Kenya 101: A Lesson on Kenyan Time

Before your lesson begins, Taryn wanted me to share a couple more Christmas stories with you. It seems that here in Kenya Taryn is just 18 years old – or, at least, that’s what the Ngamau women thought! Taryn sure was grinning from ear to ear when they told her that! Another highlight of working with the women in the kitchen was that she was given a Kikuyu name: Wanjiko. The women couldn’t tell her the exact meaning of the name, but they did say that it was an honourable name (it is also the Kikuyu name that was given to Glenda, Wachira’s wife).

Anyhow, let’s move on to the lesson. The last few days have given us some insight into what is commonly referred to as “Kenyan Time”. There are two spheres to this lesson. The first is that Kenyans are rarely on time. When you’re told to be ready by a certain time for a ride and you’re worried about being late, don’t fret because you can bank on waiting around for at least an hour. We can attribute this to the relational dynamic of Kenyan culture – whenever you see someone you know, you always stop to talk with them for a while. And in towns and villages where everyone knows everyone, you can imagine that this can take some time. The second is that Kenyans (so far as we can tell) do not understand the concept of “down time” and our inherent need for it. We think this is because Kenyans are a very hard working, patient people and have become accustomed to spending long hours doing everything from driving on the bumpy roads to working at their jobs. To illustrate these points, we’ll share some stories from Sunday and Tuesday.

Sundays for us are typically a day of going to church and then resting and relaxing, but in Kenya these are days that seem to be packed with multiple church services, lunches and other relational activities. This past Sunday, we went to the AIC church where Wachira preached on the importance of always praying – through good times and hard times. He spoke about the reality of suffering and the importance of persevering through it rather than complaining (which I will admit is something I am great at – complaining to God that is, not persevering). The service passed quickly and we were captivated by the wise teachings of Mr. Wachira. After the service, we went for mandazis, sausage and tea with a few friends and then we were called back to the church for a baptism service. Little did we know that we would first have to sit through the Kiswahili service before the baptisms took place. It seemed as though this service took much longer than the first .. only because we don’t understand the language. The baptisms were quite the sight as thirty people got baptized in an outdoor square shaped pool. They had to do the baptisms quickly since the weather was cool and the water was cold - they got all thirty people done in twenty minutes! Then we went in for a communion service which lasted about half an hour, though it seemed longer since again, it was done in Kiswahili. By this time it was pushing 3:30 and we got invited out for lunch with Wachira, Pastor Peter and their families. Then at 5pm, we left this gathering and went straight to Maina’s house for dinner with his family. We arrived home at 9pm.

On Monday, we went to visit Methenge and Ndegwa (both teachers at PACE) and their family homesteads, which are just over an hour outside of Nyharuru. We were picked up at 8am by our friend Nancy and she joined us for the day. We were supposed to arrive at Ndegwa’s place by 10am, but as it turned out the buses don’t move until they are full and ours didn’t fill up until 10:30am! So, we arrived at the cut-off for St. Lucia – which is where Ndegwa met us – around noon, and we still had a half our walk to get to the homesteads! We sort of had to rush through lunch with Ndegwa’s family so that we would still have time to see Methenge’s family (and his very cute new baby girl!!). Both families by the way were genuinely excited to have us in their homes and we enjoyed our time there thoroughly. One thing we have learned is that when we go to visit someone’s house to share a meal, it is expected that there will be no food left by the end – so we constantly hear the words, “Please keep eating! Have more food, please!” from the mammas of the house. Sometimes they will just pile more food on our plates and smile. It’s pretty cute.

We left the homesteads at 3pm and walked 45 minutes to get to the place where a matatu would pick us up. We ended up taking motorcycle taxis instead, which was a lot o fun. We passed by people and they would look at each other as if in shock and say, “Ooh, Muzungos!” We passed by one group of young children who literally went bananas when they saw us on the bike. They were hooting and screaming and pointing and clapping as if we were Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes! God bless the children! We arrived home at 7pm after a visit to the Nyharuru market where we discovered someone had duped Nancy with a fake 500 shilling bill – poor thing.

And just when we thought we’d get a day of rest, we were invited to visit with Irungu’s family which was another all-day event as we had quite the distance to travel. It was, however, delightful meeting his exceedingly happy father and mother, and some extended family. His parents were also thrilled to give us a tour of their 2-acre lot, most of which was used for their livestock (cows, goats, sheep, chicken) and crops (maize, orange trees, kale, onions, etc.) We made a couple stops on the way back, and so didn’t return until 6pm.

You must realize by now that Kenyans are very relational people, and we get the sense that “down time” for them is a time shared with others (aside from labour). Remember our camping story when we went tenting with 20 pastors and their families? That was down time for them, but definitely was not for us. Interesting isn’t it? We can totally appreciate how Kenyans spend their free time (within community) and I think it’s something that gets totally lost on our ruggedly individualistic culture. However, it is still good to have alone time between us and God, and to go to that quiet place where we are able to listen to Him without the distractions of life all around us (whatever they may be).

During one lengthy drive home (the perfect opportunity to just spend time with your thoughts), we once again realized how amazingly blessed we are. What we saw – as we sat in the relative comfort of a matutu - were children with the ends of their shoes cut out to allow their feet to grow, men using nothing more than old bikes to push an impossible amount of stuff up a huge hill (my guess is at least a kilometer), and women carrying buckets of water strapped to their heads as they walked along what seemed an endless road. We remembered that we can eat what we want whenever we want, travel at any time with fair ease, and generally have an abundance of everything. It doesn’t seem fair when we see people struggling just to survive, but especially because we also know that there is extreme wealth here in Kenya. During one visit, we looked at wedding pictures of one of our friend’s brothers who works for a multi-national corporation in Nairobi. This (Christian) wedding cost nearly US $20,000, and yet our friend struggles to make ends meat doing very respectable work. Our friend told us that his brother spent more on a pre-wedding dowry reception than he makes in two years of work. But this is a reality here in Kenya – you have a very small number of people who are unbelievably affluent, and a minute middle class of small business owners. Everyone else struggles just to make it day-by-day it seems, and with the increase in price of the staple foods, the struggle worsens constantly with no help from government officials. So this experience served to re-iterate to us that as human beings we tend to seek our own good first. But we are taught that as a community of Christians, we should always first seek the good of others. If all Christians sought the good of one another before themselves, I wonder what kind of world we would live in?

Here is a section of scripture that has touched us this week:Romans 12:9-21