Day 2: The Ghost of Kibera

I left out a section from yesterday. I made a key friend here. His name is Michael. Michael and his mother, Lucy, run the catering company for the guest house I’m staying in and the World Vision HQ. (You know the one I hurked in yesterday? Yeah. That one.) Michael seems to know everything and everyone in the city. Late yesterday, Michael took me to his mentor from his time YWAM (Youth With A Mission, they are huge in Kenya. Who knew?) 

He drove me to Paul’s place. This is where I realized how amazingly foolish/faithful/stupid I am. We drove 25 minutes into a city I don’t know to the part of town you don’t go. It was unsettling. I started to feel really uneasy, but I was there, so I went with it. Paul’s high rise looks like the kind of building they model first person shooter levels from. Dark, exposed wires, weird (and I mean weird) non-businesses/shops. All the windows were broken and the view overlooked the parking lot which the building shared with what I THOUGHT was the Nairobi slum. (It wasn’t. More on that later.)

Fifth floor. We go to this gated hallway. Heavy iron bars with chipped yellow paint and locks lead into a claustrophobic hallway. This looks like where you buy drugs, not hook up for ministry opportunities. Then we go into Paul’s office. The room was shining. Not because of the windows or lights, but this man. He was energy, passion, and Holy Spirit in a smile. For the next hour, I don’t think I said 2 sentences. He told me about his mission in Kibera, the Nairobi slum. He oversees two schools inside the slum. (I say inside because you go into a different world. This is the darkest, weirdest, saddest, scariest, thing I may have ever seen. That scary place I saw from the window…that was a flea market. I knew nothing about scary. I learned.)

By the end of my time with Paul, I had agreed to go to see his school at 9:00 in the morning and visit the other on Monday. I awoke today to go in.

We were late getting to Paul’s. He went to a meeting. He left me a guide, Protoss. (Yes, Starcraft fans, Protoss.) Protoss was a former YWAM DTS leader and was going to take me to the school inside Kibera. 

Yes. For clarification sake, Paul was not coming and neither was Michael. I’m going into the Nairobi slum with someone I don’t know coincidentally named after an alien race in a famous computer game. 

We walked for a mile on the orange dusty shoulder of the highway and then came to a place with dozens of bus taxis, a few shop stalls, and a hundred idle men. Protoss walked into the maelstrom. I followed two steps behind. Let me paint this for you:

Have you ever been hiking? Like in the mountains? You know how if the trail isn’t smooth, you look at your feet? You find good footholds. A strong root. A half-buried rock. A packed trail. You HIKE into Kibera. Nairobi is flat. Kibera isn’t. The terrain is never flat. It is years of garbage piled into a landscape. You hike a mud trail through a populated land fill. Every step looking for a dry stone. A wood plank. Dry trash. Because the “road” is a two lane path with a creek of liquid sewage running down the middle with crossdrains you have to jump/step over every 50 yards. Finally, uphill, downhill, you pass through the valley of two 20’ hills of garbage only to reach the “real entrance” a bridge over the trash river.

And then it was worse.

I haven’t mentioned any people. Nor the flea market style booths selling everything from shoes and surplus american clothes, to raw meat. (The flies are free). I didn’t mention them because only because I was so focused on my footing. Now we need to add them to the picture. People are everywhere. Imagine a busy mall at Christmastime. Some standing. Some talking. Some walking like us. Others carrying loads or bundles of every imaginable burden. Everywhere. Crowded into the claustrophobic paths all going everywhere and nowhere. And every eye looked at me. “MZUNGU” = white guy in Swahili. I heard that word over one hundred times today. Every eye looked at me, the white man. I said it got worse because I realized this is where they live.

 

The deeper we trekked the more children and animals I saw. The children chanted, “HOW ARE YOU?” when they saw me. It is the only english they know. They say it to the white people and smile. I brought a cargo pocket full of suckers. I didn’t give away a single one. There were too many children. They were everywhere in the “streets.” 

“How are you?”

I asked if the people lived in the shops.

“No” Protoss said, “Dis is main street. Day live behind Da shops.” He pointed down a dark gap/alley and you could see “houses.” Imagine that dark alley in Diagon Alley from Harry Potter. Now take away the all the magic replace it with mud and sewage and 6’ roofs. Ding. We crested a hill and I looked out for miles on the roofs of the “houses.” It seemed to go on forever. Dear God it goes on forever.

“How are you?”

After four untraceable turns and 30 minutes walk into the bowels of Kibera, I knew that if I lost Protoss, I had to make peace that I would never get out of this maze. Then we arrived at the school. We passed through a green metal gate into an open courtyard and there was light. It felt like Paul’s office again. Several dirty children played in the sun, but there was no trash. It was “clean” here. They stopped and looked at me. One older one said, “Your hair is bright!” 

There were 4 classrooms and a church that had a sanctuary the same size as mine at home. Protoss showed me the kitchen: a closet with the biggest pot I have ever seen. (Think Bugs Bunny cartoons where they throw him in the pot big.) He showed me the gigantic construction size bags of maize and beans. 

“Come. Let’s sort tomorrow’s beans.”

So we did. You have to pick the rocks, dirt, bugs, and wood out. We talked for an hour comparing our home churches. We finished and it was devotional time. I was mobbed in the courtyard by dozens of small children. Little hands dragged me into church to sit on the front row. They petted my hair, my nose, and pulled my arm hair for 10 minutes while Protoss organized the room. He asked me to tell the story. I did. It was one of the best preaching experiences I’ve ever had. Then it was food. They quit playing with me for food. They were that hungry. Every child got a giant plate of beans and maize (corn). The littlest ones ate half and came back for seconds. I don’t think I will ever think about the “what are we going to have for dinner?-I don’t know?-What do you want?-I don’t know?”debate the same way again. They eat the same lunch every day for their entire childhood. We complained about soy burgers and square pizza. They don’t complain.

For the next hour they crawled all over me. I’ve never been touched that much in my life. You know the web site that tells you “How many kindergartners could you take in a fight?” I know. The answer is nine. If you get 4 on each arm and one pulling your hair while hanging from your back, you should just tap out. You’re not going to make it. I know this now.

I took pictures. I patted heads. I gave a high five. I left.

We hiked out.

“How are you?”

“I don’t know.”