Mathare

October 21, 2007

Jesus Christ, where is this semester going? Last night was our last Saturday night all together in Nairobi until the very end of this program. Madness.

One thing I know I’m missing: autumn. Autumn, I do believe, is my favorite season, although Carolina in Spring might rival it. I went abroad in the fall because I do very much want to be back on the Hill for that last semester, and as my father once told me oh so correctly, there is nothing more beautiful than Carolina in the Spring. He was right. But fall! Fall is actually better in Missouri, where we have a brilliant changing of the leaves, crisp apples, chilly high school football games on Saturday nights, cozy sweaters and hot chocolates. And Halloween! Thanksgiving! I’ll be in Uganda on Halloween, and Thanksgiving is during ISP time, so I won’t have really anyone to celebrate it with. Right now it’s looking like only Karissa and I, maybe Varun, are going back to Kisumu for our ISPs, which is perfectly OK, but it means a small cartel of people in the city. It will be a big change from here in Nairobi, where it’s almost impossible to do anything alone. However, it will probably more be conducive to writing my ISP itself. Anyway.

Last night we went out for some delicious Indian food to a very classy restaurant in Westlands that was absolutely brilliant. A little pricey (by Kenyan standards) but absolutely worth it. It took forever to get there because of several detours made in the cab, but it was still a fun time. Afterwards, we went to K1, which was a great bar, but I was just so tired and very far behind in the drinking since we had gone to dinner so late, so I only had a few drinks, shook my hips a little, and peaced. We also managed to see the end of the Rugby World Cup, which South Africa won. There were a surprising number of Kenyans in the bar cheering for England, saying that they hated SA because they thought they were better than the rest of Africa.  K1 was also a little sketchier, because there was a lot more dancing. When we went out for Cherries, we were pretty much the only ones dancing, but here, there was a very active dance floor. We would form a circle of girls dancing and would inevitably be surrounded by a concentric circle of Kenyan men who would each try to pick one of us off. That got a little annoying, because I want to spend my time dancing, not trying to avoid the attentions of sketchy dudes. But hey, I guess it comes with the territory.

Fangirl moment! We went to visit UNITID, which is the University of Nairobi Institute of Tropical and Infectious Disease, which is pretty much awesome and I would love to work there someday, but the doctor who lectured us, whose name currently escapes me, is buddies with Paul Farmer. FANGRIL MOMENT OMGZ!!@22111!!~!. I was talking to him after the lecture, trying to get some contacts in Kisumu, and he mentioned a name of someone who was now working for PIH, and I said “omg love paul farmer lolz” and he smiled and told me that they were buddies back at Brigham Women’s. *DEATH*. I’m heading back to the hospital tomorrow with Sam to get some info and some contacts, and if he can put me somewhere, I might even considering bailing on Kisumu. A contact within PIH = gold to me. Look at me, I’m the girl who fangirls hobbits, Dutch-American poets and infectious disease specialists. Who am I?

Oh I forgot! I made dinner for my family on Friday night, and it was a big hit. I made spaghetti and meatballs, sauce with lots of veggies and sautéed green beans. The only thing I did wrong was I made WAY too much food, but that’s OK. My house help, Mary, was frightened of the meatballs, but ate the pasta, but the kids and my mama and baba all thought they were very good and helped themselves to seconds. Yay! They were nothing like I make them in the states, so I was pretty much flying by the seat of my pants, but they were still very good, if I do say so myself. Afterwards, baba brought out a brilliant bottle of wine – a 2005 South African Shiraz – and an excellent bottle of spiced Indian whiskey, which was also delicious, and we all watched old Bond movies. It was pretty freakin’ sweet way to end the night. I had no idea how much I had longed for real pasta until I made it, either.

I actually need to get going, because we’ve got a boatload of work due this week, and we leave for Uganda on Thursday. I also want to have most of my med school stuff squared away before I head to Uganda, which just means hours on the internet to download all the necessary forms and send in monies and tell professors where to send their letters. So that’s going to be today. Still don’t know when I’m going to be seeing downtown Nairobi, but at this rate, not till the end of ISP. It’s OK, I’m realizing there isn’t a massive amount of things to do in this city.

And expect calls home soon. I do now indeed miss you all something fierce.  

I’m also going to write about Mathare yesterday, which is one of Nairobi’s biggest slums, and we walked through it yesterday, but I need time and thought first before I begin to try to explain what that experience was. When you see the pictures you’ll understand why.

Mathare.

Forgive my excessive dork-i-tude, but it reminded me of West Wing (of course). Basically, it’s a very bad day in the office, and people are realizing that in the past four years of presidency, many mistakes have been made and many things they set out to do have not been accomplished. Wracked with guilt, Leo sends Josh on a goose-chase. It’s December 23rd and the roof of the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem has collapsed, and Israel and Palestine are up in arms about fixing it. Josh is essentially with creating peace in the West Bank in the next twenty-four hours, so the pilgrims can go to the church on Christmas Eve. Later on, with O Holy Night being sung quietly in the background, Leo calls Josh off the chase, dark circles under his eyes. He shakes his head. “It’s four years later,” he says, “and some things are worse, and some things are exactly the same. Where do you even start?”

“By fixing a roof,” Josh responds. “I’m staying on the phones – you want to stay with me?”

“Yeah. Yeah.”

By fixing a roof, my friends. By fixing a roof. The challenges of our generation are epic. The sins of the father have been visited upon the son, as they always are in this world. We did not seek to create the situations we have to face, yet we must face them nonetheless. And what the greatest minds and hearts of my generation aim to change is perhaps impossible. Perhaps. But perhaps it is also possible.  It will certainly not be easy; it will take sacrifice, it will take hard labor, it will take time and blood and sweat and tears. We can not extend privilege to those who have none until we give up some of our own. But Father Phillip was right when he gave his Good Friday homily my freshman year of college, using Speak Truth to Power and talking of the human rights activists who have been tortured, maimed and murdered for daring to imply that everyone on his planet is born with a soul and we are all the same children of God, endowed with rights that can not be denied.

There is something salvivic about pain. It makes no sense to us, it is horrendous, it is terrible, but it is true. Salvation gets mixed up with crucifixion; grace comes from betrayal and despair. You want to see God in our world? You want to see grace in action? Go to the slums. Go to where the poor are shitting in the same river they bathe in, go to where mothers and fathers weep in the dark corners of their shacks for the stillbirth of their child, go to where you dry heave from the smell of rotting garbage in the unforgiving sun, and then tell me we are treating Lazarus any differently than two thousand years ago. Woe to you complacent in Zion.

Neither you nor I can begin to understand the appalling strangeness of God’s mercy. Graham Greene.

It is hard, in times such as these and in environments like this, to remember that the current state of the world is not the only way it has to be. It is hard to remember that there is a way out from the wretched existence that the majority of the world leads. But there must be. There is no problem that can not be fixed by the power of the human mind and the determination of the human spirit. We’ve put a man on the moon, for heaven’s sake; surely we can figure out how to restructure power and privilege to give everyone in our world a fighting chance to live.

We will do what is hard. We will not shrink from the problems of this world; we will not go quiet into that good night. We will not stand for the inequalities and the injustices at our doorstep; we will not give Lazarus the scraps the dogs eat.  We will do the impossible. We will change worlds. We will move mountains. We will never look back.

We will be human together.

*** 
Isaiah 58.

Is not this the kind of fasting I have chosen: to loose the chains of injustice and untie the cords of the yoke, to set the oppressed free and break every yoke? Is it not to share your food with the hungry and to provide the poor wandered with shelter – when you see the naked, to clothe him, and not to turn away from your own flesh and blood? Then your light will break forth like the dawn, and your healing will quickly appear, then your righteousness will go before you, and the glory of the Lord shall be your rear guard.

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