The Sabbath

Today was Sunday and a real people day. I went to a church in Kihoto, a slum next to where I’m staying. It was in a temporary makeshift building…I always find it funny how churches spring up in the most ramshackle of buildings yet they have a fully equipped PA system with speakers and microphones inside blasting the music away! Most of the songs were in English and quite familiar so at least I could join in a bit. The tradition here is to welcome any visitors very publically - I.e make you stand in front of the church and say something about yourself! This isn’t an easy thing to do under normal circumstances but when its in a language which you’re not so fluent in its even more difficult! Anyways I gave it a shot in Kiswahili and tried to tell them a little about my background. The reaction to a few words of Swahili gave me mixed feelings - it’s great to see the appreciation of an attempt to speak to their language but also sad to realise again that apparantly few foreigners have tried to learn the language in the past. The sermon was all about accountability and the need to be accountable before God and the people we have around us. The pastor followed it up by telling men they needed to be accountable to their wives - he told the men to tell their wives how much they are earning and to budget for the household together! This is pretty counter cultural and good to hear from a man in authority. I haven’t often heard such a practical application of faith to everyday life, such a challenge to cultural traditions. So many times you hear of men who are earning a decent amount of money but their wives see very little of it and have to beg for cash to feed the family so it’s pretty cool to see the Bible being applied in such a way.

After church I headed to the house of a guy called Maina - Maina is the cook for the family who are hosting me. He’s a very chilled out guy who I get on well with so I thought it would be good to meet his family. He is married to a girl my age called Veronicah and they have a 3 year old daughter, Grace, who after an initial bout of shyness spent the afternoon dancing around the room! We storied for a couple of hours and put the world to rights…I love just spending time with regular people and getting their views on things. I think this is where familiarity with culture and environment is a bonus as the initial observations that Europeans have at what we would describe as the “poverty” people live in (I.e the lack of material comfort that we have become accustomed to in the West)….well you stop making these observations after a while and, therefore, stop defining people in terms of poverty but learn to define them by their humanity, their personalities, their relationships and their character. I find it weird thinking of friends like Maina and “poverty” in the same thought - he’s a friend…and I know he gets frustrated by the lack of opportunities to develop the obvious gifts he has when it comes to cooking and being a chef…but his income does not define him - he is more than that! I was talking to my friend Selinah on the walk home and saying, maybe I should just take loads of photos of the houses we were passing in Kihoto slums…photos of the dirt tracks that act as roads, the temporary houses, people handwashing clothes, …as I know these types of pictures will have the “shock factor” and get a reaction out of groups I might speak to back home. But I don’t want the Western definition of poverty to be the thing that Westerners use to define the people of Kihoto, to define people like Maina. THEY ARE NOT THEIR POVERTY! Or rather they are not what the West says poverty is! Selinah was saying she’d be uncomfortable at the idea of that kind of “poverty tourism” - at the idea of someone taking photos of how she lived, knowing people would be looking at the photos and making judgements of her life. And I agreed with her. It makes me uncomfortable. I want to make sure I have integrity when I try and relate life and experience here to the wider world. I’m going to have to take lots of photos of the work of an NGO in Nairobi on Wednesday - as well as photos of NYM’s work so I want to remind myself that when I show these photos, I must protect people’s dignity and try to retain their humanity in the stories I tell.

Anyway Selinah had plenty to say - as usual! I love people who can out talk me…they’re rare I find;) We jumped on the back of some moterbike taxis and headed up to Joyce’s house. Joyce is the NYM team leader and has a new baby boy called Isaac. I spent a while cuddling him and trying not to feel broody…easier said than done! We didn’t get to visit Damaris and her new baby today so I think we’re going to go tomorrow…hopefully that will be the last baby for a while!