your wife hears all about it. In Kenya missing a business meeting to help a friend push his car to the petrol station isn’t an indicator of unreliability, but rather a sign of good priorities. You may have missed important information, even a promotion, but the attitude won’t be criticizing, it will be reflective of saying, “Well, it’s just the way it worked out. There will be more work to be done later so don’t worry. Did your friend get his gas alright?” There is much more interest given to the relationship than to the work.

I could say I learned a laidback lifestyle from Kenya, but America isn’t a workaholic, they just prioritize differently. In Kenya a full day is having two things planned and getting one of them done. That isn’t at all to say that Kenyans are lazy. On the contrary, I have never met more resilient workers in my whole life. Each has his own skill, but the skill they have they work well in. They just don’t plan their day around their work, they simply work and as other things come up they adjust. They don’t ignore or avoid for the sake of finishing a row of maize or sewing a shirt. They stop and watch or engage in the distraction, whether it be a guest or a lorrey accident, they allow the flow of life around them to sweep them up and change their direction. In America the mindset is different. Not worse, just different. When an activity is scheduled, it takes priority. The craziness of life takes a back seat, and you get your assignment done. Whether it is going to the store or writing a paper or building a bridge, what you have been assigned to complete you do so without compromise. It creates a very efficient society, and one in which the majority of the world would like to live, but it denies life its joy if spontaneity. Everything must have a place and a program in America, whereas in Kenya nothing has a place or a program. It’s just different.

I could say that I fell in love with the outdoors because of Kenya, but that would smack the face of my childhood, being raised on a farm. Ironically, Kenya has a comparable size and population to California. There are plenty of urban centers in Kenya and there are vast stretches of California without a soul insight. The difference, then, lies in how the urban and rural areas are constructed. There is no such thing as zoning in Kenya. It can cause confusion and make it much less predictable to find certain buildings in certain places, but it allows a much more organic, albeit chaotic, transition between rural and urban. You never really get away from people in Kenya, there are very few places where there isn’t a village is reasonable access. But you almost always feel like no one is around. This, I think, is because of the virtual lack of a societal safety-net. There may be people, but that doesn’t mean there is help. Oh, the people will help all they can, but that doesn’t mean it will actually be helpful. You never can be sure where the next gas is, or the next market, or the next place to sleep. You know they are there somewhere, but the finding could prove difficult. And so you always feel just a little more outdoors and isolated in Kenya than you do in America, even in a place like Yosemite.

I could say America taught me financial responsibility, but in Kenya I owned and ran my business. And it ran well; I had established contacts to receive new products from, and I had a trustworthy bank to keep my earnings. It worked well, and all parties were responsible with their money. I learned a lot about accounting and finances from some Kenyan friends, so they are not at all money-dumb. They just find that “protecting their own” is extremely important, and it comes back to no safety-nets. They would say that they are responsible with their money because they make sure that their parents and children are taken care of, and that’s responsible. To an American, transparency and investment show responsibility, but that is because the children have free education and the elderly have (or had) Social Security and good healthcare. Kenyan financial responsibility doesn’t benefit the country as much as American financial responsibility, but it does honor the family.

I supposed what I can say, then, is that I have needed both. I’d be less if I lacked one or the other. I cannot say that America has left me unlearned any more than I can say Kenya has left me un-experienced. I didn’t know Kenya was so relational except that I could see how America was so financially responsible. I couldn’t see that America was domineering until I saw that Kenya was so familial. So I haven’t so much as learned or grown from Kenya so much as I’ve watched the relationship between myself and the two countries grow and change, and me with it.

Aude sapere

It was while lying beneath the infinite audience of the stars that I thought to myself a few days back, "I love these times: times when I can snuggle up to the earth and be held in the loose embrace of the grass. My eyes turned to the sky allows my vision to sink beneath the surface of myself into the pasture --or cage?-- of my soul. It is a breath of fresh air; having spent the extent of my measure beneath the waters of human interaction and social bustle, to break the surface by diving into the silence of nature and myself is revitalizing."

The first half of this week found me in Nakuru working at a boys home. Our task was simple for the two days we were there: dig a trench, to begin laying the foundation for a cow shed which will also provide bio-gas to the home, relieving the pressure of deforestation and high propane costs from the orphanage. Looking at the field where the shed is to be I was surprised at how little work they had assigned us, and even enquired if there was more work to be done after we finished digging.
The next morning as we began work proved my skepticism ill founded. Never before had I known digging to be so strenuous. Exhausted I looked at my watch only to find a mere half hour had gone by. Seeing our soft muscles and weak backs, some of the Kenyan men who lived at the home came to join us. They did much more than join! By the end of the day it became one Kenyan doing all the hoeing (which was most difficult) and four of us behind him just struggling to keep up with the shoveling!
It was what stands out to me as the second great humbling from a single event since starting college. The first was when I tore the ligaments in my ankle and was forced to use a wheelchair in the St. Louis Zoo, but even that I got out of in less than an hour, my pride to deeply bruised but the lesson learned none-the-less. This time, however, there was no escape. Hour after hour I watched as my body failed my, weakened by years of strengthening my mind. For hours I watched people whom the majority of the world doesn't give a chance work four times harder and faster. And it wasn't because they were brutish and only good at it. No. One was a high school teacher, one a pastor, and the third a farmer. I weighed at least fifty pounds more than the heaviest of them. And yet their skill, their relentless advance through the unrelenting soil taught me much.
First, it reminded me that for one in my blessed place in life, living becomes a series of trade-offs. It is extremely difficult to have a strong education, back, and social net. Very often strength in one means weakness in another. Two of the three are within grasp, but all three are too much.
Also it made me consider and reconsider my priorities. Realizing that for every one thing I choose to do there are ten things I choose not to do, I had to revisit that which I called important. I had been thinking on what ministry I ought to be involved in heading back to Pacific, I have thought much about relationships, and also of my future.
Last year I believe I attempted to do too much in the way of ministry, so that there were periods months long where my ministry was an obligation put on me by myself and other humans and not at all what God had in mind for me. There were also rapids I floundered down, being caught up in the roll and tumble of American Productionism, which effectively turned my ministry away from the glory of Christ and into the mirey alleys of Unit Output and Time Input, running parallel to one another and weaving and tangling so efficiently that once I got enough head about me to stop and look around, I couldn't tell which way was air and which way was earth. I was also reminded during these few days how little knowledge of the Word I seek outside of the Word itself. I mean this in regard to listening to the words of wiser Christians through discipleship and/or reading books. To top this off were two other thoughts, semi-related: I've been thinking quite a bit about how the Alpine House ought to be used this upcoming school year as well as how we five Alpine House Men can continue to grow in Christ as a house, as well as individuals. Between these many different criteria, I've come to settle on the idea that I ought to step back from diliberate, corporate ministry. Many ideas are still floating around in my head, but I am looking at my spiritually weak muscles and have decided that sharpening my skills in public ministry is not worth what it has been costing me in the tone of my spiritual physique.
I have been reading through Isaiah and have again and again found myself challenged by the words of the prophet. In regard to the supremacy of Christ, the message in clear. In chastisement for straying from the Mighty King, the command is stern. In reminding of our incompetency with righteousness on our own, the words are a paintbrush which slap me in the face as they paint broad stroke pictures of my need to establish a deep fellowship with my King through individual meditation and community pursuit.
Hopefully as the details of my new desires and different direction take on physical form through disciplines or scheduling, I will have the blessed opportunity of witnessing as the Spirit grows myself and my community in widsom as we are led into a deeper worship with our Adonai.

To Carroll

Many of you have asked about how I myself am doing, and I probably brought it upon myself to be asked such, since I perpetually ask people that, seeking a deeper answer than merely the physical actions that compose existence.
So here is a letter that I would love to write to any one of my Kenyan friends, a letter that perhaps is an expression of the underlying current of thought and emotion as I interact with nationals. They are such a beautiful people enrobed in a culture woven with ornate details of tribal traditions dangling and bumping against technological jumping that jangles as it collides with corruption. All this is held together by a rugged but spectacular cloth that has managed to pull together dozen of languages and customs to be birthed out of a prenatal colonial release and thrust upon the political, environmental, and economic wishes of the wider world. It is a people looking out at a horizon that fifty years ago stretched to the border of their mother tongue and now stretches the world around. And this is what I would say to those like me, but born of Kenya:

To Carroll:

How are you? How is your family doing? It has been good for me to be back with my parents again here in Kijabe. I am glad we were able to meet and become friends, and hopefully sometime I'll make it to Lake Magadi! Thank you for talking with me as we peeled carrots, it was good to get to know you a little bit. Are you planning on attending school again soon?
On that note, there is something I would like to say. It will be a speech from the spirit of American indomitability, and with it comes a disclaimer.
While it is true as I have heard some other Kenyans say, "You Americans, you always want more. It is never enough, you always strive for something better," it is also the American downfall. On the one hand, it is this spirit that has led the nation to become the world's overall leader in technology, economy, environment, and industry. But on the other hand, it has ripped families apart, as relationships are treated like commodities which can be improved and upgrades by trading out the "older models" for newer ones. It has also destroyed the ideological "sacredness" inherent in cultures, as the youth of America embrace their indomitability and strive for the next "cutting edge". The old, for the most part, are forgotten, and with them, their widsom. Interactions based on relationships are displaced by transactions based on financial responsibility. This spirit has removed the moral framework, labeling it "Constrictive" and "Archaic", replacing it with a social construct grounded in economic logic.
But it is also these very things: economic logic and financial responsibility that causes many Kenyan friends of mine to wish they could live there. It is the pull of indomitability that has swayed the world towards capitalism, and the image of endless wealth that has filled the hearts of the innocent with greed.
And I say this not as a criticism to America, but a warning to Kenya: for where America has economic logic, Kenya has respect for its elders and traditions; and where America has financial responsibility, Kenya has a legacy of familial and relational importance on which the social, moral, and economic handiwork hangs.
But to you, one who has partially finished a college education, I say this from the spirit of indomitability: fight for your right to be educated, to be of value, to be an asset to your family and your country. You said that like a name you cannot change the place you are from, that you cannot escape Dagaredi, but I say fight. If you want for yourself the ability to raise children who can all become professionals, be a professional. You are studying Computer Engineering; do not abandon that cause. It is a good thing you do for yourself, your family, your tribe, and your country to serve them in that way. It doesn't matter if you cannot finish school; become a secretary in an engineering firm. It won't matter to your children's children if you were forty and just finishing your college degree, what will matter is that by the time your grandchildren enter college they will be a part of a lineage that has persevered, that has not taken no for an answer, and that believes they are capable of making their own future and not subject to peel potatoes their whole lives, if it be their choice not to.
The young children of Tumaini spend hours a day telling stories and singing songs, and their hope is strengthened and reflected through their developing curiosity, but to the older children it is all books and chores. And I see the light of endless opportunities slowly fade from their eyes; the hope they held on to is assaulted by the harsh realities of the repetitive life. Do not quench your curiosity, dream of more than the next harvest; break free from the monotony of peeling potatoes. Do not forget, do not forsake, and do not condescend upon those who can do nothing more than what antiquity has handed them, but do not believe that you are also caught in the same endless cycle.
To you, Carroll, I say fight for your right to find your own place in this world: a place that upholds and honors your relationships and your family, a place that is shrewd in financial responsibility, a place that embraces economic logic, and a place that has a firm foundation in the moral framework given to us by our Lord Jesus. Carroll, it is a place from which you will give your children the chance to shake off the dredge of the repetitive lifestyle, and place where your family will be honored and yet changed, and a place where your country will be changed; it is a place where you will change the world. So Carroll, endure; struggle through so that your children will not have to grow up in a world where they must always keep their "dagger ready."

Your friend,
Kaben