“Where in the hell are we now?”
It was our third day and the first time I muttered what would become my mantra throughout my two weeks documenting The History of Christianity in Africa class immersion experience in Kenya.
One seat behind me in the fading afternoon light, Professor Rick Warner shrugged his shoulders and yelled a mantra of his own over the diesel’s rumbling exhaust note:
“Wherever you go, there you are.”
But he didn’t know wherever the hell he was, either.
Our rented bus swayed and rocked over the deep ruts in the red clay road, then lurched to a stop like
a man stubbing his toe.
“Are we there yet?” Michael Jon Mondovics ’13 called out in a mock whine from the backseat.
“Not quite,” said our host, Father Godfrey Odunga, who, no matter the circumstance, would bear the same knowing grin throughout the trip. “We must get out of the bus.”
Soon we were tramping down the rutted road—Professors Bill Cook ’66 and Warner, 16 Wabash students, a student of Cook’s from the State College of New York-Geneseo, and half a dozen Franciscan friars, seminary or university students from Nairobi who would be our companions, teachers, and guides throughout our time in Kenya. The bus followed—the driver had feared our weight would cause it to bottom out.
“Where are we going?” I asked Father Odunga.
“You’ll see.” Grin.
I was running ahead to get a shot of the group being chased by a bus when the students began to disappear. One by one they ducked through a small, low door in a security gate into only God—and Odunga—knew where. I thought of the Biblical verse about it being easier for a camel to fit through the needle’s eye than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven.
But we were doing pretty well so far. And as we walked across a dirt yard toward a group of 60 or so elementary school kids and their teachers, all singing in welcome, we could have been entering that kingdom.
This was our third such encounter in three days, and even our shyest guys were beginning to get the hang of it. Smile, shake hands, join in the singing. Then Professor Cook (“Father Bill”) would greet the group, and each of us would introduce ourselves. Jake German ’11 and DeVan Taylor ’13 were old hands from the start; Robbie Dixon ’13 and I got better as the trip progressed.
Then we’d sing “Old Wabash.” A day earlier, we’d been the first group ever to sing the College fight song during a formal Catholic Mass in Africa. Twice. Because, as Professor Cook would explain, “it’s the only song all of us know.”
Afterward, as always, Father Odunga led the kids in a chant:
Odunga: God is good…
All: All the time
Odunga: And all the time?
All: God is good. That’s his nature. Wow!
Then the teachers led us into a classroom to show off the chalkboards and sturdy desks we’d come to realize can be a luxury in rural Kenya schools. Outside our students ran with the kids; Michael Jon, Sam Glowinski ’12, and Professor
Cook balanced on teeter-totters while two or three little ones clung to the opposite seats.
Almost everywhere we went those two weeks our hosts would sing, play, or dance with us.
It was the dancing that got to John Plaiss ’13, as he wrote after we joined worshipers during Mass at a country parish outside Nairobi and later participated in a traditional Kenyan dance at the Bomas Cultural Center:
“I’ve been a member of the Holy Roman Catholic Church for 20 years. At my home parish in Michigan City, IN, we have a solemn liturgy. Dusty old hymns are sung by equally dusty old parishioners in a dusty, dank church.
“This past Pentecost Sunday I went to a church that had life, and it was a Catholic Church, too. When our van pulled up we were met by dancing. They did the same throughout the liturgy. It was as if the Holy Spirit filled their bodies so much that it poured out of them in the form of a frenzy. These people inspired me.
“So today at the cultural center, despite being hesitant, I wanted to join in. Not knowing one step of dance, I decided to go for it anyway. This was the first time I’ve danced in public, and I wasn’t ashamed. I was embarrassed-—but not ashamed.
“I danced and, in dancing, I shook off the dust.”
It seems an audaciously Wabash notion, flying students to Kenya to explore the History of Chris-tianity in Africa by encountering the faith as it is lived out and changing today. Our class was a mix of Catholic, Protestant, Muslim, Buddhist, and agnostic students, each with his own intellectual and emotional purpose for taking the class and traveling to Africa. Each wrote thoughtfully, often beautifully, about those reasons on the blog we posted on the College Web site. To paraphrase the late Professor Don Baker, they were “in it with all their hearts.”
It proved to be a trip about letting go of control and letting in the hospitality and generosity of people who are masters of both.
It wasn’t always easy. Professor Cook, whose deep knowledge of Franciscan art and Italy enable him to lead tightly structured and punctual immersion trips for alumni and students there, was suddenly at the mercy of a country he didn’t know and a culture far less concerned about the clock and planning ahead. The students watched him work to live out his Franciscan values as he learned, adapted, taught, and reveled with the children.
Professor Warner summed it up best: “We have met and talked with hundreds of Kenyans. We were always in the company of Franciscan friars and brothers, and some of their friends. They shared our journey. And though this class is about Christianity in Africa, the trip was about much more than that. This trip, in short, was about people.”
On these pages you’ll find some of those people and moments that made the trip.
“Religion from the Bottom Up”
How do Africans understand Christianity? We and our students have stood in the middle of this question on an experiential level.
We have stood among Kenyan Christians in the poorest of slums as well as in a parish in a professional-class neighborhood, St. Jude. We were invited to participate—though never obligated to. By yesterday, as I found myself singing and dancing with some Pentecostals, I realized that we were often involved in “participant anthropology.” There was a lot of shaking of hands and hugging on this trip.
Africans have appropriated Christianity steadily over the past century and a half. They have done so in their own way, carrying some of their previous traditions with them into their new faith. Thus, African Christianity has a different look from the Church that we are familiar with.
We discussed this “inculturation,” as African theologians have called the process, with Nigerian Jesuit Agbonkhianmeghe Orobator, author of Theology Brewed in an African Pot. For me, our discussion with Orobator was among the finest moments of our trip, since he has put into words something I have always believed about faith from both a scholarly and personal perspective: ordinary people make of religion what they will. Forced conversion is an oxymoron. Faith is built from the bottom up.—Professor Rick Warner
“Blessed are the Peacemakers”
Our group was lucky enough to attend a meeting of the Damietta Peace Initiative in Kibera. Only three years ago this place had been the epicenter of deadly politically motivated and tribal-based violence in the aftermath of the 2008 Kenyan presidential elections.
But instead of using a history of violence as an excuse to incite more violence, these leaders of Kibera use the painfully recent past as a point of progression, as a lesson well learned rather than one to be repeated.—Jose Herrera ’12
At our meeting with the Damietta Peace Initiative in Kibera, Professor Cook reminded those gathered of Francis of Assisi’s objection to the Crusades and his meeting in 1219 with the Sultan in hopes of bringing peace during the siege of Damietta, Egypt.
“That day, Damietta was the center of the world,’’ Cook said. “Then, 25 years ago, religious leaders from all faiths met in Assisi for the first World Day of Prayer for Peace. On that day they were one, and on that day Assisi was the center of the world.
“Today we meet as brothers and sisters of many faiths, not to ignore our differences, but to put them into proper perspective. This is sacred soil, and today Kibera is the center of the world.”
Today I saw Jesus, and he was teaching in a rural school on the outskirts of Nairobi. On our visit to the elementary school this afternoon we met some awesome kids who sang and danced with us and told us their hopes for when they grow up.
But I saw Jesus in the instructors at the school who led the children in songs about hope and shouts of “hard work, hard work.” I saw men and women who were not going to allow those kids to give up on their dreams. Those teachers were not going to leave room for doubt in these kids’ lives.—Sam Glowinski ’12
“Africans First, Kenyans Second, Tribal Third”
Today, Denis Maina, one of the African students traveling with us, asked me a simple question: “Dylan, when you look at the 20 Africans sitting in this room, are you able to distinguish who is from what tribe?” Naturally I replied no. He told me he wishes and prays that one day Kenyans and Africans alike will view each other with the same way of seeing that I have. He said the tribal blinders that every African wears over his or her eyes are the shackles that disable Africa from progressing forward in this capitalistic world. He emphasized the need for tribal traditions, but said the order of representation should be reversed. He said the people of the world’s most beautiful continent (in my opinion) should be Africans first, Kenyans second, and tribal third.—Dylan Andrew ’12
The most profound statement I’ve heard on the trip so far is this: “Africa is sick. Africa is poor. Africa is at war. Africa is broken.” Yet through all of the hardship, the spirit of Africa—specifically where we are, here in Kenya—and the people remain strong. It moves and drives people. We see that when you have nothing, all you have is faith and family; that is the stability and what is important.—DeVan Taylor ’13
Six of Us Attended Sunday Mass at Christ the King Catholic Church
As I pressed on through the winding streets up to the gates of church, the sights were almost surreal. There were places so foul that I could not believe what I was seeing or comprehend how these people were able to survive.
Yet that, at the same time, was the beauty of Kibera—it was, in fact, home to thousands who not only survive, but who work, struggle to raise families, and, as we would soon see, worship. From now on I will avoid using the word “slum” to describe this place, for it is the home of some of the most loving and devoted people I have met.
For me, the Mass at Christ the King was the most beautiful part of my entire Kenyan experience. And it may sound strange, but I, too, felt like I was at home. As a Catholic and former parishioner of a church with the same name in South Bend,
I was truly moved by what I saw there, the people I met. I was moved by the generosity of the congregation. And I could see the true love and devotion that they held for their Catholic faith, especially through the voices of their amazing choir.—Michael Jon Mondovics ’13
“Holy Innocents”
We visited the Mother Theresa Nuzzo Children’s Home, run by the Sisters of the Sacred Heart, for a day of work and play. Many of the 57 girls here were rescued by the sisters from the nearby Kibera slum after their parents had died of AIDS.
“This is what saints look like,” Professor Cook said of the sisters. “And these children are the holy innocents.”
Lucy liked to play and take pictures like a model. Yvonne, short and sweet, barely understood English but liked to listen and dance to Beyonce. Margaret wanted to come to America. Lucy is Kenya’s Next Top Model, Yvonne is the future face
of Gerber Baby Food, and Margaret is the next little girl to travel the world.
They seem to be so unaware of the things they can have and what is in store for them in the future. We may think that children are a small part, but they are the heart of it all and we have prepared these with so little. Lucy doesn’t know that
she is the future of Kenya. Soon it will be her responsibility to save the children.
How can anyone in the world let this poverty go on for so long? Why do these children have to suffer and not be given a fair chance?—Rashaan Stephens ’13
Kibera
Civilization is struggling in Nairobi, Kenya. The industrialization introduced by the British, like the railroad that slices through the Kibera slum like a scar that won’t heal, limps along, with the benefits hoarded by a relative few. The government takes its cut, while organized society has seemingly regurgitated the slums as a reaction to its inability to control so much at one time.
That, at least, could be one source of the poverty and huge disparity between the extremely rich and devastatingly poor that can be found in this country.—Jose Herrera ’12
What's Next
Let me be honest about how I feel about the term immersion learning: Although I am aware of studies that show that students and their professors can make great leaps in crossing the divide between our own culture and that of the“other,” I have always been a little skeptical of such laudatory claims.
But my own appreciation for the value of short-term class trips has increased exponentially over these last two weeks in Kenya. I hope we can send more trips to the developing world. This is the sort of life-changing experience that we should be proud to offer. This is liberal arts education at its best.—Associate Professor of History Rick Warner, co-teacher of this year’s History of Christianity in Africa course
In his final entry for our class blog, Robbie Dixon ’13 wrote: “The trip is over now. Everyone will be asking about it, and I don’t know what I will tell them. I know I will not be able to convey what Kenya has said to me, which is enough to change
me forever.”
That change has shown up in many ways, from Michael Carper’s return to Machakos this spring to Professors Cook and Warner’s plans to lead another class to Kenya. Members of the class made a large donation to the Damietta Foundation, while several students are struggling to start a nonprofit to work with some of the people we met. Still others are telling their stories at a fundraiser on campus this spring, while Professor Cook delivered a moving Chapel Talk about the experience last fall.
John Plaiss not only learned to dance in Kenya; soon after his return he converted to Islam.
DeVan Taylor put it this way: “I found faith, hope, and love in Africa. I found family. I discovered that as open-minded as I
thought I had been, in some ways I am as close-minded as those I criticized. I gained understanding, perspective, and determination.
“And I have a mission. We have a mission to each other, being members of the same species. We have a responsibility to each other.”
Many of us have wrestled with that responsibility since that trip. It’s difficult to be so warmly welcomed, to see such material
disparity between our countries, to see the riches of community and faith of our Kenyan friends, and not want to continue those relationships.
A man who knows that calling better than most came to hear about the students’ experiences last fall during an evening
class session. Indiana University Global Health Professor Dr. Bob Einterz ’77—co-founder of the Nobel Prize-nominated AMPATH and the IU/Kenya Partnership—had introduced our students to his work in Eldoret during the trip. Last fall he ate dinner with the class and looked at photos from the trip. He listened carefully as Taylor expressed his desire to help the orphans we had spent the day with in Nairobi. Then he said something encouraging and wise.
“If you wait until there is no risk involved in what you want to accomplish, you’ll never do anything. But also remember:
The purpose of this trip to Kenya wasn’t for you to change Africa, but for you, yourself, to be changed.”