In which I love this new church, and spend a day in the slum

I could/should have wrote this days ago but I’ve been busybusy and therefore tired at the end of the day and not feeling like thinking enough to type out a post.
BUT.
So…last you heard it was Thursday and I’d just arrived.

So Friday was a waste of time, basically…I went to the Zinduka office in the morning, got a tour and got introduced to all the people who work at the office, and then was told to wait for them to get my schedule for the week. An hour and a half later I got the schedule. For Friday it said “introduction”. Also the office closes at noon on Friday, so I took a nap with my head on the desk, wrote in my journal, and drank tea. When the office closed I went and sat in the church’s main office lobby and read the newspaper and did all the crosswords and sudokus in the paper. Then I sat in Cathy’s office and read about all the kings of Israel that did really stupid things that made God really angry until she finished working and we went home.
Here’s a side note for you: Sunday after church they had these small groups and I joined a random one and we were talking about the book of Hebrews, which talks a lot about Jesus’ sacrifice and how it restored people to God, and we were talking about the old way of doing that, was to make a animal sacrifice…and when priests tried to enter the temple, or make sacrifices without being clean, without preparing themselves, God sometimes struck them down. Like…if you went into the room where the Ark of the Covenant was when you weren’t supposed to, and without making all the sacrifices for your sin, you just died. And nowadays people do all sort of sacrilegious things, and people whose only thoughts are for their own fame and fortune preach about God and in general we approach God with a lot of disrespect and dishonesty…but nobody gets struck dead for it. What mercy is available to us now that Jesus is here…and we’ve taken it for granted, I think.
Which is also interesting in context of those kings of Israel. They did EXACTLY what God told them NOT to do and built alters to other gods in the middle of God’s temple…and God allowed other nations to come and take them over but as SOON AS they repented and started serving God again, he delivered them. SO MANY times. So even BEFORE Jesus he was being SO merciful to them, ya know? We always say “In the Old Testament God was wrathful and judgmental and in the New Testament God is forgiving and merciful because of Jesus…but truth is he was REALLY merciful even in the Old Testament.

Anyway. Saaaaturday we slept in and then made chapati dough (YEAH!!) then I went with Cathy to pick up her niece and nephew from her sister’s house, and bring them over to her brother’s house. Her brother’s house is really close to hers so we walked home. On the way we stopped at a fruit stand just inside the gate of the estate, and some random guy said hi and asked where I was from and what my name was, and tried talking to me but I couldn’t understand his English or Swahili very well…which is a common thing for people to do. What isn’t common is when we moved on to the vegetable stand 50 ft away, he followed us and just sort of stood next to me, trying to talk but not doing a very good job getting words out. So I realized he was drunk, and we told him to go away, and the 3 or 4 other people around us watching were just like …”dude…leave them alone, you’re embarrassing yourself”. So eventually the vegetable man finished chopping the cabbage and we left Mr. Drunk behind.
Then we got home and made CHAPATI S and they were DELICIOUS as usual.
Then we went to the airport to say bye to Sam’s mom, who was going to the US for 3 weeks to visit some family member who’s there. That was the first time I’ve been to that airport with no intention of flying out, which makes me officially a local, I’ve heard. :-P I met Sam’s dad who is also the senior pastor of the church, and his mom, and a couple other family members. We stayed for a while until they fiiinally had to go, then took literally 30 minutes to get out of the parking lot, even though it would have taken 10 steps to get from the parking spot to the gate. Apparently a lot of people want out of the airport lot at 9:30pm.

Suuuuunday we went to church at ICC, and I LOVE this church. I went to the youth service (youth here is the equivalent of “young adult” which was about 150 people. Everyone is so incredibly HAPPY to see each other and to be there, it reminded me of an extra large Chi Alpha. They were even serving tea and mandazi (fried dough things) which would have been icing on the cake if I hadn’t gotten on line too late to get any before they ran out. Oops. Sooo we had church and then I went over to the visitor table to say hi and they had tea and mandazi THERE so I did end up having some. :-D After church they had their small groups. They’ve all been going through this book that is a re-arrangement of the books of the New Testament into a different order…plus no chapter and verse numbers. So we had a discussion about Hebrews that was really good. Theeen we did a LOT of sitting around and talking to various people…the youth were having some sort of small group competition so there were a lot of games out, and I watched and kept score and was the official dictionary for a game of scrabble. I did not expect to find that game amongst non-native English speakers, but it will indicate to you how educated and westernized this area is that they actually played, and only one person made a habit of using only 3 and 4 letter words, and added “s” to the end of other people’s words.

I went home with friends of Cathy and Sam’s who live a couple of houses away because Cathy and Sam had a married couples’ class, so I spent the afternoon watching the Style network (cable TV..is that cheating …am I still allowed to call myself “on a missions trip”?) because it made me feel connected to home to know what Giuliana and Bill are doing with their lives. :-P

Monday was an adventure. I went with Zinduka people to do VCT just outside the Kware slums (Which is where we did the clinic both of the previous times I’ve been here). They basically set up 4 10ftx10ft tents with curtains down the middle to make 8 small rooms , with plastic stools. The front is covered by a “Free VCT” sign which sort of makes privacy but not really. Each counselor takes a room, and 2 people are on recruitment duty. They basically tell people “come here” and they come, then they say “go get tested” and sometimes they go, sometimes they don’t. Usually people need to be asked otherwise they will walk right by…but a lot of people will go in as soon as they’re asked…like they only need the tiniest bit of convincing to get tested.

I want to make this short so I will tell you the facts and keep the entertaining story until next time. :-D

So from my experiences through the day and asking the counselors I gathered the following information: The counselors have a 3-week training program before they can counsel. They do this free VCT every day. They choose one location and go there every day for a week, then move on. The counselors go in 2 shifts, one from 8-noon, one from 12-4…which is actually closer to 5:30 or whenever-they-feel-like-stopping (since the street becomes much more crowded around 5 as people get off work). The session takes about 10-15 minutes, they get counseled, informed about HIV, how to get it, prevent it, etc., then they get tested. There’s a standard 1^st test. If it’s positive they use another one to confirm, if that is positive they are positive. If the 2^nd is negative there’s a third test (They’re all different KINDS of tests, not just a repeat of the same one) that is the tiebreaker. Whichever it says is the answer. They do a questionnaire to find out if they’re an “at risk” person (prostitute, IV drug user, fisherman/truck driver[“a girl in every port” ya know?]) to see if they should have further follow-up at another facility. Then they go on their way!

So some funny things happened, involving a couple of drunk-but-not-disorderly guys, but I’m tired and we’ve passed 2 pages so you’ll just have to wait until tomorrow. :-D

I will also inform you about today's adventures.
Isn't the suspense killing you?
I didn't think so, you're more patient than that.