Kent in Kampuchea

Hey.  After a long break from the blog, I'm back, and it's time to go to a new country.

This summer, I'll be working in Cambodia.  The details of my project are largely confidential, so I'll have to get my work-related information screened before I can share anything.  All I can say for now, in this forum, is that I'm going to Cambodia to work with a non-profit that does some incredible work to benefit the people of Cambodia, as well as the people of several other Asian countries.  If you're curious about what I'm doing, and can't wait until I can get permission to post something official, you're welcome to call or email me and I'll answer all your questions.  I promise.

But, I can say a few things about Cambodia itself.  I won't actually be in the country until early June, but since I'm letting everyone know that I'll be keeping this blog going while I'm there, I thought it would be nice if there was something about Cambodia to whet the appetites of any preliminary visitors.  So, a few facts in preparation.  Cambodia is here:

This is the southeast Asian peninsula called Indochina.  To the east of Cambodia is Vietnam, to the north are Thailand and Laos.  Farther southeast, the Philippines and Indonesia spread over the water toward Australia.

Cambodia was settled first by Indian merchants (India is due west) in the first century A.D.  For that reason, first Hinduism, and now Buddhism, dominate the religious landscape of the country.  The Khmer language is also more like Indian languages than those of China.

And, speaking of the Khmer, "Cambodia" comes from the word "Kampuchea," which means something like "Land of the Khmer."  The Khmer Empire was the great empire of Cambodia, from around the time of the Fall of Rome until Columbus got lost on the way to India.  Still today, by far the largest racial group in Cambodia are the Khmer, and Khmer is the official language of the country.  The Khmer were phenomenal builders, who built the extensive man-made lakes and canals that make the country a major producer of rice, as well as one of the most extensive temple networks in the world, including these, the famous Ankor Wat and the ruins of Ta Prohm:

Now, Cambodia is rebuilding from the Vietnam War era.  During that period of turbulence for America, Cambodia was rocked by first the terrible reign, and then the ongoing threat, of the infamous Khmer Rouge.  Finally, the Khmer Rouge is being brought to justice, and the people of Cambodia are moving past that dark shadow in their history by holding trials for the guilty participants in court and moving forward in their constitutional monarchy.  Cambodia is shaking off a modern history of civil wars, landmines, and poverty to emerge on the world stage, in a period of growing stability, as an agricultural producer in its corner of the world, an international exporter of fine textiles, and a democratic society that is gaining its feet and putting together what it can offer to the world.  I'm excited to be going over to be part of that emerging society.

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.