Bulging Pockets

Today started out with a Swahili lesson. Staged in a 10 foot by 12 foot one-room home with two adults and two kids, Violet taught us to barter in Swahili for a fair deal at the market.

-“You are giving me the mzungu price” (which literally translates to wanderer as white people are seen as never sitting still but always moving around)

-”I want the Kenyan price. That is too expensive, please reduce your price”

Back and forth we go, trying to knock a few shillings off of our make-believe elephant carvings, sunset paintings and wooden spoon sets. In the back of my mind, I am thinking about the lavish Pier One store in Tacoma where the prices are often marked up 50-100 fold for international artwork. It is really ethical for us to barter? I would rather have the artist reap the benefits of my white skin and inability to speak proper swahili than corporate America. What about the rich Kenyan at the kiosk next to me who is exerting his pocket power to make his living room look pretty. I deserve to be treated fair compared to him, don't I? I searched around the house for remnants of a Sunday market to find nothing. Our lesson fees covered her family's rent, food and school fees but apparently we didn't pay enough to send her to the market with her leftover money at the end of the month.

At the end of our lesson, she gives us her two cents on how she perceives us white wanderers. Careful not to offend, she points out the realities of mzungus that we try to avoid yet are confronted with many times each day. The concept of travel is within grasp of a very small percentage of this world. Planes, trains and private automobiles are few and far between in some circles. Crossing an ocean seems impossible to some while taking a bus to visit family 300 km away also poses its own set of problems. We thank her for her willingness to integrate Kenyan culture into a language lesson, say our farewell and wander on to our next engagement-an afternoon with a pastor in the same informal settlement.

We find him in the midst of an election rally waiting at stage 2, the last stop on the matatu route. He spots our complexion from afar and welcomes us to his turf. Because of the heat, he decides to cut back our schedule for the afternoon a bit, the main engagement being lunch at his home. We first walk to his church to find 10 of his members waiting for a 5 minute greeting, a prayer and a promise of return. We agree to the terms. Our walk through the community is insightful as he highlights the struggles, triumphs and some of the overarching issues that inform how and why it is the way it is. We have a great deal of respect for this pastor, his commitment to his community and the vision that he has for transformation.

Very similar to the home of our swahili teacher, we sit on a couch which is facing the bedroom and kitchen with no walls to separate the three. His wife graciously prepared a delicious stew, Sikumawiki (cooked Cale) and ugali for us. It was absolutely delicious. We enjoyed a conversation about hopes, dreams and goals for the future of his ministry. He also took the opportunity to learn about us, what it is that we are passionate about and how we feel that our experience in Kenya will change us. We spoke honestly, openly and without the cultural barriers that often hinder one's ability to feel comfortable in being themselves.

Minutes later, a neighbor arrived. Also a pastor, he had lots of questions about what we thought of Kenya, the people and specifically the church. We shared a few thoughts and took the opportunity to learn from his insight in the process. As if he were on cue, he began saying things that no longer corresponded with eachother and digressed from conversation about us as individuals into a conversation about “you people in America”. Over the next ten minutes, we were gawked at because of the amount that we paid for our plane ticket, we were told that our lives would be longer if we gave money to a church to buy land and that we should help bring pastors to the U.S. to be trained. Our wonderful afternoon had taken a turn for the worst.

We often find ourselves in much tension over the power associated with money. Our skin color and ability to travel to Kenya target us as having bulging pockets. It is somewhat ironic that Mandy and I have had many discussions on how things here are much more expensive than we anticipated, how we feel the need to spend wisely as some of our financial support has come from others and that we feel the need to live frugal lives here in comparison to many Kenyans and virtually all Americans. Kris Rocke, the CTM Director reminded us that money is a sacred subject, one that reveals something about the parts of ourselves that we want to cover up the most. I would add that in our situation, money is also a public subject, one that finds us in all situations. Although talk of money does not scare me amongst those that I know and trust, I am not sure how I feel about the sacred meeting the public in this instance.

Our bulging pockets, however slim we might perceive them to be have caused us to feel ashamed, to resent people's motives and to take a closer look at our own constructs of money than we may have ever wanted. Yet in the process, we are learning how to bless people appropriately, whether financially or in other ways, out of obligation, calling, crisis or the fulfillment of a lofty dream.