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August 8, 2003
Dear Friends and Family
It has been a number of months since I last sent an update, but
can I plead forgiveness, based on working fulltime and being a
single mom of two very active pre-schoolers? In addition, being
in the wonderful community-based African context, our home tends
to attract at least five or six neighborhood children at any given
time, with other unexpected, but very welcome, visitors dropping
by, with at least tea being required, if not a more substantial
meal, without a moment’s notice. My years as a single, independent,
self-determining professional are somewhere in my distant past,
but I am happy with how God has stretched and changed me, so that
I greatly miss it when I am away from home here. I have been terribly
negligent in my correspondence, but you are not forgotten in the
midst. I think of many of you so often, and am so very grateful
for each of you.
As I am preparing to gear up for a new academic year, which starts
next week, I have been reflecting on the challenges and the rich
opportunities while being here at Daystar University, Nairobi,
Kenya. Let me offer something I wrote a week or two ago, as I
was observing some to the scenes out my office window:
“Tradition! Tradition!” Thus goes the theme song from
Fiddler on the Roof. One of my colleagues just borrowed
the video of Fiddler on the Roof for the third year in
a row to show to his class at Daystar University. At first thought,
one might wonder what relevance the story of a Jewish peasant
farmer under Czarist Russia has for contemporary urban Kenya.
But on second consideration, the story is a remarkable portrayal
of the realities being lived out in this part of the world today.
As I lay aside a student’s wedding invitation sitting on
my desk, I think of the traditions of marriage. Early on in my
stay here, I had asked a young man who was engaged to be married
what the process was for marriage in Kenya. Being a young university-educated
urbanite, he noted that things are really quite modern these days,
and especially so since he and his fiancée were Christians
and were able to bypass “old tribal traditions.” When
I asked him to describe his process, however, he began to recount
the intricacies of going to the home of his perspective bride
with some of his friends as mediators to present his intentions,
after which the long and nerve-racking process of negotiations
between the two families began, which is done not by the couple,
but by uncles and other representatives from both sides. When
the wedding planning finally began, preparations were done by
a committee made up of the prospective bride’s and groom’s
friends and some relatives, who would raise the money, plan the
wedding, and pull it off. At the end of describing the whole process,
my friend paused and observed, “I guess we’re not
really very modern, are we?”
My office window looks out across the road to the city mortuary,
and there mourning rituals are played out daily. When I had first
arrived in Kenya, I was told that if groups gathering at the mortuary
were very noisy, with wailing and dramatic displays of emotion,
they were probably Luo, a major tribe in western Kenya. If the
gathering was quiet and sedate, they were most likely Kikuyu (the
major tribe in Central Province). On Sundays, when the mortuary
is closed, the dirt parking area often hosts groups of drum-beating,
banner-waving worshipers clad in brightly colored robes and turbans,
sometimes carrying large wooden crosses. These are members of
African Instituted/Indigenous Churches (AIC’s), congregations
that have sprung up independently from the mainline, historically
mission-based churches. Many of these appear to be more an adaptation
of traditional culture than what a Westerner might recognize as
a Christian worship service, but then, much of traditional culture
is so close to Old Testament Jewish culture that the leap to Christian
faith bypasses the culture of the Western world (Europe and North
America). Some of the AIC’s are very biblical, while being
firmly grounded within tribal forms of expression. Others are
at best questionable, hardly recognizable as either Christian
or traditional religion, and are instead a syncretistic melange
of both.
A few weeks ago, a simple wedding ceremony before a magistrate
became headline news, subject to political cartoons, commentaries,
and editorials flying in all directions. A 67-year-old widow wed
a 25-year-old workman. What was supposed to be a quiet, private
affair became top story news, as the breach from tradition screamed
across the headlines. The purpose of marriage in African culture
is for the continuation of families through bearing children;
land inheritance and the continuity of life is dependent on such
unions. This couple are both of the same tribe, but the age difference,
with the bride being old enough to be the groom’s grandmother,
is shocking the nation.
This is not the first time Wambui Otieno (the bride) has dominated
public attention for flouting cultural demands. Eighteen years
ago, the dispute over the burial of her former husband, S.M Otieno,
became a landmark court case, as she, the Kikuyu wife, insisted
that her Luo husband be buried in a Nairobi plot according to
his written will, which flew in the face of Luo tradition that
requires that all Luos be buried in the family land. After months
of litigation, tradition won. The remains of Mr. Otieno, a prominent
Nairobi lawyer, were finally laid to rest in western Kenya. As
this latest uproar has thrust her once again into the limelight,
the brothers of her former husband insist that the clan cannot
recognize this new marriage, because according to custom, she
is still their wife, and will be until she dies. She will then
be buried next to her former husband, on the family land.
So what does all this have to do with teaching at Daystar? On
one hand, our classrooms are filled with young men and women who
dress just like their peers in London, Tokyo, and Chicago, who
listen to the same music as their age-mates in Europe, Asia, and
North America. They idolize the same movie and music stars and
watch the same serials on TV. Yet if one scratches below the surface,
one finds a worldview in conflict, formed within the setting of
traditional values and mores, yet adapting to the individualism,
competitiveness, and materialism of the West. Some Kenyan families
could replicate the story of Fiddler on the Roof’s
Tevye, with each child pushing the traditional boundaries one
pace farther. Can the old and the new live together? When is the
stretch just too much? What of the past can be valued and integrated?
What needs to be left behind?
These are the questions my students wrestle with day by day.
They carry their Western textbooks on the overnight matatu
(public transport) to their rural home, hoping to catch up on
their reading between greeting all the relatives and helping with
the harvest, or the burial. They seek ways to communicate the
gospel in forms that are meaningful both to the older generations
in the rural areas and the young professionals and slum dwellers
in the city.
On August 18, the Postgraduate Studies Department will be launching
two new masters programs in the evenings: an M.B.A. program, and
an M.A. counseling psychology program. Applications have flooded
in over the last few months, demonstrating a notable demand for
such programs. Our prayer is that students will be equipped in
such a way that they can have an effective and competitive voice
within the larger global economy, and at the same time, be relevant
to the context in which they live, able to apply their knowledge
and skills utilizing their own cultural strengths, values, and
priorities. We want to help them become professionally competent,
integrating their Christian faith and cultural identity. Can it
be done? With God’s grace, we will try. It will be up to
this next generation to either integrate what they are doing and
who they are, or to be in a continuous limbo, neither traditional
nor fully Western, neither African nor non-African in identity.
Tradition! And my children? Justin Wangai (now 5 and a half)
and Imani Njeri (4) are definitely third-culture kids. They are
surrounded by friends and strangers of many different tribes,
races, and languages. Being in the city, they actually know a
bit more Swahili than their urban Kenyan playmates, who only speak
English, because their mother (me) keeps pushing it. Nowadays,
when we go to visit someone whom they don’t know, their
first question before arriving is, “Are their faces like
yours or ours?” (i.e.“Are they White or African?”)
They start their sentences with “Ebu! [an exclamation] Feel
this mama!” or “Ati?” (What?) For food they
prefer goat over hamburger, ugali (a corn meal starch)
over potatoes. Sugar cane is a happy treat at the end of school
lunches, and the other day when I offered to butter Justin’s
toast, he demanded, “What’s butter?” When I
explained it was “Blue Band” (a local brand of margarine)
he said, “Oh, OK!” On the other hand, I can overhear
them calling to their friends, saying, “Well, in America…”
or “When we were in America, we….”
As is the tradition at Daystar, we will begin the academic year
next week, as we receive new students to prepare them for their
journey ahead. It will be filled with meetings and teas, ceremony
and logistics. We pray that we will be able to walk the narrow
balance between being warm, generous, hospitable, communal, and
relational, and being academic, rigorous, challenging, informative,
and transformational as we proceed. As the “Good Book”
says, the Lord knows the plans he has for each and every one,
plans for a future and a hope. Jesus, who entered a specific culture
in order to reach all cultures, will be the best guide, leading
the way for any and all who ask.
May you each be enjoying your traditions of summer rest and play,
as we prepare for the coming year ahead.
With hope,
Marta
The 2003 Mission Yearbook for Prayer & Study, p. 45 |
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