totally unrelated and frivolous, but occasionally updated at least: http://scottlee.blogspot.com

Hey, everyone..

I just want to announce that I've arrived safe-and-sound in the U.S., aside from an untimely bout with the flu.  My last few days in Kenya were, not surprisingly, bittersweet.  I was aching for the comforts only home can afford, yet I was sad to face the prospect of leaving my friends and family behind in Ugunja.

To make my departure more difficult, I was treated to some amazing displays of kindness and generosity during my last two days.  First, I was invited to preach at the local church I've been attending to commemorate my last Sunday.  Very reluctantly, I accepted--not because I had anything of pastoral merit to offer to the people, but because I sensed that they really wanted to hear me speak and I would be doing them an injustice if I didn't.  (In case you're wondering, no, I didn't present myself as some devout theological student--the church doesn't have a full-time minister/priest because the congregation can't afford to support one.  So, a different church member preaches each week; this week, it was my turn :)).  I worried all week about what I would speak about, and eventually, I ended up giving a sermon about the importance of sharing (which, of course, has occupied my thinking in many of these journal entries).  Well, to say that I was preaching to the choir would be history's greatest understatement, and thus I tried to express to the congregation (through a translator) that I was in no position of authority, that I had learned everything I knew about sharing from my time with them.  Hopefully, I got the point across, but I'm not so sure, because, afterwards, various church friends came up to me to tell me how much they "learned" from my sermon.

Well, the next day, the Nyasanda students threw a "farewell party" in my honor, which was--more so than touching--simply baffling because it was so ridiculously undeserved; I almost expected Alan Funt to rise out of the bushes and tell me that I was on Candid Camera :).  The students organized the whole affair themselves: they chipped in to buy flour, sugar, oil, and milk and then spent the whole morning making miniature mandaazis and tea (unbeknownst to me, of course; at the time, I was just wondering why the students were being so strangely absent and evasive).  And they bought me a going-away gift: a model hut made of the fibers of a locally grown plant.  And then there was the party/ceremony itself, replete with eloquently orated speeches by the students.  So, I think you'd agree that I'm not just feigning self-deprecation when I say that the whole event was absurdly excessive in its gratitude--something fit for a king, not for an inexperienced volunteer who has been the prime beneficiary of his stay in Kenya.  I tried to tell them that it is they who have been my teachers, and not the other way around, and I tried my best to return the gratitude, but words can only say so much.

The next day, I was set to depart on a bus for Nairobi in the evening, so I spent the morning packing and most of the day saying goodbyes to the local villagers.  After such a comprehensive attempt at closure, I expected my departure that night to be quiet and private, but it turns out that many people walked (some from fairly large distances) in the dark to meet me at the bus station and wish me a "safe journey."  It was an (almost literally) unbelievable display of kindness that these people would go so out of their way just to say farewell...

So, my last memories of Ugunja are wonderful but convicting ones--touching on the one hand, but self-indicting on the other.  Inside, I know of all the ways that I could have done more, but didn't.  And I know how cruel it was just to jump on a plane and return to a life of privilege and luxury, leaving my "friends" behind in lives of struggle and suffering (is this how one treats friends?)....

With these memories in mind, it feels strange to be in the U.S. again.  I look around me--at this culture of mass consumption--and my heart just sinks when I consider that so much of the hardship on the other side could be alleviated if things were different on this side.  Life here is so frivolous, so ostentatious--I just don't understand it anymore...

I want to go back to Ugunja, for the sweetness, the earnestness, the real-ness (as in, "keeping it real") of life there.  I want to go back to the moral peacefulness of being with and learning from those wonderful students, that wonderful community.

But, alas, I lack such courage.  Until I find such courage, I guess I'll have to deal with my inner pangs of guilt as I negotiate life as an uncomfortable child of affluence, a cultural misfit.  Maybe--hopefully--one of these days, these pangs will overcome me, and I'll have no choice but to "arise and go."

So, with that, I think I'll sign off, for now at least.  Thank you so very much if you've had the patience and interest to read along as I've written these entries during the past three months.  I hope that it's been edifying in some small way, and I pray that we will all have the strength, grace, and wisdom to always, always listen to our deep heart's core, whatever it may say to us, wherever it may lead us.

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I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,
And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made;
Nine bean rows will I have there, a hive for the honey bee,
     And live alone in the bee-loud glade.

And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,
Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;
There midnight’s all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow,
    And evening full of the linnet’s wings.

I will arise and go now, for always night and day
I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore:
While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements gray,
    I hear it in the deep heart’s core. 

                    -- W.B. Yeats, The Lake Isle of Innisfree

Hello, everyone.

I’m happy to write that the first week of Nyasanda High School’s Volunteer Internship Program (I know, it’s a mouthful) has gone very well.  A few thoughts:

Before coming to Kenya, from the comfort of my bedroom, I remember visiting the UCRC website, seeing a picture of the students, and thinking, rather surreally: “In a few months, these smiling students will be my friends.  They’re strangers now—just so many anonymous faces in a shoddy, cinder-block classroom—but soon I will know each of them closely: their invisible dreams, struggles, tragedies—their solitary souls.”

Well, as I mentioned in an earlier entry, it has turned out that—for most of my time here—I haven’t worked very closely with the students.  When I have worked at the school, it has mainly been in doing manual work on the school farm while the students are learning in the classroom.  So, I’m a bit embarrassed to admit that, until a week ago, I knew the names of only about three of the 36 students.  For the most part, the students remained anonymous faces—people I greeted and chatted with but didn’t really know in any significant way.

Fortunately, with this program, I’ve been able to spend full days with the students in open, conversation-friendly environments.  I’ve traveled to the different institutions with them (there’s no bonding experience quite like being crammed into a car with 9 other people) and worked alongside them as they undertake their internships. And, though it’s only been a week, I can now say that I know all of them at least by name, and many of them more personally.

What limited time that I have spent with them has been a glimpse of radiant kindness and fortitude.  These kids are sadly underprivileged; five of them are orphans being cared for by their extended families, and my guess is that about half of them have at least one parent who is deceased (more often, the father).  Though one couldn’t say that they are the poorest of the poor—neither of Ugunja nor of the world—they’re poor enough that their families cannot afford to pay for their schooling (not even Nyasanda’s severely reduced tuition), poor enough that they must wear the same outfit for an entire week, poor enough that they often eat just one meal per day.  And yet (as is the case anywhere, I suppose), they’re rich in so many other ways.  To me, one episode from this past week captures their singular, elusive richness, and—though it doesn’t offer much in terms of excitement—I feel it deserves to be documented:

I was spending the day with the team working at the local Ambira Health Centre, and we were giving ourselves a short break after cleaning the facilities for the past three hours (mopping and washing windows).  It was about eleven in the morning, and none of us had taken breakfast; I, for one, was starved.  In front of the health centre, there was a lady sitting on a stool trying her best to eke a living selling bananas, chapattis, and porridge to patients and visitors.  I considered buying some food as a snack/breakfast for the students (we weren’t scheduled to have lunch until 2:30) but opted against it, fearing that it would cause too much conflict as to why this team got a snack but the other teams did not (there are other thorny issues that have to do with how I, as a foreign volunteer, spend my money in UCRC activities, but I won’t go into them now).

So, for a few minutes, we just lounged around, chatting and relaxing—the students sitting as a group on the grass, and I leaning on a tree about ten feet away.  Then, one of the students (Benson) got up and bought a chapatti from the lady for five shillings (for the unfamiliar, a chapatti is like a tortilla, but made from wheat flour).  I looked on as he came back to the group of students, tore off a small piece of the chapatti, and, without saying a word, gave the remaining portion to another student.  She, in turn (also in silence), tore off a small piece and passed it on.  Seven students later, two pieces remained.  The last student took his piece, got up, came up to me, and offered me the last piece.  I politely declined, feeling that it would be awfully selfish of me to accept.  So, he went back and offered it to someone who had already finished his piece.

In the end, each student ate a barely bite-size piece of bread—of negligible nourishment, and probably more effective in whetting their appetites than satisfying them.   Nonetheless, it was one of the most touching acts I have ever witnessed.  What struck me was not so much that they shared the food among themselves, but that they shared it so naturally, so effortlessly; what struck me was not that it was some dramatic event, but that it was an utter non-event.  There was no deliberation, no delegation, no need for Benson to apportion the ten pieces beforehand.  It was as if they were repeating the act of sharing the chapatti for the hundredth time—maybe, in fact, they were.

And there was no complaint that one person had gotten more than the other, no dispute, no discussion.  There was no “Thank you, Benson” and no “You’re welcome.”  As far as they were concerned, Benson had done nothing noble or generous; he had only done what was decent.

Yet, whereas for us 5 shillings (about 7 cents) is basically nothing, we must understand that Benson had made a real sacrifice.  The students very, very rarely eat breakfast, and—if breakfast costs just 7 cents—it just goes to show you how poor these kids really are.  He could have used the 5 shillings to get a chapatti for himself, but he didn’t.  What little he had, he shared.  And, what little they had among themselves, they shared with me—an extravagantly wealthy person who very rarely misses breakfast and inwardly complains when he does.  If I were they, I would hate me (sorry about convoluted syntax), but they chose to extend grace to a personification of greed.

In the end, there was a certain sanctity to the whole event, this mundane epiphany—the solemnity, the unspoken understanding, the humility.  I was sublimely awed.

It was, I believe, a momentary glimpse of Heaven.  It was, I am sure, a most Holy Communion.

Hello again.  I hope this finds you well…

Since I last wrote, things around here have become increasingly busy, and I’m now finally getting a chance to sit down and reflect a bit…

Believe it or not, for the past several years, there has been only one homeless man living in Ugunja.  Such is the paradoxical yet comforting state of affairs: even as the average person around here is quite poor, even as the birth rate soars, even as the number of AIDS orphans increases, the sense of community is strong enough that—as a bare minimum—virtually everyone is provided with a roof over their heads (even if it’s just a piece of sheet metal) and food in their stomachs (even if it’s just plain cornmeal)—a claim that can’t be made in many, far more affluent parts of the world.  In fact, resources in general are shared freely; there really isn’t the strict, this-is-mine-and-that-is-yours sense of private ownership that we in industrial capitalist countries take for granted.  At times, practically speaking, this lack of concern for personal property can be a bit annoying, such as when I lend someone a pen and never see it again.  But, in principle, I much prefer this more open and communal mentality, as I feel it promotes egalitarianism and cooperation (if you can’t tell, I dream of a socialist world, though I (perhaps fatalistically) doubt that human beings will ever ascend to such heights).

Anyway, about this homeless man: he wasn’t always homeless.  Until a few years ago, like most other adult men in Ugunja (these days, an increasing number of families are rent-paying tenants in the town centre), he owned a modest plot of land in a nearby village—essentially family-owned land that was informally passed down through the generations until it was officially apportioned to him as his own soon after Independence in 1963.  I’ve yet to sort out all the details, but apparently—for whatever reason—a few years back he decided to sell his land to his brother, who to this day lives on an adjacent plot.  But the brother never paid the full sum to purchase the land, so the man in question later tried to resell the land to a local wealthy landowner.  Inevitably, a dispute arose among the three actors, and somehow the man ended up with neither the land nor the money (the wealthy landowner, probably by bribing the relevant officials, managed to obtain the land rights).  As a safety net, Kenyan law states that, if necessary, a person may retain the rights to the minimal amount of land required for permanent settlement—that is, the man was legally entitled to keep his house, if nothing else.  Yet, the landowner razed the man’s hut, suddenly leaving him penniless (er, shilling-less) and homeless.  And, in classic Cain-and-Abel fashion, the brother offered no assistance.

                Ever since, he’s been a bit of a forest-dweller—fashioning a roof by tying together plastic bags, and begging for food.  He’s quite old now—my guess is that he’s about 80.  The UCRC has decided to act upon this human rights violation, and for the past week or so, we, as well as other community members, have mobilized to build him a new hut on his former land.  It’s been hard work, but it’s all worth it just to see the profound look of gratitude (and surely perplexity as well) on the old man’s face as he watches us (including several white people!) get down and dirty.

                On a related note, I’ve been duly impressed with the architecture and engineering behind this traditional Luo hut.  Granted, in terms of grandeur, it pales in comparison to, say, the Parthenon, but the ingenuity and resourcefulness of the hut’s design is amazing.  Basically, all the materials are locally available—and I emphasize “locally.”  The hut’s wooden skeleton is made from trees growing a few feet away, the thatched roof from grass growing in a nearby field, and the walls from mud found, well, in the ground directly below us.  Yet, despite the simple and basic materials, the average lifespan of a traditional hut is about 60 years.  And, for sheer recreational value, building a wall by hurling handfuls of mud at the wooden skeleton sure beats piling bricks and mortar.

… In other news, I spent a day at a nearby health centre, and—for the second time in my life, I witnessed the birth of a child (well, technically, it was the third time, but I was a bit more than a witness the very first time J).  The last time was back in high school, when I was shadowing a doctor as part of an assignment.  What little I remember of it was pretty incredible (I got a bit lightheaded and almost fainted), even with all the sterility of a modern hospital.  Well, this time, I managed to remain fully conscious throughout, in spite of the mother’s blood-curdling screams (it was a natural birth).  It was an amazing experience, though seeing the little baby’s head pop out reminded me of a scene from the movie “Aliens.”  In the end, after much hard labour (from all sides: the mother, the baby, the nurse, and my wobbly knees), the world welcomed a healthy boy weighing in at 2.9 kgs.

… Finally, I’ve been busy organizing a Nyasanda School program slated to begin next Monday.  The school will be closed during the month of August (Kenyan students get only this one month off, and this happens to coincide with harvest season), so rather than have the students be mostly idle (besides helping out with their family farms), we wanted to arrange for small internships in which they can volunteer their labour at local institutions while learning about the institution’s activities and services, thus creating a mutually beneficial relationship between the students and the institutions).  We’ve never had such a program before, so it’s been a challenge to try to press out all the logistics from the ground up, but things have progressed nicely, and—come next Monday—the students will be travelling to three institutions—the mission hospital, health centre, and district hospital (all of which have been mentioned in previous entries)—to gain hands-on experience in basic health care practices.

     The coordination and planning of the program has been gratifying for me (in a self-absorbed sort of way), as—for the first time—I’ve been able to head up a UCRC project on my own, rather than merely assist or follow other volunteers at the Centre.  Not that there’s any merit in having “my own” project, but it is a nice feeling to realize that I’ve established myself firmly enough that I can now bear the responsibility of (for the most part) independently designing and coordinating this project.  (Lest I give myself more credit than I deserve, I must say that I have benefited greatly from numerous consultations with Aggrey)  I guess I’ve sort of “come of age” as a volunteer at the Centre J.

     On top of that, it’s been wonderful to travel around on my own.  Partly because vehicle transport is so risky, but more so just to get some exercise and enjoy the scenery, I’ve travelled either by foot or by bicycle for the planning meetings at the three health facilities (it’s a one-hour walk to the mission hospital, a 30-minute walk to the health centre, and a 1.5-hour bike ride to the district hospital).  It’s exhilarating to find my way through the backcountry dirt paths of rural Kenya—something I would definitely miss were I to travel by matatu, and there’s nothing like riding a bike through verdant tropical hills at the chill of dawn, the sun rising ahead on the horizon, slowly but surely illuminating this latter-day paradise.