admin

September 19, 2017September 20, 2017

A Kuria Welcome

Most people the world over forgive offenses made by newcomers – especially when the error is done in ignorance.

We found the statement true, at least among the Kuria. Our failure as green missionaries to extend basic “please-enter-for-a-cup-of-tea” hospitality, drew no further mention from the slighted delegation of elders.

”Hello, I am Reverend Joseph Muhingira.”

I drew comfort being courteously received by the local Overseer.

Muhingira welcomed us to his cement-plastered, tin-roofed home where his wife, Esther greeted us warmly one evening. Entering the grounds we noted several range cows – brought in from their day of grazing – jostling, mooing in the tight corral outside, just beyond the dining room. The holding pen was a weave of rough-hewn poles fashioned from skinny felled trees. Such trees dotted the rolling terrain of the area.

Esther and their eldest daughter, Robi, served my family up our first Kuria meal – roast chicken, a local spinach-like green called Sukumawiki, a cup of broth served in a modest tin bowl. And Ugali.

Ugali – a kind of corn-meal mush, was brought to the table hot – baked firm, molded in a half-moon-shaped metal bowl. Esther deftly inverted the bowl, planting it top-down on a round serving plate. She lifted the metal bowl, leaving the spherical hill of ugali steaming before us. The ugali had no odor. We did catch the fragrance of a kerosene flame. It shone from the single lantern perched atop a seasoned chest-of-drawers at the edge of the tight dining area.

A staticky short-wave radio, powered by D-size batteries, rested on the same furniture piece. From it there rang a distinct mix of African tones – high-pitched, electric guitar-plinking blended with smooth Swahili vocalists. Passing hole-in-the-wall cafes months before along Nairobi city streets I had wondered if more than one song had found its way from a composer’s pen. By now, I had started making peace with the style’s apparent monotony.

The lantern’s glow thrust eerie shadows jittering and waltzing in irregular moves along a wall, reflecting mother and daughter motion as they tended to the servings. We ate our fill and washed the remnants down with hot chai – cooked with sugar and milk thrown in together.

“Mungu awabariki.” Our first dining experience in Kuria-land had ended as pleasantly as it had begun.

Thanking our hosts with the Swahili “God bless you”, we stepped from the humble dwelling. Overseer Muhingira led us on the foot-path to our little VW. Light from the vivid Kenya moon played on Julie’s upturned eyes and across the soft blanket encircling her face, giving the blanket a magical look.

The evening had gone well – Muhingira, gracious, gentleman-like. Esther’s warm personality had fit naturally with her talent at food preparation.

I turned the engine and we followed the dirt track home to the mission. In the quiet and calm of the Africa night, it seemed we had moved to a peaceful wonderland.

Meeting our neighbor, Grace – learning her story – would challenge such a notion to the core.

September 22, 2017September 22, 2017

Omens

(*Note. Due to the nature of some of this narrative’s content, some may opt to forego its reading. .Watch for Tuesday’s entry. .)

“They put my crying newborn there. Outside there. For the wild dogs or the hyenas to do as they would do.”

Sometimes messages – especially messages suggesting the worst kind of thing, the unthinkable – simply get rejected by the listener’s mind. Expelled from the world of thought before added information can follow. Perhaps this is a built-in reflex to shield the human soul being overly sullied by the unspeakable.

The poised African woman re-living her account was in her forties. She sat nearly immobile – her thoughts, even her body, seemingly lost in another time – years in the past where some things might be better left forgotten. To a place just a stone’s throw distance from where several had now gathered, huddled outside our mission home.

Grace shared how she had come to live in this area, separated by several bus rides from her own people. She had been brought here, far from her family’s region to the north, an outsider bride to a local tribesman. Her native clan followed their own practices, some good, others less so. What her own people did not practice – in her lifetime at least – was infanticide.

“The clan here into which I married had beliefs about child-bearing. Superstitions, I think.” Grace’s words fell from her lips, quiet, with little evident emotion. The days of jagged pain tearing at her mother heart had long past. But the memory lived fresh.

“If twins were born to a home, it was a bad sign, a bad omen.”

One of the two babies would be let go, Grace told us. There, outside the hut, once night has fallen. Outside, where hungry creatures scavenge for dinner.

“And, too, when the time for a baby like mine should come. It, too, must be let go.”

Can this be real? I had heard of pagan practices in far off places. Am I truly now living in such a place?

The African woman spoke of the occasional baby, like her firstborn, whose only wrong was failing to make her arrival to the world head-first. A breach presentation.

For Grace those years ago one night, her labor pains had reached what seemed their limit. She strained a final time. Moments passed. A wave of relief came. Cries of a newborn – vibrant, healthy-sounding cries.

But not cries, after all, to be celebrated.

The new mother helplessly agonized her own horror as her mother-in-law moved the baby out of reach, then beyond the dwelling’s entrance way, out into the night.

As my wife and I learned the story we were taken by the nearness of it all.

In the instance of this young mother, the loss of her newborn had happened just a few years prior to our arrival to Kuria-land.

Mercifully for Grace, another pregnancy followed and, later on, another still. Each pregnancy heralding entries into the world of children lucky enough to arrive in acceptable fashion.

Does the presence of foreign missionaries matter? Does our coming really make a difference?

A young Maasai, slender and tall, had an answer for me. Years afterward. In Tanzania.

September 26, 2017September 29, 2017

Above African Plains

“Disgraceful.”

The female passenger, strapped securely in her seat in the Cessna 206 high above Tanzania’s plains, continued her vent.

“Missionary groups should just stay away. Stop meddling. Stop interfering with beautiful, ancient traditions of cultures not their own. They have no right.”

My missionary pilot friend, Denny, had been recounting to me in his distinct French accent a short conversation. One he had witnessed while ferrying a businesswoman to an East Africa destination. Mission aviation groups sometimes assist non-religious personnel in their travels. Denny’s passenger spoke a German accent. She was on a roll.

“Why do they feel they must meddle? Why not leave the tribal groups alone, to their own rich customs? The arrogance of it! Pedaling their Christian message where it is not needed. . .”

In one of the Cessna’s rear seats, just back of the complainant, sat an African pastor, a mentor to fellow Maasai evangelists of a local denomination. Daniel listened to the woman. Silent. Attentive. When he sensed her comments were done, he spoke.

“Mm, I am sorry, madam, may I offer a question?”

She tilted her head his direction.

Daniel’s respectful tone continued. “Please help me with this. I have been hearing your complaint. My thought is to do with my people here in East Africa.

“When missionaries came they found us with many problems. We suffered diseases which shortened our lives. Our people had not known what brought some of the sicknesses or how to correct them.

“Also, our people of an earlier time lacked knowledge of other things. We could not read books. Our understanding stayed small.

“Then visitors began arriving, coming to us from Europe, from America. With them they brought things like medicines. They started clinics and began showing us about our sicknesses, their causes. Our condition began improving.

“These people seemed to care about us. Books came. Teachers brought literacy to my people. Schools were built. Our lives were changing more and more.

The aircraft continued her path through the skies. Daniel kept his voice strong, competing with the engine’s steady hum.

“And, madam, we were a fearful people. We have always felt there is a spirit world – invisible among the people and our tribes, but real. And that this fear we had, came from dark kinds of forces. We feared death, especially. The visitors, these missionaries, brought to us another message. They showed us about God.

“My question is this one, please. Are you saying that those missionary people should not have left their places and come to us. With their medicines and their schools and the news to help us with our fear?”

Daniel had spoken in a voice steady, strong, reasoning. He and the pilot awaited the visitor’s response.

An airstrip came into view.

The plane began its descent. In silence.

September 29, 2017

Extra Descriptive

Denny tilted sideways in the aircraft seat just enough that I could catch his voice above the engine hum. His message brought sweat to my palms.

The missionary pilot had directed the aircraft westward, above East Africa’s plains. The Cessna was a baby fly at the foreground of the continent’s most stunning monument, Mt. Kilimanjaro. Massive. Majestic.

We had lifted off from Moshi’s small airport and were bound for remote preaching outposts. Five of them. Each outpost was marked by a small gathering of Maasai huddled under one or two trees or beneath a shiny tin roof indicating a village schoolroom.

Denny’s passengers also numbered five, meaning the Cessna 206 was at her half-dozen capacity.

“Every three weeks or so I fly young evangelists to these outposts, leaving them one by one at each preaching point”, Denny had said when inviting me along. “They share with any locals gathered who want to learn about God. I myself offer a short teaching at the final spot on the circuit. Afterwards I retur home, retracing the earlier route, collecting the young men once again on the way.”

Denny said travelling by air cut the travel time for such a venture by days.

By now, we had touched down and taken off a couple times.

We departed the most recent dirt strip where we had left the third preacher-trainee. It was near this time my French pilot friend began cluing me in on particulars of our next landing site.

“So, now we will be coming, in about fifteen minutes to an unusual landing place. It is among that range of peaks there.” The landscape ahead was varied, featuring moderate elevations merging with steep green slopes revealing spherical volcanic outlines. Nothing of the terrain hinted at flatness.

As we flew, several distinct bumps alerted us to updrafts. We were passing within near range of one of Africa’s towering escarpment cliffs.

The missionary’s accented monologue resumed. “We approach soon the most difficult landing strip I visit in all the region.”

It was here that my palms began moistening. This, despite Denny’s steady, undramatic, near-casual manner. What does ‘most difficult landing strip’ actually mean? For Denny. For me. Today?

He seemed in a mood to describe something of our coming destination. In more detail than I would prefer.

“First, the terrain near this village has few suitable places for landing a plane, so the length of the strip is quite short.

“Then the landing/take-off space lies slanted a bit – uneven, not quite flat – resting at the edge of a greater slope. . .”

The aircraft brought us nearer the village and, in the distance the ribbon of runway came into view. . .

My instinct here was to wave a friendly hand – further moistened by now – to signal satisfaction with the amount of info he had supplied. I did not.

“And, finally”, Denny went on, “there is the wind. Up here it is seldom moving the direction best suited for landing and takeoff.”

Our descent was well underway. Apart from the queasy feeling brought on by the data just delivered me, I relished taking in the wonder of the volcanic mountain landscape rising to meet us.

With a talent common to seasoned bush pilots alone, the Frenchman brought the airplane safely in. A smooth, entirely glitch-free landing.

Denny’s performance, in my estimation, confirmed the viewpoint of a person whose opinion should count for something. . .

It is possible to fly without motors, but not without knowledge and skill. – Wilbur Wright

October 3, 2017

BOOM in the Night

“Bwana, Kuja! Ona nyoka kubwa sana!”

The African voices clamored – yelling attention to the white men of Bukuria station. “Sirs, Come see! Very big snake!”

Art Dodzweit leapt from his chair. Reaching for his rifle and a fist full of shells he shouted. “Bud, come! Seems a cobra or python has paid us a visit.”

In the mid 1940s, friends Bud Sickler and Arthur Dodzweit had boarded ships to Kenya from the U.S. The agency had commissioned them and their new brides – identical twins, Fay and May – to preach, serve where they might, and start churches. Early on an administrator had greeted them.

“That hill over there, just in the distance. Its the place we’ve approved land for your mission. Shall we have a look?” The Englishman of Britain’s Crown Colony showed the Yankee newcomers the plot of land. Then left them to the work.

Kuria country was covered with trees, underbrush, and occasional patches of grazing land, rugged and wild. Narrow creeks and rivers crisscrossed hilly terrain. These waterways flooded their banks most rainy seasons. Crop planting hardly got a mention among the traditional nomad cattle-tenders – the Wakuria.

Among predator-creatures native to the area were large, slithering pythons, camouflaged in the region’s undergrowth.

They moved about mostly at night, stalking small and, at times, larger game – their big, round eyes and nimble forked tongue, keenly detecting prey. On the night of the snake alert the sky was black. The men tramped the direction shown to them.

Art stopped. Movement in the tall grass by his feet sent shivers along his back. The snake lay nearby, no question. A young Kenyan bearing a flashlight, lowered it. They spotted the signs. Blotches of tan interrupted by cream-tinted borders and black outer lines glided forward. Art held the gun stock in a tight grip. A python for sure.

“Bud! Bud!” Art’s nervous voice cut into the night. “I’m gonna shoot, Bud.” He squeezed the trigger. The kick of the rifle threw him back a step.

That moment the python’s fore-end, several yards out to the left, instantly rose upward from the blast’s impact, the high caliber bullet tearing into its midsection.

Bud stood meters away, silent in the dark. A nearby African, gripping a flashlight, caught the image of the huge snake’s head, suddenly meeting eyeball-to-eyeball with Bud Sickler – perhaps two inches before his nose.

Bud’s throat took in a sudden suck of air. His backward fall came instant and sure. The tall, red-haired young man lay flat in the grass, out cold from the shock of the encounter.

We never learned how the two friends, when they finally retired for the night, managed to sleep.

What we would learn now that we had landed at Bukuria. The Python family hadn’t gone away. They were still in the neighborhood.

October 5, 2017October 5, 2017

A Matter of Taste

I never grew a warm place in my heart for serpents. Never acquired the taste.

“Good morning, Bwana.” The man labored up the slope, evidently with merchandise.

Not that snakes were uncommon on the farm where I grew up. Water Moccasins (Cottonmouths) and a few non-poisonous varieties often found their way to our pastures and watering ponds. A pleasant summer past-time of mine, in fact, was picking off the occasional slithering intruder, using my dad’s .22 rifle. But there was a difference between then and now, this place and that place. The snakes on the Oklahoma farm tended to be shorter. . . by ten feet or more.

The Kuria tribesman was calling to me as he pushed his aging bicycle up our grassy driveway inside the mission compound. The bike’s rear tire seemed low, probably due to the load – whatever it was – concealed in a well-worn burlap bag atop the bicycle’s carrier rack.

I greeted the stranger and soon learned he was a near neighbor – his family occupying two thatch-roofed huts. A boma (homemade corral) sandwiched between.

I eyed the bag with increased curiosity. It was anchored down by strips of discarded inner tube.

The African’s smile stayed happily in place under his floppy brown hat.

“We Kuria find that missionaries like the skins. The white people coming before you – they pay us for what we bring.”

My new-discovered neighbor began unfastening the rubber strips. Heaving the coarse bag to the ground he untied a thin strand of fresh tree bark used to bind the sack. Slowly he drew out the contents.

A few minutes of back and forth discussion followed.

Pocketing the shillings I handed him – roughly a dollar’s worth – he turned his bicycle and rode off.

I stared at the python spread lengthwise before me, its patchwork pattern and sheer size a thing of wonder.

How do they skin these things?

My mind rehearsed the Kuria man’s account.

He had wakened in the night to the screams of one of his goats. It was being seized and encircled by the great serpent. Two gashes in the snake’s body revealed where the rescuer’s spear struck. More drama followed until the snake finally lay dead (I never learned the final state of the goat).

Shortly after the skirmish the man walked his bicycle onto our property.

Once I skinned the snake I spread it full-length on the longest, flattest board I could find. With small nails I secured it, the inside stretched open to the sunny sky. I powdered it generously with table salt. It can dry there and hopefully cure.

Reaching to my tool box I found a measuring tape. Nose to tail the reptile stretched 17 feet.

Mid-afternoon I was startled by a sudden cry from my wife outside – not of terror but of alarm. She was racing toward our first-born. “No, Julie! No, No, don’t touch!”

Our 30 month old daughter had by this age been introduced to the tangy flavor of salt. Spotting the seasoning sprinkled atop a curious thing on a length of wood, she had begun taking in direct samples on her happily extended tongue. Interrupted, thankfully, before acquiring a taste.

October 10, 2017

Urgent Care

Klak. Klak. Klak. Klak.

The sound of an archery bow thumping a bedroom window deep into the night is one not easily forgotten.

Our watchman’s smokey voice joined the klacking sound outside, pronouncing my surname as best he could, “Bwana Lauti, Bwana Lauti.”

At Nyamahanga’s second or third call I stirred. The bedside clock read 1:30 a.m.

“Bwana Lauti. . . Mama karibu kuzaa.”

The cement-plaster floor of our room felt cool to my bare feet. Flashlight in hand, I was soon exiting the room, “Honey, another ambulance run. A Mama has gone into labor.”

“Ok,” a sleepy voice murmured back. “Be careful.” it was a role-reversal of sorts – Ann, normally the late-night riser when a baby needed changing or fed.

A few minutes passed. I whispered a prayer as the father-to-be who had raised the alert, took his place in the passenger seat. We were off to fetch the missus, then get her to Kehancha.

Such “ambulance runs” had evolved as part of a naturally-assumed job description for any bush missionary. The assumption, we agreed, made sense, as mission personnel were among the scant number of people owning a motorized vehicle.

The race against time came pantingly close some nights over my three-plus years of free, on-call ambulance service. But I somehow outpaced the labor contractions with every midnight jaunt. The same was mostly true for Canadian friend Phil Harman of Suna Mission some distance away. Except one night. A good part of the next morning found him vigorously doing a scrub-down of floorboard and rear seat in his newly-christened VW Bug Delivery Room. Mother and newborn had fared just fine.

Over time we grew to wonder what next medical crisis could visit the compound. It was during such a period a young man appeared at our back entrance. Night had fallen. He stood bleeding profusely, leaning into the support of another man. The machete attack had found its mark.

Jesus help us.

October 13, 2017October 13, 2017

In The Name Of A Friend

The young pastor strained under the weight of the bleeding man he supported. “He is my brother.”

He labored to keep the wounded man upright. The machete blade had gone deep.

“How did it happen?”, I asked, as my nurse-wife entered from a side room and approached to lend aid.

“My brother has a friend. The friend sent my brother to collect money owed him by another man.”

I took in the unfolding story as we all helped the wounded brother out of his coat, it’s back soaked through in red.

“The man owing money was drinking beer and got angry when my brother told him why he came. My brother decided to leave and come back another time. But the man had taken up a panga (machete). When my brother turned to go out, it was then he was slashed, before he could reach to the outside.”

Ann had brought out a sizable roll of gauze. By now his shirt had been removed and, with strips of old sheets and tape, she bound his bare torso. The panga had opened a V-trench some eight inches long – vertically, between spine and shoulder blade. She wrapped the material about his torso several times, in hopes it might slow the blood, buying us time to get him to the clinic where they could sew him up.

The government-sponsored clinic, a thinly-equipped medical outpost established to serve the Wakuria clans, sat at the edge of the village nearest us, five miles to the north.

Life was hard for the tribal people, often heartbreaking. It was a rare home that had not lost at least one child to malaria.

And there were the skirmishes.

With cultures of the region given to decades-old feuds – mostly to do with livestock – violence could erupt in a heartbeat. Kuria country lay bordering other cattle-tending families – the Maasai, the Luo, the Kipsigis. Bands of spear-wielding parties of either tribe, trekking by foot in their stated quest to take back rustled livestock, had become a common image.

I grew to slow the bug down on our dusty road and roll gently past the occasional vigilante parties. We couldn’t guess when a band might come into view on the twenty mile drive to our mail box (we checked for letters once, sometimes twice, weekly). Though as a missionary family we did not feel directly threatened, our verbal charge to the back seat passengers came with regularity, “Roll your windows up, kids.”

The task at hand just now was to get a terribly wounded young Kuria to a place for treatment.

I hope the doctor is in.

October 17, 2017

Survival

“Sir. . Sir, Hello. . . Hello! Can you come sir? Hello. . .”

Waking a doctor from a drink-induced sleep called for persistence.

We had transported the machete-attack victim the five miles to the government clinic, only to learn an aged, slow-moving male nurse was the only person on duty.

“The doctor for this work”, he said, eyeing the wide blood mark streaking our patient’s back, “is away. You might find him at his house.”

Leaving our patient, I drove another five miles of bad road, where I came to the darkened home of the physician. “Hello. . .Hello. . .”

Thirty minutes later, the groggy doc held a kerosene lantern (electricity had not reached the village) examining the naked wound. Thankfully, Ann’s gauze-and-sheet wrap had held and not too much blood had seeped through.

The wounded man went by Mwita. He sat upright on the cot’s edge as three pair of eyes, beside the doctor’s – Mwita’s brother’s, the male nurse’s and my own – gazed at the deep slash. I had never seen such a wound.

No surgical mask was donned by any of us. There were none in supply. And, I assumed, maybe never had been.

A brief exchange between the bush-surgeon and myself left me surprised. And troubled. The nurse had stepped to another room and was now rolling in a metal cart into view. A steel pan sat and, in it were utensils. Suturing material, I guessed.

My tone was respectful, sincere.

“Sir,” (it seemed doubtful by now the man I had wakened for the upcoming procedure was a doctor in a full, professional sense) “could I ask. . . how are the instruments sterilized?”

Lifting a sizable curved needle offered by the old nurse, the gentleman held it before the lantern for a better look. With a wave of an elbow he declared knowingly, “Oh, you understand, off there in the big cities where many people live, there are, many more germs. Many more.

“But out here in the rural places, we have fewer people. And so – less problems with infection”. The man’s silence as he squinted one-eyed, finding the needle’s opening and beginning the thread, suggested my question had been sensibly answered. This is the way it is. No discussion.

I cringed at my next discovery.

“He will be given anesthetic, right?”, I ventured.

“No, we are out of it.”

Perhaps – looking back – my biggest surprise of the evening was my lack of queasiness.

Witnessing a needle in the firm grip of someone, the needle piercing the muscular surface, tugging a string of black thread in its trail – again and again – left me at the edge of nausea.

Next morning I readied myself to visit the clinic when word of the wounded man reached me via Africa’s reliable grapevine.

“You’re sure?”, I asked a second time.

“Yes, Bwana, he walked home this morning.”

My thoughts retraced the sequence.

Treks to our place last night (who knows what distance?) – losing blood the whole way. Endures several bumpy miles of ‘ambulance ride’. Without meds to blunt the pain, the flesh of his back takes into itself a suturing needle of questionable hygiene time and again, drawing the parted muscle and sinew close. . .

I’m now feeling queasy.

And, early the following morning, walks home – more than five miles – unaided.

While missionaries are probably not widely known for referencing Charles Darwin, I found myself at different times suddenly recalling a phrase, “survival of the fittest”.

This was such a time.

October 22, 2017

TEE Time

“Now, Jerry”, My friend’s voice hinted at mischief as we started across the church parking lot, “tell me about tee-hee-hee.”

To know Van Gill was to treasure the sound of a rolling chuckle. And take in a pair of grinning eyes, coaxing response to his merriment.

Everything about the Texan pastor was large. Large frame, large mind (among the keenest), large humor. All of these reflecting a thing largest of all – his overflowing, over-spacious heart.

Van was a man of the Book. Indeed, it was his love of Scripture that, in part at least, stirred him to offer the teasing invitation. . . tee-hee-hee.

By the time of this our family’s visit from Africa, I was co-authoring a study book on the Gospel of John, a curriculum piece for Theological Education by Extension, widely labeled T – E – E.

Writer’s workshops, led by Fred and Grace Holland of the Association of Evangelicals of Africa and Madagascar, trained missionaries and nationals in Bible school text development.

After my training I had partnered with Evangelist Josephat Rungu of Western Kenya. Together, we teamed with South Africa counterparts and, Teachings in John was born. Published in Nairobi, the T.E.E. training series – featuring topics from Old Testament Survey to Bringing People to Jesus – spanned denominations and cultures across the continent.

From Latin America to Africa and beyond, T.E.E. had begun empowering the church, equipping spiritual shepherds in the care of their flocks. Especially the many pastors and elders who were unsuited, for various reasons, to traditional schooling in far-away, culturally-detached settings.

When our extension Bible school met weekly under a big tree at mid-day, we engaged a means to dodge the harsh rays. “That’s it, bring your chair again this direction, keep moving ahead of the sun.”

Week after week, month after month, young and old apprentices to Jesus engaged each other in such settings, some indoors, some out. They would sip hot tea, an open hand would fervently wave to emphasize a point. Laughter erupted now and then. The minds of these servants of God were those waking more and more to fresh discovery of truth. They grappled with ancient scripture and sought ways to apply it well. In their own lives, their households, and to the broader community of faith. Transformed lives by Jesus and the Holy Spirit, their aim.

Through our beloved Africa years, perhaps nothing – apart from watching my three children grow – brought me greater pleasure, more sheer joy.

Tee-hee-hee. Not bad.