Pixaby image
After 8 years here, it’s time to move!
I have carried everything with me to my new home.
Welcome to stop by for a cup of tea or even a proper meal over a story – that’s what I love best!
Welcome to my new online home
Join the dots
The Sunday Nation newspaper was our favourite. As the parents caught up with how the world was being governed, we, the children, had a field day with the children’s pullout. This was a treasure trove of stories, crossword puzzles and ‘join-the-dots’. At first glance, the join-the-dots puzzle seemed like randomly numbered dots, but we knew better. One only needed a sharpened pencil, locate number one, and from there on draw a line to the next number and the next, and soon enough, the picture would let you know whether it was a flower or a dog.
Wouldn’t it be nice if our lives worked like that? But more often than not, they look like a tangled ball of yarn or a preschooler’s drawing – anything but a clear picture. In earlier seasons of my life, the progression of dot one to dot two was clear. Primary school, score high marks, secondary school – score a B, make it to the university, get a job, get married, wait a year or two, get a baby. In the last few years, however, the pattern of dot to dot hasn’t been as clear.
I have a clear mental picture of that Saturday evening when my family landed in Addis Ababa from Nairobi. We had checked in 11 bags of what we considered the minimum we needed to start life in a new country. One bag did not make it. As it so happened, it was the one with all I had packed by way of clothing for myself. Looking back, I realise that had I been more astute in the art of spiritual discernment, I would have heard the voice telling me, “New wine needs new wineskins.”
You are embarking on a new life; that wardrobe will not suit!
I have since gained up to 10 kgs (true story) depending on whether you use the weighing scale at the hospital or the ones operated by little boys (why are they not in school?) on the streets of Addis Ababa. You give them a birr coin and step on and off fast enough before it starts beeping, “one person at a time, please!”
For sure, those amazing clothes would not fit me today.
But I am sure what I was meant to understand did not necessarily have to do with an expanded waistline.
The metaphor (quite costly as the bag never showed up) was lost on me. I am not the kind that does cryptic or whispers…. Spell it out in capital letters if you want me to get it.
That did not stop the script from unfolding.
I was going to get a new life, although I did not know it yet. I tried to continue joining the dots of my life as I had always done (job applications and interviews). It seemed someone had mixed them up. I could not find the next dot (all those rejections and silences). Some numbers appeared to have been erased or labelled in Amharic – a language I have yet to get the hang of. Sometimes I couldn’t even find a dot to join. I wondered whether I had made a mistake – should I go back or re-do (is that even possible?). The picture was anything but clear… sometimes what had seemed to be shaping like a leg turned out to be a leaf… was there really a plan?
Muddling through this fog, I got the idea that I at least knew what was possible to do on any given day. Lots of cooking and cleaning up, writing Facebook posts, hanging out over coffee or on WhatsApp, a bible study group, a book club, online courses, a pro bono writing/editing assignment and such. Nothing at the time looked important enough, and it was definitely not what I had asked for.
Occasionally (like now), the mists lift, and for a while, it makes sense. You are granted a moment to see that, indeed, every action, however confused or confusing it was, was one more line on a real picture and not a child’s crayon creation. E.L. Doctorow advising on writing a novel, once said, “… is like driving a car at night. You can see only as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way. You don’t have to see where you’re going, you don’t have to see your destination or everything you will pass along the way. You just have to see two or three feet ahead of you.
This is relevant not only in writing but also in life. “Life can only be understood backwards, but it must be lived forwards. (Soren Kierkegaard) In a process that the Quakers call – way leads to way or dot after dot in my case, I did end up in a new profession – meaningful but certainly not perfect (for instance, the pay…).
Sometimes we choose a path (like my sojourn to Ethiopia), and sometimes the path is chosen for us (my lost wardrobe… and what followed). But if we have faith in an all-knowing, good and sovereign God, we can trust that his silence is not absence, and his hiddenness is in no way abandonment (Timothy Keller).
That encourages us to do what we can – today. Take the next step and the next, patiently (very hard) trusting there is a larger hand scripting. He knows where each dot is and how it fits with the others and as we follow him, step at a time, the picture will eventually be clear – whether in this life or the next.
I Like Adventure a Lot, After it’s Over
People love adventure – differently. There are those who enjoy going through it, and then there is me. I like adventure a lot, after it’s over.
Take for instance, that evening two Fridays ago, when friends convinced me to join them for a party in Kitengela (a Nairobi wannabe suburb). I was hesitant, seeing as I had a flight to catch the following morning, but they convinced me there was still a good many hours before my 5 am flight to Abyssinia, so off we went. What I did not know was that the forces that seemed determined to keep me from my onward travel to Hungary had not given up – despite the visa securely stuck and stamped on my bright blue passport.
As fate would have it, there were roadworks on the 3 km stretch to my friend’s house. A heavy downpour had interrupted the crew who left behind uncompacted murram. It soon became a muddy stretch, and a truck skidded, got stuck and cut off the road. We found ourselves in the middle of a growing gridlock, and if you know Kenyans, you know how quickly it goes downhill. We could already begin to see ourselves spending the night by the roadside. My friends thought it was exciting because… a journey should not be predictable; it should have some ‘adventure’.
I begged to differ. To me, this was a last dash attempt by the forces that wanted to keep me from travelling. They had already thrown everything at me. The consular who was suddenly called away and the visa could not be issued. The alternative efforts to secure the Schengen visa that did not yield (thank you Hungary Embassy in Nairobi for stepping up and saving the day). The error (yes!) on the ticket that cost good money to correct, and now this. Was I really going to be telling my grandchildren that I did not make it to the conference because I got stuck in the mud on some avenue in Kitengela?
I have ridden a motorbike to get to an airport before, certainly not on a muddy stretch on a rainy day. Thankfully it did not come to that. Hours later, on a somewhat sunny morning, I landed in Vienna, Austria, just in time to connect to my train which would take me onwards to Budapest. If we were to go by my dreams, I would enjoy the views of the snowy alps against the soundtrack from The Sound of Music, yes with Maria’s distinctive voice singing, Do, a deer, a female deer, Re, a drop of golden sun, Mi, a name, I call myself …
The only thing standing between me and this dream was the lady at the train ticket counter. Why don’t you have a ticket, she demanded after I showed her my piece of paper with the times appropriately highlighted in yellow. Yours truly does a double-take. What do you mean? That piece of paper brought me all the way from Africa …well…technically, it was the plane… but you get my point.
Tap tap, my lady goes on her computer, tap tap tap she goes again and shakes her head, and tap tap, go to platform one, she roughly throws at me. Don’t I need anything else? I mumble, well aware I barely had time if I was to catch the 7:01 am. Use that sheet, she says with a look that reduced me to a gel of confusion. Down the ramp, blue suitcase trailing behind, I find platform one just as what seems to be my train pulls up.
The bud of my joy had barely blossomed before disappointment shriveled it right back. None of the names on the screens or scrolling across the train matched those on my ticket. Double-check – the time was right, and this was platform one. I lunged my suitcase onto the train. Once inside, the second-guessing started. Which is the worst of the two evils? Be left by the right train or depart on the wrong train; better to go out and double-check.
I hopped off and approached a young man who most assuredly confirmed this was not the train to Budapest. I knew the train would pull off in seconds; there was no time to drag my suitcase up the ramp and to the woman at the counter. Just then, a young, dreadlocked melanin-rich young man strolled up.
“Budapest? Take the train and change at Hauptbahnhof.”
Tis’ all I needed. I mumbled a quick thank you and went back onto the train. Well… after a few minutes of wrestling with the door and after yet another young man walked up and pressed a green button and the door slid left. I beamed a sunny thank you; why didn’t I think of that?
The train slid away from the station, and I turned my attention to the scrolling names to identify how many stops away to Haupt-whatever, but I couldn’t see such a name. I swallowed the panic, slid next to two French-speaking melanin rich brothers, and asked for help. Not to worry, sister, they said, we’ll show you where to change trains, and a girl relaxed.
When my stop came up, I wrestled out my luggage and headed for the screens and once again, narry a familiar name. I asked the man holding a JW sign to point me to the OBB (train service) office. Madam, that’s not a ticket, said the burly guy at office one. What do I do? Go to the ticketing office. Where is it? Forty metres to the left, came the quick response (true story). And sure enough, it was there all right, but a long queue was snaking out. Since I couldn’t very well walk to Budapest, I adopted the attitude of ‘iris whariris’ (it’s what it is) and took my place at the back of the queue.
The next I heard was someone asking me, Ukraina? In a mix of sign language, grunts and nods, I gathered the queue was for Ukrainians and was shown where to wait. After what seemed like an eternity, I was directed to a counter where I once again narrated my story to the lady behind the glass panel. The clock said 7:40, and by this time, I had gathered the next train to Budapest was leaving at 7:47 am. The lady did her tap tap on the keyboard, looked at my document, tap tap again, and it was clear that I wasn’t going to be on that train. Sorry Ma’am, but we can’t retrieve this ticket.
I had what I had thought of as the perfect ticket. A combination of plane and rail.This would give me the chance to see the mountains on which Maria acted in The Sound of Music, but now it looked like I would spend the better part of my morning on platform 10 C. The lady at the counter had pointed me to platform 10 C-E, where the next train would depart from an hour later, with a warning to be sure not to board the airport-bound train. Yes, the airport was definitely not what I wanted, yet. Also, I was €52.3 lighter as I had to buy a ticket I thought I had. There goes all the money I planned to buy fridge magnets for you.
Hungary, why are you fighting me so hard? I wondered, huddled there on the platform with only my blue suitcase for company.
Yes, I know trains are plenty, but I am already three-quarters of a day late; is that not enough to appease whatever the forces that seem keen to keep me away? Then I heard the word Keleti on the public address system, and my ears perked up straighter than Sandy’s (our beloved canine). That was my stop in Budapest. It dawned on me that the earlier train had been delayed. Yes, it was only arriving at the station now. I took off, down the stairs and up the elevator in a mad dash, made it to platform 12 just in time and …Budapest, here I come! I was mostly excited, although the little exclusive looking cubicles on the train gave me some anxiety. Did I somehow stumble into first class? I looked for a friendly face who assured me this was economy, right in my lane.
I was fast approaching the one part of this journey that I had expected to be challenging. How to get myself from the train station to Siofok on Lake Balaton (the largest lake in central Europe), my final destination. I had spent a good chunk of time scouring the maps and quizzing google, and finally, I had a plan. My train pulled up at Keleti station in Budapest (Yay!), and my next order of business was to get some Hungarian forint. Would you believe it, right there at the train station were these men, holding wands of cash, offering to give me a good exchange rate. What?! It was so Namanga, or Malaba, or any other Kenyan border point style; it was unbelievable.
But no, I live in Ethiopia, and we strictly change money only in the bank. I scanned around, found a forex bureau, got myself a wand of notes and directions to the metro station. Just as I had planned it the previous day. I swung into the train like a local, and shortly we were at the Deli train station where I was to catch the train for the two hours, of the second to the final leg of my journey. It took some doing with the blue suitcase that I was now ready to abandon, but finally, I found the counter and bought my ticket. The screen said platform 4, 12:30 pm. I found my platform and the train was already there. Among the names scrolling down the screen was Siofok. I manhandled the suitcase onto the train with a sigh of relief. The thought that I could actually make it in time for the afternoon sessions, warmed me up.
I pushed down the nagging itch in my brain. Isn’t this train a bit too early… a whole half hour? But then, I reasoned, I had seen the name Siofok, and with that, I silenced the nag. When the train pulled off 15 minutes ahead of schedule, I knew I must be on the wrong train. Since I couldn’t very well jump off, I stayed put and waited for the adventure to unfold. I tracked our direction on the internet (when the Wi-Fi cooperated), and we were pointed in the right direction. Halfway through the journey everyone alighted, and the engine was switched off. Like – really? I may have been done with adventure, but the adventure wasn’t ready to let me go.
It was starting to feel like Phileas Fogg’s travel adventure. Accompanied by his valet Passepartout, Fogg set out to win a bet by travelling around the world in eighty days. From England to France, Egypt, India, Shanghai, New York, round the world. Through the loss of money, loss of his travel companion, near imprisonment, attacks; by train, steamer, ship, sail-powered sledge, even an elephant! He arrived back in London five minutes too late to win the wager. It was only later that he realised that his journey through time zones had gained him a day, and he was not late after all; he made it to the club where it all started with a few minutes to spare.
That’s how I felt when my cab finally deposited me at 2 pm in front of the beautiful Hotel Azure on the shores of Lake Balaton with half an hour to check-in, freshen up, and catch the afternoon sessions of LittWorld the global Christian publishing conference. Earlier in my seemingly 400-hour day when I was trying to figure out my ‘not-a-ticket’, husband dearest had whatsapped me, leo utalala Siofok. Tonight, you will spend the night in Sifok. How about that for hope as I made my way to a conference dubbed “Publishing Hope Beyond Crisis?”
A Good Story
There is a good reason why we shush story spoilers. We love the tension of a good plotline; we eagerly wait for the unexpected twist and the surprise ending. Just when we think Cinderella has had her one night of glamour and now it’s back to scrubbing the pots and pans for the rest of her life, the prince discovers the glass slipper, which eventually brings him to Cinderella and their happily ever after.
It’s, therefore, a problem when we’ve heard a story over and over and over. For example, the Easter story. We know it’s every twist, turn, and punch line. Jesus is betrayed, thirty pieces of silver by one with whom they had sweated as they worked the dust of Palestinian roads trips together. A friend close enough to have called dibs on the last piece of bread over dinner betrays him. He is crucified, dies, is buried and rises on the third day. There … no surprises; everyone knows it.
One year when our girls were younger, we read the story of the last week of Jesus’ life on earth together. In small bits, we followed Jesus in the garden at night pleading for another way, being betrayed, being shuttled from one court to another, crowds baying for his blood, friends shrinking away and declaring they do not know him from Adam. Finally, our girl#2, exasperated by all the back and forth, burst out, “Why are they doing this to him? He has done nothing wrong!”
And there it was! An unexpected gift, restoration of wonder to my jaded heart that has heard this story over and over for decades. It was a precious moment when we could all feel the story. We had a chance to explain that her question was indeed the answer to why Jesus’ life and death was so important to us. He had done nothing wrong; he was innocent, he did not deserve to die!
Maybe this Easter, you can slow down a little…maybe read the story with a child or someone who has never read it before…and maybe in there, one of the twists and turns will stand out and make the story alive for you. It might be the mobs baying for his blood …crucify him! It might be the night of anguish, Jesus pleading with the Father, asking if there was another way as his friends snored away. Maybe it will be the final surrender – not my will but yours or even Pilate’s washing off his hands as he handed Jesus over to die.
It might also be like it happened for me that Easter years ago, the powerful reminder that Jesus was without sin. The twist in the plot and the wonder of the story is that the righteous judge leaves the bench and comes to my side (I, the guilty one) and takes the fall for me – and you – if you would!
Insurance for the Afterlife
It swept through our community like a hurricane – this sense of expectancy… and the need to know that you are right with your maker. I would have called it a revival, but my not-yet-pre-teen- self did not know the name. More and more kids in school were squeezing into the class where lunchtime mwaki was held. This small group that prayed the rosary was for the Roman Catholic kids, but that did not keep us from attending. We, the protestants, started off fumbling with the new words, Maria mutheru nyina wa Ngai, tuohere ithuī ehia… hail Mary full of grace… Soon enough, the words – if not the meaning – became familiar, and we could sing-song with the best of them.
As if that was not enough, we began to hear of the sightings of Mary! My new understanding of the Catholic faith said she was the fast track to God. Soon enough, rather than head home after school, I was tagging along with other kids to one of the homes where Mary was being sighted. Would she allow me to see her, granted that I was just getting the hang of my Hail Marys? Would my fledging faith be enough? There we were masses of us, angling in for the perfect line of sight to where she was expected to appear. The choir was singing their hearts out. “Sometimes she appears holding baby Jesus”, the whispers made their rounds. Bated breath… Only God knows the excuses I gave mother for showing up home later than usual.
And then the convener of the mwaki, teacher Mrs Ndūrū, got saved. What?! Romans Catholics did not get saved…or so we had been told. That was our thing, protestants! And then little girls (there were possibly boys too, but that is my memory) started saying “nīmahonoka”, they were getting saved! Wait a minute! Kids? I thought this is what you did at the end of your life to insure your afterlife after you have ‘enjoyed’ life on earth?! It was clear that the end of the world was at hand. Have you heard of the 666? Those in the know would ask. 666? The rest of us hapless ones would ask. Yes, the number of the beast, the mark that will send you straight to hell? And the rapture? Yes, when the born again will be taken up. And the sinners will be left behind! It’s all there, in the book of revelation.
Who was to hold my hand? Who was to help me make sense of all this? On the one hand, was the shame that came with being ‘saved’ as a young child. It was sooo uncool (not that we had that word). But, oh my God – the fear on the other side of being left behind! I remember more than once turning in the night, and in that split second, when you come to wakefulness and wonder where you are, my heart would be pounding, threatening to come out. I would be entirely convinced that the end of the world had come and I had been left behind. I would then listen for sounds of anyone else in the house.
Maybe the reason this fear was so intense in the night was from the then oft-quoted words that Jesus would come back like a thief in the night? You might not live with the irrational fear I had as a 12-year-old, but you will do well to heed the words of the Lord of time who said, You know that if the homeowner had known what time of night the burglar would arrive, he would have been there with his dogs to prevent the break-in. Be vigilant just like that. You have no idea when the Son of Man is going to show up.
The fear is because your house is not in order – you have not made peace with the Lord of time and eternity. The good thing is that we do not need something significant to trigger commitment to Jesus. Because it’s not just an insurance policy for the afterlife, it’s a relationship, a walk in his presence on either side of eternity… this one and the next.
Return From the West
“Wooi, niī ndingīcoka rūgūrū.”
More than once, I heard my mother-in-law wail those words, “I can never return to the west!” She would shake her head, bend forward and cover her face with her palm as though to ward off the memory of her adventures in the west.
Now, to be clear, my mother has never stepped foot in Europe. So, rūgūrū (west) here refers to the western part of Kenya, which practically starts on the doorsteps of Nairobi, stretching all the way to Lake Victoria. While growing in the heart of Kikuyu land, I would overhear snippets of conversation, relatives of neighbours updating each other that such and such family had relocated to rūgūrū. It conjured images of distance, foreign, and a hint of the derogatory. It’s the home of … those other tribes, different from us.
Fifty years ago, my father-in-law moved his family to rūgūrū, about 170 Kms westwards from his ancestral home. The reason is a combination of factors; pressure on the land, conflict, need for money for the growing family, and maybe even a sense of adventure. He eventually acquired land in these greener pastures that were anything but green. It was an arid land that had to be tamed into submission, wrestling the thorn tree shrubs to put up mud-walled houses and farm. It was a wildland and family folklore boasts of scary encounters with rhinos.
I came to the scene, just over 20 years ago when his son took me home for an introduction. By this time, it was a typical homestead. The homestead had one building for a kitchen adjacent to the one that housed the living room and bedrooms. To the side was a house occupied by the young men as they came of age. On the other side was a house for the sheep and goats, a store and a shed for the cows from which mum would get milk enough for chai and a little to sell. There were always chicken at various stages of growth and the occasional duck or turkey. The rest of the land was separated into portions to grow the Kikuyu staples; maize, beans and potatoes. There were portions where they would experiment with horticulture, a dam, and tanks to trap the rainwater. To see this mature green farm, one would have to try very hard to conjure up the images of the barren land they had settled in.
As the now-ageing folk went about their business, mother nurturing her prized orange trees and father planting yet more trees and trimming the hedges to make sure they were cut just so, the country went to the polls as we have done every five years. We voted, a president was sworn in, and war erupted. My parents became the proverbial grass that gets injured when two bulls go at each other. What followed for them were days of watching plumes of smoke draw nearer (torched houses) and nights of listening to screams and wailing from distant villages sounding ever closer. They were hemmed in between the approaching terror on one side and a road barricaded by machete-wielding gangs on the other. They were marooned on an island that was quickly going up in flames. The only question was how long it would be before the attackers reached their village.
Where was the law enforcement? The villagers did what they could. By day they would band together in the local market finding comfort in unity, keeping up with the intelligence and trying to work a way out. Nights were spent on the farms, but not in their bedrooms on their mattresses. The fear of being burnt alive in their houses was too great. The closest they came to sleep was to catch a few winks as each leaned against the back of a tree. They will never forget the horrific murder of their immediate neighbour, an old man, shot through with an arrow. He had sneaked to his house alone during the day. Maybe to salvage a treasure, he had forgotten?
Finally, a way opened. At the end of that tense week, the barricaded road was cleared. Some siblings went to pull out the old folk. Within a few terse hours, they pulled down the 40-year-old homestead, packed anything that could be packed, livestock, household stuff and all, and made their way out.
The Old Testament has the story of a man who emigrated to a neighbouring country with his wife and two sons during a famine. The sojourn did not end well. He and his two sons died in that foreign land. His heartbroken wife returned home and, on arrival, said, “Don’t call me Naomi,” she told them. “Call me Mara, because the Almighty has made my life very bitter. I went away full, but the Lord has brought me back empty. Why call me Naomi? The Lord has afflicted me; the Almighty has brought misfortune upon me.”
On return from the west, my parents settled not too far from the area where they had grown up and lived in the early years of their marriage. They could not stand going back to the very exact place. They had left more or less empty and had come back empty. This may well have been the story of Naomi, who had left home in famine for greener pastures only to come back empty-handed.
This was actually not the case. Her dutiful daughter in law Ruth had stuck with her. She took care of her and eventually made her a grandmother and the great grandparent to famous King David, a forerunner of Jesus. My parents were also more fortunate than many of their neighbours and others around the country affected by what we now refer to as the 2007/08 Post Election Violence (PEV). Although they had been forced to start all over in old age, had lost the property they had poured sweat and toil into – they now had their children to cushion their resettlement. Indeed, they had a choice on where to resettle – that’s why mum could vow never to return to the west.
Although we see the mercury rising higher and higher in this election year, this is not a political statement. It’s more a reflection on the story of Ruth, a book in the bible without a record of God speaking directly or doing anything out of the ordinary. Instead, it contains amazing coincidences that point to God’s providence.
We love my parents’ new home. A much smaller farm that is resplendent in green, overflowing with bananas, green leafy vegetables, arrowroot tubers by the flowing stream, maize, beans, onions and sugar cane. There are gooseberries for the grandchildren to hunt, and it’s in a more central place for quick visits from their children and grandkids. It makes it easier to manage medical care for the various aches brought on by age.
Are we happy that they had to go through what they did? No! But in it we see God’s providence; his almighty and ever-present power, whereby, as with his hand, he still upholds heaven and earth and all creatures, and so governs them that leaf and blade, rain and drought, fruitful and barren years, food and drink, health and sickness, riches and poverty, indeed, all things, come to us not by chance but by his fatherly hand.
It Was All I Needed
The shards felt too small to possibly ever be put back together. Jagged pieces, that were all that remained of my heart after the rosy romance crash-landed. It had been at least five years since that first glimpse, a quickening of my heart, and the thought – could he be ‘the one’? The interest, delightfully, turned out to be mutual; leading to months of endless chatting, going out, and me floating on air as we planned our happily-ever-after. And then it was no more!
A friend, not quite my father’s age, but more of a trusted older brother summoned me. Maybe he had noticed my clothes hanging ever more loosely on my frame, or the frantic frenzy with which I attacked my work, or how uncharacteristically quiet I had become.
“How are your wedding plans coming along?” He asked me.
“They are not!” I blurted.
With only a little persuasion I tearfully poured out my tale of woe. It had been some weeks already since that night when I had happily gone on a date, only to return home dazed – as one sleepwalking through their worst nightmare. My erstwhile beau had broken off with me. Despite the hint, or two, of trouble in paradise – this was unexpected! And so, I narrated my story, as I came apart in a pool of tears.
This older brother could have read me a verse that afternoon. He could have challenged me to pull myself together and think positively. Instead, he listened and did what no one else had done for me.
You see up until that point friends had said; move on, there are more fish in the sea (who wants to date a fish?) and God has a purpose (true). In church the worship leader had roused us to ‘trade our sorrows for the joy of the Lord’, and try as I could, my sorrow refused to budge. Day after day I wept quietly on the bus as I rode home after work. At night, I agonizingly counted the minutes to morning, with only the barking of the neighbourhood dogs for company, sleep having evaded me. I forgot to eat in that bleak, colourless world where sometimes an insidious voice would taunt, “What is there to live for?”
This friend whispered; “cry until it becomes ridiculous.”
He gave me permission to grieve.
With those words, he acknowledged my loss and validated my feelings of heartbreak. I did not need to pull myself together and be strong. That day would come – just not yet.
It seems that flicker of hope is all I needed. I don’t remember how long it took for the well of tears to dry up, but it did. Eventually, the weight of grief lifted, I stepped lighter, slept better and started to eat. A realization flowered within, there was still so much to live for and possibly even other loves. Hope was restored.
Now married for 19 years I know a broken heart can mend, one can love again, that indeed in life’s ocean, there are other fish young men. But never have I ever forgotten the understanding from my friend, and his wise counsel.
He did not judge the pain in my heart, assuming to read some imaginary needle on a scale to determine whether my grief was within acceptable limits. Neither did he give me an appropriate time in which to wrap up the crying and move on. He acknowledged there was pain and that we each carry our pain differently. That soft urging – cry until it becomes ridiculous – made all the difference.
Not Enough
There was no doubt in my mind that I wanted to be an accountant. The reasons were not the noblest. I had chanced upon a ‘letter to the editor’ in the Nation newspaper – a complaint that KASNEB (the accountants examining body) was setting very tough exams and failing students. Like a homing pigeon, my calling arrived. I had been introduced to basic accounting in high school, and I decided to prove there was nothing so tough about debits and credits.
As soon as I completed secondary school, I went hunting for this body, registered, and proceeded to work my way through the 18 papers, three at a time; eyes firmly on my goal to add that coveted designation, CPA, to my name. It took years to scale that very slippery pole—years of toil, sweat, and frustration. At one point, just a little over the halfway mark, I almost threw in the towel. A messenger that could only have been from the evil one by the name quantitative techniques threatened to capsize my dreams. I must have repeated that paper a million times.
Finally, I was pronounced fit to double-entry (a debit for every credit) and balance the books (no deficits). Someone may have whispered that accountants are well paid, but no one warned me they were nobody’s favourite colleague. Before long, I heard uncomplimentary names like ‘bean counter’ in reference to a profession I had worked so hard to enter. I was only safeguarding organisational resources – why then was I not the good guy?
Among my other sins was a failure to do magic. I was not allowed to say there was no money or that the math was not adding up. I was under no circumstances to refer to the budget or point out that a vote head was exhausted.
Maybe that is why the teacher’s command rankles me every time I read it. I honestly feel like it’s personally addressed to me, and I don’t like it. It had been a long day, physically and emotionally draining. The evening was approaching, and his disciples did their due diligence, environmental scanning, projections; and came up with an actionable plan that would do any CEO proud.
“This is a remote place, and it’s already getting late. Send the crowds away, so they can go to the villages and buy themselves some food.”
In return, they got the kind of unreasonable command that used to make me (spreadsheets and all) flip.
“They do not need to go away. You give them something to eat.”
What? The disciples needed no algorithms or cashflow projections to figure this one out, “That would take more than half a year’s wages!
What Jesus was asking his followers to do was ridiculous, impossible… It brings back to me all those feelings. Being made to look like I am the one who is refusing, often accused of hiding the money when I knew well there was nothing in the pantry.
And so, like me, a good accountant, the disciples presented Jesus with a report of the situation on the ground. Five loaves and two fish. Insignificant. A drop in the ocean. Rounded off, it was probably as good as zero in the face of the hungry multitude. The basic economics problem is the gap between limited resources and unlimited wants. You don’t need to be a CPA to know this. Whether it’s the family or the business budget; or even your own life, it’s never enough.
In this story, Jesus abundantly feeds the multitude. The disciples had assessed the need and the available resources and acknowledged they did not have what it would take. In turning over to Jesus what they had, they experienced God’s amazing provision. When we come face to face with our insufficient personal resources – we should turn to him. He can multiply the little we have far beyond what we can ask or imagine.
Even more, he presents himself as the bread of life. Far greater than any physical hunger is our spiritual need. Our longing to be made right with God, to know we are forgiven, and to be empowered to live a purposeful life. He promises those who turn to him shall never hunger. Only Jesus can fully satisfy the hunger of the human soul.
Put All Your Eggs in One Basket
Investment 101 will tell you – no! That is not the financial goal to have. We know how things can go wrong – business, real estate, stocks. It is only wise to diversify your portfolio so that if the return on one asset goes down, you will still have something to give you an income. If anyone tells you anything to the contrary – their advice is suspect!
While real estate is usually touted as a sure thing, it still has its risks when it comes to investment. And so, it’s a curious story of a man lurking around on a farm, possibly minding his own business, and stumbled upon a treasure. Nothing much is told to us – what was the treasure? The mother lode of gold? An oil gusher? Or cobalt enough to rival DR Congo’s deposits? All we are told is that he looked over his shoulder to confirm no one had seen him and covered up any telltale signs of the treasure. He then put up his previously diversified portfolio in the market. He then sank all that cash into the piece of land.
Risky move – right? You only do that for a 100% sure investment. Wary Kenyan’s will be heard asking, is this another quail farming? They know how they rushed to rear quails for their miracle cure eggs and meat, expecting to come out millionaires only to be left holding fool’s gold. Beyond pyramid schemes, we have listened to brokers with their graphs and spreadsheets of projected income, basically trying to guarantee you that you cannot lose on your investment, and yet we know how things go wrong – projects overshoot on costs and time, pandemics happen – messing up international logistics, politics… at best they slow the economy and at worse bring it to a halt.
The moral in the story of the guy who sold all his possessions to buy the land is, of course, not money advice; it’s about the Ultimate Treasure. In fact, it’s specifically about Jesus – who is the treasure of all treasures; and how confidence in him leads one to sell everything they have to buy an ‘empty’ plot of land. It might seem that the good news about Jesus is hidden, but this story is followed immediately by another story that assures us that those who seek, find. The second story is about a merchant in the market, actively looking for fine pearls. He found a pearl of great value. Nothing is to say that the pearl was not in plain sight, meaning it was available to anyone and everyone. On finding it, he put everything he had in the market and bought the pearl.
Contrary to the appearance, this is actually not that risky of a move. A safe investment is one backed by an immutable guarantee. For this Ultimate Treasure, the one for which the two investors gave up everything – the guarantee is none other than the God of heaven. He guaranteed by giving up everything – his glory, his power, coming in the very form of a wee babe, dying on the cross to pay for our sins. He who did not spare his only son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also, along with him, give us all things?
So, you see – He is the Ultimate treasure that we seek. You can put all your eggs in one basket, you can throw in your lot with Him; no need to hedge your portfolio. You can be confident that knowing him is of far more worth than anything you might seem to lose.
Ahem … Happy New Year!
If you glance at your rearview mirror, you might see me running, limping, huffing and panting … trying to catch up. By the time the whistle blew for the 2022 train to leave the station, I was certainly not on board and nowhere near ready for departure. Between battling influenza A (who knows for sure what it was?) and some clinging projects from 2021 that refused to be neatly wrapped up, it’s not a wonder I was left behind.
The result? Dropped balls every which way I looked. Missed deadlines, unreturned phone calls, unwritten resolutions. While many have their resolutions, the word of the year, strategy meetings, goals, and everything else needed to be on the train under their belts, all I wanted was someone to press pause. Oh, that the Divine would grant at least two weeks, a no man’s land between the old year and the new one. A space where I can sleep off the fatigue, catch up with friends and family, make plans, and complete projects from last year. A place where time stands still and allows me the grieve the past, bury my regrets, make peace with all the uncertainty that has been our lives, and possibly come up with some decent resolutions.
There was no such space; by the time the last of the new year’s fireworks quieted, kid’s back-to-school manenos were upon us (wipes brow). Is it a wonder that it’s only now, on the 40th day of January, that I am lacing up my boots, ready to step into the new year? Breathing Ethiopian air has righted my world and is probably helping a lot! (See the update I just sneaked in there?!)
The image of me panting after a bus that has already set sail brings to mind Aesop’s fable of the race between the hare and the tortoise. It was a no-brainer for those who saw the hare whizz past and the tortoise plod on. The tortoise did not have a chance of winning the race. But you know what they say about it not being over until the fat lady sings (whoever she is), the hare was tripped up by his pride and the slow tortoise carried the day.
The lesson is clear; Koheleth the wise one said, “the race is not always to the swift and the battle is not to the warriors, and neither is bread to the wise nor wealth to the discerning, nor favor to the skillful; for time and chance overtake them all.”
Fortunately, unlike in the hare and tortoise fable, 2022 is not a competition. Kenyans (not particularly known for disciplined driving) often remind each other, ‘keep to your lane.’ Each of us is called to run with perseverance the race marked out for us. Thankfully, we do this by keeping our eyes on the one who fires the start gun and holds the finish line…Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith.
To those who have started the year with the saddest possible news – departure of loved one…our hope is in the Father of all Comfort, He will comfort.
My Little Stories 