Rest and Reflection

For our last stop on our six-week African adventure, we took the recommendation of every Kenyan we know and headed to Mombasa. Mombasa is a city on the coast of the Indian Ocean, and it's warm

and tropical here, similar to Hawaii. We stayed at a fun all-inclusive resort called the Voyager and spent four days relaxing, swimming, running on the beach, eating from the huge buffet and enjoying nightly entertainment like live Kenyan music and acrobatic shows. Today we head home, a 34-hour journey that includes five separate flights. I'm glad we're going into it fully rested.

So man places to relax here -- aaaaaah...

We're still processing all we learned and experienced during this trip, but I'll share a few quick reflections while they are on my mind:

* To live in Africa (or probably most developing countries) is to experience the world's ecological threats first-hand. This has been weighing on me since the first day we disembarked in Addis Ababa and again in Nairobi. The air pollution in these cities is horrific. One can barely take a breath because of all smog from the congested, high-polluting cars and trucks combined with the constant burning of trash. Our family has been very healthy on this trip (thank goodness) but our sickest moments have occurred while stuck in city traffic with car windows open. This made me very thankful for California's high standards on air pollution, but also cognizant that millions of people breathe oppressively polluted air every day. And I am not blaming them because I believe Americans are still the #1 polluters in the world thanks to our excessive use of fossil fuels, so I take responsibility as well. Our future does not look good unless we band together and make some significant changes.

* Related to the above, Ethiopia and Kenya have a serious problem with water. Not only is clean, potable water unavailable to so many rural dwellers, but it's even more scarce in the cities. Everyone in the city buys bottled water to drink, and no, there's no recycling of all those plastic bottles here. Every one goes into the trash. Additionally, water to bathe or wash clothing is intermittent due to lack of rain to fill essential reservoirs. Those who can afford it purchase large cisterns to store city water when it's working so they'll have some water to use during the shut-off days, but this is not a workable long-term solution. I did not meet one Ethiopian or Kenyan who uses a clothes washer, for instance, because washing machines use a lot of water and need a certain amount of water pressure. Instead, people boil water and wash clothing by hand in a tub and then hang everything to dry. Same thing for dish-washing. You can imagine how much time this takes, and that's just one example. I've heard it said that water will become the most precious resource on earth as global warming advances, and now I see why that will be the case.

* On a more upbeat note: We could learn a lot about families and parenting from Kenyans and Ethiopians. One thing our family appreciated during our various travels was observing the very high value placed on marriage, children and the extended family. Everywhere you go, you see couples enjoying time together, dads lovingly carrying their children, mothers laughing and playing with their kids, older people being cared for by their children and grandchildren. Etc etc. We even learned some interesting customs of how the dowry is still in effect in Ethiopian and Kenya -- not as an oppressive tool but as a way to ensure the entire family is included in the union of two people. I know that will get some dander up among my U.S. friends, but I don't have space to elaborate so you'll just have to ask me about this later. I'll just tantalize you by saying the dowry negotiations involve lots of goats and cows and lots of kissing-up by the male suitor!

* But wait, feminists among you, please note that I did a running poll of Kenyan working women and they unanimously told me women and men get paid equally here and have equal access to jobs. Their mouths dropped when I told them that's not the case in the U.S.! I found the rate of working women to be very high, perhaps in part because the cost of childcare (i.e. "house help") is quite manageable.

Alright, there are a few droplets from my ocean of thoughts and impressions in Africa.  If you've traveled to a very different culture, I'd love to hear from you sometime about things you noticed and appreciated or struggled to accept. This, to me, is the purpose of traveling: to see and experience new things, of course, but also to try to step into the shoes of another people and culture without preconceptions or biases. It's the most challenging and delightful task we have as citizens of the world, don't you think?

A Thin Space

Few things in my life have stirred me as much as our time on African safari. I know that sounds a bit corny, but there’s something so wondrous and soul-connecting to see African animals in their natural environment: miles of wildebeest (an estimated 3.5 million of them) and zebras migrating north to

greener pastures, cheetahs creating silent coalitions to strategically hunt their prey, hippos lumbering back to the water after a night of grazing, gentle giraffes poking their heads above the trees -- and of course the lions devouring their prey or playing with their cubs. One of the guides told me he has seen guests weep as they watched this incredible scene, and I have to admit I felt the same way, deeply emotional and weirdly thankful.

Some people refer to this as a "thin space,"  a place or moment when heaven and earth seem nearly to touch, and this was one of those this spaces for me.

That said, I will illustrate my point with a few of the dozens – actually hundreds – of photos we took over our three days in the Masai Mara National Park in Kenya, not that anything can do this place justice. You'll just have to see it for yourself.

Our morning picnic on the game drive with Edward, our Masai guide.

The "great migration": wildebeast as far as the eye can see.

I'm in my "happy place"

Water buffaloes are the animal safari guides fear the most because they
have been known to charge jeeps if they feel threatened.

Karibu in Nairobi

“Karibu” means “welcome” in Swahili.  It’s a word we have heard often during our time in Kenya.  Better than that, we have experienced it.  In general, Kenyans are hospitable.  Kenyan Presbyterians excel even further in their hospitality.

Our hosts this week have been our wonderful friends Edward and Serah Karanja, and their two kids Mercy and Gregory.  A friendship that began in Sacramento has been solidified here in Kenya as this family has worked their way into our hearts.  It is no small thing to open your home to seven live-in guests but the Karanjas have done so and made us feel as if we are family.  We’ve shared delicious home-cooked Kenyan meals (love the chipati!), many laughs, and personalized tours around this vibrant city.

I asked if I could take a selfie from the pulpit.
See if you can spot our family.

Our first full day here we worshiped at the Kasarani West Presbyterian Church where Karanja has been pastor for several years.  I (Jeff) preached in all three services, the second of which overflowed to nearly 1,000 people.  Esther and Noel also offered a special music (“Your Glory/Nothing but the Blood”), a song they had sung when Karanja was in Sacramento and so he asked that they sing it here.  It was our first opportunity to experience a Presbyterian worship service in Africa.  Much of the liturgy was familiar, although the music was distinctly African in flavor.  Though they have three services, each service never really ends, as the closing song for one service immediately transitions to the opening song for the next service as people come and go. 

Esther, Isabel and Bereket attended one fellowship
 group, while I and the boys attended another, below.

Much of our week consisted of opportunities to participate in the life and mission of this vibrant congregation along with other neighboring congregations. We attended local parish fellowship gatherings during the week. The groups, divided by neighborhood, are each led by an elder and create an extended family atmosphere for prayer, Bible study and community.  We visited a local public school where Presbyterians have instituted a feeding program for students who are so impoverished that otherwise they might not eat during the week.  Learning (evidenced by test scores) has significantly improved since the program began.  The men of our group even had a chance to attend a Friday evening men’s fellowship gathering of about 150 men who listened to challenging teaching, slaughtered and then feasted on a couple of goats, and then sat down together to watch the AFCON soccer finals between Senegal and Algeria.  In every gathering we experienced generous karibu.

Godebo pours porridge into the cups of schoolchildren,
a program provide by the local Presbyterian church.
The porridge is made of healthy, filling grains like millet,
sorghum and wheat. For some of these children, it is
the only reliable meal they will eat during their day.

One experience we will not soon forget was a visit to the Kibera slum.  Right in the heart of Nairobi, this is the largest slum in Africa and is home to over 1,000,000 people.  The living conditions are unlike anything you would find in the States.  It was not safe for us to venture too far into the neighborhood, but some leaders from the Kibera Presbyterian Church toured us through two schools they run, which provide a vital potential lifeline to young students hoping an education may one day lead them out of this desperate situation. 

Looking out over the homes of the Kibera
slum in Nairobi.

It has been such an encouragement to witness firsthand the vibrant ministry of Christ happening here in Nairobi in and through our Presbyterian brothers and sisters.  Their commitment to serving the needs of the poor is unquestioned.  Their passion in worship and prayer is infectious.  And, of course, their demonstration of genuine karibu has blessed us richly and beyond expectation. 

To Market, To Market

Sara leads me under the canopy of tin roofs into the produce market. It's another world down here!

Our hosts in Nairobi, Karanja and Sara, shop for most of their produce at “the market,” and by that I don’t mean a grocery store. Yesterday I woke up early to experience the true Kenyan shopping experience at the outdoor produce market, the largest of which takes place every day in a section of Nairobi. Looking down at it from the freeway, it looks like one of Nairobi’s notorious slums, with a patchwork of corrugated metal roofs touching end to end across acres of land. Sara parked her car along the road and led me down a narrow dirt path and under that canopy, where the largest farmers market I’ve ever seen was bustling with early morning activity.

To call it a farmer’s market is a bit misleading because Sara explained that most of the vendors are middlemen. They purchase produce from farmers or even produce buyers from as far away as Uganda and Tanzania. Then the vendors sell them at their small stalls. There were stands of small red onions, bright red tomatoes, manoes and papayas, bananas and watermelon. A whole row was reserved for corn (they call it maize), with vendors sitting atop mountains of corn cobs. They will sell them whole, but they most often husk them, de-cobb them into bowls and sell them as bags of kernels. This is how Sara purchased them.

Maize vendors shucking corn.

Sara told me she buys in bulk (think Costco-sized bags) so she can bargain the price lower. And because there are no shopping carts, she brings her house-helper, Dominic, to carry the heavy bags to her car. When she doesn’t have a house-helper, she hires someone at the market to help her.

I enjoyed watching Sara in action, asking questions and talking price in her native Kakuyu language. Kenyan music played in the background, alternating with a street preacher who shouted his sermon into the microphone at a deafening level. (Sara said the preaching often goes on all day long…yikes!) I was the only white face in the crowd, but people treated me kindly and mostly left me alone. (The week before, we had visited the “Masai Market,” a place to buy native souvenirs, and it was not so pleasant, with vendors shouting at us silly things like ‘Almost free!’ and ‘I give you a good price!’ and getting testy with us if we looked but didn’t buy. This was much more relaxed.)

Sara shops for oranges. Fun fact: Kenyans call this fruit
oranges but the skin on their variety is more typically green.

I couldn’t believe Sara could find her way around the maze of stands, but somehow she picked up everything she needed in about an hour and we headed home with a very full car.

Later in the day, we went to the opening day of the new “Lion King” movie, thinking it was fitting to see it here in Kenya right before we leave for safari. We enjoyed some pizza for lunch, and the boys/men spent the evening at a traditional “goat roast” at the church. This is the favorite meat of all our Kenyan friends, and they wanted the guys to experience this custom. Thankfully, they didn’t ask Jeff to do the honor of slaughtering the goat!

A very fun and relaxed day as we finish our time in Nairobi.

 

We enjoyed seeing the new Lion King film
before we left for our safari.

Few Words

I'm at a loss for words tonight, but here are some images from our past few days in Kenya: 

A hike through central Kenya's tea plantations. Americans revere
Kenyan coffee but Kenyans are much prouder of their tea, which they
drink with milk several times a day and at any gathering.

Rolling hills of green.

Any good hike requires a foot soaking in a cold river...

or a full-on dip!

Giraffe Center in Nairobi

Isabel giving "Ed" a kiss.

What We Learned from Mama Sara

Mama Sara

I’ve been neglecting this blog partly because our days in Kenya have been very full, but partly because I can’t quite decide how to formulate my impressions. At the end of each day, my heart and brain have been flooded with new images and experiences, and my body has felt quite weary – not so much because of our pace, which leans toward slower “African time,” but because travel is very rugged here and it takes a very long time to get anywhere on bumpy and windy roads. We’re pretty exhausted by the end of the day.

That said, I think I’d like to tell you about our last day in the western part of Kenya, near Kisumu, partly because it was such a special time but also because it represents how we’ve spent a lot of our time in Africa: meeting people, asking questions, hearing their stories and learning about their lives and lifestyles.

To set the stage, picture a mostly rural community made up of villages. The villages typically consist of a couple of streets with small shops and government buildings, often a bustling street market, several schools, maybe a hospital or clinic, all surrounded by homesteads of a few homes and a patch of farmland. Villages are affiliated with particular tribes or clans that usually have their own local language. And the family trees of these villages are intricate and tightly connected, which is a way of saying everyone knows everyone and is often related in some way (though it’s important to note that one cannot marry anyone from your own village, so intermarriage is not acceptable.) Wherever we’ve gone with our friend and host, Moses Osoro, he has bumped into a brother, mother, auntie, cousin…and, of course, many friends from his childhood. So when Moses told us his mother-in-law, “Mama Sara,” would like to host us for lunch on our final day in this region, we were delighted and honored to meet another family member.

Getting to Mama Sara’s house in our 12-passenger van was no picnic. The dirt roads were narrow and deeply rutted. At one point, we even volunteered to get out and walk, which might have been faster. But the drivers here are persistent, and eventually we pulled up to a compound of small stuccoed homes surrounded by a large grassy lawn. There to greet us was Mama Sara, a minute woman in her 80s with a weathered but lovely face, as well as her son and daughter, her granddaughter, and several neighbors. I’ll pause here to say that we’ve found it very typical for Kenyans to come in large numbers to greet us and express their appreciation for our visit. I sense this is partly Kenyans’ incredible giftedness at hospitality toward all visitors, and partly because it is very, very rare for white people (we’re called “masungos” here) to visit Kenyans. It is considered a great honor to them that we take the time to come, so they invite all their relatives and neighbors, and no expense is spared.

These men were sawing a log into lumber.

After we were served cold drinks and small sweet breads called mandazis (like donuts but not as sweet), we were invited to walk about a mile to the original family compound where the patriarchs of the family (Mama Sara’s in-laws) originally settled. This was a very pleasant walk through the countryside, saying hello to the neighbors and enjoying the countryside. When we got to the homestead, which held about a dozen small homes and structures, we were shown the original house, which is now basically in ruins. There are very strict traditions in this community about how a homestead is set up, and it is considered disrespectful for anyone to move into the patriarch’s home after they die. They just let it decay. The sons build their homes behind the patriarch’s home (never in front) as they become adults, and they live there until they marry and move away to start their own families and farms nearby. Eventually, the original homestead becomes a ghost town as people die or move. Moses finds this tradition a wasteful use of resources, but this is how it has worked for generations.

In front of the original home.

We were shown the family graveyard and the structures used for farming or cooking. Then we walked back to Mama Sara’s.

By the time we got back, the helpers had moved all the living room chairs and couches outside and into a circle in the shade of a giant tree. In the middle of the circle was a table packed with food traditional Kenyan dishes: whole talapia wet-fried with a light sauce, stew of potatoes and vegetables with chunks of beef, stewed chicken, spiced rice, chipati (a fried flatbread similar to a tortilla), cabbage cooked with onions, and ugali, a fairly bland cornmeal paste that is an everyday staple in this region. We prayed and then ate heartily.

[Just a pause here to say that Mama Sara’s house has no running water, no indoor bathroom and, I believe, no electricity. All this cooking was done over open fires in a small cooking shed or outdoors. Her friends and neighbors came to help her cook and then ate discreetly behind the house, where they subsequently fell asleep on the grass. This was a labor of love for their friend!]

After lunch, we asked Moses if he would translate for Mama Sara so we could ask her some questions. We knew a bit about her history but wanted to hear the story straight from her. Mama Sara told us she and her husband were teachers. Early in their marriage, they had purchased 40 acres of land in a very fertile part of Kenya, an excellent investment that is now worth quite a fortune. On their land, they grew corn and raised milk cows. Together they had 11 children, who were all still very young when her husband passed away. Mama Sara then raised all 11 children while managing a 40-acre farm. She did all the work herself at first, then enlisted the children’s help and eventually the grandchildren. They would pick the corn, dry it and then sell it. They would milk the cows and then sell the milk. She worked very, very hard and that was her perspective on parenting: to teach her children to work hard and to be Christians. She managed to put all her children as well as 11 grandchildren through school. (School is not free in Kenya. Even the public schools require uniforms and book fees. Those who can afford it send their kids to private primary school and to a boarding school for high school, since those tend to be better schools.)

When I asked Mama Sara what advice she would give to those of us who are parents, she said, “Be very strict.” Our kids groaned, but one can see how you’d have to keep a tight ship if you’re raising 11 children on your own. Moses told us Mama Sara never turned away any of her grandchildren when they needed a place to live or help with school fees. She has an incredible legacy.

"Work hard!"

At the end of our conversation, Mama Sara wanted us to go around and introduce ourselves again, one by one. As soon as she would listen to an introduction, she would motion for the person to come to her and she would give them a fist bump and tell the person in her best English, “Work hard!”

We sat under Mama Sara’s tree until tea was served and consumed (this is a MUST in every Kenyan social setting, and it’s always black tea with milk and sugar, hearkening to their years as a British colony). All were content and peaceful in this lovely setting.

Just as we rose to leave, Mama Sara asked Moses to tell us that she was very honored that we took the time to visit her. Again, this is very common and sincere in this culture. People are honored to host guests. It’s very humbling, especially when you consider the sacrifice it takes an 84-year-old woman with quite limited means to host our 11-person group.

All the furniture moved on the lawn for our picnic.

Mama Sara was only one of the dozens of people who have demonstrated deep hospitality and generosity to us during this trip. We are hiding these moments deep in our hearts in hopes that we will remember to “welcome the stranger” with the very best we have to offer when we return home. We all believe we’ve been blessed to be a blessing.

Egg-ceptional!

Hi – this entry is from Paul and Cathy Philleo.  We have been traveling with the Chapmans in Kenya this past week, and they encouraged us to post this entry about the One Child One Hen project.  Faith has been involved with this project for over four years, and while we have seen photos and videos, and have heard regular updates from Moses and Emily Osoro, this project has been a bit of a mystery to many of us.  Our primary objective in traveling to Kenya was to visit the project to witness what has been happening here.  We have spent two days at the project:  Sunday after church, when we were mostly by ourselves; and Wednesday, when we participated in the weekly meeting of the sixty community members who are participating in the project. 

Collecting eggs

What we saw is amazing.  There are four chicken coops, each 40-feet by 80-feet, housing about 2500 hens.  It is quite exhilarating to walk through a coop with about 1000 hens fluttering around you – something we all did.  The birds are flourishing, producing 1200 eggs per day on average.  These are easily sold in the local market area surrounding the project, as demand for these eggs is high.  The eggs have developed the reputation as being the best tasting in the region (we sampled some and we concur!).  Sales proceeds are used to help pay project expenses and provide a modest stipend to the project participants.

Sampling the merchandise -- egg sandwiches!

The opportunity to meet with the community participants was very rich.  They uniformly expressed their gratitude for our support of the project, and encouraged us to remain engaged and especially, to help the project grow.  They greatly appreciate access to the quality eggs the project produces, and the stipend provides a most welcome supplementary income.  But what was really evident is the value of the experience.  The project provides technical training in poultry raising/egg production, and also accounting, marketing, and business management.  More importantly, the project is an example of what can be achieved with perseverance, discipline, and determination.  Having overcome early skepticism, the project’s reputation has soared to where there is a waiting list to join, and news of it has spread to adjacent villages.

Maggie and her accounting intern, Agnes

We also have to tell you about Maggie.  She is the niece to Moses and Emily and an accountant who lives in Nairobi with her husband and son and daughter.  She has been involved in the project since it began and accompanied us for our week here.  She is the most wonderful and delightful person you could ever meet, and we have been blessed that she took a week away from her family to be with us. We are so thankful for all she and Moses have done for us this week.   

Feelin' the Spirit

The one-room church. The members are slowly building a new,
larger sanctuary as money allows. 

From Noel:

This past Sunday, we had the opportunity to worship at the local church in the village where Moses, our friend and guide for the week, grew up. We got in the cars Sunday morning and headed off. Within 15 minutes we arrived at the church building, which turned out to be a mud-walled room with a tin roof. We got out of the car to sounds of a worship team practicing. We had arrived at the time church was supposed to have been starting, but of course with “Africa-time,” times are always approximations, and our small group of 8 was the majority of the people there. However, worship began and people began showing up and filling the small room.

Pastor Charles helps lead the joyful singing.

We began with songs, and we all stood up not really sure what we should have been expecting. Worship went like this: a man stood up and began chanting songs through a microphone. They were very obviously praise songs and, to my surprise, every person in the room knew them well, because their responses were perfect and harmonious. The call and response went on for some time. We tried our very best to sing along with some of the Swahili words, but I personally couldn’t get the full sentences down, even after 50 repetitions. However, as the songs went on, we got more and more comfortable with the environment and the worship. The church members worshipped freely and passionately, with lots of call outs of “Amen” and hands raised and waving back and forth. After a while, it became easier to fall into my own form of worship and prayer, even if I couldn’t sing along as I would normally do.

After the worship, the main worship leader remained standing and also played the role of preacher (I am starting petition to have Pastor Jeff Chapman single-handedly lead the singing at Faith Presbyterian). He preached a beautiful sermon on the theme of peace in a couple of chapters of Isaiah. His English was very good, so he preached in English with a translator for the rest of the church.

After the sermon, I was ready for maybe a quick offering and then a benediction and then we would be off. Boy, was I wrong. We remained in church as different pastors came up and gave thanks and prayers, encouraged the church and each other, took offerings, thanked and introduced us, and worshipped. At certain points that seemed to me to be spontaneous, certain members of the small church would stand up and lead a call and response song or a choir would come up to the front and sing and dance and praise.

Moses Osoro with all the children gathered outside the church.

After a few hours of worship, Moses led us out of the church in the midst of the continuing worship. He informed us that if we wanted to stay for the whole church service, we would be there for another 4 or 5 hours at least. Despite it being a completely foreign church experience in the midst of my year of all kinds of church experiences, I left very encouraged by the passionate praise, mutual encouragement, and never-ending gratitude of the whole church. There wasn’t one member there that Sunday who was there simply because they felt some sort of Sunday morning obligation to be seated in a pew. They were all there because they felt a need to praise their Lord and Savior.

Pastors Charles and Benjamin show Jeff the footprint of their new building.
They told us they collect enough offering to pay them about $2 a week -- not nearly
enough to support their families. It is a labor of love for this community.

Kingdom Work in Kenya (Presbyterian Style)

Some unexpected days in Nairobi led to some unexpected opportunities to see some vital mission work being carried out by the Presbyterian Church of East Africa (PCEA).  At the suggestion of our friend, Pastor Karanja, we were able to visit two ministries in the area supported by his and other local Presbyterian congregations.

Math class at the School for the Deaf

The first day we visited the Kambui School for the Deaf, home to nearly 300 students ages 6 through high school.  It would be difficult, if not impossible, for these students to receive an education anywhere else.  At this remarkable boarding school, however, these students are able to pursue an education that will help prepare them to one day enter the workforce.  Many of them will ultimately be trained in one of the trades, but a few go on to  We even met a few who have returned to the school as teachers.  A very small number will even have an opportunity to enter university and later pursue one of a variety of professions.

A deaf choir singing to us about Jesus' love!

We will not soon forget the experience of sitting in on a high school algebra class full of eager students.  I (Jeff) do not  know that I have ever been as impressed with a teacher as I was with the man leading this class.  I have never before considered how difficult it would be to speak the lesson (for those students who can read lips), use sign language at the same time, all while writing equations and other formulas on the chalkboard.  Disabilities are difficult enough to overcome in the developed world.  These students so impressed us with their determination to not allow their disabilities to stand in the way of them receiving an education.  The day was capped off when the entire student body gathered to sing (in sign language) a Kenyan version of Jesus Loves Me. 

School children waiting for a dental check up

The second day we visited Kikuyu Mission Hospital, also sponsored by the PCEA.  This hospital, founded nearly 100 years ago by Scottish Presbyterian missionaries, provides vital health care to the surrounding Kikuya area (not far outside of Narobi).  Many in the area are poor farmers who otherwise would not have access to adequate healthcare.  The facility is an extensive maze of various clinics.  The jewel of the hospital is their vision clinic, renowned in the entire region and beyond for the services they provide.  We witnessed a busload of children waiting to receive dental checkups aided by an American/Canadian team of dentists providing extra support..  Among the other services we saw were a prosthetics lab where artificial limbs are engineered and custom-fit and a dialysis unit that is a life-saver for its patients.

Both days left us with a deep admiration for the commitment of the PCEA to the community it serves.  These are massive efforts affecting thousands of lives and it is all being done for the glory of God through the work of Presbyterians!  It made us all proud to share a faith tradition with these brothers and sisters and left us inspired to answer God’s call by finding ways to better serve those in need in our own community back home.

Unexpected Blessings

YaYa Village

As I reported in an earlier post, we had to cancel our trip to northern Ethiopia due to some instability in that part of the country. We have spent this week instead in and around Addis Ababa, two nights at the Equip Ministries guest house and two nights back at YaYa Village the resort in the mountains that has a decent running track.

What started as a disappointing turn of events has turned out to be a nice time of rest and respite. We had time to get caught up on communications (WiFi at last!), sleep and laundry. We also got to participate in some of the activities in and around Equip. One evening we attended a concert of Ethiopia’s most popular Christian music artist. We couldn’t understand a word, but the young people in the audience were going crazy, singing and dancing. (It reminded Isabel and Noel a bit of Hillsong concerts, for those who know them.) We also attended church with the Equip staff and joined them for lunch and gelato – our first ice cream since leaving the States. One morning, we sat in on a meeting of a former Muslim who was called into the Christian faith by a miraculous event. For the last 25 years, he has been reaching out to Muslims throughout Ethiopia to spread the gospel. He had some really profound thoughts on how this can be done in a peaceful and effective way.

Now we’re enjoying the lovely YaYa resort, including the cleaner air and all the amenities like a gym, swimming pool and beautiful grounds. Isabel and I are even getting massages today – at $9/person, who can resist?

All this to say that sometimes a change of plans is not what we want, but just what we need.

And now, we are leaving Ethiopia for Kenya. Before we go, I wanted to reflect on a few random things I’ve noticed in the 2 ½ weeks we’ve been here:

One of the obstacles on a typical
Ethiopian road.

*Driving is an art, not a science – Much of our time here has been spent in the car, so I’ve had plenty of opportunity to analyze the driving style here. First, it’s typical non-Western chaos, with traffic laws being largely ignored. Drivers drift across lanes at will, cut one another off constantly, double park, pass in dangerous places – one giant game of chicken. Yet I’ve witnessed zero accidents and zero accounts of road rage. The people here have a pretty patient approach and an overall perspective that we’ll get there when we get there. I especially enjoy the apparent pecking order that goes like this: faster cards and SUVs have priority on the road, with taxis, buses and trucks pulling aside to let them pass. At the top of the pecking order though, surprisingly, are the goats, cows and donkeys that wander into the streets at will. Drivers slow down or come to a complete stop if necessary to safely pass. I understand that’s because anyone who hits an animal has to pay up on the spot.

*You would never be lonely in Ethiopia. There are many things that need improvement in this developing country, but it’s undeniable that this culture places a high priority on community and cooperation. People gather in groups everywhere we look, having coffee at a sidewalk café (essentially plastic stools placed in a circle under a tarp), helping each other fix a car, walking arm in arm, playing soccer in the street. I now see why Africans who come to America are dismayed – even spooked—by the empty streets. Where are all the people? We live in our cars or living rooms or backyards. And many people are very, very lonely because of it. I don’t think you could get lonely here.

Always many people outside in Ethiopia.

Bereket made many little friends in Abaya.

*Free college here. As I've listened to the Democratic candidates for U.S. President advocate for free college, I have not been convinced it would be financially feasible. But Ethiopia has free college tuition, and I spoke to many young adults (including Godebo's and Bereket's brother Daniel) for whom this policy has been monumental. It also seems to offer promise for the nation as they are able to train and then maintain professionals such as road engineers, architects, teachers, environmental specialists, etc. What would free college do for the U.S. in lifting up the disadvantaged, advancing science and technology, even transforming our political culture? It's worth considering.

*Traveling in a developing country exposes my weaknesses. As I’ve waited…and waited…for meals at restaurants, fiddled with hotel lights or showers or TVs that do not work, sat in gridlock, endured countless power and water outages, been unable to communicate, I’ve realized something about myself: I’m not very resilient. My comfortable American life has left me feeling pretty pampered and entitled, and I don’t roll with the punches as much as I’d like to imagine. Ethiopians are resilient and adaptable. They are also very optimistic and generous. I have a lot to learn from them.

The family of one of our World Vision sponsor kids took time to create this
welcoming canopy decorated with fresh flowers.