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Grace and peace to you all.
I continue to have new experiences here. Last week I visited and spent the night at the home of one of the St. Philip’s Theological College students, Leonard. [Note: A fictitious name has been used for the student to protect his privacy, especially about his family.] Leonard is 24 years old and is the first in his family to be in school beyond secondary school, what they call high school. St. Philip’s is the equivalent of a two year Bible college. The students get a certificate of completion. It is a three year course of study and those who graduate are eligible for ordination in the Anglican Church, if they are approved for ordination. In comparison, to be ordained in the Episcopal Church one usually needs a four year bachelor degree plus a three year Masters of Divinity from a seminary. The yearly cost for a student to come to St. Philip’s is about 42,000 Kenyan Shillings or $600.00. This is a huge amount of money for them and represents a great sacrifice.
To get to Leonard’s home we first walked 3/4 mile from the college to the paved road. From there we traveled by matatu. A matatu is usually a Toyota van that has 16 seats. There will be a driver and a man to usher in customers and collect the money. The vans are often in serious disrepair and will be jammed with up to 20 people. One truly knows they are in Africa when riding a matatu. The fare for the 20 - 25 kilometer (just under 10 mile) trip was 60 shillings ($0.85). The first 15 kilometers was on the paved road that is the major route connecting Kenya to Uganda. We then turned onto an unpaved road that was very rutted and bumpy but fairly good by local standards. We got off in a small town that had a number of shops. It was not market day there so it was fairly quiet. We then began walking down dirt roads that became smaller and smaller until they were more wide trails than roads. The whole area is heavily cultivated with maize (corn), millet, beans, sweet potato, ground nuts and some banana, avocado and mango trees. The average farm is one to three acres. As we walked everyone was looking at us. I kidded Leonard that they were all staring at him because he was such a good looking young man and had on a bright red baseball cap. It is an area that does not have many mzunga, (whites) walking around. He kept on getting asked in the local language, Luhya, who I was and what I was doing there.
Leonard’s family compound consists of about 10 mud-walled huts, half of which had corrugated metal roofs and half were thatch. The construction of the huts begins with a lattice of wood sticks that hold the clay/mud. After they have filled the walls with the mud and it dries they will smear a couple more coats of clay until it is smooth. The walls end up 6 to 8 inches thick. The color of the mud is reddish brown. The final coat is a yellow/brown clay that creates a smooth hard covering. They will also lay this down on the floor so that it almost looks like concrete. Most huts are two or three rooms and a few windows.
Leonard comes from a polygamous family. His father’s first wife has nine children and his mother, has seven. Polygamy, while not the rule, is fairly common. They are a Christian family and except for Leonard, active in the Salvation Army Church. Leonard went to Anglican schools and is considering seeking ordination in the Kenyan Anglican Church. In the local culture having more than one wife is a sign of wealth and status. Having many children and cattle are also signs of wealth. Yet, as Leonard told me, “Being able to care for, feed and educate such a large family is deemed to be less important.” The reality is that while Leonard has finished secondary school he has not graduated because he still owes thousands of shillings in school fees and nobody has the money to pay them. (In Kenya, primary education up to 8th grade is free while all secondary schools require the student to pay fees.) His 20 year old brother has also completed school and wants to continue on to be a teacher but can not consider teacher’s training until he pays his school fees. The advantage of such large families, at least to the father, is that you have many people to work the farm and care for you in your old age. I must say that it is hard for me to take seriously the outrage towards the Episcopal Church’s stand on gays and lesbians that some in the African church, including the Archbishop of Kenya, have taken while observing their tolerance of the economic, social and moral costs of their unofficial tolerance of polygamy. (Interestingly, as I have visited parishes and homes nobody has brought up the issues of the Episcopal Church’s stand on homosexuality.)
In Leonard’s family compound live his mother and stepmother, his stepbrother’s family, a couple of sisters with children and his brother. Everybody has their own huts while there are three cooking huts. When I was there they prepared the meals together. None of the men, except his brother were there. His father, uncles and older brothers either have their own farms or live and work in the city trying to raise some funds. His father works as a kind of security guard in the city of Kisumu.
When Leonard and I arrived in the compound everything came to halt to greet and welcome us. After shaking hands with everyone (in Kenya you always shake hands with everyone before you say or do anything), we were escorted into Leonard’s mother’s home and invited to sit. I was instructed to sit in the best chair. The chairs were all simple wood but each was carefully covered with an embroidered cotton cloth. We sat and talked a little and then they brought us chai and ground nuts. Chai is tea very lightly steeped in half water/half milk and lots of sugar. After a chai, while we waiting for a rain shower to end, I presented gifts to his mother of sugar and tea, two pineapples, and what was for me a small amount of money. At first I was uncomfortable about giving money but was assured that it is common and appropriate for me to do so. I also showed them pictures of my family and folks at All Saints’ Church. All of this was greatly appreciated.
After the weather cleared Leonard and his brother gave me a tour of their farm. Included in the tour was where they have to get water. We went down a very steep, eroded culvert on the edge of their property to get to the nearest almost clean water source. The village council had tapped a spring. It was a concrete half wall with a pipe with water running out of it. Since they have had a lot or rain recently, the water flowed well and looked clean. They said that they still boil all drinking water. This spring is used by about 300 people. I have no idea how the women and children, who are the ones to gather the water, manage to carry heavy plastic jugs of water up that steep trail.
As is their custom, none of the women joined Leonard, his brother and me for dinner, though his mother did eat breakfast and lunch with us the next day. Leonard and I slept in his absent uncle’s thatched roof hut. I had a very comfortable bed that included sheets blanket and, just for my bed, mosquito netting. I only found out the next afternoon that the bed was his mother’s that had been moved into the hut and that she had slept that night on a reed mat on the floor.
In the morning the children in school left at about 6:30 AM, as the sun was rising. They would get home between 3-4 PM. It was about a half hour walk to the school. After breakfast, Leonard took me for a tour of the area. On the way, he was told by some cousins that his father’s brother was ill and we were invited to visit him. He was vomiting, had severe pain in his side and was very weak. We got to his compound and prayed with him. A little while later a few younger men came with a wheelbarrow. They proceeded to line the wheelbarrow with a blanket and then Leonard’s uncle sat in it with his legs curled up. With one man holding the handles and another pulling a rope attached to the front, they bounced up the rough trails and road to get him to a health clinic. Later that morning we ran into another one of Leonard’s relatives going to the clinic in a wheelbarrow. This time it was a woman who had just given birth but the placenta had not detached. We found out later that both had been treated and released. (As I write this a week has gone by and I understand that the mother and child are doing well, but the uncle is still sick.) After visiting Leonard’s primary school and local village, raising a great deal of interest by all, we headed back to his home. We returned to St. Philip’s after lunch.
Throughout the visit, I have rarely been shown such respect and deference. I will admit that it was a little unsettling. I needed to remember that to be a visitor from so far away and to be willing to visit, share meals and spend a night with Leonard’s family was to bestow upon them great honor. I am told that stories of my visit will continue for long after I have left Kenya. I also know that they will be holding me in their prayers. I will cherish for a long time those prayers. They also ask me to greet all of you, my family, and members of All Saints’ Church. They thank you for letting me come and visit them.
In God’s peace,
Tom
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