My glorious return to the land of the free and the home of the whopper

Just wanted to quickly let anyone who hadn't heard know that I am back in the good old US of A and feeling pretty spoiled in the luxuries of electricity without power outages, showers that require no work, and roads without potholes.  I'll write about the rest of the trip when I get a chance, but right now things are pretty crazy with running and moving in and getting my ducks in a row for the start of school.  Feel free to get a hold of me to talk more about the trip, I'd actually really like to talk about it a lot because I think that will help me sort out and clarify some of my impressions of the trip in my own mind.

The road trip rolls on

    It was weird coming back to the rest of the group after such a powerful and life-altering experience. I wasn't sure how to communicate with them what happened, and since we were trying to get out the door, I didn't want to go into a "drop what you're doing and listen to what just happened to me" mode, so I took a quick shower and we headed out to go visit Lois and Kevin. I turned out that things had worked out pretty well because they had just gone down to hippo point, the park I went to with Elisha last time I was in Kisumu, and hung out there and were just debating whether to leave without me when I showed up. For me it was just another small reminder that if you drop what you're doing to serve God in a way you didn't expect, God is watching over the whole situation. On the walk over I had a chance to tell them about what had happened, but I had trouble putting into words what had transpired, it just didn't do justice to what had happened to say, "then we prayed and he committed his life to Christ" but I didn't have any other words to describe it.

    It was fun visiting with Lois and Kevin, I was happy to see them again. It was also yet another case where I was surprised by how nice it was to be saying hi to people I already knew rather than meeting new people. Maybe it's just that I'm about at my quota of new relatives I can meet so I'm glad to get to know the ones I have met better. I realized now how nice it was to visiting family when there were other people that were just as lost when they started in on some rapid fire Swahili, rather than the one sitting in the corner wondering what people were saying.

    From there we walked over to the place where Patrick had worked for a while, which was news to me that he had ever worked in Kisumu. Apparently he had stayed in the little house behind Peter and Leah's house and worked there for I think a year or two, and that's when he met Ross. The place was a small compound with a room that served as a schoolhouse and a kitchen (I think) that served as a food distribution center (I think). I wasn't sure how many grades they taught at the school, but it looked more like a preschool, and they mentioned having classes for three year olds, and I thought that whoever is willing to teach a class of three year olds is much braver than me. There were a couple teachers there that we talked with a little bit about how the school was doing and stuff, and Patrick headed over to the fence line to talk with some other guy he recognized. On our way out there were a couple people who Patrick knew just because they were still regulars on his route.

    We headed into town, and I was finally able to pull out enough money to operate on my own again. That was one of those things that wasn't really that big of a deal, but it was just a nagging thing that was off my back. We met Patrick's cousin Eddie there and headed down to a great place right on the lake for lunch. I think I had met Eddie the first time I was in Kisumu, but I didn't really remember him. The place was a beautiful resort style restaurant with outside seating with a great view out over the lake. It seemed to me like kind of a ritzy place, but it was still only about 500 schillings a person if I remember right. We got some of the fish that Kisumu is famous for, and it was excellent. They brought out of a couple of the fish and we cleaned the meat off of them with our hands, which there is definitely an art to. Patrick and Marissa (or maybe Melanie? Unlike Patrick I'm not even going to pretend I can tell you apart) cleaned their fish down to the bones in couple minutes, while Heather and I kept working on ours. Eating fish like that is one of those meals where you have to work for your food a little bit, and at the end I got a little impatient because I wasn't quite full but it was almost more work than it was worth to try and pick the last bits of meat off the fish. We had eaten the same kind of fish a couple days earlier in Nairobi, and Patrick's dad and I had both gotten the heads of the fish. I felt like I did a pretty decent job getting as much meat off of it as I could, but I remember Patrick's dad had literally ended up with nothing but a small pile of bone chips on his plate, meaning he had eaten the eyeballs, the gills, and most of the bones, which I found impressive, if not a little disturbing. Eddie had disappeared for almost the whole time we were eating and apparently had been working the phone lines to find us a car we could rent for the next day and a half as we headed to Eldoret. It would be a lot cheaper than taking matatus and shuttles the whole time, considering the amount of traveling we would be doing, and it would give us a lot more flexibility. The only problem was that we would be cramming seven people plus all their luggage into a five seat car, but this is Africa so that's not seen as a much of a problem. Another interesting insight I heard was that our chances of getting pulled over were very slim if we had a white person sitting up front, so we shouldn't have any trouble with the police stops, which I had never seen pull over anyone but the matatus anyway.

    It was already time to leave Kisumu, so we headed back to Peter and Leah's to pack up our stuff and get ready to go. After my leisurely first month and a half, it felt like we were fast forwarding through the trip, which isn't really too far from the truth. I was gaining more appreciation for Heather and Patrick's reluctance to come for such a short time, because there was a huge number of relatives that expected them to visit if they came, so even at the break neck pace they were on they wouldn't get to everybody, and as it was everybody wanted them to stay longer. In some ways it even struck me as slightly inconsiderate, as if family members were trying to persuade them to come visit or stay longer, seemingly disregarding the money and effort they were putting into trying to see as many relatives as possible. But then I pictured what it would be like if I had been gone for three years and was criss-crossing the Northwest trying to see all the family and I can't imagine their reactions would be much different. Also, Heather and Patrick's whirlwind trip didn't jive with the whole Kenyan lifestyle. Strict schedules were never even made, let alone kept, and the idea was that if you were going to go visit someone for a day, you might as well stay another day rather than rush back.

    Given how cramped things would be on the way to Eldoret we decided it would be best for Ross and I to take a shuttle and meet them up there. Cramming into the car driving around from Grandy's would be workable, but for the two hour drive to Eldoret it would be more trouble than it was worth. I really like the ride from Kisumu to Eldoret, passing through the farm land and rural villages with some beautiful views of the mountains and the countryside. This time it was right at dusk, which just made the views even more scenic. We made one of the hectic roasted corn pit stops part way, and I remember specifically thinking at one point, with the sun having just gone down while I munched my roasted corn and listened to a particularly catchy Kenyan song on the radio, that this was one of those moments I would want to store away and cherish about my visit here. It had been a really fun trip so far and I thought of all things I'd experienced and learned, and all the stories I had to tell and things I had to think about, and everything felt right with the world.

    Ross and I got to Eldoret first and it was raining, so we headed into a hotel restaurant to wait for the others to arrive. I got a meat pie while we waited, one of the standard, deli counter type food items I've really enjoyed here, which turned out to be a great call that Ross was envious of later because as events transpired we wouldn't eat until much later, even by Kenyan standards. One of the biggest things Ross and I commiserated about was the lack of certainty in when meal times would come. For me this was particularly hazardous because I was running so much, but Ross also had the added complication of being a vegetarian, so even with the erratic meal schedule he couldn't even be sure that he could have a solid meal when it came if it was mostly meat. When they arrived we headed over to Uncle Timothy's, which is in the same housing area as Roger. We split the people and gear between our car and his to head to Grandy's, because it was looking physically impossible to fit all eight of us (including Eddie) and our gear into our car. Apparently the trip out to Grandy's was an arduous and miserably adventuresome one, involving having to push Timo's car a decent amount and tightening the bolts on the rims, which were apparently close to coming of, but I was asleep for the whole ride and no one bothered to wake me up to help push the car, which I feel bad about but I would be lying if I said there wasn't a big part of me that was glad to miss the whole misadventure. The long and short of it is we got into Grandy's at about two in the morning. Rather than just crashing though, Grandy was ready to throw in a movie, chat for a while, and feed us "dinner". I couldn't believe she was even up; my grandparents were usually struggling to stay awake through Jeopardy at 8:00. The rest of us though, especially the girls I think, didn't share Grandy's enthusiasm for the late night catch-up-on-things session, and I think all of us would have preferred to go to bed, but if there was ever a house where somebody ran the show and everybody did what she told them to, it was Grandy's house. I didn't feel any need to try to stay awake for a conversation I didn't really care about, so I just snoozed on the couch until it was time to go to sleep.

When the long awaited declaration it was time to go to sleep finally came we headed down to Timo's unfinished house to sleep on the floor on top of a couple of blankets. Timo had to get back to town for work so he pulled down a solid two and half hours of sleep then headed back to town for work. The rest of us got up much more leisurely, and I took off for my run, eager to explore some of the roads around here. I think I missed them going to check out some of the rest of the farm, but that didn't bug me too much because I would have a lot more time at the farm on my own to explore as much as I wanted. Because of how short my runs had been the last two days I was anxious to get in a solid run, and this was the perfect place for it. I would rank this run as one of the most beautiful I've been on since being here, but that is probably just because it was my first at the farm so the beauty struck me so much more. I ventured farther and farther down the dirt roads through the corn fields, enjoying the views of the countryside and carefully marking in my mind which turns I had taken. I ended up hitting the main road back along the way we had come in, and there was a group of what looked to me like a collection of boda boda drivers and guys who were just standing around talking, who called me over to talk to them when I paused at the road junction. They said something about wanting to go to America and whether I could help them, which had turned out to be a pretty common conversation for me to have. It seemed kind of amusing and kind of exasperating that people I had never met before and knew nothing about who check to see if I was willing to wade into the process of getting a visa to go the US on their behalf. I told them it's pretty difficult to get to the US and that I couldn't really do anything to help them.

I got back just as they were headed over to Uncle Jack's, so I skipped the shower and headed over with them. I hadn't realized until now that Junior was here, and apparently had spent a decent portion of his break from school here. Uncle Jack took us on a tour of his garden, which was pretty extensive and had a wide variety of plants, including two big greenhouses. The highlight of the tour was when one of the chickens got loose and we had to corner it and catch it. It was basically just like the chasing of squirrels and geese that I'd done growing up (and college is part of growing up in case any of you were wondering), except that now it was fully sanctioned and actually a necessary act. I was still eating my bread that I'd grabbed from Grandy's for breakfast before heading over, and Uncle Jack teased me that if it came to it I would surely let the chicken go to hold onto my bread. It turned out to be a non-issue as the chicken never made a break toward me, which was foolish on its part because of the group I was definitely the greenhorn as far as catching chickens goes. I carried a couple of the chickens part way back to the car, which cracked me up because you just hold them by the feet and let their heads dangle. Apparently I wasn't doing it right though, because one of the chickens started squawking and flapping its wings and reached up with its beak to take a chunk out of my hand, and which I point I freaked out and dropped them on the ground, which turned out to be alright because their feet were tied together, but someone else carried them the rest of the way. They told me as long as you stay relaxed the chickens will stay relaxed but I had felt pretty darn relaxed when the chicken lost its cool and had found staying relaxed when the chicken wanted to bite my hand off to be a daunting task that I could not see through.

That was not the last of my problems with the chickens, however, because it turned out we were taking those to the farm in Kitale, which we all piled into the car to head to. As I was about to throw my bag into the back though, I noticed that the chicken had taken the liberty of dropping a load in the back of the car, making the whole car smell like, well, chicken excrement, to put it delicately (to Evan Bradford and company, two of my favorite lines from Fire on the Track came to mind, bringing with them many fond memories of quoting them with you guys. I think you can guess which ones). As far as I was concerned that was strike two between me and the chickens. I was wary as we loaded the car, but it appeared the chicken turds had been cleared. I found, to my reluctance, that my seat in the car would be in the back with Junior… and the chickens. I decided to try to make amends by petting one of the chickens, but apparently that was exactly the wrong thing to do as it set off another frenzied storm of clucking and flapping and trying to peck my hand off, except that this time I had nowhere to run. It finally settled down though, and we spent the rest of the ride with an uneasy truce, clearly with little trust on either side.

One interesting comment about the ride was that we passed through a town called Moi's Bridge, named after the bridge that is named after the second president of Kenya, Daniel Arap Moi. All over the place you find things named after him and the first president, Jomo Kenyatta, who from what I understand is something equivalent to the George Washington of Kenya, and I asked Junior if the same would happen for Mwai Kibaki, the third and current president, after his second term ended next year. Junior's response was something along the lines of "Why would we name anything after him? What has he done for us?" I hadn't heard much open criticism of Kibaki, but had heard lots of criticism more generally of the corruption of entrenched politicians, and he seemed to me to fit the bill as well as anybody, especially in light of the accusations of election fraud in 2007 that precipitated the violent riots.

The farm in Kitale was probably even more remote than Grandy's farm, well off of any paved road, and requiring us to get out and push the car once (although I should add that was after going too far because we had missed the turn). I credit Eddie for the driving on those sloppy, rough dirt roads. It was another case where I would have said we were probably into four wheel drive territory, but Eddie just kept motoring along in our little hatchback. When we arrived at the farm we found the other Eddie, who lives in Nairobi, there and I found that it was his family who owned the farm. I met Eddie's brother Neville, who I had heard about but hadn't met yet, and Eddie's mom, who I had met a couple times at their house in Nairobi. They had a beautiful house, probably one of the nicer ones I had been in here, which seemed a little out of place to me here. My impression is that the countryside is mostly poor, with some people owning a lot of land, but I haven't seen anything like the big homes or ranches that you can often find out in the remote areas of Montana. We headed out to check out the grounds, staring with the incredibly muddy feeding trough where all the cows were gathered. Neville talked some of picking out a cow to send to my parents for the dowry of the marriage, but completely just joking around, and apparently I had been completely misled that I would get my own cow as part of the whole process. Maybe I had just heard what I wanted to hear but as far as I was concerned I was down a cow. Spirit crushed, we headed out the grazing fields, which offered a very nice scenic view and, to me, the idyllic vibe of what I would want farm life to be. At one point Ross mentioned to Neville and Eddie that it must be nice to be able to come out here and get away from it all, to which they replied that they have to work way harder when they're out here and if anything they head back to town to relax. While we were out there we saw a couple of crested cranes, which are some of the most beautiful birds that I've seen. They kind of remind me of a peacock, but without the big peacock feather thing (I wasn't paying attention to that National Geographic special, sorry).

We came back in and sat around for a while playing Kenyan poker, with Ross and I taking bets on how long until dinner. I slipped out to try to call Henry again, because so far every time I'd called there had been a problem with his number, which drove me crazy because I had told him I would call him and hadn't given him any of my contact information, so I was really hanging him out to dry, and if there was one person in the whole world I didn't want to ditch out on, it was Henry. Sat there for a while wondering what to do and praying and kicking myself for not giving him any way to contact me. I probably tried to call him five or six times, hoping against hope that somehow I would be able to connect, but it gave me a message that the number wasn't in service and the only thing I can figure is that the number Henry gave me wasn't the right number, or that something was wrong with his phone. That was just an unfortunate circumstance, but where the part I really blamed myself for was counting completely on that one line of communication and not giving him a way to contact me. This was the kind of communication glitch though that I knew I had to put in God's hands. I figured if God had it in the grand plan for Henry and I to contact each other it would be easy enough for him to make that happen. Perhaps we would meet later by some method much more miraculous and wonderful than just by the phone number we had exchanged. And perhaps Henry had left my life forever, and I had played the role that I was meant to play in Henry's life, but I pleaded with God that that wasn't the case. I couldn't accept that I wouldn't see Henry again and should just plow on and leave him in the rear view mirror. Still there was no parting of the clouds or call that somehow went through, so I was left without anything else to do but sit there and pray that God either do something amazing to allow me to get in contact with Henry again or else put other people in his life to support him in his faith.

I was able to come to peace with the whole thing and just leave the whole thing in God's hands, but it still put me in kind of somber mood. Junior wanted to mess with some of his friends on my phone, but I wasn't in the mood for it. We had a big dinner, which Ross in particular dug into since he hadn't been able to eat much for the last couple of days. After dinner we stayed up for a while just sitting around talking and laughing, with the still jet lagged crowd hitting the sack before the rest of us. I was glad to have the time to hang out because I hadn't had a chance to really hang out with Neville or Eddie (Kisumu Eddie), and that is exactly why I am here, to hang out with those guys and get to know them by spending some time hanging out. I was grateful for the good times hanging out with them because they served as a good diversion for getting my mind off of the situation with Henry.

    

The coolest experience of the whole trip, and maybe my life

    I took off for a run in the morning, heading over to the stadium hoping to find my buddies there. I decided if I didn't find them I would hit a two mile time trial to get a little bit of a measuring stick on my fitness, considering I might not have another track to run on the rest of the trip. The thing I had forgotten about was the rain from the night before, and the track wasn't fit for much more than mud wrestling. There were only a two other guys at the track, and I wondered if the rope pulling fitness ladies and Alvin's crew had decided not to come because they knew it was so sloppy. The field was even worse, with half of it completely swamped and the rest looking pretty marshy. I still went for it, and slopped my way through a mile in 5:48 before throwing in the towel. As I was jogging around the track after the mile a man came to and said the track was closed to make sure it didn't get messed up too bad with people running in the mud, and I felt bad that I'd torn up the first lane so much running hard.

    As I was running the mile a group of men in suits and women in dresses had filed into the stadium and formed a big circle out on the field. I wasn't paying attention too close because I was running hard, but I noticed that they were holding hands praying. As I jogged past the grandstands watching them curiously a man came out on the track and stopped me to talk to me, which I didn't mind since I was basically just cooling down now and planning on heading out to get in a longer run. He was wearing a beat up old polo shirt and pants and worn out sandals, a pretty typical outfit for a Kenyan that did a lot of manual labor and probably didn't make that much money. He asked me about the people out praying, and explained to me that there was a big worship gathering planned for that night so they had come to pray about that. I wondered whether the field being swamped was going to be a big problem for them, and thought maybe they were specifically praying for a miraculous parting of the waters. He said that he wanted to be able to pray to God like they did, and I told him that he if he wanted to God was always listening and would be happy to hear his prayers. He revealed that he worked in a club and had done a lot of things he was really ashamed, and he smelled pretty strongly of alcohol. I told him none of this should stop him from praying to God and that these were exactly the kind of things he should take to God in prayer. Another guy, not with the church leaders, came over and started talking with us and the conversation turned more to the difficulties of finding work and making money here, which was good to hear, and I think it was as good for them to be able to tell somebody as for me to hear it. I think especially when you're in a kind of difficult situation like that it's good just to have someone willing to listen to what you're going through, and for me it was very valuable to take back with me the stories of these guys who were willing and ready to work, but had trouble finding work. I don't know the statistics, but I think unemployment is pretty high here, at least by American standards, and there's a lot of people who are eager for work that just can't find it. Maybe there is a more basic problem with lack of education that is leaving a large part of the population unqualified for more than manual labor, but at this point I'm just speculating and I'm far from qualified to even speculate on economic issues, so I'll stop right there. To me the take away is that there's a lot of labor that is being wasted because there isn't sufficient work available to employ people are ready to work. When I showed that I was interested and wanted to hear about the difficulties they were going through they asked me if I could help them, I think expecting me too just give them some money, but I told them the best thing I could do was to try to understand what the problems they had were and be able to tell people about them back home. The other guy left and I was excited when the man I'd been talking to, whose name I found out was Henry, turned the conversation back to God and prayer. He was hesitant to pray, but I encouraged him that all of us are sinners and that the people out there praying, who were now filing out of the stadium, needed to pray to ask God to forgive their sins just as much as he needed God to forgive his sins. I kind of hoped one of the prayer group would overhear our conversation and come over, as I felt unprepared and intimidated at the prospect of encouraging Henry to commit his life to Christ. We went up to sit in the stands and probably talked for at least another half hour. He said he had a Bible, and several times referenced biblical stories and showed a pretty solid knowledge of the Bible, and told me about how he had been beaten by people from his village because he wasn't willing to perform certain rituals that he thought were wrong, showing me the scars and his badly swollen ankles that he said still gave him considerable pain. I got more excited as we talked, because this guy seemed to me to be completely ready and open to really committing his life, he just needed someone to encourage him and assure him that the things he'd done and sins he'd committed, rather than being a reason not to pray to God, were exactly the reason he should pray to God. It was an encouraging thing for me personally because evangelism has always been something that I haven't liked, which I know is exactly the wrong thing to say, but every time I think about just walking up and sharing my faith with someone I felt like I was trying to sell something. Here I didn't feel that way at all; I felt like I was giving Henry a message of hope, giving him the best news that I possibly could and showing him how he could free his life from the pain and guilt that he was carrying and keeping to himself. The whole conversation just felt to me the way that I always felt evangelism should feel like. I told him we could pray right now, for healing his feet and ankles, for reconciliation with his family and village, for forgiveness of sins, and for Christ to become the Lord of his life. I never really been one for praying out loud, but without a doubt the Holy Spirit was there, and the words just flowed as Henry and I sat there with an arm over each other's shoulder praying for healing and forgiveness. It was one of the most heartfelt, earnest prayers I've ever prayed and I felt God's presence in a special way. In talking with Henry about the freedom of forgiveness of sins and the hope and joy that Christ gives us in our lives that my own life felt clarified, felt exposed in the best kind of way where things were so simple, and so freeing. I don't know that I've ever felt the freedom and hope of a life in Christ like I did then, maybe because of seeing that happening in Henry. We both prayed for a while, and I urged Henry that if he wanted to make Christ the center of his life, we could do that right now, to which he eagerly but solemnly agreed. We prayed the Daniel Hamilton version of the sinner's prayer, something I had heard dozens of times but had never bothered to really know it well, which I don't have a problem with, because I definitely felt that what was being prayed there had very little to do with me or what I knew and had everything to do with the Spirit working in Henry and speaking through me. Plus, at least in my opinion, if you have a complicated formula for how you should pray to accept Christ in my opinion that's wrong. What was so beautiful about the prayer was that, at least for me, this was some of the most honest, straight-from-the-heart, just crying out to God with what's on my heart praying I have ever done. I was never searching for words because as I was praying the words I was saying were just reflecting the outpouring of my heart that I was experiencing. By this point tears were streaming down my face and Henry was all choked up as well. We sat for a little while, I think both of us just basking in the joy and peace and wonder of the moment. At one point Henry broke into song with an old hymn that I vaguely recognized and after another period of silence I quoted Psalm 23, for what reason I don't know, it just came to me.

    We concluded the prayer, both of us still in awe of what had just happened and giddy with excitement. Henry said the only reason he had stopped me on the track was because he thought I was with the prayer group, which to me doesn't make any sense considering that I was running around the track while they were praying, but we both felt convinced that it was just absolutely God purposefully bringing together two people to bless each other and further his Kingdom. The whole thing still seemed surreal to me as I tried to process what had happened. I guess I had never pictured leading someone to Christ happening like that because it seemed to have happened to easily and smoothly. I always pictured leading someone to Christ involving me trying to choke down my fear and walk over and awkwardly ask somebody, "Do you know Christ as your personal Lord and Savior?", in the most canned, Sunday school like manner possible (note: please don't construe what I'm saying here as me bashing on evangelism, because I believe it is absolutely a fundamental and inseparable piece of any genuine Christian faith. In being honest with you my fears and doubts and anxieties and frustrations about evangelism are very real and something I wrestle with a lot but they are a big part of what made this encounter so special to me so I wanted to include them here, and if someone who's had similar struggles and frustrations can be encouraged in their faith by this account, then praise God). This had just involved a man approaching me, and me being ready to give a reason for the hope that is within me. I felt as if I hadn't done anything at all, just stood there and answered Henry's questions and nudged him in the right direction a little bit. I didn't have to convince him that accepting Christ was the best decision he could make, he already wanted that and just needed someone to point him in that direction. There had been no five points of leading someone to Christ or a prayer that I had memorized; there was just Henry searching for love and forgiveness and me sharing how I had found love and forgiveness in my own life. This was one of the best moments of my life, one of those times where I felt like I was so filled with joy that I was going to burst. Henry told me that for him I was prophet from God, a messenger who had brought God's love into his life. I was stunned by his declaration of "prophet", thinking that I wasn't nearly bold enough or courageous enough in proclaiming God's message to be remotely considered a prophet. But I thought of Moses, and he was about as uncourageous about being willing to share God's message as anyone ever.

    We got a pen and paper from one of the guys that was in the stands, who happened to be one of the pastors that had been at the prayer gathering I think. He seemed somewhat preoccupied with the problem of what to do about the flooded field, and it seemed strange to me to think that he had no idea of the monumental thing that had happened about 25 yards away. Henry wrote down his number for me, and I wished more than ever now that I could remember my Kenyan number to write for him, but assured him I would call him as soon as I got home so that he had my number. For all the cool connections I'd made since being in Kenya, this was by far the most special to me so far, and I instantly envisioned Henry and I staying in contact over the years, encouraging each other in our faith, and hopefully me being able to come back and visit him, and maybe be able to help him out with finding work or moving into a better house. I just felt so much love for him and so overwhelmed by the blessing he had been to me that I wanted to stand by him and encourage and support him in whatever ways I could. I looked at my watch and I realized I had been at the stadium for over two hours and the other back at the house had no idea where I was. I wasn't all that worried though, because I had so much peace that the whole situation was in God's hands, and that what was happening here was more important than visiting around Kisumu with the others, and even more important than Heather and Patrick being worried about me being lost. Maybe some of the moms out there don't really want to hear this, but my feeling is that serving God and proclaiming his love always, always takes precedence, no matter whether it's an issue of safety, or separation from family, or disregarding carefully laid plans, or anything else, including death. To hurry away from that great situation of celebrating the wonderful thing that had happened in Henry's life would not only be turning my back on the work of the Kingdom of Heaven that was happening right in front of me, but would also show a blatant lack of faith that God was watching over the whole situation and would work all things for his glory, whether it messed up the plans we had made or not.

    Henry walked back toward the house with me, I think both of us wanting to preserve the moment as long as we could. As Henry told me about what a blessing I had been for him and what a powerful man of God I was, I reiterated to him that I had done very little. He had been the one who stopped me and he was the one who wanted to able to personally pray to God, I was just the person that happened to be there to point him in that direction, and I really feel that way. God worked there in such a way that even if I had wanted to take credit for the whole thing, what could I take credit for? Henry had grabbed me off the track and said he wanted to be able to pray to God like the people in the field were praying with God so basically my role in the process was to say, "OK, let's pray with God!" That was hugely encouraging though because it made me feel that I didn't need to reinvent myself as a Christian to start winning more people over so I could catch up on my count of saved souls. As long as I was willing to share my faith and respond to God's promptings, he would be able to use me in miraculous ways that involved very little of Daniel Hamilton being a great evangelist. I related something along those lines to Henry, telling him that all I had done was try to share Christ's love as it had been so lavished on me, and that I tried to do that all the time, to everyone I met. After a long farewell we finally parted ways and I headed for home, still feeling like I was floating on a cloud. For the day I had basically gotten in 30 minutes of running, including the time trial, then an hour and a half break, then a 15 minute run home, not exactly premium training, especially because yesterday had been such a short day also, but I had absolutely no regrets about it. I thought as I ran home about how often I stated my purpose for running as being to glorify God through my efforts. In that way it fit nicely into the wanting to glorify God with the rest of my life, but I often wondered if I was just kidding myself about that, saying it because it was what I was supposed to say but that running was really the thing I did for myself, to get recognition and because it was fun rather than because it served God. Several time I'd asked myself the really hard question that if I felt God calling me to give up running because I could better serve him elsewhere, would I do it? The troubling answer I usually came to was that I couldn't say for sure that I actually would be willing to give up running. Today though, was encouraging to me in that respect. Even though it was on such a small scale, to drop running without hesitation because I saw a better way to glorify God and honor him gave me peace and encouragement that my priorities, at least in this case, had been in line with serving God. I don't think there couldn't have been anything more hypocritical than me brushing past Henry because I had to stay on track with my run if my stated purpose for running is indeed to glorify God through my running. Apart from running there had been some uneasiness in my life that I was actually serving God in what I was doing, since I didn't feel like I was really doing anything substantial. But I felt a peace now that as long as I was ready and willing to serve God wherever he put me, and trust him with where he put me, he would use me in ways that I couldn't even have imagined. Like leading a guy to Christ on the bleachers of Moi Stadium in Kisumu, Kenya. I rest my case.

 

Road trip with the crew and an apocalyptic run

    I had been told we were going to get an early in the morning for Kisumu, but I thought with amusement and skepticism what an early start is in Kenya. I don't think we had started on much of anything before 11:00 or noon for most of the time I'd been here. Still, I was determined to make sure I wasn't the one holding up the show, and was impressed that we actually got out of the house by 7:30 if I remember correctly (if we got out earlier than that I'm sure Heather and Patrick will say that I'm selling short their efforts to get us out the door, which were impressive) and headed for town. Here I discovered what I probably consider my biggest logistical blunder of the trip. Everyone else was packed completely in backpacks, fine with walking to the stage where we would get on a bus. I, on the other hand, had my gorgeous '70s vintage baby blue suitcase, which I awkwardly lugged along. I had planned on taking my backpacking pack as Heather and Patrick and Ross did, but as my dad and talked about it as I was packing we decided it wouldn't be worth the risk of damaging it or getting it stolen when I didn't think I would have to be carrying my stuff outside of vehicles all that much. Let me say as a heads up to anyone who is traveling to a less developed country like Kenya (and I would guess traveling anywhere) that not being mobile with your luggage can very easily turn into a huge headache. That alone put me into a foul mood as I stumbled down the road with my suitcase. The walk was probably less than half a mile, but when you're carrying a suitcase that distance is enough to be a huge hassle. It also didn't help that all of them were packing for less than a week where I had stuff packed for a month. Another thing I had underestimated was how much packing space my running stuff would take. The clothes aren't too bad because I honestly just wear running clothes a decent amount of the time so those can overlap, but if I take both pair of running shoes and a big container of Gatorade powder, that takes up a significant chunk of space. I was still out of money, which added to my foul mood. That had continued to be a pretty big source of stress for me, which was kind of stupid because Heather and Patrick were fine with covering for me but, especially on top of stumbling around with the suitcase, made feel like the incompetent little brother that they couldn't leave alone to take care of himself.

    We packed into one of the big "Double M" company busses and headed into downtown to catch a shuttle to Kisumu. Elijah and Tanna had a bunch of their relatives decide to not come, so we were going to share a shuttle with them, which I was really looking forward to because it meant we would pretty much fill up the shuttle and that would be a really fun group to go with. We stopped by a grocery store to get some snacks for the trip then headed over to the street where a bunch of shuttles were waiting to be filled and take off. Apparently there's no set time that they take off, they just wait until they're filled and leave. It seemed to me like it was a pretty lousy system if you happened to get there and be one of the first people in the shuttle and had to wait an hour or two for it to slowly fill up before finally leaving. But then again, I guess that matches with the whole Kenyan sense of time. What's the problem with waiting a couple hours?

    I knew it was too much to think that we would actually get out of there as quickly as Heather and Patrick planned and sure enough Elijah and Tanna showed up about an hour later. I think the chances of leaving somewhere on time go down exponentially the more groups you add because not only does each have a high chance of being late, but none of the groups want to be the first one there so they'll get there extra late. You can imagine the downward spiral of escalation of lateness as each group ensures they're not the first ones there. It was kind of funny to watch Heather and Patrick try to keep a tight schedule to maximize their time in Kenya, but trying to keep a tight schedule here is like catching a fly with chopsticks.

    The ride was beautiful, with some gorgeous views out over the Rift Valley. I was sorry this was a ride that I had made in the dark my first time coming and going from Kisumu, because it had a lot of cool scenery all along the way, and we saw a couple groups of zebras and some baboons. We made a pit stop in Nakuru and then headed on a rough dirt roads through the mountains, with more beautiful scenic views. Patrick explained to me a little bit of the environmental impacts of the logging that's happened, which is pretty cool when you are looking out at the land as he pointing out specific stands of trees and indicator species. We headed through Kiricho, which is where a lot of the tea in Kenya is grown, and it was pretty impressive to see the massive tea fields. The fields here, tea or otherwise, don't look like the endless fields in the Midwest, there's a lot more variety to the land. The land is a lot more rolling and a lot of the fields are dotted with trees which make it a lot more interesting than most of the farmland I've traveled through in the US. We stopped along this stretch at one of the roadside stops to get some roasted corn, which is a pretty entertaining affair typical of any commerce here. A small crowd of ladies ran up to the shuttle when they saw we were slowing down with a couple of cobs of corn in their hands and thrust them through the windows into the van, apparently feeling that you were more likely to pick the piece of corn that is two inches from your face, which turned out to be a good marketing strategy in my case because I just wanted to get that corn out of my face (unintentional Nacho Libre reference, but that just makes me even happier that it happened). I didn't even know who I took the corn from because it was just a mess of arms, and I just pressed the 10 schilling coin into the hand I had taken the corn from. I don't think I've ever had roasted corn in the US, but I prefer it to the boiled corn that is the standard "corn on the cob" that we had when I was growing up. There are places along the street all over the place where people sit out with a screen over a small stove roasting corn and selling it for 10 schillings a piece.

    By the time we got back on solid pavement Heather was feeling pretty car sick and I wasn't doing so well myself. I think coming back to Seattle every ride is going to feel luxuriously smooth, even on the bus. I'm glad to have the experience here though because I think having good roads is one of those things I never think of even being grateful for at home. To their credit the Kenyan government is doing a lot roadwork on improving the roads, both in the Nairobi area and nationally, hoping it provides an economic boost to have easier travel. When we got to Kisumu there was another agonizing walk with my suitcase for maybe a quarter mile to a close by mall, the same one I had stopped at with Elijah after church a couple weeks ago, and hung out there while Patrick and Elijah went to find a bank or cause some trouble or something like that. While we were sitting there waiting I talked with Ross about the post-election violence in 2007, and finally heard a more complete version of it. I'd heard it referenced numerous times as it still looms over much of the political proceedings today as the government works to institute the new constitution that was drafted as a result of the unrest and dissatisfaction with the 2007 election. What I hadn't known was that Kisumu was pretty much the original place where the violence started, with a lot of buildings being burned and pretty massive riots that resulted in a large number of deaths. Apparently the original cause of the violence was basically that the candidate from a nearby area that is pretty poor and doesn't receive very much government funding looked like he was going to win but the results shifted very late in the game, making it look pretty clear that voter fraud was happening. From there the anger over the election fraud turned into something of a tribal conflict, with members of different tribes destroying the homes and businesses of members of rival tribes, and in some cases killing people. This is another place where to get a more accurate and complete story of the post-election violence talk with Patrick or Kenneth or Wikipedia. To me it really is a pretty interesting, though horrible, episode, because it was a turning point for the country that is now resulting in a concerted effort to clean up corruption and build a better nation. I was glad to hear the story from Ross, because it sounds to me like the kind of thing where you would hear a different story from different Kenyans based on their tribe, so I was happy to have a more objective perspective to compare that against. From what Ross said there is still a decent amount of tribal animosity in some areas, although all the Kenyans I've talked to have seemed to downplay tribal differences.

    After waiting for a while Ross and I took off to go see some stuff. I wished I was able to spend some time in Kisumu with Ross because he knows the area pretty well from the year that he lived here and seems to me to have a similar taste to me for what's interesting to go see. He told me there was a really big open air market near the mall, and I was pretty disappointed I hadn't gone when I was in Kisumu before. Before we even got out of the mall we were approached by a friendly young man, about my age I would guess, who struck up a conversation with us about what we were doing here and where we were from. We talked with him for a couple minutes then said goodbye and headed out to the street. It was a funny conversation because I, and Ross too, expected him to ask for money or ask for help getting to the States or something, but at least as far as the conversation went he seemed to just want to talk. Ross was a little bit annoyed with it because he had obviously approached us just because we were white, but to me I'm glad to make as many connections with people as I can and be approachable. A torrential downpour started just before we took off, and we made a run for the street to get some took tooks to take to Peter and Leah's house, but just the distance through the parking lot to the street was enough to soak us.

    Compared to when I had been here just a couple weeks earlier the house was pretty empty. Elijah and Elisha had gone to school and Atieno was still coming back from Nairobi. Miriam and Nora were there, and I think Leah was there but I don't really remember. I hadn't run yet, and after the drive I was eager to stretch the legs and get in what I could before dark, so I threw on my running clothes and headed out into the rain, which hadn't let up at all. It was a great run though, one of those where you splash through all the puddles without caring because you're soaked all the way through. I think I got even more cheers than usual from the groups huddled under the shop awnings, astonished that a mzungu was plowing through the water whenever nearly everyone else had ran for cover. I'm not sure if they recognized me from when I had been running there a week and a half earlier, but either way their shouts carried me along, and I picked up the pace both because of the excitement of the run and knowing that I wasn't going to get far before dark so might as well go hard and get in a little bit of speed. I felt a giddy sense of satisfaction with the run, felt like I was about to jump out of my skin I was so happy to be out running in such epic conditions. Rather than being a miserable run, as the dark, rainy ones often are, it was a beautiful run that I cherished every moment of. Lightning filled the sky, adding the epic, exciting nature of the run, but it was close enough that I turned and hightailed it back to home. By this time the darkness was gathering fast, and even in my euphoric state I was anxious to get home. Adding to my anxiety were a couple places where the power lines were throwing sparks, which would have been cool if it wasn't so dangerous. A couple of times there were awesome lightning strikes that lit up everything like day for a split second, and if I had lost any of the excitement of the run, those would shock me back into frenzied, ecstatic state. When I got home I took off as many clothes as I could at the door, wrung them out and hung them up to dry. Every article I was wearing was saturated, but it had been warm enough that I wasn't even cold.

    That night I helped Uncle Peter out with moving some video files from a friend's laptop to his, and showed him some basic concepts about how to organize and find files and programs on his computer. He was happy for the help and both him and I were regretful that we hadn't started on this when I was here for longer so I could have taught him more. All we did was creating new folders and copying items into those folders, so I really wish I could have shown him more. I was surprised he didn't have more computer skills considering he's a pretty successful businessman, but my guess is that it just shows that computer skills here aren't as essential in the corporate world as in the States because computers aren't as widespread. They're still very useful and valuable skills to have, but you can get by without them in a way that I don't know if you could in the US.

Elijah’s old stomping grounds

    Somehow I woke up at about 8:45 Sunday morning and found out it was already to time to get ready for church. We were heading over to Elijah's church on the other side of town, which took over an hour to get to. I found out that Ken, Mark, and Elijah (guys from Rainier Ave) had all grown up in the same church, so it was cool to get to see it and meet some of the people that had grown up with them or watched them grow up. We got there a little bit early (I think that might have actually been the first time I showed up on time for anything) and Elijah showed us around a little bit, including introducing us to some of his friends. It was a fairly big church facility, with a soccer field, basketball court, separate small auditorium and a building of mostly classrooms and meeting rooms. I think they said they have three services, and the service we were in probably had close to 500 people. During the announcements time they had visitors stand up, and specifically introduced our group as the friends of Elijah. It was funny thinking of him being back in a church full of people who knew him as a little kid, because I had never thought of him like that. The church was doing a fundraiser to help people suffering from the famine in east Kenya. If I remember right the sermon was focused on that, about how we need to be generous with what we have. After the service we headed up for a meeting for visitors with a couple of pastors. It was a little bit different than your standard visitors visit since the majority of us were friends of Elijah. The pastor we were talking with was a pretty young guy who it turned out had grown up with Ken, Mark, and Elijah so it was kind of funny talking with him. One of the other visitors was a guy who had just converted from Islam, and I wished I had been able to talk with him more. I've never thought about it that much before, but when I heard that he had just converted I was fascinated by what would lead him to that and how that played out with his family and community.

    After a while more of talking with friends of Elijah and other people after church we all headed to a food court at a nearby mall for lunch. Going to one of the counters to get food we just sat down and were immediately accosted by hovering attendants who shoved menus in front of us urging us to order from their restaurant. It was a pretty amusing process but, like lots of other shopping experiences, it was kind of suffocating because it was hard to just casually peruse the menus and choose. It was a funny experience because it felt just like what they do every Sunday, going out for lunch after church. It was interesting to me to go from being on my own in a different culture to being in such a big group, because now rather than wishing I had someone I could share the cultural differences and challenges with, I was on the other side of it where if anything we had too big of a group and to where we could interact with each other enough that we didn't have to interact with the outside too much at all if we didn't want to. To me it just confirmed what I had already thought, that it's best to travel with someone else, but not more than a couple people.

    We headed down to the Massai Market after that, and I found that it was much more fun to head through the market now that I had spent more time in Kenya and was less bothered by the haggling and cajoling of the vendors. The bartering is still something that bugs me a little bit, especially there, because the system still seems to me to be basically based on deception, with vendors telling you anything they needed to, about having a bad day and having not sold anything, or needing money to feed their children. The only way to deal with them is to basically ignore what they say, because basically none of it is true, or at least so little it's not worth picking through the lies, and you ignore them and figure out on your own what something is worth. Still though, I now found the process entertaining, because I now didn't really care about hurting the feelings of the vendors by hard bargaining, and the harder I bargained the more I found that rather than offending them, that's exactly what they expected. What made this a good practice for me was because I didn't have any money, so even if they sucked me into a bad deal I wasn't actually making any deal. It was also interesting for me to see how low people would put their prices when I kept saying I didn't want to buy something. One principle that Patrick told me that I think I'll stick to or at least keep in mind if I go back to actually buy stuff is that you should spend more than 200 schillings on anything, and you can probably get most things for 200 or less. It was a fun experience, but Heather told me afterward that I looked just like our dad. As I thought back through my haggling and joking with the vendors it was eerily similar to the way my dad would listen and debate with any of the missionaries or activists that would come to our door. I felt just a little bit bad that I was taking up their time when I didn't have any intention of buying anything, but these people were pushy enough that it didn't really bother me. In most cases I was repeatedly telling them their price was too high or that I wasn't going to buy something, and they would follow me lowering the price as we walked.

    We got back as it was getting dark, and the others were still dealing with the jet lag enough that they wanted a nap. I headed out for a run around the estate, not dreading it too much since it would be pretty relaxed and I'd done enough running outside of the estate that it wasn't quite so monotonous. This was my first true night run and it was pretty cool. The darkness made the slow pace seem not quite as slow. There weren't quite as many kids out, and Mo and a couple of the older boys ran with me more than usual, more like they really wanted to run than to just play around. It was cool to be able to encourage them along as they worked hard to stay with me. Rather than running ahead of me like many of the other kids always did, they would stay next to me and stay with me as long as they could. It was maybe the most enjoyable run I'd had in the estate. Afterward Mo and one of the other boys said they wanted to get stronger and asked me how, so I showed them how to do pushups and squats, and told them those would make them strong if they did them every day. They were pretty enthusiastic and committed to doing it, but I'm never sure if kids cling to the things I say and hang onto those words, or if they forget what I've told them as soon as I'm out of sight. It doesn't really bother me either way though, because I figure whatever I tell them is more than they had before about how to exercise and become a top athlete, and even what I do can inspire a handful of those kids to become good athletes then it was worth it. The biggest thing that I've found myself trying to impart to kids is just the simple concept that if they want to become strong runners they should run every day. At the age they are to me it really doesn't matter at all how far they go, as long as they are out there running every day that's more than enough. And whether they become good runners or not I like to think that it will set them up for healthier lives.

    Overall the week of training in Nairobi hadn't been too bad. I hadn't increased my mileage at all and I hadn't gotten in any speed work, but as far as I was concerned holding steady on mileage was good enough for a week in Nairobi. I saw the time in Nairobi as a potential training disaster and I definitely avoided having a disaster. Plus, maintaining mileage at 75 miles per week isn't too bad, at that point even maintaining is building my aerobic strength. Without a doubt my training was behind where it was this time last year, but I don't see that as such a bad thing because last year turned out pretty disappointing so I think it would be foolish to be doing things just the same as last year.

 

Are we still in Seattle?

    I opted to do my long run Saturday morning, because I figured between the late night of clubbing that night that Ross was gunning for and church festivities on Sunday getting in a run at all would be tough enough without trying to carve out over two hours. Nairobi was the opposite of Eldoret in that rather than looking forward to my long run so I could explore farther down the endless dirt roads I wondered about how much I would have to loop around to get in enough time. I did my standard route over to the sports ground, which was getting a little bit boring but it was still light years better than running around the estate so I didn't mind. It looked like they were setting up for a soccer tournament or something there, so there were more people than usual, almost all of them giving me curious glances. It was interesting to me that no one yelled at me, a couple quietly said hi when I greeted them and the rest just gave glances like they wanted to see what the heck I was doing but didn't want to be caught staring, a stark contrast to Eldoret. My guess is that people see whites enough in Nairobi that it's less of a spectacle than in Eldoret and more of just a curious oddity here. Just walking around in downtown Nairobi I feel like most people don't even give me a second look, or at least definitely don't stop and stare like they often do on my runs in Eldoret. Even for these people though, I would guess seeing a mzungu out running is something new, or at least something very odd. I planned to include my new dirt road through the factory area to the run but had a little bit of a scare with some pain in my foot as I headed that way, so I decided to turn for home. I think that's about the first pain I've experienced this summer and it's certainly not a coincidence that I felt coming back to pound the concrete streets of Nairobi after running on the dirt roads. It calmed down by the time I got back, so I explored the streets around the estate, none of which were decent for running. I thought I got a lot more surprised looks and it occurred to me that not only to these people rarely see mzungus but they probably barely see runners, simply because it's too crowded of an area for running. I got more familiar with the area around the estate though, and went on a couple roads I hadn't been on at all. For the amount of time I'd spent in Nairobi I think I was much more familiar with the areas around where I stayed in Eldoret and Kisumu, because running had proven to be my main mode of familiarization with the surrounding areas everywhere other than Nairobi.

    Heather and Patrick had planned to do a big lunch at the house to kind of serve as the semi-official celebration of them getting married/them being there/the prodigal son returning home, and preparations were gearing up by the time I got back. The lawn chairs, table, and lawn umbrella were out in the yard and all of the girls were out there cutting mountains of vegetables as Patrick's dad sat with them and read the newspaper/supervised/actually just read the paper. Since they had arrived Heather, Patrick, Jordan, Marissa, and Melanie had been far more helpful with the housework than I had been in all my time there. As I saw it there were basically three reasons why I'd barely contributed to any housekeeping or cooking: I'm a visitor, I'm male, and I refuse to engage in polite arguments about whether I should help or not. Over the course of my time here there's been a number of times I've asked if there was anything I could do to help, which was consistently answered with what amounted to a polite request to stay out of the way. Maybe the girls were more insistent, but it seemed to me they were much more quickly welcomed into the kitchen to help. I realized that the cooking crew for this feast was completely female, and if staying out of the way was good enough for Patrick's dad, that would be good enough for me. If I was helping I wanted to make sure it was actually helpful rather than out of some misplaced sense of courtesy that I wanted to pull my wait that would actually only slow the process down. Ross commented later, as him and I were sitting around as the women cooked, that one of the perks of coming to Kenya was that very little in the way of helping with cooking and cleaning was expected of you as a male. Heather, however, was not from this system; on the contrary, she had been living in gender equality for all, power-to-the-women-let's-chain-our-men-to-the-stove-and-take-over-the-world Seattle for the last five or six years (note: let it be known that Heather is not one of the raging feminists that make the streets of Seattle dangerous to walk alone at night if you are indeed a male, but in my opinion even the slightest opportunity to take a jab at the Seattle feminist crowd must be seized with the utmost enthusiasm) so she asked me to crush the garlic. I enjoyed this because the garlic smell reminded me of Safeco Field, and I wistfully thought of how great it would be to go to a Mariners game right now. I'm not even sure how to explain my feeling of wanting to go home. It's not that I don't like Kenya or don't like having the time that I do here, but still I've been here and away from nearly everything that's been familiar to me for my whole life that whenever I'm reminded of it, I really can't wait to be back to the familiar sights and sounds and smells and people and culture.

    As seems to happen more often than not, the meal that was supposed to be lunch at noon or one turned into an early dinner at five. This is baffling to my American perspective because I just can't see how you miscalculate how long it will take to get a meal ready by 5 hours, but that's just kind of how things happen here and I really don't want to complain because the food was phenomenal, and if they put me in the charge the meal would have been ready by one and it would have been a disgustingly large stack of fried egg sandwiches and a pile of hash browns that could rival the standard fare at Beth's. Plus, as is also usually the case, it was pretty fun hanging out and relaxing with the people there while we waited. Elijah and Tanna had come, and so had Nora, a girl who had lived with Jordan and Heather for a summer, and her brother, so it was a fun crowd to hang out with. Rainier Avenue is far enough away from SPU that during school I don't make it down there as often as I would like to, so I was happy to be able to hang out with everyone. It was kind of weird though to basically be hanging out with the whole crowd of Seattle people in Nairobi, but for me it was a welcome break from being different to completely fit in with the group. I pulled myself away after dinner to take a nap so I could head out clubbing with Ross and the girls. I was hesitant to leave because I was enjoying relaxing and talking with Americans for the first time in over a month, but these was a group of people I could talk with in Seattle and I thought clubbing with Ross in Nairobi could be a good cultural experience. I'd seen as much of Kenyan clubs as I cared to, but I thought going along with Ross would be a lot more fun than just going with the girls.

    I think I've mentioned before the lack of privacy that often exists, but I don't think I've quite done the subject justice, and in this particular case it was worse than usual. As I've said, the size of Kenyan families and the size of Kenyan houses usually necessitates that all the boys share a room and all the girls share a room in a house. This inevitably means there can be a decent amount of traffic through the rooms, even while you're sleeping, but I haven't seen much regard for sleeping people in a room. People turn on the lights, talk in decidedly unhushed voices, play loud music, and don't hesitate to wake you up for anything and everything. Maybe this is just something that I'm pretty touchy about but I've been shocked at how much people trying to sleep are ignored, both me and others. In this case it meant that in the course of trying to take a three hour nap, people came in and turned the light on about eight times, I think three different people woke me up, two of those woke me up and tried to start conversations with me, and Flo couldn't figure out why I was grumpy when she woke me up to head out. If I was grumpy before we took off, the taxi ride that took over an hour because of running around to pick something up for Atieno with Flo and Atieno harassing me the whole way didn't help. We headed out to Westlands, a fairly class neighborhood with a decent number of whites, at least compared to other areas, and I saw as many white people in the clubs there as I think I'd seen anywhere other than camping up in Kaptagat. Ross and I hung out with a couple of his friends for a good portion of the night, and we headed around to a couple clubs. We started really hopping around 3, and by then I was definitely ready to head home, but as always the others were going strong until around 5. It had been an alright night, but I still wasn't hooked on clubbing at all. I liked dancing around and hanging out, but to me about two hours of that was enough, and the standard here, at least with the people I've gone with, is to head out for at least six or seven hours, which is well past when I'm wishing we could go home. I'm pretty sure I'm done with clubbing, because I kind of figure if I don't have that much fun clubbing with Ross in Nairobi, then there's not really any point in going any more.

 

 

The novel concept of being around people you fit in with

    Because of the late night the night before I decided to wake up later for my run and see just how hazardous it would be. It turned out it actually wasn't all that much more crowded at 8:00 in the morning than at 6:00. Maybe I was waking up earlier just to run into the morning commute. By now I was comfortable enough with my running route to explore a little bit. Thinking about it now I had only run the route twice, but it felt familiar now and I was ready to see if there was elsewhere that would be good to run. It was definitely more adventurous than I would have been my first time in Nairobi, but I was much more comfortable exploring now after my successful excursions elsewhere. Kenya in general was becoming less strange and more familiar, maybe even to a somewhat dangerous degree. I felt that was part of why I had come. I hope that if I come back, Kenya won't be a strange foreign land, but a place I feel comfortable and even kind of "at home". I explored a little farther along the rim road and headed down a dirt road that looked like it headed toward some factories. As far as the Nairobi area goes it looked like a somewhat remote area and I was definitely kind of nervous about heading that way, but buoyed by all the successful running experiences I'd had so far. It turned out to be much less isolated than I thought, following the train tracks and, after passing a couple of factories it opened into a big field I recognized as being the one parallel to the road I had run the last couple of days. People dotted the whole field, which was pretty barren except for a couple of scraggly bushes. Already the area seemed much less sketchy than it first looked. I wondered if my adventurous running was going to catch up with me eventually, but it had provided me with so many great experiences and allowed me to see so much more of the places I was staying that I was glad I'd explored as much as I had.

    I headed into town with Ross and Flo, and on the way in Ross pointed out areas we could explore later if we had time. If I was adventurous then Ross was fearless, because some of the streets he was pointing out I don't think I'd be bold enough to go down unless there was a pretty good reason or I was with someone who knew the area well. We passed one of the bigger slums in Nairobi, and I have to say it was an impressive sight. Where you could look out over it was almost non-stop corrugated metal roofs with few gaps for streets. Where the slum came up to the road you could see how incredibly crowded things were. The gaps between the shacks that people walked through looked to me like you would have to go sideways to make it through. The biggest slum in Nairobi was out on the way to Eddie's house and we had seen it from a distance the night before. Ross had told me that they could actually be pretty vibrant, and that he had walked through the big one with Miriam when he had been here before (all the slums have names, but I can't remember any of them). This was a strange concept to me because I'd thought of the slums the very top place to make sure I stayed away from. I'd never even slightly considered going into a slum, and considered them extremely dangerous. To hear that Ross and Miriam and walked through one just to check it out seemed strange to me, but in expressing this to Ross I found that, at least according to him, they aren't all that dangerous. You still definitely need to be careful, but they're not the "no fly zone" that I had made them out to be. That is now one of the things I want to be sure to do while I'm here since that was such a strong misconception in my mind. I can't imagine that I wouldn't learn a lot by walking through one of those areas.

    Ross made for a much better tour guide than Flo, and it was good to be walking around with someone who both knew the city a little bit and also wanted to see the things and do similar shopping to what I wanted to do. I was able to finally get some money from the bank in Missoula out of an ATM, which was really a relief. That had been a pretty annoying, stressful thing and I was glad to be able to pay for things myself again. Ross and I negotiated a trip to get Kenyan national soccer team jerseys with Flo in return for a trip to the hair salon. We were able to get the jerseys for 1000 schillings, so about $11. I'm pretty sure getting a jersey of equivalent quality in the US would be at least $40-50. Rather than football (American), baseball, and basketball jerseys, the main jerseys for sale here were from European soccer teams and national rugby teams. I think I could spend myself broke on rugby jerseys, partly because they're pretty classy because they're basically polos that are made for sports and partly because they're just different from anything I've seen before and I think they're awesome. I stopped at a street vendor that I saw had a scarf for Gor Mahia, a popular local team in the Kenyan Premier League. I had thought about getting a Kenyan national scarf, but since I had the jersey I figured it would be cool to have a scarf from a local team. After some bargaining I got it for 300 schillings (a little over $3). I thought of the Sounders scarves back home that I believe go for about $30.

    Ross left to go visit a friend, so it was back to me and Flo. We ate lunch, and then made a couple of long stops at different shops for Flo to get a CD burned, and she got a big kick out of me breaking one of the rickety stools at one of the places where we stopped. While we were waiting on the street for one of Flo's friends I headed across the street to the grocery store there to get some water and a snack, to Flo's distress/anger/worry. If worse came to worst I was pretty sure I could make it home and I was getting tired of following Flo around. Maybe it was just the little bit of hanging out with Ross that did it, but all of a sudden was pretty impatient about running errands around town with Flo. I guess I realized talking with Ross that I hadn't seen as much of the city as I had thought and was now antsy to do less just walking around with Flo and her friends and more seeing the cool stuff around Nairobi. Flo and I headed to a club to meet a couple of her friends while we waited for Heather and Patrick to come into town, which was actually pretty chill because I could just watch soccer on the TV's there while they talked. What wasn't pretty chill was when we took off and they started window shopping for perfume and beauty products. I felt like a boyfriend who was putting in his time, except that I wasn't a boyfriend and I knew there would be no tradeoff of heading on a hunting trip or something over the weekend, so I was pretty glum. When they came out of the shop I asked Flo where Heather and Patrick were and she said they still weren't in town. Serendipitously Heather and Patrick happened to walk up just then with Marissa, Melanie, and Jordan, their friends from church who they had just picked up from the airport. It was a huge relief to be able to take off with them and leave Flo and her friends to do whatever they wanted. I was in a pretty foul mood by that point, but I was happy to be back with Heather and Patrick and their crowd.

    We all headed out toward Westlands, one of the nicer areas of Nairobi, to meet Elijah and Tanna for dinner. The traffic was as bad as I've seen it, and we opted to get out and walk the last stretch, as traffic was at an absolute stand still. As crazy as the traffic has been I think I've avoided the worst of it because I generally I haven't been coming in and out of town during rush hour. We met Elijah and Tanna at the house of Wawa's (another guy from Rainier Avenue) parents. Wawa's mom is white and has lived in Kenya for most of her life, which was interesting to me because for whatever reason an American living their whole life in Kenya still strikes me as peculiar. Maybe it's just that I couldn't picture myself doing it so it fascinates me that they are willing to. I think I'm actually less willing now to live long-term in Kenya than before I came. It's not that I haven't enjoyed Kenya; I've really enjoyed it and there have been a number of places that I've thought would be pretty cool to live, but in my time here all the fun I've had has been with the underlying feeling that I'll also be happy to get home.

    We piled into a couple taxis and headed out to an Ethiopian restaurant out in that area and, as I was the only one other than Miriam who wasn't dealing with jet lag, it was kind of entertaining to watch people nodding off or fighting sleep during dinner. I think because of that the conversation wasn't too lively, but it was still fun hanging out with all those guys. Even in Seattle I'm not able to hang out with that group as much I'd like because with school and running (particularly running) making the trek down to Rainier Ave for church on Sundays (let alone during the week) is a pretty arduous task that I don't undertake all that often. They are a really fun group, even when none of them have slept much in the last 24 hours. About 5 minutes into the taxi ride home I think I was the only one awake, and I nodded off myself.

 

There’s no such thing as bad weather, only soft Keny… uh, people

    I took off early to run again Thursday morning, and it started to rain just long enough after I left that I didn't grab a jacket. I did the same route over to the "sports ground" I had found that was in toward town. I hoped things would be less crowded because of the rain, but the fact of the matter is people still need to go to work and I don't think the crowd walking along Outer Rim Road at 6 in the morning is just out to stretch their legs. One thing I saw Wednesday and Thursday morning is the passenger train that comes through the area and runs parallel to the main road. Both days it was packed like a cattle car with people hanging out the doors like a matatu. In a picture book Ross showed me later (if you don't look at picture books I have nothing to say to you) it showed a train that was similarly packed, except that the roof was also completely full. Apparently that is the standard for passenger trains in Kenya. They're certainly not the luxurious form of transportation that they are in the US. Ross told me that some people would hop on the back to get a free ride through town.

    There was only one guy running at the sports ground which I guessed was because of the rain, only strengthening my idea that the runners here weren't too serious of runners (though in fairness Kemboi also canceled a run because of the rain so maybe that's not an accurate measure of running commitment). He was coming around, so I jumped in to run with him, which I think kind of surprised him. He was decidedly in the category of quiet Kenyan runners who just as soon wouldn't have said a word if I hadn't been peppering him with questions about who he was and what he was doing here. It occurred to me later that if someone came up to me on a run and started asking me questions about who I was and why I was running I might be a little weirded out myself. He was running at a pretty quick pace, and said he was running to get ready for a fitness test to be able to join none other than the US army. I vaguely knew that people from other countries would come serve in the US military but it seemed strange to me now to think of someone from over here going to serve in the US army. Since then, at least of people I've talked to, that's a fairly common way for people to get to the US, and one teenager has asked me how he would be able to do that.

    On my way back I met another runner along the rim road, and we gave each other a high five and I gave a hoot. I wished I could have turned and ran with him, if for nothing else than to see where a serious runner runs in Nairobi, but I was already over an hour into my run and didn't want to go on some great excursion through the city. By the time I got home I was completely soaked as was looking forward to a cup of hot tea more than usual. Heather and Patrick made breakfast again, and then left after not too long, Heather to get her hair done in the African braids, and Patrick to deliver some things they brought with them for people over here. With them showing up there was definitely a huge change of pace. Until then everything had been pretty relaxed, a week here, two weeks there. But now with Heather and Patrick we were on a tight schedule to maximize the 10 or 11 days that had here to see as many relatives as possible, rather than spending time with all of them. I felt like someone who was walking along and just jumped on a speeding matatu, but today with them off it was as laid back of a day as I had had yet. I just spent the day at the house with Ross, mostly writing. Nicole and Lois were home, and a whole afternoon with them is usually about half an afternoon more than I'm up for. Luckily Ross has some amazing reserve of patience that I admire and marvel at that allowed him to keep them more preoccupied than I did.

    That evening we headed over to Eddie's house to visit him and his mom. It felt good to be visiting people for the second time, to be greeting them and asking how they were doing rather than being introduced. Eddie and Patrick had a lot to catch up on and they chatted away in Swahili for most of the visit, and Ross and I sat and talked about Canada and the US and Kenya and East Coast bias (which it turns out is at least as alive and well in Canada as in the US, and we're talking about sports, so don't think this is some great geographical conspiracy). It was good to be part of a group, rather than an individual who was visiting. I would advise anyone doing a similar trip that I would recommend doing it with at least one other person. The best I can explain it is that there will be so many new things and new people that you meet that having someone who is going through the same experience is good to have. There have definitely been some times when I've felt pretty alone, even with a loving and accommodating family around. A funny thing that came out in the conversation (or maybe earlier but this was the first I heard of it) was that Eddie had actually gone to school and been pretty good friends with the Elijah who goes to Rainier Avenue Church, who we would be meeting with the next day. When we got home we ate a late dinner even by Kenyan standards. I'm pretty sure I haven't had dinner sooner than 8:00, and on this night it was after ten.

We have contact

    Heather and Patrick were scheduled to come in at 1 am on Wednesday, so late Tuesday night, and I was eager for them to arrive. As accommodating and fun as the family had been, I was looking forward to spending some time with someone I had known for more than the month that I've been here. Also, Marissa, Melanie, Jordan, and Elijah and Tanna, all friends of theirs (and mine, but basically through them) from Rainier Avenue Church were also coming so I would have the chance to be a part of a group where I fit in. I was fascinated at my near-obsession with fitting in now that I didn't, considering how much I prided myself on being someone who didn't go with the flow and did his own thing. I never realized that nearly every wacky or out-of-the-ordinary thing that I had done, every pink rain coat or nasty mullet or cross-dressing hiking trip (all of those are completely factual by the way) that I thought of as being my attack on social norms all existed in the context of already fitting in. I now was counting down the days until I could be in a group where I was considered normal. For however welcoming and hospitable everyone here was, I still wasn't normal and I missed the feeling. I didn't go into town Monday or Tuesday, mostly just laid low at the house. I was in a crippling situation as far as my money went, because I needed to go get more money but I wanted to check with my parents to see if I had money in my account first, which I needed to buy more air time for my phone or for Miriam's Internet modem to be able to do. I just hung around the house on Monday and Tuesday, with not much reason to go into town other than to get money. I haven't had any time yet on the trip though where I had some uneventful days where I wasn't grateful for them because of the chance to relax, catch up on writing, and have some time alone. One of my biggest worries on this trip is that I would just get tired of meeting people, because I don't really like meeting new people all that much, and I was always grateful when I had some time by myself, because there was more than enough time hanging out with the relatives. I was very happy to see Patrick's parents again, and if there was any reason that I would spend more time in Nairobi it would be to spend time with them. I sat around talking with Patrick's dad quite a bit, which was great. He is probably one of my favorite people to just sit and talk with. He makes me wish I was an old man and that we could be some of those old guys that just seemed to me to sit and talk and watch people pass. I can't picture getting tired of talking with him.

    I went for a fun Monday afternoon around the dreadfully familiar loop of the estate. I think I dramatically underestimated how hilly the loop is the first time I was here, because now it seemed less like I was on a gradual hill the whole time and more like I was climbing a pretty legitimate hill. It certainly would explain how much I had struggled running in Nairobi and hadn't had any issues elsewhere. It put things in new perspective when I thought of doing an hour hill run rather than just an easy hour of recovery miles, and encouraged me and I looked at the training I had done here before from this new perspective. In light of that I took this run very easy, as I thought Kemboi might if he was running on these kind of hills, disregarding what my time was for each lap, and was able to run 70 minutes pretty comfortably, although very slowly. The schools were now on break now, called "holy day" here (maybe they're actually saying "holiday" and just pronouncing it different, but it sounds like "holy day" to me), so I had the crowds of kids running around with me that only showed up in the evenings last time I was in Nairobi. As I had discovered last time, having the kids running around the you is fun when you're doing an easy shakeout, but frustrating if you're trying to get in a solid run. The combination of the suffocating confines of the estate and the annoyance of kids who want to run with you but end up making you trip over them made it a pretty aggravating run, and I wondered how long I would be able to stand training in Nairobi, especially as my mileage increases. It was fun to see the kids though and they were definitely excited to see me again.

    I took off for a run Tuesday morning, but was feeling so lousy that I stopped and decided to rest up and run in the evening to see if I felt better. I continued to feel pretty sluggish through the rest of the day and ended up not going for a run that evening because my legs weren't feeling better at all. I worried that the week I was in Nairobi would just be a dead week for running that would set back my training that was already behind the mileage schedule I kept last year. For me training is something that has a big effect on my mood. If training isn't going well, it bugs me and I worry about it all day, and if it's going well then my mind is racing with the possibilities of what the upcoming season might hold.

    Tuesday night Ross arrived as we were eating dinner, which was a welcome face for me to see. Ross is a Canadian got to know Patrick while he was here working with Kiwanis in Kisumu before Patrick came to the States, I think working with giving people micro-loans to start small businesses. He had been there for a year, and had been back to visit since, so I saw him as I valuable expert. Thinking about it later, I realized that for all the people that were happy to show me around and help me adjust, none of them were foreigners, so Ross had some valuable insights that I couldn't get from the people here. I knew him from Patrick and Heather's wedding and it was good to talk with him and catch up on things. We had met at the wedding but there was enough going on that we never really got to know each other there, so we weren't even really catching up as much as learning about what each other was doing. I realized that I had only talked with one other person from North America since I had been here and it was good to hear a familiar accent. I went to bed as normal and woke up to the noise of Heather and Patrick coming at about 2. It was great to see them, and I could tell they were excited to be here, especially Patrick. Even from being away from everything I grew up with and in a strange place for two months has proven to be trying, so I have a hard time imagining coming home after three years. Because of their jet lag we stayed up in the living room drinking tea as Heather and Patrick passed out the gifts they had brought for people from America. They brought school supplies for Lois and Nicole, and Mexico national team jersey for Mo, a pair of shoes for Flo that ended up not fitting, and I can't remember what all else. We stayed up a little bit longer then headed up to go to bed, but Ross and I lay in bed talking for the next couple hours, him because he couldn't sleep, and me because I was planning on running early anyway and I wasn't worried about having time to sleep because I figured if I was traveling around with jet lagged people there would be plenty of opportunities to nap. We talked quite a bit about what things are like in Kenya and about Ross' time in Kenya, which I enjoyed hearing because it was good to talk with someone from my side of the cultural divide about the cultural differences I was seeing. I finally nodded off and slept for about half an hour before waking up for an early morning run. I decided I had to at least give a shot to training outside the estate, and felt more comfortable about that after my running adventures in Kisumu and Eldoret that I had gone on without any problems. Kenya was no longer such a strange, dangerous new place, but somewhere to explore.

    Patrick and Heather were still awake when I got up to run, and Patrick had already set about checking up on the house and seeing what was in disrepair or needed work. He seemed to me to have a quiet enthusiasm I'd never seen in him that I think naturally comes with coming home after being gone for so long. It was still pretty dark and for the most part I was able to run without any problem, but already people were headed to work and at times I had to weave my way through the crowds. Even after only two days it was a breath of fresh air to run outside the estate. One of the reasons I hadn't ventured out into the city was just because of the danger of running around alone as a white person on the outskirts of Nairobi, so I stayed on the main outer rim road that circles the city center. This morning I decided to keep the run as simple as possible to ensure that I didn't give myself a decent chance to get lost. The masses of people walking along the road and through the surrounding fields seemed kind of ominous in the gathering early morning light and for whatever reason strongly reminded me of IRobot with all of the robots gathering. I headed over an overpass where I had as good of a view of the surroundings as I had seen anywhere and it was impressive to the urban sprawl around me. I turned off the main road, which was not headed straight into town onto a mostly empty side road with a generous dirt shoulder. The further I got the more excited I was to be finding an area to run in Nairobi. Forgetting my earlier commitment to keep the route as simple as possible, I turned onto another promising side road, and was rewarded after several minutes of running with the discovery of a large dirt field that looked like a collection of soccer fields. There were several people running and jogging around it, and I figured that if people did work out in Nairobi, it was probably preferable to avoid the crowded roads and run somewhere like here. This was a community jogging area though and none of the people looked like serious runners, but I still wasn't sure I had a good eye for that kind of thing. On the roads around Eldoret it was easy because no one wore anything that even remotely resembled running clothing except the runners, which wore nice spandex, technical shirts, and track suits. Here most people were wearing track suits or exercise clothing but didn't look to me like anyone I could see dominating runners from the rest of the world. I ran several laps around, each one taking about four minutes, and then approached a group that was stretching before I left. They said they met there every day at 6 to run and exercise and said I was welcome to join them. I thanked them, but they were pretty clearly just a group exercising to stay healthy and stay in shape but not run competitively. I was excited about finding this place; just running there, running as many laps as I needed to get the mileage I wanted for the day, and running back would be a monumental upgrade to running around the estate, especially now that my mileage was higher.

    I could tell it was busier coming home as more people and vehicles filled the roads, but it still wasn't prohibitively crowded as I had feared it might be. My enthusiasm grew as this was confirmed to be a workable running route that would free me from running in the estate and let me see a little more of the city. A couple minutes before getting back to the estate a man wearing a wool sweater ran up next to me and I invited him to run with me. He said he was an 800 runner that lived and trained here in Nairobi at a track not too far away, although I didn't recognize it or grasp his directions on how to get there. He said he had run 1:46 and hoped to be able to get to the US to run, and also planned to run at the Olympic Trials next summer in hopes of qualifying for the London Olympics. I asked him about what it would take to make it to the Olympics, and he said he was hoping to run in the 1:43's and that if he did that he would have a good shot to make it. I was more skeptical of him than I had been of others because we were in Nairobi and he wasn't standard running clothes like others. I took down his phone number and told him I'd call him, but was less enthusiastic about meeting him than I had been about others. It was still nice to have a contact in Nairobi, although once we left I figured I would try to spend as little time in Nairobi as I could, so I wasn't sure how well it would work to meet. Plus, he would be doing 800 training and as I get closer to my own racing season it is becoming more important to start doing the specific workouts and training to be ready to race rather than jumping into random workouts. Thinking about the people I'd met, it made sense to me that it was easier to train in the city and at lower elevation for middle distance runners because developing speed on the track was a bigger part of their training than building strength with the long miles out on the road. I think it would be interesting to see the distribution of what events athletes in different areas ran. My guess is that the marathoners are almost exclusively in the Rift Valley but there would be greater distribution as the event distance decreased.

    I was in high spirits as I returned, now not dreading training in Nairobi like I had been. It was one of those things that I realized had been bugging me more than I was really aware of. It was a pretty big weight off my chest to not need to worry about being able to train in Nairobi. Patrick and Heather were making breakfast when I got back, and I realized that it was the first time I had seen a man cooking other than at Roger's where there weren't any women around. Patrick still seemed to me to be floating on air a little bit about being home, which was great to see. I don't think he had slept at all, but him and Heather were both still going strong. After breakfast Heather, Patrick, Ross, Flo, and I headed into town, and I was really frustrated I didn't have money, because I could have just covered transportation into town so Heather and Patrick and Ross could get money, but as it was we had to beg some money from Patrick's dad to get us into town, and from there I had to keep borrowing from Heather and Patrick, which frankly made me feel like an incompetent kid who couldn't take care of himself on his own. Heather pointed out that it was a lot better for me to be borrowing money them than having to get some money from the family, but it still really bugged me. It probably took us at least ten minutes to walk up through the estate because about every other house someone would yell at Patrick and enthusiastically greet him. It was great to see all these reunions, and I met some people I hadn't, who knew me only as the white guy that ran by all the time. The guys that were teenagers Patrick remembered as kids, and it was funny to see some of Patrick's old school mates. One of the things I had hoped for on this trip was to understand more about Patrick's background, and it was funny talking with people in the neighborhood who had watched Patrick grow up.

    One comment I'll make here is that I heard some ridiculing of Patrick that he had gone soft in married life as far as transportation. Before he left, according to Flo, he would take the noisiest, craziest matatus that he could, but now we always took the busses, which are far more orderly and I think a lot of young people see as old lady transportation. Once he even told me to make sure I was buckled up, something that no one had even mentioned since I'd been here. It turned out my seat belt had the buckle cut off of it anyway. We visited Patrick's mom at her school and took her out to lunch. Somewhere along the way we picked up Atieno, who had come to Nairobi a day after Flo and I had, and she had barely said hi before she immediately launched into harassing Patrick. Walking around town with them was more fun than with Flo or Junior, because they were a lot more talkative and it was entertaining to hear Patrick talk about how things had changed since he'd been gone. It made him sound like an old man. It seemed to me like the whole time we were out and about in town Patrick was running into people he knew, especially the closer we got his house. I figured the more people he could meet like that the better because they didn't have enough time to visit everybody, so if he could run into somebody on the street and get to say hi that would be great. An interesting insight I heard later that I had never considered was that some people could be legitimately worried that Patrick and gone off to America and found a wife and didn't care about where he came from any more. It seemed ridiculous to me because it was so untrue of Patrick, but I wonder if that happens with some people that go to America.

    When we got back a bunch of the kids were out playing and ran over to say hi to me and give me high fives, which was fairly standard protocol for when I came home. It was weird now though, being around kids here that knew me but had no clue who Patrick was. The jet lag eventually caught up with them, and I think everybody went down for naps that afternoon, and I went for an evening shakeout. It was indeed much more enjoyable running with the kids when it was for an easy 30 minutes rather than 60 or 70.