Trip to Narok July 2002

I had to fold my shoulders and duck my head to get through the door. Unfortunately, like a cork in a bottle, I now had no light to navigate. I had spent the day with the Kejeri family and their church, returning to Namunchka late in the day and had been invited for ‘chai,’ hot, sweet milk and tea. . I followed the instructions of my amused host, turned right and then immediately left into a slightly higher room and found my seat by touch on the “mens” side of the room. The atmosphere was hot, smoky, claustrophobic and somehow cozy. A small fire burned in a grate on the floor without benefit of a chimney. The only light and ventilation came through an irregular 4” X 8” hole high in the cow-dung and mud plastered wall of Jackson and Elizabeth Wejeri’s home. I tried to forget about breathing. It had been a long day.
Last week, I was invited to go along with a maternal-child clinic trip to Suswa, a Great Rift Valley town that on a clear day is actually in sight of Kijabe, about 8-10 miles by road. Suswa is a collection of stick and clapboard buildings placed at random sites generally around a large corral.
The clinic used to meet in the most substantial edifice in the town, the tavern, which by all reports made a tidy profit on “rufi” (Maasi moonshine). This despite several instances of blindness among the patrons thereof. The clinic was now meeting in a small clapboard building, The Suswa Baptist Church. We cleared the unpainted wooden pews and lectern and set to work. Four hours later, 150 babies had been weighed and immunized.
Saturday, I was talking with Drs. Gary Rourke and Bruce Dahlman and their wives Corrine and Kate. I asked the source of the baptist presence in Suswa. The story they shared made me again marvel at the working of the Holy Spirit in people’s lives. In 1990 a widowed Maasi matron came to a roadside preaching crusade, went in to listen, was saved and left with a Maasi Bible. She went home, read her Bible and, following the Word, brought her grown children to the Lord. They in turn evangelized their neighbors and started a church. This one group has gone on to start new churches all over the valley since 1993.
As it turned out the Rourkes and Dahlmans were helping another Maasi church in Namuncha, “out there past the pumping station.” The pastor of the church, Simon Wajeri, was graduating the next day from the Narok Bible College. They were taking two cars to transport the church choir which was performing. I was asked if I’d like to come along. I did.
The Maasi have been resistant, as a rule, to evangelical efforts since these started in the latter part of the 19th century. The Maasi were primarily nomadic warriors and herdsmen, holding a dominant position not only in the Great Rift Valley but south across the border to Tanzania and up to the highlands of Kenya well north of Kijabe.
The British occupation of the highlands of Kenya would most likely have been a rather bloody affair had not the Maasi suffered twin disasters just before the British arrived: a huge reduction in their herds due to rinderpest and bloody internecine warfare which reduced their numbers further. Due to this they were pushed out of the highlands into the Rift Valley floor where it is hotter and drier. They speak their own language and are much less likely to know Swahili. Martin, a Christian Kykuyu artist with whom I talked, commented that the Kikuyu and Maasi now intermarry frequently, “But we still don’t understand the Maasi.” Why he thought that husbands and wives necessarily understood each other was not explained.
The Maasi therefore have been isolated by geography, politics, language and religion for over a hundred years. Many continue a traditional life of herding cattle and goats. Their dress is colorful and distinctive. The men frequently wear kilts and a red plaid shawl and carry long sticks for herding and defense. They have no horses and only an occasional donkey. The women wear elaborate beaded necklaces and earrings. Both men and women have pierced ears that can be as long as 6 inches. (Some men, I note, must find this annoying and wear their redundant ear lobes wound over the top giving them a resemblance to Shrek).
The Maasi are looked upon by many Kenyans as quaint, backward, recalcitrant and not overly bright. “Hillbilly” comes to mind. The Maasi, on the other hand, think of themselves as the “real” people: brave, honorable but harsh if challenged.
We set out at 7:30 the next morning, drove down through Suswa again and then turned south until we came to a petroleum pumping station and forded a small stream. Navigation immediately became one of compass directions and distances. Imagine scrubland crossed by any number of cattle trails making foot deep dust, fine a talc. We came up on a small clapboard building and a rock pile (the building fund) and heard singing. After a few minutes of the inevitable greetings, introductions, and involved interrogation regarding the whereabouts and health of my family, we piled 13 people into each car and left. More would have boarded if we had allowed it. The trip out to Narok took about 2 hours but was made memorable by the presence of the Kenya International Safari Rally. We went out alternating between marveling at the zebra, gazelle and giraffe and being terrorized by racecars, dodging around trucks and cars on the pot-holed two-lane road. Half way there, Bruce’s land cruiser overheated and blew the radiator cap into hiding. Another 25 minutes were taken up with refilling the radiator and finding the cap.
When we arrived in Narok we were however only slightly late. The choir was able to sing and dance . The graduation ceremony itself was more reserved and quietly joyful than any I’ve seen lately in the USA. Simon received his divinity certificate, an associate degree. He expects to get his bachelor's in about a year. As anywhere in the world, the ceremony was followed by photos with the various relatives. Simon’s mother, all 4’ 11” of her, and brother, Jackson were wreathed in smiles. Dr. Bruce Dahlman presented a bible commentary from the mission group. After a celebratory meal at a local restaurant (we wazungu got silverware) we started back with now 14 in our Land Rover; Simon was now sharing the front seat with Gary, the stick shift and me.
The entire return trip was rather more exciting than the trip out. It became an evangelical travel-log by Simon. He would point to a little building and tell us that that was where he had done a week-long crusade the previous year. Twenty-six people were saved. The building holds 40. There was the road that takes you to Dukuleli where he spoke for 3 days and started a new church last month. Here was the house of one of the people whom he had led to the Lord…
On arriving back at Namunchka, we were invited into his brother’s home and listened to Simon as he gave an impromptu seminar in evangelism. He felt that the Maasi were now being brought to Christ for two reasons. One, that these days are the endtimes and the success among the Maasi is part of the final incoming harvest. Secondly, he believes that the Maasi needed only to be presented with the gospel in the right format, by Maasi in Maasi. He sees himself in the great traditions of evangelical efforts from Pentecost on. He is bringing an update to Paul’s assertions that to Jew he is a jew and to Greeks, a greek. We left, the cars laboring to climb out of the Valley. I felt it had been a mountaintop day nevertheless.

This week, please pray for Simon Wajeri, the Namuncha Church and unsaved Maasi in Maasiland.

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.

Broadcast letter from Kijabe, Kenya July 2002

Greetings from Kijabe Hospital, Kenya.
I arrived into Kenyatta International Airport on Tuesday July 2 without difficulty. I was collected and brought to Kijabe with two other doctors who will be working here during July also. We are staying in a house overlooking the Great Rift Valley, the other side of which I haven’t clearly seen yet. The area’s most notable landmark is Mt Longonot, and inactive (NOT dormant) volcano. The climate is quite cool as the elevation is 7000 feet. This is the beginning of the dry season and reminds me a good deal of Northern California in the fall. Those of you who are admiring my fortitude in braving the rigors of Equatorial Africa may now move on to other matters.
The hospital serves people from all over Kenya but primarily the Kykuyu and the Maasai. The Kykuyu a rather prominent in government as they are a large fraction of the country’s population and the first president, Jomo Kenyatta, was Kykuyu. The Maasi are more rural and isolated generally and thus more traditional. Most people speak a usable amount of Kiswahili (i.e. the language of the Swahili). Contrary to my stay in Zambia last year, there is very little malaria Burkett’s lymphoma or shistosomiasis. There is however a good deal of tuberculosis and AIDS (the local population has a prevalence of about 35% since it is on a heavily traveled truck route).
The medical supplies which I brought were fallen upon with glad cries! Children in this hospital, as in most general hospitals, are at the back of the queue as far as getting supplies. In a country which has limited resources, children frequently do without, medically.
This week a mother of a boy on the ward asked about Jesus and was led to Jesus by a Kykuyu layman. A mother in the next bed listened in and was also saved. Last night the 12 year-old boy was saved while his mother looked on. We serve a truly amazing God. His care is sufficient. I saw a sign today at the local school which said something like: “Our highest goal is not to do good works, succeed in accomplishments or even to see the working of God’s will in His creation but rather in the furtherance of our communion with God as his children in imitation of His Son.”

Sincerely yours,
Walt Boutwell