"hear" kenya

My junior class is reading Mark Twain's The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.  A relatively simple plot, the real challenge when you pick up Huck Finn is mastering a reading of Twain's dialogue.  His ability to capture specific American dialects is legendary.  And daunting, I've found, for many a high school student.

I've taught this unit three times now in my American Literature class, but this is the first time I thought to have my students try their hands at capturing dialect on paper.  In this international and incredibly diverse environment, I realized that these kids have such incredible ears for language and dialect, but just have maybe never had an opportunity to write this good stuff down.  

So here was the assignment: Like Mark Twain, consider the unique and varied people in your life and model a character after someone you know.  As you write a short story or "chapter" from this character's story, make sure to write in a way that emphasizes their specific dialect and unique way of speaking.  They should be believable people with believable stories.  Draw your reader into their lives.

I'm getting such a huge kick out of these.  Here's just one of the stories I received.  This was written by a Korean 11th grade student who has lived in Mombasa and Nairobi for most of his life.  Read it out loud, and I swear you'll hear Kenya.

Haro, my name is Kamau Njoroge.  I am 9 years old andi I go to St. Peetah’s Primary School in Dagoretti.  I am in crass 3.  Ruby, my teacha, is vere vere bahd yani she does not ret talk andi every day we have sreeping time, but in de middle we want to go to de toiret but then she does not ret us, we always say “Teacha, me am pressed,” andi then she willer ret you.

Yestahday, me andi my friends were praying footi ball andi we came to crass late in de morning.  Teacha was waiting in front of de doah, she called owah names in front of de crass.  “Kamau, Omondi, Otieno, come heeah.”  Andi we always say, “Teacha, what did I do?”  Andi she told Omondi to go outside andi bring a nice stick, andi then Omondi brought it, she asked us how many times we wanted to get beaten andi we always say, “Teacha I willer nevah do it again.  Teacha, have mahsee teacha plrease.”  But owah teacha has no mahsee.  We know it but we just try it, you know.  So me, I always say, “Teacha, me I want to get beaten just once—just once nicely andi freshly.”  Haya!  So now we will hold de boahd, but then this is not owah fahst time getting beaten, to we have already put some papah in owah buttocks.  

Me, I catch a ma three going home—I just rive vere crose so it’s onry ten bob.  You see, when I go home I go outside andi pray footi ball with this absorutely nice ball me andi my friends made with paypah bags that wah on de street andi then I go inside de house when de sahn goes down. 

At home I have one small brothah called Kinanjui.  He is vere stubborn vere yani you cannot rie about that you know, he always goes andi tells Mummy, “Mummy, you know… you know… Kamau has eaten de shoogah you saved foah de visitahs you wah going to have on Sato.”  He is a pure mshamba.  Pure.  Last time he was arguing with me about if you brush yoah teeth aftah you have eaten oah befoah you have eaten, andi then he went andi told Daddy, “Daddy, Kamau has badi mannas.  Can you believe that he brushes his teeth aftah he has eaten instead of brushing befoah has eaten sindio?”  Even that one Daddy cannot agree, but that day, Daddy just funggaed his mdomo andi din’t say anything.

Now when we sreep, theyah ah vere many mosquitoes, so we put sahm Doom.  In Omondi’s house, they don’t have Doom.  Us, in owah house we have Doom.  Daddy will always put Doom because he does not want us to get malaria.  Heeah, malaria is so common that people will go to de doctor andi say that they have malaria on their regs.  How foorish ah they?  Us Kenyans, we have so much potential but we don’t use it. 

Ah, now me, I have reft these guys.

confessions in unfamiliar territory

I have a confession to make. 

It isn’t something I’m proud of.  And I may even regret sharing this, as I realize it may cause others to misunderstand, worry about, or even be ashamed of me.

Nevertheless, it’s something I feel compelled to share, because my acknowledgement of this problem in my life seems to finally be changing me.  So here goes.

When it comes to truly loving others, I am a complete fool and a veritable failure.  I do not say this to gain your sympathy or encouraging word, to have you tell me that I am a good friend or to recall an event in which you felt loved because of me.  Please don’t misunderstand me.  I’m not saying this out of misplaced guilt or regret or despair, but out of a compulsion I feel to speak this truth.  I don’t know how to love.  I do a terrible job at it. I don’t know that I even fully understand “love.” 

For the past six months, I’ve been here in Nairobi – a familiar place filled with the joys and challenges I’ve learned to expect.  Joys: teaching a lovely bunch of bright, enthusiastic young people; sharing God’s Word through my everyday interactions with literature and the Arts; learning something new every day; sharing my life with others; travel; wildlife; sunshine; fresh coffee; finding myself.  Challenges: a burdensome set of responsibilities and expectations; cultural strife; power outages and slow internet; difficult students; the reality that there’s just never enough time; and tension in relationships.  Most of these are things I’ve faced before.  Nothing new.  Nothing out of the ordinary.

But it’s the “tension in relationships” that has been a common thread throughout not only my time as a missionary teacher in Kenya, but throughout my life as a whole.  Communication struggles.  Unmet expectations.  Distance.  A lack of depth and intimacy. Feeling I’m not worthwhile.  Feeling there’s something terribly wrong with me. 

For years, I’ve been punishing myself for some felt failure and sensed inadequacy.  I need to change.  People don’t want this person.  They want something else.  All I need to do is become that person.  And somehow, even in these seasons of self-abuse, I made room to blame everyone else for this same failure.  They need to change.  Perhaps I don’t want them.  I’ve done nothing wrong – it’s their problem.  Screw this.  Schizophrenic at best, pathological at worst.  I’ve even found myself defining who I am by these broken relationships.  I was the first grade outcast.  The homebody.  The pathetically shy middle schooler.  The “prude,” misunderstood, and abused high school student.  The forgotten and unappreciated, albeit “nice” collegiate.  What pride.  What disdain.  What ugliness there has been in this.

What had happened in my heart?  How had it become so fractured and still so calloused?  I looked around and saw brokenness, felt brokenness, tasted brokenness.  And all the while, I’m worrying about them, and I’m worrying about me. 

To be honest, it only occurred to me in a very vague and detached sense to consider Christ as having any role in all of this.  I knew He loved me.  I knew I trusted Him.  I knew He’d saved me.  I knew He wanted relationship with me.  I knew He wanted me to love Him back.  But I looked at the relationships in my life – both whole as well as severed – and only desired to be affirmed by those relationships.  Bottom line: Christ wasn’t enough for me.  And all that knowledge didn’t change the reality of this problem in my heart.

This school year began the same way as most years.  I had high hopes that this year would be different.  I was refreshed from a summer away from the challenges in my life.  I felt filled.  I felt spiritual.  I felt ready to make the necessary changes in my approach to relationships to ensure that nothing could possibly go wrong. 

You can imagine my disappointment when nothing changed.  In fact, things seemed to get worse.  The same problems arose in my relationships with the people I lived with, worked with, and served alongside.  And the problems I’d faced in the past seemed to be amplified by these new relationships.  How did this happen?  I anguished. 

So I worked on letting go.  I did my best to assess my relationships and acknowledge and take responsibility for the aspects of brokenness that I had contributed to those relationships.  I sought forgiveness, and then I tried not to hurt so much.  It was a good enough plan.  Fix what you can, if it changes things, great, if not, not my fault anymore. 

Then January struck hard.  Mid-way through the school year, my plan didn’t seem to be working any longer.  I found myself constantly disappointed, consistently frustrated, and even angry and bitter about my lot.  I reasoned that, well, with so many broken relationships in my life here in Nairobi (and some of the best ones about to close with these individuals' coming departure in June), perhaps this is God giving me the green light to move on.  Closure.  Nothing to grieve, because nothing’s lost.  Just moving on.  It didn’t seem right to me that a community filled with Christians could be this messed up and bruised.  Weren’t we all called here for the same purpose?  Wasn’t our being here supposed to be about serving Christ, and nothing else? 

Oh, no. 

It’s been in this season, at this point in my life, nearly twenty-five years into this journey, that I’ve finally realized that even though I knew all of these things about community and relationships and purpose and calling and love… I have not sincerely believed them.   If I had, things would be different.  Not necessarily in my circumstances.  But certainly in my attitude and heart. 

My heart breaks at the knowledge that my life has been that of a foolish harlot, chasing and lusting after what cannot possibly satisfy.  Why would I ever seek the approval and love of man over that of a Holy God? 

I have spent years desperately running around seeking love, affirmation, and relationship.  I’ve grieved lost opportunities and battled against "difficult" people.  I sought my meaning and value in racking up quantity- and quality-based personal relational statistics.  I have exerted so much energy in this futile search.  When all along, it’s never had anything to do with what I was able to get out of those relationships with others.  It’s never been about finding my worth in them.  My entire life, I’ve missed opportunities to bless and honor the God who knows and loves and saved me through loving others.  Unconditionally.  Without expectation.  Because it’s only an expression of my heart wanting more of His. 

I’m not naïve in thinking that this revelation has instantly healed my heart and changed me completely.  This is going to take work.  Reckless abandon.  Abandoning everything I thought I knew and once cared about.  Abandoning the notion that anything is ever only about me.  Abandoning who I once was.  This is a radical, dangerous, and truly reckless idea.  But I sincerely believe that if it’s only for the Lord that I should seek to love others, then it’s only through His guidance and sustaining might that I can have any chance of success. 

I think it’ll be worth it.

I wish that I could personally meet with each of you loved and dear ones that I have failed in loving, and seek your forgiveness and work to restore what was lost or broken.  I hope you all know that while I’m still learning what love really is, and what its value and purpose are and what transformative power it holds… it’s my sincerest desire to know this Love and learn to offer it whole-heartedly, without restraint, and unconditionally. 

Please continue to pray for me as I live my life here that I might truly love my students, my co-workers, my roommates, my neighbors, the people in this city and nation, and my treasured family and friends back home in a way that seeks only to honor my heavenly Father.  And that through that outpouring, I might bless Him and bless them as well.  I'll pray the same for you...


Added February 4, after realizing that Oswald Chambers might say it even better when he examines the life of Paul:
When we are born again by the Spirit of God, our testimony is based solely on what God has done for us, and rightly so. But that will change and be removed forever once you “receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you . . .” (Acts 1:8). Only then will you begin to realize what Jesus meant when He went on to say, “. . . you shall be witnesses to Me . . . .” Not witnesses to what Jesus can do— that is basic and understood— but “witnesses to Me . . . .” We will accept everything that happens as if it were happening to Him, whether we receive praise or blame, persecution or reward. No one is able to take this stand for Jesus Christ who is not totally compelled by the majesty of His power. It is the only thing that matters, and yet it is strange that it’s the last thing we as Christian workers realize. Paul said that he was gripped by the love of God and that is why he acted as he did. People could perceive him as mad or sane-he did not care. There was only one thing he lived for— to persuade people of the coming judgment of God and to tell them of “the love of Christ.” This total surrender to “the love of Christ” is the only thing that will bear fruit in your life. And it will always leave the mark of God’s holiness and His power, never drawing attention to your personal holiness.