Phases of Sixty---Part 5

 

Birthday guests

There are only about 2 hours left in the month of February here and I want to do one more entry for this month to close some story loops. There was at least one significant social event, as well as a work trip and some school events to track. 

I will begin at the end, as we are just home from International Day at Rosslyn Academy. It is a tradition at the school that actually mirrors the same event we used to celebrate annually at Bingham Academy in Ethiopia. International Days are definitely a cause for celebration at an international school where we have over 60 nations represented in the student population. Although Rosslyn was established as  a Christian mission school, it receives students from many countries and gets a number from families of UN and embassy workers who want a good English language school. 

The festivities began about 2:30 in the afternoon on a football field at the school. Each county had a booth and people from each country prepared tons of traditional foods. Rebecca made chocolate chip cookies and a vat of mac-n-cheese as part of the America table offerings. 

The event began with a parade of nations, with each nation, represented by parents, teachers and students, in traditonal dress coming up to the stage one at a time. It took quite a while and I sensed a lot of pride for each country coming with their flags, like the Olympics. China may have had the most impressive display with a giant panda costume, and two dragon-lions with 2 people in each.

When the US came up, many students in red white and blue with flags ran up to the stage jubilantly. I admit I felt a pang of sadness and shame at the thought of the amount of foreign aid that was canceled this week. USAID families from the school are leaving. I felt like we had withdrawn all of our good will, and celebrating ourselves in this African context, where the cuts will be devastating, felt wrong. 

Nonetheless, everyone was having a great time, and after the parade people were invited to get plates and sample foods at each booths-- popular ones were India, Ethiopia, USA, Kenya, Rwanda, Zimbabwe, Korea, China, all the Scandanavian countries, and Canada, where they featured a lot Tim Horton's style donuts, but no poutine. It was a really hot day today. 

After eating, we had a variety of entertainment acts from different countries. Rebecca and I were asked to lead a line dance for the US. We did Good Time, and people really loved doing it. It was actually a lot of fun to teach and watch the students and adults learn--over 100 participated. 

We came home around 5pm, made pizza, and watched an episode of The Chosen before I started this.

The other big social event this past week was my Birthday! A milestone --65, which seems very strange to me. I am convinced I did not age a day during the 25 years of my dance career, so I feel more physically in my 40s. But given it was a milestone, we decided to go all out. We invited most everyone we knew--all MCC staff, people from church, small group, neighbors, school, we even had some friends from Ethiopia who happened to be in town this week. We had it catered from an Indian restaurant which made the food really great. 

We also planned a full program of events--folk dancing (especially the Virginia Reel), a feasting liturgy, Indian food, a piñata, talent show and singing with the banjo and guitar. We were going to have some of it out and some of it indoors. 

About 10 minutes before the 5pm start time, our power went out. We were not sure how this affect the plans if it stayed off (which it did until the next day). During daylight hours we had the dancing and dinner so that was fine. (We could not do the Virginia reel because there were too many people for the driveway where we were going to do it. But we did some other dances instead.) 

It was still light at dinner and Rebecca prepared a Liturgy for Feasting with Friends from a book called Every Moment Holy. It was a great blessing that included prayer as well as raising glasses in good cheer. The dinner catered by Rosinas was fabulous. A very nice array of Indian dishes. 

After dinner, we used some strong flashlights for the piñata, and it worked well. I have made the kids piñatas for all of their Birthdays to 16, but not one for mine. I did the papier mache over some balloons and David painted it. It was not a specific character, just an abstract design. We had a large group of youths as whole families were invited, so they really enjoyed smashing it open. 

Cake and present openning followed this. I got some great gifts, including a lot of licorice (I think Rebecca must have said I like it), and some golf balls as well, which were great since David and I play whenever we can. I also got a new hat and Rebecca got me a Fitbit. 

After that it was really dark, so I lit a fire in our outdoor fire pit which made a nice light area to sit around. We had prepared a songsheet of bluegrass songs about the hear-after. It seems most bluegrass religious music is about what is to come. I played the banjo, and Rebecca played guitar with David singing. We did, I'll fly away, Sweet bye and bye, I'm gonna sit at the welcome table, Ain't no grave gonna hold my body down, All my tears, The big rock candy mountain (about hobo heaven). We also did a Porters Gate song, Teach us to number our days. It was appreciated by all, and the banjo sounded pretty good with the guitar. 

Having all of this by firelight was actually very picturesque, although it was not our plan at all. People left around 9pm I think. We spent a fair bit of Saturday cleaning up and relaxing after much preparation. We are starting to see the contours of our new community here. 

This past week we did have some unusual work activites. We had a visit to Nairobi from MCC's global finance team. This includes all finance people from all regional offices all over the world as well as US and Canada. It can be hard to find a country where everyone can get a visa--especially US and Canada. But Kenya seemed to work out fine. 

We met the team at their hotel on Tuesday and had lunch with them. They wanted to see a project, so we took them to a school and maternal child health project in an informal settlement called Mukuru kwa Reuben (that is the correct way to call a slum). It is a very poor part of town with very vulnerable families. The school has a huge impact giving many a chance to go who would never dream of going.

We went out with the 17 member finance team in a small bus that managed to get down the narrow alleys to the school, which was in session. If you are not used to seeing buildings with mud floors made of tin, it might be a shock. But the school is very well run.

We met the head teacher and project staff. We heard about the history of the school and church that built it. We had a chance to watch many songs of dances of children who entertained us. We also met a student who graduated there and was now going to University. We also met our two volunteers who work there, Deborah and Mary, Deborah works at the school, and Mary in the MCH project. 

We ate the same lunch as the students, which was a corn bean stew called githeri. It was very simple, and quite tasty. After lunch,, we visited some classrooms and then met the whole school for an outdoor assembly where we thanked them and returned to our office where we gave the team an overview of our program before they returned to their hotel. 

There were some various and sundry smaller events. We have been seeing our friends the Kontras from Ethiopia who were here for a football tournament in which Bingham came from Ethiopia to play at Rosslyn. It was great to see them and their kids. Sadly, neither Bingham nor Rosslyn won in the end, but David and Rebecca cheered them on. 

We have been working hard in choir getting ready for a March concert. David and I did get to golfing at least once this month, which is now much cheaper that he got a junior golfer card which means he can play for about 50cents per game--so only I have to pay for myself.

Big Rock Candy Mountain

 

Finding Rhythms in New Realities

Tree hyraxes

The last update was at the end of January and mainly covered our vacation time with Oren in Watamu. I was hoping to keep this up more regularly, but twice per month looks like the best I can do. The last month has had a number of interesting events that I will try to cover here, but there is a shadow hanging over much of it since Jan 20th. I am not interested in making this a political blog, because the purpose of this forum for us is to chronicle our work with MCC, and usually that is not too difficult, except that our work is often impacted by conflict or other factors in the local context we find ourselves. 

In our context as humanitarian workers, the closure of USAID and the immediate withdrawal of 47 billion dollars of foreign aid is not possible to ignore. A number of families in David's school and our church were told to depart immediately (at first). About 40,000 Kenyans in the development sector have been laid off effective immediately because their agencies depended on USAID grants. The WFP program in Kenya which feeds hundreds of thousands of refugees gets 50% of its food from USAID. The HIV/AIDS PEPFAR program that provides ARTs and other meds here to people suffering from illness has ended suddenly, with meds for TB and other vaccines sitting and expiring in ports. We've been assured that essential aid will be allowed to continue, but the funding is still completely blocked and there is no one allowed to remain on the job to administer it. It is hard to fully grasp the shock of this sudden change in US foreign policy without any warning. It is devastating to many in sub-Saharan Africa where most of the USAID humanitarian beneficiaries reside. 

USAID website

There is plenty of news coverage on this, so I am not going to spend a lot of time on it. I just wanted to say it does affect our work here. Fortunately, our biggest single funding source for MCC Kenya is a grant from Global Affairs Canada for a nature-positive agriculture project, and this has not been affected by the USAID cuts. 

Despite the election, the start of our regular routine in the new year has felt mercifully more manageable; we feel like we have finally been able to move out of the introductory phase of the new job, which involved tons of travel to meet every partner and get acquainted. We have had many more full weeks in the office, which feels like a blessing. Our weekly office routine is actually very satisfying. We have a full team meeting on Mondays. That involves about 8 staff in the office who meet in a conference room, joined on Zoom by William our peacebuilding coordinator who lives out of town and four of our one-year volunteers who are seconded to different partners. We have a devotional followed by a check-in from every person, giving updates on the past week's work and what lies ahead in the current week.  It is a good way to start our week and get a read on how busy it will be. 

On Tuesdays, the highlight is a team lunch for anyone who is working in the office. It is prepared by our cook Lucy and is appreciated by all. Sharing a meal together is great for team building. Wednesday and Thursday do not have any special events, and Friday we all work from home, because commuting in traffic in Nairobi is murder, and it is great to get a break from it one day a week. 

We had our Area Directors, Wawa and Kristen visit us and spend several days evaluating our program. They are great supervisors and we really appreciate working with them. We even see them socially, as we did last week. David is great with their kids, who are a bit younger than him. We usually play Monkey in the Middle with a Frisbee. We also played the board game Telestrations -- a combination of Pictionary and Telephone. Check it out if you need a good group game. 

Umoja chapel, Mwangaza Jesuit center, 
Ngong hills in the background

Despite the better pace of our daily routine, Rebecca felt a need for some personal sabbath; as MCC Rep with a pastoral vocation, she can feel more stress than I do. It was great that she was enthusiastically granted a week of retreat at a Jesuit retreat center. Here is her account:

Paul has written a lot about the normal flow of our life, which has kept us head down, pushing forward, trying to keep up with work demands and the basics of trying to live in a new place. Even vacation time and the retreat at the end of 2024 felt quite frantic. At the end of January, Paul and I had the opportunity to meet with a professional to just stop for a few hours and take stock.

Chair with solid rock footstool

This transition debrief was very helpful for both of us – naming and sitting with all the changes we have been through, not just in the past year, but in the past 10 years. We’ve needed to move out of and into five completely different countries and communities during that time, and we recognized that there are reasons why we feel depleted. The transition between Ethiopia and Nairobi was unavoidably challenging: I think we had 2 days where we weren’t in charge of any MCC program anywhere. And we had to hit the ground running in Nairobi to make up for a two-month gap in leadership here. With non-stop traveling and learning, and all the rewarding but taxing relational work of getting to know a new place, I realized that I was way out over the edge of the cliff of working sustainably.

I also remembered a very helpful insight shared with us in 2014 when we attended a debrief following our 6 years in Burundi (and this might be helpful to other friends moving countries). Typically, the mother in the family keeps everyone else going through a transition and then finally has time and space to grieve and process about 6 months after the move. Bingo. I’m so grateful that I met with my spiritual director during the same week – we’ve been meeting monthly since the time I lived in Tanzania. She listened to me and for the first time ever, strongly suggested that I take a week's silent retreat. The debriefing counselor suggested something similar.

Labyrinth and hyraxes in the tree on the left

It's very hard to step out of the flow of work and expectations, but I looked at my calendar, and Paul and I realized that I could make it happen. Two people suggested the Mwangaza Jesuit Center in Karen. I called and they agreed to include me in 5 days of their scheduled 8-day silent retreat program. I really felt like it was the most important thing I could have done. I don’t want to be burnt out, right at the beginning of a new assignment, but I was very much at risk. And those five days were pure gift to me.

Mwangaza Center was amazing, a place of real beauty and quiet. I deeply appreciate the Catholic Jesuit tradition for understanding our deep need for silence and creating a space where it is possible. For five days I did not talk to anyone at all, except for 30 minutes a day to the retreat guide assigned to me. Even as we ate meals together in the dining hall, we retreatants ate together in silence, with soft music playing, just giving polite nods to each other to acknowledge one another.

Sunset over the garden

The grounds are beautiful, with many places to sit and pray thoughtfully scattered around the garden. I enjoyed some wonderful birding but tried not to get too distracted. Still, the first thrill of spotting a Hartlaub’s turaco was fantastic – and then I realized that there were many turacos hidden in the trees around the agricultural area of the compound. Just next to the labyrinth, I discovered a little family of plump tree hyraxes, always placidly considering me from above the scarlet tree orchids as I slowly walked.

I think all the other normal retreatants were Catholic (though of course I couldn’t talk to them to find out! But the nuns’ habits and priests’ collars are kind of a dead giveaway) and nearly all were Kenyan, with a few international folks thrown in. I elected to join them for mass each day, with homilies given by the very international Jesuit priest community – So I suppose you could say I listened to speech – but it was nurturing to be in that community and observe the regular discipline of confession and intercession and receiving the grace of Jesus’ body and blood.

The Way of the Cross

On the second evening, I decided to go way out of my comfort zone and attend the evening Silent Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament. It was stunning – almost everyone was there in the chapel, 60 to 80 people sitting or kneeling in complete silence for more than 30 minutes, simply praying and contemplating and gazing at the monstrance. I found a deep focus on the very lifelike wooden sculpture of Jesus, tortured and crucified. I found a deeper perspective on my light and momentary struggles in the light of the passion of Christ. I was given a very vivid vision of Jesus protecting me and David during the car accident in October, his body was crushed as he deflected the car of the drunk driver careening towards us in head-on collision. I was left in awe and gratitude. I came away wondering why we long for so much distraction in the evenings. So much scrolling and TV-watching and Podcast listening. Why not just sit in complete silence from 8 to 8:30? So much more healing and restorative.

It was hard to return from that time. Not for a single moment was I bored, or unsure of how to fill the time. There was so much to pray about and to listen for. Scripture to consider, and exercises assigned by the gracious retreat guide, a loving Kenyan laywoman. Some good naps to take. Some beautiful new birds to learn the names of. And it was a relief, selfishly, not to worry about anyone else or their needs or their meals for a few days. If I have any friends in Nairobi in need of a spiritual reset, I highly recommend that you take a decent number of days for a retreat at Mwangaza. (Caveat 1: if you go, you need to be ready to enter a very Catholic space with an open heart, ready to receive the many gifts it offers while leaving aside anything that doesn’t square with your theology: in the end, what matters is that Christ is glorified. Caveat 2: I suppose this is a better retreat experience for introverts 😊)

White tree orchid,
only open for one day after the rain

But back in the real world, it is very difficult to maintain that kind of discipline of silence. For example, tonight I’m blogging, and not in silent adoration. But I do feel more of a longing for prayer, for starting my day on a better foundation, resting in the love of Christ. I know I desperately need it, to serve in this assignment with joy and energy. And with all the political turmoil going on outside the retreat center, it can be extremely difficult to find a focus on God’s love rather than on fury and frustration at current events and my internal arguments with people who see things differently than I do. But I need my feet on solid rock to keep going. So, that was a fairly vulnerable account of another part of what it is like to endure frequent international moves.

 

The Lost Sheep, with Maasai shepherd
Consolation chapel

David also had a school activities week that partially overlapped with Rebecca's retreat. He went with a number of classmates to a town called Kanja where he worked at a school. He said it was really great! That was a surprise since he usually does not like activity week trips. I asked what he did. He said that as soon as they left the bus they were told to dig holes! (If you have read the book or seen the movie Holes you would be laughing). But he said they also helped with lesson planning at the local school and got to see how the teachers worked. It seems like he has several friends from the swimming team on the same trip. 

Lunch date with our Ethiopian volunteer Deborah

Other things that happened at work. We have only done one field visit so far this month, and that was to Kisumu, a town on the shore of Lake Victoria, and home to the headquarters of the Kenya Mennonite Church. The occasion was an invitation to attend a strategic planning meeting with their leadership focused on establishing a development wing of the church to centralize their development work. We are supportive of this and were happy to join. 

Kisumu is an 8-hour drive or 40-minute flight. We chose the latter and arrived a day before. (Rebecca and I traveled with our Peace Coordinator William). We left David alone for two days because he can totally handle it. Our reason for arriving early is that we have a peace partner GDI who works in the same town and hosts one of our one-year volunteers-- Menzi from Zimbabwe. We wanted to check in on the partner and him.

We arrived in the morning and took a cab to the GDI office, met staff, and had a good catch-up on their last reporting period. We ate lunch together, and then in the afternoon, we accompanied the team to a Peace Club meeting at a local high school. GDI runs peace clubs in most of the schools in the town. Violence is common in this area, particularly around election time and often originates with youth who are manipulated or bribed into provoking a violent event, such as a riot. Peace training helps them develop skills in critical thinking and conflict mediation. We watched Menzi teach a module on conflict analysis, and then we had a chance to engage with the students directly as well. It was a helpful visit, to see what they do. 

peace club

We stayed the night in a sweaty hotel (Kisumu is hot) and then spent the entire next day in meetings with KMT leadership. I was actually very grateful for the opportunity to see so many people who I should know by name and face, in the same place at the same time. Even the Bishop elect of Nairobi. This will help when I encounter them again in the future. There are a number of high offices besides Bishops from each Diocese (they were not all there) There is also a Moderator and Secretary General. I think I would recognize them all now. 

Kisumu meeting

The meeting was very interesting as there was a lot to cover regarding collaboration between at least 8 dioceses. There was a lot of debate, but generally a movement toward consensus. We were exhausted by the end of the day, and I was glad to get a plane that evening to head back to Nairobi. We found David doing extremely well while we were gone. He is very self-sufficient. Below is a picture of a typical breakfast he prepared for himself before school.

Waterfall in Tigoni

We had a few opportunities for some restful activity. We still swim, exercise and go to choir weekly. Last week we took a trip to Brackenhurst to walk around the tea plantations with some friends from small group. Here are some photos. 

Menzi teaching

dinner with ADs

David-style breakfast burritos with 
Chili mayo and raw cabbage
Mango and passionfruit on the side