Sunday, the First Day

I slept very well last night.  I was so bleary-eyed that, when I pulled the bed covers back, I didn’t realize I was pulling all the linens back, including the bottom sheet and the mattress cover.  I thought it felt a bit strange but I was too tired to care.

Breakfast was in the dining hall here at the compound, a substantial meal of an omelette, potatoes, cooked vegetables, a large plate of fruit, sausage and a drink made of a mixture of mango juice and beet juice.  I also had a cup of chai tea with milk, a staple here.

Still feeling the buzz of jet lag and not enough sleep, but we felt good enough to go to church.  We crammed the four us us into an Uber for the 20-minute drive to the Nairobi Chapel, a large church that meets in a big open-air tent.

Everyone should attend an African church service at some point in their lives, particularly those of us that come from a more reserved or stoic background.  They know how to make a joyful noise.  Although the service was in English, they did sing one song in Swahili which was cool, and they had the words in English on the screen for us gringos who don’t speak the language.

Afrika yote yakusipu
Kwa makofi na nderemo

(All Africa praises you)
(With clapping and joyful noises)

The sermon was on the story of Noah, particularly about his obedience to the crazy thing that God asked him to do: build a ship where there was no water.  And the challenge to us is: will we be righteous or rebellious.

Kind of hard to summarize a two-and-a-half hour worship service.  I guess you gotta be there.

One thing I noticed right away was a sign-language interpreter in the front, something that’s pretty rare in churches.  A little later on in the service a man by the name of Michael was introduced, who lost his hearing to meningitis when he was eight years old.  He had an amazing story of how he went on to become quite an advocate for the deaf, and he was responsible for coming up with the Kenyan sign language.  He taught the congregation a couple of signs (how are you, God be with you).

The worship leader announced that today was Enze Sunday (enze means ‘treasured’ in Swahili, not sure of the exact spelling).  This is an intentional reaching out to those with disabilities and including them in worship.  The sign language interpreter was part of this, and they highlighted a young woman named Zawate who had palsy who described in a video her desire to be on the production team at church.  The camera soon panned to Zawate, running the sound board.

It was nearly 2pm when the service ended and we walked the 10 minutes or so to a nearby mall, where we changed out some currency and purchased a local SIM card for our phones.  Exchange rate right now is 138.50 shillings to the dollar, which is great for us tourists coming into the country but is not so great for those locals who are just scraping by as prices for many things have been rising dramatically without a corresponding rise in wages.

We stopped at a restaurant in the mall for a late lunch and I ordered a cheeseburger.  Willie asked about authentic African food and Dave and Joy just laughed.  They told us that authentic means ugali, which is cornmeal and water, heated and mixed until it is stiff enough to cut with a knife.  No spices of any kind.  So I opted for the cheeseburger.  What I got was one of the most enormous burgers I have ever eaten and a large pile of spiced chips (fries)

Back at the conference center, I just had a fruit salad and samosa for dinner.  Keep up this rate and I’ll need two seats on the return flights.