Hell's Gate

April "The Beginning"

I had a very interesting April break. The schools in Kenya are year round, so they have month long breaks to separate the terms. As soon as school was over all of the teachers had a celebratory outing where we went to an awesome restaurant called the Chicken Palace and stuffed ourselves and just relaxed after a long term of work. The next day Jacob and I went to Hell’s Gate National Park for our first safari. One of our friends is a former Park Ranger so he went with us as a tour guide. We first rode around in a mini-bus and saw a lot of gazelle, hartebeest, impala, zebra, a bustard, baboons, and warthogs. Later we let our tour guide go rest and Jacob and I rented some bicycles and went on our own adventure. It rained every other day that week, but somehow it never did that day. We ended up riding for about five hours. I think they need to hire a new cartographer and sign-maker for the park. We weren’t lost per say, but we couldn’t find where we were for awhile. We did get pretty close to some eland, hartebeests, zebras, giraffes, and finally buffalo. This was going up and down some pretty massive inclines on some pretty janky bikes. At one point we ended up in the middle of a Massai herd of cattle going down the same mountain path. We were supposed to have the bikes back before sunset, but we didn’t quite make it. It was pretty exhilarating riding in the dark in a National Park with who-knows-what animals all around us. We slept quite well that night in a YMCA thatched roof hut. The next day Ranger Gitau(our friend) took us to his former office. We then went down to the lake where I saw my first wild hippos. Very cool. They were just hanging out in the water with their heads sticking out. We then took a little boat to a place with Gnus a.k.a. wildebeests, zebras, and waterbucks. Gnus are very bizarre looking creatures. We then headed back to Gatundu to pack and then Nairobi for Easter. The next day I went to the International Lutheran Church for Easter Service. A few of us YAVs then went to lunch with some amazing friends of ours, Lyle and Terry Dykstra and Cal Brand. I got some awesome lasagna with lots of cheese, finished up with some delicious chocolate cake. The next day I began “The Journey”. Stay tuned for Part II of my April experience coming soon.

Update

Not really a blog today, just an update on my goings ons. I am currently in Vuchama-Ugweno Tanzania. I am back visiting the place I stayed at in December. Sometime this week I plan on taking a 27 hour bus ride down to Lilongwe, Malawi to visit the family of my good friend Shadreck Kamwendo. It is rainy season here and rains about every night. I have found a new love for parachichi (avacados). I love you all. Josh

Give somebody a chance to Shine

Figured its time for a another blog. Not a long one today. Just a thought really. By the way the library initiative is going well. We elected a librarian the other day. When it comes to running a meeting in Kenya it is a lot different than the US. I can rarely tell what people want in these meetings. So when I say election basically it means I chose someone and the club members supported it. Very democratic, probably not. Anyway I later found out that the student I chose is not known to be a stand out student. The student doesn't really display much confidence or have many leadership skills. I thought oh boy, did I make the wrong choice? Turns out I don't think a better student could be the librarian. She has really stepped up to the plate and excelled in the role. She is showing confidence and asserting herself when it comes to the library rules. Other teachers have even told me that they have pleasantly surprised at how well she is dived into the role. It makes me wonder how often this happens to students and even grown-ups. We see people who have achievements and accomplishments under their belts and it is only natural to reward and entrust them with other jobs and responsibilities. What about those who have never been given chances to prove themselves. Just showing a person that he or she is trusted with a duty can do wonders in achieving self-fulfilling prophecy. It is difficult to believe you can do it if nobody else does. People we label as lazy and irresponsible usually know when they are given this label, and why not live up to it if people already believe it. This is a lesson that I am going to try to take to heart when interacting with people.
Matthew 25:29 says To those who use well what they are given, even more will be given, and they will have an abundance.

I say in order to do well with what they are given they must first be given something to do well with.

Anyway that is my thought for the day. I hope you are all well and had a happy St. Patrick's Day. I am still looking for a way to watch March Madness games here. I can't believe how fast the time is flying. I will be home before you know it.
Peace

Book Blog

Books. I love them. As far back as I can remember they have always been a big part of my life. They helped me to become the master vocabularian that I am today. Prior to embarking on this journey, Tyler and I had some important choices to make at the Half Price Books store in Greenwood. Which pieces of classic literature did we want to tackle on our respective furlongs into the world. There were so many choices at our fingertips for very little money. I think we both ended up choosing about five each. We got some Dostoevsky, Dumas, and some others that now escape my memory. Anyways the point is that we have always had easy access to liturature of all kinds. Upon arriving at Icaciri Secondary School I was somewhat dismayed to find that finding books would be difficult. There is a room on the school compound labeled library, but upon further inspection all that it had were shelves on the walls. Not a single bit of printed material in the room. This made me a bit sad, but I figured Oh well, I will just borrow books from the other YAVs. This was all fine and dandy for a while. Then I noticed a desire to read in the school. Every time I would pull out a book to read I would have students and staff asking me to "assist them" with the book so that they can read it next. Unfortunately I could not always say yes due to the fact that many of them were just loans to me. Over the past few months I began to really think about this predicament. The students want to read books but don't have access. The staff want to read books but don't have access. Then it hit me. Lets figure out a way to get the school access to reading material. Easy right. Wrong. I found a makeshift library in the local town that seems to use books that the customers bring in as collateral. So in order to check out a book, you must first put down one of your own as a deposit plus pay the fee to check out a book. To utilize this option would take a lot of logistics figuring, such as where the money and collateral should come, plus how to get the books to the students or the students to the books. While taking some time to try to figure this out I began buying cheap books where I could find them, either for the students to read directly or to use as deposits for the Gatundu library. I presented some ideas at a staff meeting, and we even formed a Reading Club committee. Very Presbyterian right? I went to the primary school next door to talk to the principal there about ideas. I saw on his desk a new hardback copy of The Poisonwood Bible, which I remember well from junior year at Shelbyville High School(thanks Mrs. Learned, maybe thats what gave me the Africa bug.) I asked him where he got it and he said that a former student who has done well for himself had mailed some boxes of books to his school and even a box to mine. Nobody had mentioned this to me before, or even seemed to know about it. I did some digging and true enough I found a box of fairly new books under a pile of stuff in a store room. I took these to my apartment to try to catalogue somehow. This happened on Wednesday of this week. Seeing as this weekend was the midterm break I thought it would be great for the students to be able to take a book home to read if they wanted during the four day weekend. After a lot of help from a few teachers and some scrambling I was able to pull a library together on Friday. We gathered about 80 fiction books, and found tons of old reference books to put on the shelves.(Mostly all discarded text books from America in the 70's) Gotta finish this blog quickly, the coffee shop I am in is shutting down. Long story short we put a makeshift library together, and had 40 students check out a book in the half hour we had the library open. We will get it more organized next week, but hey its a start. I am brainstorming ideas to make it bigger and better so let me know if you have any ideas. I'll update you in the future about the library/ reading club happenings.

P.S. This weekend we had a retreat in which we stayed at a Benidictine Monastary. Very Peaceful

Zanziblog

Its that time again. I have recently returned from an amazing retreat to the island of Zanzibar. I know what you are thinking. That's not a real place. Believe me, it exists. And everyone knows that you can't get there by a car, cause its too far to Zanzibar.That's pretty much true. We tried. After a sixteen hour bus ride to the coast, we were forced to stop in Dar Es Salaam. From there you have to ride the ferry another two hours to the island. This trip was scheduled for reasons both educational and relaxational. Zanzibar has a very interesting history involving the slave trade. In fact the hostel in which we stayed was directly on top of one of the last dungeons to hold slaves before going to market in Africa. Like I said interesting history. But on top of that it was simply a beautiful place. I have never been to a place in which I felt safer walking down dark alleys at night. You see Zanzibar has not been connected to a power grid for over a month. The only places who had electricity were the ones who could afford generators. So at night the streets were dark, but as I said before, not scary. I'm not sure exactly what it was, just a sense of peacefulness maybe. The beaches were also quite nice. Clear water and soft sand. One day I was even able to take a boat out aways and swim with wild dolphins. That's not something I will ever forget. God has created some pretty magnificent things. Sometimes you just have to get away from all that man has created to see the infinitely detailed simplicity of this world that God has provided. I will try to upload pics soon. Let me know what you want to hear about on this blog.

Pikipiki

I have found a great time to pray. On the back of a motorcycle heading down a mountainside in the dark. The Lords Prayer and Psalm 23 are two of my main go-to's when I am terrified. Days of Elijah also comes to mind often. I'm not sure why. Maybe its the whole behold he comes riding on the clouds part. Maybe I'm just not created to be a motorcyclist. When I came to first came to Tanzania Pastor Frank(who I stayed with) said that we would be going places on his pikipiki(yes that is really the kiswahili for motorcycle). However his motorcycle needed to be fixed.(It's another story why it was broke in the first place.) We picked up some parts in Moshi which was an all day event. The next day we went to Kifula to try to fix the bike. First we tried to do it on our own. I'm pretty sure that we just exacerbated the problems that it already had. We then dragged/carried it down the hill and to the mechanic. He was not impressed with our work. He was also not sure how to fix our unique problems. Needless to say, what we thought was going to be a home by noon job turned into a home past sunset job. On average we are able to accomplish about one thing per day. Coming here has given me a new appreciation for the ability to get places easily by car. They say that you don't really appreciate something until you don't have it. Traveling without your own transport does not lend itself to keeping a schedule. Anyway back to the motorcycle. The day was ending and the mechanic finally gave us the go-ahead. We hop on the bike, Frank confidently, myself not as much, and we were off. I'm no mechanic, but I did not like the sounds coming out of that engine as we tried an incline. Three minutes later we are walking the thing back to town. We got a bus home that night. So our one task for that day was an epic failure( two days wasted if you count the previous trip to Moshi for parts). That should have been my first sign that I'm not meant for pikipikis. The next day we planned to journey to Usangi to check out the future resource center that is actually the reason for me coming to Tanzania in the first place. We called one of Frank's pastor friends and he said we could use his pikipiki in Usangi. Our plan was to leave at 9:00 a.m. At 6:45 Frank wakes me up and says there is a bus here so we should catch it. I throw some clothes on and rush out the door. The bus has already gone. Frank says that if we hurry we can catch it further along the route. I say let's do it, so we do an early morning run through the mountain jungle to the next stop. Twenty minutes later, out of breath, we arrive at the next stop. The locals there said that we just missed it but it usually waits at the next village for a while. We did a speedwalk to the next village. Gone. Maybe this was a sign to turn around and go home. We don't give up easily though. We squeezed into a van going our direction. A few vehicles later we arrive in Usangi. We get to the church and borrow the motorcycle. My motorcycle experience before coming to Africa is exactly zero. So to say the least I was not ease when getting on the back of this thing. Maybe if we were driving on the streets of Shelbyville it would have been different, but these aren't exactly paved roads, or even necesarily roads for that matter.(see Musings #17) Before we are even moving I have started praying. I was probably into my third reciting of Psalm 23 when we come upon an innocent looking bridge. When we were about 2 meters away I noticed a crevice in the road about a foot wide. Being a pikipiki novice, I thought this is interesting, what do we do in this situation. It turns out in this situation we first try to apply the brakes to no avail. When that happens, the next step is to fall into the hole. The next few seconds are completely gone from my memory. The first thing I remember is turning around and seeing Frank on the ground with the motorcycle half on top of him, half in the chasm. After asking if he was ok I pulled the bike off him as quickly as I could. His lips were torn up and bleeding pretty badly but other than that he said he was unhurt. I checked myself over and did not have a scratch, I was not even dirty. Somehow I went over the handlebars and Frank and seemingly landed on my feet. I have never put a lot of thought into guardian angels, but I could believe I was carried by one in this event. After checking over the bike, and yes the brake was broken, I thought we would walk the bike back to the church. Frank however got back on the bike and said lets go. I said don't we need that brake. He said the other one is the only one we really need and it seems to be working. Bucking up my courage I got back on the bike. We went smoothly enough for awhile until we arrived at a particularly steep hill on a turn. We slowly toppled over. Once again I somehow jumped at just the right time. We walked the bike up that hill. We finally got to our goal. We looked at the building for all of ten minutes. We then start to head back a different route. It is a beautiful view overlooking some mountains and I am starting to feel somewhat relaxed. I pull my camera out of my pocket and snap a few shots. We come to a fairly steep decline. We aren't going very fast and I'm feeling fine. Frank says something to me that I can't hear and then we start to go towards the side of the mountain into some brush. Once again confused as to what is going on, I am forced to alight from the bike. This time I wasn't quite fast enough and got my leg dirty, from rubbing against the wall while on the bike, and a scratch on my finger. Frank ended up inside the brush. What he had said before the crash was "Now we are in danger". It turns out that the motorcycle would not switch gears when he tried, so rather than go down the hill at an uncontrollable speed he opted for a calculated crash stop. We then walked the bike down the hill. And yes we did continue the journey on the pikipiki. We made it back to the church eventually. And we made it home that night. After another forty minute jungle walk in the dark we arrived to a dark house. The entire town had lost power. While taking a shower by cellphone light I looked back on the day. I was involved in three motorcycle wipeouts and all I had to show for it was a little finger scratch. God sure does make life interesting. In order to make this blog worth your time I am now going to turn it into some allegory. One interesting facet to the journey was that after each incident I became more and more comfortable on the thing. I chalk it up to seeing that, yes we would crash, but also we could survive the crash. In our lives we all have unexpected crashes. Some of them are worse than others. The choice you make after the crash is what determines if you reach your destination. You can choose to give up, say "I am too afraid to continue", walk the motorcycle home; or you can dust yourself off, say a prayer, and continue the journey. The first option is a whole lot easier, but have you ever heard anyone say they were proud of taking the easy way out. If any of you finished reading this story I am impressed. I myself probably would not have, if were reading it. I don't have much of an attention span for these kinds of things. As a bonus note for making it to the end you can know that I am writing this after seeing the sunset on Mt. Kilamanjaro then taking an uneventful motorcycle ride down a mountain in the dark.