My Africa Trip - 3

5/31/11

Well in usual fashion the night's sleep was full of interruption. The howler monkey/birds from before were much quieter at the new place, but some motor with a high pitched squeal replaced it. The thing about it was that it turned off and on at irregular intervals. Just as the high pitched piercing sound faded to background noise, it'd make a clunky shut down and jolt me awake. My eyes would close, my muscles relax, then a mechanical scream would start me awake again. I'd get use to it, then Katie would start whining about it.

Finally that sweet moment of exhaustion where you don't care anymore hit me and it was some pretty solid sleep until 4am...We had to be ready to go by 5am because the bus ride to Turkana was going to take 18 hours with no problems.

Every one of the 12 other passengers coming to Turkana were ready to go by 5am. The driver was about 20 mins late and he had the only keys to the locked bus we were all gathered around in the dark.

On the way, we picked up one more passenger who immediately started praying and preaching to everyone. He told a convoluted half story about Hannah and her miracle son, Samuel and how she gave him to serve the Lord at the temple. Every year she'd bring a slightly longer robe as Samuel grew. This is where the day's story ended and the encouraging began.

According to our bus preacher, the trip to Turkana desert was like God giving us a longer robe. As we grow, we're given longer clothes which I guess somehow is supposed to translate to a bigger challenge? He didn't clearly make that connection, and maybe something was lost in translation from heavily accented Kenyan English to my American English ears, but I didn't see how better fitting clothes is an analogy for trials in a desert.

As I was trying to reconcile the cognitive dissonance in the analogy, he prayed and immediately began to solicit donations for "a servant of the Lord." He referred to himself as that several times.

He seems like a nice enough guy, and appears to be sincere, but I can barely describe how much I resent this.

I'll try.

We've been saving our hard earned money for over a year for this trip. We've made many promises to donators that 100% of donations would go to those who need it most. We're in transit to see kids, some of which go an entire day on a single cup of tea or porridge. That's it.

I'm feeling guilty for having a second K-bar for breakfast and this jerk wants me to subsidize his trip too? This is a servant of God? What the hell does he think we're all doing here? I'm certainly not 12 thousand miles away from home to tickle my philanthropic bone and expect to bask in the adoration and money of my peers.

There's a balance. I have no problem if these people want to clap their hands and sing their folksy songs poorly as I try to sleep. Whatever makes them feel better is fine. It just makes me sick when it becomes indistinguishable from the six thousand dollar suit, gold watch wearing televangelist guilting old people out of their last two pennies.

Jesus had one robe after retiring from carpentry, and Paul was a tent maker for the specific purpose of keeping money from tainting the message. They contributed. This is the difference between symbiosis and parasites.

Maybe a bright smile and encouraging words are worth money to some people, but I always thought that was the bare minimum requirement for being a decent human being.

On the plus side, the food and tea is really good, the bus is very nice, and the weather and countryside is wonderful. We've seen giant smoking craters, herds of zebra and gazelle, and a flock of thousands of white flamingo looking birds. Herds of goats, sheep, and cattle are sprinkled across this peaceful countryside.

The people are all incredibly friendly and smile very easily. They do look at me like I'm the first white person they've ever seen, or more probably the first half-white/half-Asian they've ever seen. So far it's a strong possibility as I haven't even seen a single other remotely white person since we landed and left the blonde hair, blue eyed, Brussels flight. I believe I read that there's maybe 1% non-Africans in Kenya, including Arabs, Indians, and Europeans.

If I'm to believe the Asian hysteria and African warnings, I'll be stabbed for $5 worth of Kenyan shillings(KES or /=) if I'm outside the gates even one minute after dark. Apparently white skin is the color of money to locals. I suspect this is yet another case of a few incidents reflecting poorly on an entire subsection of the society, but seeing as I'm literally the only even partially white male I've seen anywhere, I'm not about to take my chances.