Same Ole River

So this past weekend, Brandon, Lily, and I went to Uganda to raft the Nile, which turned out to be by far and away one of the coolest things I’ve done in a long time. After a tumultuous and excruciatingly early departure, we finally arrived in Jinja, Uganda just in time to get on a raft with four Swedish girls and a Kenyan guide for the 6 hr expedition. All incredible rapid experiences aside, I was pretty much beside myself freaking out thinking about Moses in the basket and the whole river turning to blood. Giddy would be a fairly accurate description. John Wilson claimed that this trip made the Ocoee look like a little stream in the backyard, but that hardly begins to describe how incredible the trip was. Our section of the Nile had 12 class V rapids, more than any river I’ve ever heard of. I’ve rafted the Ocoee probably five times, which, for those of you who don’t know, is the river they did the Olympic kayaking competition on when the Summer games were in Atlanta; in other words, its pretty hard core. But on the Ocoee I’d seen a raft flip like maybe once; on the Nile on Saturday, our boat flipped three times, and sent half the boat flying out the side inexplicably a fourth time. Somewhere between being sucked underwater in the middle of the final class v rapid, and reemerging to basically body surf through the rest of the waves, I thought to myself, “This is just about the best thing I’ve ever done.”

After the rafting, we had an equally fun and surreal, if not adrenaline evoking, experience in Kampala, the capital of Uganda, where we met Michael Pepper and his team of four other Lookout Mtn. Presers in the middle of their summer mission trip to northern Uganda. For those of ya’ll who know those folks, be encouraged; they’ve had an incredible opportunity to both see and be participants in Christ’s redemptive work, and that’s about the best anyone could hope for. Pepper is a good friend, and it was really refreshing/so strange to be able to kick back and chill with him some 8 time zones from our normal stomping grounds.

“Every rose has its thorns,” as they say though, and our first thorn was the four hrs + trip back to Kenya crammed into the back of a hot, dusty, cramped matatu. For those of you Memphians who remember sitting in the nosebleeds at the Pyramid for Tigers games, and how you had to sit sideways in your chair to avoid having your knees jammed into the seat in front of you . . . . picture that, but take away about 6 inches of leg space and you have a somewhat accurate depiction of my seating arrangement. Also, it was pretty much the only time I’ve ever entered a vehicle clean and come out completely covered in dust from head to toe; but then again, I’ve never been on such a miserable excuse for a road either. The second thorn came this morning, when I found out that about half the money I had exchanged back into Kenyan shillings at the border was counterfeit. Don’t hate, whoever was making the fake bills was dang good at what they do. I couldn’t even really tell the difference in full daylight, much less in the near pitch black darkness of the Ugandan border.

By the way, I've included a picture of me with my field supervisor, Patrick Koyi. This guy is the truth, and has really helped me out in my research here. I think he kind of looks like a tall, African Yoda, and he's definitely got that whole guru thing down. What do yall think?

My research has come to what may turn out to be a major crossroads (for those of you who are content with stories of Nile rafting and hippos, feel free to stop reading; I won’t be offended). For the first six weeks of my research, I basically did focus groups, participant observation, Participatory Learning and Action 10 Seed Ranking tools, and informal interviews with members of CCS sponsored groups and with local microfinance institutions (insert laughter from all com dev majors, and blank stares from pretty much everyone else; I apologize for the gratuitous jargon). I realized last week that I’ve sort of come to the end of what I can do with the focus group questions I was doing. This week I’m going to try some new participatory tools to try to get the groups to discuss what their community strengths, weakness, opportunities, and threats are. This is all a part of my efforts to try to do research that doesn’t just ask communities “What’s wrong with you?” but also, “What is right with you? What strengths and abilities do you have?” I have come to believe that poverty is much more than living below some arbitrary monetary sum, and that if we don’t respect, value, and seek to learn from the poor, we are fooling ourselves, reinforcing Satan’s lies to the community members, and generally ignoring the advice of the One who “chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise,” the One who has placed His image on every human being on the planet, and who “plays in ten thousand places, lovely and form and limbs not His own” in the lives of the economically poor of the world. But I’m also beginning to have this creeping sense of not having enough time, of being totally inadequate, and wondering how the heck I should go about trying to come up with ways to uncover what I’m really after. I may attempt a survey to try to understand the realities of the market situation in which these farmers sell their produce. I genuinely may not be able to pull this off; I basically have a phobia of surveys, and the issues that I am trying to understand are extremely complicated and difficult to uncover. In short, please pray for my research second half, and pray that I would have confidence that He will show me what He desires me to see and to report on.

Pray also for my day to day walk with Christ. The LORD has been so good to me, and recently I have been so overwhelmed by my own inadequacies and shortcomings. I have been confronted with my own brokenness and realized just how complicated everything is about development and mission and the Church and the world. There are many metaphors for the Christian as laborer, and I have certainly been encouraged by the call of Scripture to work joyfully as unto the Lord. But there are also a host of verses that ascribe to us the metaphor of wanderers or sojourners in the world. As I begin to catch a glimpse of the overwhelming complexity, and the inability of any of us apart from the work of the Holy Spirit, I have been filled with the feeling that I am more of a discombobulated wanderer than a “purpose driven” laborer, but that as such I have been given the incredible opportunity to see what Christ is doing in Bungoma district, and am doing what I can to be a part of it. I am reminded that ministry is not our service to God; it is God’s grace to us to allow us to see and be a part of His Kingdom work. Praise the Lord that He does not reject the likes of us, His ragtag, rebellious band of children, to be His agents for change in the world.

Pray for me, and please stay in touch. I love and miss you all, but there is plenty to do and see, plenty to rejoice in and mourn over, here in Bungoma, and I’m glad that the LORD has me here for another 6 weeks.

Peace,
rhodes

Hippo Therapy

Well, things just keep looking up around here. The research continues to go well, although it can be grating for a type a Westerer used to running from one event to the next to adjust to the "African clock" that we run on around here. But I've been meeting some great folks lately, and really learning loads about Community Development. For example, this 80-something-year-old guy I met named William. William told me the entire history of East Africa's colonial years, finally working his way round to the very house we were drinking chai in. As it turns out, William's dad worked for the colonial owner of this "White Highland" farm after the British pushed the Africans off the land and onto reservations (sound familiar? did our ancestors work out of some kind of training manual for abusing inigenous peoples? gracious). But when the land got redistributed, William's dad cashed in on the farm, and now William is raising his kids there right now. William also told me about how he has worked as a primary school teacher and a land distribution officer, about how he is now an elder in the Quaker's church, and how he played on the Kenyan national football (the real kind) team from 1951-1954. And the dude is still running around talking in the clearest English and whipping out dates and names and places that I forgot twenty minutes after learning them in high school (except that we didn't learn much about colonization in high school; I can't imagine why). At any rate, that's just one example of the cool people I've been chilling with lately.

Speaking of football, I finally found some kids to kick around with near my house. These guys are straight up great, and I've been playing all those great soccer games I never played growing up. All ya'll Covenanters better watch out come intramurals, that's all I got to say.

Another cool person, for instance, is David Khisa, the son of the family I'm living with. Its been great having another young fella to kick ideas around with, and to ask questions about Kenyan culture I wouldn't feel right about asking his folks. Furthermore, this weekend David took us out to Kisumu, the local thriving metropolis. It was a real opportuity to gain some cross-cultural experiences, like eating at the same restaurant five meals in a row because they served pizzas and burgers American style, and going to the theatre to see Spider Mand 3. But more importantly, both mornings we took boats out on Lake Victoria. Lake Victoria is the second largest freshwater lake in the world, and a great place to check out some traditional fishermen and see a whole lot of birds. But most importantly, its the best place around to see hippos. We saw like 25 of those heifers, which was probably the coolest thing I've seen since I've been here. They are so huge its hard to describe, and when you get close they start snorting and grunitn and stuff. Supposedly they are the most dangerous animals in Africa, and we got within like 10 feet of one of them. It was so much fun.

Anyway, keep praying for my research, and feel free to drop me an email sometime. Miss all ya'll, but having a great time here.

Peace,

rhodes

Of Beauty and Brokenness

Life continues to fly by here in Bungoma. The longer I am here, the more overwhelmed by the sheer beauty of this place. Most of my time is spent outside of the busy Bungoma town up in the many villages north of my home here. Almost everyone works in agriculture in these villages, and there are countless small farms filled with sugarcane, corn, beans, amaranth, banana trees, and all the rest planted on beautiful rolling hills as far as the eye can see. Throughout the day you can see the many village people out in the farms, planting, harvesting, and weeding these farms by hand (think National Geographic special, and you've got the right idea). Because land is scarce here (Western province has some of the highest population densities of anywhere in the world), crops are often planted all the way up to the road. This leaves the billions of chickens that live here to roam the streets, and the cattle to graze in the small strips of grass right along the road. The sunsets, which are almost always mixed with coming rains, are absolutely stunning. During the early evening, I often climb on top of the roof of my house to watch the sun go down, and to spend some time alone at the end of what almost always proves to be an exhausting day. The last two weekends, Brandon, Lily, and I have also been able to take some hikes up some local mountains, and really seen the beauty of God's creation here.

But there is also great brokenness here. In almost every focus group interview I've conducted, food scarcity and hunger have been major topics of discussion. If the weather turns bad, or pests attack the crops, or if the market prices fall, the same beautiful people who are so quick to offer me a cup of tea or a meal, may spend months at a time struggling to have more than a meal a day, if that. Furthermore, I have been overwhelmed by the violent conflicts that we read about every day in the papers. I am not sure how much of this is being published in the news at home, but recently, a violent religious sect known as the Mungiki have been brutally murdering innocent people in random acts of violence. Almost every day we hear of new killings. I have been somewhat overwhelmed by the inability of these gross acts of injustice to be stopped. Then this past week, in an effort to put up a strong front, police officers ravaged a Nairobi slum which was believed to be a haven for Mungiki members. The police brutally beat members of the slum at random, looted food and beverages from local kiosks, forced slum dwellers to destroy their own homes so that they could search them for weapons, and shot and killed 14 "suspects" without trial or due process, many of whom, according to newspaper reports, had already surrendered. All of this is happening at a great distance from where I live and work, so I am in no danger. But I have been overwhelmed by this great injustice and tragedy, by the violence of those claiming to be religious, and by the wanton violent injustice and murder of innocents by those who are supposed to protect the people. Please pray for the violence in central Kenya to stop, and for justice to "roll down like water" on those who have committed such crimes. I debated whether to put these stories on my blog, but Christ calls us to mourn with those who mourn, and to intercede on behalf of the oppressed. Too often, we try to overspiritualize the struggles and sufferings of Christ's people in the world; too often we try to overspiritualize what it is Christ calls us to do on behalf of the oppressed and the poor. But Isaiah makes it clear that God is looking for someone to "stand in the gap," to stand up for the oppressed and marginalized of this world. I am struggling, in the face of injustice like what has happened these past weeks in Central Kenya, on what that means for my life. Again, I want to emphasize that I am in no danger (if there was violence in Las Vegas, we in Memphis wouldn't be concerned. It's a similar situation), but I do ask that you would include a prayer for peace and justice for the people of Kenya in your prayers for me and my trip.

Research continues to go along swimmingly. For you com devers, I've even had the groups playing with magic beans (check out the picture). I'm having alot of fun with this part, and it is such a joy to hear how people working together have been able to improve their lives, and the lives of their communities. Many of the groups I met these last two weeks spend many of their resources, which are meager to begin with, on serving the widows and orphans of their communities. Seeing such generosity among those who have so little has been so challenging and encouraging.

Keep me in your prayers, and drop me an email at rhodes@covenant.edu I miss all ya'll.

Peace,

rhodes