Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday were all exam days, and my daily routine was similar enough that I really can't remember clearly what happened on what day so I'm going to roll all of these into one post. This is really what I planned on doing originally anyway, but I've found for nearly the whole trip that each and every day has held enough new experiences and stories to fill up its own post. The morning assembly only happens on Monday, Wednesdays, and Fridays, with classes going through songs and prayers on their own on Tuesdays and Thursdays. I ducked into the eighth grade class for this on Tuesday morning, but I've found I can't be the fly on the wall in classrooms that I'd like to be. I've spent enough time at the school that the eighth graders now seem old and mature, practically adults to me after spending time with the second and third graders. On Monday at the break after lunch one of the eighth graders named Humphrey came and talked to me, asking me about America and why I was here. He struck me as a pretty sharp kid, and I asked him about what school was like here. He's become one of my better friends of the kids here, and definitely one of the ones most willing to come talk to me of his own volition, though he doesn't strike me as a terribly outgoing kid. The eighth graders sang several songs, seeming a little bit self-conscious and hesitant to me, maybe because I was there, maybe because they were old enough to feel like singing songs at the beginning of the day was something for little kids. One of the kids was appointed by the teacher to pick out a scripture reading, after which several students said prayers. Roger had come in with me and went over to talk with the teacher, while I stayed by the door. After they were done Roger talked to them a little bit about how he liked the scripture passage and that if it was their turn to pick out the passage they should take care to pick a passage that had a specific message for everyone to think about and apply to their lives. He introduced me and asked if I had anything to say, and for about the third time in two days I had a classroom full of kids looking at me expectantly as my mind raced. I thanked them for allowing me to watch and learn from them and told them to not hesitate at all to come talk to me or pull me out to jump in an activity or a game of football, that's exactly why I'm here. Since then I've gotten to hang out with some of them, but for the most part the eighth graders have been busy enough with exams and the end of school that I haven't spent too much time with them.
Roger had a set of power point slides that he had translated the text of from English to Swahili that he wanted me to put back onto the actual power point slides. The presentation was about Pierre de Coubertin, the founder of the modern Olympics, and it was for the international gathering of schools he was going to in China in August. The presentation had been translated into a number of languages, and the organization wanted it translated into Swahili to be able to make connections in Tanzania, where Swahili is the national language and English isn't commonly spoken as it is in Kenya. I was glad to have something helpful to do rather than just wander around and join in on PE whenever anyone was out on the field. It was pretty monotonous work, but I learned a lot about Pierre de Coubertin as I went and picked up some more Swahili words that were being used a lot. I went over to lunch alone and sat with a table of kids on my own for the first time, which was a huge excitement to them. I can't remember if it started on Tuesday or later in the week, but playing soccer with the kids after lunch made me very popular with the second and third graders. The funny thing is I really didn't do anything other than get the ball, which they could have gotten permission from any of the teachers to get the ball themselves, and then played on whichever was the weaker team, at whatever effort level would equalize the game. My guess is that having a definitive authority figure for picking teams and resolving disputes was the main thing that made me so valuable to them. I remembered playing football (and now I'm talking about American football) on the playground in elementary school, and when disputes broke out, no one had sufficient authority or was objective enough to make a definitive ruling, so we would just argue about it for a while and then get back to playing, usually arguing as we would play. It appeared to me that the situation is about the same here, another connection for me that young Kenyan boys aren't so different from young American boys. What this meant though, was that during lunch I would usually have at least six or seven little boys come over and timidly tap me on the shoulder and ask if we were going to play football, to which I would usually rustle their short, curly, rough black hair, smile broadly, and exclaim, "Of course we are!" To which they would flash a sometimes toothy grin and run back over to their table to spread the good news among their friends. Another thing the developed as the week went on is that from Tuesday on I never carried my own dishes over to the window. It's pretty standard for a teacher to give their dishes to a student to take to the window for them, but in my case almost as soon as I sat down kids would ask me if they would take my plate, my saucer, or my cup to the window. It's turned into something of a competition, with me barely finishing my food on one plate before a kid snatches it away to go take it to the window for me.
Watching the kids play football, I've been impressed with the talent level. Without a doubt the thought of passing the ball or spreading out rather than running for the ball is still a long way off, but the kids are pretty good for their age. I'm not sure if this is a particularly good group with some of the world-class athletic genes that a lot of these kids are blessed with or if the football being played in school yards around the country is this good, or if I'm just underestimating the general ability of kids that age. Overall, I've felt that there's quite a bit of untapped athletic talent, both running and playing football, and from the talking with people that's a widely held consensus. From what I've seen for kids here the glory is in becoming a star football player, and that is the game that I see being played almost exclusively in the streets and on the playgrounds here. However, the talent isn't getting developed, and of people I've talked to quite a few point to corruption in the national governing body for football, as well as lack of resources in many areas. Playing with the kids after lunch and during PE I've tried to work on the concepts of passing and teamwork, but with that many kids it's pretty hard to do, and they're too excited to just be out there to listen very much to any tips I have to give them, so I mostly just let them play. I figure the main purpose of that time is that they run off some steam and get some exercise, they can work on their fundamentals later on.
After school on Tuesday Roger and I headed into town to pick up some food for dinner. We stopped at a butcher that had one of the hind quarters of a cow hanging in the window, and it looked as if he had just worked his way up the cow selling the meat and was near the end. We went and Roger talked with him some about how much we wanted, and he went into the front window area to start cutting strips off the cow. He didn't make clean cuts of meat though, rather looking as if he was trying to include as much bone as possible. Roger pointed that out several times, and eventually walked out without buying the meat, mumbling about how the guy was trying to rip him off, and went to what looked like a more established and reputable butcher, although one where the prices were somewhat higher.
As I was jogging along one of the side roads near Roger's house doing strides, when a kid maybe a little younger than me asked me where I was from. I told him I was from the US and about the nature of my visit. He told me his name was Muhammad and he was from Britain. He was here because his mom does a lot of real estate dealings down here, and he said he enjoyed visiting here. I hadn't noticed the English accent right away, but it was readily apparent now. I was somewhat envious of him being able to regularly experience a different country and culture. He said he was late for prayer and needed to go. I realized afterward that with his name and the mosque being right there he was probably Muslim.
Wednesday at school passed much the same with me finishing the slides for Roger and then digging into my continuing Swahili education as well as working my way through the book I'm reading. I have enough words and knowledge of the structure of things to make simple sentences, and I covered Roger's blackboard with the simple sentences to test how much I could actually say with my limited vocabulary. The sentences turned out along the lines of "The big, heavy, door has not come" or "The important games start today". I hoped that as I talked with kids in the classroom they could correct them and help me expand on them, but that never turned out to be very useful. Kids who are fluent in Swahili I've found aren't very good teachers because they will tell me the names of everything around us to the point where I can't actually retain anything they've said. I've been able to get some useful information from them if I come to them with a specific term that I've seen or heard that I can't figure out. In that respect I think the more Swahili I learn, the more I'll be able to learn because I will be able to pick enough out of conversations to ask questions about the words I don't know. Right now I don't know 90% of what's said so it's hard to know where to start as far as asking questions about a specific conversation.
On my run Wednesday I went up past the garbage heaps again, planning to explore more of the roads up there. I'm getting pretty comfortable with that area, and there are even some people that I can recognize from one time to the next, especially the guys that hang out by the creek next to the garbage heaps. They are still maybe the group I'm most wary of, but I have to admit they're pretty friendly guys and always yell at me as I run by. One of them, who's name I found out is Michael, often runs back up the hill to the main road with me on my way back through. On my way back down toward the garbage heaps a man asked me if he could come train with me, which I was very excited for because I still had done all my running pretty much alone other than the little kids that would run along with me. I stopped to talk to him and he explained that he would like to run competitively, but he didn't have running shoes or clothes and he had to keep working his job at a factory in town to support his family. I would have guessed his age as maybe mid to late twenties, and he had the build that suggested he could be a very good runner (then again, so do probably 70% of Kenyans). If the story was true, this was exactly the kind of person I wanted to help. If I could provide the break that would allow him start running that would be fantastic, plus one of my pairs of training shoes that I had been running in for most of the track season were starting to wear out so I was about ready to get rid of them anyway. I asked him what size shoe he wore, and he told me some European size that didn't mean anything to me, so I looked at his feet and asked if he wore about the same size shoes as me. He said he did, but I'm pretty sure he would have said that regardless if it meant getting a pair of shoes, but it looked to me like my shoes probably would fit him alright. I told him to meet me at the junction we were close to the next day at 5:30 and I would give him the shoes then and we could start training. I asked his name and he said it was David something, one of those fast sounding Kenyan names that starts with a K. A couple people had been watching me carefully as I talked to him, I like to think making sure that he wasn't taking advantage of me or anything but who knows, most notably the family that lived in the mud hut maybe just 30 meters away. As I said goodbye to David and started running again, several of them that were standing there motioned and yelled "kuja" in Swahili, which means "come". Maybe I was too eager to show that I understood what they were saying, or maybe I was just in a great mood from having met David, but I headed to the small yard next to their mud hut to shake hands and say hi, something I don't think I normally would have done. I used up my applicable Swahili in about a sentence and a half, but that was enough for them to respond in Swahili, at which point I had to apologize for not being able to actually speak Swahili. I went around and shook the hands of everyone that was there, which included some older men and women that had been sitting in the yard, and spoke with them just a little bit about where I was from and what I thought of Kenya. We pretty quickly ran out of anything to say, and I kind of figured they had something specific they wanted to ask me or say to me because of the way they had asked me to come into the yard, but apparently that wasn't the case, so I told them it was nice to meet them and headed back out to the road to continue my run. I was absolutely thrilled about meeting David, because that was exactly the kind of meeting I hoped and prayed for when I came here, but had absolutely no ability to create myself. I consider it to completely be an answered prayer, and he said as we had been talking that he has just been working and praying and trusting God to provide, so it sounded like it was answered prayer for him as well. It was all the better because it was clearly something that neither of us could have planned, just a case (if he was sincere, which I'm going to go ahead and believe at least for now) of both of us trusting God to work in our lives, and he provided in a really cool way. I also felt good about it because I knew I was going to have a pair of shoes wear out while I was over here and figured I would give them to someone here, but really didn't have any idea of how that was going to work and this was a more perfect situation for it than I ever could have orchestrated on my own. This was great because I wasn't just handing out the shoes to someone on the street and running off, but was hopefully starting a relationship with the shoes as the starting point.
That night and the next day I prayed quite a bit about the whole situation, both praising God for having provided it and asking that this whole thing would work out in the way that would bring the most glory to Him and that he would show me the part that I have to play in that. This is the kind of situation that I definitely don't want to limit to the narrow scope of the possibilities I see, because as great as some of those are, there have been so many times in my life that what I have imagined has paled in comparison to what God actually did that I almost don't want to think about the possibilities for fear of my actions trying to enact one of those scenarios rather than being prayerful and faithful to what God is doing. Through the day on Thursday I began to wonder about what I would do if David didn't show up. It was such a fragile arrangement, because he didn't have a phone and I didn't even know my phone number to be able to give it to him, so if we couldn't rendezvous at the appointed time, there was no fallback for being able to meet a different time. That was exactly the kind of thing that sent me into more prayer though, because this was clearly a situation that I didn't feel would have come about without God having his hand over everything that had happened, so there wasn't any reason to suddenly feel that the situation was unfeasible or illogical, because I believe most of the special things that God does aren't feasible. That's what makes them so special. If they were feasible, then there are so many other things we could attribute the success of the situation to. But when something works and there's no reason why it should have worked, there's no alternative but to praise God for bringing it about.
One of these nights on the news there was a story about the police instituting a "go slow" policy to protest Parliament scaling back the salary ladder for them, which seemed funny to me because from what I've heard unless you have money it's doubtful the police will do anything. It was interesting to hear Allan's take on this because, for how critical he is of police, he explained that they were doing what they had to because they really don't get paid enough to support themselves, so they don't have much of a choice other than to take bribes. I asked if paying the police more would get rid of the corruption, which Allan said he thought it would but who knows if that will ever happen and the current situation doesn't seem particularly promising.
On Thursday some of the younger kids were done with exams, so I got to play some more soccer with them, which is a good time, but quickly gets exasperating if you try to teach them the finer points of the game like, oh for instance, passing. Other than that I spent a lot of time reading and working on my Swahili, which is starting to come around just a little bit. At the end of the day Roger told me that he was staying at school that night in the dorms with the kids that board. From fifth grade on, students stay at the school for the whole term in dorms. That's the way most high schools works and I guess a number of primary schools too. I couldn't imagine spending that much time away from my family when I was in fifth grade, but I guess that's just the way things operate here. I was interested to stay for the night, because I thought staying in the dorms would be an interesting experience and running out here would provide a chance to explore some new territory and maybe find a connecting route to home, but I hadn't brought running clothes and I was supposed to meet David with the shoes tonight. I headed home on the bus alone, and apparently Roger had assigned one of the kids who lives in the same neighborhood to make sure I made it home without getting lost, which I found funny because I knew the way pretty well, plus the bus stopped right at the group of houses where Roger lives so I probably had less than 200 yards to walk.
I made sure to take off for my run so that I would get to the intersection we planned on meeting at right at 5:30. It was a little bit clumsy running with the shoes in my hands, but not too bad. I wasn't looking forward to the run up there though, because for the first time since I've been here I'd obviously be running with something valuable, and even worse something it was pretty clear I was planning on getting rid of. It ended up not being too bad, although lots of people asked me for the shoes, most noticeably the guys down by the creek. The setup with David was a lot better though in my mind because it required that he follow up by showing up today to pick up the shoes, and then hopefully to continue running with me. There was already a stigma with being a mzungu that I had stuff to give away, and I hated to enforce that idea and wondered if people would be bugging me for things when I was running from now on. One of the things I had appreciated about being out running was that if people asked me for anything, I pretty obviously didn't have anything with me and when I told them so they'd leave me alone. A couple people (including a group of high school girls I have to admit) have asked me for my phone number out on runs and I've told them, in complete honesty, that I don't know my phone number since the phone I have here is different from my regular phone. I got to the intersection and my heart sank as I didn't see David there. I thought it might have been too wishful to think that this meeting would work, considering that extreme rarity with which people actually show up when they say they're going to show up. But now I was in something of a conundrum. Should I just stand there waiting? If I do, how long would I wait? Kenyans can pretty routinely show up a couple hours late for an arranged meeting. Should I go ahead and continue with my run? If I do should I take the shoes with me or leave them? I was pretty sure if I left the shoes that they would disappear, which wouldn't be too bad because I'd have no problem giving them to just about anybody up here. But because of David's situation I thought for him they could mean more than just having a new pair of shoes, they could be a big break for him. Also, I didn't want them to just be a pair of shoes that were found on the side of the road. Maybe selfishly, I wanted them to be a gift of love to someone. I wanted them to be an encouragement to whoever got them, and maybe an inspiration. They struck me as an opportunity for a special, unique encounter and I didn't want to pass that up if I could help it. Still, if I didn't meet him did I plan on running all the way home with them, with no way to contact David again to get them to him? All this ran through my head but I only paused for maybe a minute there, then jogged down to the more major intersection about 200 yards farther along the road. He wasn't there either though, and I hesitated there a minute pondering what to do. It was true that I really hadn't come up with any backup plan, maybe because I really wanted to believe this would work and thought this must be exactly the way God would make things happen.
As I paused at the intersection kids started gathering who had been working in the corn field along the road, talking quietly and giggling, one of the pretty standard responses I get out on runs. Since I didn't keep running though, a small crowd of curious and amused faces gathered. One of them asked me what I was doing, and I told them I was waiting for a friend to go running. I answered some of the standard questions they had, then told them I was going to jog back to the other intersection, and most of them, probably about 10 or so, joined me, many laughing uncontrollably that they were running with a mzungu. Many of them ran well ahead of me as I jogged to the other intersection, then watched expectantly as I stopped. One of the things that gets somewhat uncomfortable is people, especially kids, staring expectantly at you, as if you're about to do a trick or burst into flames or something. One of these days I think I might scream "NO! Nothing is going to happen! I'm just going to stand here and watch the grass grow! Go home and find something more interesting to do!" I suspect some of them are just waiting for me to crack, but I won't give them the satisfaction just yet. They peppered me with more questions as we stood at the intersection, but they didn't swarm around me like the kids in Nairobi but made sure to keep their distance, despite their curiosity and fascination. I found that some kids when I say hi to them or wave, will bolt like a dog to make sure they are a safe distance away. If I remember right in that specific situation I took a step toward them at one point – they were standing probably 10 feet away – and they instantly begin to scatter to keep their distance. Most specifically they asked me if I liked Kenya. I told them I really liked Kenya, and they asked me if I liked the USA. I told them I really liked the USA too, and from that they deduced that Kenya is like the USA. I told them no, Kenya is very different from the USA but I like both of them. That conversational merry-go-round took a minute or two to sort out, the process exacerbated by responding to ten curious, laughing, shouting kids rather than one or two. By that time it had been about 10 minutes and I decided it wouldn't help at all to wait for David any longer. That still left me what to do with the shoes. I didn't want to run with them for my whole run, but I knew they were something that was valuable here so I wanted to make sure I handled them well. I asked the kids who around here could use a pair of shoes that size, but couldn't get a response from them. There was actually a high school age kid coming up to the intersection I tried to give them to, but he wouldn't take them, maybe suspicious of why someone, even a mzungu, would just be giving away a pair of shoes. The kids were still waiting expectantly for me, eager to run more with me. I told them that they should show me good road to run on, and a couple of them took off down the road I hadn't explored yet from that junction, so I followed, with the rest of them running with me, forming a giggling, energetic pack. Like the kids in Nairobi I couldn't believe the foot ware, or lack thereof, the kids were wearing and still keeping up no problem. Many were barefoot, and many others were wearing flip flops or sandals. Only a few had shoes, and of those most were in such a condition that they would have been thrown away in American households long ago.
I couldn't bear to just leave the shoes, so I continued running with them, unsure of what I would do with them other than to trust that God would make it clear to me what my role in relation to them should be that would best serve the Kingdom of Heaven and show God's love to those around me. As I thought about it, I prayed that if the best thing for me to do was to leave them along the road that my own desire to see the conclusion of this episode so I could have closure about it wouldn't get in the way. One of the things that really bugs me in the world, both on a global scale and in daily lives, and that I try to check my own actions against, is doing good things so you can feel good about helping others rather than because the thing you are doing will actually be helpful to other people. That set me off on a whole line of thinking and pondering and praying about how we really don't ever see the end of consequences of our actions and have no idea how far our actions and interactions will ripple out into the world. This triggered me into all sorts of big idea thoughts about the effect I was having on the world and how I fit into the fabric of humanity and all the poetic, philosophical stuff, so I was pretty distant and preoccupied for most of this run. The road they took me down connected to the beautiful main road I had run on Monday. By this time there were only two little boys still running with me, with the rest scattered along the road, some yelling for me to wait for them. At that corner I hid the shoes in a bush there, and decided if someone grabbed them from there then so be it, and if not I would pick them up on my way back through, with no idea f what to do from there. Those two made it with me until just a minute or two before I was ready to turn around. I decided to make it to the top of a hill looming in front of me, and told them I would be coming back in a couple minutes. At the top of the hill I came to a junction between two roads and the sign for a secondary school that I recognized as being on the road that I had been exploring out toward the school. With that realization, I was able to unite and visualize most of the network of roads I had run so far in relation to each other. When we got back to our turn off the shoes were still there and I picked them up, still praying and pondering what to do with them, hoping that things would be made clear. In the back of my mind I entertained a faint glimmer of hope that maybe we would go back to the intersection and David would be waiting there, but I focused on not getting too set on that being the only situation to hope for. One of the kids that had run with me for almost all of the last 40 minutes asked me if he could have the shoes as we were on the last stretch back toward the junction. I told him that I had brought them for a specific friend of mine, but that if we didn't find them he could have them. Having a default situation relieved a lot of my anxiety about the situation, though I wasn't sure whether a pair of size 10 shoes would even be useful to this eight year old kid. I guessed if he tried to wear them or run in them he would actually be moving slower clomping around in the shoes than now, when he was easily keeping with my pace barefoot. Even worse, I could easily see him getting beat up and the shoes stolen by older kids. All of this melted away as we approached the intersection and David was standing there waiting. He apologized for not being here at the set time and said he had been waiting here hoping that I would come back by. I wondered how long he would have waited if I wouldn't have shown up. A wave of relief and joy swept over me as I gave him the shoes, and we agreed to meet there at five the next day to go for a run together. Seeing him now in brighter daylight he looked younger, and I thought he might even be younger than me, which just made me more excited about the prospects of him being able to make a career out of running. I was thrilled that the shoes were in David's hands, because as far as I was concerned that was the main thing. If we were able to run together and he able to make a career out of it that would unbelievably wonderful for me, but even if we never see each other again, he now has a better opportunity to explore that path. And, I thought, even if he never even attempts to make a career as a runner, if he needed the shoes enough to tell me that story, and then to show up and wait for me for who knows how long the next day, then the shoes still went to a place where they were needed. This was another great example of God working things in a way better than I could have imagined. To me the ideal situation would have been for us to meet just like we planned and go for a run. But because of the way things worked out, I had connected with a whole crowd of little kids and had run with them, and I have no idea where any of that will lead, but it's exciting to think about. It made for a great run home, full of joy and praise at the wonderful experiences and people God was exposing me to. As I passed the garbage heap and headed up to the main road Michael came out to run up the hill with me again and told me I should come the next day with a pair of shoes for him, to which I responded that that was the only extra pair of shoes I had.
Thursday evening was the first time since I've been here that I was home alone and I have to admit that it was a welcome feeling. I've had a great time with everyone I've stayed with and have really appreciated their hospitality, but the nature of a trip like this to see a new country and meet a whole slew of family makes for a severe lack of alone time, one of my concerns going into the trip. So far it hasn't affected me too bad, but now being alone for the evening was a relief. I cooked fried egg sandwiches for dinner and watched Man on Fire, and the combination of American food and an American movie felt like a breath of fresh air. Both still make me miss home, and to be honest, as much as I have enjoyed the trip and want to get as much out of the remaining time as I can, I'm eager to be home as well.
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