Tag: Swahili

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Strong Language


“Hey Gary, got a minute to listen to my water pump? It’s got a clatter goin’ on.”

Minutes later, socket and ratchet in hand, the wiry young man wriggled beneath his fellow student’s old car. He felt as at home here as an armadillo in this South Texas heat. It was why Gary Pokorney’s conquest in Korea left me mildly puzzled.

Gary was no slouch. His dogged probing of a carburetor or gear box on any number of nearby vehicles attested to it. And there were plenty nearby. The Bible school parking lot gave a shade-tree mechanic projects abundant.

“Jerry, how would You and Ann like to join Beverly and me on a pizza date – celebrate our graduating departure from the Hill?” Hallelujah Hill at the Northwest edge of the city, barely inside 410 Loop, home to International Bible College.

The Italian eatery along Fresno Avenue offered up the best deep-pan pizza.
Raising my napkin to dab a speck of red sauce lingering from my last bite, I grinned, “Hey guys, let’s plan another one – a pizza date. Down the road next time, when you furlough home from Korea and we’re back from Africa?”

“That’s a date!,” the Porkorneys chimed.

Two years passed. Ann and I had settled into life in the great Continent of Africa. Turning my Nairobi post office key and swinging open the box one morning I drew out the latest copy of my alma mater’s paper. Travelling surface mail via land and ocean it was seven weeks arriving. Any mail from home brought instant smiles, especially of friends or family. A lead article in the Torchbearer caught my eye. “Gary Pokorney Honored in Oratory Feat”. I read on.

Astonishing phrases leapt from the newsprint, “. . . Pokorney wins first place. . . nationwide oratorical contest. . . Korea’s First Lady hosts reception. . .”

I devoured the piece – amazed and proud for my old school acquaintance. Over dinner, Ann and I recalled fond scenes. Of the Hill, of special friendships, memories. All refreshing.

“To think, babe,” I looked her way. “Just listen again. First Place. . . the wife of the nation’s president hosted a special tea in Gary’s honor. . . The Head of State himself remarked that if he weren’t looking at Gary firsthand he would swear the speaker was a Korean national.”

Later that evening my fingers pecked away at our small green Hermes typewriter. “Dear Gary,” I began. .

“We just got news of your achievement. Wow, Congratulations, sir!” A post script wrapped up the note. . .

“I do want you to know this. When I read of your feat I retreated to my room. I seated myself in sackcloth and ashes, and wept over my Swahili-English dictionary.”
©2017 Jerry Lout

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Death Valley

There in the African Savannah where acacia trees with their flat-topped enchanting forms dot the landscape, an adolescent boy, a humble cattle-tender, was cornered by thieving attackers. He made a futile attempt to seek refuge among his father’s herd of semi-nourished cows – the bounty his attackers pursued. Horrifying moments raced like short distance sprinters toward the finish tape until the boy was seized and beaten to death by these neighboring tribal warriors.

Once I heard the news, words like heartless and senseless quickly sprang to my young missionary mind.

In the worldview of the tribesmen who had slain the boy for his father’s cows, there was nothing senseless about their deed. For generations nomadic lore had dictated that all cattle were created by God as a gift for their people. Any means to retrieve what was rightfully theirs was deemed acceptable. The “retrieving of cattle” was, to them in fact, a kind of calling.

Pastor Nashon had first been alerted of his young brother’s death by the high-pitched wailing of nearby village women. Afterwards, through grapevine media common to rural Africa, word of the tragedy reached our mission station several miles to the west.

Mounting my orange and aging Suzuki dirt-bike, I ran my helmet strap through the cinch ring, securing it snugly beneath my chin. Pastor Nashon needed a friend nearby – even a recent friend whose culture and land were radically different from his own. I hoped to somehow be such a friend.

Mindful of an involuntary tensing of my eyebrows I tried to push back my growing sense of inadequacy. Comforting loved ones who’ve experience the quiet and expected demise of, say, an aged and dear family member can be daunting enough. But this defied categories.

What shall I say an hour from now once my piki-piki is brought to a dusty halt and I enter the humble, thatch-roofed hut? How do I myself process such news, much less console the grieving young pastor whose brother’s life had so recently been brutally taken?

***

“Bwana asifiwe.” Nashon, only barely my junior gave a warm smile as he offered the Swahili greeting, “the Lord be praised”. Though a common greeting among believers, the words seemed specially poignant (maybe less than fitting? I thought).

I quietly entered the dirt-floor hut which was poised on a high ridge along the Great Rift Valley. I took the seat my young host offered. My senses caught the flavor of steaming, charcoal-heated chai, its vapors loitering above the fresh-washed mug now extended my way.

What followed altered my world forever.

©2017 Jerry Lout
Photo by Dave Butler http://bit.ly/2pQV0TF

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Signposts

The spindly lady of the Bluegrass State bought me time.

Mrs. Hottenstein’s sponsorship gift achieved what she’d hoped. Freed me to attend more to my college work at hand. And the extra hours away from the teletype keys meant added time with my young nurse-student wife. That meant a lot. Our ships-passing-in-the-night could sit a few more minutes each day in their common harbor – the thirty-five by eight-foot rented house trailer we called home.

The added margin freed me to drive northward. To a meeting I felt strongly drawn to make.

“Hey David, I feel I should visit my home church in Oklahoma. Special meetings are going on next week. If you’re free to come, it would be great having time together.”

The nine-hour road trip brought us to the sanctuary of Living Way Tabernacle, my place of worship from childhood. What followed set the course for decades of adventure to come.

Vigorous hand-clapping accompanied robust singing as organist Ragsdale’s nimble fingers brought life to the instrument. Monday night, first evening in a string of special meetings.

Rev. G.C., a pastor hailing from the deep south, was handed the mic. He was a large man, gigantic by any standard I knew. I had never met him. It was preaching time.

Over the past two weeks my thoughts had pivoted back and forth between two topics. An African language whose sounds I wouldn’t recognize if I heard it. And a phrase, leadership training. A seemingly random visit with a former missionary had spawned these musings and the themes wouldn’t let go.

Rev. G. C.’s deep, graveled voice thundered away as he moved deeper into his message. Rivulets of sweat glistened on his broad face as his three hundred or so pounds of Georgia preacher-man paced across the front, up and down the center aisle. His command of sacred text was impressive. His passion ran deep.

Twenty minutes into the sermon it happened.

G.C. paced into center aisle, his preaching on a roll. Suddenly, in mid-sentence, he halted. His head tilted upward. The pause continued. Then the preacher man uttered a single word no one expected.

“Swahili.”

I stared his direction, astonished at the sudden turn in his message. And especially that word. Swahili. The language I had encountered days before. I felt a mist of tears form, a hint at a gathering stream. The preacher went on. “I am hearing the Swahili language.” He scanned the audience.
“Someone in this room is called as a missionary to east or central Africa.”

Another pause. Longer this time. Clearly he wasn’t finished.
©2017 Jerry Lout

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A Call Confirmed

Truth is stranger than fiction.

The adage proved itself one October night in a small-town church. When an uncommon word astonished a gathering and helped frame a destiny.
Rising from my seat next to friend and mentor, David Mulford, my response felt surreal.

Like an out-of-body Sci-Fi character I advanced toward the sanctuary altar. Each step added to the emotion. An odd blend – somber excitement – stirred inside me. Meanwhile, the giant clergyman with a Deep South drawl found his own stride and spanned the half-church distance between us in far fewer steps. Rev. G.C.’s great open hand stretched forward in pursuit of my skull-top. An old-fashioned word of prophecy seemed imminent. No one assuming this was let down.

Something common to “directive prophecies” of the times involved the spokesperson employing first person singular language. As though God himself were voicing his will directly through the prophet. Indeed, such was typically assumed in Pentecostal gatherings. Caution was prescribed, however. Such a message must “line up with God’s Word, the holy scripture. Furthermore, prophetic words must not violate a person’s free will. No contriving, no manipulating allowed.”

“My son,” the Reverend solemnly announced, “I have called you to be my servant. . .”

The weight of the words settled over me like a commissioning charge at a swearing-in ceremony. But even with heavier gravity. Then it came. That other portion of my past-days musings. . “to instruct leaders to know and walk in my Word. So they may teach others as well!”

The prophetic statement settled in deeply, to a place at my inner core. Nothing, it seemed, could ever dissuade me. If anything had ever felt a sure thing, I knew this was one of those things. I (we. . . Ann and me) – we were called, commissioned. To a place and a people neither of us knew anything about. At least now. Only that it was Africa. Swahili was their language. The truth of the Lord their need.

Awash in tears reminiscent of a weeping scene at the same location years before during a V.B.S. assembly, I found my way back to my seat. The weeping kept on, leaving me only vaguely aware of the church service and its sudden new direction.

An impromptu offering was being taken.

For air fares. To East Africa.
©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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Sensibilities

Green – Naïve – Novice – Ignorant. String them together and you had my name tag.

The rambling house that my wife, myself and our bundle of Julie settled into had been built by missionaries who pioneered the work three decades ahead of our coming. The pioneers had fashioned the dwelling from local soil – rust-tinted bricks fired in a home-built kiln.

A day or two after our Bukuria arrival, a chorus of male voices took us by surprise. Not a musical chorus but a mix of busy voices growing loud, fading back, then loud again.

Are they angry. . . enthused. . . something other. . .which? Their language was neither English nor Swahili. Kikuria, no doubt. Unsure of their disposition and ignorant of who they were, I touched the screen door. And moved to the open veranda where the dozen or so African men had assembled.

I was twenty-seven, my wife twenty-three. It was clear most of the men out-seasoned me – their skin weathered from years beneath an equatorial sun.

The group of strangers – all male – coming unannounced, still left me uneasy.

Do we invite them in? If so, what do we do next?

Are these gents all friendly to the Mission. . . We have a six-month-old girl.

Whatever else Ann and I knew, one thing was certain. We were out of our element. These were waters we’d never swum.

One of the older men – their spokesman? – moved closer. His English was broken, his accent challenging but I could make it out easily enough.

“We come to greet. We come to welcome you here to this place.”

I drew near.

“Hello”, nodding. “Hello”, smiling. “Hello”, I greeted, shaking each extended hand one by one. Though I felt more at ease and was touched by their welcoming us to Kuria-land, I was still conflicted how to respond. Only to offer repeatedly. “Thank you, Thank you, sir. Thank you . .”

I searched awkwardly for some cultural bridge to temper the situation. Answers eluded me. The visitors glanced toward one another, voiced some quiet, mysterious words. And eventually, slowly, went their way.

It was months before I learned I had made a marked impression that awkward day. By then word had got around. It took a while to redeem our name. . . “They did not even welcome us in for tea.”

The new resident-missionary – come to live and serve among the Wakuria people – successfully offended a welcoming delegation of church elders.

Like the snaking road leading past the Mission, another bend in the way lay clearly ahead – our Taranganya learning curve.

©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

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Blessing Waves

The mid-twentieth-century tsunami sweeping inland from the coastal town of Mombasa carried with it no carnage, no loss of lives. . . no water. What the wave of spiritual awakening brought was a transformed culture among Kenyans, Ugandans and Tanzanians for years to come.

“Only the power of the living Christ proclaimed in demonstration of the Holy Spirit can meet the urgent needs of humanity.”

Oklahoma-born evangelist T. L. Osborn, who is credited with the quote, launched his gospel crusade in in Kenya’s second largest city on the shores of the Indian Ocean. It was 1957.

The message of Christ was preached. Prayers for healing followed. Africans yielded to Jesus by the thousands, many of them gaining freedom from sicknesses, others from addictions and destructive lifestyles. They had met Jesus.

Once the meetings ended, the message of Christ swept inland via large numbers of newly-transformed, love-emboldened men and women.

According to one African churchman the Mombasa meetings released the fountain of a river spreading through the heart of East Africa. Hundreds of new believers were launched overnight as gospel preachers in Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda and Congo shared the message. Most did so with little or no funding, scant organizational backing. Within a few years, thousands of new churches had sprung up in bustling cities and sleepy villages. Led by men lacking somewhat in biblical literacy but not in passion.

It was into this eruption of multiplying churches the generation of missionaries preceding ours had landed. And in their wake a company of wet-behind-the-ears, twenty-somethings with a measure of Bible knowledge and less practical experience than any of us would have boasted. Two or three Bible schools had been opened by now. But the demand for foundational instruction among hundreds and hundreds of untrained spiritual shepherds remained daunting. Still, we went to work, our hearts sincere. A faithful Lord –  keenly aware of our frailties – met us there.

From Lake Victoria’s Luo-land to the Ocean’s Mijikenda peoples, African preachers – their local-language Bibles in hand – shared good news. Courageously. Compassionately. Whole populations, formerly bound to witchcraft curses, incantations and the great dread of dying, came alive in the hope of the gospel.

Lyrics of a Swahili chorus gave testament to many, of their encounters with a vital Deity known as loving, forgiving, empowering. Moto imeshuka (Fire fell on me).

The wonder of Christ-centered outbreaks acknowledged as from the Holy Spirit wasn’t new to the continent. In the 1920s an African national, Simeon Nsibambi and a missionary, Joe Church, labored together in prayer as they searched Scripture and their own hearts. Both thirsted for holy and empowered living. Others joined the quest. By the coming decade, waves of sorrow over sin, confession and deliverance, and believing faith broke across Rwanda and Burundi territories, through Uganda and beyond.

Turning from their wrongs, inviting the Spirit’s infilling, vast sectors of tribal peoples – thousands of nominal Christians numbered among them, shed lifeless religions and paganism. In exchange for an emancipating redemption secured through a cross and a vacated grave.

While believers still far from perfect, grappled with issues, struggles and setbacks, Jesus undeniably marked their lives going forward. The movement grew. It’s transformative impact on religious sectors, educators and households of all descriptions flourished.

The movement bore fruit whose fragrance and flavor draw hungry seekers still. Eventually a name was assigned the phenomenon, The East Africa Revival.

Today Christ-followers from across the continent – male and female, seasoned laborers and young converts alike – press on with the proclamation of God’s love in the power of the Holy Spirit.

Africa’s enthusiastic heralders bring to mind a captivating phrase – the motto of a group of disciple-makers known as the Navigators.

To know Christ and to make Him known.

A more worthy, more glorious mission, who could conceive?

©2018 Jerry Lout

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Drag Race

When I look back, it wasn’t really wise or fair of me to put him at the wheel. I don’t think he was quite ready. . .

“Anybody here know how to drive?”

There is something that brings a smile to the face hearing Swahili uttered in New York City accent.

The blond-haired, high-energy young missionary raised an eyebrow when Chacha – weed-slasher in hand – stepped forward. Chacha’s grin was wide. . proud, his eyes shining.

“Ndiyo. Mimi naweza, Bwana!” (indeed I can, sir!)

The day laborer straightened his shoulders, Perhaps today I will be again at the driver seat!

“OK, Chaca. So, tell me. Who taught you to drive?”

“Ah, Bwana. . . it was Mzee Dodzi” (the German ‘Dodzweit’ spilled abbreviated off his tribal tongue). Mr. Dodzweit, a past missionary, had apparently coached the grounds-keeper at the wheel of an old mission truck. Where to sit, how to grip a steering wheel, shift gears. . .

The attentive missionary toyed with a long grass stem plucked from the soil at his feet, his eyebrow furrowed. Then he smiled.

“Well, Chaca, let’s see how we do then. This Volkswagen here has stopped working. I need it moved to Suna where another fella and I can work on it. It has to be towed. . . you know, pulled by a rope behind the gari over there”, he explained, pointing with raised chin to an aging Jeep nearby.

In a few minutes the two stepped from a windowless storage building. They squinted, their eyes suddenly confronted by the high-noon rays of an equatorial sun.

“So, here’s what we’ll do”. Paul held forth a rope, fished from a place in the shed. “We’ll tie an end of this to the Jeep. I will drive the Jeep. The other end we attach to the car. All you need to do is steer the little VW and – now and then – just touch the brake when we need to slow.”   He paused a few seconds, the energetic man of the Big Apple.

Ten minutes past and the two vehicles moved away slowly, entering the murraim road out front of the mission compound – linked as by an umbilical cord fashioned of hemp. The first few kilometers passed with little concern.

Now they navigated a long, downhill stretch of road.

Abruptly everything changed.

Paul stiffened, taken by the sudden drag to his Jeep. Something was very wrong.

Swinging his head about it took a moment to grasp the image beyond the Jeep’s rear bumper. Really?!

Leaping from the Jeep the second it stopped he raced to the Volkswagen. . . His eyes hadn’t lied. The helpless Bug lay flat on its side there at the road’s edge, left-overs of churned dust wafting upward.

Rushing forward, he called, “Chacha! Chacha, are you OK?!”

Discovering an unharmed Weed-slasher-turned-roadservice-driver, he drew a long breath. “What happened? Tell me what happened, Chacha. . .”

The shaken but unscathed man crawled from the car – dusted himself. The missionary allowed space for him to gather himself. The Volkswagen escort fixed his gaze on his homemade sandals. They were common to the area, fashioned of car-tire remnants.

“Eh, ehh. . ” The gent gathered his thoughts to give answer. “Ehh, Bwana. . . truthfully. . .” His voice trailed a little and resumed. “Truthfully. . . when I saw my gari was gaining speed as we came down that long slope there, I thought – um, I thought, ehh I am moving faster than the Jeep now. . . I will go around the Jeep.

“And so. . .I tried.”

Adding, as if by afterthought,

“Nilisahau kamba (I forgot about the rope)”.

©2018 Jerry Lout