Life Outside of Nairobi

Without a near competitor, last weekend was the most adventurous of our trip to Kenya, and probably my life. Actually, Sandy and Maddy stayed behind at the university in Nairobi since we were warned that children don’t adapt well to where I was going. In retrospect, I don’t think Sandy would have adjusted well either, so I’m glad she stayed behind…

A couple of weeks ago, Daryll and Verna Stanton invited our family to attend a District Assembly for the Eastern Kenya District for the Church of the Nazarene. For you non-Nazarenes, a District Assembly is a gathering of representatives from all of the Nazarene churches in a geographic region where business is conducted and reports from the churches are given. A District Assembly was nothing unique. Where it was being held was. The Stantons had been to the village of Kiatine many times, and recommended that it would probably be best to go alone since it was a pretty long trip to a pretty remote village. It was good advice.

The drive there was the first adventure. Unlike America, Kenya does not have what we would call highways or interstates. However, they are building what they are calling a “super highway” between Nairobi and Thika (a city to the NE of Nairobi). So far, it is nothing like our highways, and I’m not sure it ever will be. Remember one of my blogs where I asked you to take your American experience and subtract a bunch of things? Well do the same thing here. Take an American highway that you know with three lanes going each way, remove the lines from the road, remove any signs (e.g. construction, exits), remove all the rules of the road (including speed limits), add speed bumps every half mile or so, and there you have it. There are people (and animals) walking everywhere – both along the sides of the highway and walking across it. There were people driving the wrong way on the wrong side of the highway. There were matatus and busses stopping periodically to pick people up and drop them off. Add to all of this Daryll driving 120 kph (75 mph), and I was gripping the arm rest for a good portion of the journey! I think it will take quite a while for Kenyans to establish “rules of the road” and get used to living by them for everyone’s safety on a highway.

Once we made it to Thika and left the super highway, things became pretty deserted. There were several small villages that we passed through and many farms (coffee, banana, pineapple, etc.), but not a lot for the remaining 2 hours of the journey. However, I have to say that eastern Kenya is a very beautiful place. There were a lot of mountain ranges, and a good portion of it must be quite fertile since there was a lot of vegetation and farms (even though we are in the dry season). As we got closer to our destination, things started to dry out quite a bit and farms became more sparse. The road also turned to rough dirt and rock, so we slowed down quite a bit until we pulled into the town of Kiatine around 10am. Honestly, there was not much in the town. There was a small corner for a market, a couple of small buildings with 2-3 shops in them, and the church where we were having our meetings.

The Church

 After we parked the car at the church, a group of 50-100 high school aged runners came down the dirt road in a race. Most of them were barefoot, but a couple had socks on. No shoes allowed in this race apparently! I quickly learned that the church was more than just a church to the community. It was also the main primary school (for boarding students and orphans), the only medical clinic in the region (Rustin, I picked you up a job application), and the eventual source of water for the community.

The Water Tower

I say eventually since I found out that the community has no running water and had to either fetch their water from wells or rely on donkeys to deliver their water in jugs. The church is building a well that will provide the entire community with running water, but they are still raising money for it (they are around $50K short). I also found out that the community only recently (within the last year) got electricity. They are making progress!











After tea, the meeting began around 10:30. The meeting was held in a mixture of English, Swahili, and another local language that I did not understand either. So, I understood <33% of what was going on (probably more like <10%). What I did enjoy was the enthusiasm of the people during the singing. They really get into it! There was a lot of loud singing, swaying, and dancing in the isles. I almost thought I was in a Pentecostal service! Since there is a school on the property, there were around 100 kids present and around 200 adults. The kids were the best part of the whole experience. Have I mentioned how I love interacting with Kenyan kids?? Of course, they were fascinated with us (rarely seeing white people), and stared at us for the longest time. Actually, they kept looking back at Verna and me throughout the whole meeting, and when I made faces at them, they would just smile and laugh. It was quite cute, and I was surprised how well behaved the kids were without any adult supervision. They sat still (outside of the couple of singing and dancing performances they put on) from around 10am until the meeting ended at 3pm. American kids would have been going bonkers! Verna said that it is because American kids are over stimulated. Probably true.

Lunch at the Church

 At the conclusion of the meeting (3pm), I was starving for lunch. Apparently, they wanted to finish everything before lunch, and this probably gave the ladies additional time to prepare the goat they had slaughtered that morning. On one of my trips out behind the church to the “bathrooms” (remember no running water!), I saw the ladies working over the fire behind the church. It smelled really good and made me even hungrier. Anyway, when it was time to eat, they invited us up on the stage to eat at the head table. The food was really good, and I ate like a pig (or goat).


 

The $3 a Night Hotel

We then walked across the street to check in at the “hotel” (I’m using that word loosely). The room was more like a cell then what I am used to. It was only an 8x6 cement room with a bed. The metal door and bars on the window made me think of prison. The two geckos on the wall didn’t help either. Daryll had stayed here many times before since it is the only place to stay within miles of the church, so he showed me where the bathrooms (here again, a loose use of the word) were and the stall where we would take a bath/shower in the morning with a bucket of water they would provide. OK, so I admit it, it felt A LOT like prison!

My Room

Amenities - 12 squares of TP and Soap

The "Bathrooms".  The first red door is the "Shower"

Verna then took me on a tour of the school. I was really looking forward to seeing it since it was somewhat sheltered from the church, and I did not know what to expect. 

The School

When we got there, we looked through several of the classrooms which were open rooms (no doors or windows) not much bigger than my hotel room (probably 10x10). Each class had around 15-20 students (we could tell from the lists on the walls). There were short benches with attached tables, a small chalk board, and various hand written charts on the walls for English, science, and multiplication tables. 

A Classroom

Very primitive, but when the kids saw us, they came over and showed us their classrooms very proudly. We then went and visited the girls’ dorm where they were all outside washing their clothes by hand in tubs with bar soap. They were very glad to see us and invited us to look around. I didn’t feel comfortable asking to go inside, but when we went over to the boys’ dorm, I did ask if I could go in. It was quite large with a lot of bunk beds along the walls. They too were ecstatic to see us and kept stroking my arms (Kenyans don’t have hair on their arms like I do). They also really enjoyed it when I took out my IPhone (which they were fascinated with) and showed them pictures of Maddy. They kept saying how beautiful she was and how they were going to marry her someday! We had several laughs together about that!  

Sleeping that night was difficult (due to the surroundings – I kept thinking about the geckos and the ants), but I finally went to sleep around 11pm. The bath/shower thing the next morning was better than I expected, and I was surprised at how little water you actually need to bathe! I actually felt pretty good after it. We had told everyone that we needed to leave around 2:00pm, so when we headed over to the church for services around 9am, I thought it would be no problem. However, the service lasted until 1:30pm, and was still going strong when someone came to get us and said lunch was ready for us! I don’t know if it was a special service or not, but it was great to see each of the classes from the school get up and do a performance, especially since we had just interacted with them the prior day. They were all really talented! When we got back to campus, the first thing I did was take a shower. OK, I didn’t feel that clean! While I was in the shower I told Sandy that I almost came back with an orphan. She laughed and said that Maddy would have a difficult time adapting. For sure. It was a great weekend, and I’m glad that I was able to get outside of Nairobi and experience some more of Kenya. The people just continue to amaze me. Under very difficult circumstances, they are so kind and generous. A lesson I hope to take back from Africa.