Eldoret, the World’s Favorite City-Village

The time has come, my dear friends, to conclude my work in Africa. Tomorrow, I’ll make my way back across the equator, so that Tuesday I can cross it again and head home. It strikes me as very odd that I have to go to the Southern Hemisphere to make it back to the States, but such are the peculiarities of the twenty-first century.

For my last post here, I thought I’d write a piece on this place I’ve been staying for the last month. Eldoret is unlike most places I’ve visited in my life in that it seems unable to make up its mind about what sort of settlement in wants to be. As I walk through the markets and neighborhoods here, I am continually struck with the impression that Eldoret is more like a sprawling village that accidentally collided with the modern world than an actual city.

This perception is not, historically speaking, inaccurate. The city sprung up out of a number of villages in fairly close proximity to one another. After the area developed, there was what amounts to a constantly-expanding and shifting cityscape in the midst of a sprawl of huts, shacks, shambas, and rural markets that keep their villages in contact with each other and the rest of the world. The whole place is a comedy of juxtaposition, a study in the way the rest of the world works now, and the way it used to be.

There are low-level artists and craftsmen who market traditional goods to the locals alongside souvenirs for the few tourists who make it out to Eldoret. Markets populated by farmers in traditional dress with fruit rotting in the street huddle in the shadows of international banks and businesses. The city is becoming an educational center in Kenya, the Athens of this part of Africa, full of colleges and universities offering dozens of IT classes and introductory course to professional careers. Yet these are crammed into dingy old malls that they share with clothing makers and butchers who hang goat carcasses in their windows.

Surrounding the city proper are neighborhoods of mud huts and sheet metal shacks just across the manicured walls from the brick-and-concrete mansions of doctors, bankers, foreign buisnessmen and government officials. People ride donkey carts in the streets past SUVs and security guards armed with cheap automatic rifles. Street vendors roast ugali and maize just outside new spas and cafes. Tribesmen sell livestock or crops from carts in front of currency exchange firms. What is this place?

It seems to me that the people of Eldoret, and of most of developing Kenya for that matter, have a culture that is inclined to live on as it always has, while borrowing the little conveniences and necessities of modern business and industry wherever they become available. And the more I see it, the more I like it. It’s rugged, even in a developing city. It’s robust and determined. It reminds me of the outer world spaceports in sci-fi movies where all the less-refined aliens carry on in all their cool alien glory amidst the barely-holding-together government of whatever human overlord race is playing the role of the modern Western society metaphor.

I've seen this bizarre blend most clearly in the combination of outdoor life and indoor space. Kenyans at least and, I would guess, most Africans living in similar climates, simply do not observe the same stark delineation between inside and out that we Americans do. Now, much of this can be briefly explained by the excellent weather here, which exhibits only small divergences from a comfortable temperature the great majority of the time. Typically, the weather falls little below room temperature at its coolest, and does not climb above seventy-five or eighty degrees in the shade at its warmest. Therefore, any space with a roof to cover it and walls sufficient to block the worst of the wind remains entirely comfortable all day or night. The most one desire in temperature control on a given day would be a low speed fan.

Yet the openness of structures and living space, I think, should not be attributed entirely to pleasant weather. While that may explain the reason that Kenyans do not take any special course to alter the atmosphere of their houses, and therefore the reason they are not quite so careful to keep them closed off to the outside, it ignores the equally strong weight of the value that Kenyans put on a world where the natural environment is enjoyed on its own terms and welcomed into all life, including into the home.

Now, I’m not trying to make a case for the Noble Savage here. Kenyans blend outdoor and indoor largely out of necessity, and they certainly do not live in some utopian state of perfect balance between natural and man-made. Still, there is a definite style, an attitude and a distinct intentionality, to the way in which Kenyans live in their environment. Houses, instead of being air conditioned, are built with holes in the walls of every room. Only a bit of screen in the middle of this hole then separates the interior of the house from the exterior. Moreover, during the day, windows are opened to further let the breeze pass through. Alongside that breeze comes all the sounds—and smells—of the outside world, from livestock to people talking and shouting in the streets, to the cacophony of thuds, squeaks, and rumbles that a city emits to let everyone know that it’s still alive.

Some houses are even less set apart from the world outside of them, with a sheet, or nothing at all, to serve as a door and cracks left unpatched lining the walls. Here it is that we see perhaps the most striking example of the traditional, basic, open lifestyle of the Kenyans swallowing at will desirable elements of our modern millennium. Even in these most rugged of huts, left open to the elements and the thousand intrusions of nature and life, families keep a television, a DVD player, an fast-boiling electric kettle, perhaps even a computer. Amid dirt floors, with the sounds of the small family herd drifting in through the open doorway, they can watch American Idol and check Facebook. The scene is unlike anything one could see in the modern West, a world truly its own. In this way, the city of Eldoret seems less a modern metropolis and more a super-village, dominating its part of the East African plain and deciding for itself at every turn how it will employ the twenty-first century to its liking, and how it will simply continue blissfully along as it has for thousands of years.

Hipsters vs. Kenyans

Greetings, Reader Land. It’s been a little while, I know. I got asked to preach two sermons here, and seeing as how I’ve never before done one sermon in front of a congregation, I thought it would be a good time to put a little extra effort into my prep work. Now I’m past the first, and writing the second. So far, so good.

Did you know that it’s Lent now? If you didn’t you should. Easter is on the way, people. Get ready.

Now, to the post! My last few have been lengthy and fairly thought-heavy, so I thought I’d do something a little shorter and a little lighter this time around. And, since Chattanooga just made the list of Top 5 New Hipster Cities in the States, I thought I’d blend a little home and a little abroad to bring you…

HIPSTERS VERSUS KENYANS 2012!

Here’s how this thing is going to work. If you’ve seen “Zoolander,” I’m imagining a throwdown contest similar to the walk-off between Hansel and Derek Zoolander. If you haven’t seen “Zoolander,” quit reading right now and go watch it. Unless Will Ferrell or Ben Stiller are likely to offend you, or you need intellectual stimulation from your movies.

So, I’ve isolated the common ground between hipsters and Kenyans and narrowed the playing field to five major categories. Each category will be judged separately, with the victor being the group that takes the most total categories. Let us begin.

Cheap, Unattractive Clothing –

The Kenyans have a strong claim on this, but the Hipsters give them a run for their money. Over lunch one day, I mentioned that my clothes came from a thrift store. My companions were fascinated. Indeed, Peter Rono decided that my clothing economy, near to the heart of all hipsters, was the final step in proving my true African citizenship. “When they were dealing out the cards of where everyone should go,” he told me, “they accidentally threw two at once into America, and decided to just let you go. You were supposed to be one of us.” They demanded to know how a used clothing market works, and were blown away by the low cost of the good available. American clothing costs far more than Kenyan clothing when new, but thrift store prices undercut even Kenyan street markets. So, in terms of economy, the hipsters win the category. However, the Kenyans rally remarkably over the so-called “ironic” (read “ugly”) element of dress. To walk through the markets downtown is to see a clothing pageant in which M.C. Hammer, Steve Urkel, Olivia Newton John, the Backstreet Boys, and Mufasa all provided wardrobe trunks which were promptly intermixed with no respect for style and items were chosen with no rhyme or reason. However, I must concede that this garish comedy of errors is entirely unintentional, so, the hipsters have it. CLOTHING POINT: HIPSTERS.

Hipsters: 1

Kenyans: 0

Intentionally Poor Hygiene – One often finds hipsters to be among the unwashed masses. Between the willful rejection of respect for appearance and the attitude of cultivated apathy, showering and other such daily cleanliness is left by the wayside as a convention of “The Man.” Or whatever the preferred term for the establishment is. Kenyans, however, raise this to a level of art. There are generally accepted slang terms, such as “passport shower,” for halfheartedly cleaning oneself. Indeed, such meager gestures in the general direction of personal hygiene often do not occur until several days have elapsed without such a gesture. Deodorant is considered entirely optional, and not necessarily a desirable option, despite the fact that nearly every day offers either dry summer heat or humid mugginess, depending on the season. Culturally respected traditions reinforce the situation. Upon returning to one’s homelands, one is usually expected to splash a small amount of dirty river water over oneself, and to bathe in this woefully insufficient manner for the duration of one’s stay. Hipsters, you tried, but these people have been cultivating group stank for millennia. HYGIENE POINT: KENYANS

Hipsters: 1

Kenyans: 1

Tie game

Being “The First” to Hear “It” – It is a highly regarded mark of distinction for any hipster to be the first among one’s social circle to hear a band that goes on to attain some notoriety in indie or underground circles. For a demonstration of this reality, watch Harvard Sailing Team’s Youtube video, “Hipster Playlist.” And the lengths to which such folk will go to establish their credibility, or to promote those bands they have discovered. Have you met Daniel Hall? Still, the Kenyans pull out all the stops for this one. Street bands are constant, and everyone is trying to “make it” or get the chance to play a venue who has any talent for music. Interestingly, because the odds of securing a huge record deal here are significantly less than in the States, it is more common to simply want to gain some local notoriety and be afforded the opportunity to play at small venues, the only kind that exist in most localities. But the thing that really gives the Kenyans the edge is that songs here may be in English, Kiswahili, tribal dialects, or even Shang, a language invented by the youth for themselves, and largely unintelligible by adults. That’s right, folks, indie bands playing in an indie language. “Have you heard of the new metal/tribal fusion group “Wrath of the Zebra Brothers?” “Dude, I heard them before you, in that field by that hut, like, three years ago.” “Yeah, but you don’t speak Kiyuku, so I understood them first, so…” INDIE MUSIC CRED: KENYANS

Hipsters: 1

Kenyans: 2

Uh-oh…

Substandard Housing –

There’s dumpster diving, there’s trash reclaiming, there’s the ubiquitous mooching, but nothing quite establishes the lowness of hipster living standards like a good look at any number of loft apartments and semi-renovated basements which are called home. Now, one must admit that thousands, perhaps millions (I’m not good with population sizes) of Kenyans live in mud huts, grass huts, and even the occasional cave or thick woodland grove. Yet this housing is much better than it seems to the outside observer. With the mildness of weather here, the beautiful climate, and the general fondness for blurring the lines between outdoor and indoor, the Kenyan lives in an open structure of limited space as much out of genuine contentedness and enjoyment of the environment as out of necessity. Kenyan houses are also quite well-maintained, demonstrating an ability for home care and a sense of responsibility far outstripping that evidenced by the average hipster “apartment.” Therefore, JUNKY HOUSING: HIPSTERS, believe it or not.

Hipsters: 2

Kenyans: 2

Time for a tie-breaker

There is one thing, perhaps more than any other, that allows one to recognize a hipster in any environment, even in neutral public territory when devoid of distinctive wardrobe. This, of course, is the ever-present pint can of Pabst Blue Ribbon beer. Thus, our final judgment must be determined by…

Crappy Beer – I, of course, am a respectable educator and have no personal way of judging this category. Thankfully, I have a friend here. We’ll call him Johnny Kenya, who is passably familiar with Kenyan beer, and who will allow us to conclude this contest. Johnny?

Hi, everyone, I’m Johnny, and I’m typing now. In Kenya, we prefer beer that is really, really bad. Just atroshus (see, I misspelled atrocious, so you know it’s really me and not Kent). The situation has escalated to the point that talented, capable breweries don’t even bother to set up business. Our high-end, premium beers are basically on par with mediocre American domestics. And capable microbrews? Forget about it.

There you have it, folks, an unbiased local testimony. This compares favorably with the American hipster’s devotion to PBR, and similar tragedies. However, the most deeply held tenet of hipsterism compromises the hipster claim to the title. I’m talking, of course, about individuality, or “indie-ism.” It is this devotion to what is independent, what is underground, what it small or local or unheard of, that has given rise to the absolute and unparalleled explosion of microbreweries across the States in the last decade. And microbrews, by and large, are a cut above your average domestic. Therefore, the hipster’s devotion to mediocre, cheap beer is undermined by his heartfelt embrace of craft beer, which he imbibes when he has sold enough demo tapes to afford a proper bottle. So it is that we find, CHEAP BEER: KENYANS.

Final Score:

Hipsters: 2

Kenyans: 3

My apologies, dear hipsters, but you have been outclassed (or underclassed) by an opponent with even less stake in Western culture and propriety. The Kenyans have it.

Africa Afire

Here’s a curious thing: the church in Kenya has some striking similarities to first century Christianity. It’s more than just passing similarities of fellowship or support in the face of adversity. There are things that happen here that are practically repetitions of events recorded in the Book of Acts or Paul’s epistles. Overwhelmingly, these events and trends center around a single reality. What’s that reality, you ask? Why, dear reader, it is none other than the sort of otherworldly manifestation of the Holy Spirit that started at the Pentecost following the Ascension of Christ, and continued to be so prevalent in early church Sabbaths and worship services.

But let’s back up for a second, because that is a huge, startling, somewhat uncomfortable assertion that makes a lot of people, including myself at times, very suspicious. We hear Holy Spirit-fueled Pentecostalism, and we start looking for the wires and mirrors. So let me offer some background, throw out a few facts from a class discussion, and then you can decide whether you want to listen to my thoughts on the charismatic bonanza that is the Church in East Africa.

Most churches here are Pentecostal. I don’t mean that most churches are planted by Pentecostal denominations, nor that Pentecostal groups tend to be the most popular. I mean that churches in general are predominantly Pentecostal. Denominations indigenous to this continent are almost exclusively Pentecostal. The foreign denominations that do the best are largely Pentecostal as well. But the most telling phenomenon is that sects that would not be Pentecostal in other contexts, that might even officially disavow Pentecostalism, have dozens of Pentecostal congregations here. Catholics, Presbyterians, Methodists, Anglicans: you name it, there’s a Pentecostal version here.

Indulge me while I give a brief lesson in Pentecostalism for my unholy non-rolling readers. Pentecostalism is so called because it is the theological system based on the miraculous, demonstrative gifts of the Holy Spirit first evidenced among the followers of Christ at Pentecost. The story is in Acts 2, and it goes about like this: All of the Apostles and assorted other disciples of Christ are following Jesus’ instruction to be cool and lay low in Jerusalem until they receive this other manifestation of God. At the first Pentecost—a harvest festival (I think) in Judaism that occurs roughly forty days after Passover—after Jesus tells them this, they’re all together in the morning and suddenly there’s tornado-type sound and fire from Heaven appears, hovering over them, and they start doing all sorts of crazy things. They speak in different foreign languages that they’ve never learned, and even angelic tongues. They start prophesying different things. The whole scene is so rambunctious that it becomes the focal point of the city for the day, with people from all over the world who are in town for Pentecost listening to what’s going on and speculating about it—the predominant view being that they’re all just hammered drunk. But then people start realizing that, regardless of the fact that they don’t speak the same language, they can all understand what’s being said. In the middle of this boisterous, perplexing, deafening spectacle that’s pouring out into the street, good old St. Peter stands up and gives a sermon explaining that, rather than being drunk, these guys are being filled with the Spirit of God. The sign and Peter’s interpretation are so convincing that three thousand people come to the disciples’ faith that same day. From that point on, these miraculous signs of the Holy Spirit, along with miraculous healings, become a distinguishing characteristic of Christianity during the first few centuries A.D.

Fast-forward about one and a half millennia. The Holy Spirit gifts have come to be regarded by the church across the world as a thing of the past, miracles that were important for the first Christians but that have been replaced by sound doctrine, established sacraments, and the teaching and work of the Church through the centuries. Then some Methodists in the hills of the Southeastern U.S. get the idea that true Christians should do more than just attend Church, believe the right things, and carry on with life as usual. They decide that Christians need to live differently from everyone else on earth, and place a huge emphasis on righteous living and adherence to the ethical behaviors listed in various places in the New Testament.

They consider this true holiness, and so come to be known as the Holiness Movement. Their communities get established, and then, a few generations down the road, some of them start experiencing the gifts of the Spirit that were thought to have passed away with the Early Church. About the time, certain Methodist revivals in the Southeast (Kentucky and Tennessee, mostly, I think) start experiencing the same things. So, the Holiness folks and the ones from those revivals that experience this Pentecostal phenomena join up and start their own church based on the assumption that other Christians are generally right, but they’ve missed this crucial part of Christianity that the Holy Spirit has shown them. Since then, Pentecostalism has become the focal point for several American denominations. Furthermore, in the last fifty years or so, as non-denominational churches have emerged, many have been open to this kind of thing. However, since they haven’t wanted to adopt the whole theological systems of the Pentecostal churches, they have opted to accept the label “charismatic,” which I’m pretty sure they didn’t come up with but have since been happy to wear.

Now, a few disclaimers. First of all, I’m not trying to persuade you to accept Pentecostalism as such. I’m reporting what I’ve observed, and trying to understand it in a systematic way. Secondly, the last two paragraphs are just what I remember from a couple of books, a couple of college Religious Studies classes, and things I’ve heard. Any particular fact may be wrong, and this isn’t a complete picture of global Pentecostalism, but I’m confident that it’s pretty accurate overall. And, meta-narrative notice number three, I’ll use the terms Pentecostal and charismatic interchangeably, because I’m not talking about whole theological systems here, and because the Africans don’t much seem to care about the distinctions. Now, move with me to modern Africa.

Here in Kenya, the controversy over Pentecostalism that exist in the modern West and that has waxed and waned in Christian theology ever since the first century looks very different. As I’ve said, the Pentecostals aren’t a fringe minority here. They’re a large majority, and the question isn’t so much a debate between the religious establishment’s theology and the small faction’s new discovery as it is a huge majority saying, “Look what keeps happening. Will you join us?” And the most common answer is yes, even among congregations beholden to theological systems that haven’t the least trace of Pentecostalism in North America or Europe. I’m told the situation is much the same in the churches of South America and Southeast Asia, but I can’t speak with any authority to that.

In Kenya, this perceived presence of the Holy Spirit takes a large number of different forms. One of the most common, and I think perhaps the most palatable for non-Kenyans, is the empowerment of their pastors. Many, maybe even most, pastors here have little or no training, and it is the widely-held belief of my friends and students here that the Holy Spirit is the only possible explanation for why these unschooled men can be such effective ministers. These are people with high school educations, usually, who work normal jobs as maintenance men or shopkeepers or factory workers nine to five, six days a week. But at some point, they feel a call to share what they have come to believe about God, so they begin a preaching career. Take my good friend Peter Rono, for example. Peter was a taxi driver with a basic education who was supporting a growing family when he felt that God wanted him to become a pastor. Now Peter is a Bible college student with an unusual depth of insight who does great work at theology in his second language. He has had nearly inexplicable success at this unexpected new course of study and career, and when he couldn’t figure out how to pay for the rest of the program, his estranged brother called him up for the first time in years and told him that he wanted to pay for Peter to go to school. Nor is this story uncommon, even among the small student body of Discipleship College. Under-qualified, uneducated people across Kenya deliver powerful sermons every week, and are receiving miraculous provision to pursue seminary and ordination in their various denominations. The story kind of reminds me of some redneck commercial fishermen from a place in northern Israel who suddenly had an ability to preach incredible sermons and who started the world’s most prominent religion.

But the wonders of the Kenyan churches don’t stop with their pastors, nor with qualifying the called. People experience large, boisterous manifestations of the Holy Spirit often enough that it isn’t unexpected, and people report glacellalia (the possibly-misspelled academic term for speaking in tongues), miraculous healings, and other “signs and wonders” across the country. It has become such a presence in their churches and such an important aspect of their faith that Kenyans have left non-Pentecostal churches in droves. Nor is this an exclusively Kenyan trend. My Ugandan and Rawandan students tell me that the situation is much the same in their countries. Indeed, the most heartfelt and adamant defense of charismatic work that I’ve heard here came from my Rawandan student Janvier.

Janvier came to faith because his mother was healed after seven years of illness. Her story reminds me of the story of the Woman with the Issue of Blood from the gospels, where we get the famous line from Jesus, “Who touched me?” Janvier’s mother contracted some kind of intestinal disease that sounds to me like a major foodbourne illness. She went to several doctors over those seven years, but the disease was resistant to all treatment. Finally, although her family wasn’t religious, she allowed a neighborhood pastor to pray for her. She was healed suddenly and surprisingly, as if the past seven years had never happened. The event was so startling that Janvier, already a young adult at the time, decided to change his whole belief system and became a Christian. Another incident later led him to decide to enter into ministry.

This kind of thing happens all the time here. Most of my information comes from a couple of class discussions I had with five students, and as I pressed to find the differences in their various experiences and see how they each understood what had been happening, one commonality emerged. All of these people had experienced God, through his Holy Spirit, in some miraculous way. They were a set of people including three different nationalities, both sexes, various socio-economic classes, and ages from early twenties to mid-fifties. Yet every one of them had multiple stories of having experienced or been close to incidences of speaking in tongues, prophecy, miraculous healing, and other more individualized empowerments that seemed utterly miraculous. It was even more clear and concrete than my young years spent in a Pentecostal denomination (I tipped my hand there, see?). It was like stepping right back into the Early Church and seeing all the things we take for biblical history as present reality.

So, that’s the situation on the ground here, which in itself is interesting as a social phenomenon and as a religious trend. But I’m not just telling a story or reporting a trend. I’m also asking a question, and maybe even cautiously leveling something of an indictment. Forgive me if you think it inappropriate, but I shall state it nonetheless: Why don’t we see this in America? Could it be that we are missing something very important and very real, which we’ve been missing, by and large, for centuries?

Let’s talk about Tim Tebow: everyone else is doing it. And, let me go ahead and say that I know nearly nothing of football, as evidenced by the fact that I’m not sure whether I’ve got his surname spelled correctly. Anyway, I do know enough to know that people have some strong opinions about Tebow, which seem to me to come down to him either being a rare paragon of faith in modern popular culture, or a self-righteous and overly pushy football player who receives attention out of proportion to his ability, due to his faith. One of my friends who knows a good deal more than I about sports, though, once postulated something. He noted that a lot of people seemed to be waiting to see what would happen to Tebow; essentially, to see when and how Tebow would fail. He argued that the reason for this might be that people don’t want to have to live up to the Tebow standard. They don’t want to believe that they need to live out their faith more openly, and so they find reasons to make those who do into either super-people or sub-humans. Either way, those people aren’t normal people, so the rest of us can just go about our lives and not have to do any better or worse.

I’d heard about this situation in Africa in passing a few different times before coming here, but no one made a big deal out of it. And, now that I’ve been on the ground and seen and heard a few things here, that strikes me as truly odd. If the Spirit of God really is here doing miraculous healing and giving people all sorts of supernatural abilities, shouldn’t we be making it into a big deal? Maybe the Kenyans are wrong, theologically mistaken or rationally deficient. But maybe it’s not them. Maybe we’ve got Holy Spirit brand Tebow syndrome, and it’s just easier to treat stories about this kind of thing as distant realities that don’t have to apply to us. They are either better than we can hope for, or worse, but they don’t have any bearing on our world. Or do they?

Here in Kenya, they have a word for non-Pentecostal churches. The churches that doctrinally refuse the theology of Pentecostalism and deny the legitimacy of charismatic gifts are losing membership rapidly. They’ve already lost the majority presence in Kenya, and are beginning to struggle just to remain significant. Catholic, Mainline Protestant, Evangelical, Jehovah’s Witness and Mormons alike find themselves in much the same position. The Kenyans have seen this, and they have a name that they apply to all such churches, regardless of doctrinal rigor, exuberance, financial wellbeing or international clout. They call them, “Religious.” If you’re keeping score at home, you probably just lost points. That is, if the Kenyans are right.

Now, let me give you an explanation that may make you a little more comfortable. I can see where one might think that I’m implying that our churches are without the Holy Spirit. I’m not saying that. If we are doing anything worthwhile in America, which we are, then it can only be through the Spirit of God in some way or another. I think it perfectly reasonable to assert that we have the same access to and presence of the Holy Spirit as the Africans. It’s just manifested differently, for whatever reason. It could be that God has chosen not to relate to us the same way that He relates to the Kenyans. Just as likely, it could be that in our theological resistance to the Holy Spirit, we have reasoned ourselves out of Pentecostalism. It could be that God, in allowing us the great gift of our free will, has decided that if we are intentionally set against charismatic gifts, then He will respect our decision as His children. That, I think, would be a pity, but it’s not theological or spiritual suicide.

Yet I’ve heard arguments that are rather more assertive than a simple theological rejection of the Holy Spirit in response to the presence of such phenomena. See, there are churches all across the States, North America, and Europe that see Pentecostal gifts all the time, so it isn’t as if whatever is going on in Africa simply doesn’t happen on our civilized continents. In response to this, there are those who go much farther than to argue that these phenomena are out of place, or exaggerated. Many assert ardently that any charismatic experience of the Holy Spirit beyond what is reported in the Bible is a fiction, perpetuated by the ignorance of its audience. So, let’s talk about Historical Arrogance.

Historical Arrogance is an increasingly observable tendency of our society to assume that our ancestors believed wrongly, and were generally ignorant, superstitious peasants because of their ignorance of our modern scientific knowledge and philosophical sophistication, and their illiteracy. You can observe it in the term “Dark Ages.” There’s this idea that for a long time in history, everyone was really dumb, which is why we have all sorts of fairytales emerging out of this time, and why there weren’t any real advances in science or philosophy until the Renaissance. But the problem is that the more we study our predecessors, the more we find that they weren’t so dumb as we often imagine. As it turns out, there were miniature Renaissances throughout the Dark Ages, like the Carolingian one, and that there was all kinds of good philosophy being done, it just wasn’t the kind of philosophy our Greco-Roman-influenced system prefers. Many people want to dismiss anything before the Enlightenment as part of a pitiable lack of intellectual rigor, worsened by a nearly insurmountable weight of superstition. Yet continually, when we study the writings and philosophy of these early ages, we find that it is we who are prejudiced. The ancient Egyptians wrote a book of philosophy, for example, that speaks of a fascinating and complex system of social ethics. Thousands of such things exist, and we are slowly coming to see that people have never been all that much less intelligent than ourselves. They have just been less refined, and even that is up for debate. The reason this is important is that this same historical arrogance is applied to reports of miracles, including most of those surrounding the Holy Spirit. Anything occurring after the Early Church period, and sometimes even much of what is reported there, is summarily dismissed as the hallucinations or deceptions of ignorant peasant folk who wouldn’t have had such outlandish notions if they had been able to reason and analyze properly. Yet we’re coming to find that those people were much more insightful and reasonable than we give them credit for being.

But even aside from that argument, there is another problem I’m starting to see. Kenyans hold education and science in high regard. I know of at least three children who live in mud huts yet whose parents insist that they go to school five days a week, and half a day on Saturday. If our contemporaries, who are not much less educated than ourselves, are still experiencing the sorts of phenomena that we ascribe to the ignorance and superstitions of our predecessors, then the premise for our historical arrogance is false. And if a premise fails, then the theory which is based on it likewise fails. That’s Scientific Method 101. Who are the ignorant ones then?

We can be as skeptical as we like, and indeed as skeptical as our cynical rationalist minds insist on being, but Janvier is not an idiot. The man lived in a shack that was little more than a hut, working, eating, and sleeping right beside the rest of his family. He is perfectly capable of telling whether or not a human being is ill, and he is in perfect proximity to his mother to know how serious and ongoing her disease was. If the man says that his mother was seriously ill for seven years, and then had an immediate recovery after being prayer for, it is unscientific not to accept this evidence, even if one doesn’t buy his explanation.

It then becomes a lot harder for us to dismiss the Kenyan religious experience. This isn’t to say that Pentecostalism is the only true faith, nor that there aren’t deep-seated problems in the charismatic congregations, just like everywhere else. There are problems. In fact, there are problems in spades. There are problems that were declaimed as heresies and hucksterisms by the Early Church. I know this because I grew up in a Pentecostal denomination, and I’ve seen signs of the same warts and perversions here that I saw back then. The huge emphasis on charismatic gifts often means that the importance of other gifts are diminished. There are those who go so far as to condemn the “Religious” churches, certain that they aren’t really Christians. Furthermore, if the modern Western Church has replaced the Pentecostal gifts with sound doctrine and structure, the reverse is often true in Pentecostal congregations. The experience of exciting, demonstrative contact with the Holy Spirit comes to be emphasized over the understanding of God through theology and the practice of the more basic sacraments given by that same Holy Spirit. Indeed, my student Grace tells me that one of the quickest ways to get rich in Kenya is to found a huge church and provide an overwhelming emotional experience. She jokes that she is going to take me to Nairobi, set me up in a church service as a learned doctor from America, hire a big choir and stir up an exciting spectacle, and just watch the money roll in. This scenario, meant for comedy, is more a satire of a very present reality than a wild exaggeration. Janvier even tells of people who offer lay people the chance to pay to get the Holy Spirit, and everything that goes with it. There are prophets and “miraculous” intercessors who will pray for you and promise any number of blessings. I seem to remember a certain Simon the Sorcerer who tried the same thing in the first century. St. Peter wasn’t overly impressed then, and I don’t imagine God would be too much more approving of the notion now.

There are also some very good characteristics of the American Church that come from not being purely first-century in our faith. I mean, have you ever read the Epistles to the Corinthians? Or the part in the beginning of St. John’s Revelation where Jesus starts airing the Church’s dirty laundry? The first century church was the prototypical church, and to be a prototype is to have a lot of kinks that need working out. Early Christianity was one giant, nasty beta test. But it was also a piece of Heaven on earth that most pastors and theologians, and more than a few of us lay people, wish we could get back. It was a prototype that a lot of people loved enough to die for.

I just can’t look at what’s going on here and dismiss it altogether. It may be exaggerated, by accident or for profit. But I just don’t see any way to altogether ignore or dismiss something that dominates the Church across at least a huge portion of a whole continent like this does. Then, too, there’s the fact that most of the Christians I’ve spent time with here are people with genuine faith and active devotion. If it were all just a show or hallucination, I can’t imagine that it would be so fruitful and beneficial to individuals and society as a whole here. Thus, I can’t escape the question of why things are so different between this church and the one in America. I’ve got a few guesses, influenced by the answers of students and pastors alike here and abroad.

Let’s go back to my first point that uneducated men have ministries here flourishing far beyond what I imagine the global average must be. Grace postulates that, in America, our pastors go to seminary, become educated, and are thereby qualified to preach. Here, though, their pastors have no opportunity for seminary, so they have to just make the frightening move of stepping up in front of a crowd of people, hoping and believing that God will give them the right words. The very inception of their ministry is utterly dependent on the direct intervention of God. American pastors usually don’t have to take such a large leap of faith, and they know that the system whereby they will become pastors includes at least a solid foundation of credible education. They know that the manufactured system will give them all they really need to start a ministry, so they don’t have to depend on anything else. The Kenyans have a faith-based, sink-or-swim experience, whereas we Americans get extensive swimming lessons before we get into the deep end.

Now, I’m not knocking seminary here. Actually, Kenyan pastors long to go to seminary, and their denominations and congregations often bend over backwards to find the funds that will make this possible. My point is not that training is bad, but rather that training may become a crutch when it is expected. Kenyan pastors have to act on a great deal of faith because there is no alternative: they might never receive any training at all. Faith is a necessity here. Back home, we can get by without it. And that principle, dear readers, extends far beyond ministerial leadership. Let’s talk about doctors. Grace tells me that miraculous healings here are pretty common, and follows this up by joking that if it weren’t for the Holy Spirit, no one here would get healed. But it’s not really a joke. Want to guess how many permanently practicing cancer specialists there are in Kenya, according to a radio program I heard on my miserable ride from Nairobi to Eldoret? Four. Cancer is one of the most common and lethal diseases of our modern society, and there are a total of four people in all of Kenya who specialize in treating it. Want to guess how widespread these practitioners’ treatment facilities are? One city. There is one city in Kenya that contains the entirety of the nation’s equipment and knowledge for adequate cancer treament. And most Kenyans can’t even afford the transportation to that city, much less the treatment cost. So, your treatment options if you’re among the vast majority of Kenyans who don’t live in Nairobi are basically limited to a miraculous healing or, well, that’s pretty much it. Miraculous gifts of God aren’t a nice sign here, they’re a necessity, and people are desperate enough that they’re willing to set aside their suspicions and pride and try anything that might work.

But I’m not sure it’s only necessity that makes the Holy Spirit’s presence here so prevalent. Were that the case, all the truly impoverished congregations in the States, and throughout the world for that matter, would suddenly have all their needs miraculously met and the privileged few here in Africa would restrict themselves to more mundane religious experiences. I think it may be about openness, too. I wonder if necessity is only a contributor to the real cause. Janvier’s mother had access to some doctors, albeit doctors who hadn’t the resources to treat her disease, so in her case it wasn’t purely about necessity. Instead, the ongoing inability of the doctors created an openness in her to any possible option. So, despite her family not being especially religious, she went to a pastor assuming that, since nothing else had worked, maybe God would. She was desperate enough that she was open to even an outlandish possibility that she could receive some divine intervention. And she did. Maybe it’s really about openness. Maybe the difference between the American Church in general and the Kenyan Church, even the African church, isn’t that God has chosen to related to us in different ways, but that we have chosen to be open to God, and closed off from God, in different ways.

Which brings me to the end of this little essay. Is the American Church deficient? Is what’s happening in Africa genuine? Does the Kenyan Church have something right that we have wrong? More practically, can we fix whatever deficiency may exist? I think so, but the how and why of that is a much lengthier, more controversial discussion that I’d rather have in person. Let me, then, just say this. There are some wonderful, active, fruitful congregations here in Kenya that have a great deal of faith in these Pentecostal gifts. Those congregations think of congregations that oppose such gifts as strictly “religious.” There were groups in the first century that were called “religious,” too, by the Church Fathers and even Jesus. And it was pretty much never a compliment.

“You know what you got?” “S-T-Y-L-E”

As I said in my previous post, one cannot fully understand Kenyan food until one understands the culture, the tradition, and the formality that surrounds it. So, let’s talk culture.

First, a piece of pseudo-culture that is neither purely Kenyan nor purely traditional, but is well worth mentioning. While here in Kenya, I have been hosted by the Mills family, and they are wonderful people. It’s high time I recognized their greatness, and this is as good a place as any to do it. Gene Mills is the director of Discipleship College here, and was a professor of mine back at UT Chatt, hence my connection to him. He’s a great man, with a career that has blended church ministry, non-profit administration, and academic scholarship. He and his wife, Tanya, moved here about a year ago to begin full-time work with the college. Tanya, interestingly enough, is Hawaiian-Filipino (Philippino?), and met Gene while he worked and studied in Hawaii—one of his academic focuses has been Hawaiian religion, which makes him that much cooler. Their kids all look like islanders, and they come complete with Hawaiian middle names. Their daughter, Amber, lives here with them, and is planning on going to med school here at Moi University. If you’re interested in their ministry, or the place where I’m working, or looking for a way to donate to good work in Africa, check out http://gene-at-dc-kenya.blogspot.com/.

So, why the Mills shout-out in the midst of a food post? Because, my friends, food is how the Millses take care of me here. Yes, they let me live in their guest house, and yes, they’ve given me useful things to do here, but let’s get real. The food is what’s important. Every night, right around seven o’clock, we play this game where Tanya calls to ask what I’m doing for dinner, and I tell her that I don’t know as if I didn’t think she were about to invite me over, and then she tells me that I have to be at the table in ten minutes. So far, I have cooked only about three meals for myself, being showered with their hospitality most nights before I can even think about what I’m going to eat. And eating at their table has yet to prove dull. Sometimes, I get tastes of home with pizza or burgers. Much more often, I am served either Kenyan food or, most frequently, Hawaiian dishes beloved by their family. Ever had Spam with steamed rice and seaweed? Chicken and cabbage with Hawaiian shoyu sauce? Pork and squash? You would have if you had spent the last two weeks with the Mills family.

More important than the food itself, however, is the idea behind it. The Millses are wonderfully generous, and that generosity translates into warm comfort and family security for me, here in the midst of an entirely alien world. This is what Kenyan food culture is all about. The sharing of a meal creates the bonds of kinship and the goodwill that were necessary to survival in the tribal hunter-gatherer culture, and still today they perform much the same function, enforcing familial and neighborly bonds that support poor people in a tough life. The simple and fairly bland diet of Kenya is spiced with a hundred traditions and ceremonies that grant it immense importance.

Some of these ceremonies were already familiar to me, since they have been imported to Kenya. Every restaurant here, and even most homes, observe the Old World dining customs that have quietly slipped away from most modern settings. We now discourage elbows on tables, and singing at mealtimes, as vague gestures toward the great pageant in which noble meals used to dress themselves. Yet here in Kenya, the decorum runs much deeper, and I for one find it delightful for the little time I may enjoy it. Meals here happen in progressions, each course given its own attention, even when there are only two or three dishes. Before the first course, and after the last, fingerbowls of hot water and citrus rinds and brought out to wash away the day’s dust. Oftentimes, palette cleansers are presented between courses, consisting of seed mixes that function like mint to fill the mouth with a sharp freshness before introducing a new savor. The courses themselves almost always rest on warmer pots—little terra cotta vessels with simple designs carved into their sides which hold candles to keep food warm. At every restaurant, the table itself is elaborately dressed as well, with fine table cloths, expertly folded cloth napkins, and trays full of various condiments in different metal and glass serving dishes. Drinks are all served bottled and poured tableside by the server, who quickly whisks away empty bottles and any refuse that comes to rest on the table during the meal. All of this formality contributes to the sense that a meal, especially a meal out at a restaurant, is an occasion for celebration. Perhaps this is why it is such a rarity in America. Whereas many Americans eat out as frequently as they dine at home, very few Kenyans eat at restaurants more than a few times each year. One appreciates a meal much more in such circumstances, and so is entitled to enjoy all possible pomp in the event.

Such formality, however, is not restricted to expensive dinners on the town. Long before European custom came to these shores, there was a whole network of traditions surrounding the sharing of food. As I have written, mealtime was as much about the people at the table and their relationships to one another as about the act of nourishing the body. By this, I certainly do not mean the same thing that American television campaigns for family dinners intend to communicate. Certainly, there is a sense in which the immediate family was drawn together by meal sharing, but the power of sharing food, and hospitality, was far greater than family values promotion. Alliances were solidified, strangers were made known, futures were decided, business was conducted, and faith was enforced through meals. To share food, as a sign of hospitality, was to share the substance of life. It was to make oneself a slight bit more vulnerable, and to offer part of one’s own livelihood to one’s guest. The sharing of dinner was, and in some ways remains, a symbolic offer of trust, protection, and friendship.

Thus, food custom is still very important, a fact I learned first hand upon visiting my friend Peter Rono. Upon being invited into his home, I was sat down and food was brought out. It didn’t matter that I was unannounced, nor that we were much too late for lunch and much too early for dinner. Bowls of bananas, passion fruit, mangoes, and boiled sweet potatoes were set out, along with fermented milk and chilled water. The milk itself, which has featured multiple times in this blog already, is indicative of much of the food culture. Fermented milk is more than a national or cultural tradition, it is a symbol of the tribe. One way that some Kalenjin choose to represent themselves is with a native drink, implying that eating and drinking and the accompanying customs are an inherent and significant part of who they are as a people. The way in which I was tended to while being served was important, too. I have already recounted the extended ceremony of hand washing which both precedes and follows the meal. Furthermore, everything was offered to me by hand, repeatedly. The water and milk were poured for me, and towels were extended as well. All of this was done by Peter’s wife and sister, the women of the house who tradition dictates as hostesses. Their service was so attentive as to be somewhat embarrassing. Mary, Peter’s wife, leaped to remove the scraps of my banana peel and passion fruit as soon as they touched the table. My discomfort over this particular piece of service resulted in Mary and I competing to see who could throw away my trash first. This single fact was particularly notable to me, because it brings up a difficult question. When one encounters a culture this steeped in tradition, there is bound to be some need for adjustment. Yet one also has one’s own culture to contend with. So it was that I struggled with Mary over the disposal of my refuse. Which, then, is more rude: to allow someone to wait on you literally hand and foot, to the point of collecting your garbage every few moments while you continue to gorge yourself, or to struggle against that someone’s traditions in an effort to be polite? And, make no mistake, a guest is expected to gorge himself. When I had eaten all the fruit I wanted, the family continued to offer food, and to inquire as to why I wasn’t hungry.Whatever the case, there is one thing of which I am now certain. It really wasn’t all that ridiculous for Saint Peter to get all discombobulated when God Almighty wanted to give him a footbath. There’s something strangely humbling and uncomfortable about someone serving you that directly and completely, and I can only imagine that the discomfort greatly increases when that someone is Jesus Christ.

This, then, is the other aspect of food in Africa. No matter how modest the meal, even just ugali and water, the customs which accompany it and the manner in which it is served and partaken of are of deep significance. Food here is a way of life, a symbol, and a cultural practice as much as it is a source of sustenance and culinary art.

Taste the Jambo

I love food. I love knowing about what makes it work. I love making it. I love trying to create traditional recipes with accuracy, and trying to combine non-traditional elements with style. I love knowing the history of food, why it was cultivated and why each dish carries the cultural weight it does. I love to think about what food means to different people, and how the cuisine of a place reflects its population. I love the stories, the flavors, the traditions surrounding food. So, it is high time I did a food post for Eldoret. As you read, you will probably want to refer to the illustration below. This was my first full, traditional Kenyan meal, with each component labeled.

A: Ugali B: Chipati C: Suma Wiki D: Beef Stew E: Green Gram

First, let’s talk staples. Grains are staples throughout the world, and in developing countries, I find that “staple” comes to mean “frequently appearing.” Thus, rice is a constant meal component throughout central America and in many parts of poor Asia. Even in our more prosperous countries, rice or bread or pasta tend to accompany almost every meal, a fact which any person who has ever thought about his dinner can confirm. Kenya is no exception to this reality.

Here, the staple grain is a food called “ugali.” Peter Rono tells me that in his family, they say, “If you have not had ugali, you have not had dinner,” a saying which could easily be the motto of nearly every family in Eldoret. Ugali is interesting in its function, although in and of itself it is largely unremarkable. The grain is rather like the grits so loved in the American south, except that it is stickier, almost like sushi rice, and often served cold. To eat ugali, one pinches off a piece, rolls it into a loose ball, and dips it in whatever else is on one’s plate.

Ugali starts its life as a native maize. That maize is then dried, and it is here that things begin to get interesting. I was teaching the biblical story of Ruth a week ago, and I paused the narrative for a moment to discuss the way in which God provides for the poor in Israelite culture. In Ruth, we see a number of customs designed to uphold the disenfranchised, including levirate marriage and laws regarding the harvest. This latter device includes the precept that when one is bundling harvested grain, he must leave whatever he drops wherever it falls. The poor of the community are then encouraged to come by and pick, or glean, from whatever has fallen, so that they need neither go hungry nor beg for their dinner. While I was lauding the virtue of this system, one of my students told me that it is still going on in Eldoret. Here, at the soccer stadium (a building with a rather exaggerated title), the people lay out their harvested maize to dry, so that it can then be milled into the meal that will turn into ugali. As it turns out, it is expected here that when one gathers up the dried maize, one will not be too careful to get every stalk. The poor women may then, a la Ruth, come and collect what is left behind. I’m curious to know whether this as an old tribal custom, or if it is something that came when the British missionaries began to Christianize the country. Either way, it’s an inspiring little blast from the deuteronomical past.

Of course, one cannot subsist entirely on sushi grits. So, there are a couple of other traditional compliments that accompany many ugali dinners. The most common, I gather, is “suma wiki.” Suma wiki is essentially a variety of green, like American collards (colored greens) or turnip or mustard greens. The preparation here, though, is decidedly less vinegar-based than any of its American cousins. I think the plant itself may also be less tough, since suma wiki tastes rather fresher than American greens, leading me to believe that it requires less cooking time. In the same way that ugali has a little saying to solidify its character as the ubiquitous staple grain of choice, suma wiki has a piece of folklore to celebrate it. These Africans love their proverbs and fables. “Wiki” is the Kiswahili word for “week,” and the story goes that suma wiki was added to ugali to break up the monotony of the local fare. Thus, it helped the “wiki” to pass more quickly.

We have now covered the grain and the vegetable that dominate the local diet. To this, we must add a protein. Eating animals at every meal is quite expensive, so that’s pretty well out. In fact, it is a mark of prosperity in this culture, and in many others like it across the world, for a person to be able to eat meat every day. In Kenya, I consider this a particular sign of poverty, since the meat around here is not very good. Most of it seems to be quite tough to begin with, and no one here has ever heard the term “medium rare.” Instead, Kenyans eat a legume that I’m pretty sure is closely related to lentils, if it is not in fact the same wonderful little bean-vegetable-plant-seed. Let me say here that if you are looking for a new staple to add to your diet, add lentils. They are versatile, they are delicious, they play well with any number of culinary styles, they are extremely healthful, and Esau sold Jacob his birthright for a bowl of them. So you know they’re good. Green grams exhibit all this fantastic virtue, making for a delightful addition to the other two fairly bland staples of the Kenyan table. Typically, they are prepared as a thick stew, seasoned with little more than salt and scraps of tomato or onion. And they really don’t need much else.

Added to this modest trio are a wide variety of stews, which seem to be more a general principle than to be based on any particular recipe. Indeed, there doesn’t even seem to be a particular Kiswahili word for any particular stew. I learned this when I got lunch one day, and decided to be verbally curious about my meal. I asked the cook what one thing on my plate was, pointing to it, and she told me in a thick Kenyan accent that it was called “chipati.” Turning to the other component of my meal, I asked, “And this?” She looked at me with something between puzzlement and pity for my stupidity, and flatly replied, “Vegetable stew.” Such stews are another thing into which ugali can be dipped, and they often include carrots, onions, and cabbage. If there are some bones or scraps of animal carcass lying around, the cook will toss these in as well—a fact which I found out in the most dangerous way possible. The stews are fairly mild in flavor, the Kenyan’s preferring not to spice their food much. It is in these stews that I find my greatest objection to Kenyan cuisine, for they are the sovereign domain of my arch nemesis, cilantro. They stuff swims through the stews like an overwhelming, languid, over-appreciated pond weed. Nonetheless, even cilantro cannot manage to ruin a good stew, and so it is that I manage to ignore its offence in regard for the dish as a whole.

There is one more food that often graces a Kenyan plate, and it is the more sophisticated, prettier, pleasanter older sister of ugali. Chipati, my friends, is where it’s at. Think of a crepe that has greater than average substance, and that is quite a bit more savory with flavors lent by a benevolent griddle, and you’re in the chipati neighborhood. I love the stuff, and one eats it much like ugali: dip into anything and everything, and chew slowly. The Kenyan nativity of this dish, however, is questionable in my mind. Chipati is flour-based, and it seems unlikely to me that the maize-based ugali would have reached such imminence had good flour always been available. However, regardless of how longstanding the tradition of chipati is, it has come to be regarded as completely traditional, which suits me just fine.

To these, the most common Kenyan foods, is added chai whenever possible. I have written extensively on chai already, so I’ll be brief here. The drink is like an American chai latte, except far more milky than spicy, and with the good grace to be inundated with vanilla. I think it a nearly perfect thing to drink whenever possible. Peter tells me that in Kenya, any time is tea time, and I see why. Chai is mild enough to be highly drinkable, unlike coffee or wine. It is complex enough not to be cloying, unlike coke. And it is warm and rich, so that it has none of the bite of fruit juices. Plus, who would want to drink water when chai is available? The devotion to it is so great here that I am told drinking steaming chai is the preferred method for relieving one’s body when one is working in the equatorial sun on a hot day. I find this particular application to be stretching even the considerable merits of chai, but I am enthusiastic enough about the stuff to suspend judgment until I have tested it myself.

Of course, chai isn't the only drink on the block. All the regulars are also here, with coffee and fruit juices occupying prominent places. However, only one other is really worth mentioning: fermented milk. Now, I've written before on fermented milk, and explained discovering the drink in the worst way possible. If you're curious about the experience, which you should be, check out my recent post "The Kenyan Muzungu." However, for the sake of a complete picture, I feel I must say something here. So: fermented milk is a traditional drink among the Kalenjin tribes, of which I may be a member. It is exactly what it sounds like, with charcoal added to remove the poisons created by the fermenting process. It tastes real bad, but it is an honor to be allowed to drink it. So, there.

Ugali, suma wiki, green gram, chipati, a stew, and chai: this is all that is needed for a proper Kenyan meal. But I hasten to add that these alone are insufficient to give a full picture of cuisine in Kenya, because the food itself is only half the equation. The way that dinner is presented here is at least as important as what’s being eaten. In a forthcoming post, I shall relate this side of Kenyan dinner. Until then, I bid you Good Eats.

“The Kenyan Muzungu,” or “How I Undeservingly Became a Kalenjin Tribesman”

I’ve been working on this one for a few days. It’s long. I hope it amuses you, I hope it gets you thinking, and I hope it doesn’t discourage you.

Once upon a time, I became the son of a fifty-eight year old Kalenjin tribeswoman by drinking fermented milk and eating unsanitary passion fruit. It is one of the greatest honors I have ever received, and it breaks my heart a little. But that is getting ahead of the story.

This past Tuesday, my student Peter Rono asked me after class, “Do you want to come to my house?” Heck yes I did! So, that afternoon, Peter, another student named Grace, and myself set out for a walk through Eldoret. I followed eagerly behind them as we left campus, walking several hundred yards of crowded, dusty streets before entering a quieter section of town. The roads were still all made of dirt, but overhanging trees and roadside hedges full of the flowers that grow everywhere here did much to alleviate the sense of oppressive dustiness that hangs over this late part of the dry season.

As we walked, we began to compare our lives and our worlds, and found much to discuss. Grace and Peter were particularly interested in my opinion of President Obama, and my reports of general American sentiment about our commander-in-chief. It seems he is a great curiosity in Africa: on the one hand, he is seen as a hero for giving the order to assassinate bin Laden. Yet the Kenyans don’t at all understand the general enthusiasm for his presidency that they perceive through the media, particularly the immense grassroots support that sprung up during his first election. They told me that he seems a largely lackluster figure, and laughed when I told them that I think he will be re-elected in the coming election. I was puzzled by their attitude. It isn’t that I don’t understand someone disliking the president; indeed, a huge portion of our own country usually dislikes the president in office during any given administration. So I pressed them about their attitudes, and got at least a partial explanation. “If he had to run here, in Kenya,” on of the students explained, “he would have had a much more difficult time.” When I still didn’t understand, my source laughed, “We are all black!” Finally catching on, I shared the joke with them. Then they continued, telling me that, despite their reservations about Obama or any other politician, the people of Kenya have immense respect for American government. They told me that they are enthralled by the way that our politicians listen to us, the American people, and respond to our demands. I started to respond, “Which politicians have you been watching?” But they continued, and I could see that this matters a great deal to them. Our system may be imperfect, and they may not even particularly care for any one man—including our current president—but they deeply respect our ideals and the way that our people try to uphold those ideals at least a majority of their time.

For all of this to make sense, you have to understand Kenyan government. Kenya has one of the most stable, well-respected governments on the African continent. And it’s still atrocious. The most famous Kenyan president, whose name I believe was Moi and who I think was either the last president or the one before, retired from office as one of the richest men in the world, despite the fact that he was president of an incredibly impoverished nation. I’ll give you one guess as to how he made his money. The most recent, or perhaps current, president is widely known to take a twenty percent or larger cut of every government contract for himself. Nor are these men the terrible disease of an otherwise-functional system. Such corruption is known, even expected, throughout parliament and with every government bureau, down to the bribes demanded by many local police officers. Kenyans chafe under this system, rail against it, and yet find themselves unable to do much of anything about it. So our system, warts and all, seems practically utopian to them. Kenyans long to be empowered, and to have a government by the people, for the people. But this revelation was only the beginning of our afternoon.

After telling them about America, about our government and our feelings about our politicians, and after hearing about their national problems, I asked to hear about Kenya. Peter, who had invited me on this walk in the first place, laughed and told me he doubted any American had ever heard of Kenya. Not so, I told him. There are only a handful of African countries whose names we know, and half of those are not realized to be African by half the people who know them, but most of us have heard of Kenya. I told him that my perception of Kenya, which I think is fairly representative of that of my countrymen, was that there were a few modern cities, scattered throughout a huge savannah that runs a perpetual, real-life production of The Lion King. Then I asked Peter about their flag, and I heard again about a national identity that is troubled, but which longs for and believes in its own ability to be great. The flag is red, Peter says, for the blood of Kenyans who died to free themselves from colonists, and green for the fertility and richness of their land. It is black, he chuckles, and points conspiratorially at his skin. Sobering, he tells me that there are white stripes for the peace they desire, and a shield for the way they must defend themselves from the trials that come to them. Finally, there are two spears, symbolic of their strength and resolve, their resourcefulness and ability to meet any challenge, as evidenced by their fearlessness in winning their liberty from the modern British army with nothing but the weapons they had used to hunt on the savannah since time immemorial. “But,” he confides to me, “you only need one spear. The other is for decoration.” Good point, Peter.

As we passed down a number of beautiful dirt streets bordered by walls covered in flowers and vines, I commented that no one lives this way where I’m from. “I’ve never seen a city with so many compounds,” I told them. “It seems so normal here.” Peter laughs at Grace, and tells me that her neighborhood, which we’re nearing, is upscale, and that he will take me to the real Eldoret. Grace denies Peter’s joking critique, and begins to tell me about the walls I see. The muzungu, the white people, all live behind these walls, as well as the government officials and other Kenyans with money. They close themselves off from the rest of the country, and from the people around them. Now, from what I understand, this is not altogether unreasonable, since people with money do often tend to lose it here if they don’t protect it somehow. But Grace and Peter assured me that the muzungu are far more afraid of Africans than they have any right to be. I don’t know, guys. I saw The Four Feathers. We conversed about this, and they told me that there is a deep divide in Kenya between the few people who have some money, including the muzungu like myself who come and live for a time, and all of the other people. They are amazed that I am even willing to walk out on the streets with them, and tell me that I am more Kenyan already than the muzungu who have lived here for years. I deflected the compliment, joking that in America, we keep our lions in cages and our white people roam free, whereas here the lions are free and the whites are caged. They found this immensely funny, and I was very pleased with myself.

Peter and I left Grace, and turned to head to his home. As we went, the houses did indeed become smaller, more spread out, and less neatly laid out. Homes are everywhere, and interspersed with vacant buildings of various sizes, not laid out neatly in proper neighborhoods. Peter continued to tell me of his wish for a Kenya run by honest, responsible Kenyans. “We believe that we could be like America, a great country, if our people were given the opportunity.”

Finally, we reached Peter’s home. It was a truly modest house, half the size of my small apartment in Chattanooga. Around one side was a thriving shamba, full of the local greens and the vegetables that supplement ugali, the local maize-meal that is the staple of Kenyan cuisine. Outside, we met Peter’s family, who proceeded to pour hospitality on me. His mother and I exchanged what I only know as the French custom faire les bisous, and I was ushered into his living room. His house is tiny, but it is crammed with comfortable furniture and happy family. They treated me like royalty, which put me in mind of a friend of mine who once described to me the feeling of embarrassed gratitude he had felt upon receiving similar treatment in the Philippines. I would call it a humbling experience, and it is, but that makes the whole thing almost too pious. It’s humbling, yes, to see how well these people treat their guests and to compare it to how rarely you welcome strangers into your home at all, but more than that, it’s antiquated and beautiful and outdated and barbaric to receive this kind of treatment. It’s a product of an older, politer world, but the modern man can’t help but think, “These people are my equals, not my servants. This can’t be right.” But if being in the homes of foreign people has taught me anything, it is that one should accept every gesture and comment in the spirit it is given. So, it was with as much charm and grace as I could muster that I watched Peter’s younger sister Pamela bring me fermented milk purified by charcoal.

Now, let’s talk about this milk. Peter’s traditional tribe is a Kalenjin tribe, one of the Nilotic peoples, and they have a special drink which they have been imbibing for centuries, maybe millennia. This drink is milk that has been left out to ferment, and to develop the texture that one might expect. Then charcoal is added. Peter’s uncle/brother/father-in-law (family relationships are labyrinthine here) helpfully tells me that the charcoal is used because otherwise the drink would be totally poisonous. This piece of information is not overly reassuring to me, but I rest in the knowledge that the Kalenjin have had dozens of generations to work the kinks out of the process. Peter tells me that I’ll enjoy the drink, and that it’s just like yogurt. Well, the aftertaste is certainly a relative of yogurt flavor. The foretaste, however, is more dominated by notes of buttermilk and mold, with the whole married together by a flavor that is pretty much what you might expect from fermented milk. Add in the fact that the whole thing is lukewarm and not altogether silken in texture, and your mouth is in for a truly remarkable sensation. Mercifully, Pamela brings a bunch of bananas with the drink. Then adds mango. And passion fruit. And the feeling of embarrassment at their great generosity returns. Then there was an extremely awkward moment in which she poured two gallons of warm water over my hands at a rate of a teaspoon per second, while I tried to figure out whether custom demanded that I wash my hands unceasingly for ten minutes, or if there was some cue to stop that I was supposed to give but of which I was utterly ignorant. About two and a half minutes in, I just pulled my hands out from under the water, at which point Pamela gracefully pulled the pitcher away and I congratulated myself on cracking the code. Then I promptly undid the decorum by going to wipe my hands on my pants, much to her dismay. She coughed politely as she offered me a towel form her forearm, and I attempted to re-gather my dignity while laughing nervously. Thankfully, Peter’s uncle Jacob laughed openly when he saw it, and I managed to recover something of the moment’s decency by standing and offering him the towel as he finished his own wash, which took far less time than mine. Ah well, these things do happen.

Once I had resigned myself to giving my fullest effort to the fermented milk, and munching at the proffered fruit to help it all go down, I settled in for a long discussion with Peter’s mother, Jacob, Pamela, his wife, Mary, Pamela’s son, and Peter’s own boy, Leon. Leon contentedly devours passion fruit, while Pamela’s son perches at the edge of the farthest couch, eyeing my warily and holding himself ready to flee at any moment from my muzungu tricks. I listened to them tell about their lives in Eldoret, and about the Kalenjin people. In between statements, they converse amongst themselves in Kiswahili while Leon and I have a staring contest over our fruit.

Then came the greatest moment. Peter’s mother embraced me, and told me that I was now one of her sons. Between this declaration, and the trial of my manhood which I assume must have been implicit in the fermented milk, I am now confident that I am myself a member of the Kalenjin people. In case you’re interested, Peter tells me that our tribe is a particulary large portion of native Kenya, and that we fought the Maasai. They wanted our grasslands for their cattle. But, of course, we never let them take it. Those Maasai think they’re so great…

(One of My Fellow Tribesmen, But Not One I Know Personally)

Peter and I left, with me practicing my Kiswahili farewells on his family and waving my ridiculous-but-effective cowboy hat. While we walked back to campus, Peter told me that he had been joking with his family that I was a real Kenyan, “not like the other muzungu.” He told me that my heart was big and open, and that I was the first muzungu these students had ever invited to their homes from the college. “You are like a long-lost brother!” he laughs. You might think I was flattered and gratified by this, and I was. But I was also dismayed. See, there have been multiple white directors of the college, at least one of which—the current—is a man well deserving of their respect and admiration. Aside from that, the white instructors care deeply for these students, and have given their lives to live here in Africa with them, which is decidedly not an easy life change to make. More than anything else, though, there is the glaring fact that I had been in Kenya all of five days at this point, and they had only known me for two of them. What had I done that was so significant? I’d taught two minor classes, tagged along on a field trip, and gone to chapel with them. But as Peter kept talking, I began to see that it wasn’t so much what I’d done as how I’d done it. I’d laughed with these guys, made jokes with them. I didn’t push the struggling ones in their English, and I constantly asked questions about Kiswahili. I walked the streets with them when I got the chance, and I asked about their lives. I shared their worries about their government, and the problem with raising children in modern Kenya, and the complications of muzungu with perfect intentions but raging savior complexes. In short, I hadn’t done much of anything other than treat them like equals. Which wasn’t difficult, since I’m younger than most of them and not even really a proper professor. What I want to emphasize is that I hadn’t done much at all. That’s the point. I’d just sat back and listened, like I would with any other people. Not people I was trying to save, but people I was trying to understand. And I did this mostly out of total ignorance. I was blessed by God and generally blind enough that I just happened to do the right thing by doing hardly anything at all.

I know for a fact that at least most of the white missionaries, pastors, and faculty here share all of these concerns, and doubtless feel them much more deeply than I do. I’m just not wired to be all that compassionate. But I wonder if any of the others have been able to tell the Kenyans of their concern on the Kenyan’s own terms? More importantly, I wonder if the Kenyans have ever been able to believe it before. It seems the racial tensions here, and, just as much, the constant power struggles and abuses among the Africans themselves, have built a huge weight of misunderstanding even between the modern individuals who respect each other and understand each other on an academic and religious level. That Peter so freely accepts me as an anomaly, a real Kenyan muzungu, is not so much a testament to my own ability to break through barriers—which was doubtless done more through my blind, headlong ignorance than any latent insightfulness—as a marker of the depth to which preconceptions and tensions run around here. And more, the ease with which even the best-intentioned slip into them.

Let me illustrate this last point. When some missionaries I know came to Kenya, they moved into an old colonial compound where there was a hut for their gardener and an on-site maid. Now, I like to think of myself as utterly old-fashioned and unenlightened, but even I saw this and though, “Really, guys? Servants?” This came up in conversation later, and they told me that they had had the same reaction, and felt bad about the conditions in which their gardener lived as well as the idea of treating people as base laborers to do their dirty work. But they hadn’t fired them, because they didn’t want to just turn them out on the street. You want to know Peter’s response? He told me, in much more gracious terms, that Westerners come and move into nice houses and then stupidly fire all the staff, eliminating jobs and spitting in the face of the established custom. Even in our most noble efforts to liberate the African downtrodden, it seems we stray wildly from the course.

When we, the muzungu do-gooders come to Africa, I think we have to learn to aim not at correcting them as well-informed leaders, but instead at coming from behind and beneath them to aid them however we can. That isn’t to say that we shouldn’t teach: in fact, my students are eager to learn from me. But we have to do so with the understanding that as we teach, we must learn, because we are so far from our world here that we cannot hope to simply make assumptions about the way things are and assume that we are right. If we do, we’ll end up drinking a ton of metaphorical fermented milk. And not in a good way. We have to empower, not save, the Kenyans, and help them finally make their country their own. And yes, I do think this is as much the business of missionaries as foreign-aid programs. Maybe more.

Now, I don’t at all wish to cast wholesale criticism against the efforts of Western missionaries in Africa. There’s more than enough of that going on, and it’s much too easy to do. There are a lot of Christians in the first world who have seen the problem second- or third-hand, and cast aspersions that are, quite frankly, ignorant and unhelpful on genuine efforts here. I have been on the frontlines myself, I’ve talked with the Kenyans who know the situation intimately, and I am still aware that I won’t fully understand the situation even a month from now. I’m totally new to all of this, and it would be a grand show of arrogance to assume that I’ve found the solution to all the myriad problems of the relationships between normal Kenyans, those in power, and the muzungu who want to help. The people at Discipleship College are keenly aware of the problem, and they work much harder to remedy it than I think anyone across the Atlantic would guess. I sat in on a class and listened to an old-guard missionary here lead a discussion highlighting the dangers of non-Kenyans leading community-building efforts here. Literally hundreds of muzungu missionaries in this country know the problem, and are working to solve it. It just isn’t that easy. There’s no simple answer to the question of how one stands back and doesn’t interfere when children are being discarded and faux-Christian government officials are growing fat on the blood, sweat, and tears of their own people.

I guess I’m just trying to think this through, to offer you some kind of explanation, and explain to you why it is bittersweet to me that I can finally get those minority scholarships that have so long been denied to my Kalenjin countrymen.

Neema na Amani. Grace and Peace, everyone. I leave you with some thoughts from some of my close personal friends (bonus points if you can identify the band):

“Catch the rain, empty hands

Save the children from their lands

Wash the darkness from their skin

Heroes from the West

We don’t know you,

But we know best.

But this is not a test”