Chapter 2: Roast Mutton

Image created by Tim Keiper using Adobe Photoshop

Dadaab, Kenya - near the Somali border

I've been programmed to fear Islamic images.  Black robed women with slits for their eyes, turbaned men with dark eyes and long beards, white buildings with high minarets looking like they've been dipped in green, and a crescent moon that looks like a star on a Christmas tree but it isn't...not even close.  I'm usually a bit apprehensive when entering a new culture for the first time...but for me, this is different.  I've seen the images of the angry Muslims and the men that crash planes into buildings.

But then the young woman in long black robes, getting water for her family, turns and gives a bright white smile that contrasts with her dark skin and shouts "Hi"and waves.  And still the journalists report that Al-Shabaab, the Al Qaida ally, is actively recruiting at the refugee camps just minutes from here.  I find I'm fighting this internal battle between TRUST and NAIVETE.

If I trust...maybe I can accept people...if I can accept maybe I can show love.

But Jesus offers that topsey-turvey world.

He loved...He accepted people...I don't know if He trusted.  He wasn't naive though..He knew what we were capable of doing.

My new friend Paul has worked with the people of Dadaab for 15 years.  His co-worker Yattani moved to this desert from his home area in northern Kenya several years ago.  Matt came in to get me out of bed one night because Yattani wanted to pray...and so, under the desert stars we prayed for their Muslims friends and their families.  That is the ministry they have given themselves to...praying for their friends...looking for ways to be helpful (from building clinics to giving rides and water to thirsty  camel herders walking in the desert)...funny, in all those years I doubt if they have ever given a sermon in that place...but I bet there are a thousand or probably many more that look on them as the only Christians they know.  There are Paul and Yattani, one white Canadian Liverpool football fan and one black nomadic goat herder from the other side of Kenya, not even wanting to be known as Christians - just simply followers of Jesus Christ...being His hands and feet in the desert.

Here is Matt at the wheel British style.  I must say we were in guy heaven - 4 wheelin with a Land Rover.  We drove many miles on a road that was right on the equator.

That's fine but then there is the little deal that Matt wanted to stay out there too...just a bit troubled by that. The morning I was leaving one of the elders of the town came up to greet me as he did each day I was there.  I faced him and put my hand on his right shoulder.  I told him I was leaving and that as a village elder I would like for him to look after my son.  Paul was standing across the outdoor cabana-like structure and told him what I had said.  Osman turned very serious at this and put his left hand on my shoulder.  "I will look after him as if he were my own son".  and I said: "then I give him to you to look after as your son while I'm away".  He repeated:  "He is with me.  I will look after him like a son."  As you can imagine, I was so thankful for this encouragement God was giving us.  I was thinking about it on the way home...I'm so thankful...but I hope Osman doesn't marry Matt off to his two daughters before I get back up there....

Osman                                                       Photo by Tim Keiper

Quick update:  we hear from Matt regularly and he is doing very well.  He teaches at the local school (one math class, four PE, and one English).  He is the great white hope on the soccer team and they plan to travel into the refugee camp to play one of the teams there next week.  The school and town of Dadaab is just next to 3 UN run refugee camps "hosting" almost 300,000 Somalis fleeing the violence across the border. 

(All photos by Tim Keiper)  One refugee camp is a maze of stick walls protecting mud and stick huts covered partially by UN tarps.  Some of the people we spoke with have lived here for 20 years.  The above is the doorway to an Ethiopian church in the camp as almost all refugees are from Somalia but some are from Ethiopia and other from Sudan.

                       

Chapter 1: An Unexpected Party

One of my favorite books was written by J.R.R. Tolkien and is called The Hobbit. The subtitle is: There and Back Again and this book turned my reading light on. My 5th grade teacher Mrs. Schutz would read to us every day after lunch and I remember begging her to read "just one more chapter". Imagine a dirty-faced group of boys sitting on the ground of a dirt basketball court, ball at our feet, talking about Bilbo's cool sword - that was us. Finally, I had enough of group reading. I wasn't quite sure what the look on my mom's face meant when I asked her to help me get a library card. I knew I had done something right though as she picked up her keys, went to the door, looked me in the eye, and said: "let's go". My mom had five kids so I don't remember going anywhere before that without running twelve errands and picking up two siblings at sporting events. That night by flashlight under the covers I devoured the book. I’m man enough to admit that I cried at the end. My brother Val who shared my room heard me crying under the covers and asked me what was wrong. All I could get out was "Thorin died" before I choked up again...I don't think I ever asked him what he thought about that because I'm pretty sure I punched him in the arm in the morning first thing just to show him I was still tougher than he was.

I’ve never had a blog before and I doubt if I ever will again. I can’t imagine that anyone would want to read this but I am excited, in a demented sort of way, to see if family and friends have a life or if they actually read this blog from time to time. My friend Phil, who is having his own unique (life vs death) adventure at the moment, told me that no one reads blogs unless you talk about how you looked death in the face and won (I assume if you lost you wouldn’t write a blog about it). Well, Thorin doesn’t have a blog but Phil does and you’ll find all kinds of courageous (and funny) words of faith there if you go to felipebeach.wordpress.com

You see Chris, Matt, and I, like Bilbo, have started out on this strange adventure that has brought us to Tanzania...but we have very quickly noticed that the real interesting adventurers are the people, like Phil, that we are meeting at home and on our journey. These are the ones that when Jesus asked then to stick their neck out, leave the comfort zone, and follow him – they did it. We stayed at the Mennonite Guest House in Nairobi last week and it was amazing to hear story after story, at literally every meal, of people like Ashley that leaves her family every couple of months to come to remote Kenya for several weeks to manage an orphanage she started. I am really humbled and amazed by these people. I decided that for my blog I want to record as many of their stories as I can.

In two weeks I’ll tell you about Yattani and Paul as Matt and I have the opportunity to travel with them to an area near Somalia to visit a school.  These people work in what Paul describes as the “wild west” part of Kenya where there have been hundreds of thousands of Muslim refugees moving in from Somalia. The name of the place is Dadaab and if you are interested in details you can easily find information by googling it.

We went to chapel yesterday and there in Swahili, to this wonderful African rhythm, they sang over and over again: you, you, you are; you, you, you are Lord. We’re learning about that...