Tag: Nairobi

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Bridge Ahead

As with many words, the term threshold has a way of stirring memories – some positive, others less so. An all-time favorite of mine calls up a treasured photo image, captured on, yes, my wedding day. The moment awakens warm feelings, still.

“How about we get a shot of you carrying your new bride across the threshold!”, the photographer offered.

My bride, Ann, and I were IN.

With the pastor’s house adjoining the church parking lot, a momentary mock venue was set.

Calling now to mind a thousand snapshots of us captured through all the years since that December day 1967, none matches the delightful threshold image.

Over time a long string of dates and events have signaled a parade of threshold moments. Many scenes, photographed or not, could carry enchanting captions.

“Hello (smiling)” Jerry meets Ann, 1964

“Yes, I’ll marry you”. (1967)

“Ladies and gentlemen, time to board”. Africa-bound flight. JFK International

“It’s a girl!”  (1972)

“It’s a boy!” (1974)

“A girl!” (1983). . . Nairobi Hospital all

Thresholds.

Transitions mark the lives of us all. Every person forging new – uncharted passageways across life’s landscape – no two points of entry just alike.

Our Africa years stretched into decades. A good two dozen laps around the sun had flown past since we’d pledged our wedding vows and the camera flashed our threshold moment.

The dawn of 1992 would soon lift her ever-stretching sunlight across a very new kind of landscape.

©2023 Jerry Lout

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Thanksgiving remembered

“Thanksgiving? Tomorrow?” Taken off guard I blurted out my discovery.

The exclamation caught my wife’s attention. Really? Are you sure?

Ann and I had arrived in East Africa in May. Six weeks later we welcomed our first child, Julie. This was the land we would call home. We were to help train leaders in a growing Kenyan church. I ventured into language studies. By November my Swahili classes were in full swing.

That Wednesday, after a usual day of class I returned to our apartment. I casually glanced at a calendar we brought with us on our move from America.

The arrival of our traditional holiday was so unexpected.  I grew mildly indignant – an irrational feeling but  happening just the same.

Tomorrow. And Swahili classes are still on? Well. . .

The contest inside my head was brief.

“Honey,” I announced, “tomorrow I’m cutting class. How about a holiday picnic!”

Thanksgiving of 1972 was gorgeous.  Ann bundled Julie in a colorful blanket. Earlier the same year KFC had launched their finger-lickin’ enterprise in Nairobi.

The aroma of fried chicken filled our Volkswagen Beetle as we set out for City Park.

A garden of jacaranda and bougainvillea received us under sunny skies. A light breeze stirred as I laid out the blanket. Perfect.

We sat cross-legged – nearly motionless on our picnic lawn. And reviewed Thanksgivings of our past. Gratitude rose in Ann and me for many things – finding ourselves especially thankful for Thanksgiving itself. Our infant princess gurgled. We bowed and I voiced our gratefulness.

Turning to Ann, I framed my request precisely and in the polite form, “Kuku tafadhali?” (Some chicken please?)  We chuckled. My language exercise for the day. It would have to do.

“Let us come before him with thanksgiving.”    Psalm 95

©2015 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.”

No Peace at All
©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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South C

Never in my life had I known a neighborhood whose name was plucked from a string of alphabet symbols.

The two cars arriving from the airport – one transporting us, the other our luggage – eased up to Maxwell’s South C home.

Their house itself sat hidden behind a stonework wall, like a shy maiden part-concealed back of a fortress of vines. And vines there were, in abundance. Bougainvillea – their rich array of petals – pinks, purples, oranges, reds garnishing much of the ‘C’ neighborhood. Ray Troyer back in San Antonio had put into my hands my first-ever 35mm camera, a second-hand Voigtlander. What beauty these flowers could show on a slide. If I can just remember Ray’s coaching how to use the thing.

“Jerry and Ann”, Jenny called out, “we’re off to Sunday morning church”. “You folks just relax. . . sleep a bit if you can. . . you’ve travelled far and long. After service we shall come collect you and we’ll go together for lunch. Good?” Weariness, having indeed caught up with us, we readily agreed. After all, this was Sunday right, a day of rest?

What would our first meal in Africa be. . . and exactly where? The question hadn’t crossed our minds. Had we given it a thought we might have assumed we would dine under a long-grass roof within a mud hut.

Entering Nairobi’s Hilton we shook our heads trying to get them around this scenario. The new and somewhat naïve American couple exited the hotel’s café an hour later having happily feasted on sandwiches and fries. ‘Chips’ Jerry, I coached myself. Fries aren’t ‘fries’ here, they’re ‘chips’.

So our first day entering Africa, a living tutorial had essentially greeted us. If formalized, an academic title might have been posted: ‘Kenya. Background and Culture 101’. This was a beautiful land of contrasts. . . rich and impoverished, tradition-steeped and cutting-edge, conflicted and united. It sobered us that we hadn’t begun to learn and it inspired us that we could start now. Here at tourism’s iconic Hilton Hotel, walking-distance from one of Africa’s largest slums – Mathare Valley.

A voice with an accent I was hearing more often called over to me. New Zealanders carried the nickname Kiwi, after the national symbol, a bird common to their Islands. “Eva needs electrical wiring put in at her Mashuru place”, offered John. “So I’ll head out there Tuesday. The job should take a couple days. . . Like to come?”

“Sure”, I piped. Getting away from the big city and out to the ‘real Africa’ would be fun, I thought. Maybe even a thrill.

Walking unarmed and alone through leopard country had not crossed my mind.

©2017 Jerry Lout

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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 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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Tradition Speaks

My eyebrows furrowed.

Thanksgiving. . . Tomorrow?

Staring at the American calendar in my hand, I blurted the discovery.

“Ann, take a look at this calendar. Tomorrow’s Thanksgiving.”

“Really? You sure?”

For two months Swahili studies had taken most of my time. Noun classes – prefixes – infixes – suffixes – vocabulary. . . my Okie tongue wrestling non-stop with a host of Bantu sounds.

Language classes this Wednesday had wrapped up like any other.  Leaving the school’s Anglican compound I returned to our apartment. It was there I noticed the calendar that had come with us from the U.S. Lying open to the current month. November.

The surprise arrival of Thanksgiving Eve stirred emotion. I felt mildly indignant that such a great holiday should count as just another pair of digits on a calendar page. An irrational feeling for one living in another country, but a feeling all the same.

Thanksgiving’s tomorrow but so are Swahili classes. Well. . .

The contest inside my head was brief.

“Honey, I’m cutting classes tomorrow. How about a picnic?”

Thanksgiving Day of 1972 arrived gorgeous.  Only months earlier Kentucky Fried Chicken had launched their finger-lickin’ enterprise here in Nairobi itself.  What figure better reflects American tradition than Colonel Sanders?

Ann bundled our four-month-old in a colorful blanket. The aroma of fried chicken filled our Volkswagen beetle as we set out for City Park.

A garden of jacaranda and bougainvillea surrounded us under sunny skies. A light breeze stirred as I laid out the blanket.

We sat cross-legged, casually reviewing Thanksgivings of our past. The memories stirred gratitude.

Our infant Julie gurgled. I took in the garden environment and voiced our thanks to him who made it all. For bringing us to this beautiful, hurting land. For one another here, out under the open sky. For family back home.

Turning to Ann, I voiced my request with care, applying the polite form,

“Kuku, tafadhali (Some chicken please?)”

We laughed at my language exercise for the day.

It would have to do.

©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 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.

©2017 Jerry Lout