Tag: Maasai

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Song Power

Jim Reeves.

I could recognize the singer’s velvet voice anywhere. The last place I would think to hear it was in Africa’s outback.

The country gentleman’s crooning, “Am I that easy to forget?”, floated from a battery-powered cassette player beyond a giant anthill some yards back of me. What power music has, to carry you away, I thought. Feels like I’m in an Oklahoma hay-field taking a sandwich break.

John and I were at Mashuru, a remote Maasai village, a dot on the Kenya map halfway from Nairobi to the Tanzania border. The snowy summit of Africa’s Mt. Kilimanjaro came out of hiding now and then. My first glimpse was the day before, her majestic beauty leaving me awestruck.

“Ready to hunt some wild game?”

We had finished some wiring on Eva’s small mission house and time had come for some adventure. As for the hunt’s artillery, my new friend’s 35 mm camera would do.

His VW Beetle was casting a late afternoon shadow as John eased the car to a halt at an elevated spot not far from a pool of murky brown at the edge of a wide river bed. Nice watering hole for the thirst quench of some exotic beast, I thought, recalling the region was a notable big game hunting block for all manner of wildlife. Will an elephant or a rhino show? A lion, maybe. . . leopard?

After a fruitless half-hour waiting, John touched the ignition key. “Jerry, here’s an idea.” A mix of daring and mischief flavored his voice. “These months the river stays mainly dry. Its path winds along for a few kilometers and in a little while it passes near Eva’s place”. He went on. “Let’s take the bug right up the river instead of going back along the murram road. What do ya say?” Though John had not yet spent a year in Kenya, by my standards he was the seasoned missionary veteran.

“Sure, why not.”

Before half an hour passed two things were underway. Africa’s equatorial sun was rapidly setting, spreading darkness along the riverbed and the dense forests hemming it at either side. And two young men pondered ways to free a Volkswagen Beetle sunk axle-deep in river-bottom sand. By now we had abandoned the plan to make it back to Eva’s, managing to turn the vehicle around. Still the task to escape this oversize sand-pit was daunting.

“Jerry, here’s an idea.” I had heard the phrase before.

©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

 

 

 

 

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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.

© 2017 Jerry Lout

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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.

©2017 Jerry Lout    ‘Disciples of Flight’ image. attribution.

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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.

©2017 Jerry Lout

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Uncommon Hero

“When the simba came at me I brought up my shield but then he knocked me back.” The young African opened his palm, extending it my way. I surveyed the seasoned lion-claw scar running near his thumb and forefinger. “My brothers then speared him.”

My chat was with a tall lean Maasai named Gaddiel, recounting his lion-hunting venture – an initiation rite demanded to get labeled a warrior. His voice was calm, undramatic, as if he were recounting details of a routine walk to the local market.

Gaddiel Nkarrabali had become a warmly-regarded Christian pastor among his nomadic, cattle-tending kin. His gospel work came about largely because of Eva.

Eva, a single missionary mother – her two kids schooling at Rift Valley Academy – had come to Kenya in the 60s, settling down eventually in a dusty remote outpost called Mashuru. Her first house, put up in less than two days, was a home-made tin structure covering just 209 square feet. Once erected, she and a local co-worker lady settled down for the night. In her memoir, In The Shadow of Kilimanjaro, Eva describes her next-morning surprise.

“All around the (parked) car were large pad tracks where a lion had inspected it. Well, what you don’t see doesn’t hurt you. It excited us but we weren’t really troubled. We knew what country we were in so went on fixing our little house.”

Along the way the gutsy pioneer missionary came across a young tribal warrior. Gaddiel.

“I had asked some young Morani (warriors) if any would like to go for more schooling.” The school in Eva’s thinking was Kaimosi Bible School off to the north and west.  None of the youth were Christ followers.

“Up went a hand and one said, “Nanu” (I wish to). His name was Gaddiel, the chief of his manyatta.”

Years later the cattle-herder turned Christian shepherd, recounted his first days at the Bible school.

“I saw many miracles that God showed me. One night I prayed so much asking Jesus that I wanted to see his face. That very night there came a man in my dream in a great light. I woke up shaking. A song came into my heart. I am sure Jesus was doing something to (in) me. . .”

Eva Butler’s “Welcome kiddos!” greeting on our first airport arrival to Africa gave my wife and I no hint we were encountering face to face an authentic hero in frontier missions.

©2018 Jerry Lout

 

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Sweet Expansion

Sunday church service in the shade of a fruit tree brings its perks.

When a high-up branch at our quaint meeting place let go its grip on a ripened mango – thumping a half-sleeping listener on his head – my Bible class came alive. For the moment at least.

***

Mzee Kunda (my Tanzania co-worker) and I had scouted Moshi town in hopes of marking out a preaching point and eventually establishing a church. The spot of land with a mango tree caught our eye.

Kunda, an aging, never-wed Chaga tribesman of Kilimanjaro, had endeared himself to great numbers of people as a travelling evangelist. His one-on-one chats had brought many across the region – town and country dwellers alike – to a vital faith. From Moshi to Arusha and back, village after village had engaged the winsome personality which was Mzee Kunda. He knew his calling and trekked hundreds of miles through the years, facing hard opposition at times, but pressing on, sharing a compelling message of love.

“Mzee Kunda,” I posed one day, “could you check an area over near the Muslim sector – you know, where the city has no church at all. . .”

The property he found was the right size but lacked electricity and water. A small river (all but dry but for the rainy season) snaked nearby.  Visits with the land owner brought a meeting of the minds.  Prayers went up. Funds came in. We were underway.

Fencing the acreage with the aid of our son Scott during his Rift Valley school break, secured the area for construction. Scott and his big sis, Julie, drew water from the river to aid the cement-mixing venture while little sis, Amy, scurried about entertaining neighborhood kids.

It was a special day when Dan and Nancy Larkin came our way. Hailing from New York, the Larkins answered a call to missions. . . and to Moshi. Grandma Nancy promptly endeared herself to 7-year-old Amy.

Excitement stirred in the Kili region when Dan launched a training center project on our two-acre grounds. Decades later we would journey again to Moshi and celebrate Kilimanjaro Christian College opening her doors twenty five years before. Lazaro Kiriama of Maasai-land had nurtured the school into a thriving training center for church leaders, equipping them for service throughout the region.

Meanwhile a familiar old tree like a quiet, loyal friend, moved from thumping Sunday worshippers with mango missiles to seasonally treating a parade of ministry trainees her juicy delights.

©2018 Jerry Lout