Worship Films

Finding Jesus In Turkana

From the moment your feet hit the ground you know you are in Africa. In spite of the distractions occurring in the lenses through which we viewed and filmed Kenya, you know you are in Africa, always. Diana and I thought we were well traveled in our lives. So when we were asked to come to Kenya to film a documentary to help support a friend and his mission site, the answer was an immediate, almost reflexive, “yes”. But as we exited the comfort and familiarity of the jet onto the tarmac of Kenyatta International Airport, the reality of our naiveté about the world came quickly into focus. In contrast to where we had just landed, we had traveled nowhere before. We had never been this far from home before. In forty some years of living and twenty-five years of marriage and travel, we had seen nothing of the world outside of our western illusions. But the trip was just beginning. Over the next eighteen days we would travel even further from the safety and routine of our home in the Midwest of the United States. Africa never lets you forget you are in Africa, not once, not ever. It is with great and joyful certainty that I tell you today; Africa never lets you forget you have been there either. In a surreal and sometimes ethereal way, it changes you. We went to Kenya to help bring about change for some of the poorest people in the world living in some of the harshest conditions on earth. In the end, it was they who changed us. So let us begin where it all began, in a church on the south side of Peoria, Illinois in the summer of 2005.
Our parish priest was gone on sabbatical and Father Edward Muge, a Nigerian, ordained to the Society of African Missions (SMA) had come to fill in for him. The core of his purpose for coming to the U.S. from Kenya was to make appeals for financial assistance for his missionary work in the northern part of Kenya, the Turkana District near Lodwar. From the moment most people meet Father Ed you begin to sense something wonderful. You see there is a spiritual depth and reality to him that is quickly realized. It is infectious. I am confident while writing this that if Father Ed knew of what I was saying about him, he would ask that it be deleted. He would not see it or claim it as his own. He possesses the kind of “inside” humility that results in all things being given to the Glory of the Lord. For Father Ed, it is not about self anymore. All is and must be for God. But the fact remains; spend five minutes with him and you know he is the “real deal”.
It is not so much what Father Ed has to say about the people of Turkana and their faith, their struggles, and their lives as it is the way he says it. Ask him to talk about the weather at the Turkwell Mission site and he will chuckle and tell stories about the intense heat that persists there. Ask him about the Turkana and something happens inside of him that quickly becomes apparent externally. His expression changes to one of great love and the tone of his voice becomes fatherly, the way a parent talks about their love for a child. It was this visceral, tangible love that Father Ed exudes for the people of Turkana that hooked us almost immediately. He loves these people for the simple fact that they belong to God. You know he told me once, “The greatest thing we can do in our life is to give another person reason to praise God and to help others live fully human as God has created them to be”. I had no idea then about what that statement would actually come to mean. Still today, I have so little understanding for the depth of its meaning.
You see, this place has changed Father Ed, a native African, too. He believes that the seemingly impossible, true changes that need to occur in this abandoned area of Kenya not only must but also will happen. He believes in something he cannot see with his eyes but knows in his heart. For Diana and I, that was enough. Spend five minutes with Father Ed and you will believe. Give him an hour and you will end up with legs shaking, knees knocking, and feet firmly planted on Kenyan soil ready to work. We spent many evenings with Father Ed while he was in our city and our parish. He talked about the miracles happening for the people of this most abandoned region. He talked about his dreams for his mission there and his willingness to continue in spite of overwhelming obstacles. He talked about Grace, and Love, and Hope, and their truest source in the power of our Creator. We were hooked. We were going to Kenya. It must be clearly and definitively stated: we were able to go and do our work only through the generosity, love and support we were receiving from our families at home and our larger family at Saint Ann’s Catholic Church in Peoria, Illinois. There can be no true mission in the absence of community and thanks be to God for the community who loves us so well in our South Side church. So we planned, changed plans, and then changed them again. Finally, we packed our filming equipment, malaria meds, some freeze dried food, and our bug spray to go to the Turkwell Mission and film the work that was happening in Father Ed’s desert home. Little did we know of the impact all of this would have on our lives.

The Other World

It has been two weeks or so since we returned from Kenya. For two weeks it is all I have thought about. It was one thing for me to imagine what hunger, poverty, and desperation looked like before I was shown what these words, these abominations, really mean. It is another thing all together to have the imagination turned into a sensory experience.
I am heart broken in a way I cannot really describe. To see a child covered in filth become filled with joy over being fed his one meal a day is to see the tragic conclusion of a world growing ever colder and uncaring. I will stand on this forever: No child should ever have to live in a situation where joy is equated with being fed! It is wrong, it is evil, and it is sin. To drive down a cattle trail across sun baked riverbeds, rivers that do not flow because there is no rain, and see children begging for food and water is to see the consequence of a dying, global humanity. To see children, His children, living in filth that defies description while malaria bleeds away their life is to see disease that need not exist but does because far too many would rather fund war and death than life.
People will say, “They have always lived like this. They have always been at war. They live like this because they choose to stay where they are. Why don’t they go to where the food is? Someone should do something about this.” I know they say it because I have said it and believed it. And for my ignorance I am sorry. I will not be so arrogant as to say I understand anything of their lives or their suffering. We suffered little in shooting our film and video. We suffered only a few days. In fact it is arrogance to call any of our experience suffering at all. In our worst moments, we knew we were going home soon to comfort, to food, to safety, to freedom.
It would be spiritually careless to leave this rambling on such grim thoughts. You see, in spite of all the horror there they have something we do not. This is true. In spite of hunger and disease they have a wealth that is not measured in physical comfort or material wealth. They have a life centered in the light of Christ Jesus and the knowledge, the kind of knowledge that nothingness alone can bring, that they are created in the love of God. As long as I live I will never forget this scene. We entered the hut of a dying woman. I was to overwhelmed to ask what she was dying of. To be there in the midst of such poverty, in all my custom clothes with five thousand dollars worth of imaging equipment, the truth is I was too ashamed to ask. She could barely move or see. But it was important to her to extend her hand to each of us and greet us with joy. I can only guess that visits to her are rare. Then again, we were only there to film her suffering and had to leave quickly because of the smell and the intense heat inside her home. But what really struck me cold was this: she asked us for nothing but a handshake. She asked only to be touched by the hand of another person. She was talking to us in a language we could not understand but our interpreter was a bridge to her message. She was sorry that she had no tea to offer us. I ask you to pause and think about this…she was sorry that she had nothing to offer us. My heart breaks a little more every time I remember this moment. She who had “nothing” was apologizing to us who had “all” for having no tea to offer her guests.
When you attend church in the villages and outstations of the region you finally begin to understand a small fragment of what it means to be them. Some walk for miles. Some walk with stomachs that have gone unfed for days. All are thirsty and they will find no water there, but what they really thirst for they find. They come because they believe in something they cannot see, or eat, or touch, or wear. They believe that Christ is worth worshipping in spite of their suffering. And for hours, literally hours, they will sing and dance and listen to the word. And not once, not once will you find a frown or hear a complaint. They have come to worship their Lord and that is food and drink enough.
It’s funny how your thinking can change having seen what Kenya really means. We went to make a film that will be used to raise funds for the life-changing projects that Christians from around the world carry out. We came to bring healing, but in the end, they healed a part of each of us. If I wrote a million words on what we saw and what is happening in Kenya it would be a shameful attempt at bringing you the story of what is happening there. But rest assured, Christ is alive and at the center of great works there. And no matter what happens with our films, the works of others, or the stories we will share, know this: God is good all the time and that is His nature. It is a phrase I first heard spoken by mouths of so many there. In the lives and souls of our African brothers and sisters we have found something beautiful. We found a small bit of what it is to find joy in the Crucified Christ. We found love where only God could make it so.
In the upcoming months we will begin showing our films and begging for money from anyone who will watch in an effort to continue the works going on in Kenya. Much has already been done, but there is so much more to do. And we who are blessed to live in a world where clean water flows free from a tap and food can be eaten any hour of the day, any day of the week have been gifted with an opportunity to help. Diana and I will not stop until the work is done. Not because we are good, or holy, or righteous, but because there is nothing else that we can do now. There is no choice left to be made.

Love at First Sight

I think it would be safe to say we all had very different ideas about what we would see in Turkana. Certainly, all the movies and programs we had seen about this continent must have influenced our ideas. We had seen some photographs Father Ed had brought to the States and in fact I had put them together for his appeals presentation at our church. But photographs, no matter how good they are, cannot prepare a soul for the truer pictures we found there, with our own eyes, through the lenses of our spirits.
Before we left for Kenya I had been reading an on-line journal written by a missionary who had spent some time in another region of Africa. She made a point in her writing that didn’t really click with me until we had been at the Turkwell Mission a few days. She had written that it would take two or three days in Africa before you realized you were not dreaming. I am not sure I could write a line that would better describe the surreal, sensory overloading experience it is to wake up to the sounds of distant drumming and singing coming from the distance in a village you have yet to explore. It is all at once disorienting and thrilling. To be there in this place is not just to see it but also to breathe it in. It is collected on your skin and in your eyes as dust and sand. To be there is to find many moments when you want to run for home and others where you know you can never really go back. Our experience in Kenya was more of a spiritual surgery performed with the brutally honest knife of reality in a surgical suite made of sticks and volcanic rock.
There are three ways to arrive in Turkana. The first is to walk. For three overweight, out of shape Westerners, walking was not an option. The second is to drive. To say that one might drive to Turkana is something of a stretch. Yes, you may actually place yourself within the confines of a vehicle, fill it with fuel, and point it in the direction of your destination, but you will not drive. To say you will “take the road to Lodwar” is to assume there actually is a road by anyone’s definition of a road. To “drive” in this region really means to take one’s life into one’s own hands. It means that you will be agitated about like a rag in a washing machine. It means that at first you will fear death and finally come to fear that you might actually live to see the end. Okay, that might be a bit strong. The “road” as it is called is really a mixture of open desert, cattle tracks, potholes the size of a minivan, and the ever-looming, real possibility of being hijacked by what the locals call bandits. We did in fact make the three-day drive back to Nairobi from Lodwar but chose the third and best option of travel to arrive.
The third and best way to get to Turkana is by plane. Western concepts of flying cannot be associated with air travel in central Kenya. We were however blessed, and I truly mean blessed, to get hooked up with MAF, Missionary Aviation Fellowship, for our flight north. The MAF was formed with a single purpose in mind; to evangelize the Good News into the farthest, most remote and sometimes most hostile places on earth. They accomplish this goal by providing air transport services to missionaries and relief organizations throughout the third world and beyond.
We were flown north through the Rift Valley on a tiny four seat Cessna. There were some difficulties associated with the weight of items we had packed to take with us. Honesty prevails and the truth is the problem was not with our items but our waistlines. We were fifty pounds over for the capabilities of the aircraft. So we, as I like to say, downloaded a lot of what we thought to be essential gear back into the van before we left. Downloaded means “to throw items wildly into large garbage bags while quietly muttering Hey, don’t we need that? We left behind our short wave radio, 6 pounds of peanut butter, three solar battery chargers, two giant bags of beef jerky and a lot of clothes we wouldn’t need anyway. All I know today is that when we return it will be with a backpack each and nothing more.
Although we had seen some of the poverty of Kenya on our way from the airport to the compound at Embulbul where we spent our first night of acclimation prior to departing for Turkana, we got the birds eye view of Africa’s largest slum set in Nairobi immediately after take off. Even from an altitude of 2000 feet, it is a shock to see millions of people living in a space the size of some American suburbs. I sighted an ostrich running through grasses out of the right window of our plane and my thoughts were momentarily drawn from the poverty below. Perhaps it is a blessing that our minds allow us to see only what we can take in as we learn to take it in. This blessing would soon fade.
Our flight through the valley was awe inspiring and wondrous. From every angle of view the scenery changes like a film on fast motion. It is hard to know where to look. Out of one window is a giant crater from a long extinct volcano. Out another you see impact craters, the remnants of meteors colliding with earth, scarring the desert floor. Still out another you see the jagged, towering walls of the valley begin to rise as if they were plastered there. Nature, it seems, was preparing us for the starkness of life we were about to encounter. Slowly, the desert floor is bled of its green leaving behind an earth tone palette of browns and darkish reds. Occasionally, this nearly monochromatic landscape would be infused with a dotting of greens created by the acacia trees below. Further and further up the valley it would appear as if all life had left this region. There is nothing but sand and heat. And just as the interior of the plane begins to become heated with the desert air outside, you begin to see the first of the Turkana huts and settlements appear out of nowhere, literally nowhere.
Our pilot told us we were approaching Lodwar where our plane would land and we would board a truck to the Turkwell mission with our friend and Brother in Christ, Father Ed. My eyes were straining against the reflection in the windshield to see this place we had heard so much about, Lodwar. There is so little written about Lodwar that it is hard to have a notion about the town where we would land. We have heard it called “hell on earth”, the “Wild West” and “one of the more dangerous places we would encounter. Having been there now, I choose to call it “hell on earth”. Finally, appearing before the foothills that separate Uganda from Kenya, we saw it. We don’t however see a place that a plane could land. So it was time to abandon the first of our western concepts of travel: an aircraft requires a well maintained, paved runway on which to land if one wishes to land safely. As the pilot began to descend through the heat and dust of this town, rising up from the desert floor with its collection of corrugated steel shacks, goats and refugees, I could see the line of what would be known as our landing strip. We touched down gracefully, with the skill only an MAF pilot could possess in this region, as the plume of dust came swirling off the rear of the plane. Suddenly I felt as if I were in a film and that none of this could or should be real to me. The dream of Turkana had begun and time began to slow to a crawl. We came to rest at the end of the landing strip near a steel building at its end. There were missionaries awaiting their chance to leave for Nairobi mixed in with the first faces of the Turkana people we would see. The locals were eagerly awaiting the mail and supplies that had come to Lodwar from Nairobi. Our gear was being off loaded and I, not knowing what else to do with myself, began pointing one of our cameras at anything and everything that moved. Were it not for the images we recorded, I would have little recollection of our first moments in Turkana. We had become strangers in a strange land, a minority of three, and an oddity to the faces all around us in every direction.
Out of the dust, a couple a hundred yards away, I saw a white pick-up truck approaching with a single occupant. My heart began to lighten as I recognized this vehicle from some of Father Ed’s photographs. It was good to see him coming our way. We were greeted with his usual joyous laughter and pronounced, “Hi, how are you?” It was as if he had never left the states and no time had passed between us. It had in fact been almost a year since we had last seen our friend. I had become oblivious to the world around me in the moment of this reunion as we exchanged hugs and talked of our first flight in a bush plane. These first moments on the ground were some of the most surreal, dream-like. We had planned so long and exchanged dozens of emails and phone calls in preparation for this moment. Now that it had settled upon us, the thoughts about all of the work it took to arrive here seemed to dissipate along with the clouds of dust that had been stirred by the plane’s landing.
Once our gear had been off-loaded from the plane, wrapped in tarps and placed in the bed of Father’s Toyota Helux (a monster of a machine that will be mentioned again and again) we left the airstrip and headed up what appeared to be a hiking trail for our first destination, the Bethany House in Lodwar. We would very quickly discover that this hiking trail was one of the better roads we would see in this region. The Bethany House is part of the Catholic Diocese in Lodwar. It is a home that operates to serve Catholic and other missionaries traveling in the region. Father Ed had arranged for us to stop there first to wash up, get something cool to drink and enjoy a wonderful meal prepared by a nun who operates this facility. (I am embarrassed to say I have forgotten her name in the fog of early encounters) We were greeted, as we would be in almost every situation to come, with open arms and welcoming smiles. We were afforded a few moments to rest in the interior courtyard of the complex and nap in the African sun before heading out across the open sands to what would become our home for the next eight days, the Turkwell Mission.
Before we encountered the desert we traveled through the town of Lodwar. It seems a bit odd to call it a town as it really resembles something of a settlement taken out of the pages of some mid eighteen hundreds novel or early western film. There is dust, more dust, and then when you think the dust has settled, you guessed it, more dust still. The town is a collection of ramshackle buildings made of corrugated steel, unlit shanties that serve as storefronts and shops, small dwellings and people everywhere. Where they are going to or coming from I could not guess. How one can find a direction to travel here is difficult for me to imagine. There is the occasional beggar in the street, goats wandering freely about, and groups of children whose gaze never seems to leave our movement. There is a bank on a small side street and out front we see two men armed with rifles. But the all important, central fixture of this place is the tire repair shop. This little shop without a front or rear would become the emergency room for our tires many times throughout our stay.
One of the very few things that seem to grow naturally in this region is the acacia tree. This tree is noted for two things. First, parts of the tree can be prepared in a way that results in a powder containing a substance known as DMT, a powerful hallucinogenic. The second is much less interesting but causes many more problems. The tree produces very long, needle sharp thorns. These thorns are everywhere, literally, everywhere. And when they are not lying about everywhere they can be found in two inconvenient places, the bottom of your feet or deeply punctured into your tires. These needles of the desert will puncture nearly anything including hard rubber, leather, and the soles of hi-tech hiking sandals. During our eight-day stay we had, I think, nine tire punctures as a result of the thorns. So it is easy to see that the tire repair shop is something of a “Mecca” and the workers, its “prophets”. A total of nine punctures do not of course include punctures to the feet. I believe Diana won the “I am not getting thorns in my feet contest” with a score of zero. I came in a close second place with two, one in my heal and one in the side of my big toe. A fellow traveler came in dead last, or, if the point of the contest was to share in the local suffering by thorns to the feet, first place with a score of five.
As we rounded a corner leading us back to the main road through town that would lead us into the desert, the town just vanishes. In one moment you are in the wild west of African settlements, and in the next you are outbound in the Sub-Saharan desert of Turkana. I had traveled through the Mojave in the U.S. and through various desert areas of our southwest in New Mexico and Arizona before so the initial scenes unfolding were not too unusual to me. Soon, however, you begin to see the inner, micro scenery of the desert as it begins to reveal its truer condition. Out of nowhere appears a group of Turkana women carrying large water containers known as “jerry cans” on their heads. A jerry can is generally an old cooking oil container or fuel container that is now used by the people to carry water back to their homes, sometimes over many kilometers. These cans also make wonderful drums that we were soon to be introduced to. Turning the other direction we would see camels wandering and a small group of young girls carrying fallen acacia wood from which they would make charcoal. There to the right a herd of the worlds skinniest goats and a man in native dress carrying an AK47 across his shoulders. There was little doubt that we were not in Kansas anymore.
Finally, after a little more than an hour of navigating virtually fields of acacia thorns, dry riverbeds and axle deep sand; we saw the first signs of our first mission site. The packed sand lane leading into the compound was something of a déjà vu to the landing strip we had left behind in Lodwar. If you don’t feel like you’re on the moon upon entering the main compound at Turkwell, you never will. It is a barren, dusty collection of volcanic stone and rock intermixed with thorns and a smattering of quartz. Out of the dirt and sand rise the two main buildings of the compound, both of which are made of cinder blocks and corrugated metal. On the right is the central building where father Ed sleeps with a small guest room. There is also a kitchen where, meals prepared on a charcoal fired cooker, are served. Across the compound and down the road several yards is a wooden and cinder block building that contains several rooms for guests and workers. The floors are concrete and the walls bare but the rooms provide a respite from the African sun. There is electricity to most of the rooms that is supplied by solar panels placed on the roofs of the buildings. Water is pumped from several miles away from a water tank, which was placed high on a volcanic hill at the girl’s school. The water pressure is not really water pressure at all and the water itself is salty due to the depth, one hundred and fifty meters, from which it is pumped. The Rift Valley was once an ocean floor and the vast majority of water that can be tapped lies very deep in the ground and is full of salt and other minerals. Still, you thank God for water, any water, in this region.
I was surprised to see the boundaries of our building surrounded by heavy wire fencing and a gate. I would later learn that the fencing serves to keep out the local goats. When food is made available by some NGO (non-governmental organization such as U.N., WHO, etc) or through donations, it is kept inside one of the rooms to keep the goats and local bandits out of it. We downloaded our equipment and supplies into our room and spent a few moments just breathing and looking around as if we had been abandoned on some distant planet without a guide. The truth is that we had not come close to experiencing what would be enormous culture shock.
I found the bathroom down the walkway outside of our room. When I opened the door and looked in my first image was a scene out of the film “Midnight Express”. I don’t mean this in a disrespectful way; it was just the only image my mind could connect to this place. The room was dark and hot. The floor was concrete and there was a showerhead hanging from a pipe on the ceiling. Much to my surprise, there was a toilet at the end of the room. How could this be? There is no plumbing here, no sanitation. Ahhhhh, it flushes to the other side of the wall on to the ground. Welcome to the third world. Later that evening I expressed my surprise and gratitude to Father Ed for the presence of this porcelain treasure. He chuckled and called it the bush toilet. Any other toilet in this region consists of a hole in the dirt inside, sometimes, a corrugated metal building I like to call an oven. If you are lucky, really lucky, there will be a large stone on either side of the hole on which to perch you rear end while conducting the necessary business of nature’s call. The bad news is that these holes in the ground serve as terrible places for mosquito’s to lay eggs and breed. When I saw this set up at the girl’s school following an emotional performance by the girls there, I was sickened and heartbroken to think that such talented, beautiful young women would have to “squat” in such terrible conditions. It was only one of a thousand heart breaking scenes that only a spoiled, overly indulged westerner would even notice.
We wanted to see everything of this place we would call home for the next many days and hurried back to the main building for more of the tour. I noticed while looking down at my feet to avoid stepping on thorns that clouds of dust were billowing up around my lower legs with every step. It reminded me of Pigpen in the old Peanuts cartoons and I laughed to myself as I wondered, not only how dirty would I get here but how would sensitive digital imaging equipment possibly survive the environment. Thank God Canon makes the quality gear it does.
The main building is made, as many buildings in hot climates are, with breezeblocks. Breeze blocks are concrete blocks that are perforated with large openings to, you guessed it, allow the breeze to pass through. Around the back of the building was a concrete porch the length of the building with an awning made of steel and palm leaves. It would seem that every step in this place leads you deeper into local tradition and custom. The culture of Turkana was about to present itself to us in marvelous fashion.

All God’s Children

We heard a sound coming from across the stone and sand hill terrain that separates the compound from the mixed boys and girls school some two hundred yards away. It was a sound I cannot describe with my meager words. It was the sound of life and faith and hope that came sweeping down across the thorn-strewn path that leads to the school. It was a sound I pray to God I will never forget: the sound of Africa’s future. It was perfectly quiet in this area as if there were no life but yours. From this silence arose the sound of the seventy or so orphans singing to us outside of their school. They live there on the ground, literally, and they are fed and cared for by Father Ed and the church. It is a gift to see that the donations that are coming into the area are being put to use to clothe and feed children who have no parents or place to call home other than this collection of concrete buildings and thorn-covered wasteland. Father Ed told us that they had been practicing for weeks in anticipation of our arrival. There, standing on ground that had not seen water in so long, in the midst of such poverty, hunger, and abandonment by the world they stood as one group. I had prayed to find humility in this place and God was making it so. Children with nothing, orphans in a land that takes the life of such young people without notice, were standing there in the glow of a Kenyan sunset singing to us their songs of welcome. They did not know us. We had done nothing for them and as far as they knew we had no plans of offering aid. But you see that does not matter in Turkana. They give all that they have to a perfect stranger without the expectation of anything in return. They know God. They do not simply know about God, they know Him. If you want to feel small and humbled, stand in the middle of literally nowhere and be serenaded by a group of orphans for no good reason other than they know God and understand at their core what giving means. I don’t think I had ever felt smaller in my life. I hope I never lose the lesson of that experience: to give when you have nothing but your love and life is to give what alone is yours to offer.
I suppose now is as good a time as any to recall something Father Ed incorporates into every Mass he offers. To really appreciate this you must keep in your mind the isolation, the poverty, the disease, and the hunger that abounds there. Father calls out to the people in a loud and convicted voice, “God is Good!” They answer in an equally assured voice, “All the Time”! He responds, “And all the Time”! They reply, “God is good and that is His nature” followed by the entire gathering shouting, “Hooooooooooo”. When you hear this spoken it cuts you to a new depth within your soul. It touches you in a place long forgotten in a world of spending and having, of keeping and taking. God is good all the time and that is His nature! I had not yet heard this when we first heard the children singing. I was not ready to hear it. I thought I knew something of God’s nature but I did not. I knew only of my adaptation to the truth and love of His Spirit, which fills us all. These orphans were His instruments. They were preparing the way into my heart to receive the message of God’s goodness that I was still too hard-hearted to bear. It would be sometime after our return home that the full impact of these lessons would even begin to unfold. I am certain I still know nothing of their truth. They finished singing and seemed to disappear into the ground they had just stood upon. We were about to meet another person who would touch us deeply, Patrice Dossoumou.
We were called to come inside for dinner. A woman I will introduce later had prepared food for us. It was here around the dinner table that we were first introduced to Patrice. He is studying to be an SMA priest and is about to be ordained as a Deacon. Patrice appeared to be so full of life and warmth and both of these estimations were proven to be true as soon as he began to speak. He is from the Benin Republic on the west coast of Africa near Ghana. Patrice is careful to speak English well and seems a bit embarrassed when he struggles for a word or phrase. To my ears he is well spoken. It is a trait we found to be common to most of the Africans we met and I wonder if there is something natural to their culture as a continent, if that is possible, to be so interested and committed to proper manners and etiquette. I must say it took a bit of getting used to with our over-abundant use of slang and slaughtered English. Patrice served us and refused to eat until everyone else had been served and none of us could want or ask for anything more. This visibly took each of us back; we had not come to be served. For me I know it is thoughts that are brought forward by his servant attitude, the remembering of all I have read of King’s writings and how I have come to be uncomfortable with the very notion of one “class” or race serving another. That is my junk and my western thinking. For Patrice it is something all together different. It is a servant attitude but not how I have come to think of that word or works in my isolated views of the world. He is acting in the capacity of a servant of Christ. In his thinking and belief, to serve is everything. It is not a thought but a belief born of scripture and the knowledge that, the least here shall be the greatest in heaven. To feed the hungry and give rest to the tired is indeed to offer these gifts to Christ. Christ himself tells us this in Mathew 25:35-40. “For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.” Then the righteous will answer him, “Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?” The King will reply, “I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me.” Having spent many days with this man I am confidant in this understanding of Patrice. I only wish I could spend a year with him as he works his way further to becoming a priest. In his simple gestures of giving and love, I am humbled once again.
Once we had finished a meal of chicken, free-range of course, we went back to the porch where we had first heard the children singing to sit and to count the stars. This of course sounds a bit odd until you see the sky without the light pollution most of us are so used to. Father Ed had told us many times during his stay in the States of how he and a fellow priest would pass the evenings quietly while counting the stars. I recall that he shared with me once, “We sit and watch the stars at night and we have a saying. We do not know the names of any of these stars but each of them knows our names.” The sky there is amazing. Should anyone ever really deny or question the existence of God, let them go to Kenya and see the sky set afire with the lights of a billion stars. This cannot be random. This is the art of God. What a joy it was. For the first time in my life I got to see Scorpio and the Southern Cross and a view of the Milky Way so bright it appeared to be computer generated. We would sit on that porch every night of our visit and look up. I often wondered what each of my companions was thinking but never wanted to ask. I think it was in these quiet moments that each of us processed the day that had left us and the one about to unfold before us.
Perhaps one of my fondest memories of this trip was an evening, very late, perhaps three or four in the morning when I got up to use the bathroom. I stumbled outside with my headlight attached and turned on, half looking for scorpions to avoid and half looking not to trip over the junk I had left outside our door. I walked out of the bathroom and it caught my eye as well as my ears. There was drumming and singing, loud singing, coming from the village we had yet to see or be introduced to. I looked up to the sky and all the stars I had seen earlier had shifted southward over time. I found the Southern Cross now tilted on its side and just stood there in silence. There was a cool and gentle breeze that seemed impossible in this region coming out of the north. Time stopped and finally, nothing moved. In my head that is always racing with thoughts about some nonsense, about some should or must do: nothing. In that moment I had transcended all I knew about the world and nature and man and life. How could this possibly be? Me, Dan Hoehne, amateur documentary film maker and photographer, standing in the middle of a compound in northern Kenya at three in the morning listening to the Turkana people sing and dance. That moment is imprinted firmly in my spirit; life can never be the same. Timothy Leary never had a more ethereal moment. It has been some time since that evening but you know, I can still hear it. I can still smell the dust in the air that never settles. I can still feel that breeze on my skin. Thank you Jesus for the gifts you have given me. Help me to be a worthy steward of them all.
Morning comes quickly in this place. On the first morning we were awakened by the sounds of a rooster crowing and the sounds of the children moving about the outskirts of the compound. Each of us is excited and itchy to get going. Today is the day we will visit the first of the seven out stations that are served by this mission. An out station is a village settlement where the development in infrastructure grows more primitive as you move further away from the central compound. Today we would travel to the furthest of the seven, Naremit, about forty-five kilometers away. But first we’d eat breakfast or as they would say, “take food”. I put on my clothes and packed some filming equipment in my cases before I left the shelter of our room. As I walked out the door and headed across the compound I saw a fleeting glimpse of a woman moving out of the kitchen and lighting a charcoal fire. I should mention here that the Turkana make this charcoal from the fallen wood of acacia trees. It is a labor-intensive process that involves setting the wood on fire and then burying it in sand so that the heat slowly consumes the cellulose in the wood leaving behind large chunks of charcoal. Then it is placed in large bags left behind from NGO feeding programs and sold on the road or in the open desert for a few shillings to missionaries, locals who can afford it, and other travelers. This is one of just a few ways anyone can make money in this region.
Her name is Felistus. Father Ed would later tell us that this was not her name at all but one she adopted, probably from some previous visitor. It is a common practice here for young people to do this. Felistus is a graduate from the girl’s primary school and has been given work by the mission as a cook and housekeeper. I believe she does not see me coming towards her but as we would learn in our time there, the Turkana always know where you are, where you are going, and most likely, when you will return. I greeted her in the entryway of the kitchen with a pathetic rendition of a Turkana hello. Quietly, as if to whisper, she answered back but I could not understand what she said. I spoke again but she turned and left quickly to attend to the water boiling on her fire outside. I tried hard the first few days to make eye contact with her and to engage her in conversation. At first I thought her brevity of responses was probably due to the fact that I was male and that maybe I was crossing some cultural boundary unknown to me. I asked Father Ed about this and he told me that in Kenya it is much different than the West. People here are very slow to warm up to you but once they have, you have a friend for life. They consider it to be improper to jump into the depths of a friendship without first giving time for both people to become comfortable with each other’s presence. It would be hard for me to describe my intense feelings of joy the morning she looked me in the eye and smiled. Later that day she would teach me to make somasa and explain to me that she had shaved her head to honor her brother who had died just two weeks earlier. She was no longer a shadow but a soul that I would cherish. Rarely have I met a more gentle, beautiful person.
We finished breakfast and headed out for Naremit to participate in the first Mass we would see in Kenya. It was a long, rough ride across the low dunes and eroded riverbeds. Traversing the terrain here only adds to the feelings that you are going some place rarely visited by outsiders. For some reason we were all very quiet. I am not sure if any one of us spoke a word on the way. I had seen pictures of this place we were about to visit but I could not get my mind wrapped around the thought of seeing it first hand. Father Ed had the radio on and we listened to BBC News Africa on the trip. About a quarter of a mile from the church we began to see people emerging from huts and the bushes alongside the sand tracks. There were very young children dressed in rags, some of them naked, and women dressed in the traditional Turkana dress, their necks adorned with dozens of brightly colored necklaces. I was watching their faces watch us and noticed that at first they could recognize the truck and Father Ed and then they would pause and almost take a step back as they realized there were three “mzungus”, or whites in the truck.
Finally, the church became visible. It was just as it had appeared in the photographs we had seen before but somehow seemed larger now and more mysterious. This was no ordinary church. It is made from sticks stuck firmly in the ground that form a circle near a stand of trees. Between the sticks, palm reeds have been woven to fill in the gaps and bind the sticks together. There is no roof at all. Mass here is celebrated under the open sky and somehow you feel a bit closer to God once inside. As our truck came to rest near the entrance to the church, locals wanting to get a good look at their new visitors surrounded us.
Again it was the sounds that hit you first; voices singing and hands clapping inside the church, dozens of people speaking Turkana at once and laughter from the children filled the air. The children were always laughing there. This mass would be one of the first occasions to hear some of the Turkana women make their quite unique contribution to the singing. They have a way of making a very loud, shrill, shrieking noise as an accent to the music. It actually catches you off guard the first time you hear it and tends to add a whole new layer of cultural newness to the music. I moved towards the church with my video camera mounted on a shoulder brace and headed for the entrance past several young children in the doorway. Their eyes all seemed to lock onto the technology strapped to my shoulders and the headphones wrapped around my head. I still wonder what they must have thought of the image I first presented. With the tape rolling and my mind racing, all I could manage to do in my fog of amazement was point my camera and film. It was overwhelming at a whole new level to be there on the ground in the midst of these people.
The Turkana are beautiful people. I mean this in several ways. They are beautiful not only in their spirits and their giving nature but beautiful in the physical sense as well. In all of our travels I don’t think I have ever seen more beautifully created people. There is a depth to their eyes that emerge from the gentle contours of their faces. The women wear their hair very short here and in a style that generally resembles, well, I am not sure what it resembles. Their skin seems to glow in the sun and the darkness of it seems otherworldly. Their clothes are bright in color and worn loosely on their bodies. The necks of the woman who have reached maturity are covered in row after row of multi colored strands of beads. It gives the appearance that their necks have been stretched like the women of the Pa Dong Karen tribe in Thailand. This however is an illusion that is created by the close fitting necklaces. To keep these necklaces from chaffing the neck and upper chest, the women will often times cover the beads and consequently their skin with animal fat to lubricate the strands. This causes their skin to glisten and shimmer in the sun and adds to their beautiful appearance. Strangely enough I could never detect an odor from the oil.
The singing and clapping coming from the church stops as an elder calls out in song the beginning of a new Turkana hymn. Immediately, they all join in chorus and the atmosphere becomes charged with the Spirit. From the very youngest child, perhaps two or so, to the eldest, they all sing and clap in unison. There are many more children here than adults and the mixture of their young voices give an almost eerie overtone to the songs. They alternately watch the leader for cues and keep an eye on us as if we are ghosts among them. I decided to take a risk and hand hold the camera at close to ground level and walk in front of the group to film the children singing. There was no fear in their eyes, just curiosity as to what I was pointing at them and I imagined, the tie-dyed bandana around my head. I was so excited I could barely breathe. I was there, really there among them, and everything was good.
The Mass began with another song followed by Father Ed introducing us as visitors. In a joking way he told the people he had brought visitors but did not know our names. This of course resulted in laughter and lightened the mood a bit more. He asked the people how many visitors he had brought. They answered three. Actually, Patrice had come with us to celebrate in the mass so there were four of us. Father Ed corrected them and said four. They however stood on the answer three explaining they saw before them three whites and a Turkana man. Patrice is from the Benin Republic but in the eyes of the Turkana, all blacks are Turkana, period. The Mass proceeded and I felt a bit guilty about being such a distraction to the celebration of the Liturgy.
In the midst of filming in this location, I found a young girl, perhaps two years old, with Downs Syndrome sitting naked on the dirt floor of the church. The child was covered in dirt and her gaze seemed to be random and unfocused. She appeared to be blind in her right eye. She was clapping in her own way and seemed to be enjoying the experience. It is different for me to see such things through my lens than with the bareness of my eye. Somehow, I can become a bit detached while I am filming as the scene becomes digital and electronic. I suppose this is a common trait for cameramen. But this was different as it would be so many times on this trip. I kept trying to look away from this little life but she kept catching my eye as I panned the action going on around us. I never did see who she left with. I don’t know who was taking care of her but I trust that someone was. There would be countless children we would encounter on this trip that would result in the same questions being asked quietly in our hearts. Who is taking care of these children? Why would God allow this to be happening to such innocence? Why are we here to see these things and, more importantly, what if anything do we intend to do about it? All of these and much more difficult questions would stay with us throughout the trip. Some remain with me today. Some of them were answered on our journey.
When Mass had ended we were each asked to come forward before the people and introduce ourselves and talk about why we had come. This is the funny thing about Father Ed. He tends to wait until a time you cannot say “no” to tell you what is about to happen. He knew we were nervous and always had the plan. One by one we came forward and spoke. Diana and I were introduced as a married couple and this seemed to be of great interest to them. I still do not know why. I was very careful, okay, as careful as I could be to speak slowly and clearly. Anyone who knows me knows this is an impossibility for me. I told them my name, Dan, and they erupted in laughter. One of the church leaders who was interpreting for us at the mass repeated my name and it came out Don. Again, there was laughter, especially from Father Ed. In Turkana, Don is not a name but a word that means stupid. The joke was on me and I laughed along as Father Ed explained to us what the laughter was about. The locals could not imagine why any mother would have named their child stupid. So Father Ed came to the rescue and pronounced my name for me saying, “Daaaaaaaaaaan”. We all laughed together and at once I felt a part of them.
From what seemed to be out of nowhere, a man called out another song and the congregation joined in. Fortunately, I had the camera rolling to catch the singing on tape. Over the next two weeks we would record many songs in Kenya. Today, as I listen to them over and over again, I am taken back to every moment in which they were recorded. It is not just the songs themselves but more the way they sing with such energy and harmony that makes the music powerful. There are no instruments but perhaps a plastic jerry can drum to accompany them. All the better I think; it is the collective of their voices in unison that portrays the love and beauty of these people. As the Mass ended and the people left, we took our positions at the entrance to film and photograph. This would be the first experience of many we would enjoy as the people, particularly the children, would flock around us in great numbers. They all, every one of them extended their hands to shake ours and to touch our white skin and western style clothing.
The eyes of these children cut through you and the illusions of what you know about the world. There is no fear in them. There is no expectation. There is only a longing to connect to you and to greet you. From this moment on, an incredible love for them began to build inside each of us. For in the midst of all their joy and openness, you cannot help but to notice the little bellies distended by a lack of protein in their diets resulting in poor muscle formation. You remember they will have water only if someone is willing to walk for miles to carry it back. You know that if they get sick there will be little or no help. These things cost money and money they do not have. Still, they know joy because they know Jesus. With each encounter we would experience, my thoughts would begin to race with the challenge of how we were going to be able to bring some relief to this region. I would lie in bed each night with their faces and voices running through my head like a film and wonder why God had brought the three of us here. Who are we but weak and corruptible people? We would be going home to hot showers, an abundance of food and clean water, and homes that by comparison, are opulent. I would ask myself this question daily and suffered with the lack of answers I would find. Sometime later in the town of Kitale, between Lodwar and Nairobi, as we waited for our truck to be repaired, Father Ed would help me find the answers.
After a long while in this informal reception line, Father Ed told us we were late in leaving for our next stop at another out station where once again, Mass would be celebrated. It was hard to leave. We wanted to stay and absorb the experience. That was one of the hardest things about this mission trip. You always knew that no matter where you were and what you were filming, it would be the first and only time you would be there. You always knew that even if you did come back, many of them would be gone. With eighty-five percent of the population suffering with malaria and thirty-five percent HIV AIDS positive, there is no sense of permanence in any of the people you will meet in this place. We were late and Father Ed was waiting in the truck so we gathered our equipment and made our exit from this strange and beautiful place called Naremit.
We were once again traveling on what is called a road in this region. The ride was as always, violently abrupt. I figured out, after a few days of travel there, that the way to reduce the impacts to your spine and head is to ride the truck like a horse. You have to keep your rear end in the seat and go with the flow. If you try and resist the sudden ups and downs you will certainly find yourself sore and bruised. Our truck became something of a carnival ride every time it moved.
As we approached the next out station, we could see that our late arrival had resulted in many people beginning to return to their village. This was a bit disconcerting for Father Ed, as he takes his responsibilities to offer Mass to these people quite seriously. He began honking the horn as we entered the immediate area of their church and the people quickly returned in droves. This was all together a different building to see. This church had been constructed entirely of corrugated steel. In the heat of this region it becomes an oven. To the best of my recollection it was already somewhere close to one hundred degrees outside but the temperature inside the building would be much higher. I would estimate the heat inside the building to be somewhere between one hundred twenty and one hundred thirty degrees. As the building heated in the sun you could hear the roof creaking and popping as it expanded from the intense heat. In fact, Diana and I both felt sick shortly after we entered and took our places to begin filming. The temperatures inside, compounded by the close proximity of a couple of hundred people, was staggering.
We took our positions towards the rear of the church and marveled at the dancing that was already occurring in anticipation of the celebration. Several Turkana women were singing in native tongues and dancing energetically. I still wonder how they are able to keep up such physical activity in the heat that is always present there. The young children found us as fascinating to watch as we did them. I sat behind a young girl holding and infant and wondered what her story was. What had she seen and experienced in her young life already? I was making silly faces at the kids. They in turn were giggling and attempting to mimic the expressions I was performing for them. It seems to be universal; kids will always be kids and I will always have a tendency to regress to their age whenever I am around them. It is so easy to see Christ in their eyes and smiles.
Mass was about to begin and the building was overflowing with people. The room was moderately dark and light leaked through the entryways on both sides of the room. In the doorway you could see the little faces of children peering in at the crowd. It was a scene to be remembered with all of this life coming together in one place for one purpose, to worship Him. This was not a good place to be if claustrophobia is a problem for you. Quite literally, you are shoulder-to-shoulder, body-to-body, with people all around you. I am almost ashamed to admit that my thoughts, for a moment anyway, took me to think about exposure to the diseases that are present here. Tuberculosis is rampant in this area and my medical training from a former life reminds me that this environment of human compactness is the best place to pick it up. This thought would quickly fade as the celebration began.
There was generally a lengthy bit of singing and dancing prior to the beginning of Mass. It is how they prepare to engage God within the beauty of their own culture. There is no holding back either. To see them dance in celebration is to see the human form become graceful and fluid. The dancing looks effortless but as Diana would tell you, having participated a few times, it is exhausting. Still, they dance until the service begins. I had at this point moved myself to the front corner of the church to capture both the congregation and the dancers. I watched through my viewfinder as the bodies in motion came so close to my camera that nothing else could be seen. It was magical and spiritual in way that I had to remind myself to breath. The dancers became like a sea in motion with each of them winding back and forth throughout the front of the church. Their energy seemed to flow into the congregation as the singing became louder and more energetic. The action was frenetic and other worldly. This was yet another time when I paused for a moment to look around. Everything became silent in my mind as I realized where I was as if it had been a mystery beforehand. Sometimes, to be with the Turkana is to be dreaming and wakeful all at once. What a blessing indeed to have your spirit dipped into a culture so surreal.
The mass began and the assembly quieted quickly. Father Ed greeted the people and in a moment the singing had begun again. I am sure you will never see this intense passion for worship any place else in the world. After a song or two, the readings of scripture begin. The rest of the Mass remains a mixture of readings and singing and dancing. Not until the mass is over will any sense of quiet return to the surrounding area.
As we left I thought it might be fun to let the children see themselves on the tape I had just acquired. I got down low on my knees and opened the small screen on the side of my GL2 and hit play. Have you ever fed fish in a trout pond? I have and playing the video for the kids here had a similar affect. Within thirty seconds, I was surrounded and pressed down by what I imagined must have been every child in Kenya. Think about it. Most Turkana have never seen an image of themselves. There are no mirrors or cameras. Certainly there are no pools of water to catch ones own reflection. They loved the experience. Again it was a way to use technology to bridge ten thousand miles and language. No matter where they are, kids are kids.
We were once again running late according to our filming schedule. It actually took me three days or so to realize the insanity of a schedule here or a sense that one could actually be late for anything. The Turkana do not bother with watches and clocks. It is my guess that few have ever seen them and if they had would find them ridiculous. Their day is set to the rising and falling of the sun, period. Six a.m. is not a time on the dial of some device but a position of the sun as it moves across the sky. One must also consider the focus of time spent here. It is common to be traveling in the pre-dawn hours and see the Turkana already on the move to find water before the sun reaches its peak. When they are not carrying water over great distances, they are gathering wood for making charcoal or weaving sleeping mats they will try to sell for a few shillings. Time becomes relevant to what needs to be done, right now, for survival.

We arrived back at the main compound sometime after noon. Okay, the sun was up in the middle of the big blue thing, it must have been about noon. The children and teachers of Kacheimer mixed school, the boys and girls primary school behind the compound, had been preparing a program of songs, dancing and poetry for weeks prior to our arrival. We had been hoping to rest a bit before heading there for what would be a long filming session but the children’s excitement could not be contained.
Before the program commenced, we were given a tour of the classrooms, cooking area, and toilet facilities. I only wish that those who so bitterly complain about overcrowding and poor school resources in the U.S. could spend an afternoon in the cinder block ovens of this facility. The fact that these children learn, and learn very well here, is yet another testament to the tenacity and will of these people.
As we walked around the rear of the classrooms towards the largest of the rooms where the program was awaiting our arrival, the children who had been spying on us, as young children will, ran back to the room to announce our arrival. I had not seen all of the children assembled in one place at one time. There were hundreds of them. I believe the exact number was three hundred and ninety five. This does not include the number of pre-school aged children who come to the school to be fed in a classroom that is situated under a thorn tree in the center of the schoolyard. To see them together, in true community with one another, is to see what I believe God intended us to be, connected and interdependent on each other. The older children shepherd the younger ones. The younger ones hold each other’s hands. No one strays from the group. They know, maybe instinctually, that their lives depend on each other.
The program was emotionally overwhelming. This would be the case every time a program was given in our honor. The children recited poems they had written in both English and Swahili. They sang beautiful songs and danced. A choir that was formed among the children and had just competed at a local venue sang classical baroque style pieces flawlessly. The teachers and headmaster took turns welcoming us and educating us on the struggles and needs of these children. It was a life changing experience to see the depth of their spirits and their raw talents. At the conclusion we were asked, as we always were, to introduce ourselves and speak about our mission. It was always hard to stand and speak to them as if we had anything important to say. Each of us would dig deep to express our love and something of our faith in Christ. It was always moving to see Diana speak to them. There is a depth to her heart I have never seen in another human being and these children grabbed that space and remained there. She would struggle to speak between the tears and always; the people would be moved by her sincerity. I looked to Father Ed as she spoke and saw that he too had been moved to tears by the faith she was revealing. Perhaps she came to understand something of what it means to love here that only she and the children could see. I will never forget the words of a teacher there that said, “ It is uncommon to see a person moved to tears by the love of another person”. Think about that. Have we given pause today to love another so deeply that they should be moved to tears? In this place of heat and dust and hunger, in this place of suffering, there is such love. May God continue to keep and bless all of the people in that place.
We needed to get moving to Lodwar to get two of our five tires repaired as the thorns had already begun to take their toll. You do not want to be in the desert at night for a variety of imaginable reasons. We made good time getting there and back and decided to take a ride to the girl’s school to let them know we would be there on Sunday to visit and to interview some of the girls and nuns there for the documentary.
We drove to the school just as the sun was beginning to lower in the sky. We were greeted by a group of nuns that administer the school and were invited to their home at the far end of the school compound. If you are in a hurry here, forget it. You are coming inside. You are having a beverage. You are going to visit. This is the way in Kenya. There are no strangers and everything is shared among these people. If they have it, it is yours. If it is their last bit of food, it is yours. They do not know what it is to be selfish. The visit was typical of a first visit with a native Kenyan. There are greetings spoken very quietly, quiet smiling and time just sitting together without speaking. Every fiber of my being wants to talk, ask questions, find some truth but that is not the way here. First you must all become comfortable simply sharing some time and space in community. It was perhaps the most difficult lesson for me to learn, patience and inner quiet. It is truly a wonderful experience. You know when you leave a first meeting that something special has occurred. Two or more of God’s children have gathered and sat quietly in the Light of His Love and Grace. Imagine a world where this was the norm: people sitting quietly embracing the presence of God in community.
We returned to the main house, as we always would, to eat, get hydrated, and relax under the fantasy of an African sky. I think it was this night I photographed the Southern Cross and the Milky Way. For the most part we just sat and talked about what we had seen during the day. Some of this time would be spent filtering drinking water, cleaning the sand out of camera gear, and writing in our journals. Always, we would drag our western thinking back into play in trying to plan the next days filming. I might never learn how to not plan.
We got up early the next morning to attend our first morning mass at the main compound church. This was the nicest of the buildings there and had been constructed in the general shape of a Turkana home. It was on this morning that we would meet quite a few local women and a handful of local men who attend mass here daily. Mass ended and the women who were curious to meet us followed us outside. They were speaking to us in Turkana and we were shrugging in English. I was moving around the group with my video gear and turned to see Diana, now hand in hand with two of the women, jumping up and down in the typical Turkana dance. I of course, not being someone inclined to dance since the “dance incident” of my eighth grade year, kept busy filming to avoid what would be an international incident should I join in. We would establish a relationship with these women over the next week that was meaningful and unforgettable. Every hour we spent with the people moved us closer to truly seeing them as our brothers and sisters.
We walked back across a field of sand, rock and the ever-present thorns to the main house. It was getting very hot at this point. It was just before noon and temperature had already reached one hundred ten degrees. Father Ed had stayed behind at the church to work with some of the kids who were going to receive their first communion the following day. We had brought a simple kite with us to give to the orphans who live outside the school. It was an inexpensive, nylon bag kite; the kind without sticks that fold up into a little bag. I walked across the land that separates the compound from the schoolyard where the kids were playing and began running with the kite. They stopped all that they were doing and watched the overweight white guy running through the thorn patch with this brightly colored bunch of fabric trailing behind him. Almost immediately, a few of the braver kids came over to investigate. There was one small problem in that there was no wind to lift the kite. Okay, now for my next trick.
Having been a magician in my early teens and twenties, I picked up a rock on the ground and did some slight of hand. This was definitely a time I wished I had known how to speak Turkana. They were laughing however and that is language enough here when you are with the children. I showed them the same trick over and over again. Hey, I only know one trick. Finally, I turned my hands the other way and showed them where the rock had been hiding all along. This of course resulted in much laughter and the international expression for “you didn’t fool me, I knew it was there all the time”. I had found my Vaudeville in Africa. I handed the kite and the string to two different boys who immediately began running incredibly fast across the stones and thorns. These kid’s feet must be like leather to endure the ground there. They were able to keep the kite up as long as they were running. Each kid took a turn to best the one who had gone before, and in turn, none of them could get the kite to fly. Eventually I was able to explain to them that much more wind would be needed. They took the kite back to the school and for hours they ran with it, back and forth, confident it would fly. Later in the afternoon I looked across the field to see they had finally gotten it up. I went across the field to join them and took some pictures.
It was interesting to watch seventy some kids playing together that day. No one was fighting. In fact, the older kids organized a line in which each child would wait their turn to hold the string attached to this flying oddity. While taking a few pictures, I showed one of the boys his image on the display panel of my camera. It was an instant repeat of the scene earlier at Naremit. Each of the children wanted to be photographed and then shown their image. They were amazed. They began posing for the camera and doing the usual goofy stuff any kid would do in America with the funny faces and “two fingers behind the head maneuver” that is timeless in our culture. I must have taken two hundred shots that afternoon. I was able to get in very tight with the lens and shoot a lot of full frame faces, which were some of my favorites. To be so close to them that you could count the pores in their skin and see the subtle variations in eye color was a gift to me. When the background is removed, all the evidence that you are in a foreign place, and all that is left are the faces, you begin to see the common humanity no matter where you happen to be. There is a story and a precious piece of creation in every human face. I wish the men who wage such awful wars on this and every other continent could find something of this truth. How much more difficult it will be to hate and kill when each of us learns to see the face of Christ in the faces of our brothers and sisters. I wonder will this ever be.
Later in the day, Father Ed took us to see something the people and the church are quite proud of. We were going to be taken to an irrigation scheme. An irrigation scheme is an area where water, when it is available, is channeled through a series of hand dug canals that weave around and between crops. We drove a little distance in a direction we had not yet traveled. I had decided not to take the video gear in favor of traveling light through what sounded like a difficult area to navigate on foot.
We drove through an open area of desert that became somewhat more covered by trees than other areas we had visited. We would soon find out that this area is actually a riverbed run dry thus explaining the additional foliage. It had been explained to us that this was an area where the men would commonly gather to make and consume a type of alcohol made by fermenting sorghum and/or corn. As we rounded the final bend in the tracks we arrived at the irrigation scheme to find a large crowd, perhaps one hundred people or so, mostly men and young women, drinking underneath the trees. This would be one of two times on our trip that we would see people drinking this foul looking and even fouler smelling concoction. Diana and I actually had a short discussion about whether or not this was a place we wanted to be. We decided we would get out and take a few photos. Diana made the wise choice to stay at Father Ed’s side. He was always the safest person to be with in Turkana.
We were given a tour of this place by what appeared to be local leaders of this area. It did not take long to realize that many of the people there were intoxicated. This of course gave us some reason for concern. As a drug and alcohol counselor by day I know what happens to behavior once alcohol is stirred into a social mix. At this point, the people were relaxed and eager to speak with us about the work going on in this area. Occasionally, someone would approach me and the smell of alcohol would nearly knock me off my feet. It was odd, the contrast between this place and all the others we would visit in Turkana. You could sense a diminished spirituality here. Maybe it was the alcohol or maybe it was something more. I don’t know. It was the most uncomfortable place we would visit. Stepping out of the truck was like stepping into a carnival of dreams. It was as surreal as anything I have ever experienced. Again, time slowed down to frames in a viewfinder.
We took the tour and saw what was growing there. For the most part, the crop appeared to be sorghum. Not knowing anything about agriculture, particularly sorghum, it would be hard to say if the crop was healthy. It must have been somewhat productive based on the amount of alcohol that was made. By this point I had taken many photographs with little or no interest being taken in what I was doing by the villagers. I then made a somewhat stupid mistake. I began showing them their pictures on the digital camera. Suddenly, I was completely surrounded by many intoxicated people all wanting their pictures taken and then to see them. In retrospect, this was not a dangerous moment, probably. At the time it was overwhelming and a bit frightening. I was being pressed in from all sides and confronted by some men who really wanted their pictures taken with the young women there. At one point, I ended up on my knees and unable to move from the spot. I pointed the camera straight up through the crowd that had encircled me and took several dozen shots. The images were amazing: dozens of faces packed tightly around me looking straight into the lens. A moment later, Father Ed pulled up with the truck and we were encouraged to get in.
Diana had a rather interesting experience here that I did not witness. A small child, perhaps seven or eight, with Downs Syndrome approached her and touched her white skin. Diana would later write in her journal, “ She touched me and then looked at her hand is if the white color would come off on her. She was so amazed. Very cute, very sad”. I think there were many people here who had never seen white skin. I still think about it today. The color of our skin made no difference to anyone. The only reaction we ever saw or sensed was one of curiosity. I wonder how we missed that point in the United States. Our whiteness never made us different from them, only curious. There are so many lessons the world could learn in this place. I hope the Turkana survive long enough to do the teaching. My God, what else of His creation are we failing to learn from? What else, where else, has the world surrendered to despair that we should be embracing?
It would be easy to judge these men for the drinking and, had it not been for Father Ed’s explanation, I might have. He would explain that the drinking staves off the hunger and makes things a bit more bearable. What troubled me then and still does now were the young women, girls really, caught up in this chaos. I know today that it is the girls who do not get to school who most likely end up there. In fact, some of these girls are lured away from the school by these men to, as Father Ed delicately states, “to make use of them”. It is just another human tragedy born of poverty and a Kenya wide culture of devaluing women. Every time we saw it, we became more determined to “bust our humps” with this project.
There would be a small miracle in the morning to come. I would be put in charge of making toast. Making toast there is something of an adventure all in itself. First, the generator must be filled with diesel, or petrol as it is called there. Then, the generator must be started. This would seem to be pretty straightforward wouldn’t it? Anyone who knows me knows that mechanical things and I have an agreement: they leave me alone and I leave them alone. Still, there was toast to be made and I had been put in charge. This was not a responsibility I took lightly. So, I managed to get this thing going and traced the extension cord back into the kitchen area of the house. Toaster, toaster, hmmmmm, Father Ed said there was a toaster and come heck or high water, I would find it. It is important to note here that toast in any form does not exist in Turkana. I suppose that turning bread dry and dusty is something that probably happens here all on its own and one does not need to purchase an electrical device to make it so. Still, I was told there would be a toaster. There at the end of the extension cord it was. But this was not a toaster. This was a waffle maker. Hey, toaster, waffle maker, it gets hot right? I imagined myself to be quite clever at this point, what with Felistus watching me from the corner wondering, I imagined, if I could manage to get bread into the waffle maker, shut it, be patient, and then remove the bread. If she knew my history with mechanical things, her wondering would be well justified. Nonetheless, toast would be made: fifteen minutes a slice, but what the heck, it got dry just like the desert itself had made it. Ahhhh, it was a proud moment for me. I the missionary filmmaker had just made toast in Turkana. I still wonder what she thought as I lifted the lid of the waffle maker every thirty seconds sure that it had to be done by now. Then again, I wonder what any of the Turkana thought as we hurried our way about as if life would end if we waited a second or two extra for something to be done.
A fellow traveler made a crown of thorns from some branches of an acacia tree that afternoon. It was so fitting, there in the desert in the miserable heat making a crown of thorns as the orphans played in the schoolyard. I wondered if Christ wasn’t looking down on the world and its senseless, man-created poverty and hunger and was asking us, “Why are these little ones suffering? Did I not take the cross that they should not have to? Which of these children did I not die for? Why is my flock untended”? These are big questions for me. The truth is that I am not ready to answer them. Maybe the truth is that I am afraid to. What could any of us say in response? I am not casting blame. I am only sharing the questions that trouble me. What is my role in the life of my unseen brothers and sisters? What is my responsibility? To what degree can I love another as I am so loved? To what lengths will I walk to share the Good News of Jesus Christ? Maybe more importantly, what will I choose to let stand in my way? I am reminded of Luke 3:10-11 "What should we do then?" the crowd asked. John answered, "The man with two tunics should share with him who has none, and the one who has food should do the same.”
We headed off for our first Sunday mass. There was a rumor going around that Diana would be dancing with the women in church today. I guess her debut in morning mass went well and they wanted an encore. We walked the half-mile or so to the church and already it was hot. As we approached the church we could hear that the singing had already begun. The people begin showing up early here for church. This is a day of worship and they are excited to be together. As we got closer to the church, the sound of singing became louder and louder. It was amazing to hear the sound of faith turned up slowly as if we were listening to a stereo being faded in with the sounds of the surrounding village.
The church became packed to the walls long before mass began. People were literally overflowing through the doors and onto the surrounding grounds. I was able to carve out a space for myself on the far side of the church near the altar. I set up my equipment and began filming the congregation. The Turkana women were already dancing and singing and were joined in song by the young girls and women from the girl’s school. The atmosphere was charged in a way that causes the skin to tingle and the mind to race. If anyone ever doubts the presence of the Holy Spirit working among the faithful, go to Turkana. As the mass began, a line of young girls entered the far side of the church in traditional dance. The singing became more and more excited and the people were visibly ecstatic. Once again, to see this unfold was to dream with your eyes open. We were asked to speak to the congregation and were thrilled to be able to share our love and the Good News with them. During the middle of the mass, before the homily was given, the dancing reached a new level of intensity. The rumors we had earlier about Diana’s command performance were in fact true. She became a foreign speck of white in a sea of glistening black. She was amazing.
Three hours later the mass ended. It was an exhausting experience. We walked outside and exchanged greetings with many of the Turkana. We were so hot and thirsty and yet each of us were wishing it had never ended. To share in worship with the Turkana is to experience God in a different way than we ever had before. There is a vibrancy and unrestrained passion to their faith. They will offer up songs of praise and glory until they are asked to stop. In a word, our worship experiences there were breathtaking.
We made our way back to the compound and upon our arrival were informed that a young woman, probably seventeen or so, had fallen and broken her leg at the irrigation scheme we had visited the day before. It was also being reported that she was most likely pregnant. Father Ed and his truck serve as the ambulance service for the region. Diana went along with Father Ed to offer her help. I think it took her back a bit to suddenly arrive in her nursing role. You tend to forget about your career here in the midst of everything. They arrived at the scheme to find a young woman lying on the ground in pain with what appeared to be a fractured leg. They made a splint out of sticks and, as Diana would later write, “woven crafts”. I wonder what went through her head then. Diana is an R.N. in a Neonatal Intensive Care Unit at one of the largest trauma centers in Central Illinois who now finds herself in a dried riverbed making splints out of tree parts and crafts. The contrast between “worlds” cannot accurately be described. On one continent you have ventilators, heart transplants and cosmetic surgery. On another you have sticks. I believe this is a disparity, which can neither be justified nor explained away. In a word, it is wrong. Diana accompanied the woman back to the village in the bed of the truck. Once they arrived back at the village, the woman was helped into her hut and given a couple of Tylenol; the only pain medication we had. It is my understanding that it took quite a bit of explaining and translation to help her understand what this medicine was and how it would help here. Remember, there is no real health care in this part of the world. Later that evening we would return to the village and check on the girl. It turned out to be a bad sprain and Diana gave her another round of Tylenol. What they really need there is a good HMO…just kidding. They already have enough problems to contend with.
This day would become the most physically exhausting of all the days spent in Africa. Shortly after mass and assisting the young girl it became time for our tour of the village proper. Father Ed had announced in the mass that day that we would be visiting and that there was no reason to fear us. He informed them all of the work we were doing there and asked them to welcome us into their homes and to assist us in our filming. Now we had been a relatively short distance from the village throughout our stay and in fact could hear the activity going on there every night. We had driven by the wall of sticks, thorns and grass that make up the boundary surrounding the village but had not yet seen the inside. We were of course very anxious to finally enter the interior of their world where five thousand or so Turkana make their home.
We had no real idea how big the area was that comprises the village. From the road it appeared to be a relatively small place. We would soon discover this to be untrue. By the time we made it to the entrance of the village it was the hottest temperature we had yet experienced. The heat was somewhat suffocating and there was a total absence of any breeze. As soon as our truck stopped and we strapped on our equipment a crowd of young children began to gather around us. I think they were as excited to meet us as we were to meet them. The openness of the children there was always a pleasant surprise. Even though their large numbers in close proximity would at times complicate filming, their joyful smiles, laughter and little hands reaching out to shake were gifts I will never forget. As we moved through the front of the village, a greeting spot of sorts, the crowd of children seemed to grow with every step. It was as if they were just coming out of nowhere, perhaps out of the sand and dust itself.
With every turn we made between the huts we moved slowly but surely into the interior of the village. Within a short time I was completely disoriented as to how far we had walked and in what direction we were traveling. This location was the highlight of my filming in Turkana. It was as if we had been dropped into a National Geographic feature film and given free license to film. Everywhere we walked an elder who was very eager to show us their home or their work greeted us. We were entirely blessed to be invited into the home of one of the catechist’s to meet his family. It was a simple home made of mud and grass with a dirt floor. A mother duck and a single chick were playing in the corner underneath the only window in this single room dwelling. I should mention that the colors there are breathtaking. Although most of them are earth tones, the shear variety of variations is a joy to the eye and lens. Sitting up against the rear wall of the home was the catechist’s wife and his seven children. One of the children was initially fearful of us and had to be coaxed out of a back room to meet us. The mother was holding what appeared to be a baby less than a year old and next to her was a toddler eating what appeared to be porridge from a small bowl. All of the other children were sitting proudly around her as the father of the family talked about their life and their home. Not once did he offer up a complaint. The light now pouring through the window of the room seemed to electrify the golden brown and clay tones of the room making it appear almost magical. God is in this place.
We left the home and continued our tour. We came upon women sitting in the shade of their huts making beaded jewelry and grass sleeping mats. Each of them seemed to take great pride in showing us what they were doing and how they were doing it. Not one of them asked us for anything, offered a complaint, or failed to offer a smile and a handshake. As we moved further back into the village through inner gates and walls we became entirely lost. Were it not for Father Ed we would never have found our way back out. The Turkana village is like a maze. There is an intentional purpose to the design and layout but my understanding of it is too poor to attempt to explain it. Trust me, it is a maze.
We came upon a centrally located, large open area that resembled something of a market place. I am still quite uncertain as to the workings of their economy. No one has any more than a few shillings to their name, which they have made by selling crafts in Lodwar or by selling charcoal to travelers on the open road. Still, they have a small market where grain raised in the irrigation schemes is sold. Some of the Turkana will make the trip to Lodwar some forty to fifty kilometers away to bring back basics such as flour, cornmeal, cooking oil etc. One woman, the secretary of the church, had a small shop that was quite advanced for this region. There she sold small quantities of supplies that her fellow villagers might be able to afford.
Near this market was the butchery. If you have never seen a butchery in this part of the world, you are going to be in for a real “treat” the first time you encounter one. This particular butchery was in a very confined room constructed of what appeared to be discarded lumber and metal scrap. In the corner was a three-foot by three foot partitioned area where the animals, goats mostly, would be slaughtered and processed. Here, processed means being hung by the back legs until the blood is drained and then cut into chunks to be sold. It is certainly not as elegant as meat processing in the west, but hey, it gets the job done. All that was left of the days processing was a wicked looking little chunk of goat hanging on a meat hook and covered in flies. For around thirty cents the prize could be yours. We of course passed having developed a true love and loyalty to Falistus’s cooking.
Outside and to the left of these two buildings was a small, open-air market selling mostly produce and previously packaged items. You don’t buy a box of matches here you buy ten of them tied together with a string. You don’t buy anything in bulk here, it is not for sale and no one could afford it anyway. I am not sure how their economy works but it appears to. These open air markets and small wooden shanties were the norm for every thing we would see on the road from Lodwar to Nairobi. In fact, other than the central most portion of downtown Nairobi, this type of market structure appears to be all that exists there. I had to laugh when Father Ed referred to a group of young women selling produce on a grass matte beneath a thorn tree as the local Wal-Mart.
As we left the market area and approached the rear border of the village, we came upon some young men playing soccer, excuse me guys, football as I would often be reminded it to be known here in the heat of the day. The children love to play football here and, with no real balls or money to buy one, they make the balls by tightly packing rags together until the desired shape and size has been accomplished. This is typical of the ingenuity of the Turkana. Now by this point Diana and I were rapidly becoming dehydrated and feeling quite ill. We had planned very poorly for this trek having imagined the village to be a small place. I am guessing we had walked a bit over a mile to reach the rear of the village grounds and had not taken water with us. The sun was nearly directly overhead and the temperature was well above one hundred degrees. In the absence of taxis, rickshaws, or companions willing to carry your dead weight on their backs, the only way out is to walk out. To complicate this matter further, we still had about an hour of filming left to accomplish. This was probably the only time on the trip where we actually approached a fraction of the daily suffering the Turkana suffer through. How these young men could run in this heat and play soccer, err, football, escapes me. I suppose this is why the Kenyan runners are some of the best in the world. What else could challenge a man more than training in this place?
We began our walk back out to the final places we needed to film. My muscles were beginning to cramp a bit and Diana’s face was bright red. At this point we were facing the sun and both of us were about spent. Father Ed had shown us many pictures of the people during his visit to the States. One woman who really captured the hearts of all who would see her picture was Regina. Regina is an elderly blind woman who has been “adopted” by Father Ed for safekeeping. It was important to him and for us to meet her and to speak with her. We came upon her small hut in the center of the village and found her napping inside. I will mention again that the temperature inside these huts is a minimum of one hundred and thirty degrees. It was in fact so hot inside of them that it was hard for me to breath while filming. Regina awoke to the knocks on her corrugated metal door and to the calls of Father Ed.
We were immediately invited in and, in spite of the fact she could not see us, she smiled warmly and extended a hand of welcome. Her hut was sparsely furnished with a small cooking pot, a sleeping mat made of woven reeds, and a stick she used to find her way about. It was a spiritually enriching moment to have Father Ed place her hand in ours and interpret her greetings to us. Father Ed explained that she survives in this inhospitable climate only through the love and compassion of fellow Christians in the village. Can you imagine what her life might be in the absence of such Christian values? Can you imagine what our world might become should each of us share this love with the blind among us, those who cannot see the truth of salvation in our Lord Jesus Christ? Imagine it, those who had left the darkness to bring into the light those who long to see. I think this was one of the many lessons we were to learn in this desert place, there in Africa.
We left Regina’s home and headed further towards the entrance to the village. Along the way we passed many villagers sitting quietly in the shadows of their huts. There is no natural shade in this place, none. I imagined that the people were like sundials set in flesh as they moved about their circular dwellings following some respite from the sun. It was becoming harder and harder to continue to move. The heat was oppressive in a way that causes the mind to question every next step. But step you must to take this journey. It is a vast and open land and walking is often the only way to traverse this place.
Towards the entrance of the village we came upon a group of young boys and an older man playing a game in the dirt. The man was on one side of the rows with the boy on the other. Each of them was on one knee and surrounded by a couple of dozen children who were watching the play intently. There were three rows of ten holes in the ground. Each of them contained a varied number of small stones. Father Ed did his best to explain the game but he himself knew little of how it was played or even what it was called. The man of the group was in competition with one of the older boys. Each would take his turn counting the rocks in each hole and then, for no apparent reason, would smack the ground as if to signal they were satisfied with the placement of the stones. For reasons I still don’t know, the man claimed victory and a new game began. This game, as so many things in this place, remains a mystery today. It is odd I suppose that you can spend time in Turkana, walk through its many places, meet so many of its people and still understand so very little of what you have experienced. It is a place far from the familiarity of home. We were exhausted and beaten down by the sun. Finally, we reached the truck still accompanied by our little band of native children. We had to drag our overheated and dehydrated bodies into the seats. They had the energy to run about and wave as the truck departed the village.
We were late again as the girls at the Turkana Girls school were awaiting our arrival. We were tired to the point that any more filming seemed to be impossible. I thank God we were given the energy to continue. What we would see and experience at this school would touch us so deeply as to change our hearts forever. We arrived at the entrance of the school yard to see hundreds of young girls, all dressed in uniforms, suddenly become excited as they watched us approach. I had no idea there were so many girls there. I had imagined we would see less than a hundred. We would be blessed to greet and be greeted by four hundred of these beautiful souls.
It was something of a chain reaction taking place throughout the grounds of the school There was so much giggling, yes, young girls giggle there to, and laughter, and whispering, and running about. It was like watching a miracle unfold before us. Our introduction to the girls would be a bit delayed as the headmaster and one of the sisters that run this place greeted us. I was my usual, impatient self wanting only to get closer to the kids and begin filming their story. I think God knew that we would have to see the classrooms, the unimaginably cramped living quarters, the unspeakable latrines, and the raw sewage flowing in a little stream in the back of the complex to fully be touched by the beauty we were about to encounter.
The tour was as it always was; no complaining, no pleads for assistance, just a thorough explanation of what they were doing and a Christian sense of pride in the works that God was directing there. As we left the last of the living quarters, we were led to a pavilion like structure in the center of the courtyard very close to where the girl’s meals are prepared and served. We were able to get a glimpse of a man cutting meat on a stone in preparation for their dinner. The pavilion was already packed with hundreds of smiling faces that pierce the spirit and soul and ask only that you watch and listen, to participate in their lives. It was still a bit uncomfortable being the center of their attention. Every eye in the pavilion was squarely focused on us. Each time I would make eye contact with a girl she would smile brightly as if to say without speaking, “Welcome to Turkana”.
We were about to be treated to a group of performances that would leave us stunned and dizzy with the newness of it all. The program began with a kind and generous welcome from the headmaster and a fellow teacher followed by one of the older girls. We would be witness to poetry being read in English, Turkana, and Swahili, powerful and stunning dances surrounded by powerful drumming and singing, a comedy performance, and always, the smiles. As each new group took their place in the front of the pavilion, the leader of the group would come forward, curtsey, and introduce herself by saying, “Honored guests, parish priest, teachers and fellow pupils. Before you stands (her name). I would now like to now perform for you a song or poem or dance. I hope you will enjoy it”. The formality of this introduction seemed to be in such stark contrast to the setting and the scene. My only guess is that it is an influence of the British style of education that dominates most of Kenya.
It was in this moment that we would witness the most overt face of suffering we would encounter. There had been a young man we had seen in church a few days earlier. No one knows his name or knows where he came from. He was severely retarded, mute, and appeared to be suffering from end stage tuberculosis. His eyes were sunken into his head and his movements appeared to take all the energy he could muster. He was emaciated in a way I have only seen in film clips from the concentration camps in World War II Germany. He was so thin you could see the joints in his limbs work and the tendons contract as he would find a place to sit. When we first saw him in church he was carrying a cup that he used to catch the fluid he was coughing up from his lungs. Still, he smiled at us and seemed curious about us. As we moved about the church filming he would, in turn, follow us to sit close by. I saw nothing of him until we arrived on the grounds of the girl’s school.
When we saw him appear there, we asked Father Ed again about his condition and where he was from. Again we were told that no one in the village knew. Father Ed handed him his bottle of water and his face lit up with joy. We were told that the sisters at the school had adopted him in a way and that they make sure he is fed each day. Most of his time is spent wandering the grounds between the schoolyard and the church. I struggled with whether or not I should film him. Our goal in Kenya was to not become press oriented voyeurs into the suffering of anyone. We were not there to film death, rather life. Finally I made the decision to film the young man as he sat leaning against the stone wall of a school building. If anyone had questions about the depth of poverty and hunger in this region, the image of this man would surely be a sufficient answer. I stopped filming for a moment and prayed for him. I have prayed for him nearly every day since our return home. No human being should have to suffer this way, no one. I truly wonder if he was an angel walking among us hoping to show us the truth of this place. May God have mercy on this man and grant him peace and healing, amen.
The program lasted for well over an hour. Moments after it began we had forgotten about our tiredness and our need to get some fluids in us. We were at this moment joined with them and their culture in a way that defies explanation. I cannot imagine how long they had practiced and prepared or how much effort it took to do these performances in the blistering heat of this day. The show ended and once again we were asked to speak. I dreaded my turn as I was already struggling to hold back the tears welling up in my eyes. Imagine that, such complete openness on their part, such foolish vanity on mine. I watched as Diana spoke. Moved to tears of joy she struggled to speak to them but speak she did. I believe she spoke with the voice of Christ that day as she told them of her love for them and thanked them for their love for her. There is something that lives inside of her I still do not understand and to see it flow from her to these children is to see a miracle. It is to see God working in love through an instrument of peace. I still have so much to learn from her. It was now my turn to speak but the words would not come. My mind was racing with where I had been in my own life and how I fought to see God in the world. And to stand here and speak to them in the midst of their joy despite the struggle was humbling to the center of my spirit. I honestly don’t recall what I spoke to them that day. I know that it is not important. All I know is that I loved them and they loved me and there can be no words that transcend the love that Christ has set upon us. To be with these children was to experience the Grace and Peace of our Lord Jesus Christ in the flesh, in the faces of strangers, in the realest of real. Thank you Lord for sharing this with me.
We said our goodbyes and headed back for the truck. I think this was a moment more than any other there where I did not want to leave. If someone would have asked me to stay forever I believe I would have said yes. But I was not asked and Father Ed would share something with me on the road to Nairobi that would give me a reason why. He would tell me some things about my life and my faith that I needed to hear, but more of this later. The ride back to the compound was unusually quiet. We stopped on the way back in a large open area and worked to get a signal on the satellite phone. Finally, we were able to connect and call home to check in. After unsuccessfully reaching either of our parents we called Sister Judith Ann of our home parish to check in with her. It was during this call that Diana would learn that her father had undergone open-heart surgery shortly after we left the States. Thanks be to God, he had come through the surgery okay. Our families knew how much this work meant to us and decided not to call us with the news. Even if they had, it is a three-day drive out and there is little we could have done. Diana and I agreed they had made the right decision. This night would end as all others had, sitting beneath the African sky counting stars and remembering the days’ experiences. Tomorrow we would travel back to Lodwar to get supplies, water, and have some punctured tires repaired.
This day began before first light. I walked out of our room to the center of the compound and watched the last of the stars before they gave way to the rising of the sun. I stood silently for some time trying to take in the scene and burn its image in my memory. I never want to forget this place or what it is teaching us. Across the compound I watched as Felistus lit the charcoal fire to prepare the morning meal. Her movement is elegant and seems to fit so well with the rest of this scene. I wonder how long she has been awake and working. I think about her life and how she was once a student at the school we had visited the day before. I remember her telling me how she is trying to save enough money to buy a house in Lodwar and that she was certain it would probably never happen for her. I watch her fanning the coals of the charcoal fire and wonder how she would react to life in America. I think about this often. What would it be like for one of these people to be transplanted to the Midwest with all the noise and traffic and hurried living? I am not sure you can take any of these people from this place, or more correctly, take this place from the hearts of the Turkana. They fit here, as they truly are part of the land.
So many people have asked us since we have come home, “Why don’t they just move to where the food and water are”? It is not that simple, in fact, it is not really possible at all. This country is as most African nations, carved up into tribal districts, mostly by the countries who once colonized so much of the continent. The separation that exists between them is largely influenced by past history that was not their own design. And in this place, there is no place where food and water abound. Even in the capital city of Nairobi, hunger, poverty and disease are out of control. There simply is no economy here. What little money comes into the economic equation of Kenya is misused by the government to promote self-wealth instead of helping its many people. One of the catechists in Nairobi would later tell me, “The government is corrupt with impunity”. There are no real efforts to hide the political thievery of this or any other ruling body. Their own people are not their concern. Without the presence of the Catholic Church and many others, the situation would quickly plummet from bad to worse. To speak out against this government means trouble for the person who takes such a risk. Just two weeks before our arrival here, another priest was murdered for speaking out for women’s rights. They murder the voices of truth and change here. This priest was one of many Christians who have been killed in this place. Still, the missionaries of this place move forward. The hands of hate cannot silence the works of God.
There is yet another problem for the Turkana. The Turkana were once a successful, nomadic, pastoralist people who roamed this part of Africa grazing their cattle and goats and living off the land. Global warming and years of harsh draughts and famine have forced them to abruptly change their lifestyle. In many parts of the world this would be a fixable situation. But in the complete absence of any, and I mean any, government support for these people, a total lack of economy and an increase of disease in the area, they are left to the assistance of Christians from around the globe. There is no place to send these people. There is no place on the continent for them to go. If they are to survive it will be in their homeland because others take an interest in seeing them survive. Here is a little fact that might spark your interest, for the cost of one stealth bomber, malaria could be eradicated from Africa. I believe that if this region were rich with oil or any other commodity the world sees as valuable, things would be different. Then again, maybe they would be worse. Parts of this continent that contain oil fields and large mineral deposits are generally prostituted by outside interest leaving the people enslaved in the process. Maybe the solution is to help others see Christ in the lives of these people. Maybe when the world begins to value a culture of life instead of fostering one of death, things will improve there. Until then, it will be small groups of people trying to make a difference in the lives of one child, one school, or one village that will carry on this work.
So enough of my political soapbox, there will be time for that later. Once we finished our morning meal we headed off to the main church for morning mass with fifteen or so women that were always in attendance. What a glorious way to begin a day worshipping with them all. We would not be traveling with our equipment that day. We needed a break and there was no need to add the risk of carrying it with us. We arrived back in Lodwar and visited the local church that is the cathedral, the central church, of the diocese. It was large and well furnished by Kenyan standards. I always find it interesting in these churches to see the African art and depictions of Christ on the walls. It is fitting and correct that it is this way. What color is Christ anyway?
We drove about the town and went to a store Father Ed calls the local Wal-Mart. As soon as we arrived in the dirt parking area, beggars and a few local youth looking to hustle a few shillings surrounded us. I was always so tempted to give them money but had been duly warned that doing so would only create a riot. So we entered the store as we politely refused the request of the small crowd. The inside of the store reminded me of a trading post from the old Wild West movies. The wooden floor was buckled and broken and there were no lights. Dust from the streets filled the air that was stagnant and musty. The array of items for sale was as varied as the countries on this continent. Almost anything could be bought there for a price and I wondered how any of the locals could afford anything they had for sale. We were obviously sticking out like sore thumbs there as I struggled to figure out how many dollars would be needed to convert to shillings. They were not interested in taking U.S. currency there and we scrambled to put together the shillings we had to pay our bill.
As we left the store to head out for the Pastoral Center, the young people who were hustling on the street were still there. They were tenacious but offered no threats or sense of harm. I joked with them a little bit and asked them if they had any news of the World Cup results. Amazingly, they did. Imagine, there in the middle of literally nowhere, news of the World Cup was known almost as soon as it happened. We arrived at the Pastoral Center in time to be served lunch. As we entered the compound, we saw a group of strong looking men digging a well, or borehole as it is called there. It is back breaking work in that heat and I have no idea how they manage. They had erected a large tripod made of metal pipe above the site they were digging. Hanging from the tripod was a block and tackle with two large, long ropes. The ropes were wrapped in both directions around the pipe and the digging was accomplished by two groups of three men pulling back and forth on