God. Loves. Irony.

He’s pulling out all the stops.  I think the Lord must have something big He needs my attention for, because it’s just too ironic that everything could get this way without there being some cosmic plan involved.

In the midst of all the new stressors that have been introduced into my life this year, somehow there seems to always remain a little bit of room left for some new problem to pop up.  It’s like those silly teen slasher films.  You think it can’t possibly get any worse, and then, wait.. yes.. there’s always room for more ketchup wounds and screaming adolescents.  The nation-wide power and water outages, for instance, I’ve gotten used to.  But now, it seems like everything at our house is breaking: our instant shower heater, our washing machine, our break lights on the car, etc.  The power kept surging this morning in my room and downstairs, and I seriously thought to myself that something was going to explode.  Our house helper does everyone’s laundry except for mine, but I think that’s probably because she’s nervous to do mine anymore because on her first try, she ruined seven or eight items of clothing (they’re permanently dyed a splotchy purple/gray).  Everyone’s sick at school- this nasty cold/flu where everyone’s nose is runny and they’re coughing and sneezing and losing their voices.  I haven’t gotten it yet, but I’m sure it’s coming.  Like I’ve mentioned before, I’m teaching more courses than I had last year because one of the newly hired teachers and her family are still support-raising back in the States and the new word out is that she’s probably not going to make it at all.  I’ve roped myself into directing two plays second semester instead of one, we’ve increased the size of the yearbook by 30% from last year, and I’ve got a batch of smarties in my AP English class who really deserve to do well on their test in May.  

It’s been one doozy of a quarter.

But all of that came to a climax this past Friday night.  My roommate had had some of her senior French girls over to the house for a sleepover.  I’d stayed up in my room for a while reading a book, but joined them after an hour or so.  They’re great girls and it was fun to spend some time outside of the academic school environment.  We were talking about their post-graduation plans (turns out one of them is even looking at my alma mater, Miami University, which was a fun surprise) and how their senior year is going so far, just kind of catching up.  Each of the girls who had come was also on my yearbook staff, and our director had just given me a copy of the yearbook from the NICS school in Bangdung, Indonesia, and so I went back upstairs to bring it back for the girls to look at to get some inspiration for their section staff.  As I came back down, I missed the step before the landing and did this little human-accordion stunt as I rolled over the outside of my right foot.  I imagine it looked pretty funny to the girls down in the living room, and I popped right back up and was laughing, too.  

But a little later on, I realized that it hurt pretty badly, even with ice on it, so when the doctor dad of one of the girls came to pick her up, the girls asked that he come and check it out.  I’m a terrible wuss when it comes to doctors, and so even though the pain wasn’t too bad, I ended up in this crazy crying/laughing fit with a whole circle of students and a parent around to witness the tragedy.  He recommended that I get an x-ray in the morning and told me to lay low until the next day.  So at 9:30 am Saturday morning, Jennifer P drove me over to a clinic to get the x-ray with one of our sophomore students, sister to one of the senior girls and daughter to the doctor, as a tag-along.  She seemed really excited to find out whether her teacher had broken a bone and was making predictions that I’d need a cast and asked if she could sign it.  Silly girl.  Turns out, though, after an hour and a half at this junky little clinic, I got my x-ray and report that I had indeed broken my foot.  Spiral fracture to my 5th metatarsal.  Awesome.

So Dr. Joe had my other roomie, Becca, and his older daughter head out to the chemist to pick up the stuff to make a plaster cast and the whole family helped out in the process of plastering me up in our back yard.  It was pretty comical, really.  The senior daughter held an umbrella over me so that the plaster wouldn’t set too quickly in the sun while the dad was sarcastically teasing me the whole time and the sophomore daughter drew smiley faces on my toes with wet plaster and made a big ol’ mess, delighting that she was finally not the one who’d broken something and needed a cast.  

The crazy part was that the whole process ended up costing me 2000 ksh (1000 for the x-ray, 1000 for the cast supplies)- about $27.  And I never once even pulled out my insurance card.  Wild.  So the rest of the weekend, I pretty much sat around telling this same story, eating chocolate and working on school stuff.  The doctor’s wife, Sue, who coincidentally works at WNS as our middle school English teacher sent over a borrowed copy of some British made-for-TV film about a woman who loves the Austen novel Pride and Prejudice and finds Elizabeth Bennet in her bathroom one day and switches lives with her.  Wildly entertaining, but a little shocking as well.  My discipler, Kara, came over with soup and a Betty Crocker brownie box mix Sunday afternoon, too.  I guess there are some perks that come along with the whole being an invalid thing.

But I’ve got to admit that this whole thing has just got me mad right now.  I’m ticked.  I’ve never broken anything before in my life, I’ve never been all that sick, and I only just had my first cavity ever a year ago.  I kind of can’t believe that it’s now of all times and here of all places that I have to go and break my foot.  I feel so inconvenienced and helpless and pathetic.  I’ve got to hop around with this huge thing on my foot and hobble around on crutches for six weeks.  Our campus is really hilly, and there are stairs everywhere, so I know that’ll prove to be pretty challenging.  We’d planned on a trip to Mombasa in a month, but it would be just silly to try to go to the beach with a cast.  No more driving lessons, either.  I’m a lump.  So frustrating.

And yet, I can’t help thinking that this is just way too much happening at the same time for it to be purely accidental.  I mean.. seriously?  On top of everything else already making life complicated, I’ve got to gimp around for a month and a half just because I missed a step on a staircase I’ve run up and down in the dark before without hurting myself at all?  I think I must be one of God’s priority targets for training in patience without whining, because He’s giving me way too many opportunities for practice to have it be mere coincidence.  I’m either going to become the most annoying person on the planet for the poor people around me, or the next time you see me you’ll encounter a saint.  Boy, I hope it’s the latter.  

I’m hoping this is the last trial He’s got planned for me for a while, though.  Did you hear that, Jesus?  Hold off for a little while until I figure out how to take a shower with a plaster cast up to my knee without getting it wet.  Then you can throw me something else.  Promise.  In the meantime, I suppose there’s humor to be found in it all.  I’m trying my darndest not to get all cranky and sorry for myself, and I’m sure that a week of students gaping and giggling at their teacher poking around campus on crutches should help me not to take myself too seriously.  So here goes.  

Introspection

In all honesty, I never really considered myself a geek before I came to Kenya, but I think that it’s dawned on me that that’s exactly what I am. Maybe some of you had that figured out already, but this is a new thing for me. Sure, I remember my middle school days of people nerves and anxiety and my mild case of OCD in maintaining my perfect all A plus streak and how people in my classes strategically placed themselves around me so that they could copy off of my homework. It’s probably because of that season of my life that I find something lovable about those kids who desperately maneuver through their high school classes, fretting over every 97% that could have been a 100%. Granted, though, most of the time that’s just kind of annoying. That used to be me. But this is different. I have discovered this component of my personality that, while completely disconnected from intelligence and/or work ethic, I believe could and should place me in the geek realm.

I love learning. So much. I’m finding that I miss my college days less and less for the social memories (that still stings a bit, though) and more and more because I just miss the whole student thing. Those of you who know me well probably wouldn’t label me as the brainy one, or even as the deeply motivated and ambitious one. But I’ll tell you one thing I know I’m good at: when I learn something new.. something that’s wise and rich and deep and interesting.. it strikes a nerve in me. I can’t help but apply that new little bit of truth and see what it does.

So the other day, when I sat down with our director to map out a plan for how I can meet the ACSI requirement that all certified school teachers develop their Philosophy of Christian Education, I looked at the book list of required and optional reading and, even though I’ve got far too much on my plate already this year, I actually got a little excited about the project. We’ve got four required readings, and then there was this list of several titles to choose between. I quickly skimmed over the required reading list and moved on to the optional ones. At the very bottom was listed Nancy Pearcey’s Total Truth: Liberating Christianity from its Cultural Captivity. And I don’t know what it was about that title, but for some reason, I was sold. I went to our school library to check see if Bwana Joel had it on the shelves, and.. surprise, surprise.. it’s by far the thickest book in the bunch. But I’ll tell you what, I’ve taken this book home and I’ve had so many geeked-out moments in the past few days, it’s silly. I’ve written before about all of my efforts to introduce the concept of Worldview into my classroom, and my desire to implement Biblical truth as much as possible into every moment in my teaching. This book, I’ve got to say, has just become such an affirmation and encouragement in what I’m working to do here at WNS.

I’ve got such a burden for the intellectual and spiritual vitality of my students. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard the statistics about Christian students who leave their Christian homes and Christian schools and go out into the world and get bush-whacked by the intellectual community and all of its misdirection and completely abandon their faith. Forget the wild parties and alcohol.. I’m more concerned about the numbing of these students’ minds. And while I continually have to remind myself that I am not responsible for the spiritual lives of my students - that I am merely responsible to my students in preparing them as best as I can - I’m pulling every trick I’ve got up my sleeve to try to get these kiddos ready for the “real world.” So that’s become my focus. The one thing I think I have to offer each of my students. Worldview 101. A.k.a. “How to think, not what to think.” A.k.a. “You-don’t-have-to-abandon-knowledge-and-reason-to-be-a-Christian-because-God-IS-knowledge-and-reason.”

It’s been pretty fun, too. I’m finishing up my “Utopia, Interrupted” unit with the tenth-graders on William Golding’s Lord of the Flies, and while they’ve apparently been talking about the “Beastie” on the bus and have successfully freaked out the elementary schoolers (can you say “life imitating art?”), I’ve been so pumped to see these kids embrace the ideas of human dignity and depravity, civilization and savagery, and good and evil. They’ve hunted down social, political, moral, and religious allegories successfully in the text and have engaged in several heated debates on the human condition and various philosopher’s views on civilization and mankind. Totally exciting.

My AP students were no doubt surprised, as well, when I brought up American feminist Kate Chopin’s short stories and had the students study, critique, and implement feminist criticism in their discussion and writing. Apparently, I did such a good job of remaining neutral and allowing the kids to make up their own minds about feminism that my students were left wondering amongst themselves which side of the fence their teacher was on. [For those of you wondering why I would think that’s a good thing, remember: “how to think, not what to think” is my mantra.] We’ve since explored Jean Paul Sartre and his “hell is other people” concept through the drama No Exit and the existential worldview popular during WWII.

My micro-class of American Literature students (five wonderful young ladies) has discussed reputation, ethics in law and the administration of punishment, Puritanism and legalism in religion, adultery, and sin at length as we’ve gone through Nathaniel Hawthorne’s romantic masterpiece The Scarlet Letter. We had one particularly interesting discussion in which I asked the girls to write down adjectives which other people in their lives had used to describe them, both good and bad. Some of the anonymous descriptors they handed in? “The ‘good’ one,” “Immodest,” “Goofy,” “Judgmental,” “Hypocritical,” “Racist,” “The ‘future doctor,’” and “Mean.” These have got to be five of the most beautiful, articulate, and dear young women I’ve ever met. And still, in their transparency and brokenness when afforded an opportunity to discuss freely, they amaze me.

Life in Kenya - Nairobi City Stars

I’ve found that getting a glimpse into other ministries here in Nairobi is building my understanding of missions, ministry, and the needs of Kenya in a big way. We’ve attended two of the Nairobi City Stars soccer games in the past month. A few weeks ago, we headed to Nyayo stadium in Nairobi to watch the Stars play the Leopards. The game ended in a scoreless tie, but with all of the stories we heard later, it was difficult to look back upon it as “uninteresting.” Josh and Steve, both American expats here with the U.S.-based ministry organization Ambassadors in Sport, came over to our place after the game with Amy P. and Kenyan friend of theirs. We heard all sorts of insider information about the trials that NCS is facing and the bizarre subculture of Kenyan football. First, Steve, who manages the team, told us how tough financial times have meant that none of the players have received salaries for the past several months. As a player for the team, Josh added that it’s been painful to watch his teammates get kicked out of their homes and run out of money to pay their children’s school fees. Steve said that the management staff is actually really excited about all of the incredible things that are happening through this challenging period, and Josh agreed that many of the players are making tremendous strides in their walks with the Lord. Pretty neat stuff.

And then later, we learned that at their last game against the Leopards, which took place at the NCS home stadium in Kawangware, Leopard fans had gotten out of control and pushed the entire fence down. Apparently, the Leopards also employ a witch doctor, who at the Nyayo game, was walking around the field the entire time, shaking a stick (think Rafiki from The Lion King). When one of the NCS players was injured, the Leopard staff told a doctor he couldn’t bring his medical bag on the field because it may contain magical elements that would contaminate the field. At one point, a man associated with the Stars was taken aside and beaten because the Leopard staff thought he was the Stars’ witch doctor. Crazy. Josh and Steve both said that this kind of stuff isn’t all that uncommon in football in Kenya - that other teams have washed their jerseys in some “magical” mixture that they also spread in certain places on the field. We all agreed that if you want to talk “spiritual warfare,” this is the real deal. The Stars aren’t a “Christian” team, but they’re sponsored by some religious organizations, and about half of the players are believers. NCS has been praised by the league for their service efforts in their community (Kawangware is a large slum in the city, second to Kibera, arguably the largest slum in Africa, which is also in Nairobi) and their sportsmanship and high character.

Unimportant, but nevertheless:

• I am completely bummed out about not being in Columbus for a third season of Buckeye football. Friday night, there was a big gathering of people at a WNS family’s home in Karen, and we sat around their big TV and watched a DVD of the Steeler v. Titans game. I can’t tell you how completely mesmerized we all were.. it was a bit pathetic, really, but all of us who miss fall football were appeased, at least for a little while. I heard from a USC fan about our loss the other day Sunday morning at church. Not the best way to hear bad news.
• I think I may be becoming lactose intolerant. One of my new roommates, Jennifer P., isn’t able to handle dairy, and while I’m fully aware that this isn’t something that can be contagious, I’m thinking it might explain a few things. If I’m right, this is terrible news, because it either takes away completely or at least negatively modifies some of the principle items in my diet here: coffee and chai, grilled sandwiches, yoghurt, omelets, and the really yummy gelato at Junction. Bummer.
• I had my first run-in with a dangerous African animal a few weeks ago. While my roommates and I were out enjoying the sun in our "backyard" (which is really just a slab of concrete and some tragic little plants), and out of nowhere, this black beetle with red antennae comes along and squirts acid on my hand. So there was this dime-sized spot on the back of my hand for about a week and a half - originally bright, burning orange, and then it turned into this ugly scab. Bizarre. Nobody can tell me what it was, but I've heard of a similar insect, the "Nairobi Eye" that burns blisters as it walks along your skin. Only in Africa.
• Driving in Nairobi is getting more and more insane. Every morning, on our drive to work, we are run completely off the road by buses, matatus, and other large vehicles at least twice. Saturday night, on our way out of Kawangware from the soccer game, we hit a terrible pile-up at an intersection and chose to try out a new direction. Basically, we discovered the entire city must have gone completely crazy, because everywhere we went, there was out-of-control traffic. We ended up using some questionable dirt roads through alleys and markets that, while they showed us a different and fascinating side of Nairobi, I’m not all that anxious to venture out on again. Kudos to Becca, though, our driver through the chaos, who nearly got hit several times, but only stalled once and ultimately got us home. My favorite moment: Jonathan putting down the camera he’d been using to document the ride and putting his hand on the front of a bus to remind the driver not to hit us. Sometimes, I forget I’m in Africa. It’s nice to have occasional reminders :)