Do you need to stare down that elephant in your room?

For some time now, I’ve been blogging about our arrival in Kenya—our three-month orientation course in the bush, living alongside lions and baboons and hippos, sampling new foods, singing worship songs in Swahili, and other adventures from Chapter 2 of Grandma’s Letters from Africa—but I still have not blogged about that elephant in the room.

(The Oxford English Dictionary says we’ve used the term “elephant in the room” since 1959. Did you know it does not mean the same as “the 800-pound gorilla in the room”?)

I’ve done a pretty good job of crouching in one corner or another and avoiding eye contact with that elephant. 

So far, stepping closer to it has been more than I can handle.

That’s why I keep circling that elephant at a distance.

But believe it or not, with several recent blog posts I’ve been circumnavigating nearer and I know that one of these days I’ll have to stand up close and lean in and look that elephant in the eye.

What am I talking about? What’s the elephant in the room?

Do you know? Or can you guess?

Leave a comment below or on the Facebook Page for Grandma’s Letters from Africa.

Come back next week and I’ll share more of my story.

But for now, LET ME ASK YOU:

What elephant in the room do you keep circling

from a distance?

Do you need to lean in and look squarely in the eye of

YOUR elephant in the room?

Perhaps my story will encourage you

to stare down your own elephant.

See you next week.

What was that crazy American woman doing?

I’ve already admitted my angst over living for three months without a proper toilet.

Instead, my only choice was a pit latrine. Well, maybe not my only option—I could have squatted down behind bushes, but with wild animals and snakes and biting insects also hiding in those bushes, that option would have been worse than a pit latrine. And besides, at least our latrine had a yellow plastic tarp around it for privacy.

My friend Joy outside our pit latrine

Have you ever noticed how comforting it is to know you’re not alone in your suffering? With that, today I’ll share a story from missionary B. Arnold about . . . well, you know. . . .

B. admits to life-long anxieties about restrooms and says that when she arrived in Burkina Faso, West Africa, she was introduced to “the thrills and chills” of “multi-bathroom experiences” and concluded she needed to make some changes.

In this excerpt from her article, Bathrooms of the World, she recounts her first trip to a village for an open-air evangelism campaign:

“We were greeted and then led into a very nice courtyard where we were fed supper by the host family. After supper I used the facilities in their yard which consisted of a three-sided mud brick building with no roof and a hole in the center of the cement floor.

“The hole in the center of the floor meant that this outhouse [unlike some others] was a multi-purpose unit and could be used for all ‘needs.’ For a bush village these were very deluxe accommodations. The ‘outhouse’ provided for some semblance of privacy and luxury as well.

“Once the veil of darkness fell upon the village we began our open air evangelism campaign but part way through the service I had to once again use the ‘facilities.’ It was then that I realized that I had forgotten my flashlight. I asked one of the pastors if I could borrow his and he gladly loaned it to me for my little private moment. . . .

“I entered into the deluxe accommodations

and then discovered my dilemma:

what to do with the flashlight

while making use of the hole?

If I placed the flashlight on the wall

I could not see to find the hole

and if I held the flashlight

I could not manage my dress while busy.

What to do? What to do?

“… My only choice would be

to place the flashlight in my mouth

(yes I know that it was dirty!)

and then be as quick as possible before I gagged. . . .

“I looked down to find the hole and when I did, the flashlight shone down into the dark abyss. Soon I was ‘busy’ and at almost the same time thousands of giant cockroaches began pouring out of the hole having been disturbed by the light.

“I could not scream as the borrowed flashlight would fall into the hole—I could not stop—and I could not stand still. Soon I was dancing back and forth, stomping and tromping and shaking off the critters as they tried to crawl up my legs! . . .

“Finally I was able to leave the ‘deluxe’ facilities and leaned against the wall trying to compose myself. I began to shake at the thought of it all and then just as suddenly, I began to laugh. . . . I must have been a site [sic] to behold.

“I’m sure that the people who were watching the beam of light dancing around and around in the dark [from inside that roofless outhouse] must have wondered what in the world that crazy American woman was doing. . . .” (B. Arnold, ©Women of the Harvest Magazine, Sept/Oct, 2001. www.womenoftheharvest.com. Now part of Thrive Ministry and The Thrive Ministry Magazine. Excerpts used by permission.)

Originally published July 22, 2010

Water: An Essential!

A page from my scrapbook

In Chapter 2 of Grandma’s Letters from Africa, I wrote that in Maasai-land during the second phase of orientation, our water came from a stream a few inches deep and maybe fifteen feet wide.

Maasai bathed in it, washed their laundry in it, and herded cattle through it.

Other wild animals splashed around in it, too, and baboons up in the trees pooped into it.

I also used water from that muddy little stream to hand-scrub our laundry.

To get laundry water, you’ll see in the top picture that I tied a rope to a plastic bucket, lowered it down the bank and into the brook, then pulled water up. Because the stream was so shallow, I could get only a few inches of water in the bucket at a time.

In the bottom picture, I used the enormous roots of a fig tree as a table for the wash basin.

That stream was also the source of our drinking water.

What?!? you might gasp.

Have no fear! We set up water-filter systems that removed microorganisms that cause diarrhea, vomiting, typhoid, and other illnesses.

We set up our gravity-fed filter system with half a dozen red plastic barrels, rubber tubing, and ceramic filters. Those filters, called candles, looked like rolling pins without handles.

We immersed them into a barrel of dirty water that, in a few minutes, passed through the slightly porous ceramic. In the process, that murky water turned clear and pure and it came out through rubber tubing.

A crew of people cleaned the candles on a regular basis because slime from the brook built up on them.

Water! It’s essential for living!

Safe drinking water is essential for health

and, by God’s grace,

we had both there in the desert.

That was a cause for sincere rejoicing and thanksgiving.

Our kitchen in the bush

Have you ever wondered how you’d cook in the middle of nowhere for six weeks without refrigeration? without a gas or electric cook stove? without a grocery store?

Let me show you a picture of the “kitchen” during our six-week stay in Maasai-land for our orientation course.

The footlockers and orange tent in the upper photo served as cupboards, and a couple of large folding tables provided work surfaces. (Can you spot me looking through one of the footlockers?)

Our stove? You see it there in the bottom picture where two staff members, Jacinta and James, stir up something tasty in a suferia. (Read more about Jacinta here.)

Speaking of suferias, our fellow orientee, Peggy, baked a cake one day.

How?

She filled one of those huge suferias about half full with sand and heated it over the fire. When it was just the right temperature, she placed her batter-filled cake pan on the hot sand, popped a cover on top of the suferia, and voilà, she had created an oven! Clever lady, that Peggy.

“The dust of Africa had penetrated my skin pores and entered into my soul”

Take a look at these boots. (The other items have significance, too, but we’ll talk about them another day.)

I wore those boots in Africa, mostly during Kenya Safari, our orientation course. While you read the first three chapters of Grandma’s Letters from Africa, picture me wearing those boots.

All these years later, every time—and I mean every time—I shove my feet into them and cinch up the laces, I ask myself, “Do you think there’s any African dust still on these boots?” Then I smile and answer myself, “I sure hope so!”

Nine years after returning to the States, I discovered that Shel Arensen, a man I ran into from time to time in Kenya, had published a novel, The Dust of Africa.

When I read the book’s description, I knew I had to order it, and I’m so glad I did. It brought back scores of memories—Blue Band margarine, chai, and brown-red puddles. Bata safari boots. Mosquitoes dive-bombing my ears at night.

—And nocturnal hippo noises at Lake Naivasha. Shel described their sounds as “spluttering and wheeze-honking.” In Grandma’s Letters from Africa, I described them as “ghastly bellows and snorts.” Click here to see a brief video clip of hippos and hear some of their noises. (They make other noises, too.)

Shel wrote this about his novel’s main character, Clay Andrews: 

“I slumped into a chair at the Blukat Restaurant on Muindi Mbingu Street opposite the city market. ‘Do you still make the best samosas in Nairobi?’ I asked the waiter.

“‘Ndino Bwana, Yes sir,’ he responded with a smile.

“‘Then bring me four with a cold Coke.’”

Until I read The Dust of Africa, I’d forgotten that we had to ask specifically for a cold soda pop, otherwise it arrived at our table at room temperature. We avoided ice cubes because we couldn’t know if they were made with safe water, so the next best option was refrigerated sodas. I can still hear myself placing my order, “Diet Coke. Cold, but no ice.”

In the book, Clay Andrews continues: “The waiter came back with a small clear plate with four triangular pastries oozing grease onto a white torn-in-half napkin.”

Yes, I remember the oozing grease, but I’d forgotten about the torn-in-half paper napkins. It was a cost-cutting thing. The recollection brought me a smile.

After reading Shel’s book, I felt like I’d spent a few days back in Africa. It was a rich experience.

I was delighted to learn the source of Shel’s title, The Dust of Africa. It comes from an African proverb: “You can’t wash the dust of Africa off your feet.”

I’d never heard that proverb before, but I know what it means. Shel described it well. He wrote, “The dust of Africa had penetrated my skin pores and entered into my soul.”

Yes, I’m sure I still have African dust on my safari boots.

In addition to The Dust of Africa, Shel Arensen has written a number of other books. He has also served as the editor of Old Africa Magazine.

Pulsing rhythms, rich harmonies, throbbing beats

One of my favorite experiences during our orientation was singing in Swahili with Jacinta, a gentle young Kenyan woman hired to help with childcare while parents attended classes.

Jacinta led us in the traditional way of singing: She sang a line, then the rest of us sang an answering line. We sang back and forth until we finished the song.

We didn’t need musical instruments. Someone tapped on a kettle, someone else kept rhythm with a stick on a chunk of wood, and the rest of us clapped our hands.

I’ll never tire of those African rhythms and harmonies. In Grandma’s Letters from Africa, I described them as rich, distinct, and pulsing. They quickly boogied their way into my heart and spirit, and they dance there still. I treasure them.

Clickon this link to view a short video of Kenyans singing a Swahili praise song, “Angalia Bwana” (Look, Oh Lord). The leader sings a line, like Jacinta did, and the others sing an answering line. But keep in mind that in this clip, those are shy young people! Usually, Kenyans sing out with great volume and energy, but I suspect they were nervous on camera.

Here’s another clip that will give you an idea of the pulsing African rhythms and harmonies, and the way Africans usually sing out and enjoy dancing while they sing in church (unlike those shy young people in the first clip). And, oh!—how I miss that now back in America! Like I wrote in Grandma’s Letters from Africa, King David’s dance before the Lord (2 Samuel 6:14) could not have been any more joyous than those dancing in African churches!

I ran into Jacinta a few times after Kenya Safari. She’s a soft-spoken, gentle young lady with a ready smile. (African smiles seem more radiant than Americans’ smiles, don’t they?)

Sweet Jacinta radiated joy!

She blessed me with her quiet spirit,

inner radiance, sunny smiles, and her Swahili worship songs.

Jacinta was a gift from God.

Jacinta helped with childcare and cooking during the orientation course.

Have you ever eaten a chapati?

In my last post, I listed a number of firsts experienced during Kenya Safari, our three-month orientation course. Some of those firsts were delightful, others not so much!

Another first was eating chapatis.

When Indians started moving to Kenya (around 1900, if I recall correctly), they introduced chapatis—basically, flour tortillas.

Chapatis consist of about three cups of flour and one cup of cold water stirred together and kneaded for a few minutes.

After letting the dough sit for half an hour, you divide the dough into little balls about the size of a ping pong ball, sprinkle each with flour, and roll them out until they’re very thin.

Traditional recipes call for frying them in a dry pan over a hot fire for a few seconds on each side.

By the time we moved to Kenya, chapatis had become a staple food for Kenyans but over the decades, they’d changed the original Indian recipe.

During our orientation course, the chapatis our Kenyan staff prepared were a quarter of an inch thick (usually thicker) with lard layered in, and fried in lard, too.

In Chapter 2 of Grandma’s Letters from Africa, I described them as “unleavened, and with a dense, rubbery consistency.”

Often people tear them into bite-size pieces and drop them into Kenyan stew—cabbage, onions, carrots, and tomatoes boiled together. Sometimes they add a little meat, too.

Mmmm . . . . Recalling such meals makes my mouth water.

Sweet memories—even though I’m sure all that lard could not have been good for us!

This is lovely Jacinta (more about her next week), along with another staff member, James, working at our cooking fire under enormous fig trees in Eleng’ata Enterit.

Jacinta and James at our cook stove during our orientation in Eleng'ata Enterit