Learning

Saturday was another of RVA's community outreach days.  Generally, about three quarters of our 500 students sign up for various opportunities to serve out in the communities surrounding Kijabe.  As a science teacher, I(Jim) am normally volunteered to lead the 'environmental option' which so far has involved planting trees somewhere.  This time, I was supposed to be building 'rocket stoves' down in the valley truckstop town of Maahi Mahiu.  They're fuel efficient cooking stoves that reduce the need for fuel and especially the need for charcoal.  I was excited about it and Faith was too, so she asked to come along.  As is usually the case in Africa, the plan wasn't actually followed.  I was reassigned at the last minute as a driver for a group distributing some food down in the valley.  I pictured giving a few small bags of maize to a dozen or so poor families.  Then I found out we were supposed to be distributing food to 135 families!  Faith still wanted to come along, so we loaded up 1,800 pounds of maize meal (in only 9 bags!) 200 pounds of cooking fat, and 9 students into two cars and headed down the hill.

This was all fine and dandy until we stopped to pick up three crates of sodas here in Kijabe and the locking mechanism on the ignition of our car broke, leaving us stranded just outside RVA's gates.  We borrowed a Land Rover and after bouncing down the 4-wheel drive road to Maahi Mahiu, we arrived at our rendezvous point only 20 minutes behind schedule.  The man we were supposed to meet (Christopher) wasn't there, so we called on the cell phone:  "I'll be there in 20 minutes."  This is Africa.

It's amazing to me how different the valley floor is than Kijabe.  Kijabe is green.  Cedar and olive trees and flowers are everywhere.  It's always between 60 and 80 degrees during the day.  Eden.

By comparison, the valley floor is all hot dust and thorns.

Just outside of Maahi Mahiu, we again leave the main road, first following a natural gas pipeline, here driving up an arroyo, later across a washed-out culvert - the deep wash on each side 'repaired' with two narrow rows of basketball-sized rocks.  Eventually, we rejoin the pipeline and drive through open grassland.  Dusty flat ground with knee-high grass is punctuated by the occasional thorny acacia.  Living in the states, this is what I had pictured Kenya would be like: open flat land with grass waving in the breeze.  The stuff you watch lions creep through, almost invisible, as they stalk wary zebras on National Geographic TV shows.

Eventually, we leave the pipeline and travel along a row of barren power poles.  Some are already beginning to show age, though the wires haven't ever been placed on them.  They stand sentinel, monuments to Kenya's slow development where big projects are started but never finished because the money suddenly disappeared into somebody's pocket.

Leaving barren power poles behind, we turn onto a fading dirt road where only the daily tread of feet beats back the invading grass.  Finally, we leave the tired road behind, following a footpath in white land rovers as they bounce incessantly over grassy tussocks to a mud hut and a waiting crowd of people pressed into the shade of a few umbrella thorn trees.

Community Elders sit in the deepest shade in ubiquitous plastic chairs, their distended earlobes flopping against their necks as they chew the ends of kunia branches and passively swat away flies with the fuzzy blue-green leaves.  The women fill the rest of the shady space, all of them talking excitedly about who knows what, their earlobes flopping against their necks as they absently wave aside flies with their hands.  Covered with bright kangas and buried beneath layers of tinkling beaded necklaces each clutches a bag to be filled with some of the maize meal we've brought.

The whole thing practically screamed, "Missionary in Africa." Everything about the day fit all the stereotypes and it made me think a lot about the way the Evangelical Church does missions.  As I tried to distill one big take-away for the blog, it became more and more apparent that this one day was really a great illustration of a whole bunch of points I've been thinking about a lot over the past year.  So over the next few days, I've got a collection of reflections on the modern missions movement and some ideas for becoming more effectively involved in fulfilling the great commission.