Tag: Kenya

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A Calming Effect

Airport kiosks of the sparser variety often feature elevated circular tables so travelers can munch their edibles while standing. My new South Asia friend had moved to such a table, his modest lunch in hand. Adjusting his backpack, he had a glance around. Suddenly, he paused – shifting his gaze to the beverage in his hand.

No straw.

Taking in the customers around him, he realized all their drinks did include sipping straws, each one poised as if standing at attention within the respective drinks. The travel-worn student’s heart sank.

The kiosk attendant did not give me a straw, Dheeraj moaned inwardly. Surely it is because they do not like my being here. In this place. . . this country.

Reining in his gathering gloom, Dheeraj returned his focus to the checkout counter, noting the small stack of napkins from which he had earlier retrieved his own.  He then noticed a newly served customer fetching one for himself. Turning, the gentleman pressed a finger to a metal device near at hand. From this device, a bright, fresh sipping straw magically appeared!

Relief washed over Dheeraj.

Ann and I flashbacked to our own skewed perceptions when arriving in Kenya as youngsters – our first foreign country of residence. Excitement and angst, wonder and trepidation ran the gamut, having a roller coaster field day. (Having grown up in an era of “Me Tarzan–You Jane” movies, I was half-surprised that our Jumbo Jet set down on paved tarmac, rather than a dirt landing strip!

In time our TU ministry team offered cultural orientation sessions for new arrivals coming in from abroad. We relished witnessing the ‘lights come on’, seeing anxieties dissipate even as we handed out copies of a perfectly-labeled booklet, How To Survive In The United States.

In time, opportunities arose where we could pass along treasured phrases from an ancient era, that proved as relevant today as at any time ever,

“Be anxious for nothing*. . . “Do not fear, I am with you**”

©2024 Jerry Lout                                                            *Philippians 4:6-7   **Isaiah 41:10

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A Knowing

His intimate and often practice of prayer brought Jesus into sweet communion with God, his heavenly father. And his praying served as the perfect teaching tool, placing in his disciples’ hands a sure and certain onramp to daily life in God.

Like fruit-bearing branches streaming from a common vine, Christ-followers actually get to see their lives as extensions of his own. They are a band of humble pilgrims anchoring into a new identity. Having become God’s reborn sons and daughters they quickly catch on to the fact that apart from Jesus they can do nothing. Nothing at all. He has become their life source. The Holy Spirit helps keep Jesus ever before their eyes. And, as with priceless treasure discovered in a field, no obstacle on earth will stop them going after it.

So it is that God’s unimpressive tagalongs – his precious apprentices – are set on a course of blossoming and flourishing. His fruit-bearing emissaries.

This sweet communion with God through the practice of prayer is not a thing reserved for Jesus of Nazareth alone.

I think of Frank.

Long ago a young missionary in Western Kenya confided in me, “All that I have learned about how to pray I learned from Frank.”  The young man spoke warmly of his missions colleague and friend.

“Frank didn’t teach me to pray by telling me how to pray. I learned praying by being with Frank when he was praying.”

Apparently, this is how it was with Jesus’ twelve. A longing arose within them that they become pray-ers, because of what they witnessed in their praying Lord. They discerned that their brilliant and beloved rabbi displayed utterly unique qualities. Beautiful and desirable qualities. Like goodness. And joy. And compassion. And humility.

Such qualities, they began seeing, could only be derived from those frequent times he communed in secret with a world they knew little about.

(c)2023 Jerry Lout

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Train

Warm the bench.

 The high, red-brick gymnasium overshadowed our school’s single-story classrooms.

Parked on the cold bench with fellow player-wannabees, my gaze dropped to the tennis-shoed polio foot at the end of my left leg.

My rear end’s the best thing this bench ever saw come its way. I’ll keep this wood plank warm all season.

I looked up to the scrimmage happening on court. My melancholy eased. Look at those Petit brothers. Perspiration glistened on their lithe ebony forms. Wow, amazing their fitness. . . and their moves. Effortless.

So it seemed.

* * * * * * * *

A common link binds me presently to four athletes.

Colton, the youngest and his sister, Tara (high school junior) practice lobbing free throws. Every day. They scramble after rebounds for their teams.  Moments later their coach barks, Work it inside, move the ball inside!

After practice the siblings breeze along four miles of dirt road to their Oklahoma farm home – to chores, and homework. To laughs with family at the wood-burning stove.

The third athlete in the quartet – Luke, the ninth-grader – schools in Kenya. Luke keeps fit for what’s up next. . . Rugby, volleyball? Calls made in the game of rugby land strangely on American ears. . . scrum awarded – collapsing ruck. . . Given the sport’s intensity, ‘Rugby-moms’ are known to gasp at certain calls – bleeding wound. . .

Grace rounds out athlete number four. On the Congo playing field rigorous training tunes her ears to soccer calls. Corner kick – yellow card. On it goes.

I thrill taking in games, studying pics of these my grand-athletes. Some nearby, some far.

My mind revisits the Petit brothers of Preston High. And the term so readily voiced before. Effortless.

No. The thing that is going on out there – over the squeaking shoes – the pivots, the fakes, the twirling leaps. Nothing accidental’s going on out there. Not a thing.

My thoughts shift to another dimension. To life. All of life.

Whatever goes on with a person that actually counts. Language acquisition, architecture, athletics  – or that makes for exceptional living – those actions demand something. On-purpose, precise, repetitive action. While dreaming, hoping.

My fabulous four athlete-grandkids practice. They’re keeping fit. They  train..

I’ll never suit up for the NBA. Or charge down a soccer field defying blockers and goalies. I won’t (God forbid) kick shins – or have shins kicked – in a rugby scrum.

Every athlete has an aim.

In the contest of life every follower of Jesus has an aim. Really, an aim beyond the highest aspirations of any physical athlete. The aim is dual in nature, fashioned amazingly God himself.

Being transformed by renewing the mind, the way we think.

Let Christ be formed in you – our becoming like him. In word and action.

Great, we say. So. How’s this done? How?

Good news it is possible. He will help us.

To train, to practice, to be made fit. Till new ways become, not ill-fitting, but natural. Something we call – as Jesus did –  the light burden – the easy yoke.

I lean down. Cold bench, warm bench. . . no matter. Lacing my shoes I cock my ear to the coach’s call,

Time to train.

©2016 Jerry Lout

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Walking

“Jerry, meet Charles Duke. He’s been to the moon.”

Hardly an introduction one is offered every day.

So far – as of this blog writing – just a dozen sets of human footprints have ever marked the lunar surface. America had overtaken Russia in a great cosmic race.

The new acquaintance smiled my way. “Charlie,” he said. I took the extended hand. “Pleased to meet you, sir”.

Shaking the Colonel’s hand added one more link to my feeling connected – however remotely – to the wild, daring adventure NASA had embarked on in response to President Kennedy’s challenge.

How many Apollo blueprints, flush with intricate detail, did I sort and file up at the Tulsa plant anyway, I wondered. . . With their engineerish terms like Reaction Control Thruster Assembly and the like?

Charlie Duke was in Africa to deliver a Kenya flag that had traveled on an Apollo flight to the moon and back. It would be gifted to the National Museum. My wife and I had moved to Kenya a few years before. Today we were visiting friends in the Capital.

I joined a gathering that evening where the astronaut recounted his moon walk, along with a story of his personal faith.

Finding a seat I was soon taken by the former astronaut’s words. Near the end of his Apollo 16 narratives he shifted topics, sharing highlights of his journey with Christ.

Another witness. Another quite intelligent space-traveller – speaking of a reality he’d come to own, of a truth and a person upon whom he chose to anchor his life. The room was quiet – the only sounds the colonel’s measured tones, deep with feeling yet controlled. The impact of his next statement – like his enduring footprint on the moon’s surface – never left me.

“Travelling to outer space was a rare and wonderful experience. Yet. .”

The room grew quieter still.

“I’ve found that walking on the moon can’t begin to compare with walking on the earth with the Son.”

©2017 Jerry Lout

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Airport Angst


I was sorting British currency at one of earth’s busiest airports when my two-year-old girl vanished.

Amy had stood quietly at my side seconds ago as I made a kiosk purchase. In a quick, awkward 360 degree swirl I scanned what I could of this piece of Heathrow’s bustling throng. Amy! My little girl was no where in sight.

We had flown here from Nairobi, Kenya. Our family’s connecting flight to the U.S. would receive passengers in a couple hours. I sprinted the short distance to my wife, Ann, and the two older children. Because of a fractured toe from the day before, Ann could only stay seated, her leg out before her with the bandaged foot resting atop a lower piece of luggage.

“Julie! Scott!” They jumped to action when told their little sister had disappeared – striking off in directions indicated by my commando-like hand signals. I took in the many and varied images of travelers, their luggage pieces trailing behind like obedient pets. Nationalities and languages from all parts. My eyebrows furrowed. Some 75 million travelers pass through London’s Heathrow yearly. Lord. Where? Where can she be? Help us, Lord.

My movements were a vigorous, graceless waltz, craning this way and that, continuously turning, specially scoping for signs of ‘little people’.

Seconds felt like minutes, minutes like hours.

In something over five minutes the airport’s public address system gave a pop, then hummed to life. The voice was male.

It was even. Strong. Indisputably English. Voices have a way of projecting personality. The person back of this voice was clearly gentle and good-humored.

“Heathrow travelers, I would like your attention, please.” The din of luggage casters clacking and shoes clicking and people clamoring only barely faded as the announcer went on. “Ladies and gentlemen, it seems we have a young lady, an Amy-BethLout (he blended the middle and last names to sound as one, sparing himself the awkwardness perhaps of associating the unflattering term ‘lout’ with any of his esteemed airport guests.) Regardless, the gentle, good-humored security fellow had got my attention. “Thank you, Lord”, I breathed.

It seems Amy had become sort of spellbound, taking in the grand throng of men and women and children. And their pigmentation. Since her East Africa birth only a tiny fraction of people she had seen had a skin color common to her own. Absentmindedly, after a mere few steps, she had drifted into the river of humanity.

Now I was holding her in a close hug.

”So Amy, tell us, how did you get to the nice man with the microphone?”

“Well,” she swayed back and forth slightly, “after awhile I looked around and I couldn’t see you anymore.” An old man with probably his wife was near to me. So I reached up and pulled down on his jacket. He looked at me and I said, “Do you know my daddy?” And so they got me back to you.

Her smile was unlabored, spontaneous, wonderfully naïve. “I’m glad we found each other daddy.”

I smiled back, only now aware my heart rate had begun normalizing again.

“I am too, Amy.” I hugged her again. “Really glad.”

Talking Heads
©2017 Jerry Lout

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Mother

*today’s post is in current time, a departure from my usual narratives out of a more distant past. I’m in Africa. A ministry visit. Thank you for your time and for joining in special prayer.

***

Tanzania, my country host, lies mourning.

The bright young students held such promise, their minds fired up
for the day’s challenge. That was reality a few mornings ago. Before the bus they traveled in left the road.

I am writing from East Africa this morning in May – a month for honoring mothers. I’m the lone mzungu – white person, on a twenty-passenger shuttle bus, it’s occupants making our way from northern Tanzania to Kenya.

I silently offer thanks for our seasoned driver. “I’ve driven commercially since the 80’s”, he had told me. I’m in the front passenger seat. The driver is to my right as vehicles here use the left lane. Six hours more and we’ll reach Nairobi. Keep him alert Lord. Mist gathers on the windshield and he passes the wiper blade across the surface. It’s Wednesday. My mind returns to Saturday’s incident, down the way, beyond my lodging near Arusha.

The primary school students, 12 and 13 years of age, were en route to another school to take an exam.

Rainfall glistened on the pavement ahead as their bus descended a steep hill. For a reason not yet known. . a blown tire, excessive speed. . the vehicle swerved and plunged downward into a river-swollen ravine. Among the thirty six who died, thirty-three were children.

Join with others, would you, in praying for those overtaken by loss. The grieving friends, the siblings, the fathers, the school teachers. And of all. Remember the mothers.
©2017 Jerry Lout

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Embakasi

“Jerry Lout, right?”

The accent, which I would later recognize as New Zealander, came from beyond a short railing. John Maxwell’s hand, its firm grip on a paper, pressed forward past the barrier and into Nairobi airport’s arrivals section. Labeled Immigration, it was the sector where passports, visas and such are green-lighted or rejected.

The paper being handed me was important. My Work Permit, the document required for our long-term stay in Kenya. The Permit had been signed just recently, an inky stamp-print marking approval. Good for four years. Happy to meet a welcoming presence to the continent, I took the paper from our new colleague, nodding my thanks.

Our plane had touched down minutes earlier, having traversed the Mediterranean Sea north-to-south and a long air path over the Sahara Desert.

Mile-high Embakasi Airport was just a short distance beyond the Nairobi Game Park, popular tourist attraction at the east edge of Kenya’s Capital City. The town’s name, Nairobi, was formed from a Maasai phrase meaning “cool water”. Six years would pass before Embakasi’s rechristening, paying homage to this nation’s first president, Jomo Kenyatta International Airport.

“Well, this is good!”, John’s wife announced cheerily, flashing a smile. “Seems your luggage all made it with you fine.” Jenny’s two pre-school boys bustled close by. Noting Ann’s larger-than-life midsection one asked, “Mummy, will Auntie have her baby now?”

Though wearied from travel, Ann felt lifted by the young mother’s warmth, “Let’s get you where you can relax a bit, shall we?” Jenny was Nairobi born-and-raised, and as comfortably at home in Africa as any expatriate we would come to know. From the outset our households, the Maxwells and Louts, had begun a bond.

Another person drew near – a lady graying a little around the temples, but vibrant. “Welcome, Kiddos.” The American accent stirred a good feeling somewhere inside us.

If what were needed for a pair of green missionary-hopefuls landing on the continent was a matronly, plucky veteran of Africa’s bush-country, Eva Butler fit the role. Single-mom. Servant to Kenya’s more remote peoples and cultures. Being in her company, Ann and I sensed a measure of awe. Then my mood shifted and I nearly chuckled, recalling an uncommon meeting in a small college chapel not that long ago. . . “So this is the man with the black heart!”

My wife and I smiled as, in turn, we took Eva Butler’s hand – sister to the snowy-haired, twinkly-eyed Elim President. Carlton Spencer.

In a few days I would visit one of those remote regions Eva called home. And have a taste of raw fear.

©2017 Jerry Lout

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A Morning Laugh

The key slipped easily into its slot. I was downtown Nairobi, standing before a bank of metal post office boxes. The bold figures on our assigned box – shared by others of our same mission – read 30207.  Drawing out the few pieces of mail bearing the Lout name I paused at one marked with a Louisiana address. I recognized the sender though we hadn’t been in touch since I left San Antonio more than a year ago. I turned the envelope a couple times. How about this. . . What’s Ray up to these days?

Ann and I had passed through our first Nairobi, Kenya months in a seeming blur, a lot of new happening. New friends, new apartment, new culture and new car. . .New baby.

Julie Ann Lout made her squalling entry to Nairobi Hospital July 13, 1972 – a bare six weeks after our Africa landing. Our most joyous moment since Ann and I exchanged our vows.

A few weeks later I engaged another kind of new. A new language.

We found we were short on funds to cover both an insurance payment coming due and my Swahili School entrance fee. By now the language studies were underway. The money worries burdened me.

On the post-office-visit day I had awakened about 5 o’clock. Our little studio flat came with an oddly arranged self-contained kitchen, separate from the rest, making possible an inviting private space for alone-time. Before boiling some coffee water I slid a chair near me and knelt before it. And found myself questioning.

Laugh? I’m to laugh?

My questioning was reaction to a direct, uninvited impression that entered my mind some moments after I knelt. “Laugh. . . simply give your voice to laughing. . . laugh.”  To consult my feelings seemed pointless. I felt like doing any number of things. Return to bed. Bemoan our money shortfall. Worry.

The word ‘laugh’ persisted, like a gentle command. A few moments passed.

OK, here goes.

“hahaha”. “hahaha”. “hahaha”.

The sounds coming quietly off my tongue were flat, lifeless as a corpse, ricocheting the yellow-painted walls of my small enclosure.  I realized that no smile accompanied my attempted laugh. Alright.

I’ll smile. I willed my face to the posture. By now, though, I had begun sensing that God’s Spirit was likely behind this unorthodox exercise. That something special may await.

Several seconds of emotionless chuckling directed upward stretched into a minute or so. For the most part my eyes stayed open, as the practice didn’t seem entirely like prayer anyway.

What happened next, there in my early-morning space, surprised me. And revisited my thinking later in the day when reading the Louisiana-stamped letter. The impact was profound.

©2017 Jerry Lout

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In A Manner Of Speaking

“La!”

The roundish, baldish, gruffish language tutor prided himself in his home area’s version of the Swahili language. After all, his was the Coast Swahili variety. Only Kenya’s neighbor to the south, Tanzania, could compete with the gold standard Swahili spoken along the teacher’s Indian Ocean region. His voice was raspy, making him seem harsher than he really was. His sudden “La!” (No!) was instantly followed by a terse scold, “Up-country Swahili!” With little patience for poorly-spoken words, the aging gent spat out the phrase as if evicting a live wasp from his mouth.

It was through this mwalimu mzee (elder instructor) I first caught the need to communicate well in another culture. This was further driven home once our stay in the Capital ended. Through a much-loved missionary headmistress whose wrinkle-teased eyes constantly twinkled and whose tongue offered up wisdom and wit by the kilo. . . “I believe I understand what you think I said, but I’m not sure that what I said is what you thought I meant.” A sampling of Elizabeth Ridenour’s way of making the point.

Some places are not the best for a native English-speaker to learn the Swahili language. Nairobi was one of them. A recommended, though challenging way, to master a new language is through a method called immersion learning. Learning by immersion happens when everybody around the student understands and speaks the desired language, but do not speak the student’s language. A sink or swim approach.

By the time most Nairobi kids reached adolescence they were fluent in two or more languages. And with English the nation’s official language – in government-sponsored places like post office, secondary schools and parliament – young people thirsted to know English. During my language school months, the moment I tried bumbling through half a sentence of Swahili in the company of a teenager, the youngster was already responding in crisp, fluent English.

Meaningful practice of the African dialect outside the classroom was rare.

I was dead set on communicating well – as Mwalimu Mzee insisted. With proper ‘textbook grammar’, exact pronunciation. . . Coast–like. That was my aim. And I must not yield to the great linguistic sin – any use of upcountry Swahili.

Months passed. Classes ended. The Mission assigned us to a remote station hundreds of miles further inland from the Coast. How would my textbook Swahili do. . . there in the place we were to live and serve?

Upcountry.

©2017 Jerry Lout

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A Sound Of Drums

“Do you hear something, Hon?”

The drum-beat rhythms seemed distant and ill-defined – more like a dream than real. Indeed, for a moment I thought the sound was a dream. But it grew in strength and as we lay wide-eyed in our fully-darkened sleeping quarters, our senses were strained. Time passed slowly.

“They’re coming nearer.”

Taranganya occupied a tiny dot on the rare Kenya map that found the outpost worthy of any space at all. The village’s claim to fame included a butcher shop. Flies gathered there to hike around on suspended beef portions well before customers took their cuts home to savor them for themselves. Pressure cookers were prized items in any missionary dwelling.

Two government schools roughly book-ended the butchery, one for elementary kids, the other, high-schoolers.  Beyond these, the one evidence that Taranganya village existed was Bukuria Mission.

Bukuria. Our first upcountry home. The place an outdoor hired hand pummeled a seven-foot spitting cobra after she raised her head just yards away and shot venomous spray my direction.

Bukuria – where a tornado ripped the metal roof off our neighbor’s house to hurl it across the compound, pretzelizing it in the branches of several trees on the way out.

Bukuria was a kind of place that stirs nostalgia. Past residents recall images of smoke clouds wafting over distant Maasai plains – evidence of herdsmen purging brown grasslands before the onset of welcome March rains.

A night watchman, Nyamahanga, was a fixed security presence on the station, greeting us at our first arrival. His armor consisted of a homemade bow with a handful of arrows (razor sharp). We had heard that tribal skirmishes may flare up in the area now and then. One wouldn’t want to be caught in the cross-fire, or worse yet, become the direct target of an angry archer.

“Lord, thanks for watching over us, over this place.”

The mission station rested on the uppermost slope of a gradually-ascending hill. Its entrance-point marked the head of a sweeping curve of the narrow, unpaved road passing before it. Our new home was in a remote sector of Kenya just five miles north of Tanzania’s unpatrolled border. The massive waters of Lake Victoria glistened from her banks 40 miles to our west.

We, the newbie missionaries, had just moved more than two hundred miles to this place, having received little orientation. We had no actual history with anyone of the Kuria Tribe.

The drumming volume intensified. Chanting sounds in a local dialect unknown to us fueled our anxiety.

Had we pondered more the impact of faith since the arrival of outsiders bearing the Jesus-news three decades earlier, our jitters would have lessened.

Our night of fitful sleep finally passed and we asked the obvious question.

The midnight drum-beats and chanting voices had stirred old film images of painted warriors, pith helmets and boiling pots. But we traced our Saturday night of sleeplessness to a little band of Kuria believers. En route to a prayer meeting.

©2017 Jerry Lout