August 14 - Visit to "Journey"

Journey – August 14th

Friday, the 14th, was Pat’s birthday so after spending a good part of the morning in the internet café downstairs we went with her, Daudi, Njeri, and Njeri’s brother Derek to a nice restaurant that had grilled meat that Pat likes. Daudi entertained us with stories of his fear of the ocean and travel stories about his time in Finland that made us laugh. While we were there a friend of Pat’s named Abu stopped by the restaurant and we got a chance to chat with him. He was a really sweet guy who does a lot of work on AIDS and HIV education among youth. He was describing a project he does in the prisons with young men where they use theater to educate and encourage safer sex practices. His work really focuses on de-stigmatizing HIV/AIDS and looking at it as a medical issue and dispel some of the myths that surround it. It was really interesting to talk to him about some of the HIV/AIDS issues – he answered questions like, “Why is there a 20% HIV infection rate in Kisumu but only about 10% in the rest of the country?” His answer – in the western part of Kenya they still practice the tradition of wife inheritance. If a man dies his wife (or wives) go to the brother or next closest male relative. So, if a man had been infected and died and his wife, also presumably infected, gets passed on to a new partner and all of his partners you can understand how the disease can spread faster. He also explained that in Kenya it is still quite common for men to have “side jobs” – meaning mistresses. Because there are still lots of superstitions around AIDS/HIV (the virgin cure is one still alive in some parts) this makes his job of educating people a bit more difficult. We hope to hook up with him when we get back from our Coast trip and maybe peek in on one of his projects. His interest in using theater to engage young people seems like a natural fit with some of the people we work with back at home – if only we could find more ways for people like Abu to share his work. Some of the problems he encounters and the difficulties facing youth are so similar to what we also see in the Bronx.

After the dinner we headed over to the University campus to check out Journey – a band that Njeri and her friend Andrew are part of. Apparently they have a Friday night youth gathering on the campus with music, discussion and dancing for Christian youth. Because they raved so much about it we wanted to see it and also support Njeri and Andrew who were to sing that night. Despite our protests Pat insisted on calling Justus to come pick us up from the restaurant and take us to the band practice as he was to pick up the rental car that evening. We felt that it was unfair to ask him to transport us around since we weren’t paying him to do so and because it was his last night with his family before we headed east for our big Coast trip. We waited for a long time for him and it was getting late so we finally took a taxi. Njeri was annoyed but we were secretly relieved to not make Justus come all the way there, pick us up and take us somewhere else and wait for us. (NOTE: we have had several conversations with Pat and Njeri about this and feel that even though they explain this as part of the culture we feel very uncomfortable treating Justus like a servant there to do whatever we say whenever we say. Though it is true we are paying him, on this particular day we were not and felt it rude to even assume that he would leave his home to drive across town and drive us around.) When we arrived we looked around and saw that two of the seven rows of chairs are filled with Americans; we were a bit surprised as this is not part of the tourist circuit as far as we knew.

After four or five songs the white American minister that helps to organize Journey, Brent (the same guy who spoke at the church service the first day), got up to introduce a guy who was going to introduce a guy to speak – Brent mentions he doesn’t really know either of them but welcomes them to share. The first guy, gets up and gives a shout out to all the Americans in the house; weird. Then he starts talking about how he’s so happy to be in “Africa” and “Africa is so great” and this is his second time in “this great country, Africa”. Then he starts describing his important work here in “Africa.” He’s here on a two week trip to Kibera to run a basketball camp. He tells the story of how he found Jesus after losing him for two years in his youth and how now he uses basketball to help others find Jesus too. While we didn’t mind his quest to get to know Jesus well and it didn’t strike us as odd that he chose basketball to do it, we did think it a little weird to come all the way to “Africa” to try to convert people living in the largest slum in Kenya to Christianity and he didn’t even think to call the country by its name. He wanted it to be clear that we not think that basketball was part of the religion but a way to connect to the young people so they’d be more willing to open their hearts to Jesus and get to know him and accept him as their savior. This hit us most because Kenya is a primarily Christian nation and Kibera, the slum where he was working, was in Nairobi, which is overwhelmingly Christian. Why did he assume that these children didn’t know who Jesus was or had never been to church?

The guy quickly ended his explanation of his trip because he wanted to introduce one of the youth pastors that was with him who was to give us a sermon. The young man started out his sermon trying to tell jokes but the humor, a very American and sarcastic humor, was lost on the audience though we chuckled. He also spoke fast in a strong Midwestern accent and many visibly strained to follow him. He had a powerpoint presentation to go with it with different bible passages flashing on the screen. He asked everyone to take out their bibles, about 10 of the Americans reached in their pocket for their bibles and the other six pulled out their iPhones with an app for Bible passages I guess. It was weird to see, only about 2 or 3 of the Kenyan youth had bibles with them. He began to deliver a sermon with the title “How to live a good life”. He jumped from one passage to the next, trying desperately to connect them all to the theme and peppering his sermon with personal anecdotes of a mean boss who he didn’t like but served with a servants heart as the bible told him to do until one day the boss was fired. The sermon was still going on after 20 minutes when Njeri finally decided it was time to go. As we walked out the Kenyan young people looked literally bored to sleep (some were in fact) and the poor young guy, who sensed it, kept trying to explain what he was saying. We felt bad for everyone in the room, including him.

Leaving Journey we were a little bit in shock because it seemed, though he was sincere in wanting to help others, it felt odd that this 19 year old guy had chosen to travel half way across the world and lecture Kenyans about having a servants heart and loving and serving even those who oppress you – and all this based on his experiences as a barista in a coffee shop in Wisconsin. We don’t think he caught the irony of a white man from one of the richest and most powerful countries in the world telling young black Africans from a developing nation with a huge unemployment rate, an economy in big trouble, and a long and impressive history of being colonized and exploited by various European nations (and the US), about how to be a servant of God by praying for those who do harm unto you.

It reminded us of a quote we saw in the national museum of Kenya earlier in our trip from the country’s independence leader Jomo Kenyatta,

“When they arrived we had the land and they had the bibles. They told us to close our eyes to pray and when we opened them we had the bibles and they had the land”

There might be a word or two off there but that’s how we remember the quote.

While we respect the idea of going to others and helping them, sharing your beliefs with people, and making the world a place more like the one you envision, Africa with its history of missionaries with alterior motives makes the abundance of missionaries we’ve run into (we met others in our trip at virtually every stop) weird. They don’t seem to have bad intentions but the way they deliver their message to Kenyan audiences carries a certain arrogance that has multiple times made us feel uncomfortable. For their first time visiting Journey you might expect them to sit and listen, perhaps ask questions and try to learn from the young Kenyans themselves who have organized this space and time instead of standing up and reporting on all their good work in teaching Kenyans about Jesus.