Chris is currently participating in a one-month short term mission in Kenya, Africa with African Enterprise as part of the Youthworks Year 13 Gospel Gap Year program. In this, the second chapter of his journal, he reflects on his first impressions of Nairobi, and the contrasts of poverty and wealth.
First impressions of a new nation
As a child, I was a hopeless travel show tragic. I would fanatically watch them, week in week out, drooling over the sights and cultures presented and encountered. My infatuation with travel extended so far as to lead me to spend many hours pouring over atlases, trying to visualise each place in my mind.
You can imagine, then, how surreal the experience was for me when, after years of dreaming, I actually found myself flying into Jomo Kenyatta Airport, Nairobi, Kenya. As I found myself walking around the airport, I was surrounded by black men whose eyes were as unfamiliar with seeing white skin as I was with this country, and whose glances follows us intensely.
But how can I describe this amazing land? How can I encapsulate its peculiarities, beauties and fascinations in words? If I was to give Nairobi City a title, I would call it the city of contrasts. While flying into the city I was surprised by the sights of Nairobi's very modern, evidently affluent skyline. But while driving in our matatu (a small van which serves as a taxi), I was blown away by how different and changeable things were on the ground. Each time you looked out the window, a different side of the city emerged. In Nairobi, glass-panelled business districts are only hundreds of metres away from slum communities, filled with dilapidated houses and farms. Opulent manors neighbour dishevelled classrooms which pass as poor excuses for schools.
In my area, known as Karen, the poor man's markets stand alongside sprawling shopping malls. On the well-worn roads matatus and other dilapidated vehicles wrestle for control with cars so expensive you'd scarcely see them in Sydney. Partly for this reason, all of the team have come to greatly anticipate our drive in the matatus.
But aside from seeing so many new and unfamiliar sights - green country sides, sprawling markets constructed of tin sheets, piles of burning rubbish heaped and women balancing packages on their heads - we have also taken to practicing our Swahili on the locals. We scream "Havari Yako" (how are you going?) to unsuspecting bystanders, who more often than not reply with a large grin and an enthused "Nzuri Fana" (very good!)
It’s the sight of such extreme wealth that has shocked me the most. It serves to highlight the great deprivation we only glimpsed in the slum communities we drove past. Likewise, as I sat down in our fabulously western, comfortable lounge room, with my stomach full from our incredibly palatable dinner (from which there was a second feast of leftovers), I could hardly help but think of the countless people around us who could only dream of such plenty.
Meeting and interacting with the people of this nation over the past two days, though, has been an amazing joy. The general friendly outlook, despite the obvious cultural barriers between us, has been a great reminder to introverts like me that we need to be prepared to take on their forwardness if we’re really going to engage with the people around us. If I am to impact as many lives as possible for Christ within the truly short amount of time I have here I cannot afford to crouch in sheltered comfort. I need to boldly step forward and mirror Paul's efforts:
"I have become all things to all men, so that by all possible means I may save some." (1 Corinthians 9:22)
William, one of the local African Enterprise leaders, underlined this idea as he briefed us for the days ahead. He challenged us to allow no sin, no issue, no minor difference of theological belief, no cultural taboo to stand as a barrier to the gospel of Christ.
sydneyanglicans.net will be publishing a new entry from Chris every few days over the next four weeks as he discovers Kenya and Kenya uncovers him
Photos courtesy ntkriced and harlemdakota
