Wiki tatu (week 3)

The third week of our journey was up to hot Egypt.  We could title that week either "Standing Outside the Fire"or as our friend that lives there as a hospital volunteer calls it "Hairdryer in your Eyeballs". This episode is dedicated to processing the events at Sinai just from last Sunday, Aug7- Tuesday, Aug9 2022.  

I. Bush Fire:

George McDonald on Divine Burning:  "He will shake heaven and earth, that only the unshakeable may remain: He is a consuming fire, that only that which cannot be consumed may stand forth eternal....He will have purity...the fire will go on burning in us after all that is foreign to it has yielded to its force, not with pain and consuming but as the highest consciousness of life, the presence of God." (1).

Are you still with me?  St. Catherine's Monastery in the south of Sinai peninsula is the oldest continuously inhabited monastery in the world.  It was built in 548 during the reign of Emperor Justinian (the official name of it is worth the click on the above link).  The only human inhabitant we saw was a gatekeeper who kept out ill dressed tourists*.  The main attraction inside the walls is actually a bush.  Tradition says that this is The Bush, the burning bush of Moses's first meeting with God.  It is still living and green and watered from the well said to be the "Well of Girls" where Moses met the girl he would marry.  I noticed that the bush, still vivaciously alive is not charred or brittle or most notably, dead. Even though God is a consuming fire, whatever is pure and of Him will remain. ( Hebrews 12:29)

    Also at St. Catherine's Monastery is a library, the oldest continually operating library in the world and home of one of the oldest original and complete manuscripts of the Bible, the Codex Sinaiticus (4th century) and another in Syriac.  These ancient documents testify to the veracity and accuracy of the Bible over 1,000's of years.  They were not on public display sadly.  The monks are very private about their books and the Codex has been mostly annexed to the British Museum in London anyways. (Thank you, Indiana Jones) But we know that what is true will remain ultimately.

II. Rocks:

There are very unique rocks in the vicinity of Mt. Sinai and the Burning Bush.  There is a burning bush leaf-like print that is indelibly tattooed in the rocks.  It is like a testimony in stone of the Holy God-Trodden place.  You can almost hear them crying out with organic graffiti "Remember: God was here".  Even when the rocks are hammered and split apart, the print is there within it's essence.  

Just think: stone tablets of the covenant that God gave to Moses and His people were written on this mountain.  But because Law never penetrates the human heart, only love does, when the base people betrayed their Liberator- Lover God and broke his heart, those stone tablets were broken too.  And then Moses went up again and got another hand written copy of the Law for God's people.  My knees were sore from one trip down the 750 stairs. Good thing I didn't have to go right back up again. **

Can you see the wee lad in the lead running like a hobbit down the mountain?

III. Mountain:

We went up the Mount Sinai (jebel Musa) just one time, thankfully.  It was a journey that began at 10 pm from the hippy beach town of Dahab.  In order to drive in the Sinai, vehicles must go in police escorted caravans.  If you want to go somewhere, get to the police checkpoint in time and wait until the caravan comes.  We had our airbnb pillows in the air-conditioned van and a very knowledgeable tour guide teaching us along the way so we could get education, rest, safety, and adventure all at once.  After a small lecture on the archeological evidences of the Exodus, everyone went to sleep in the van until midnight.  As we drove through the night, red taillights guided in a remote wildernesses.  I thought about the rods and cones in the human eye (Purkinje effect) and the gracious gift of God in guiding His people with a fire by night instead of LED white light.  Maybe He did have a white hot fire leading them, but I think warm red or orange is gentler in the darkness, like the taillights we keep following.  

We reached the end of the road at 12:30 a.m. and met up with our Bedouin guided camel journey. The kids went first and second up on the giant animal's backs with sadly teeny tiny saddles. We rode tall through the star strewn darkness. There are no sweet crickets in the desert.  It was so very quiet.  For two hours we rode up the rocky trail.  Occasionally we'd round a corner that exposed a military grade LED  streetlight somewhere far below.  In the darkness with zero trees, zero plant life, it was stark.  After 2 hours we had to walk.  The rocky upward stacks of rocks was illuminated only by our handheld devices.  It was not built by the same people who engineered the pyramids lets just say.  The kids again were leading the way further up and further in.  We reached the summit in plenty of time to watch the 5am sunrise.  We read Exodus 19 and 20.  How did we get up here if all that is true? Then we read Ephesians 2 about how Christ's purpose is to bring us who were far away and had no business in the presence of a Holy God near to the Father and make us one.  

IV. Dryness:

George McDonald has much to say about the Divine Burning and also about spiritual dryness. 

"That man is perfect in faith who can come to God in the utter dearth of his feelings and desires, without a glow or an aspiration, with the weight of low thoughts, failures, neglects, and wandering forgetfulness, and say to Him, 'Thou art my refuge'" (1).

In the Sinai, we constantly sought refuge in the shade and water bottles. When we are stripped bare of every last pretense, we only have faith that God is our refuge or we have desolation.  I am left amazed at the realization that it is perhaps in very dry and barren places, the magnanimous mountains of dryness that a holy ember of faith could create prime conditions for a wild fire.  There is nothing else to be consumed by a blaze out here though. The red tipped cigarette held by the man with the camel isn't going to hurt anything because there is nothing for it to consume aside from his lungs.  Dryness and desolation- why did God chose this place to make Himself known instead of that lovely lush end of the very same Great Rift Valley in Kenya? We hiked down and talked about Egypt in the Bible and the complex relationship it represents with God's people and how Jesus was a child there too for a purpose.

It makes me think of a Rich Mullins song(as much of life does) "He was a boy like I was once, was he a boy like me?  I grew up around [Tennessee] he grew up around Galilee..." Back home in green Chattanooga, rain has been so voluminous that our grass grew 10 feet and my porch pillows grew mildew.  Guess how I get rid of that?  Blazing sunshine.  The light and the heat is purifying.   I'm so thankful for green, trees, rain, the gentle hills of East Tennessee.  And I am also thankful for the desert wilderness of rocks and heat and mountains you wouldn't believe they are so stunning.  But I do hope you believe, and especially what happened on that mountain and how God came to not just give a law, but to be with His people particularly in that very dry and desolate place.  He still does that.

Thanks for reading or listening to my story.  I hope you enjoyed it a little bit and next time I will tell you a story about Typhoid, Tetanus, and a Lady from Khartoum...

*see photo.  One of us, clothed persistently in athletic shorts had to wrap a rental covering over his bare knees in order to enter.  Oddly enough, we were not asked to remove shoes. 

** Wonder upon wonder!  Michael had knee surgery in April and was healed up enough to make this trek!

1. C.S. Lewis George MacDonald: an Anthology 365 readings p.1, 2

Wiki mbili (week 2 in Kiswahili)/ Down to Earth

   Time in Kenya is like honey. It is viscous and fluid to a fault, sweet and golden at its best.  It is flowing for sure but one must keep pace, not with the impatience of hurry, but appreciation for the sweetness that comes with slowing down.  Here, the thoughts have time to catch up.  The mind can defragment by walking instead of running.  We are brought back down to earth by experiencing the strength of all 5 senses once again and finding our tiny place on earth. 

    There's a hot little technique in counseling called "grounding exercise" in which a person re-orients from anxieties by naming 5 things seen, 4 things felt, 3 things heard, 2 things smelled, and 1 tasted.  I will take a stab at a little grounding not to overcome anxiety here but because its a way to organize sensory overload.  I won't complete the 5-4-3-2-1 for sake of time today. ;-)

    Sight1 : Early in the morning, looking out the window at an angel trumpet tree, its quiet beauty is blaring out the glory of its Creator.  Holy, Holy, Holy. The visiting neonatologist in her white coat comes down a staircase behind the tree to go up and see her baby patients first thing in the morning.  

    Sight 2: Our big bright green bag was packed up here with some things that are more useful on this side than at home.  One of those is a gaudy bright pink dress I had made here. Another is the electric tennis racket that is used to hunt mosquitos at night.  I love this big bright green bag because it holds a little place for us on a storage shelf while we are away.

    Sight 3: Gigantic black dog.  We are dog sitting a Great Dane puppy named Nova for friends this week.  The sight of this dog is pretty amazing.  Also we are keeping a Golden Retriever named Rugby and a little fluffy dog named Maizie.  We like having the sight of good dogs around us.  Rugby reminds us so much of our dear Dandy dog back home.

    Sight 4:  My favorite sight is of the 25 or so house helpers gathered together who came for afternoon chai last Thursday.  We just wanted to sing a few praise choruses in Kipsigis and thank God together and share some words of encouragement with each other after the long time of distancing. Everyone was really happy.  They told us how the house churches popped up when the buildings were closed and large groups became 2 or 3 family groups.  They told how the church never stopped meeting, they just multiplied under the pressure and adapted.  But they remained faithful.  What a precious sight.

    Sight 5: Daktari coming home with the medical ward team of 8 for lunch one day.  They are Kenyan trainees that are the sight of hope for the bright future.  

    Touch 1: You feel your feet molding over the stones in the road.  You are aware of where you step and take not for granted the fact that the path will be smooth.  The dust swells up under heavy feet.  The dust of the dry earth swells up and finds a way to touch every part of you again, reminding you from whence you cometh.  We get re-grounded literally.

    Touch 2: The kids and I went out to pick beans with our local friend when she had only 1 day to harvest.  We got to experience a few hours of being field hands.  The neighbors who were there the whole time helping were happy to have us join and they popped up from bending at the waist, smiling, heads wrapped up, welcome to the field.  Toughened by time and tenderized by gathering the spilled beans.  The rains did not come so the plants became brown and dry.  We learn to uproot the plant from the soft dry earth.  They are gathered in large gunny sacks and even the weeds are gathered up for the time being.  She just wants to get those beans out and will sort the useful from useless later.  Our blessed job is just picking the beans someone else planted and helping a little to complete a task.   But there are also burrs in the field.  They cling to all the cotton clothing and make me look like a porcupine! They feel like they look too. Tiny straight quills prickle through the sleeves and legs of our clothing.  If we stayed on doing this, imagine how in tune we would be with the earth and its needs and appreciation of each and every bean. But as time flows on we turn to our chai break and lunch break and time to go back home- sore and scratchy and plum tuckered out.  

    Touch 3: Cold L-shaped door handles loudly squeaking betray early morning sneaking through any bathroom door.  The doors are heavy and solid, no hollow core will last here.

    Touch 4: The touch of clean water is noticeable.  We used to have silty river water in the tap.  A new water treatment plant has made it possible to even drink from the tap now.  (I'm admittedly a bit too chicken to try it still so we drink from another filtration system). But the feel of the water is different. It's clearer, and cleaner.

    Sound 1: Ka-wonk u-wooonk! Ka-wonk u-wooonk!  2 magnificent crowned cranes trumpet praise for being alive and flying.  They wake me up and call me out of the house to look for this oddly large and graceful bird and its life-mate.  They fly in with head hunched down and perch atop the tallest tree around.  "It looks like Charlie Brown's Christmas tree" she says.  And there is a pair of haloed angels balancing on the droopy tip top.  I watch them a while but they are quiet now that they've landed  (and think, I might have totally missed them if I had had AirPods in).  This regal bird is a lavish display of God's handiwork.  It's golden plum crown makes me think of a holy saint.  This icon of Africa adorns Uganda's flag.  

    Sound 2:  But it's the lower, tiny birds who sing the loveliest songs. The big birds are awesome but the small ones give music to make the heart happy.  

    Sound 3: Chainsaws.  The music of Mordor. They are the sound of developing farmland and much needed housing.  They buzz and whine through the day in the distance where Eucalyptus trees are taken down to stumps.  This is not the good sound I want to hear but it too reminds us that we are here on planet earth only for a short while.

    Smell 1: Trash burning.  Too sad to describe. Noxious even in the memories.

    Smell 2: Rain. They love it.  Best smell is rain.  He used to run home racing the rain.  This time he just sits here and enjoys it and texts his friends at home.

    Taste 1: "It's different. Not bad."  I tell her the foods just aren't what she's used to.  They don't have to be the very best or our most favorite foods, but they are different.  Everyone loves the taste of mandazi that we eat with chai.  It's like a beignet or doughnut hole shaped like a triangle or square.  The taste of friendship shared.  We met with 6 different friends in Narok yesterday to eat a meal, drink chai, have mandazi, or just a soda.  This tastes of friendship and weight gain.

That is quite a sensory overload for week 2.  Thank you for reading and helping me feel back "down to earth".

    

Wiki moja (Kiswahili for Week 1)

 Wiki Moja-  I hope to post 3 weeks of Dakatari Life for the first time back online for the first time since, well, a long time ago.  

    We are so blessed to have this opportunity to be back in Kenya serving at Tenwek Mission Hospital again.  Daktari was allowed to bring a UT medicine resident for an away rotation.  Kenya has general elections in August and it is recommended that visitors make their way out beforehand, so we are only able to work in the hospital for a week.  Therefore, he hit the ground running at 7 a.m. for ICU rounds on Friday and is covering call for the medical ward this weekend.

    Here is a very dry little take on the medicine rounds so far:

ICU patient 1- Rheumatic Heart Disease, atrial fabulation, history of stroke.

patient 2- Lady with probable Lupus, very sick, respiratory failure, on vasopressor, chest tube for fluid on lungs.  She coded Sunday morning.

patient 3- Old mad with diabetes, hypertension, DKA, new renal failure, needs dialysis.

patient 4-  heart failure, getting a little better.

Medical ward, 40 patients to see, a noticeable lack of HIV this time.  There's more non-communicable diseases and a handful of Covid patients (which is a communicable disease) in a cohort isolation unit.

Highlights: There are now 2 Kenyan full-time doctors on the ward.  One was a med student in our 1st year here, then he was an intern in our 2nd year, and now he is the consultant on staff!  The other is a Kenyan medical officer and affords the consultant a partner in the work.  These are major developments from 2014 and a big reason for doing what we do.

Another highlight: teaching at rounds and patient bedside with the team of medical staff. Teaching them about rate control for RHD, ID concepts on diagnosis and treatment of neutropenic fever (which is like the guards of the immune system all going on leave of absence at once).

There is an overwhelming volume of very sick people but it is a little bit like "Cheers" in that everybody knows his name, and they're always glad he came.  Lots of happy, warm welcomes in the community so we are encouraged.  That is the daktari update wiki moja, part 1.

The Great Rift Valley is still there. 

 In 2019 we witnessed its rifting in an earth splitting fracture of the  road.

Typical town along the 3 hour journey from Nairobi to Tenwek.  

The roads are remarkably smooth these days!

The most beautiful tree along the way

Oh, wow, that's a big pointer finger.

Our friend, Gideon is completing his 6 years of medical school now. Pray for his exam on Monday!

How to tame your dragon/ Great Dane

We get to dog sit for 3 different missionary dogs this week!

The day Josiah prayed for friends to play with, a 13 yr old named Josiah appeared and remembered him from summer camp at the gaga ball pit.  They got to rematch on the trampoline this time. God had planned to answer that prayer before it was even prayed I do believe!

The "Place of Songs": Tenwek 

Our little friend's 2nd birthday party