It is Saturday January 13. A day I could use sleeping late and just catching my breath. But I had arranged to be picked up by Benson Peter Nzioka to travel to his place in Nairobi for a family get-together.
Ah! The sound of the tuk-tuk chugging up the drive, then up the walkway almost to the porch. Arms wide, Grace, a woman about my age and Peter’s mother, comes toward me chortling with glee at seeing again a long-time friend from the USA. Karibu sana! (Very welcome!)
Peter comes next carrying a big green plastic bag. In the living room he dumps out Grace’s handmade baskets. She is skilled at taking native grasses and weaving beautiful baskets. She has me pick out three for gifts to Lois (my sister), Ellie and Rachel. And two I had paid for ahead of time.
There are 10 left at $600 Ks apiece. George Mitchell says he’d like a couple for wife and daughter. Done. I give Grace $6000 Ks. She can use the cash. She has another 20 at Ebenezer (their small shamba out on the plain) but I can only pack so many. These are skillfully woven out of native local material. Would you like one?
The tuk-tuk is waiting. (Tuk rhymes with book). These tiny three wheelers put over the rubble surfaced road with bone-shattering emphasis. It’s a little smoother when we hit pavement. In the city of Machakos we meet Mweni and Daoudi, Peter’s older siblings and Nzomo, their nephew who is 17. Soon we are on the matatu and off for Nairobi.
Forget about conversation for the first 6 km. The road from Machakos to the Mombasa Road is under construction. We are shunted from a dirt by-pass on the right to one on the left several. At a place where a grader has just moved some material the Matatu scrapes bottom on several boulders. Did I tell you that a ma-TAH-too is a mini-van with shrunken seats that holds 15? Two up front with the driver. Four rows of 3 with an aisle down the middle as there is but one sliding side door. This is big improvement from 6 years ago before they passed a seat belt law. Then I went with Peter to see the seminary he graduated from. We got the two last seats. But soon I had grown woman on my knee as did Peter and a couple of others for a total of over twenty! To repeat, this is in a mini-van—not our monster maxi-vans 15-seaters.
The Mombasa Road is paved about the width of Liberty Street in Haverhill. It does have a dirt breakdown lane on each side. The traffic is heavy. I suck in my breath as the driver pulls out to pass a lorry going 5 mph up a 4% grade. Ongoing traffic is not apt to yield readily. There is a lot of light-flashing. Petrol tankers, gravel haulers, cargo semi’s spewing out black fumes. Some are in the breakdown lane with rocks chocking wheels while a naked axle awaits a repaired wheel. The sun is shining and the breeze helps a bit. Could be worse. Kenya is improving its infrastructure they say, but I don’t see much improvement from two years ago as far as roads go.
Ah! There to the east is the control tower of the airport. There the road is a dual carriageway into the capitol city. This is a typical developing world city of several millions. Most people on foot. Roadside dukas all grimy with soot and dust each about the size of a Topsfield Fair booth. Goods of all kinds out for view. Fruits and vegetables. Snacks and sodas. Clothing. Medicines and CDs. Metal ware from teapots to wheelbarrows. Roundabouts jostling with car horns. Stall and crawl. Yet the bus has a few stickers about John 3:16 and the like. The music is about serving Jesus in your home and neighborhood. I can pick out “hallelujah” and “Bwana Jesu” and of course hymns and praise songs in English.
Finally we are at a depot. We board another vehicle for the east side where Peter and Gladys live. “We alight here,” Peter informs me. Soon a young lad is coming across the road. It is my namesake, son James, aged 13. He will take grandma Grace, Dauodi and Mweni directly to the house while Peter and I continue to see his church and office. Catching the next matatu we see a sports stadium in the distance—the pride and joy of Kenya. It looks to hold about 50,000 more or less. This is to attract European teams and fans and boost the economy. We alight. “There it is,” says Peter, pointing over a grassy rolling plain to a stone building that looks like it was moved here from Dresden at the end of WWII. Its windows have been stolen. The roof over the second floor is gone. Thieves have chiseled many stones out. We walk in that direction.
As we do, Peter tells the history. Now, Peter is an honest wheeler-dealer who has a way of winning friends. He held an open air meeting here for weeks with his family and one or two locals who were recruited. “We cannot go inside until we have permission,” he told his flock, for we are Christians. He got his permission. He was told that this vast acreage had been taken corruptly from public lands, houses and this office built upon it. A later administration discovered this and reclaimed the land. Now people have garden plots on it, but the dwellings are derelict. Peter got permission to use the office building free for a church until the government razes it in favor a new golf course to go with the sports stadium, designed to attract people from the frozen north who want sunshine and pleasant temperatures. If days like this are the norm it should be jumping with tourists, since you can really stretch your Euros here in Kenya.
As we approach we see three people by the road. Who are these waving and smiling at us? “Those are my people—they saw us and want to meet you.” Instantly we know we are brothers and sister in the Lord. I shake hands. Big smiles, as Peter tells me one is a Sunday school teacher, another works with men and the third with women. I try two of the 12 words in my Kiswahili vocabulary. “Bwana Jesu.” Jesus is Lord. Heads nod vigorously.
Peter and I go ahead to the church. It is indeed a shell. Completely bare. But they meet on the first floor where it is dry (mostly) and carry two benches a few patio chairs and a pulpit back and forth each Sunday from the office a quarter mile hence. Peter has painted the front overhang white with these letters: LIFE ASSEMBLIES CHURCH INTERNATIONAL. Even with next to nothing, he does not think small. He told God he would do something with what is at hand. That was his family, his own voice, and a derelict stone building slated for demolition. Eventually he hopes to have impact on every continent! I am reminded of the green slogan: Act locally; think globally. In the church here that is changed to “glocalization” since the church is not a franchise cloning itself worldwide, but a creative work of the Holy Spirit indigenous in every tongue and culture. Peter has that mindset.
He shows me where stones were being hacked out of the back wall. He has notified police, who send an occasional patrol. Previously no one walked on the road here because of robbers lurking in the swales. Since the church has started that is no longer a problem.
Here’s the MO. He and Gladys go to houses or open areas and engage people in conversation. (He really needs a portable PA system as that always attracts lots of onlookers.) They invite people to come to the service to learn more. (Peter preaches well and goes on to train those converted to be leaders able to teach and counsel.) The people gather in their homes for prayer during the week. As in many areas of Africa (and India) God does signs. One woman said her husband was about to divorce her since she bore no children for him. (The one commandment all Kenyans agree is essential is “go forth and multiply.) So they prayed and prayed for her. She conceived! So that is a living testimony to the power of the Bwana Jesu. Another man had walked with a limp for decades. They prayed and prayed for him. Now he walks upright and no limp. If you are a Kenyan living in poverty with no hope of corrective surgery this is a huge witness to the love of God.
A five-minute ride on one of the ever-passing matatus and a five-minute walk down a dirt lane and we are at the four-story apartment complex. Just outside the gate is an area strewn with plastic bottles, wrapper and other refuse. At least today the trash is not burning. Inside the concrete floors are acceptably clean. Wash hangs on lines near the breezy edges.
“We have two bedrooms,” Peter tells me, “for about $20 a month.”
We enter their home, concrete walls painted beige tending toward yellow. Charcoal fires in hibachis in the entry hall. A kitchen room about 5x5 feet. Nothing but bare walls. The little hibachi and all the pots and pans and plastic basins sit on the floor. Janet, a new church friend is helping with cooking. She bends from the waist to roll out the flour, turn the chapattis, stir the stew and so on. Not a stick of furniture there.
Now to the living room, 10x10, crammed with a couch and two stuffed chairs and two coffee-type tables. But who cares? Here comes the family, many of whom I have not seen for at least six years. Besides those who came with us from Machakos there is mother Gladys, Peter’s wife, and children James, Lois, Grace, Peter (who calls himself the professor, as he wants to get two PhDs, John, and little Victor. They shake hands with Mzee and say their names, baptismal and Kenyan: “Grace Rahemma,” for example.
Mama Gladys thanks the family in the USA for the gift box of clothing sent. There were shirts and hats and stuff that will help a lot. She says that she has been telling her kids that she has a father in Heaven and a father in America—who has now come to see them. That’s not a bad deal since that means that if I really retire and show up in Kenya they will take care of me the rest of my life—and they would, too. But now it is my turn to help provide for them in a small way.
Soon bowls of salad and steaming rice, stew (with beef chunks and potatoes), baked chicken and barbecued chicken. Gladys prays for the meal and for our fellowship as a family. For me this is a good meal. For them it is like Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners combined. They seldom eat this well, especially having so much meat.
Soon the children disappear, I suppose into the bedrooms or the narrow storage room adjacent. They are bright lot, excelling in school. They speak Kiswahili, English and even Kikamba, enabling them to converse with grandma Grace and Uncle Daoudi and Aunt Mweni and their country cousins. Since there is no money to pay Mrs. Janet, the children have taught her to read and write both Kiswahili and English—these grade school children!
They soon present me with a letter, all neatly hand-written in English for Ellie, signed by each one able to write. They are a bit unsure of this tall, greying white man they have heard much too much about. But they smile shyly and say goodbye when the time comes. I ask all to gather so I could pray a blessing on the home and extended family and the ministry God has given them.
Gladys walks out with us to the road. I notice she is wearing Ellie’s old Reeboks. “These fit me right and are comfortable when we have to walk all the way to church,” she says. I give her hugs and kisses goodbye, knowing now how much I miss her—this fatherless girl from Kitale whom I had helped rescue from her greedy dowry-demanding uncles and had joined in marriage to Peter in 1993. Who knows, she may be related to Phillemon Busolo at West Church, whose name proves he is from Kitale also.
It’s another two hours back to Machakos and the college. But my heart is overflowing with the treasure of friendships I never dreamed would be mine—these precious folks 10,000 miles from Boston. My morning reluctance rewarded in good measure. And to seal the day, I see two twiga (giraffes) lunching on acacia trees as the slanting sun sets aglow the volcanic hills of the Kenyan plains.
I am 15 minutes late for supper at the home of Justus, the college bursar. “I am the bearer of bad news (yes, you must pay the fees before going to classes) yet they love me anyway.” His lovely wife brings out their 4 month old girl, who seldom makes a fuss, day or night. Soon I get to hold her. She eyes me warily. Glancing at mum and dad across the table, she is reassured and settles into my lap.
Yes, it has been a good day.
As I sink into bed with that “tired but good” feeling I wonder how I can help Peter and Gladys in the selfless work they have undertaken. Peter’s 8x8 office, built at the edge of the road by a sympathetic landlord has no water, no electricity. But its dream is painted on the door: Life Christian Assemblies International. It’s a dream that must bear fruit. How can I help him find a free Internet access, as he cannot afford the shillings for the Internet café? I want to help him create a blog to publish some of his ideas. How can I help him get a D.Min degree online? He needs this to open doors and he cannot leave Kenya to pursue it. How can I send him books as he teaches his new church members? How can I get Gideon New Testaments for him to pass out? I have much to pray about in the next months.
Yes, it is good to come here. To get a fresh perspective. To ponder the shallowness of much of my American spirituality. To be careful (as that eminent Scottish phrasemaker George Mitchell puts it) not to be “caught in the vortex of one’s own inadequacies.”
Thanks for reading.
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