Lesa is currently directing “An Evening of Short Plays”.  In this, she is putting her master’s classes into practice by using a type of theatre she learned about this summer called Devised Theatre, where she takes the kids through a specific process of activities (acting, team-building, etc.) to produce original works that are driven by the students.  The high school cast is producing 7 of these short pieces, two of them being directed by seniors.  The middle school cast is producing one longer piece (approx. 45 minutes).  Lesa’s Intro to Theatre class is also producing a piece.  All of these are to be performed at the end of October as one show.

Lesa has also been thrilled to be the new Coordinator for Worship Teams for the high school chapels.  She has 25 students who rotate on teams to lead worship each week.  She and Andy took them on a retreat in late August to work on skills and to just spend time worshiping together as a group.  They are quite good musicians and are amazing kids who love God.  She has also taken on an exciting new Worship Class which focuses on the spiritual, musical and technical aspects of leading worship music.  It has been so rewarding to pass on what she and Andy have learned over the past 15+ years.  These 35 students in the class and on the teams represent at least 10 different home countries.  What an amazing thought that God will multiply our experience across the globe!

It was my 2nd time in Korr, Northern Kenya, in the desolate desert of what’s called the “northern frontier district.” Frontier is the right word, as this is past the edge of civilization by at least an 8 hour drive.

The lack of water is a big problem in East Africa right now. 2 years of miserably poor rainy seasons and deforestation of parts of the Kenyan highlands have left many people in a bad state. (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/8057316.stm) Especially in the desert, where people rely on their animals for survival, not just the meat but liquid from milk and blood. These people, mostly nomadic, move their entire village with the herds, or send the warriors out for months at a time with the herds, in a never-ending search for water and grazing. So when it doesn’t rain, the animals get sick and die, and the people lose not only their way of life but the very thing that keeps them alive.

So, when we pull up to a village (a “goob” in the local language) with our Land Cruiser, the women (who have the job of finding water and firewood every day) seize the opportunity to save themselves a 4 hour walk to the well and back. They run to their huts, grab whatever containers they can find, and swamp the truck. You can’t imagine how many people can fit in the bed of a pickup truck until you try it. If there was room for one more foot, or for one more person to hang on to the side of the truck it would be taken.

As we bounced along the bush, crossing dry streams, swerving to avoid camel carcasses, the women sang. They sang the entire drive to the well, at the top of their lungs. When we stopped so they could fill their jugs, I asked Nick (the missionary who was hosting us) what they were singing about. “Praise songs to Jesus, mostly,” he replied.

The volume of their singing doubled on the trip back to their village with the now-full jugs of water. It was a double blessing for those ladies that day, not only saving them 4 hours of walking, but half of that with a back-breaking load of water(well, back-breaking if I tried it, but these ladies are tough and strong!). It was a double opportunity for them to sing out in praise and thanksgiving to their God, to our God.

Last time I was in Korr, Ted and I filmed an interview with Indubbayo, a woman who came to Christ through the local literacy classes and now serves God as a traveling evangelist, visiting goob after goob, sharing the hope and peace she’s found in Christ. A hope and peace that’s pretty rare in these desperate times.

2 years ago when Ted and I were here, she shared one of the songs she’d written. A worship song to God, in the traditional Rendille style. Something that hadn’t been done before, up until that point the church was mostly singing songs from other sources that had been translated into Rendille.

And now, 2 years later, through Indubayyo and the literacy programs Rendille are coming to know Jesus, and each village is coming up with a unique, indigenous expression of worship.

As a musician, and a closet ethnomusicologist, that really excites me. And bouncing along these dusty roads with these beaded women worshiping God for the little blessings in life, reminds me of why I’m here in Africa, and why I love what God has us doing.

Exploring Old Town

We went to Mombasa last weekend, in partial fulfillment of our orientation requirements, and in partial fulfillment of ourselves and getting away from the busyness our lives are in right now. We stayed with some new friends of ours, Justin and Shannon Brown, in Mombasa’s Old Town which was built in the 1500′s. It was the closest we’ve been as a family to life in an islamic culture since Lesa, Sydney and I went to North Africa 3 years ago. Waking up in the middle of the night to the sound of the call to prayer in 12-part dissonant harmony from the dozen mosques in the vicinity, sweating it out in the oppressive heat and humidity even at 4 in the morning, reminded us alot of where we were when we experienced that original confirmation/call into missions.

The drive to Mombasa from Nairobi is like this: 2 hours of the worst roads followed by 6 hours of the best roads in all of Africa. We left around lunch time on Friday, stopping along the way to treat ourselves with snacks and sodas and a sit-down Kenyan-style meal, and arrived at the Brown’s around 10pm. We didn’t sleep too well, though, as it was all we could to do stop thinking about the heat as we lay sweating on top of our beds, under the mosquito nets, with fans blowing on us.

The next morning we did a little grocery shopping, ate lunch out, and spent the afternoon teaching at AIC Tudor, a large church in the Tudor area of Mombasa Island. Lesa and I had been invited to give a workshop on worship to the worship teams of this large church. It actually went pretty well, we decided to focus on what God says about worship in the bible and how important it is to Him, apart from our individual forms of expression since the Kenyan style of worship is vastly different than our western style. Lesa and I both had some serious points we wanted to get across, without sounding like we were judging their expressions of worship but wanting to help them raise the bar. We talked about God, about worship, sang some songs together, talked about practical steps in preparing a worship service, then opened it up for questions. From the questions we were asked (like “how do we coordinate the singers and the band when starting a song?”) we could tell our objectives had been subtly achieved, in getting them to take worship seriously and wanting to strip away the distractions that drive Lesa and I crazy like keyboard/guitar players taking the entire song to find out what key the singers had started in. “Great question,” we responded, and demonstrated how hard it is for an instrumentalist to pick out the key when the singer starts first, but how easy it is to prompt the singer with a pre-determined chord and key. We sat down afterward with a few instrumentalists and singers and went through some of the handouts on piano and guitar and worship leading we had written.

I know this seems like common sense to you westerners, but the traditional African style of music is largely vocal and rhythmic, not based in keyboard or guitar, so as they try to add these instruments (which for some reason they feel they must add) and a big loud sound system, you get a lot of chaos unless the guitarist or keyboard player is also the worship leader or is highly skilled. We hope what little we had to offer will help the church in the long run, and we’re looking forward to doing more of this kind of thing in the future.

On Sunday we had been invited by the AIC coast area bishop to come to his church and lead some songs and give the Palm Sunday message. We left Sydney with the Browns, who have 2 little girls, and the rest of us drove to AIC Chamgamwe. Not really sure what to expect or what would be required of us, we overprepared but were thankful. We expected a 3 hour service in Swahili and were not disappointed. We led a couple songs, I gave a message on worship and how Jesus’ death ripped the temple curtain and moved worship from the temple to our hearts, how the Father is seeking people to worship him with heart,soul,mind. It was my first time giving a message in an African church, though not my first time speaking with a translator. I actually spoke for maybe in a minute in swahili, greeting the church and introducing my family. Beyond that I can’t think fast enough to not bore the people to tears.

After church we had lunch in the pastor’s office (ugali, sukuma, chai, even some bread-and-butter for us wazungu [white people]). We went back to the house after this and crashed. Late afternoon we went out with the Browns and toured through Old Town. Most of Old Town has streets too narrow for cars, and is full of women covered head to to toe in black, men in white robes and skullcaps, children running all about between prayer times. Mosques everywhere, ornately carved wooden doors on everything.

We spent the next day, our last day, at the beach. You can’t go all the way to Mombasa and not go to the beach, right? We paid a daily rate at one of the hotels and swam in the pool and ate at the hotel. We also hired a local boat captain to take our family out for a bit on a big dugout outrigger sailboat. When we’d had enough we returned to Old Town, where the boys and I grabbed a tuk-tuk (3 wheeled taxi) to go visit Fort Jesus, a 16th century fort built by the Portuguese.

It rained that day, and in Africa when the rains come, so do the termites. Something about the rain that hatches their eggs or frees them from the ground, and suddenly the air is full of these little flying bugs. The first time this happened at our home in Nairobi we thought a plague had come upon us, as these little guys head immediately for your house and squeeze through every crack in every door or window, often leaving their wings behind. We would awake puzzled to find a big pile of wings at the threshold of our doors, until we figured out this is a normal part of life here. In fact, flying termites are a delicacie, and when they come it is like candy that is flying through the air to the children.

Termites... yum!

Well, Justin and I decided we need to know what the big deal is with people loving to eat termites, so we rounded up the dozen or so that were crawling on his kitchen floor, and threw them into a frying pan with a little oil. I called the boys to the table, and we feasted. I think anything that small and fried in oil can’t be too bad. Neither did the boys as we all enjoyed several of the crispy treats.

We’re back in Nairobi now, trying to wrap up our lives here as we’ll be leaving in 3 and a half weeks for America. I’ve got a video and web project I’m trying to wrap up, Lesa has the big “the King and I” production in 2 weeks, and we have a house to pack up. It’s a strange mix of emotions, like the ones we felt moving here, knowing we’ll be right back, but feeling a little anxious about coming to America. Like we don’t really know how we’ve changed until we experience the “reverse culture shock” of re-entry. Anxious that everyone will be wearing space suits or speak some new language or have a completely new cultural cues (tv shows, movies, etc) that are a part of every conversation that suddenly we don’t know about. But we’re most excited to see everyone and catch up relationally with you. Sharing meals and lives and swapping stories. That’s the African way!