My own Musings

A rebuttal to Tyler's musings of India. If you have not read them on his blog then you should. They are at http://tylergoestoindia.blogspot.com/2009_11_01_archive.html

So here it goes.

1 Even though people don't have pets as companions, don't be surprised to find any animal in any place. Like a hen in a kitchen, dog in a classroom, cat in a hospital room, rooster in a living room. All of which I have seen.
2 Ninataka choo and Ninatoka choo do not mean the same thing. Choo means toilet. Ninataka means I need. Ninatoka means I come from.
3 People like to decorate their walls. About every house has a picture of Jesus and/or Obama. But I have seen posters of Arnold Schwarzenegger, Titanic, and The Undertaker from pro wrestling.(all in the same room)
4 Just because a man is wearing a Chicago Bulls shirt doesn't mean he likes the Bulls, has heard of Chicago, or has even knows what basketball is.
5 Even though you are on the sidewalk, you still have to watch out for Matatus(commuter buses). If there is a traffic jam, no place is off limits to them.
6 If you feel homesick for America, just find the closest mall. They are pretty much the same everywhere
7 Most Kenyan students know more American rappers and R&B artists than I do.
8 Sometimes in order to get from where you are to where you need to be you have to just jump in the back of a random truck.(or walk for hours up a mountain)
9 I have seen Pepsi products in Uganda and Tanzania but none in Kenya. I wonder if it has anything to do with Kenya's website url endings. ie. www.google.co.ke
10 You don't really appreciate western style toilets until you have the runs and your looking at a small hole in the ground.
11 Sometimes it is better to just close your eyes and take a bite. Wait till you are finished before you ask what it was you ate.
12 Don't be surprised to hear a cell phone ring at any time or place; restaurants, church services, funerals, weddings.
13 There is always room for one more. This includes taxis( I have been in a five-seater car with ten people in it) matatus( 25 people with 12 seats) Tea time(26 people sitting and drinking tea in a room not much bigger than a bedroom)
14 If you ask what time an event begins don't put too much stock in the answer. First of all the system of time here is 6 hours different than ours. For instance at noon they say it is 6:00. And it is pretty safe to show up about an hour after the supposed start of anything.
15 Even if you can't figure out what time it is, it is probably Chai(tea) time. As they say here, "Every time is chai time."
16 If you like music at church then show up on time to the service. The first hour is almost always singing.
17 Every place is a path(or road if your a matatu). If there is no razorwire in front of you then it is ok to walk there.
18 Every place outside of a building is a toilet(at least for the boys).
19 It is rude as a guest to refuse food and drinks if you come to visit. So just put on a smile and eat the whole thing.
20 Don't drink something too fast unless you want more. As soon as you finish a cup of tea it will be instantly refilled. So if you don't like the beverage, but you want to be polite and finish, time the cup so that you finish as you are leaving the house.(It took me too many cups of bad coffee to figure this one out)
21 They also play the roll-the-hoop-with-a-stick game. They are pretty inginuitive at figuring out things that can roll. I still don't get out they roll them uphill.
22 Kaka kakamavu ana mkakate ka kakakaka. Try saying that out loud. If my Kiswahili grammer is correct(which it most definitely is not) this means "My cunning older brother has a plan to rapidly sit.
23 When we were walking through a mountain forest the other night. I told the Pastor I was with that it was "so muddy" he that I said it was "samadi" which was kiswahli for cow manure.

Hope you got a few laughs from these. I am having a great time. Stay in tune for stories from Tanzania. Merry Christmas!

Waitence

Word of the day; Patience.... and Waiting. I guess thats two words. Lets try that again. Noun of the day; Patience. Verb of the day; Waiting. No, I like to have only one word of the day, lets make one up and call it Waitence, which now means waiting with patience. Now I'm rambling. Thank you for your waitence.

I can't speak for all of Africa, but at least for the parts of East Africa that I have seen, I can say that time is relative. America absolutley loves time. So much of what we do revolves around being places at very specific times of the day and doing things for very specific amounts of time. Even when I was in America sometimes I would say that we are slaves to time. Being in Africa has only reinforced that idea. Don't get me wrong, they do have clocks in Kenya. They are just not always in places where they can be seen, or have batteries in them.

I remember my days at Shelbyville Middle and High Schools. Each class period was an exact number of minutes,and I remember even setting my watch to the precise second so that I could know when to jump up and run to lunch. The passing period between classes was 4 minutes I think. If you weren't in a classroom in your seat when that bell rang, you would be listed as tardy and there would be consequences. Looking on that now from an African lens it makes me think "We Americans do like stress don't we." Here when it is near the time that the 40 minute class period is over a student will get up and ring a bell. If the student is five or ten minutes late or early, not a big deal. Nobody stresses. Then the teacher will mosey towards the classroom when he or she feels like it and start class. If there is an interesting conversation in the staff room, then the students can wait by themselves a few minutes until the teachers arrive. Nobody stresses.(If I remember right I think some of the math/social studies teachers at SHS employed this technique.) I have not seen any place to keep attendance, let alone tardy slips. And you know what, its ok. Why should the kids be policed to come to school. They realize the importance of an education and want to be there. If they do not show up then it is probably for an important reason. Maybe there is work on the farm that needs done today. Maybe a mother is ill and needs help. I don't think that we could use these policies in America unless there was some major overhauling of our attitudes. We are very rule oriented and we like that structure. Time, as a rule, rules our lives. Sorry I'm rambling again. Have some waitence.

Anecdote 2: I went to Uganda this past weekend to go white-water rafting at the source of the Nile. (God did a very nice job wih the Nile.) Traveling to and from Uganda we took large coaches, kind of like Greyhounds. From Nairobi to Jinja it was supposed to take ten hours. Actual travel time; thirteen hours. But whats another three when you are already sitting for ten right. I slept through most of that anyway, so not a big deal. It was the trip back that really tried my waitence. My group had to split up going home because of the availability of tickets and work schedules. So my friend Lauren and I were to take the 6:00 pm bus to Kisumu where we were supposed to meet our friend Anselm. Leaving at that time we should have arrived by 10:00 pm when our friend would be waiting to pick us up and take us to his home. We arrived at the bus station at the scheduled time of 5:00. We waited. Six came around, no bus. We waited. Seven, no bus. Some buses passed through, but the workers said these were not our buses. They were going to other places. Eight, no bus. At about ten we find out that one of those earlier buses was our bus, but that it was full and could not take us on as passengers (even though we had bought the tickets a day earlier.) But we could get on the next bus. Midnight, finally a bus arrives that they tell us to get on. YAY, more hours of sitting. We get through the Kenyan border ok at about 2:30. After another police check, we are off again. I ask one of the bus employees to let us know when we get to Kisumu so that we don't fall asleep and go all the way through to Nairobi. To our chagrin he informed us that this bus was not going to Kisumu. Surprise. After some conferring they decided we should get out and wait for another bus. Fortunately there happened to be a Matatu bus going to Kisumu for whatever reason at 3 in the morning. Not a pleasant ride, but anyway we finally get to Kisumu as the sun is coming up. My first American reaction was "Who can I sue, or what can I get out of this bus company in compensation." My next thought, "Haha, we are in Africa now, it happens, don't stress."
I'm trying to learn now. If I am supposed to be at a meeting at noon, it may or may not get started at two-ish. If a post office's posted hours say open till six, I better get there by three if it is important, because they close when they feel like it. I'm going to try really hard to master this way of looking at time.
So in conclusion. I apologize in advance for when I return to the States and Orem time is two hours late instead of only fifteen minutes. Have some waitence with me. Peace and God Bless

Tests

The school year in Gatundu is coming to an end. The Form 4s(Seniors) recently left the school. Kenya has a very intense examination for the students finishing their schooling. This is called the KCSE test. It tests material that they have learned over the past four years. The examination process takes about 3 weeks. It is divided up into each of their classes. So on one day they may have a biology practical and then a 2 hour English essay test. This test decides if university is in their future. The rest of the students have final exams pretty similar to our own, except that they are worth a lot more towards their semester grades. There are only three grades that go into the gradebook. Two tests throughout the term worth twenty percent each, and the final exam worth sixty percent of their term grade. That puts a lot of pressure on them to do well on the exams.

Happy November!

Yay, I have begun to receive mail. Email is great, but there is something special about receiving physical lettters and pictures. It appears that it takes between 10 and 17 days for mail to reach me from the states. Keep this is mind, as I will not be at this address for the month of December. That is when the break between school years is. I am not sure where I will be during December so mail may be best be sent to Phyllis, my site coordinator. I am not sure what that address is, so I will put that up soon. I hope everyone had a fun Halloween. I went to Nairobi to celebrate with my fellow Americans. Seeing as I did not have my full arsenal of costumes I had to settle for a flowerchild of the 60s and wear my tie-dye and a bandana with a peace sign and a guitar case. My extensive facial hair helped too. I hope everyone is having a great fall season. Until next time.

Happy November

Yay, I have begun to receive mail.  Email is great, but there is something special about receiving physical lettters and pictures.  It appears that it takes between 10 and 17 days for mail to reach me from the states.  Keep this is mind, as I will not be at this address for the month of December.  That is when the break between school years is.  I am not sure where I will be during December so mail may be best be sent to Phyllis, my site coordinator. I am not sure what that address is, so I will put that up soon. I hope everyone had a fun Halloween.  I went to Nairobi to celebrate with my fellow Americans. Seeing as I did not have my full arsenal of costumes I had to settle for a flowerchild of the 60s and wear my tie-dye and a bandana with a peace sign and a guitar case. My extensive facial hair helped too. I hope everyone is having a great fall season.  Until next time.

Mr. N'Jenga making dinner of Kuku (chicken)

Nyamaya N'gombe (Beef w/ bananas, spinach, and pepper

School Bus

Icaciri Students

Language

We Muega, Toriega, Jambo, Hujambo, Hamjambo, Sasa, Habari ya saboi, Habariyako, Habarizenu. These are all greetings that I give on almost a daily basis. It is a lot of fun trying to simultaneously learn two new languages. Kiswahili* is the natonal language along with English.(*The prefix Ki denotes that it is a language.) This means that all students are expected to learn Kiswahili and English in school. The first language of nearly all Kenyans however is neither one of these languages. Kenya is made up of about 42 different tribal communities. Each of these tribes has a distinct language which is spoken by the members of the community. The country is trying to unite all Kenyans by having them all speak one language. I have mixed feelings about this process. Communication is always a good thing, however I feel that a lot of culture may be lost as some of these cultural distinctions gradually disappear. So along with Kiswahili, I am also trying to learn the language of the local people which is Kikikuyu(language of the Kikuyu tribe). It is a lot of fun watching the reactions of neighbors as I greet them in their own language. It is often one of great surprise. It is a small gesture on my part, but it means much to a grandmother who knows only Kikikuyu, while more and more of her people are learning and speaking these new languages. I am having fun being a Kiswahili student to my English students. I am amazed at how glamourized the American culture is (''Why are there no poor people in America"), and I think many learn English from American rap and R&B songs. This is definately a learning experience for both teacher and student. I just had a thought. Maybe I can use some blogs to teach you all some of the language I am learning. Somebody famous might have said one time that the best way to learn something is to teach it.(Don't quote me on that) Does anyone have any requests for blog topics. I'm not really sure what people like reading about. Let me know. Hopefully I will get some pics up this weekend when I head into Nairobi to celebrate Halloween with my fellow Americans. :) Until next time Thiinewega(Kikikuyu:go in peace)

Habari ya asubuhi

Jacob and i sang They will know we are Christians by our love. Today in church in front of about threehundred Kenyans. I was pretty nervous at first. The movies here are sooo cheap. They are all bootlegs though. You can get a dvd withtwelve to twenty movies on it for 150 Ksh (two dollars) they are not quite dvd quality but they are still good..
Peace
Josh

Email blog

This is a test of of the emergency blogcasting system. I an attempting
to blog by email from my phone. Crazy huh? It is cheaper to get online
and email than it is to call or text even from Kenyan phone to Kenyan
phone. Technology these days. If this works then I will probably have
many short blogs rather than a few long ones.

Pictures

Check out the new link in the upper left corner of the blog and you should be able to see some pictures that I put up.

Just a picture of these huge birds that are all over the place in Nairobi.

Worship

It is refreshing to see the amount of vigor there can be when worshipping. Every service I have been to has had a very strong musical focus. It seems as if everyone knows all of the words by heart. There are always calls and responses within the music as well. People are not afraid to sing and sing loud. And oh the dancing. I think more American services need to adopt dancing into their worship. Nobody is standing still while singing. There are impropmtu clapping rhythms when people feel like it. There are choreographed movements during certain songs. And there is a lot of hips moving. Even if I cannot understand the meaning of the actual words I can feel the meaning behind the words, and that is very powerful. I have been reading a book given to me at YAV orientation in called Geography of God. I am reminded of a chapter in this book which discusses how when we as Americans go to church we are generally looking for one of three things. Whether it be consious or unconsious, we come to get therapy, entertainment, or knowledge. None of these things are necessarily bad, but they should not be the point of worship. Each of these things is self-focused, whereas true worship needs to be God-focused. I have often come out of church feeling like I have not gained anything. Having that thought means that I expected to gain something from the worship. Rather we should enter into worship with an intent to give of ourselves. We need to feel the awe of God and realize that worship is a gift of praise. I confess that most of the time I just read the words out of the hymnnal. I want to really feel and believe the songs that come from my lips. In church services in Kenya I can truly feel the reverence and awe of God. The prayers are fearful and heartfelt. The songs are energetic and purposeful. The offertory is not given begrudgingly. One of my favorite experiences here so far happened in Meru Town Church PCEA(Presbyterian Church Eastern Africa). As a group we YAVs went to Meru to take part in a youth rally. In Kenya youth is considered from age 18 to about 35. We had a wondeful time playing games and getting to know the youth of Meru. A real wow moment came though during the offering. Brenda Harcourt, the pastor who was giving the sermon(who also happened to be from Synod of Lincoln Trails) had asked me to give the offertory prayer. I was pretty nervous about this prospect, it being my first time to pray to a Kenyan congregation, but I accepted the invitation. So anyway, after the congregants brought up there offerings I did my best at a prayer and then sat down. I had not even realized that somehow a pile of food and other items had made there way to the alter. The head pastor then promptly began to auction these items off. The other YAVs and I did not know what to think. There was an actual auction happening in the middle of worship. People were bidding on eggs and jugs of milk. One member would bid on an item to go to another member. It was very entertaining. Most of us Americans were given food that Meru members won on our behalf. When the auction finished service continued pretty much like one of our Presbyterian services. We were later told that not all members could afford to give monetarily. Rather than not give of anything, they would give what they did have; such as extra tomatos, a few eggs, or even a used winter jacket. That desire to give, even when there is so little to give, means so much more.

Baboon

Hello again,
It is almost time for me to start my new job teaching in Gatundu. The name of my school is Ishishiri High School. We were lucky enough to be able to travel to the Great Rift Valley to learn about some anthropology and history. This is me standing in the giant Menengai Crater, a volcano 2,490m (8,167 ft) high. It is the second largest surviving volcanic crater in the world, The views of the crater itself, as well as the surrounding countryside, are spectacular.




This is one of the locals that we came across.



We were excited to see these baboons as well as zebras, warthogs, and Thompson's gazelles. I am still trying to upload more photos but it is not working well. I will try again tomorrow maybe. I miss you all.


Josh

Meru

Hello out there, I am officially two weeks old Kenyan. We got our passports validated today, so I am an official resident! This past weekend was really incredible. On Friday we took a road trip up to Meru. It was about a five hour drive. It was exciting because we drove over the equator. We went to Meru to participate in a youth rally with the Meru Town Church. We had so much fun. I played a lot of volleyball and candando(soccer). In Kenyan churches youth is considered from ages 18 to 35. In Meru we stayed with a woman by the name of Brenda Harcourt. She is American from Synod of Lincoln Trails. It turns out that she had been to Synod School and Triennieum during years that I was there. She was the moderator of Blackhawk Presbytery at one point. Brenda was an amazing host and I look forward to seeing her again. We took part in a church service in Meru. It was very interesting. I gave the prayer after the offering. We Americans also sang Tawa Pano and They will know we are Christians by our Love. During the offering people who could not afford to give cash donated items such as food. Then these items were auctioned off during the service with the money going into the offering. It was very interesting. People would bid to win fruits and veggies for other people. Someone won some tomatoes for me. I have been eating very well. Until next time.
Kwaheri,
Josh

Hakuna Matata

I am officially one week old in Africa. I have had an amazing time so far. I went to a Kenyan funeral and it was incredible. It was a huge celebration. It was on a mountaintop and there were over a thousand witnesses there. I think I was the only muzungu(white person) in a 50 mile radius it seemed like. There was a town choir with dancing and great rejoicing for the life of this 97 year old woman who has passed. On my way to the event I was able to see my first wild giraffes grazing in fields next to the highway. I was very excited. I have had so much great fresh fruit and vegetables. My sleep schedule is just now starting to regulate I think. I am so very glad that I am able to be a part of this program with this group of people. We have had a lot of good laughs, and it will be difficult for us when we must split to our individual assignments after the orientation period. The people of Kenya could use a lot of prayers right now. The drought has affected everyone here badly. Much of the power supply comes from hydroelectricity, and with out the hydro they have no electricity, so Nairobi is having to ration electricity amoung other things. So most houses have their power cut from 6 to 6 three days a week. Many animals are also dying due to the lack of water. I will try to post pictures and video as soon as I figure out the best way to do that. Peace and Love

First Post

Josh made it to Kenya. I am currently staying with the Kiragu family for the weekend. They are of the Kikuyu tribe. They have a 6 acre farm. I have had tons to eat already. The fruit is wonderful. so fresh. It is cooler than I expected weatherwise.