The Hunt: Week 2

The Hunt

At night, we hear mosquitos whining in the air.  We don’t see them in the darkness but we know they are present.  Like a prison camp search light sweeping the walls, our cell phone light seeks out whom to destroy.  The little pests are hard to see though.  Daktari and Man Cub have an electric tennis racket that they hunt with at night to zap the mosquitos in the house.  It’s a fun game while we are awake.  When we are asleep however, we are under mosquito nets, imagining it to be a force field holding them at bay.  Who is hunting whom really?

In the morning, choir practice of song birds begins quite early.  I love their gentle early morning blessing that sings to us “Get up, get up, the sun is about to rise and it will be a hot and very busy day.  Get up while it is lovely and peaceful with us!”  We can’t see the birds too easily from our ground level apartment with one window.  But I do know they are there.  There is a 10 lb. book of The Birds of East Africa that I’ve been toting around for years now.  It shows me what they look like on paper.  Yet experience shows a real bird in in the tree is worth 25 in the book!  The illustrations of a Lilac Breasted Roller pale in comparison to the real life one.  A Variable Sunbird far surpasses its species name and drawing in the astonishing beauty of reality.  I renamed it the “Birthday Bird” because of its birthday party like colors and date of apparition.

We stay on the lookout, ready for the beautiful surprise that is the True Life version: iridescent flash of fruit loop blue as the wings take to flight.  The birds are there but my eyes can’t quite find them in the dim light of dawn…

Last weekend we got to go camping at Lake Naivasha with our Tenwek friends to recreate and relax together and celebrate the birthdays of a few of our Man-Cubs together.  There were not one but TWO Lilac Breasted Rollers perched in some dead trees at the shore!  I had one in my binoculars and lost the other.  Where did he go?  Then, the flash of wings was right beside me where he had landed and taken off again.  Blue and purple and white flash, opening my eyes to what was right there beside me as I looked out in the distant dead tree.  So close

There is an old Rabbinical joke George once told us about a day that God wanted to play a game of hide and seek and He wondered where to hide and the Holy Spirit told God to hide in the human heart because “no one will ever look for you there”!

Who is hunting whom?

First night in country:
We arrive in Nairobi at the "Midnight Guest House" in what felt like midnight.
Wake up in the morning to the happiest kid anywhere. "Ahhhh, when I look out the window and see that (green tropical garden and trees full of birds),  it just makes me so happy!" says the Man-Cub.

First drive through the valley:
We have a 4th year med student and a senior resident on a global health elective rotation with us.  It's a great job that we get to be doing this and call it work. Kenya is changing.  There is a new section of railway being built.  And Kenya is much the same; now in a new segment of an old story.

First Call:
Daktari on call on the first weekend here.
The hospital has open one ward for males and another open ward for females.  20 beds in a room and lots of very sick people sharing space with family members and each other.  There is a 35 yr old man who had a bleeding ulcer.  He was stable but he suddenly coded and died in the night.  35. Ulcer.
Directly across from him our friend was coding a 1 yr old child.  She also died last night. 1 year old. Next morning before church, found out a second man in his 30's also died unexpectedly before the code team could even be notified.  How it happens like an angel of death sweeping over the place, I don't know.

First weekend:
We were invited to lunch at our friend's house in the village over the river.  It was lovely to be out there again.  Real people doing real life:  growing banana trees, sugar cane, grass to feed the milk cow.  Eating real Kenyan food: chapati, greens, rice, beans, beef, and steaming hot sweet chai. Thankful for these nourishing relationships that keep pulling us back to this place.

First meals:
We were also invited to dinner with a missionary family who recounted the traumatic events of last weekend, just a week before we arrived.  Tenwek had a terrible fire at night.  Around 8 pm the kitchen caught fire and burned up an entire building of offices and the kitchen.  They community was really dramatically impacted. It was like a story of Gideon in the Old Testament and how he took his tiny army and some flash lights to defeat the enormous Midianite army.  Here in Kenya there is no EMS.  The closest thing to a fire engine was a water tank truck in town and the wheels were off for repair.  One missionary drove for an hour to the next town to look for a fire engine.  Meanwhile the missionaries and staff and local folks were tossing buckets of tap water onto the huge flames.  One man we know who is a master builder, climbed on the roof of the building to knock off all the wood trim that would spread the fire to other buildings.  The boiler room and back up generator with tons of diesel fuel were directly next door to the burning building.  The patient wards were all around being evacuated.  The Lord directly protected and contained the fire to that one building and we are all full of thanks and praise!  Not a single person was even hurt.  It was miraculous.

First impressions:
The daktari kids noticed that some of the ground rules in the community have changed for how they are allowed/expected to play.  However, they still ask if we can stay here for years and years.  It is their glory days all over again.  At least, that's their first impressions.

More that rises in the morning...

    My would-have-been friend, Rich Mullins wrote a song when I was 9 yrs old about how "there's more that rises in the morning than the sun".  He listened and reported like a prophet on the deeper things that call out to the human soul, the Spirit that sustains all our humanity and creation.
   When I walk out on the back porch before dawn, I look east and see glowing lights on the horizon.  It is not a sunrise at all.  It is led and sulfur lights that have twinkled all night to report human activity of airport and shopping mall and franchises that eat off the cell wall of the city.
   What I hear is a few cars cruising up the main road and a few robins, all us early birds up to get something accomplished this Saturday before dawn.  Listen harder.  Listen longer.  I hear a distant train, an airplane, my children upstairs waking to play nerf war.  Listen more, hear the Spirit of God.  Become aware of His presence even in a suburb.  Even here and now.  Yes.  God is still within her she will not fall. God will help her at the break of day. (Psalm 46:5)
    Think through the day with gratitude, opening the porch doors for the fresh, crisp air of grace.  thankful for breath.
   Reflecting on the day, realize there is a battle to be fought and if I merely ignore it, I am therein defeated.  Blind and deaf to the beauty of God's heart would be our default and my defeat. I would simply believe that all we can see is all there really is, or worse yet, all we can feel is all that is real. Lord, keep us truly alive to the Life that is Abundant.  Keep us sharp and quick to Truth, Love, and gratitude. 
  The sky is getting lighter and it is overcast this morning. I don't see a sunrise still in the east.  But I do know that it is rising.  We are like campers in a tent waking to the light, the sun isn't visible.  But we cannot go on sleeping because the sun is making everything else visible and I know that it is time to get going.  Time to get going.