Grandma's Letters From Africa

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Grandma's Letters from Africa

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Chapter One

September 29, 1994 Nairobi, Kenya

Dear Maggie,

I awoke at four this morning, unable to sleep any longer. Ah, I thought, surprised, I'm still not over jet lag. I had arrived back in Nairobi twenty-eight hours earlier and thought I should've recovered from jet lag but, to my dismay, I had not.

I lay there in bed mentally drawing lines, tracing my journeys over the past fourteen months: the United States, England, Scotland, Kenya, Cameroon, Burkina Faso, Niger, back to Burkina Faso, Senegal, Ivory Coast, Togo, Ethiopia, Kenya, Canada, the United States, Holland, and back to Kenya. As of today, I have changed countries seventeen times in fourteen months.

By tomorrow, Maggie, you'll have lived on this earth for two months and I'm scratching my head, trying to figure out how I can be your grandmother from way over here on the other side of the world. I always imagined I'd be a traditional, quaint grandma like my grandma, the kind that sits in a rocking chair and knits baby blankets-but quaint I ain't. How many grandmas have drunk tea made in a pot cleaned with cow's urine, or run from a charging hippo? How many grandmas have cooked breakfast over a fire, only to have a baboon poop into it? How many grandmas have jumped out of the way when a Maasai elder spit at them? No, quaint I ain't!

What is your grandmother doing on this far-away continent of Africa?

All I ever wanted was to live a quiet, secure life in a little white house with a picket fence and a rose garden, but your grandfather saw God pointing us toward Wycliffe Bible Translators in Africa, and we agreed to go. Thus, last year, on August 21, our British Air 747 touched down at Jomo Kenyatta International Airport in Nairobi, Kenya.

Africa!

If someone had told me a few years ago that one day I'd stand on African soil, I never would've believed him.

Your grandpa and I ducked through the jumbo jet's little oval door, blinked in early morning sunshine, and clunked down a metal stairway. With carry-on bags and laptop computer tucked under our arms, we followed fellow passengers across the tarmac and up the stairs into the terminal-much smaller than the last three we'd seen, JFK and London's Heathrow and Gatwick.

Inside the dimly lit terminal, a man stepped out of the crowd and handed us forms. Bleary-eyed after traveling all night, we thumbed through our passports, searched for numbers and dates, and filled in the forms' blanks.

Next, we joined a line facing a row of narrow wooden booths that looked like something from my childhood back in the 1950s-hand-made and stained reddish-brown. When our turn came, we stepped forward and handed our passports to an official who spoke softly in a clipped Kenyan accent. He asked a few questions, stamped our passports, and waved us through.

We took a couple of steps forward and found ourselves on an escalator down to the baggage carousels-all two of them. Only one hummed around on its U-shaped journey, so that made it simple. Thank God for small airports. Our suitcases, boxes, and duffle bag showed up one by one and, after your grandpa lugged them onto our cart, we turned around and stood in line for an inspection. When our turn came, the official rummaged through a few bags and then pointed us toward large glass doors.

Your grandfather's cousin Paul stood on the other side of those glass doors, and by then we were mighty pleased to see a familiar face. He and his wife Barbara translate the Bible with people in Zaire, but they happened to be in Nairobi at the time. Paul loaded us into a borrowed van and we set out toward the city. He sat behind the wheel on the right side of the van and propelled it down the left side of the highway, a practice established in British colonial days. It seemed like we drove down the wrong side of the road, and I felt disoriented and dizzy. Add that to jet lag and sleep-deprivation-and I thanked God it was Paul's job to drive and not mine.

We drove through broad grassy spaces, punctuated by African thorn trees, with a clear view of escarpments in the hazy distance, wide and purple, and all of it spread under a vast dome of blue sky.

Before long, we passed a few shops and businesses, some shiny like new, others patched and rickety. The highway had no paved shoulders, only orange dirt littered with thousands of plastic shopping bags. Pedestrians and goats walked alongside speeding traffic. We passed piles of burning trash that filled the air with a foul odor. Enormous old trucks and buses spewed black exhaust, adding to the air's stench. The fumes burned my nose, and I could feel my chest tighten.

Within minutes, we entered the busy city of Nairobi, cloaked in blossom-covered trees, dense green shrubs, and tropical flowers-red, yellow, purple, and orange-lavish beauty in the midst of trash and polluted air.

Paul maneuvered the van through thick, aggressive traffic. I held my breath while he battled his way into a congested traffic circle, and around-clockwise.

Unruffled, Paul steered the van out of the traffic circle and onto a narrow, quiet lane lined with towering eucalyptus trees. Within seconds, he pulled up to a wrought iron gate with stone pillars on each side, and a blue-uniformed man stepped out of a narrow wooden guardhouse. He swung the gate open and Paul drove us into a small compound. We slid open the van doors, climbed down, and-stepped into springtime. Dappled sunshine filtered through tall old trees, and the temperature felt about seventy degrees. After wild city traffic, noise, and exhaust, this place was a hushed haven.

Paul explained that our offices would be there on the campus of Bible Translation and Literacy, or BTL, a Kenyan organization that partners with Wycliffe Bible Translators. I looked around at three charming stone buildings reminiscent of old British structures, three stories each, with quaint, small-paned windows and ginger-colored tile roofs.

Tropical gardens teemed with bright colors and textures-Bird of Paradise, lantana, begonias, rosemary, ferns, violets, marguerite daisies, banana trees, fig trees, hibiscus, and the grand centerpiece-lofty old palm trees in the center loop. I don't think the Garden of Eden could've looked any prettier.

A room in BTL's guesthouse was our first home in Africa while we awaited the start of our orientation. We didn't have to wait for the course, though, to begin our education-my head spun with all I'd taken in at the airport and on our drive to BTL. Little could I imagine how much more we would learn or how that learning would look, sound, taste, feel, or smell.

In the guesthouse, your grandpa and I slept in single beds in a room about nine feet square. Our hand-made beds, stained dark, had foam-pad mattresses four or five inches thick. We shared a kitchen and bathroom with several other people, most of them Africans who had traveled to Nairobi for a workshop.

On our first day, I made several trips to the laundry room. On my first trip, two Kenyan children played by the doorway. They looked up at me and whispered, "Hello." I smiled and said hello back. On my second trip, they smiled and said, "Hello," when I went in, but when I came out the children giggled and said, "Hi! Hi!" I giggled with them. On my next trip those charming little ones called out, "Jambo!" (Swahili for hello). I called back, "Jambo!" and we laughed together. Those bright eyes and quick smiles seemed like a serendipitous gift to me and, as a bonus, I even spoke Swahili on my first day in Africa.

On our second day, Sunday, a Wycliffe couple invited us to walk with them to a nearby Presbyterian church. The building showed its age, but God lived as surely in that Nairobi church as He'd ever lived in the United States. I felt strange as one of only a few white people, but no one stared or tried to avoid me, so I felt welcome.

When we sang old Scottish Presbyterian hymns, the Kenyans sang reverently, but when we sang Swahili songs, the congregation came alive. People sang out with great volume and rich harmony. They grinned, they clapped, they danced, and they lifted praise to God. I could see that their hearts and minds felt more in touch with God when they sang to Him in their own language. That first Sunday in Nairobi showed me how important it is for people to have worship songs in the language they know best-and that is one of Wycliffe Bible Translators' tasks and one of the reasons we had come to Africa.

Though everyone within the BTL compound spoke English, we heard accents from around the world: Kenya, Ireland, the United Kingdom, Holland, America, Switzerland, Germany, Russia, South Africa, and Scandinavia. And New Zealand. A dear young couple from New Zealand, Brian and Jenny Caston, served as directors of the three-month orientation course your grandpa and I would soon begin. When Jenny, a nurse, issued us our malaria prophylaxes, she explained that it was very good medicine but it gave some people "MEE-ooth-ool-suz." She sensed that I didn't understand so she smiled and said it again. I looked at your grandpa, and he looked back with a blank expression on his face. Within seconds, though, I saw him grin. "Mouth ulcers! Canker sores!"

September 9 through December 2, we participated in Kenya Safari, Wycliffe's field orientation course designed to teach basic skills for living in remote settings. We'd worked with Wycliffe in South America when your dad and aunt were youngsters but, because we'd made a short-term commitment then, only three years, we didn't take an orientation course. This time, though, we'd made a long-term commitment and had to take the course.

I could understand the rationale behind such training-Bible translator friends of ours in South America, for example, used such skills to set up their work in isolated areas within nearly Stone Age-type cultures. In addition, I knew two young women who fled from guerrilla soldiers and had to survive for several days in the jungle, awaiting their rescue.

Yes, I understood the importance of such rigorous training, but I dreaded it because I was not athletic, possessed no aspiration for adventure, and loathed roughing it. Moreover, I had already paid my membership dues and joined the over-the-hill society. Although I didn't know what to expect during the orientation, I knew I'd never experienced anything like it and that I'd need more strength and courage than I'd ever needed before. For two years I prayed, and prayed, and prayed, and psyched myself up for Kenya Safari but, by the day of our departure, I still didn't have a lot of confidence in myself. Nevertheless, somehow (well, not somehow, but by God's grace) my worries and doubts coexisted with faith that God would get me through if only I'd depend on Him and cooperate with Him. The Bible says, "In quietness and confidence shall be your strength" (Isaiah 30:15, New King James Version). I told God I'd keep my mouth shut and take care of the quietness part if He'd take care of the confidence part.

So, armed with a chocolate bar and my friend Esther's instructions on how to stare down a leopard, on September 9 your grandfather and I set out on our three-month orientation, Kenya Safari. With a clenched jaw, mixed emotions, and plenty of jitters, I gave God a stern reminder that I was counting on Him.

Our group of fifty trainees and staff drove out of the capital city in a northerly direction and eventually arrived at Fish Eagle Camp on the shores of Lake Naivasha. For thirteen days we lived in our tent under shade trees: eucalyptus-heavy-scented, with clouds of billowy dark leaves-and umbrella acacias, with horizontal layers of airy, delicate leaves and three-inch needle-sharp thorns. I'd seen acacias only in exotic African photos, and then at Lake Naivasha I found myself living in a tent under those trees.

Hippos lived at Lake Naivasha. On the day God created hippos, He must have run short on ingredients for beauty. When I see a hippo, the word bulbous comes to mind-blobs of steely gray-brown, bewhiskered fat. Hints of pink ring their dainty ears, noses, cold beady eyes, and the underside of their wide, boxy snouts. They can grow to fifteen feet long and weigh around three tons.

During the day, the hippos stayed underwater among the reeds, but at night, they grazed freely-even within two inches of our tent-and made monstrous grunting, munching, belching noises throughout our campground.

In the middle of our first night, the ground rumbled like an earthquake and your grandpa and I jolted awake. Within seconds I recognized hippo noises, and I knew what I heard-a stampede, right through our camp. Immediately I wondered if we had pitched our tent in their usual path because, if so, those spooked hippos would trample us to death. I asked myself, Should we get up and run? If so, where? Which direction? I couldn't think straight! But it didn't matter-I was so frightened I couldn't move. The hippos thundered through our camp in about twenty seconds-which seems like a long time when you're scared out of your wits-and then we heard colossal splashes in the lake as, one after another, they plunged in, their ghastly bellows and snorts echoing through the night.

One morning several of us unzipped our tents and headed for the outhouse, only to find that a couple of hippos still grazed among our tents. With sturdy, long, razor-sharp tusks in mouths that open four feet wide, hippos are deadly.

It seemed like we all stopped breathing and moved in slow motion. Some of us stood at a distance and watched to see what would happen. Fellow trainees Dick and Nancy Baggé and their two children stood near their tent, keeping an eye on a hippo about twenty-five feet away. I sensed Dick and Nancy weren't sure whether to stand still or run. After a few tense seconds, that hippo charged them-but in an instant of inspiration (divine, no doubt), they darted into their tent and zipped the flap.

When that hippo lost sight of them, it made a sharp left turn and kept charging-toward me. I stood about fifteen feet away but, like Dick and Nancy, I unzipped our tent flap and ducked inside, and that hippo ran on by, just inches away. Imagine! Only a filmy tent wall kept me safe. Thank God hippos quickly forget what they can't see. (Using the outhouse had to wait.)

Speaking of outhouses, a row of them lined the edge of camp-rough wood planks and black toilet seats. The place was dark, stinky, and full of flies. Ugh.

Actually, we had two rows of outhouses. The second sat equally close to our site, but I wondered why no one ever used them. One day I checked them out. (Maybe there was hope, after all, that I could become more adventuresome.) I pulled open the wooden door and-I'd never seen anything like it. I saw only a hole in a concrete floor.

Only a hole.

In the floor.

But how did people use it? I stood there trying to figure it out. I could envision how men could aim for that hole, but, but-what about women?

Hmmm. Little by little-okayyyyy-I pictured how a woman might use such a hole.

Suddenly, the scene solved a mystery. This explained the footprints I saw on the toilet seat in the guesthouse bathroom back in Nairobi. The other rooms had housed Africans from rural places, and it dawned on me, standing in that outhouse at Lake Naivasha, that some of them didn't know how to use our kind of toilets any more than I knew how to use theirs.

I shoved the door closed and hurried back to the other outhouses, the ones with black toilet seats. From that moment on, those black toilet seats were, in my opinion, things of beauty.

I myself, however, was not a thing of beauty. Without electricity, I couldn't use a blow dryer, curling iron, or iron, and my clothes stayed as wrinkled as when I wrung them out and pegged them on the line to dry. (They're not clothespins here. They're clothes pegs.) Women wore skirts because Kenyans believe trousers reveal too much of a woman's body. I wore safari boots with my skirts and, oh, if my friends back home could have seen me! Everybody-my friends, my relatives, and even I-had always expected I'd live a genteel life in a little white house with a picket fence and a rose garden. Instead, I was camping in Africa-with limp hair, wrinkled clothes, and no makeup. But, hey, little by little I realized that genteel and quaint were beyond my reach. No, quaint I ain't.

More than a thousand bird species live live in Kenya and almost four hundred species make their homes at Lake Naivasha. Each kind has its unique song and, at first, I didn't like those songs because they weren't the ones I knew and enjoyed back home. Soon, however, those foreign birdsongs became familiar and sounded like a grand symphony, especially early in the morning.

(Continues...)

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Excerpted from Grandma's Letters from Africa by Linda K. Thomas Copyright © 2010 by Linda K. Thomas. Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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