So, as it turns out, we’re learning stuff. Here are some summaries:
Nyama Choma: Learning To Feast Together
Nyama Choma. The truly Kenyan feast. Direct translation: burnt meat.
Eating choma challenges all sorts of theories about eating that Becca and I have acquired over the years. For starters, it’s almost always goat. I’ve never eaten goat before, didn’t really know you did. Second, when you eat choma, everybody’s food comes out on one plate, and there are no utensils. And third, those of us who live in the barbeque capital of the world are used to eating food that looks like animal parts (i.e. ribs), but we ain’t got nothing on choma. And Kenyans eat every last bit of it. The last time Bec and I had choma, one of our friends actually took a bone and tapped it on his plate until the bone marrow came out . . . which he then ate.
Nyama choma is a truly carnivorous feast, a huge celebration of grilled meat with little added flavor or side dishes. Everybody loves choma, and advertisements for it at restaurants are everywhere. And on holidays, families and friends get together to slaughter the goat and grill it themselves.
So what have we learned from choma? Several things, actually. For starters, feasting, celebrating, shoveling loads of meat into your mouth with other people, is a beautiful manifestation of community. Choma is great because people love it, and sometimes when we’re eating it, I feel like we’re getting a taste of the great banquet to come.
Second of all, whether it’s Kenyans here, African-Americans in Memphis, or backwoods mountain folks near Covenant, one excuse for me to not cross boundaries is just “the otherness” of others. But here’s the thing: daily life offers us a million opportunities to suck it up, and dive into cultural experiences that, while maybe strange or even gross to us, are incredibly dear to those other folks who we think are weird and who also happen to be made in God’s image. It happens to us all the time here: tea made with raw milk that develops film on the top if it’s not kept constantly moving, meat that looks just a little too much like living animals, flies in kitchens, Lord-knows-what-in-the-water . . .”
But here’s the deal: now, Becca and I freakin’ love nyama choma. Like choose to eat it whenever we can. And that’s the way that it is with all sorts of things. When we dive in, when we cross boundaries, we make friends, and we have beautiful, incredible experiences.
Last Thursday, after a full day of work, Becca and I went to get choma with two of our Mang’u farmers and one CCS worker. And in that simple sharing of what looks to be a pretty gross dinner, and actually tastes delicious, we realized that we are making friends. Real friends, who love us enough to tell us how much it means to them that we eat what they eat, that we’re constantly trying to speak to the farmers in Kiswahili, and that we spend time with them. That’s what we’ve learned from nyama choma.
Hospitality
It’s short and simple: God tells us explicitly in His word to bring strangers into our homes, and Kenyans are awesome at it. When we walked through Ngare Ndare a week ago, people w
ere calling out from their huts, telling our farmers that they were “doing bad” because they hadn’t brought us to meet them and to get tea from them. Another farmer practically forces us to come into their home, take tea, and carry away a ten pound bag of tomatoes, which is a main source of livelihood. In Mang’u, we go around to follow up with our group’s farmers, and every single one gives us mangos, or avocados, or a pumpkin. Or the incredible Jedidah and John, who have absolutely insisted that we sleep in their house every time we come anywhere near Ngare Ndare, and that we bring every single visitor we have to greet them.
Hospitality doesn’t mean big planned parties to entertain people from our same socio-economic class who will pay us back in kind in the near future. It means inviting the stranger, the other, the sojourner into our homes, allowing them to interrupt our lives and families and daily rhythms of life. As one person put it, “whenever we show up, it’s almost like they’ve been waiting for us.” I spend most of my American life trying to make sure that other people don’t interrupt what I’m doing. Kenyans are quickly killing that impulse, and teaching us that hospitality is a beautiful, fun way to serve God’s kingdom.
God’s Presence
Rebecca and I are currently reading through the entire Bible, and we recently finished reading the books known as the “minor prophets;” quite a euphemism considering how much they shake us up and challenge all of our presuppositions. But one thing that has struck me this time around, and particularly in the prophets, is the emphasis on God’s presence.
It seems to me that presence is one of the biggest themes in the Bible. The beauty of the garden is founded on God’s presence with humans. The Abrahamic story is absolutely filled with God’s promises “to be with” Abraham and his descendants. God speaks to Moses by presenting Himself in the burning bush, and follows that initial crazy meeting with many other personal encounters, talking to Abraham “like a man speaks to his friend.” In the Exodus, as promised, God’s presence is absolutely on the Israelites in an incredible way: through pillars of cloud and fire, the cloud over the tabernacle, supernatural storms and trumpets over Mt. Sinai. In the Promised Land, God establishes the Davidic kingdom, and the Psalms are filled with David’s recognition of God’s presence, and when his son Solomon built the temple, “the glory of the Lord” descends on the place. After Israel rejects their God, the prophets are absolutely filled with promises of a return of God’s presence: Ezekiel envisioning God’s Spirit departing from the temple only to return later on, the promise that “I will be their God, and they will be my people,” the promise that “I will be with them, and I will be their peace” or elsewhere “their righteousness,” and the incredible prophecies of Immanuel, “God with Us” fulfilled in the Incarnation. And then the story of God walking among us through the cross and resurrection, and His departure with the words “Lo, I am with you even unto the end of the age.” After Jesus goes back to the Father, the next thing we here about is God’s Spirit coming down at Pentecost (which is better than if Jesus were with us according to Him), and finally in Revelation the promise that Zion will descend from heaven prepared like a bride and the declaration that “behold the dwelling of God is with man.” The promise of presence is one of the most frequent, powerful, and hope inspiring in all of Scripture.
And I think Kenyans get it. One of our hosts always prays, “Lord, you have been with us today, as we have done all of these things. Be with us now and tonight.” The Anglicans frequently pray, “Be with us, and keep us from the dangers of night,” and end their prayers with “now may the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Spirit, be with us now and forevermore.” And you know what? Many of those promises of presence are specifically directed to those on the margins, the excluded, the poor, the downcast. And if God’s word is true, that means that those on the margins have something to teach us about knowing God’s presence. And I think they are.
Nyama Choma: Learning To Feast Together
Nyama Choma. The truly Kenyan feast. Direct translation: burnt meat.
Eating choma challenges all sorts of theories about eating that Becca and I have acquired over the years. For starters, it’s almost always goat. I’ve never eaten goat before, didn’t really know you did. Second, when you eat choma, everybody’s food comes out on one plate, and there are no utensils. And third, those of us who live in the barbeque capital of the world are used to eating food that looks like animal parts (i.e. ribs), but we ain’t got nothing on choma. And Kenyans eat every last bit of it. The last time Bec and I had choma, one of our friends actually took a bone and tapped it on his plate until the bone marrow came out . . . which he then ate.
Nyama choma is a truly carnivorous feast, a huge celebration of grilled meat with little added flavor or side dishes. Everybody loves choma, and advertisements for it at restaurants are everywhere. And on holidays, families and friends get together to slaughter the goat and grill it themselves.
So what have we learned from choma? Several things, actually. For starters, feasting, celebrating, shoveling loads of meat into your mouth with other people, is a beautiful manifestation of community. Choma is great because people love it, and sometimes when we’re eating it, I feel like we’re getting a taste of the great banquet to come.
Second of all, whether it’s Kenyans here, African-Americans in Memphis, or backwoods mountain folks near Covenant, one excuse for me to not cross boundaries is just “the otherness” of others. But here’s the thing: daily life offers us a million opportunities to suck it up, and dive into cultural experiences that, while maybe strange or even gross to us, are incredibly dear to those other folks who we think are weird and who also happen to be made in God’s image. It happens to us all the time here: tea made with raw milk that develops film on the top if it’s not kept constantly moving, meat that looks just a little too much like living animals, flies in kitchens, Lord-knows-what-in-the-water . . .”
But here’s the deal: now, Becca and I freakin’ love nyama choma. Like choose to eat it whenever we can. And that’s the way that it is with all sorts of things. When we dive in, when we cross boundaries, we make friends, and we have beautiful, incredible experiences.
Last Thursday, after a full day of work, Becca and I went to get choma with two of our Mang’u farmers and one CCS worker. And in that simple sharing of what looks to be a pretty gross dinner, and actually tastes delicious, we realized that we are making friends. Real friends, who love us enough to tell us how much it means to them that we eat what they eat, that we’re constantly trying to speak to the farmers in Kiswahili, and that we spend time with them. That’s what we’ve learned from nyama choma.
Hospitality
It’s short and simple: God tells us explicitly in His word to bring strangers into our homes, and Kenyans are awesome at it. When we walked through Ngare Ndare a week ago, people w
ere calling out from their huts, telling our farmers that they were “doing bad” because they hadn’t brought us to meet them and to get tea from them. Another farmer practically forces us to come into their home, take tea, and carry away a ten pound bag of tomatoes, which is a main source of livelihood. In Mang’u, we go around to follow up with our group’s farmers, and every single one gives us mangos, or avocados, or a pumpkin. Or the incredible Jedidah and John, who have absolutely insisted that we sleep in their house every time we come anywhere near Ngare Ndare, and that we bring every single visitor we have to greet them.Hospitality doesn’t mean big planned parties to entertain people from our same socio-economic class who will pay us back in kind in the near future. It means inviting the stranger, the other, the sojourner into our homes, allowing them to interrupt our lives and families and daily rhythms of life. As one person put it, “whenever we show up, it’s almost like they’ve been waiting for us.” I spend most of my American life trying to make sure that other people don’t interrupt what I’m doing. Kenyans are quickly killing that impulse, and teaching us that hospitality is a beautiful, fun way to serve God’s kingdom.
God’s Presence
Rebecca and I are currently reading through the entire Bible, and we recently finished reading the books known as the “minor prophets;” quite a euphemism considering how much they shake us up and challenge all of our presuppositions. But one thing that has struck me this time around, and particularly in the prophets, is the emphasis on God’s presence.
It seems to me that presence is one of the biggest themes in the Bible. The beauty of the garden is founded on God’s presence with humans. The Abrahamic story is absolutely filled with God’s promises “to be with” Abraham and his descendants. God speaks to Moses by presenting Himself in the burning bush, and follows that initial crazy meeting with many other personal encounters, talking to Abraham “like a man speaks to his friend.” In the Exodus, as promised, God’s presence is absolutely on the Israelites in an incredible way: through pillars of cloud and fire, the cloud over the tabernacle, supernatural storms and trumpets over Mt. Sinai. In the Promised Land, God establishes the Davidic kingdom, and the Psalms are filled with David’s recognition of God’s presence, and when his son Solomon built the temple, “the glory of the Lord” descends on the place. After Israel rejects their God, the prophets are absolutely filled with promises of a return of God’s presence: Ezekiel envisioning God’s Spirit departing from the temple only to return later on, the promise that “I will be their God, and they will be my people,” the promise that “I will be with them, and I will be their peace” or elsewhere “their righteousness,” and the incredible prophecies of Immanuel, “God with Us” fulfilled in the Incarnation. And then the story of God walking among us through the cross and resurrection, and His departure with the words “Lo, I am with you even unto the end of the age.” After Jesus goes back to the Father, the next thing we here about is God’s Spirit coming down at Pentecost (which is better than if Jesus were with us according to Him), and finally in Revelation the promise that Zion will descend from heaven prepared like a bride and the declaration that “behold the dwelling of God is with man.” The promise of presence is one of the most frequent, powerful, and hope inspiring in all of Scripture.
And I think Kenyans get it. One of our hosts always prays, “Lord, you have been with us today, as we have done all of these things. Be with us now and tonight.” The Anglicans frequently pray, “Be with us, and keep us from the dangers of night,” and end their prayers with “now may the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Spirit, be with us now and forevermore.” And you know what? Many of those promises of presence are specifically directed to those on the margins, the excluded, the poor, the downcast. And if God’s word is true, that means that those on the margins have something to teach us about knowing God’s presence. And I think they are.
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