Open Eyes, Open Heart, and a New Culture

The corner of Metty’s room where she cooks

Entry #5: (8/29/10)

As I write this entry I am sitting at my desk in my hostel, as the cool breeze floats through my window. I can hear the twittering of birds mixed with the bass beat of someone else’s music in another hostel and the quite music of worship songs coming from my computer. It is another quite Sunday afternoon on the Daystar campus. This weekend was a holiday weekend (the holiday was a result of Kenya signing a new constitution), so seeing as we had Friday off the majority of students went home…thus a very quite campus all weekend. It has been nice is some ways, but I am also getting antsy to get off of campus and go explore Kenya a bit more. People keep asking me “how do you see Kenya”, but I feel like I can’t really answer that because I’ve only really seen the campus and some of Nairobi. I know that in the coming weekends though I will be getting out and seeing more of this country, so I tried to embrace the quite and relaxing atmosphere while I had it.

Let’s see…Friday I did not do much. I went to breakfast with Janna and while we were there our friend Lucy joined us. After eating we all went back to Dupa (Mine and Janna’s hostel) and just hung out and chatted for a few hours. After talking with Lucy for a while in our room she showed us her room, in the hostel patience, and we meet two of her roommates. Then we headed back to our room to clean. It felt so good to clean our rooms! They have not been cleaned for three weeks because Janna and I have no cleaning supplies and our roommates had not said anything about cleaning! So now I am sitting in a semi-clean room ;-)

Once our room was clean, our newest roommate (Favor who is an international student from Nigeria) made us lunch—we had noodles with tomatoes and tomato sauce with sardines. VERY interesting…I have not had sardines before and I don’t think I will have them again…at least not by my choosing☺ As we ate we watched the movie Knight and Day on her computer. It was an pretty good movie, but the quality was terrible, so that made it worse☹

Then a few hours later we went to dinner and Peter joined us (he is an international student from Tanzania). He is a talker, so we chatted with him for a while about how he wants to start a tourism company in Kenya… After being escorted back to our hostel by Peter, Janna and I joined about 5 or 6 other girls for dance lessons. One of our friends, Goodness, knows a few different types of dance, so she was showing us all how to do them. We learned steps for the Waltz, some swing dance steps, and a few other steps. It was a lot of fun and we are planning on doing it every Friday night, so I am looking forward to that! I’ve always thought it would be fun to take dance lessons for some sort of ballroom dance…who knows maybe I’ll recruit someone to take them with me when I get home!?

Well, not much happened on Saturday…just another lazy day around here!

But today, Sunday, I helped out with Sunday school at a nearby church. I had no idea what to expect, but it turned out well. I went with a girl, Metty (from school), who regularly helps out with different Sunday schools. I met with her around 9am, but the service did not start until 10am, so I hung out in her hostel for a while. She lives off campus, so she cooks for herself and lives in a room with one other roommate. While waiting for church she gave me a cup of drinking chocolate (which we call hot chocolate) and she made herself breakfast (I had already eaten). Around 10:15 we headed to the church, which was right across from her hostel. We sat through the worship and introductory part of church, but before the sermon began we left with the kids to sit outside and have Sunday school. There were about 18 kids there— all under the age of 7 I am sure. They were so cute! Since most of the kids only understood Swahili Metty taught them and I helped out with some songs. After church Metty invited me to have lunch with her in her room. I didn’t want to make her use extra food on me, but when we were inside she told me that in their culture when they have someone over it is cultural to offer them food and to feed them, so I joined and I’m glad I did! It was a very simple meal—rice with tomatoes, green pepper, onion, and egg over the rice—but it was great! I enjoy tasting all the different types of food that I can. It was a good morning; I enjoyed talking with Metty in our free time and learning more about her and the African culture.

As I am living here I am asking the Lord to give me open eyes and an open heart to all that I am experiencing and learning. I want to see and experience as much of this world as I am able to. I love traveling because each time I see more of God through each new place, each new culture, and through every new person; I am able to see His creativity, His wisdom, His beauty, His love, and His compassion more clearly with each new experience. Over the years I am seeing that every culture is unique, but every culture is at the heart the same as well. We are all here trying to live our lives to the best of our ability with what we are given. We go through our days eating what we can, working, and building relationships. In this life we all go through trials and hard times (some people worse than others) and we also all hopefully have times of joy and happiness.

So although I go about my life back in the states very differently than I’ll do life here in Kenya, I want to get caught up in missing what I’m used to for fear of taking my time here for granted. I want to take in what I’m learning here with a willing attitude and an open heart.