Tag: Lake Victoria

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Bridging the Divide

Our cinema van slowed, rolling forward to the shoreline.

Africa’s vast body of water, Lake Victoria, lay directly ahead. If we should reach our destination, Rusinga Island, we must await the ferry here at Mbita Village.

We watched the ferry approach. Soon the Toyota, bearing us two missionaries, a diesel generator, a movie projector and gospel films departed the mainland. We and our cargo floated toward the water-encircled land before us.

Throughout it all the ferry was key. We had no other way to make it there. This was it, the ferry. Just this.

A religious group in the city where I now live set a sign in front of their meeting place. The organization promotes an idea that there are many equally valid “life paths”.

The sign reads, What is the true bible for you?

To the disciple of Jesus, such a question seems odd.

To his delight, the disciple has found that the book of the ages – the Holy Bible – holds in its pages the answers to life’s biggest questions. Foundational truths addressing the deepest concerns of every culture and people through every generation are preserved in the ancient Judeo-Christian texts.

Amazingly, the Bible leads anyone who responds to its invitation to the answer of all life’s primary needs. That answer does not lie in a philosophy or a principle or a creed. Rather, in a person. Jesus.

The earnest Christ-follower stands assured that each broken individual, every fractured, upside-down society can be healed, can be put right. Truths found in scripture supply hope for every soul who lives. What is needed is opening and reading and honestly considering the Book’s words. And responding to God, to his salvation offer of ongoing abundant living with him. In surrender to Jesus.

What Bible is for me?

The disciple has looked carefully at Jesus’ life in the scriptures and says, “I like what I see in the nature of this person, Jesus. I want that. I want it more than anything I have ever wanted, more than anything I could ever want.”

Terrific! It is at this place then, we must meet our challenge. Deep waters lie before us, our complete inability on our own of getting to the place we need to go. It is like gazing across Victoria’s waters to Rusinga Island but with no ferry to get us there.

Good news.

The disciple is not left stranded, the apprentice is given means. A land of the living beckons.

©2022 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

 

 

 

 

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Staring Down the Elements

Had I known that my dirt bike could well have landed at the bottom of a river before day’s end, I might have stayed in bed.

Rains had been falling off and on for several days around Suna Mission, punctuated from time to time with pummeling downpours. My piki-piki slipped and slithered beneath me for miles along the muddy roadway, finally bringing me to a bridge. Submerged beneath a torrent of waters.

It was the bridge I had planned to cross on the road taking me to Lake Victoria’s shoreline ten miles further on. I was slated to preach the Sunday service in a fishing village.

Great volumes of murky brown raced along – a steady, turbulent surge – passing both under and above the concrete bridge. Slowing the bike to a halt I let my feet find the muddy road surface. I sat some moments just taking in the scene. A young Luo man approached as I dismounted.

Smiling cheerily, he wasted no time offering me a proposition once the customary greetings were out of the way.

“Would you like to go over to the other side?” He hardly took a breath before adding, “I can get you there. . .” The youth quickly surveyed the Suzuki and waved an open palm toward it before concluding, “and you’re piki-piki, too!”

Shy of any strong conviction to leap at his offer, I questioned what he had in mind.

“Come. Just come.”

I clambered behind him up a muddy hill, a rise from which we could now take in more of the river upstream. I wasn’t quite ready for the view.

There at the water’s edge lay a home-built canoe – long and narrow. It had been wrestled to shore and held in place by it’s two captains.  First into the into the canoe was lifted a hefty bag of maize, probably a good 70 pounds worth. What most caught my eye, though, was an animal being drawn, much against its will, down the steep bank to the water, and the canoe.

“Kuja! Kuja! (Come! Come!)”, shouted the man leveraging the donkey’s makeshift harness, as his comrade energetically shoved from the animal’s backside. The poor creature’s resistance proved futile as it skidded nearer and nearer its watery destination.

The donkey’s handler passed the harness rope to the nearest boats-man who made sure the animal went into the water alongside the vessel rather than into it.

Once the craft was loaded, off they rowed, the donkey swimming nervously alongside – it’s jaw held taut by the keeper now on-board – bumping now and then against the canoe side.

Whatever was true about the action-laced drama, the mariner’s labors convinced me. To – reluctantly at least – entrust my old dirt bike to them. With one condition, however.

“Not a single scratch must be added to the bike until it’s safely across and sitting on the opposite bank.”

If this feat were met satisfactorily I would add an extra two Kenya shillings on the agreed fare. Naturally, I wasn’t so concerned about added dings on the already-scarred machine. I simply wished to make the strong point that neither the Suzuki nor myself landed at the bottom of the river.

Two additional canoes – freed of  goods they’d just delivered to the far bank – made their way to our shore. The boats found me struggling some to keep my balance on the steep, sloshy terrain.

Twenty minutes later and a good way further downstream, both my piki-piki and me alighted intact on the opposite shore. Balancing in the canoe carrying me across, I had snapped a picture of the bike, it’s 250 cc frame held perfectly upright the whole distance in the second boat by two strapping Luo youth. The photo appeared later in our newsletter update with a caption beneath advising,

“Watch and Pray”.

©2018 Jerry Lout

 

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Don’t Wait Up

“You will sleep at my house tonight.” The stranger pointed to a thatched dwelling in the distance. His words came more as factual statement than invitation.

The high school boy had emerged as I sat straddling my motorbike atop the gravel road not far from Africa’s largest lake. Daylight had faded. My bike’s head-lamp struggled to project its beam outward through an increasing mist. Well, I’m not awash in a downpour. Not yet.

I had brought the pikipiki to a stop once the drizzle began. It was clear I was in for a long, perhaps soaking, ride the remaining fifty miles home. The bike had been through a lot since leaving Nyabisawa Mission early this morning. Bouncing and slipping, zigzagging ruts carved from cattle tracks and rivulets of earlier rains.

The boy’s first greeting had framed a question, “Hello, sir. My name is Joseph. Where are you going?”

“Hello Joseph. I’m Jerry. Taking the long way to Nyabisawa. Going home.”

“But sir,” his voice growing solemn, “you do not want to travel this way at night-time. The next village ahead is Rodi. Bad people are there these days. When you pass through they will throw stones at you. It is not a safe place to pass.”

Reaching forward to wipe gathering moisture from the head lamp, I pondered the revelation. The schoolboy turned and with the wave of a hand indicated a gathered trio of grass-roofed huts not far off the road. Night was descending and in equatorial Africa the shift from light to dark occurs in a heartbeat.

“You will sleep at my house tonight.”

Once the pikipiki was secured inside the largest hut, I followed my young host to my impromptu sleeping quarters. It felt like I had stepped onto the center of an open National Geographic magazine. . . Africa bush-country – Circular hut. Thatch roof. Floor of hardened earth smooth and clean-swept. . .

“I will stay out here in this room”, Joseph announced. I glanced about as we passed through. With the exception of a sisal mat rolled up at the far wall, the room was bare.

“The house is my mother’s. She is the second wife of my father. She is not here tonight.”

We passed through an opening into the hut’s only other room. It was small, the area barely allowing for a single, narrow cot. The light of his kerosene lantern revealed the cot’s neatly-tucked bedding, a navy blue blanket. A mosquito net, much like a larger one in my own bedroom back at the mission, draped the bed – hanging suspended from a roof support. The net appeared adequate to keep any malaria-laden pests at a distance.

This small side-room and mosquito-shielded bed normally served the high-schooler as his own sleeping space. Nothing I said could persuade him to give me the other room and the floor mat. This was the African way with guests.

I wonder how Ann’s doing? Wish I had a way of being in touch.

The big 9 p.m. meal in the main hut with my engaging young host and family ensured the deep, restful sleep that came afterward.

Stirred awake by a string of rooster crows, I emerged from the mosquito netting, bundled it in place above the bed in a loose knot, and joined Joseph for bread and sweet hot tea that smelled slightly of  charcoal embers. I thanked all the family, pulled on my helmet and was on my way. The last image I took in was through my rear-view mirror. Joseph – white-toothed smile gleaming from his ebony Luo face – waving a vigorous farewell.

I passed through Rodi without incident, no rowdy mischief-makers, no stones to dodge.

Quite a weekend. Traversing a swollen river, my bike and me, aboard makeshift canoes. Preaching and fellowshipping at a Lake Victoria village. Hosted and dined overnight in a home rivalling the finest of Kenya’s tourist hotels.

It was the weekend marking my wife’s resolve going forward. . .

If my husband is out in remote places and doesn’t make it back when expected. If I don’t hear from him. I will not worry. I’ll pray and trust he’s fine. This is Africa.

©2018 Jerry Lout

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The Door Please

 

“I need to what?”

“No, Jer, you need to get proactive. You must tell him. It’s what you do.”

Moving from Bukuria to Suna brought new discoveries, new challenges. Tensions. A lot of things differed between these two tribes, the Kuria and Luo. Traditions. Customs. Worldview.

Rally the courage, Jerry. . . and just do it.

Our colleagues, the Harmans, were off to Canada for a time and it fell to Ann and me to oversee Suna Mission Station in their absence. The Mission sat a stone’s throw from Tanzania, 45 kilometers east of Lake Victoria.

My disquiet was prompted by a visit to our home by a nearby pastor to discuss church affairs. . .  Nothing weighty – a simple interchange to do with common matters of mission work.

By the time our second and then third visits rolled around I struggled with a dilemma. Four simple words could sum it up.  . . how to part ways. I was stumped over how and when a visitor simply leaves for home once a visit is finished.

I had noted a pattern. . .

***

“Welcome, Brother Tom,” I smiled, “Come in.”  We settled into a pair of living room chairs. Ann appeared, greeted the visitor, then moved toward the kitchen. Soon a kettle was whistling. Mugs of hot chai would soon rest on a serving tray before us. So far so good.

The pastor brought up a point. I introduced another. We covered one item, then a second. Cup of chai number two had arrived and gotten drained. Nothing odd here. . . the Locals like their tea.

By the time our third mug of spicy-sweet chai was drained, our discussion matters had wrapped up. The pastor’s visit was finished.

So I thought.

Tom didn’t move. Nor did I.

The pastor glanced at his watch about the time I snuck a peek at a wall clock. Snatches of small talk came and went, broken by moments of awkward silence.

Ann’s tea pot weighed considerably lighter since the first servings.  Finally, in a series of awkward back-and-forths, my visitor arose. I did the same. Tom was gone.

***

“Here’s the thing, Jerry”, my Luo-savvy friend privately responded when asked about the dilemma.

“The thing is – once you’re done with business or whatever, the visit is done. It’s time.”

“Time for what?”

“Time to tell him to go home.”

My eyebrows crinkled. “Say that again, please.”

“Sure, it’s like this. In this culture, see, it’s really rude of a visitor just to get up and – like us westerners would – just head for the door. We’re used to the, ‘Gotta go now, see ya later’ thing. No, where you live now  you must invite your guest to leave.”

“Hmm.”

© 2017 Jerry Lout