Gatab

(This Post is a week old, so bear with me... this weekend is coming soon too! I can't upload too many pictures, because the people that run the internet will probably come slap me for stealing their bandwidth)

Our Cessna 206 is climbing out of Wilson airport in Nairobi, Kenya on our way to Gatab, Kenya. Below us stretches a golf course and “The estates,” some of the nicer housing in Nairobi. Only a fence seperates both of these from the million people living in the Kibera slum. Only a fence from rags to riches. We are climbing for 9,500 feet where the air is cool and the turbulence is light. We fly over Nairobi, then to lush mountain passes and waterfalls, then to an absolute, desolate desert. A drought stretching from Sudan to Northern Kenya to Somolia has killed any hope of vegetation up here. Governments (at least Kenya’s government), the UN, and AIM-AIR alike are shipping relief food to these people as their animals are wasting away and any hope of crops is gone. Gatab is in Northern Kenya (sorry, I said East earlier) overlooking Lake Turkana, a 120 mile long lake stretching from Ethiopia then south into Kenya.

Our 206 makes an initial stop in Langolani, a blazing hot village at the edge of Lake Turkana. Palm trees make it look tropical, but there is no “oasis-ness” about this place. We meet up with Tim, a missionary on a four-wheeler and a pistol in his holster. Rough place. We exchange some greetings and John (on our plane) gets Tim’s electric jackhammer. John is building a dormhouse for children at the school in Gatab. John, while digging the dorm’s footings, has encountered some massive amounts of rock.

We take off and climb 4,500 feet toward a mountain 15 miles east, Gatab. Jeff, our pilot, makes a firm landing onto a 2,000 foot grass landing strip that ends at a cliff. We are met by Jeff and John’s families and a host of Kenyans and their farm animals. Some are dressed in t-shirts, some in colorful robes.

After the greetings (Kenyans prefer a “Habari?” with a firm handshake. You reply “Nzuri.”), we make it to back to Jeff’s house, where we will be staying a few days.

I learn that this area of Kenya is composed mostly of people of the Samburu tribe. The Samburu tribe (google them) is not unlike the Massai tribe, which you have probably heard about. They’re a semi-nomadic people that make their living herding animals. People were in varying levels of traditional dress, with many women weighed down with decorative beads and head-dresses. The men often had colorful beaded earrings poking out the top of their ears. Many of them were huddled in assorted groups watching us go about, but the men and women never associated in public. Oh, and there’s donkeys and goats everywhere.

Gatab, at 5,500 feet, is on a small mountain and technically a rain-forest. A rain-forest overlooking an desert that extends in any direction for hundreds of miles. Lake Turkana below makes it feel like you’re on a small island, but it hasn’t rained more than a sprinkle in Gatab for more than a year straight. Nor has it rained on the desert below for hundreds of miles. For more than a year. From Sudan to Somolia.

The Samburu raise animals for their livelihood, but not really as a cash commodity. A rancher in America raises cows to sell them for profit. Samburu raise a large herd to have the pride of having a large herd. Cows, camels, goats, donkeys. With the drought, their animals are wasting away because all the grazing land has been depleted. They could sell a few animals to help weather the hard times, but their avarice for a large herd sticks. Instead their animals may just die if the rains don’t come. It doesn’t make sense to me, but I (white person) probably don’t make sense to them.

The more “nomadic” Samburu are the warriors. These are young men who have been initiated through circumcision and have accepted and trained as a warrior. They pleat their hair into tight corn rows and cover that hair with red “ochre,” A red looking soil. These warriors have been initiated at an age anywhere from 14 to 25 years old. In Samburu culture a boy is not a man until he has been initiated. If never initiated, one will always be a boy, even if 60 years old. A boy also has no social standing within the community. Anyways, the warriors seem to be the ones who travel long distances with the herds looking for grazing grounds. They are to defend the animals, whether it be from animals or other tribes. Many in the community worry that fighting will ignite among the several tribes’ warriors as they all close in on the few remaining grazing grounds.

I awake Sunday to see Kevin talking to Mark, a 14 year old Samburu boy who has been hired to feed a family’s dog while gone. Mark has seven siblings, six brothers and one sister who is the youngest. His oldest brother is a warrior and his next brother has gone to the university to study. I’d love to sit in at that dinner table conversation! Mark takes us on a tour of the community, where we meet many of the people and animals of Gatab. He explains how, when having children, boys are most important and that a proud family is one full of boys. He explains how many of the animals are starving and much of Gatab’s population has left with their animals looking for grazing grass. He tells us of all the wild animals living near and is amazed that I haven’t ever seen a baboon in the wild. He shows us his uncle’s five camels. He asks me why I am so old (23) without being married. “You come to Africa without a wife?” We compare life and Kenya and America and talk about Obama.

“It’s good to have friends,” Mark says.

We go to church on Sunday. The children sit in front. Women on the left. Men on the right. Boy do they know how to sing! Long and loud and I like it. The sermon is in Samburu and translated to Kiswahili. I didn’t learn much from the foreign sermon but did learn a lot. All the children would look back at me and smile. I’d smile back and they’d hide their face out of shyness. Most of the adults shook my hand with a “Habari?” I was warmly welcomed and asked to introduce myself to the church. We were in a cement building with peeling paint but it was so, so full of life. It’s what is on the inside that counts I guess.

After church we learn that three miles down the road a lorry (truck) has been ambushed by 3-4 men dubbed the “Turkana Raiders.” These guys have guns and have been setting up small ambushes on the road into Gatab. The men in the lorry escape and watch from the bush as the raiders steal what they can. The raiders were starving so badly that the truck drivers saw them, from a distance, drinking cooking oil. The lorry was carrying relief supplies from the Kenyan government to Gatab.

First, with a name like Turkana Raiders, who wouldn’t want to be one? Second, guys with guns on roads is a big reason why mission aviation is in need in Africa.

Kevin and I were supposed to leave on the Samaritan’s Purse King Air 200 on Monday but the flight got delayed a day. So, we spent Monday working with John (who is with Master’s Mission, who seem to be Marines-met-Jesus. Chevy pickups and power tools and a handgun.) With John, we were working with a dozen Kenyan guys digging like nuclear war was coming. We worked through rock to dig the footing of the dorm room going in for the school kids. I worked largely with Manai, John’s right-hand-man. He knows Kiswahili and I know English, but we both know improvized sign language and man-grunts. Thus, cutting rebar and moving dirt, a friendship was born.

What a weekend to a far corner of the earth, right here in the middle of Africa.

To the ends of the earth,

Lance