Next Door to the Orphans: What to do with your extra wife

NDONYO, Kenya -- Because of some health questions which the female residents of Ndonyo had raised during the nutrition workshop, the leaders of our LEAMIS International Ministries mission trip and the leaders of New Life Church decided that it would be a good idea to conduct separate men's and women's meetings one afternoon.

Jim Upton was called upon to lead the men's workshop. Since Guy McDonald was busy working on the water purification system that LEAMIS had brought to Ndonyo, I decided to sit in on Jim's session and provide moral support.

Jim had opened the floor for questions when one man raised his hand.

"The Bible tells us that we should have only one wife," he asked. "But what happens if you have two wives, and then you become a Christian? Should you divorce one of your wives?"

Jim and I fumbled around with that one for a second. I tried to explain that since polygamy is both illegal and uncommon in the United States, it's not a theological question with which Jim or I had a lot of experience.

A few minutes later, I decided that since many of the questions were marriage-related, and since I've never been married, I would duck out and let Jim tread water by himself.

Fortunately, most of the questions I had to answer during my week in Ndonyo had to do with soap-making.

Most; not all. One day, when I was in a funk at having broken my digital camera, several of the church members struck up a conversation with me on the sidewalk outside where Guy and I were rooming.

We talked about the United States. Did our houses in the U.S. have thatched roofs, like most of the huts in Ndonyo? How did we get from place to place?

Perhaps my favorite question, and it was deadly serious, was whether black Americans and white Americans spoke the same language.

On a different day, Joseph Keango -- the church pastor -- and I had a more informed conversation about the misconceptions Americans and Kenyans might have about each other. Kenyans were indignant when the U.S. State Department issued a travel warning for Kenya. The warning seems to have had more to do with the fact that Kenya borders on the Sudan than with any actual threat coming from Kenya, a relatively peaceful country with little inter-tribal violence.

But the differences between available resources in Shelbyville and rural Kenya are staggering. April Klabzuba and Audrey Lindsey, two bright and enthusiastic 24-year-olds, were in charge of our children's ministry in Ndonyo. I don't know how they did it, but they created crafts and Sunday School-like activities for as many as 150 children each day while the rest of the team members led cottage industry workshops. On their first day, they had the children make some sort of simple craft out of a paper bag. At the end of the session, the translators and other adults from Ndonyo began taking up the paper bag crafts, never dreaming that this was a souvenir which the children would be allowed to keep. On another occasion, Audrey and April had to carefully explain to the adults that the kids were allowed -- encouraged, even -- to use more than one color of crayon on their projects.

Neither the church where we worked in Ndonyo nor the church where we visited in Kegogi has electric power. The Kegogi church has access; in fact, a power line runs right across the church's property. But the cost of actually hooking up to the power lines would be prohibitive for the church.

The hospitality which the people of Ndonyo showed us was humbling. There were times when I felt conflicted about it. As a short-term missionary, you always want to be gracious enough to receive true hospitality, given in love. Some people find it harder to receive hospitality than give it.

Kenya has a tradition of pouring water from a pitcher for guests to wash their hands before a meal. One of my teammates sometimes refused this, saying he had already washed his hands, and I winced every time he did that. This wasn't just about sanitation; it was a ceremony of sorts, a sign of good manners. To turn it down would be rude.

But at the same time, we wanted to send a deliberate message of partnership and equality, and resist any false hospitality arising from the remnants of colonialism, race or class distinctions. Sending that message meant doing things like mixing and mingling when we sat down for worship services. It would have been a terrible example for all the mzungus to sit together in a clump in the sanctuary. The church members asked us all to sit up front at the week's first service, so that we could all be introduced, but after that we sat among the church members.

On the first few days of my soapmaking workshop, my dirty pots and pans were whisked away by workshop members at the end of the session to be washed. Then, one day when I had a different set of students, that didn't happen -- and I caught myself feeling annoyed at having to wash my own dishes. When I realized what was happening, I was ashamed at my attitude.

I wrote on Monday about our remarkable welcome to Ndonyo. But our departure was equally remarkable, and another humbling display of hospitality. On our last day in Ndonyo, we had to walk up a steep hill to get to the place where we were supposed to meet our matatu (public transit van). Our luggage had been gathered in the church compound, and various church members -- primarily the women -- picked up our bags and carried them on their heads up the hill. We weren't allowed to carry anything heavier than a backpack or purse. The air, as I noted in a previous installment, is quite thin in Ndonyo, and it was all some of us could do to get ourselves up the steep hill, much less a heavy suitcase. (I was, at that moment, quite grateful for having been talked out of a similar hike a day or two earlier.)

LEAMIS gives the families or churches that host its teams a stipend to help cover food and other costs. Several times, the church made us feel a bit more at home by purchasing soft drinks for us. The soft drinks were kept in a cool place, but without full-time power they obviously weren't refrigerated.

The very first time we were served soft drinks, I decided to try the only thing on the table that wasn't a recognizable American brand name -- Stoney Tangawizi, a soft drink marketed by Coca-Cola in Kenya. It has a citrus taste with a cinnamon aftertaste that you can feel on the back of your throat; I thought it was delicious, and said so. From that point forward, they handed me a Tangawizi every time we had soft drinks. I really did enjoy it, but late in the week I swapped with one of my teammates just because I was craving something a little more American.

TOMORROW: A place at the table