My Africa Trip - 8

Chronicles of 6/4/11

The towel defense has failed me. Like clockwork the unyielding horde of maggot-assed crawler wasps attacked at 4am. I jumped as the distinctive tickle of their prickly legs on my back matched the buzzing sound of their ineffectual wings. What the hell do they want?

Luckily I caught most of them still struggling through the towel. Dozens more died by my frantic foot stomping and yet they continued to breach forth out of the dark cracks. I know they saw many of their best friends get crushed and smeared across the ground. I'm sure they could hear the ultra sonic cries for help, but yet they continued forward into my righteous slaughter.

I finally plugged enough holes to buy enough time to grab a bucket of soapy water from the bathroom and pour it over the towel. This created a suffocating wall that finally stemmed the insect tide.

Later, when we left, outside the door, there was a whole line of them still waiting to get in. So creepy.

Sometime during breakfast, (I didn't eat) I found out my step-mom Sophia told Sarah not to tell us a REM meeting was going on during the time we were out here so that we would feel obligated to go in return for Sarah's help. I absolutely hate backing out of my commitments, but I nearly quit REM right then and there.

On the bus trip from the place we were staying to the church, I was trying to at least get clarity through Katie's Korean translation. The confusion was thick, and I was so over it.

At the very least I would be able to handle getting some food during lunch break. I could get some for the Lordwar kids at the church school where the REM was being held, but there was a huge resistance to the idea of simply dropping off food for the even poorer kids in Lokichar. Essentially it was okay to expect me to waste my entire time in Turkana helping them, listening to the director's snide sarcasm about my idea to help w/ water wells for people having trouble getting enough water. Hoping they could spare the smallest of time at a place that was literally on the way back to Nairobi for the kids of the very same people they were trying to preach about how wonderful Jesus is was too much to expect. This was after I had been told several times that there would be 'plenty of time' to do exactly what I was asking about.

My immediate family recently sent me several high and enlightened messages about spiritual growth and 'no expectations', but Jesus didn't suffer lies and hypocrisy this much.

I was done. If they couldn't spare the smallest of time to just stay out of my way, then I was not going to finish the REM. The excuse was that the student missionaries that were with us needed to get back to school on Monday, and we couldn't spare any time for these kids.

I think some of them heard me because they broke into loud shout prayers and speaking in tongues (or Korean, I couldn't tell).

I swear that so often many Koreans' love of status annoys me to no end. They care more about the appearance of riches than actually being rich, more about the appearance of generosity than actual generosity, and the appearance of piety than actual piety.

Sarah, I have a huge amount of respect for. She came out here by herself when her church wouldn't support her. Only when she showed the good things she was doing to help people did they send their support in the form of these formulaic REM meetings. Oh how I wish I had come during a time when there was no REM meeting here to waste my time and work for these kids.

The director of this REM meeting rubbed me the wrong way in so many different aspects. She MUST be called "Director". Fine. She MUST have the loudest mic regardless of her tendency to avoid being on key. Okay. She must play the keyboard regarless of significant inability. Alright I get it. It's your show. Don't scream and cry and sing about how much you love Jesus when you won't spare a couple hours, at most, to allow someone else to feed the hungry!

After a few minutes of wailing and jabbering from the Korean females in the front of the bus, Sarah comes to the back of the bus where I'm muttering and trying to get an idea of what's going on from Katie's translation. She says, "God has told me, 'everything will be fine'. OK?"

What does that mean?

I may believe it but real people have real logistics to deal with while others hang on to fuzzy platitudes.

Apparently that meant that we would go to the bank after we dropped off everyone else at the church, then go buy food. By the way, we frequently needed to visit the bank as we tried to avoid carrying 10 times the national average yearly income on our yellow, weaponless persons. I still had no idea where or how we'd get the food to Lokichar but we were going nonetheless.

As luck or providence would have it, we happened to meet a woman also attending the REM, named Jael. She was a very upright, noble looking woman in a dark blue dress. She overheard me explaining my issues of delivering food to Lokichar to the driver. She explained that a Lokichar stop wouldn't take a couple hours off our trip. It was but 5 minutes off the main road and we would just need to talk to a teacher from Lokichar to handle the supplies we would be leaving. Katie mentioned that there were women from Lokichar in her table group. The driver said this sounded ridiculously simple and was totally on board with doing this when we headed back to Nairobi.

Jael led us to a wholesaler who we bought out. He only had 20 boxes, which was about $40. Next logistical problem...where to get more food to actually buy? I bought out all his supply of 5 liter juice concentrate too amid objections that this was plenty. These people are terrible at math. I watched Sarah count out 1000KES from only four 200KES bills. I literally had to explain how there are FIVE 200/= bills in 1000.

I was only getting started.

We were running late so we headed back to the church. My team had already started their discussion, and my boy, Benjamin, was running assistant. I had no idea what I'd missed but it didn't matter. These were a bunch of pastors and I could write a children's book with how simple these concepts were. The amazing part is that Rev. Lee can go on and on for hours about such simple ideas. She, herself, even claims the concepts of salvation were meant for the simplest among us to understand. Anyways, enough of that.

This was the last day and I was in full mission mode. It was good to finally see the actual boxes of biscuits for the first time. I started calculating costs and delivery space. I was drawing diagrams, calculating the free space in the bus, and scribbling conversion equations all over my notebook. I found out that we had enough money to get so much food we couldn't possibly fit all the hundreds of boxes I wanted to get on the fully loaded bus without the 'Director' and others sitting uncomfortably on these boxes for a bumpy 3 hour drive. That was if I could even eventually get a last second agreement to stop at Lokichar. I couldn't get a last day guarantee. I was through taking chances with these people.

We gave the first boxes and juice we bought to Naomi's care for the Lordwar kids. For all the trouble, and incredible waste of money and time, at least one person seemed to appreciate it.

I was no longer waiting on breaks. I immediately went to Naomi, who was usually busy with meal preparations or watching/taking care of kids. She was one person I felt I could trust to help without constant self concern or prior obligations getting in the way. After several days of frustration and broken trust, this was immensely refreshing. I was constantly on the lookout for people not only genuinely looking to help the less fortunate despite no personal gain, but actually able to deliver that help.

Sarah definitely has the heart for the former, but with her pulled by obligations to REM, she was proving unreliable for the latter. Raph, one of the very awesome African missionaries that's come to Turkana for the express purpose of helping kids with Sarah before, mentioned that all the other trips were exactly like what we were hoping to do here. Ugh! That does not help my sour feelings toward REM and Sophia's deception.

Naomi understood my issue about delivery to Lokichar and immediately said she'd talk to her colleges and see what she could find out.

On my way back to the church, Rael met me outside the entrance and pulled me around a corner. She had changed from her usual dress to a bright yellow shirt and pants today and her hair looked a bit more slicked. I must say it was working for her. Essentially she came out and rather boldly said she "want(ed) to go with me." Go where? "Wherever you live. Wherever you go." What?! She wanted to stay with me? In Nairobi, in America? "Wherever you live."

Not expected. I awkwardly chuckled at the complimentary proposal and said, "I don't think my girlfriend would be okay with that." Actually, at first, I think I awkwardly said I'd have to "check with my girlfriend" because with her heavy accent and broken English I wasn't totally sure she wasn't just sick of staying at the church, sleeping on the ground, as many of the other attendees were.

When it became more clear, I couldn't help but try and get more info about her, if only to deflect while I processed a rather personally unique, life experience. It turns out she's 26, married at 19, has 3 kids, and is a teacher in Lokichar! It was all hard to believe about this rail thin, beautiful girl.

It was then I told her about my plans for Lokichar and how I was needing someone who taught there to handle the food for the children.

Focus on the mission! Don't stare at the bright eyes!

She was amenable. Excellent! Things were finally starting to happen.

Stop thinking about the smile. You love Katie!

Around this time, Naomi had gathered Jael from earlier, and Bishop Manje, who seemed eager to help. Bishop Manje and his wife, I later found out, moved to Turkana from Nairobi and started the church there connected with the school. They are really amazing people and seem to genuinely have a generous heart for the suffering of these people.

After filling Manje in on the situation, he jumped on the phone and got a man he knew onto gathering hundreds of biscuit boxes (he pronounced it "bis-kuwits"). He informed me that the man would get back to him in the afternoon if he could procure the abnormal sum.

Lunch had already rolled around. I was anxious and tired of disappointment. Rael suggested lunch.

Sure, fine.

When we went to the line all the the food was already gone. Rael missed lunch because she was with me trying to handle the food situation. I signaled her to follow me and I went to the small house where the special team member food was kept. As I knew it would be, it was still plentiful. I filled a bowl to overflowing, left the house, then out of site of everyone, gave her mine. She seemed to think we would share, but I certainly wasn't going to eat anything now. She claimed my lack of meat eating was the cause of my dry lips. I'd never heard of anything like that before.

I took the opportunity to grill her about the situation in Lokichar. 7 schools there, 1 serving of porridge a day for the kids, 2 of the schools have 350 children each, so there's more than the original 700 I thought, and she teaches the little ones.

About this time, as usually happens anytime I stand still around here, other people start to gather around me. A couple guys from Lokichar, and a few others I don't really know but somehow know me join in on the conversation. I think I'm somewhat of a white/yellow novelty. One of the guys from Lokichar is Rael's brother. Apparently this was a perfectly natural time to mention that her brother thinks she should leave Lokichar and marry me. She says this with that cute, half smirking smile she does, and the other guys seem to have no objections to the idea.

I wish I hadn't been so dumbfounded. I wish I hadn't deflected, as I really wanted to figure out what she had in mind. Did she really not like her husband? Was he going to be cool with her bailing with the kids or did she plan on abandoning them? Was such open talk of divorce so common? So very curious. She obviously had no concept of the immigration issues involved.

As ridiculous as the idea was to leave Katie, I would be lying if I said I wasn't the slightest bit tempted. If she were in the states and I wasn't with Katie, she'd be marriageable, but also very probably not interested in me and my upper-middle class income. She'd certainly be worth a lot more than the 32 goats that were paid for her first marriage.

She asked if I was going to marry Katie. I said, "very probably". This pleased Katie greatly after I had relayed the tale and basked in my "I told you so" moment. She had a very hard time appreciating having a boyfriend that gets hit on by other women. I think it's a trust and insecurity issue. I can certainly relate.

The rest of the REM meeting went terribly slowly and finishing it dragged on. The only thing keeping me awake was determination for the mission and finding a view to stare at that didn't have super-model thin, 20 year old moms whipping out their giant, beautiful breasts and trying to drown their baby with them. There were more exposed breasts here than at a PETA protest.

The REM ended at 4pm, the public bus to Lokichar could take the food as well as the attendees from there at 6pm. Bishop Manje said they would go under the care of a friend of his from Lokichar, Moses, and Rael would be there as well. Things could still work out.

Finally REM ends! Everyone wants pictures and contact info. I don't talk to the Bishop until 4:45pm. He's handling things with many people. We're ready to go finally, but the bus is gone. I have no idea why as we rented his services for the entire week. I suggest the only other form of transportation I'm aware of for the distance; taxis. Like a white-collared super hero he says, "there's no time, we must take the motorcycles!"

Up to this point I thought there were just a bunch of roving motorcycle gangs. All this time the dudes hanging out on bikes were in fact one man taxes.

Bishop Manje, Katie and I jump on to the back of 3 and the drivers sped us off to town. Why I don't own a motorcycle is beyond me. Damn those things are fun.

We buy the food. Now these are shady shanty shops. The storeowner's wife, off to the side, is loudly counting with me as I lay down bill by bill. There's a small hill of rice bags and about six guys just chilling on them, staring at us from 5ft away. They've all seen the secret kangaroo pouch I hide all my valuables in and could murder/rape me and katie with little trouble or simply never deliver the food. I would have zero recourse at this point and could only trust the Bishop's word that these people were legitimate.

I'm barely hanging on here. How are they getting on the bus? Who's going to be responsible after that? Do they need a ticket? Is the large amount of food going to cost extra to ship?

Bishop Manje agreed with my concerns. "To the bus stations!" We jumped back on the patiently waiting bikes and sped off. I literally could have wandered the streets for weeks and never found the bus station in this small town. It was madness fighting chaos that worked only with intelligence.

The bus station was basically a caged booth with a small sign stuffed in a wall by a drainage ditch. It happened to be right next to the restaurant(they call them hotels) we went to the first night we arrived when our bus broke down.

Dozens of people were just sitting about on steps. Some were trying to sell trinkets, woven hand brooms, or bundles of sticks that turned out to be delicious, natural toothbrushes. Others were begging or looking for work.

It was constant hassling, but I've seen the living conditions. A torn scrap of leather sandals is the good life here for many. Many have callused heels like a worn hoof. I didn't see a single edible plant miles before we even got close to this desolate hellhole. Later I asked why they don't go to nicer areas south. The answer I got was they get attacked and killed because of tribal warfare. Sam Kineson's idea to "get them out of the fucking desert" sounds great until you find out the original racism happens to be black on black crime. Sure there's fighting over water and religion, but there's recent fighting over nothing but history. Nairobi is nicer but those who are able to make it that far often end up filling slums for lack of jobs. I can't really begrudge them anything.

Ten men fought over who would get to load the biscuit boxes onto the bus. I think two got the job and were probably paid 50/=(about $0.60). One looked at me and said he was hungry. His ribbed chest and sunken cheeks said so long before he did. I gave him the last of the peanut candies Katie had brought. I told him to share with the other staring, hungry faces.

Moses had finally showed up, tickets bought, and everyone was paid. Mission Accomplished?

I didn't want to be Bush, thumbs up on an aircraft carrier 8 years before Bin Laden was killed, but I certainly felt a little better. I made sure the Lordwar kids got a hundred more boxes and promised Naomi I'd see about books. We didn't yet get the chairs for Lokichar kids like we'd planned, but hopefully an extra lousy biscuit or two a day helps them bare the rocks they learn on a little longer until we do. I'm still concerned about having to rely on Sarah for that later. Kenya is largely off the internet and gathering information with the language barriers is proving debilitating.

We returned to the church and the three riders asked for essentially a couple bucks each for taking us 3 places and waiting at each. I teased that a 3 hour bus ride to Lokichar would cost the same, but then handed over the money. They had big smiles when I didn't haggle, so apparently that was a good deal for them. I suspect most people here live off less than $2/day.

Shortly afterward there was someone yelling about the bus to Lokichar. Does it ever end? Apparently not.

I ran across the street and down the dusty road a bit to where the bus was doing this stop-n-go thing while a dozen people were yelling in Swahili(probably) and shoving each other to get on. I yelled for Moses at the windows and he finally came, leaning over 2 other people to wave excitedly at me. I asked him if everything was alright with a thumbs up. I'm not sure he understood a word I said, but he seemed so positive I felt reassured.

Pastor John was rushing 3 Lokichar women to the bus. Later I found out they might not have been able to make it that night if they didn't make this particular bus. It was literally packed 2 people to a seat and the aisle already looked full. Rael was among them.

One last handshake, a knowing look, and a sad goodbye and she was shoved on to that huge, overstuffed, sardine can.

Jon and I talked for a bit. He's a really good guy whom I think I judged a bit harshly from my first impression. I mentioned considering going to Lokchar to see the job done and he thought it was a great idea and wanted to come too. The group bus could pick us up tomorrow and Jon knew people in Lokichar that could accommodate us. He mentioned that one of the women there was his student who when they met was only at a 4th grade learning level even though she was a young adult age.

I finally decided against it as I didn't want to leave Katie alone to all the packing.

As it turns out, we both regret that decision now.