Taizé, Part One

Friends,

It's been one week in Taizé and I'm already losing words. You would think that spending hours each day in song, silence and reflection would give rise to beautiful formulated thoughts. But at least so far, this has been a time of unwinding, undoing, unthinking. Letting words fall away.

In prayer, I try to focus on listening to the soundscape surrounding me, whether it be a chorus of sniffles and coughs or wind in the trees. I learned in high school choir to listen to the group as a whole rather than only my voice or section. I'm finding that philosophy applies to any moment when I have the wherewithal to pay attention.

In more concrete terms, my week at Taizé has consisted of attending morning, midday and evening services, a daily chore, a bible study with one of the brothers, eating, walking, hiking, running, and getting to know people here from around the world. The schedule is simple, the place is clean, the scenery is beautiful, and the people are friendly.

It's a place just to be for a while. To remember that every moment is a gift.

This coming week I will be in silence, staying with the sisters in the next town over. I'm hoping I will be a good time to process this journey that is suddenly mostly over. How did that happen?

Until soon loves.

From South to West

The train station at terminal two of Charles de Gaulles buzzes with efficiency and self-sufficiency. The schedule is on the board. The tickets are at self-serve kiosks. Figure it out, move quickly, don't ask questions. But if you must, ask the man at the information booth.

When I went to the information booth, of course, the man rolled his eyes when I started with "How are you?" Maybe I should have asked, "Where are we?"

Contrast this train station to the bus park in Kampala, where I arrived with  D four days ago to get a ride to Fort Portal in western Uganda.

Downtown Kampala, crammed with people and public taxis and trucks spewing smoke. I mean crammed. Every inch of space is fair game for the next person or object who cares to squeeze into it. I follow D as we weave through crowds, him often grabbing me as we cross the street to be sure I stay out of the path of motorcycles. As we near the bus park, three or four men hurriedly approach to guide us to their respective companies. D has an exchange with one—at the time I think he's telling the man to leave us alone, but he's actually agreed for us follow him.

We head in. I hold on. Buses are parked tightly next to each other, a mere one or two feet between, enough for one person to pass through and board the bus.

Once on board, the aisle is packed, if not with passengers getting on and off, then vendors hawking watches, socks, toys, electronics, drinks, snacks, and full meals on plastic plates.

The bus does not have a schedule. It will leave when every seat is full. We wait for an hour before heading out.

Kampala's bus park is chaotic, unnavigable without my companion. The place demands intuition, dependency on friends and strangers.

In Charles de Gaulles, you could be a robot and find your way without a hitch. In fact, I doubt people would notice a robot getting on the train as long as it didn't bother anyone.

Friends, I have arrived in the land of earbuds and wifi and automatically flushing toilets. People relate to their gadgets, to maps, to systems. You do you, I'll do me over here. Mind your own business.

Uganda is relational. Your business is my business is our business is his business over there. We are in this together.

This comes with a sense of moral imperative, too. Mob justice and sweeping social policies. I once heard an argument break out on a public taxi, about whether the passengers wanted to squeeze in more people and each pay a lower price. Eventually one woman turned to another and said, "You are the source of conflict here. Get out." She did.

Despite their differences, both places work. People get where they want to go. The man at the information booth in Charles de Gaulles let me know that I had been trying to swipe my receipt rather than my ticket. Ah yes. Thank you, I'm on my way. To Paris.

Paris!

Please don't get me wrong.

All of my culture shocked griping aside, I love Paris. Really. Wow. Although I'm not sure if I was more excited about eating a croissant or drinking tap water. It's going to take a while for this all to sink in.

Just two hours after my plane landed, I walked up to the door of V and M, family friends who are kindly hosting me as home base for the next three weeks. M is an artist who became friends with my mom at business school in Chicago many years ago. He and V have four daughters. They live in a beautiful home.

V fed me breakfast, helped me get a SIM card, showed me where to get my hair cut, taught me how to use the laundry machine. I sauntered around in the one clean piece of clothing I had—a dress that was too short to wear in Uganda. In a house full of petit French women, V lent me the biggest sweatshirt she could find to keep me warm.

I have arrived.

I am on my way.

I am writing from the train—a very fast, clean train that left on time—eating the last peanuts from a bag that D and I bought for the bus ride back to Kampala, after two days of hiking and dancing and marveling at sunsets in Fort Portal.

This train is taking me to Macon Loche, where I board a bus to Taizé - a Christian community where I will spend the next two weeks. If you read about it on Wikipedia you will know more than me. All I expect is that I will be spending a lot of time singing and praying.

Which leads me to a last thought - an anecdote that has stuck with me for the past few weeks.

Someone asked Mother Theresa what she says when she prays to God. She said, "I listen." Then, she was asked, what does God say?

"God listens."

Thank you for listening to me, loves. Here's to our open ears and minds and hearts. On we go.

*note this was posted a day after it was written!

Aesthetically Speaking: Budondo

Friends, this is overdue. Blame it on a lack of wifi in the past three weeks. I write today from Paris, but Paris will have to wait. First, Budondo.

In the past I have obsessed over finding purpose for my trips to the village. Research, workshops, discussion, whatever justified the time. This trip was different. I had little to no agenda and relaxed into the day to day with the family. Moments between moments. Time moved slowly but the days flew by.

Budondo is a tiny corner of the world, and yet a world within itself.

Bukoko, baby chicks, picking for bits of food around the front yard, sleeping in heaps in the smoky kitchen after dark, running over my bare feet screaming chio chio chio!;

Impassible sugarcane fields, thick gardens of bananas, vegetables and wildflowers, sweet potatoes growing in neatly lined heaps of dirt, passion fruit seedlings creeping up banana fiber ropes;

Water warmed over wood fires, mixed with cool water in a plastic bin for your shower, splashed with your hands over your shoulders, stomach, knees, hair, feet, in that order;

Squat toilets, cleaned meticulously, daily, smelling fresh, haunted by the occasional lonely fly. Look up and spot the biggest spider you've ever seen, who diligently keeps the pests away;

Drinking and cooking water pumped and hefted home in jerrycans from the nearby borehole. Note that yours truly has set a personal record of carrying two 3/4-full cans in one go;

Clothes washed by hand in plastic bins with bubbly detergent and bar soap. Scrub twice, rinse once. 

Fabric on fabric. Let the boys clean the towels and the jeans, tough on the hands. With enough sun, it's all dry by evening;

Early morning runs around the village, followed by pointing and screams of children, Mzungu Mzungu, white person white person!;

Morning greetings followed by humming call and response: "wasuzeotia sebo, bulungi, kale, wena wasuzeoyia nyabo, bulungi, kale, mmm, mmm, mmm, mmm...";

"Alikuega lusoga". Yes, I'm learning lusoga. "Eeeeeh benange, my god...";

Schedules follow meals and weather rather than clocks. For instance: "We will go after we take breakfast, which is after we fetch fresh chapati, which is after the chapati making lady finishes 10 pieces, but it's raining this morning so she started late. So maybe we'll go after lunch";

When it rains, it roars. Tin roof turns deafening. In my room, mice nest in the rafters. Mornings after the rain I find a baby fallen on the floor, to take outside and throw into the banana plants. Sad day, but that's life;

Mama and Betty cook on three stones over a wood fire in a closed room. I love to sit, listen, chop veg and laugh along, but when the smoke gets too much I have to leave;

Sometime I just sit close by and touch my hand to mama's shoulder, to show I'm paying attention and appreciating;

Tea with every meal. And when I'm lucky, hot, fresh, whole milk boiled with ginger. With a spoonful of sukali, sugar;

For breakfast lunch or dinner, matoke, mutiere, cassava, posho, beef stew, beans, eggs, greens, cabbage. Served with hot sauce, my personal contribution to the meal;

Evening stories from Mukisa, Dad, whose every thought is animated with a smile, punctuated first with "Ah ha! You see:" and concluded with a sigh, a chuckle... then "Yes";

The night still with crickets and wind blowing in the sugarcane, every bed creak and footstep echoing, then before I know it the rooster crowing, then dishes clanging, and voices murmuring. Morning;

And more and more and more.

Corners and Chapters

Just a few days left in Kenya. It's hard to look at endings. I didn't realize how much of a nest I built up here with the help of some wonderful friends. Something about the environment - whether it's planning a weekend adventure, finding the best peanut butter at the grocery store, figuring out how to cook new vegetables or navigating ever-changing security issues.... This is a place to make fast friends.

Saying good bye to C, my coworker, housemate and best friend here was especially hard. Who knows when we will meet again, Australia being where it is. (Really Australia... so far!)  But sad as I am, I feel lucky to have met him. It is a great reminder that a new best friend might always be around the corner.

So, speaking of what's around the corner: While I'm putting finishing touches on my life novel entitled "filmaid: my first real job," I'm also setting up my Yale Divinity School email and perusing classes for the fall. The identity shift from working-for-salary to all-for-the-sake-of-knowledge hasn't happened quite yet, but it's out there. I'm excited.

And in the meantime, a beautiful chapter of vacation and life adventures has just started. Mom has been here for a week. We have enjoyed breakfast with elephants in the Maasai Mara, meeting my Nairobi friends, nursing me back to health from an infection (thanks Mom!) and most recently a harrowing hike around the rim of a volcano crater. Let's just say it involved more rock climbing than she bargained for. Basically my mom is a champion, first to fly herself to Nairobi and second to go on these adventures I've (mostly, sometimes inadequately) planned!

That's all for now. Thankfully part of finishing with FilmAid was also giving back my laptop, which means I am largely screen-free for three months! So at the risk of being bad at email and posting less often... I am enjoying reading actual books, looking at things far away and making more eye contact. What a concept.

Much love, friends.

Easter in Kakamega

I spent this Easter weekend with B, an 81 year old Kentucky-born missionary who has called Western Kenya her home since 1982.

B lives in a mud house, plastered and painted to look like a brick house: a small island of Americana way out in the bush. Inside the walls are bright yellow, with dark blue flowered fabrics for curtains, velvet-upholstered furniture, two bedrooms and a bathroom. B takes bucket showers with river water and washes her vegetables with bleach solution. She throws her compost under a banana tree she's growing in the back yard, feeds meat scraps to a dog who lives on the front porch, and burns any remaining trash once a week. B told me about her own grandma who worked a midwest farm on her own until she turned 100. B, it seems, is on the same track.

It's a cozy home and B has everything she needs, including power, an oven, a refrigerator and several close Kenyan friends, neighbors, family and frequent visitors. On Saturday we got on the back of two piki pikis (motorcycles) to take the 40 minute bouncy ride over dirt roads to Kakamega town, where B does her weekly grocery shopping. We brought home huge bags of groceries, tied with strips of tire onto the back of the piki pikis. B's driver also held between his arms a big jug of bottled drinking water. This week, groceries included a treat– canned peaches. "Don't tell them I'm not suffering" she told me.

But B does miss pickles, pudding, jello and chocolate chips, and brings them back from the United States anytime she goes. For Easter weekend we baked four loaves of banana bread (three of which to give away) and made potato salad with olives. B taught me to play 13, her favorite form of solitaire. I taught her how to text. Over one dinner conversation she recounted the entire detailed plot of the Silvester Stalone movie Cliffhanger, complete with her critique of his mountain climbing technique (for she herself was a climber and a spelunker before she moved to Kenya). The 15-minute story ended with a prompt, "Well that was a pretty good movie, I guess." It was a fabulous time. In a big way, I felt like I was with my own wonderful grandparents.

So what is B doing so far away from home? She is building a health clinic next to her house, which will have outpatient services, a pharmacy and a maternity ward. B is a nurse–a profession that has served her very well–and has set up multiple clinics around Kenya since 1982. While she gets some donations from churches in the U.S., she supplements those funds with her own small pension and social security check. There's no doubt she's bringing something good to the community she lives in.

But first and foremost, B is a missionary, spreading the gospel come hell or high water. Suffice it to say B and I have very different approaches to Christianity. I have a lot of opinions and feelings about that, but this is not the place. If you're interested in unpacking it with me, let's do it face to face and preferably over a drink back in the States.

Our differences didn't stop us from eating, praying and celebrating Easter together. B brought me to the mission church on Sunday, where congregations from five different churches gathered to meet the American visitor (me) and celebrate Easter. Fifty or sixty people gathered in a big mud building–some of whom had been walking since the break of dawn to arrive around 11, when the service started. B and I stayed for the two hours of beautiful music, lots of announcements, and three sermons including one from B. Six or seven pastors were present, all men. I myself stood up when asked to give a testimony– I introduced myself, said some things about Jesus and resurrection and hope, and taught the congregation a song (St. Lydia's-style). Friends, that might have been my first ever sermon, clocking in at three minutes!

I'm very lucky to have gotten to know B's amazing world. She treated me as her own granddaughter, showered me with love and gifts, and was sad to see me go. She is an extraordinary person, and her story will stick with me for a long time.

Close Encounters

The past couple posts have been a pretty heavy, so it's time for a good old fashioned wildlife photo shoot. This is from our visit to an animal orphanage in Nanyuki, a three hour drive towards Mt. Kenya. C took these on his fancy camera.

Waterbuck give wet kisses.

Black and white colobus monkey shares his secret: woo visitors into giving him bits of potato.

The regal crowned crane.

Bongo Bongo Bongo Warthog Warthog Zebroid* Bongo.

Pigmy hippos only ask to be taken seriously.

Are you porcupining for a bite of compost?

Samango monkey helps himself.

Oh hello!

And finally...

The hungry cheetah.

 That's all folks!

*Zebroid is a cross between a zebra and a horse.

Landscapes

Lately I've been more serious, more lost in my thoughts. Visiting Kakuma has brought me back to Tiffany's death. I've realized the past few months in Kenya have provided some welcome distraction from grief.

I've started to think about emotions as landscapes that take shape over the course of our experiences. Some places form over long periods of time, the way glaciers carve out valleys. Some places change suddenly, the way volcanoes burst open the earth.

Tiffany's death was a terrifying earthquake. The world is a different place.

There's something to be said for seeing a place with your own eyes. Maybe I had read the guidebook and seen the photos. But I had never experienced grief like this. Not like this. Now it's part of my body, my internal landscape.

What does grief look like? It is cavernous. It is dark. It is empty. It is craggy. It is deep. Over time, maybe this place will be smoothed over by the weather. It will be less frightening as I become familiar with its cracks and corners. It will be a place to share with my fellow humans.

In the days after Tiffany's death, I thought about other people who live with grief. People who live in places of violence and disaster. People I have never met. People I meet every day. It makes me realize the many emotional places I have never seen or imagined that might be central to another person's life. Truth is what you experience.

Undoubtedly, my experience with grief is tied to faith. Resurrection has never been so true for me as it is now. When Jesus died, the earth shook, the sky went dark, the temple curtain tore from top to bottom. The world was a different place.

If emotions have geography, they also have seasons. At last the spring is here to shed some light after a long, dark winter. Easter is only two weeks away. It will be especially important for my family this year, as we remember that three days after Jesus died,

He rose.

There is life in death. There is hope in disaster. God is not finished.