Graves of Kijabe July 2002

Graves in Kenya
In America, I guess, it would be considered, at the very least, bad advertising to have a cemetery in close proximity to a hospital. Nevertheless, at Kijabe there is a quiet little burial ground about a 100 yards from the “business” entrance. I made a small detour to see it on my way back to my house last week. The whole area has been planted with orderly rows of trees that shade the entire cemetery. A dirt path lined with Poinsettia runs down the middle. The grass grows a bit rank in places despite the workers hacking back the weeds and bushes from time to time. It is a quiet place through which many of the hospital staff walk on their way to and from work.
I found the oldest grave with a readable stone back at a corner. It was quite a thing, covering the grave with a Mansard stone top. The inscription read that Reginald Singyng So-and-So had died here at Kijabe while hunting and that he was really from India and it almost seemed he was a bit embarrassed to be here. He died in 1922, a few years after the mission opened.
The next group of stones was several men and women in their thirties and forties who also died in the early 1920’s. These were some of the early missionaries who came out to Kenya to serve at Kijabe. They died at their station, bringing the news of Jesus to the Kykuyu.
Mixed in with these were small markers, level with the ground and taking up hardly any space at all. They all had dates of birth and death in the same year; some in the same month; some on the same day. One had the inscription: “The first face he saw was Jesus.” A stone nearby bore a woman’s name. It had the same name and date as one of the babies.
The next group of graves was a little more recent. These people died in their 60’s and seventies even. The stones frequently noted service at Kijabe for 10, 20 and even forty years. One stated: “Born in Kenya, Died at Kijabe, Will meet the Lord from Kijabe.”
I walked along a little further past a jumble of weathered wooden crosses and rock-bordered but marker-less graves. Some of these showed signs of recent visitation with faded flowers laid on the ground. As I moved along to the end of the path, I saw graves with stones in Swahili and Kykuyu. Here there were whitewashed crosses and Bible verses on the stones.
I met Joaichim Techand, a 52 y/o German missionary to Congo, on his deathbed. I never had the opportunity to talk to him; we were trying to get his heart started at the time. We failed. All the doctors on call at Kijabe had been paged to the hospital in the small hours of Saturday, the 13th. We worked on him for most of the next hour before we had his family come into the room, said a prayer committing him to his Lord and called the code. It was his first heart attack. He, his wife and 3 of their six kids were in Kijabe for the week to see Ruth, their oldest girl, graduate from high school. Graduation was at 10AM that day.
I don’t know where he will be buried but I’m sure he would be welcomed to spend the brief time from now until the rapture in the company of believers among Kijabe’s quiet rows of trees and tombstones.

Please, take some time over the next few weeks to prayer for Joachim’s family.