Trying Out New Things in a New Place

MCC team 2024

It has not been easy getting this blog off of the ground. This is the fourth blog Rebecca and I have created since 2008, moving from Burundi, to Tanzania, to Ethiopia, and now Kenya. I admit that it was easier to sit down on a weekly basis and record the events of the week when everything seemed completely novel.---discovering the often baffling differences in cultures, and relating them in a cohesive (and hopefully engaging) narrative. I admit that while each day is still full of new experiences and starting a new assignment means encountering many new people and places, we are probably a bit exhausted from starting over, and are more inclined to see sameness rather than difference. A bit of dulling of the senses, and more reticence to jump right in. 

GSL volunteers getting oriented to Nairobi

I think the discipline of blogging though is an opportunity to see and appreciate in retrospect, and of course to share it with many who have cared and prayed for us through all of the different places we have been. 

I have to confess that Nairobi, at least on the surface, feels like a relatively easy place to live. That is not to say there are not challenges of living in a city of 5 million. Traffic is honestly quite bad. The house we are living in does require a daily commute, and we are having to learn how to make choices between multiple routes to work, or David's school to avoid traffic. 

David at swim meet at school

We have been able to establish daily routines that give us a chance to exercise in the morning. We share carpooling with our neighbors to get David to school. On those days we can lift weights in our house, On days when we are not responsible for the ride, we can go to a pool and swim (also at David's school, but open quite early in the morning).

Our home and office are located at picturesque venues with trees and gardens. When we need to shop, we can go to a supermarket, buy anything we want that would be available anywhere in the world for a reasonable price, and pay with our US credit card or mpesa. As I said, life here is easier than many places we have lived, and feels more like we have the things we take for granted in the US. 

Team dancing "Jerusalmu"

We have much to be grateful for, but I admit, there is a side of me expecting it all to be taken away suddenly. Like I don't trust it, and maybe we shouldn't. We know what it is like living when ordinary things are harder and we need to rely on others to help us with our daily needs. 

That should do by way of introduction. We want to work back now through the contours of the past 3 weeks and give some details about what we have been doing at home and work. Rebecca will write in italics as we split up the load of recounting:

Moving In

At the very end of August, we were finally able to move into what we hope will be our home for years to come. It’s amazing what kind of systems are available in Kenya. We hired a moving company to come and move us. They packed up everything int the Rep apartment within 3 hours, bringing along their own boxes and packing materials. We did nothing by way of prep. they packed EVERYTHING including the contents of every cupboard, curtains and even the lightbulbs. The Grinch could not have done better! And then we drove across town to our new home. They moved in furniture, unpacked boxes into shelves, rehung curtains and clothes in closets, made the beds, cleared away the rubbish, broke down the boxes to use again, and were done by 2 pm. It was pretty miraculous and saved us so much time and effort, all for about $200 USD. Of course, they couldn’t unpack the 12 packed suitcases we had brought with us from Ethiopia – that was still our problem. But we had a back room where we could dump all those additional bags to deal with at our leisure. And meanwhile, we had a pretty functional house.

Over the past few weeks, we’ve taken our time, unpacking those personal things. At this point, we have things pretty well organized, with at least some art on the walls. All we really need now is a new guestbed to accommodate my dad when he visits in the beginning of October.

Visiting churches

Over the past month, we have enjoyed visiting many different churches for worship services. It’s been amazing to realize the range of Christian communities in this city. For ourselves personally, we have been in a process of discerning the international church we should join for fellowship and contributing to the community. So that took us to enjoy Sundays with International Christian Fellowship, St. Julian’s Anglican Fellowship, and Lavington Vineyard Church. We also accompanied our young adult volunteers to worship at two very different Kenyan churches. Our colleague Sharon invited us to CITAM Clay City (Christ is the Answer Ministries), where she participates in the worship ministry. What an impressive worship experience, with high energy, expertly-produced Gospel music, dancing, and heartfelt preaching! It was also incredibly well-organized, with a plan for just about everything, including meeting and greeting new visitors. They are very serious about being a missional church with coordinated outreach. The next Sunday, we visited a much smaller Mennonite congregation in the heart of the informal settlement Mukuru kwa Reuben. The service was much more intimate and participatory, clearly more of a family church where everyone knows each other and supports each other organically--albeit they were singing at 100 decibels on a very old sound system (as is the practice in most churches here). This congregation also has a school and a community development program where two of our young adult volunteers are serving this year.

After weighing various factors, we decided that we will make our church home at Lavington Vineyard Church. It is very international and is seeking to intentionally display the wisdom of God by being a community where ethnic, racial, class reconciliation is made visible. They are also egalitarian, with space for both men and women to serve in ministry. They currently have an all-Kenyan staff, which we really appreciate: we’ve been challenged to grow in all the sermons we’ve heard there. And finally, the location is really a draw for us. LVC meets in a tent on the compound of the former Mennonite Guesthouse (just next to our office) – a green oasis in the middle of Nairobi, very much open to the public and the surrounding Kenyan community.

Team Building

The four young adult volunteers continued their orientation for the first half of September, with language study in the mornings and then various orientation sessions in the afternoons. Along the way, we shared time with them. Lunch time was a key meeting point, especially when we inaugurated a new tradition of freshly prepared staff lunches on Tuesdays. We’ve asked our housekeeper Lucy to spend one day a week at the office to make that meal happen, and it was a give for us.

On the next week, we held our quarterly in-person meeting with all MCC Kenya/Tanzania staff. For part of the meeting, we went over some serious issues: evaluating the strengths and weaknesses of our program, along with the opportunities and threats in our context. It was a good and challenging conversation for us to be part of early in our time in Kenya. In between the deep discussion, we also had some fun. Paul taught a couple of our favorite international line dances, and people enjoyed the chance to move. We had some other team-building and sharing experiences, so it wasn’t all dull.

Young Adults Join Host Families

After three weeks of orientation, it was finally time to take our Global Service Learning (GSL) volunteers to their host families to being their real-life assignments in Kenya. On one Thursday, we made a big caravan and all drove to the flat the two young women will share. Then we went next door to spend some time with their neighborhood host family. It’s wonderful to me that we have reason to interact with my long-time friend Marion Ndeta, whom I met at the GLI Institute for Reconciliation a decade ago. She and her husband and kids are charged with helping Mary and Debora feel comfortable and settled in Nairobi. The other Nairobi-based GSLer Hijal is staying in the same neighborhood with a retired gentlemen, who had lots oof interesting and wise and funny things to say. Finally, on Friday, we drove our last GSL volunteer Menzi out to Kisumu in Western Kenya. He is living with a couple who are medical professionals and researchers, while he works at an organization running peace clubs in local schools out there.

Actually – I did not drive with Menzi. My colleague Sarah did that job, together with Menzi’s host mom and a driver. I flew to Kisumu that same morning, arriving at 7 am, early enough for some important discussions with our Mennonite church partners at the head offices outside Kisumu. I’m grateful for the opportunity to get to know these Mennonite leaders better and to understand the dynamics of the projects we have with various Mennonite entities in Kenya. Our goal over the next 3 years is to have a better coordinated way of partnering with Kenyan Mennonites. It will take some work and adjustments, but we are moving in that direction.

Sarah and I drove back from Kisumu to Nairobi in about 7 hours. It was amazing how smooth and easy travel is in Kenya. The roads are in great shape. There are rest stops and wash rooms. No fear of banditry on that route anyway. It was a very pleasant drive and a great chance to get to know Sarah better. 

Visit to Kibwezi

About a week ago I also took a longer trip out of town. I accompanied our 2 Food Security officers James, and Charles to visit our biggest food security partner--UDO. UDO has been a longtime partner and work in a 'montane shrubland' region of the country. They have worked for years to help small holder farmers and communities to manage water shortages--through various harvesting schemes, sand dams, and different types of catchments on farms. Most recently they have been managing a large Global Affairs Canada funded project called Nature Positive solutions. The project continues to focus on ways to prevent waterloss along with working to increase biodiversity and prevent erosion of a selected watershed through farmer managed practices such as terracing, conservation agriculture and controlled livestock grazing. 

The project also helps local smallholder families increase their income through savings schemes and market aggregation that help them get competitive prices for their harvests. 

We had a similar program in Ethiopia funded under the same larger grant, so I was interested in seeing what they were doing. I travelled with Charles and James on a Monday. The trip goes down the road to Mombassa. I actually remember travelling that road when my parents lived here in the 1980s. It was a scary 2 lane road frequented by trucks moving cargo from Mombassa to Nairobi and back. I was not pleased to see, that this has not changed in over 40 years. It was still a fairly harrowing drive passing many trucks, while having to drive straight at oncoming trucks in the passing lane. 

We did make it safely in about 6 hours, went to the partner office and watched the last day of monthly reports from agriculture extension staff. This actually went on for 2 days, so I was able to hear about some of the activities they were engaged in before we went out to the field. 

The field visit, needless to say, was more interesting. We went out all day on Wednesday. We began by visiting one of the savings groups, and I was quite impressed by the amount of savings they had available through their VSLA savings scheme. They told me they were no longer in debt to any loansharks that show up just before harvest time. I was also really impressed by the work of the gender officers. The women in the group were all aware of their rights. Now any incidents of gender based violence in a home a reported to the police. There has been a complete change of behavior of husbands towards wives. (especially now that wives are also bringing substantial income into the household through small businesses they started from their saving group loans. 

After visiting several groups, one of which welcomed us with a huge dance that we all joined in. We also stopped by several farms practicing CA, digging terraces, and planting trees,  then we climbed to a high overlook that jutted out of the landscape (common in the rift valley). It was a great view of the entire project area, close to the end of our day. 

The following day, we passed by the UDO main office in a town called Machakos. There we had another debrief from field officers from another project before continuing on our way back to Nairobi. It was one of my first field visits out of town since coming back here in August, and it felt good to be out of the office and seeing project activities. 

International Day of Peace

This past Saturday I did an in-town field visit to one of our peace projects in an informal settlement (the more sensitive vocabulary for what is often called a 'slum'), called Mathare. One of our partners, CPN, has worked on setting up peace clubs in 7 primary and secondary schools. The students who participate are taught how to media conflict and find non-violent solutions to situations at school. The International Day of Peace was being celebrated at each school, and Rebecca and I accompanied one our Program Coordinators, Nelly', to 4 of the 5 schools. We were there to observe as well as be the presence of MCC at each event-- kind of a formality. Still it was good to see how inspired the students were about being peacebuilders in their schools. 

The students were also quite creative and great singers and dancers, singing many peace songs and doing dances. I was especially impressed because most of the schools were very integrated between Christian and Muslim students, and that, along with ethnicity can be a source of conflict in this settlement. Each ceremony ended with students planting several trees on the school property. 

But life has not been all work and no play. We have had several weekends of family fun:

Family Excursions and other Diversions

Choir

Rebecca and I love to sing and have been in choirs in all of the places we lived--most recently Tanzania, then Ethiopia. We were hoping to find a choir here to participate in. A teacher at Rosslyn tipped us off about a community choir at the German School on Thursday nights. We tried it about 3 weeks ago and LOVED it. The director is a very charismatic multi-lingual Kenyan, and the choir is a mix of descent European singers and some excellent professional level Kenyan tenors and bases. They sing awesome songs, everything from Christmas carols, to Les Mis, and Swahili songs like Baba Yetu as well as some Xhosa, German, Luo, and Swedish songs. I think they are modelling themselves on the Stellenbosch University Choir in South Africa. They are great and it is a lot of fun singing with them. 

Longonot and Naivasha

My parents lived here in the early 1980s when I was in College. I spent a semester with them and I have some fond memories of going to Masaai Mara, climbing Mt. Kenya, as well as climbing Mt. Longonot several times and going to Lake Naivasha. Although I had not done this for years, I decided to take Rebeca and David there one Saturday a couple of weeks ago. I was in my late teens the last time I did these things, and I remembered Longonot, a crater in the Rift Valley not far from Nairobi, as being a kind of vigorous jaunt up a longish hill. We donned our sneakers and left in the morning. The road down the escarpment and to Longonot was not much different than I remember. We got there easily enough paid the admission fee. It was actually a day when many school groups were going up. 

For those of you who have done this, you would have to agree that thinking of the hike as a 'jaunt' is overstating its ease. I would compare it to the 'Grouse Grind' in Vancouver. Maybe worse. It is several hours of a very steep climb, much of it concrete stairs because it is too steep to scramble. David, 16, got up fairly easily, but Rebecca and I were huffing and puffing by the top. The reward is looking into a large forested crater--very cool. If you have an extra 4 hours, you can hike around it. We passed on that and returned back down. Fortunately coming down is much easier than going up, and we were down in less than an hour. 

It was still early enough in the day to go on to Lake Naivasha which is a lake in rift valley not far from Longonot. I remembered a place called Simba lodge, so we drove down to it in about 30 minutes from Longonot. We did find it, although it has been completely redone. We had a cold drink there then headed back up to Nairobi. The trip back was slower than on the way down with a number of trucks getting stuck on the way up the escarpment. I have since learned there is a newer route than the Limuru road route we took going down. It was still a great day. 

Golf

Final update this week. David had a day off from school this past Monday. He and I like to play golf, something unaffordable in Ethiopia. We did a bit of research and found an excellent course "Windsor" is almost next to our house. We decided to give it a try. We brought a neighbor kid David's age, Aaron who did a lot of golf with his grandfather in Nairobi. We had a lot of fun playing the front 9 on an excellent course. David and I were definitely out of practice, but are looking forward to getting back into practice in the future, time allowing. 

A lot of other things have happened in the past month, but is a good summary to date.