Rain, and America and Such

So, it’s been raining lately way more than it does even during the rainy season. Typically rain starts in April, and then the heavy, daily rains come in June or July. Then it’s usually very hot and dry starting in November. This year, the rainy season was normal. But in November it started to get way worse. For weeks it’s been mostly raining, and the sun hasn’t been out much.

Rain is a really tricky thing here. You’d think it would always be a good thing, because rain means food. But if the rains start too early, when people are just beginning to plant things, the rain will wash away the seeds, or kill plants when they start to come up because they’re too little to handle the really hard rains. If the rain starts too late, things shrivel up and die because of the hot sun. It basically has to rain a perfect amount, and not too hard, for food to grow well.

People start harvesting corn, beans and lots of other things around October/November, which is the perfect time because that’s when the dry season starts. Once they harvest everything, they lay it out to dry, and then live off of that for the rest of the year. Since the dry season this year turned into a more wet season than the actual wet season was, food has started to rot. The sun has not been out enough for things to dry, the ground has stayed wet, and then people lose potatoes, onions, corn, beans, and lots of other stuff that they need dried. Even the Juma’s had to sell all of the corn they just harvested because it was starting to rot (that sounds mean that they would sell it, but let me explain). They had harvested enough for a year, but if they kept it all for a year, it would have just gone bad. But if they sell a little to families who need it and can use it right away, it’ll be used before it goes bad. Anyway, they had to sell all theirs, and then buy corn that was already dried.

Another thing is that rain affects everything here. Because most people walk or bike around, when it rains, they have to stop and find shelter. That means that all the women who sell things in the markets (a lot of the markets are open air – there’s no shelter) have to find tarps to cover everything, and then go find shelter. So they’re not making money, because no one is walking around. And because the markets are just big, open…dirt areas, it turns into a mud pit after the rain stops. Which makes walking around really difficult and horribly messy (do you know mud is about as slippery as ice? – I never knew that till I got here and had to walk in it – or saw cars sliding down roads just like they had hit a patch of ice). Anyway, when you go through town when it’s raining, everyone is just lined up under any kind of roof that they can find. They stand there and wait. And wait. And wait.

It’s so weird because in America, rain stops nothing. If you need to go to a store, you get in your car and just go (while complaining that you have to walk all the way to your car from your house, or all the way from the parking lot to the store entrance in the rain – I do this, I’m assuming others do too?). Or, if you’re doing laundry it’s okay, because you’re in your house using a machine. And then you stick your clothes in the dryer, and they get dry! You don’t even have to think about what’s going on outside. If you want to make dinner, you make it, because, again, you’re under a roof. Here, the laundry stops, and you run around like mad trying to take in the laundry that’s already hanging up and getting wetter from the rain. The cooking stops (most people have their ‘kitchens’ outside here – they don’t cook inside because they don’t have stoves – they start fires outside and just cook over that). Life literally comes to a halt. I see this because, unfortunately, I am bad at timing when the rain is going to start, and I get stuck on piki piki’s on my way to town, or in the middle of my jogs, more often than I wish to admit.

Side story…the other day I was going from Juma’s to town on a piki piki (motorbike). I truly thought I could make it to town before the rain started, and I really needed to go to the store. So I told Elisha (the driver) to just keep going and not to take me home. But it started down pouring about 3 minutes before I got to the store. So, in those three minutes, I was drenched. My hair was matted to my head and dripping. My jeans were wet through the front. My shoes were a mess, and my legs had mud splashed up them. I had to walk into the store through a crowd of people who were just waiting there for the rain to stop. And I heard one guy go, ‘Whoa mzungu’ as everyone else just stared at me. Now, I get stared at a lot here because I’m white. But everyone in the store wasn’t just staring; they’d actually slow down their walking and turn their heads to look at me. I know I looked ridiculous, but really. I didn’t do it on purpose. I was very cold too.

Back to the real issue with rain…it’s just sad to see rain start to ruin food when so many people have a hard time getting food here. And Kenyans have been saying that this kind of rain at this time of year means a drought is coming next year. So, right now, food is rotting, while next year, there may be no food?

This makes me think of how every single aspect of life is harder here in Kenya. Rain makes for a very muddy, uncomfortable, cold messy life. Especially for those moms who have little ones, running around in the mud. Then they have to wash all those muddy clothes by hand, if the sun happens to come out. It takes hours to prepare food here. Nothing is packaged. You make everything from scratch. If you want cheap beans for dinner, you grow them yourself, you beat them out of their shells, you dry them, you sort through them...and then you cook them. You do that with most food that you don’t want to buy at the stores. Nothing is simple or easy for the people here. Nothing. I look at all the work they have to do to simply live, and I think I complain for them. I mean, people here still have to go find water! There are many who don’t even have a water source on their property, never mind in their house…or hut, or whatever they’re living in. They walk everywhere, so things take much, much longer. The sun makes work so hot and miserable, and the rain makes work impossible. But they all just go on living, not complaining, not even trying to change anything. They have a contentment that is almost non-existent in America, but I think they’re too content. They don’t think to change things or make things better. Like, there were these men unloading huge bags of maize flour at a grocery store. They were at least the 150 kg bags, which is over 300 lbs. There were two men in the bed of a truck, they’d lift up a bag of flour, put it on one guy’s shoulders, and that guy would walk up the flight of stairs into the store, then walk up two huge flights of stairs to put it into their storehouse. So, they unloaded one bag at a time like that. Now, if they had a dolly, and a ramp, they could just pile up the bags and push them. But they don’t. They break their backs over bags of flour. And then there’s America.

America is not a different culture, it is truly like a whole different world. Everything has to be perfect, everyone always wants things to be better or faster. That’s not bad, but when you have that kind of mindset, you’ll get upset and discontent over little things that really don’t matter. Kenya and America are such polar opposites that it’s just…confusing. I can’t reconcile how the guards who work on my compound, make $35 - $40 a month, after working 12 hour shifts, full time. But I made $30 for a half hour piano lesson in Washington State when I lived there. I made that amount because that’s what was normal. And the guards here make that amount, because that is what is normal. But I don’t get it, I just don’t understand. It’s very, very strange to think about. People here are content in their $6 - $8 dollar a month rental ‘house’ (concrete structure with no running water), while people in the States are discontent in what is a mansion compared to houses here. But both are wrong! Why are people here in Kenya content to live in such...horrible conditions, sending their kids to work instead of school, selling their own bodies instead of things you can make, letting everyone and everything oppress them till they become accustomed to submitting to all kinds of absolute and horrible injustice? And why do Americans (like me) complain all the time, when they have machines that do their laundry and dishes, and when they can buy food that comes in a package, and when they have a job so that they don’t have to eat out of the trash? What is wrong with this world? It makes no sense, except for when you read the Bible, and you see that sin has screwed everything up.

When I came home from my first trip to Kenya, a friend asked me if I could do anything, all reality aside, what would I do. I said I’d be a missionary. I was such an idiot. See, I had been in Kenya for two months. Everything was new to me, so I just followed other people around, and saw them save orphans, and give out food and do all this stuff, which I thought was really cool (and I still think that’s cool). It actually seemed kind of glamorous. But I wasn’t here long enough to really understand things. Because sometimes, living in a foreign country is the exact opposite of glamorous. Not every moment is some climactic scene that could be made into a movie. I got an email from a good friend today, who reminded me that, so often, we want to live like that. We expect or wait for something big to happen, and get bored when we just have to live through the normal daily grind. And living in Africa can definitely be boring. Sometimes it means sitting in your house for days on end while it pours outside. Sometimes it means laying in bed for days because you get weird sicknesses, and you can’t even think straight, so you can’t get anything done. Sometimes it means seeing a kid get beat on the streets, or children high from sniffing glue. Sometimes it means seeing an eleven-year-old with her baby on her back. Sometimes it means being misunderstood by a culture that doesn’t understand you, or misunderstanding a culture because you don’t understand them. Sometimes it means being misunderstood by other white people, because you don’t do everything the way they would do it. Sometimes it sucks.

Then sometimes, you go to an orphanage, and you literally see hundreds of lives that would not be around, had it not been for God putting someone in their lives to love and care for them. You see God’s grace in situations that seem to be without hope. You see prayers answered. You see a family take in tons of children from the streets, and then you see God transform their lives and provide for every single one of them. You see God provide in almost unbelievable ways. You see God’s faithfulness, you see God’s power, you see God’s justice, you see God just never giving up on His children. You see God working in ways that you’re not used to, because you’re in a strange and unfamiliar place, but God is still at work, here and everywhere. He’s got it all under control.