On October 1st, I am going to ride 70km on a really uncomfortable bike seat. On October 2nd, I am going to be glad it is over.

Raise Their Voice, an organization I am a part of, is joining the Ride for Refuge to raise funds for the North American tour of my play  She Has a Name. Produced by Burnt Thicket Theatre, the play has already touched the hearts of thousands of Canadians, but is a story I hope many more will experience. The play deals with the realties of child sex slavery and the devastating nature of the exploitation one of millions of children in the world face.

Raising awareness is the beginning of the journey for individuals who want to help bring restoration to the trafficked and exploited. That is why I am riding. And that’s, ultimately, why I wrote the play. The  2011 Ride for Refuge is a cycling fundraiser that supports over 150 charitable partners who in turn support thousands more who are displaced, vulnerable or exploited – refugees, orphans, widows, street kids, the urban poor, homeless, victims of human trafficking.  The list is extensive.

This fall 6000+ other riders and volunteers in Canada and the USA will raise $1,300,000 for some of the most marginalized people in our world. The ride I am a part of takes place near Gull Lake Alberta and will be beautiful. There is an option to ride 20 or 70 km, or if riding isn’t your thing, others are simply joining to raise funds or volunteering. If you want to take part in any way to support Raise Their Voice and Burnt Thicket Theatre please hit the link at the bottom of this post.

She Has a Name will help shape change and begin a release of freedom for many stuck in impossible conditions most of us can’t even imagine. 70 kms on a bike is really a small sacrifice, and it isn’t the last I and many others will personally make to play a part in reshaping the culture that currently allows such awful realities.

Please help me meet my personal goal to raise $500 by giving a $5 or $10 donation right here. Or, join the ride! Bike with me by joining my team – KooMen.

Please ride, donate, and believe with us that the goal to tour the play and, most importantly, to abolish the modern day slave trade, will occur in our life times!

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With thanks for KooMEN team captain Matthew Kooman for some of the wordsmithing on this post.

As YWAM celebrates its 50th year, Andrew wanted to catch up with people who’ve experienced the global organization’s flagship training program, the Discipleship Training School, and see what life and faith has been like since. View other interviews in the on-going series here.

Andrew Kooman: Why did you pack your bags, get on a plane, and head to England for your DTS?

Peter Bos: During a trip to Kenya with a friend, we talked about DTS. I told him I’d never do a DTS because I hate skits and dramas.  During the same trip two different pastors asked me if I wanted to be involved in missions. I kept those words in mind and pondered them often during the rest of the trip, and didn’t share them with anyone else. When I came home to Holland I found a letter on my pillow written during the trip, which contained the same question. I knew that God was calling me for missions.

In the next few months I started researching several opportunities and DTS was one of them. After some prayer and asking for council I decided to attend a DTS, but where?! That was another big nut to crack. I landed on two options, Scandinavia and England, but both had pro’s and con’s. On a Sunday my wife (then girlfriend) and I took some time to pray for someone to bring confirmation during the church service I was going to attend that evening for the location where I should go. Nothing really happened during the church service and doubt started to fill my mind. As I was thinking and doubting a lady came up to me and asked me if I was going to England.

There was the confirmation that we prayed for!  So 2 weeks later I packed my bags and left on a plane to England to attend a DTS at YWAM Holmsted Manor. This was January 2006.

AK: What was the most significant lesson that you learned during your time in the school?

PB: God has called me to be a leader. I had never realized that before, but somehow it made sense.

AK: When you look back, how do you place or view your DTS in the context of your life? Why was it significant? What expectations did it meet or fall short of?

PB: I absolutely had no idea what I had gotten myself into, so really no expectations. I knew there would be a lecture phase and an outreach, that was about it. I loved every bit of it and really enjoyed living in community and learning together. I think what was hard was the transition back into normal life. DTS can become quite a “bubble” and being out in the world can be quite a challenge. I don’t think you can really prepare yourself for it, especially when you have been in a Manor where the nearest neighbours are cows, ducks and rabbits. The girls were waiting every day for Mr. Darcy to come down the drive. I guess that says it all…

It was an incredibly rich time, full of great moments and memories!

AK: Did you do any further training or work with YWAM or complete any other post-secondary education?

PB: After I finished my DTS I went back to Holland for about 1.5 years. Inge and I got married in that time and started planning to return to England. In December 07 we packed our bags for the move to England to start work working with YWAM. Inge hadn’t done a DTS yet, so she attended one and we led a team to Poland for a 2 month outreach. After that I pioneered a young leader development program called Foundational Leadership Development Course (FLDC). We did several outreaches, pastoral visits and were involved in several DTSes. Inge and I also led a DTS which started in September 09. We finished our time in England in May 2010 and returned to Holland with our son Roan.

Before I did my DTS I also got two degrees in Mechanical Engineering.

AK: What do you do now?

PB: At the moment I’m working as a Product Support Engineer/Trainer in a company that sells truck-loading equipment. Besides my job, Inge and I are thinking about starting a ministry to train and equip local young people and take them on mission trips. Mission work has impacted us so much and we want to share of what we have learned in these years with YWAM.

AK: What specific vision or purpose do you have in your life? How did you discover it and how do you mean to achieve it?

PB: I have been challenged to think differently in the last number of years. I came from a place where I often asked myself: God what is your will for my life? which frustrated me big time every now and then. Until I read Chasing Daylight by Erwin McManus. He changes the question around to God, how can I give me life for your will? God has made his will known and we can be part in making that happen. He has created us and equipped us with gifts and talents. My vision is making the most of who I am (in Christ) and helping other move towards their full potential too. This is a vague statement, but it helps me not to get caught up in details..

Moving towards all there is means edging forward. Not always hallelujah but being real. Walking in openness and brokenness, and, the journey doesn’t end when I leave this place. That’s comforting I guess.

AK: What do you hope your personal legacy will be?

PB: I could write 10 sentences full of Christianese language, but that would be sad.

I hope that when I leave this place that I will have made impact in peoples lives. That people have been challenged. And that people will remember me for living a life of no regrets.

AK: What, at this point in your life, is your view of God?

PB: He is good. Good and faithful. I can’t stop thinking about that. Also that He is full of surprises. He is always the same but always uses new ways to reach people.

AK: What inspires you?

PB: Creation, but mostly water. I love the widespread waters of Holland, the waves and the quiet. I also love reading books full of deep thoughts. Books that you can’t read in one go but have to digest bit by bit. I also get excited when people pursue their dreams and make them happen..

At the moment I get inspired most by my son Roan. He is so determined and loves adventure. A great joy and inspiration to be around!

AK: What most challenges you?

PB: People painting a picture of the church that is simply not real. People getting hurt in the church. Being real. It is so easy to put up a mask, to hide away the true self and walk away in a stained glass masquerade.

I realize that these are just umbrellas for loads of thoughts which would take quite some thought and paper to share. As you might have gathered I think a lot and do need paper and space to process. That can be challenging too!

I’m going to

To read this

Do a bit of this

I’m traveling there with the star of

And I have the privilege to hear

speak.

Hopefully I’ll drink some of this:

And on return have some leftovers of this:

Here’s the Alberta James Cameron isn’t talking about.
Kananaskis country is the place to be when the leaves start to turn yellow.

Well, this is certainly a first for me, blogging from 32, 000 ft.

It’s been one of those flights you dread.  To be fair, things started well.  I got my ticket and went through security like a greased pig slips through a farmer’s calloused hand.

I wasn’t racially profiled which occasionally happens, nor was I searched, patted, nude-full-body-scanned, or sneered at by tired airline agents, which seems fair-game in today’s mad world.  And so far, no flight attendants have cursed us out or pulled the emergency shoot, beer in hand, and headed for the parking lot.

But they might have had reason to.  We just took to flight, the seat belt signs are off, and I’m only just (2+ hours later than scheduled) legally using my electronic devices.

I’ll have you know that this post is costing me 9.95 USD.  I have mixed feelings about this. Every word I type, I guess, softens the blow.  After paying 25 USD for my bag (which was 2 lbs over – the kind Belgian check-in agent looked the other way) and nearly as much for my soggy turkey sandwich on sourdough, it’d be nice to be thrown a perk, especially after waiting in the terminal for an extra hour because of a flight delay, and then on the tarmac for another hour with no explanation while the pilot, after a safety check, had to ensure that a light which went off was just that – an indicator light going off – and we could fly “legal, safe, and compliant.”

But I won’t be one of those passengers who sits and complains. (Wink). I have much to be thankful for.  Like the fact that this isn’t a full flight and I could move up a few aisles to have a twobie row to myself.  And that I can take some time to reflect on my trip (which was unique, and different than I expected, with a few surprises, some sunshine, much laughter).  That I can read more from the RS Thomas biography I’ve been digging into.  Think, muse, and even pray.

I only hope blogging brother aggrodude won’t be too frustrated when I arrive – that he’ll still be there.  The reason I dipped online in the first place was to relay the message that “I’m gonna be late.”

But you know, flying – and life – can be like that.  There are delays.  Things go differently than you expect.  You take your seat, and wait.  Your life and time at the mercy of someone else who has control.  Trusting, only trusting, that you’ll get where you mean to go with the few things you could carry in your hand.

In 2006 Andrew traveled with a crew of six independent filmmakers to shoot the film E for Everyone: The Mouse and the Elephant. The following is an excerpt and a behind the scene look of Andrew’s experience on set.

Previous Entry

What are the edges of our lives and what is the space?  How do we present ourselves to those hands that shape?  Outside a small shop near the Tulia Guesthouse in Nairobi I drank a Coke from a glass bottle for sixteen Kenyan shillings, the equivalent of thirty Canadian cents.  Thinking back on our time in Lodwar and Kisa, considering my shape and the shape of my dreams and whether those dreams are the same shape as God’s perception of my life.  I have come to no solid conclusion yet.

There is, however, something I’m aware of, I reach for it like a child stretches his tongue on a dare for the back of his throat.  For a brief moment able to touch at and feel the soft flesh, reeling and relieved to leave things be.  There’s a part of God that isn’t nice and isn’t tame and, were I not aware of his tenderness or loving heart, a part that would make me feel afraid.

Lord, you have been our dwelling place.

Throughout all generations.

Before the mountains were born

Or you brought forth the earth and world,

From everlasting to everlasting

You are God.

You turn men back to dust saying

“Return to dust, O sons of men.”

For a thousand years in your sight are like a day

That has just gone by,

Or like a watch in the night.

You sweep men away in the sleep of death;

They are like the new grass of morning –

Though in the morning it springs up new,

By evening it is dry and withered.

We are consumed by your anger

And terrified by your indignation.

You have set our iniquities before you,

Our secret sins in the light of your presence.

All our days pass away under your wrath;

We finish our years with a moan.

The length of our days is seventy years –

Or eighty if we have the strength;

Yet their span is but trouble and sorrow,

For quickly they pass, and we fly away.

Who knows the power of your anger?

For your wrath is as great as the fear that is due you.

Teach us to number our days aright,

That we may gain a heart of wisdom.

Relent, O Lord!  How long will it be?

Have compassion on your servants.

Satisfy us in the morning with your unfailing love,

That we may sing for joy and be glad all our days.

Make us glad for as many days as you have afflicted us,

For as many years as we have seen trouble.

May your deeds be shown to your servants,

Your splendor to their children.

May the favor of the Lord our God rest upon us;

Establish the work of our hands for us –

Yes, establish the work of our hands

Who but Moses, wanderer of deserts, leader of the grumbling multitude could write such a prayer?

There seems an aspect of God’s nature that seems as barren and harsh as Lodwar.  But why shouldn’t it be that way?  The earth with its deserts, glaciers, dry lands is the Lords and the fullness thereof.

For some reason it is this aspect of God I try to keep at bay, deeply and quietly, so subtle I rarely catch myself, a pattern of behaviour so well practiced: me afraid to let things be things, to allow things and persons to be what they are, even God.  Afraid to let him so batter and afflict me in order to make me malleable and able to change.

Who am I fooling?  Who can keep God at bay?  Like a lion tamer I sometimes approach the Lion of Judah with feeble whip in hand and enter his cage, manipulate him, make him jump through hoops of fire, with a fear buried deep down that I could become prey.

***

In Kakamega, before I knew it was the Plasmodium Falciparum strain of Malaria at work in my system, I had a ‘seize the victory’ moment like the Hebrew King David of old.  My body was in pain.  My digestive tract and gut felt rock hard and uncomfortable.  I didn’t know what to do with myself so I prayed.  Should I go throw up, Lord? And soon after a picture came to my mind: a cheetah, running swiftly, then an image of an arrow pointing to the bathroom.  Go quickly to the toilet. A Should-I-go-attack-the-Philistines-Yes-you-will-be-victorious moment in the present day.  I ran to the toilet, forced myself to throw up, a violent messy battle, one that changed my miserable state.  I was victorious.  Truly I am the Lord’s anointed.

Though it is a fearful thing, sometimes you have to take the dare, pray, put your finger to the back of your throat, feel that soft flesh and not waver. The obstacle will move if you move yourself.

***

Does the clay say to the Potter, ‘what have you made?’

I long to be finished, useful, beautiful.  A vessel admired, noted for its worth.  But who am I to say to the Potter, ‘shape me so.’  I cannot resolve the fact of my dreams, dreams that if unrealized promise to leave me unfulfilled.  Dreams I cannot help but think are part of the Potter’s very design.

And still I yearn to trust those hands that belong to a person I believe is so worthy of trust and love.  What if those hands merely meant for me to be shaped into a vessel with space enough to be filled, only to be emptied so others can receive, filled and poured out, even with living water?

A corridor, or a riverbed, maybe a simple funnel.  In Lodwar, in Africa, or somewhere else.

© 2010 andrew kooman

Remembering Names: Reflections from Kenya :: Download the entire Ebook HERE

E for Everyone: The Mouse and the Elephant :: $20.00

Motion Picture Soundtrack – E for Everyone: The Mouse and the Elephant :: $10.00

In 2006 Andrew traveled with a crew of six independent filmmakers to shoot the film E for Everyone: The Mouse and the Elephant. The following is an excerpt and a behind the scene look of Andrew’s experience on set.

Previous Entry

We started the day at the bank.  We brought some money with us from people at home and gave some from our own pockets towards the purchase of a plot of land.  Kubondo and the church had a scheme to build a real church building, a house for the pastor, a medical clinic, and an orphanage on a piece of land not more than an acre or so big.  Sixty thousand of the eighty-five thousand shillings remained, and we decided to pay it all.  The provincial government of Alberta had just issued surplus cheques to all Albertan residents: $400 just because.  A few of us pooled this money together to pay the difference for the land the church needed.  As independent artists making our first feature film on a small budget and a prayer, gifting the money was a good hurt.  A thousand Canadian dollars and this dream of theirs, by now years old, could move beyond the vision and come much closer to reality.  Money can go a long way in Lodwar, if you can actually get it out of the bank.  We had to fight our way in the line, creatively access funds, then wait, wait, wait.

Later we traveled half an hour North of Lodwar to a small Turkana tribe to distribute some food.  The children we gave juice bought in liquid concentrate and stirred in a bucket purchased at the supermarket in town, which, like everything else in the area, was covered by a thin layer of red dust.  And with the juice, two pieces of white bread stuck together with margarine, which I’ve been told is, chemically speaking, only a few molecules away from being classified as plastic.  Sugar water, white flour, plastic.  What little it takes for smiling faces.

We gave a kilogram of rice and a kilogram of maize flour to each of the adults, and whatever leftover bread that the children didn’t eat, which worked out to half a sandwich each.  Before we distributed the food, the tribe gathered and sang a few songs of worship and prayed.  It seems the gospel really has, as St. Paul wrote, reached the ends of the earth.  It was somewhat bizarre or maybe the word is surreal, to watch people so foreign to me worship the same God.  It was unexpected to say the least.

Women, thin, skin weather-beaten like canvas sails that have been out at sea for countless voyages, breasts and jowls sagging and stretched, necks covered in beads.  Shoulders wrapped in bright red-dyed cloth, tooth sized gaps between their front top and bottom teeth, casually spitting wads of saliva on the ground like it was a spittoon, the only moisture besides human and animal urine to hit the soil for who can remember how long.  These are the ones who sang.  Kubondo pointed out an old mama, wrinkled and hunched, skin leathered by the relentless wind and heat and punch of the elements.  I had noticed her too, tears in her eyes, singing with all her heart, her faith undoubtedly real.

Beauty, an oasis in the otherwise desolate land.  Many others just sang.  Christianity, like sheep herding, female circumcision, or hunting in other parts of Kenya another cultural practice that all members of the tribe participate in.

I feel that I have so little to say about the experience.  For me it was barren and spacious as the surroundings.  I watched.  I was a set of eyes.  Hands too, I guess.  It was meaningful to place food, water, juice, in peoples’ hands, to give practical help.

Does a river attach feeling to the fact that it channels water to the ocean?  Does a hallway have much to express after people pass through its corridor?  Perhaps I too need only be silent, and consider myself a conduit, an open space, otherwise empty but for the moment when it is used and useful.

© 2010 andrew kooman

Remembering Names: Reflections from Kenya :: Download the entire Ebook HERE

E for Everyone: The Mouse and the Elephant :: $20.00

Motion Picture Soundtrack – E for Everyone: The Mouse and the Elephant :: $10.00

In 2006 Andrew traveled with a crew of six independent filmmakers to shoot the film E for Everyone: The Mouse and the Elephant. The following is an excerpt and a behind the scene look of Andrew’s experience on set.

Previous Entry

We made the long journey to Lodwar from Kakamega in the matatu we hired from Nairobi.  The driver we inherited was worth his pay.  George was a quiet, serious man with a smile.  He drank his orange Fanta warm because cold soda made him sick.

Before the drive Kubondo prepped us for the worst.  Severe drought had eaten the area and continues to bite away at the land like a praying mantis the head of her mate in the climax of passion.  He told us of children, water starved, lining up at the side of the road for water, a gift as valuable as gold.

We were to expect young girls and boys whose stomachs were pushed to the bursting point, stretched with hunger.  As we imagined encountering these facts in the coming days I could only trust that whatever we saw, God would give the grace we needed to bear witness to whatever ugliness or pain we would see.  And compassion.  Even as I sat on the steps of Mama Ruth’s in Kakamega after a devotional time with the crew, meditating on the personal love of God given freely to me, a picture grew inside of me: a young Kenyan, ribs poking through a naked torso, bloated, food-starved belly appeared on my mind.  Emaciated arms and skeleton skull, bulging eyes, hair orange-red with malnutrition.  Feet covered in dust while World-Vision-sized black flies crawled over her face, in and out of her nostrils, while she stood about absently scratching at bug-bitten skin.

We took to the road.  The temperature increased, it seemed, with each degree of latitude we gained as we drove further and further toward the Somali border.  Hotter.  Drier.  More desolate, but surprisingly, even to my untrained eye, the land was beautiful.  It was itself.  Abandoned termite hills were thrust against the sky like skyscrapers, tall as giraffes.  Goats grazed on who-knows-what while camels loitered and swaggered, breaking from their routine to watch our vehicle interrupt their lethargy and bump its way down the road.  In Kenya, potholes seem to be the rule, not the exception, great chasms and crevices in the pavement, pockmarked like a war zone.

And the people.  Stoic men emerged from the horizon carrying long staffs, shawls thrown over their shoulders, limbs graceful and thin like dark ebony wood-carvings.  Women with elaborate, colourful beadwork around their necks, carrying bags filled with grass or rice on their heads and empty containers for water.  Young boys responsible for entire herds of goats often naked or carrying their shawl in their hands.  Shy little girls with stunning white teeth holding empty bottles in hopes they might be filled with water.  Never in groups of more than three or four, randomly spotting the road like signposts, like phantoms.

At the sight of a vehicle they would hold out their hands or empty containers, sometimes run to the side of the road and yell magi, the Swahili word for water.  Oftentimes, the children, forgetting themselves in their desperate thirst, would neglect the warnings of abduction they were given by their parents and approach the vehicle, only to panic once they saw the white-skinned foreigners holding out bottles of water as seductive lures, the means to hook them by the gills, steal them from their families and tribe forever.  The sudden realization of their danger and the fear that overtook them was heartbreaking.  The youngsters would scream in terror, turn and run, shouting in Swahili for the younger ones to run away.

Though our hearts dropped, our spirits lifted to see the same children cautiously creep back to the roadside once the van carrying us had driven a safe distance away to collect the treasure left in danger’s wake, bottles of water they received like a prize or treasure of incomparable worth.  The dancing and smiles we could make out in the rearview mirror proof of the water’s value.

Oh to thirst like a child on the road to Lodwar.  Kubondo laughed a deep baritone laugh that echoed in his chest like everything else when I told him “three days out here and I’d be dead.”  Matt said he thought he could make it five, a pretty generous wager.  It was fun, in a morbid, inappropriate way, to speculate.  And though Kubondo laughed there was enough of a sigh in it, a sort of contemplative self-check to make me think it would be the same for him too.

What is out there on the road to Lodwar that makes the people stay?  Dry river beds crisscross the land, constant reminders of other times when life could be sustained.  Dry wells, barren landscape, dust and rock.  Would this not be a perpetual slap in the face?  Move south.  Curse God and die.  Do something, but stay?  I cannot imagine the life.  There is nothing to start with.  No food.  No water.  Hot, dry heat.  How do you cultivate a life or organize a cultural system on these things?  But there goes another sheep herder.  There are a few more children.  There’s another pair of women with empty buckets out on another fruitless quest for fool’s gold.  Another herd of camels.  The district officer in Lodwar told me the region is so eaten by drought, people only survive on the relief brought and distributed from January to December.

What is man that you are mindful of him?

Kubondo asked me to preach at a service in Lodwar.  What message can you possibly give to people who live on the edge of death, people one meal away from starvation or survival?  How is a North American experience of reality, of God, possibly relevant in the given context?

And then I was reminded of those words from Isaiah.

Come, all who are thirsty,

Come to the waters

You who have no money

Come, buy and eat!

I spoke of food that is not for the belly and water that is not for the body, of my country where there are people who have too much food, who eat so much they get fat and sick and die, but whose hearts and souls still are not satisfied.  Through a translator, I told those who were gathered – mostly women and orphaned children – that I could never forget the picture in my mind of children on the road to Lodwar, running to our vehicle to receive water they could freely drink.  Water they longed for.  Water they were dying for.  Water they so gladly received.

I deeply admire the people on the road to Lodwar: their ability and quickness to receive, their desperation, shameless and overt.  I told the small church at Lodwar that evening in the dark, under the stars, two Coleman-like lanterns burning on the table in front of me, that I admired them and that they should run to the One who gives living water for eternal life as quickly and as desperately as those children on the road into their town.  May God help me to ever do the same.

© 2010 andrew kooman

Remembering Names: Reflections from Kenya :: Download the entire Ebook HERE

E for Everyone: The Mouse and the Elephant :: $20.00

Motion Picture Soundtrack – E for Everyone: The Mouse and the Elephant :: $10.00

In 2006 Andrew traveled with a crew of six independent filmmakers to shoot the film E for Everyone: The Mouse and the Elephant. The following is an excerpt and a behind the scene look of Andrew’s experience on set.

Previous Entry

We got on a bus from Mombasa to Malindi, a place on the coast where a lot of Italian tourists visit Kenya.  Their skin is dark and leathery from days spent in various states of undress lounging in the sun.  Old men with enormous bellies walk around with beautiful young Kenyan women.  At night they smoke their brains out and drink hard liquor.  I wonder what the statistics are like for occurrences of cancer among middle aged, middle class Italians.  If you took a sample from among the tourists in Malindi, I imagine the percentage would be high.

Of all the cities we visited in Kenya, Malindi seemed most comfortable, most adapted to white visitors.  The road into the city said it all: wide enough for two vehicles and almost without pothole, the clearest stretch of highway but for the fifty kilometers outside Kakuma, the refugee camp in the North.

On the bus, I had an opportunity to be chivalrous.  It was Joel’s idea, really.  At least he suggested it before I had a chance to think it.

We paid for our seats, and though the coach was full, the bus driver continued to make stops along the way, picking up travelers.  We stopped for a young family: a man, his wife who looked no more that fifteen, and their infant child.  No seats on the bus for the girl, though the husband managed to find a spot.  No big deal.  The girl did not look concerned and was prepared to stand the whole way with her infant on her hip, an hour or so of driving.  I gave her my seat.  And I could hear people behind me take notice.  An unusual sight, perhaps.

Being chivalrous somehow feels heroic.  Doing something good, too.  But it is strange.  There seems such a war inside me, a voice so critical of the very behaviour that feels good.  A voice that demands a seat for the 160 Shillings paid.  Squinted, hate-set eyes that roll at the thought that an act of kindness was done for any reason other than a pat on the back.

It seems right to make that voice scream.

I remember reading the Time magazine that paid tribute to Ronald Reagan after his death.  During the Cold War, in a time when the country seemed almost at a psychological standstill he gave a speech in which he called Americans to once again ‘Dream heroic dreams.’  That quote did and still does resonate inside me.  I want to dream heroic dreams every day and do good that makes the lethargic, comfortable, cynical ass sitting on the bus stand up and give away its seat.

© 2010 andrew kooman

Remembering Names: Reflections from Kenya :: $2.99 :: Download the entire Ebook HERE

E for Everyone: The Mouse and the Elephant :: $20.00

Motion Picture Soundtrack – E for Everyone: The Mouse and the Elephant :: $10.00

In 2006 Andrew traveled with a crew of six independent filmmakers to shoot the film E for Everyone: The Mouse and the Elephant. The following is an excerpt and a behind the scene look of Andrew’s experience on set.

Previous Entry

Are death and life mere facts only God can bend and change?  What do the dying think about on their deathbeds, and what do the dying think of the living who visit their bedside then go about living once again?  What did that dying Mama think as she overheard from her bed our interaction with Lydia just outside her hut?  How did Nathan, once sharp and able, think about us as we, though tired and hungry, walked away from him, never to meet again and sure to regain our strength?

So much of our lives we are watched or are watching, limited by time and space.  The scene changes so we change with it.

Scene One – Interior

Death House.  Mood: Somber. Woman is dying.

Scene Two – Exterior

Front Lawn of Death House.  Mood: Happy, Festive.  Child is about to receive gift from strange foreigner.

Scene Three – Interior

AIDs patient’s house.  Mood: Awkward. Foreigners are uncomfortable.

But what about the fringes?  What about the greater scenery and soundscape?  What happens in those rooms out of focus beyond the lens?  The story continues there too.

***

Through Kisa and area winds a river, mud-red from the clay in its banks.  The river might be a symbol of the place: the goodness of life muddied by death, hunger, disease, yet still flowing, still starting new, with still something more beyond the mud and muck of it.

Our last visit in the area was paid to Julie and her three siblings, orphaned not a year ago.  We met the children very near to where their parents were buried in the ground, humps of red earth bursting from the soil like large pregnant bellies, like beached clay-coloured whales.

In Kenya people are blunt.  Kubondo did not mince or step lightly around the topic of death, but asked, inches away from their graves if Julie remembered their dying.  In Canada we would much sooner imagine the death away, pretend it never happened, wait until the child was ready to talk about the facts at a much later time.  In Kenya you talk with the child on the spot where, if you put your ear to the ground, you can almost hear the sound of still decomposing flesh.

Julie.  Thirteen, and suddenly mother, nurturer, teacher, provider are titles added to her already full resume of orphan, child, daughter, sister, schoolgirl.  Smart, pretty and a speaker of good English.  Her youngest sister clung to her, eyes swollen and red, she was quick to shake any visitor’s hand.

Joel asked the usual set of questions: what do you think about, what do you need that you don’t have, what do you have that you can do without, what worries you?  And though most answers were brief, there were a few that shocked us, though outwardly it may have looked like we didn’t miss a beat, her answers given so matter-of-factly.

The children did not have sufficient clothes or shoes.  They needed sweaters and uniforms for school.  They occasionally went without food.  They are sad when people beat them and treat them harshly.

A day in the life of an orphan.  Julie somehow thrust into shoes too big for her, though they are not the shoes she needs for her calloused feet.  Somehow alive and not infected with the disease that claimed her parents.  Somehow learning, managing, growing.

I was compelled to give money to Julie and her siblings, only five hundred Kenyan Shillings, but a lot for her.  Secretly I hoped she would squander it on something fun: chocolate, or ice cream, a colouring book for the children.  But she could afford none of those luxuries.  When she thanked me for the too small gift, she said it would be helpful for her young little family to buy maize flour and rice.  Food to fill their small bellies.

As we waved good-bye, turned to walk back to our vehicles, the thought of her life was nearly too much for me to bear.  But I was proud of her too.  So strong and bright.  I turned as I walked, arms folded across my chest, and saw the same look on Em’s face that I imagined was on my own.  I have not spoken with her about it, but I’m sure I do not need to.  The thought of a child so young left to face the world.  The unthinkable thought that she and so many other children go even one night without the comforting voice of a father or mother.  The future.

***

On the edge of the land where Julie’s parents’ bodies are buried is a tree, the tallest one I saw in Kenya.  It stands there like a watchman or a sentinel, guarding, able to see far and wide all the land, every area the river covers, all its mud and dirt, and the lush green banks too.  It stands there and grows higher to the heavens, even as it digs its roots deeper into the ground – ground nourished by the water that snakes its way through the town and the nutrients sucked from buried bones.

So many things it sees.  People walking barefoot on dirt and gravel.  A husband bringing AIDS into the home.  Long painful suffering.  Death.  Children burying parents, huddling together in the dark of night, shuddering at the sound of the wind.  Cow trails and the rising sun.  Chickens clucking and beaking the ground.  An angry villager striking a frightened orphan-boy across the face.  Blood, tears, spit, semen.

Julie, a baby, an orphan girl, now a young woman with a husband and children of her own.

The tree is rooted there, quietly watching all these things.  Remembering names.

* * *

A story, if it is any good, needs a beginning, middle, an end.  Or so I’ve been told.  I’ve already gone and muddled things up.  I started with Kisa, though we didn’t visit it until halfway through our time in Kenya when the only ugly things we had seen were hunger and drought.  But it felt right to start there, and I’ve had to ask myself why.  Perhaps it felt natural to start with the middle of our time in Kenya because when I think of it, Kisa revealed the heart.  Sickness and pain, suffering, but much beauty, resilience, and happiness too.

Take, for instance, Mama Josephine who welcomed us into her home for a snack and later for lunch when we visited Kisa.  She told us she was humbled to have people from the West visit her simple home.  A woman who gives much of her time to see the forgotten child without parents, the unimportant man dying of AIDS, the unknown woman hungry and alone remembered, valued, known.  A widow herself, still recovering from the too-soon death of her husband, a wound opened further and made more grotesque by the much too soon recent death of her eldest son.  Their graves were also visible on her small plot of land, so close to where the van parked to let out its foreign cargo, so close to where she warmly greeted us and first shook our hands, dirt still fresh, no trace of greenery or life covering the nutrient-rich beds of death.

Plain facts for the eyes to see.  Not hidden.  Not covered up.  Exposed in the daylight.  And when she thanked us for the little relief we brought to her community, she was not ashamed to ask us to pray, to remember her, a widow, with a dead son also buried in the ground.

Maybe this is the heart of Kenya, Africa.  Hurt and wanting but unashamed, a heart whose honesty I can learn from, should learn from, must.

An unnamed woman. Lydia. Nathan.

Julie.  Kisa.  Josephine.

Kenya.

Remember.

© 2010 andrew kooman

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