I haven’t gotten sick or mauled yet

Dear friends,

Before we get serious let me inform you of a few truths I have discovered since I was last in contact with you. Truth number one: no matter how hard I try I cannot post pictures on this blog because of my slow internet connection. I am not complaining, its Africa, what can you do. All I’m saying is that’s how it is and your gonna miss my pretty face while I’m gone. I’ve got pictures of lions and cheetahs and elephants and mountains and London and people from different places and an orphan named Serenketi and over 100 pictures that Serenketi took after he temporarily commandeered my camera and videos of baboons and one really super one of me holding a baby goat, but your just going to have to wait until I get back. Shucks huh. Call me and we’ll do lunch…in three months. Let us move on to truth number two: there are a lot of people reading this who I would have never expected. This brings two thoughts directly to the forefront of my mind. I best write better entries than the one you are reading at the moment and I better say what I mean and mean what I say.

The other day my friend, Nick, gave a sermon on words and how they don’t mean much without actions. I wasn’t there, but I heard about it and it touched me from across the Atlantic. I am in Kenya and no matter what I write home on postcards or letters or blogs or e-mails and no matter what I will ever say while I am here or when I get home;
what I am doing,
my actions,
right now,
in this existential moment,
are what really matters.
Did you get all that? It’s not about writing home. It’s about going home, moment by moment, step by step, day by day. And taking people with me. I have to realize that I have a lot to give people, and most of that isn’t about me. Most of that is about them. Getting to know yourself by getting to know your Savior, by getting to know you’re surroundings, by getting to know the people you come across in those surroundings, and where they come from. I read a good deal of Schaeffer this summer. One of his over encompassing themes is that we as people have to put things back together, together. Its not that we live in a gigantic puzzle, its not that the pieces are all there, and its not that we know how to do it. But we have some clues and we have some pieces and we have Jesus and we have each other and we have enough beauty surrounding us in each other and in this blessing of a planet to instill substantial healing wherever we go. Pretty cool huh.

I like to take the things I learn in class and incorporate them into my everyday life and into things I can talk about with regular people who aren’t excited about the insatiable spread of sustainable conservation ideologies. This brings me to…Participatory Rural Appraisal (PRA). This is a set of decision making concepts used in Africa and all over the globe that in its basic precepts involves the local peoples. It is not about politicians enacting laws that will never get enforced, it is not about PhDs coming into an impoverished area and deciding what the problem is and making the local people do whatever they think will fix the problem, and it is not about a group a college students moving in and thinking in one semester they can change the world. What it is about is community. Imagine that. Community is so universally incredible and healing. How PRA ideally works is educated people who can relate to impoverished communities move in, learn the language if they don’t already know it, live like their less fortunate neighbors and they all decide and live out a mutually beneficial solution together. Hmm, sounds ground breaking. But is it really? We’ll get to this in a second. When I think about PRA I think about all kinds of issues we, as people, have with each other and all kinds of solutions that all kinds of people have that would undoubtedly solve all kinds of problems if we would just work together and be together. I have to admit that I’m an idealist at heart. This predisposition is probably my greatest flaw and strength at the same time. My mom likes to call me a communist for it. But can you really blame me? Long story short, this semester my peers and I will be using some of the ideas and techniques of PRA. We’ll only be here for three months, but our professors and the next group of students will continue what we’re doing and I’m happy I have the chance to at least be a part of some kind of solution. Long story short, I’m excited about PRA.

Back to the originality of PRA. When I think about things like community and PRA I also think about how about everything Jesus did was a metaphor on how we should live. Whether you believe or not you must know that Jesus became a man so he could live with us and be with us. So he could show us a mutually beneficial solution that we all could work out together. Faith gets a lot easier when Jesus shows up in unexpected places. Like socioeconomic classes. There are so many manifestations of God’s love literally engrained in what we are, where we live, what we love, and what makes life for us work best. Long story short, I’m pretty excited about Jesus.

I know none of this is groundbreaking or original or even probably put into a new subset of words and phrases. But for me it’s new and I like it. At some points this trip seems as if I have put everything I think about life and God and living and stuffed it into a laptop size carry-on. Somehow I managed to get it all through customs and security and now I’m unpacking it and its coming out in different but good ways. There’s a lot of possibilities for the things that are about to happen and I don’t think I’ll be able to fit everything into my laptop size carry-on on the journey home, maybe I’ll just have to get a few new bags.

Kwa heri,
Love,
Zachary Paul


p.s. Seems as if I got caught up in words again. I just proofread this piece of work and realized that in a stuffed to the gills page of arial narrow size 10 font I managed to write absolutely nothing about what I have been actually doing. I guess I should probably take some of my own advice about the whole words v actions thing. So here it is. Action.
Since the beginning of the program we’ve had three days off. Today is one of those days. Today is a good day. After going to bed at 2 to feel like I was actually in college I woke up at 7, or 1 if you want to go by Swahili time, was a part of making breakfast for the gang, and then went back to bed until 11 or 5. Breakfast and sleeping was delicious. The plan for the day is to finish up a paper on some PRA interviews that were done this past week, get you this entry, play soccer at the local high school, and sit by the fire and talk about truth. The last two non-program days we were busy exploring Kenya. It’s good to have some time to relax and reflect. Today is a day for that. Since my last update I’ve been busy as a bee with classes, reports, people, reading, more classes, surveying and calculating population and diversity estimates for Amboseli National Park, staring at Mt. Kilimanjaro with a stupid look on my face, eating lots and lots of beans, lentels, ugali, potatoes, and toast, and drinking lots and lots of delicious Kenyan chai. Last Wednesday the group of us went to a local primary school and fenced in some trees they had planted, started to clear a potential soccer field of rocks and played soccer with the kids. Those little rascals almost beat us. We’ve been to Amboseli several times, one of those to survey transect style. While there I saw a cheetah, lions, black-backed jackals, warthogs, wilda beests, giraffes, baboons, hippos, elephants, water buffalos, secretary birds, ostriches and zebras. Amboseli is a pretty unsustainable protected area because it is so insularized and therefore overgrazed and trampled by the over-abundance of animals that live in it. Nevertheless, to see all those mega fauna in one place is quite incredible and I’m glad I got the chance. Last Saturday we got to go to the orphanage in Loitokitok. It’s run by a saint of a woman by the name of Phylis Ndivo. We provided them with some food stuffs and a soccer ball in exchange for some play time. There are about 25 kids who live and learn there. Initially they all introduced themselves to us, sang and danced, then stole our cameras. Priceless shots. After awhile we reverted to a hearty game of their version of duck- duck- goose, cymba -cymba -twiga. Then we all drank some fruit type drink and held hands. Fun was had by all. We will be back.

p.s.s.
To those of you who are praying. Thank you. Apparently you believe that it’s doing something, because it is. We can talk about it when I get back. What I’ll tell you now is that things here are clearer than they have been for awhile. So far nothing is really stopping me from being with God and people and studying and quiet time in balanced amounts. It seems like nothing is really in the way of good things that have been planned for a long time that none of us knew about. I like it. And to clarify its not that I’m doing much, it’s that my community is doing much.

p.s.s.s.
Dear Mom, I’ve been taking my vitamins and my malaria medicine and getting too close to dangerous animals. I haven’t gotten sick or mauled yet. I love you and the family a lot and contrary to popular belief do miss you. I’m glad I didn’t bring Rascal with me; he probably would have gotten eaten by something already. Thanks for believing that I could do this and helping me out along the way. It means a lot. Tell dad I got him something for Christmas that he can use to kill rabid wild animals that get inside of the fence. Tell the foreign exchange student that she can stay as long as she wants as long as she takes her vitamins and tell Hannah that she rocks the metaphorical casbah. This morning we made drop biscuits per your recipe and they reminded me a little bit of home.