A Dominican Walk Through Kenya (Part 8)

And On The Whole World

As I set my alarm for 5:05 a.m., I knew, from experience, that waking up that early could only mean a special event worth waking up for was approaching. Mass at the Missionaries of Charity started at 6:30 a.m., and we had taken a big swallow as we told Sister Gonzalo that we would be there. We figured this is a worthwhile opportunity at her invitation. And when you promise something to a Missionary of Charity Sister, that is sufficient motivation to roll out of bed, and start the engines with some Kenyan tea.

This was also a jolting opportunity to see the pre-dawn activity of the matatu busses and people heading to work. Farmers, merchants, and school children were all making their way to their destination as the sky started to lighten. We had no such progress on our journey, as the matatu we needed to make it the hour commute didn’t start until 7:00. At this point late for Mass, we arrived 3 minutes before our planned 8:00 departure with Sister Donatella, M.C. to the school set up by the sisters in the Kibera slum. Hakuna Matata.

Heading off from the orphanage, which had become a place of familiar faces, we set off on a new venture, going stride for stride with sister in her blue stripe embroidered Missionary of Charity habit. Wearing our white habits in the dusty environment, our strategy was that the people in Kibera would recognize Sister and group us together by association. Conceding that we were going to stick out no matter what, our plan seemed to be working. I couldn’t help but notice that Sister Donatella, a 5’4” Kenyan with a hearty smile and a solid practical street wit about her (for which we were grateful) was wearing formidable hiking boots, prepared to scale any mountain.

We were soon to find out why her tactical footwear would prove essential. We actually had to climb into the Kibera slum. No need for a harness, but I did find myself gripping the stones of a wall down an alley trying to catch my balance. I staggered my steps to avoid mud and a trickle of water under me. Left. Right. Hold onto this post. Nope, it is bending. Slap. Slosh. Br. Peter is down, rebounding quickly, but not without a mud streak all across the backside of his habit as a souvenir to our entrance into one of the largest slums in Africa. Resiliently, we pressed on until the grade of the slope leveled and we approached a scene of the valley and hill on the other side, where the school was located, nestled somewhere in the maze of timber and corrugated metal. Now, I want to paint a picture of the conditions in order to highlight the dignity of the people living in them.

(Also, I chose not to take photos of the people we met within Kibera so as to stay focused on the task at hand.)

Some clothes hung on a line above a wavering metal shack in which a mother sat with her little son playing just outside on the path. The little boy ran up to greet us with the most beautiful smile of a young child. Shaking his small hand, and asking how he was with the Swahili greeting, “mambo,” I couldn’t help but notice the background that lay behind him. A stream, with an eerily blue hue, meandered through dirt and sifted through a pile of trash upon which a few chickens browsed for food.

You know, the challenge with a slum like this is often transportation. As trash comes in, as wrapping for food, or materials for building, there is really nowhere for it to go once the items are used. There are certainly not many streets for a garbage truck to drive through. So, it sits and congregates and is pushed into piles to burn leaving a very distinct smell of smoldering plastic. Even if you gathered a bunch of people to move the trash, there is not a ready place for it because the slum is so expansive. So, the trickling water and the piles of rubbish collide resulting in very polluted water. As we continued walking, we crossed a bridge made of rigid metal and hardwood nailed together as we began the ascent up the hill, finally confident that we were not going to step in the main flow of water. A woman selling tomatoes was next to another woman and her teenage son making chapati around a wood fire, under a tin roof. The waft of frying dough actually smelled quite pleasant. You see, the smells here hit you in waves with varying degrees of intensity and direction, either good or bad.

Moving along with Sister Donatella, the majority of the people greeted us warmly. One man, with a weathered face, a big smile, save a few teeth, rosary beads evident under his faded grey shirt, and eyes that seemed to be old and sincere gave us a warm “Karibu.” As we departed, he had a look of peace in his eyes that I can only relate as moving and real. This guy, standing not too far from that stream I was stepping so carefully to avoid, demonstrated a peace beyond understanding. Passing through little markets, that man we left toward the bottom of the hill was not the only one with a look of purity amidst suffering and challenges. Although some certainly did not, a solid number of mothers, children, men on motorbikes, and others offered us smiles and the response “poa” to our asking how they were.

This is where describing the people living their lives in the slums is difficult. I just related how we smiled and greeted many people on our way. Which is true. At the same time, we were also ducking past sheet metal, avoiding brushes with slum dogs, and hopping over trickles of water and trash, and successfully avoiding the water, but not the smell. So, the fact that the attitude of the people remained hopeful, at least when we were with them, speaks to the resiliency and foundation of human dignity in such a perilous environment of struggle and survival.

We also saw faces that looked dejected; not nasty, not vengeful, really just tired and overwhelmed, looking at the immense obstacles of daily life. This gave rise to a few interactions in which the facial expression of these people would progress if you had the chance to maintain eye contact with them long enough. Initially, suspicion and questioning was the look that one woman gave me. I’m sure she was wondering what a Dominican like me, thousands of miles from his home country, was trying to accomplish in a place like this. But with time to move beyond an initial glance, understanding that we came to be with her, not to criticize or try to fix her problems, a shy smirk and more uplifted face emerged from that same woman as we continued our way up to the entrance of the school.

Entering the blue gates outlining the school, the scattered trash dissipated into a cleanly swept stone patio. Peering around the corner of the first building, a well-built compilation of wood posts and sheet metal, we saw a beautiful garden budding with orange and yellow marigolds, sunflowers, and local flamevine flowers, with their orange trumpet like petals all-encompassing a grotto with a statue of the Blessed Mother inside. The flowers, like some of the people we met on the hike to what seemed to be an oasis in the slum, gave beauty to an otherwise dismal situation. Being led into a storage room for food with an accompanying wash area, Sister Donatella arranged for one of the Missionary of Charity sisters in formation to wash Peter’s habit, still giving evidence of our adventure down the muddy slope. Thankfully, it was a bright, sunny day, and we had enough time for it to dry in the open-air clothes racks behind the main building of classrooms.

Shown to the first classroom, we encountered a scene of 30 smiling faces as we endeavored to meet the kindergarten class. What a joy! Their excitement to see us was channeled into an initial buzz of activity before the teacher signaled for them to offer their collective, “Hello visitor,...We are fine,… and you,” greeting in a strangely dissonant tone. The teacher was a genuine, unflappable, hearty woman, reminiscent of the kind of instructor that you might have found in the one-room schoolhouses of the American prairie 120 years ago.

With auditory learning as one of her favorite methods, she had the kids break into a song for us. Interestingly, it was a song I had also sung as a kindergarten student, “Baa baa black sheep, have you any wool?” A number of the kids sputtered through the verses, but they knew the refrain quite well. As they sang, it seemed like they all wanted to make eye contact at once. So, on our part, we were like parents at a recital, giving our attention and acknowledgment to their greeting. The teacher also began a song, one that I had never heard before, which highlighted practical skills of daily life. In one verse, she took some small strips of paper and continued the lyric that it was time to tidy up. You should have seen the race to pick up those small pieces and the commotion that ensued. It was impressive. For real, one kid was almost upside down held up by the other kids on the ground in a fashion not that dissimilar from when the Cubs won the World Series.

Once the papers were thoroughly gathered, the song ended, and they made it back to their seats for us to introduce ourselves. Giving them our names, with Peter evolving into Petah with their response, we described our mission living with the Dominicans, as we kept looking at the kids, smiling and trying to make eye contact with us all at once. Walking through the door, now, to the 1st grade room, I looked back to see a group of kids leaning their heads to watch us go.

We found the next classroom with slightly older kids, but the resonant communal, “good morning, visitors. We are fine... and you,” was the group reaction to our presence. Sister Donatella stood in the back enjoying the whole interaction between us and the students. We met the teacher, another example of a woman heroically committed to the education of these children of Kibera, and introduced ourselves to them, smiles abounding.

The 2nd and 3rd grade rooms were next in which we were glad to receive a similar welcome. Lacking many comforts of life, as they come from the surrounding slum, they were not lacking in energy. Wow. After Sister Donatella gave us a tour of the rest of the compound, we circled back to the kindergarten room where we joined Mrs. Jaclyn, the kindergarten teacher, in her lesson. With a stick, she was pointing to a bulletin board with hand-drawn household items and the English word printed over them. Inviting us to lead by handing me the stick, I pointed at each item, impressed at the volume of their memorized response. After working through similar bulletin boards on jobs, fruits, and numbers up to twenty, we began letter sounds in English. It was interesting to see the African accent of English being formed right before our eyes. “Letter A...sound ahh,” said the teacher, pointed with that useful stick.

After “Letter Z...sound zzz,” I asked the teacher if I could sing a song with them. We then sang “Rise and Shine,” a song with verses about the story of Noah. I recounted bits and pieces of the story, with the arc and the animals, and the dove on dry land, bit by bit, after which Mrs. Jaclyn translated the story into Swahili for the children. At this point in their education, Swahili was a better avenue for oral transmission of a narrative. You know, when I initially learned that song working at The Pines Camp in Texas, I never expected to be teaching it here in this situation. But hey, it was fun.

Signaling it was time to go outside, we followed Mrs. Jaclyn into the courtyard where the kids from the other class were congregating. Close to lunchtime by now, we figured they were saying grace together before getting their food. In the stone yard in front of the grotto, the 160 boys and girls, of the age range of the school, began saying the Apostles Creed in Swahili with a picture of Mother Teresa and the Divine Mercy image visible on the wall in the background. After saying an Our Father, and Hail Mary, they began the prayers of the Divine Mercy Chaplet in English. Could they be saying the Chaplet as a school now? Sure enough, they were.

Talk about a moment of grace, standing there with the kids in lines before us, still peering across the yard to make eye contact with us, sun shining down, and listening to them pray the words, “For the sake of his sorrowful passion, have mercy on us and on the whole world.” Noting that the clean blue fence on the hill was the separation from the surrounding Kibera slum, I couldn’t help but notice the need for mercy and the purity of the prayer of these children. “And on the whole world.” These kids, growing up in a place so far, literally and figuratively, from my own upbringing, were praising Jesus by their prayer and humbly asking for his mercy and protection.

As sister would tell us later, the meal they would have of ugali, greens, and a little meat was the biggest meal, and sometimes the only meal, they would have for the rest of the day, depending on their family situation in the slum. Yet, they prayed that prayer with a strong voice and trust. They had energy and enthusiasm in their prayer. And, when we sat down with them on the concrete as they ate their ugali, they were so glad to shake our hands, share their names, and make us feel welcomed in their little school.

As Jesus said, “Let the children come to me, and do not prevent them; for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these.” Matthew 19:14.