Life Please...

What Do I Expect?

I'm sitting in a cyber-cafe in a small town called Bungoma in the far west of Kenya, updating my blog; an experiment in global communications. Although due to the lack of any refreshments or food and the occasional whiff of week old urine you would be hard pressed to call this a cafe. In fact the word cyber is also stretching the limits of the imagination to be used in this context. It is a small upstairs, windowless room packed with 10 sluggish computers on a decidedly slow connection. But it's Kenya, so what do i expect?

I am having an interesting experience but I have to admit that it's not been as crazy as i thought. My trip to India last year was certainly more of a culture chock experience. In relation to my concerns about the local cuisine (see Slugs and Yam?) things arn't as bad as they could be. I have indeed tried boiled yam, cornmeal (otherwise known as Ugali) and many other delights. It seems that Kenyan cookery requires that you attempt to remove all taste from food, and create the most interesting textures possible. It's mainly a lump of tasteless carbohydrate in some form or another, supplemented by some sort of soup that may or may not contain some nameless meat. The staple diet appears to be rice and beans. Taste is optional - just add salt.

We are going round the churches in the area praying for the sick and healing people in the name of Jesus. There have been many miracles already - people who have been in pain for many years freed on the spot and running up and down the dusty isles of mud-hut churches in tiny Kenyan villages in the middle of nowhere.

We have spent the last few days doing a crusade, which basically involves standing on a makeshift platform in a predominantly Muslim village and telling people that Jesus loves them enough to heal thier illnesses and thier family problems. We sing, dance and praise God then pray for those who ask for it and often seeing them healed. Many of them simply can't belive that the pain they have always known has stopped. They stand and weep while all around them the filthy street children in clothes torn and hanging off them, with sores on their legs and feet, dance in the dust, huge grins on thier faces. By the end of the day there's nothing else to do but join in as the sun sets like a firey stone dropping from the sky and watch them laugh at the tall white man trying to dance in their unique African way.

I have so much to write about but it can wait till i get back. Untill then...

posted by Matt Heaton @ 8:51 am