The Corn Sea

So my last two posts ended with stomach-churning gimmicks, and I'm sorry for that. Hopefully I can buck that trend as I continue to chronicle my adventures, but I'm not making any promises.

Bungoma is surrounded by a sea of corn fields. To liken it to Easter Island alone in the middle of the Pacific would not be as much of an exaggeration as you might think. And if the corn fields are the ocean, then I was swimming for most of the day. My ankle did put up a bit of a fight, but considering that I'm the one with the will power to control the leg it's attached to, it was a fight I easily won. Today's project was to visit as many of the women involved in TLAfrica's womens' ministry as possible. Salome spearheads an empowerment program for the women of Bungoma through TLAfrica, and Veronica is her on-site manager. They have impacted the lives of dozens of women in the area by teaching them to read, enabling them to study Scripture, and by training them in micro-finance, enabling them to provide for their families, as many of them are widows. TLAfrica provides either cows or small business loans for these women. In the case of those who have been given cows, support is raised here in the states to purchase an animal for them, which they use for milk for their families and for selling. Several cows have given birth this year, which promises more income as the calves grow. In the case of those who have been given small business loans, they are entrusted with a sum of money that they are expected to pay back at the end of the year. Those that are successful in repaying the money are given more. Today, we visited 11 women involved in the program, 10 of whom live in meager mud huts nestled amidst vast fields of corn (the eleventh lives more or less in town). The goal was to interview them and document how their lives have been transformed thanks to the Lord's moving through this ministry. I followed Salome and Veronica over miles of footpaths through the stalks, and down roads enclosed on either side by 10-foot walls of corn. There is a giant corn mill visible from nearly any part of the city and the surrounding countryside standing as a testament to the industry of the area and a beacon of hope for lost travelers trying to navigate the maize (see what I did there?). I kept my eye on it for most of the day, knowing that if I stopped to take a picture and my corn sea sherpas lost me (a very likely scenario), I would only have to point myself in the direction of that midwestern monolith to find my way back to town.

During our trek, countless people - mostly kids - emerged from between waves of crops, seeming to materialize out of nowhere. I considered "children of the corn" as a title for this post, but this really isn't a horror story, and most of them are far more terrified of me than I am of them. Those that aren't are delighted to see a muzungu (basically, a white person), and even more delighted to have their pictures taken. The conventional American understanding of corn fields involves a farm house every few miles, and nothing but crops in between. I don't know what the corn-to-person ratio is in the midwest, but it's obviously quite a large number. The ratio here seems to be about 1. People in Kenya are as numerous as the corn, and just as ripe for the harvest.

Despite the abundance of corn all around, for the first two days I hadn't consumed a single kernel here until this afternoon. In fact, corn in any form is not even on the menu at the Hotel Tourist Bungoma. So it was strangely unexpected when we were offered corn by two of the women that we visited. Not wanting to be rude, I ate a cob's worth of corn at each place, and returned home unexpectedly full, having embarked on our voyage across the golden sea without anything to eat. Corn lunches were not the only gifts we were offered, however. On two separate occasions, a woman disappeared into a back room or into the yard and returned with a chicken. A clucking and flapping chicken. The first time this happened, it seemed very much as though the lady wished to present the chicken as a gift to me, personally. She also asked me when I was planning on visiting her again. It wouldn't have been so unusual if she hadn't proposed it to me as if my return was an absolute certainty, and if she wasn't living on an island in a sea of corn. The second time a chicken was presented, it was clearly meant for Salome. I thought this much more reasonable, and Salome handled both situations with grace, asking the women to bring the birds into town the next time they come. I'm sure Salome has little more use for a live chicken than I, and I'm secretly hoping that she'll wait a few days before devising some other occasional excuse to present one woman's chicken as a gift to the other, and vice versa.

There is an inverse relationship between possession and generosity, which defies logic. These people have so little, and they are so much more willing to share what they have, whereas those who have much are frequently reluctant givers. It seems to me that those who have little place great value on what they do have. This too, should logically lead towards closed-fistedness, but I believe that when you truly value something, you long to share it with others. Conversely, those who have much cannot concentrate enough value on any one thing to muster up a desire to share it. Of course, there is also the notion that those who have little are simply less tied to material things. This is also quite true. However, I think that considering generosity in terms of value placement seems a more compelling and more profound understanding of this phenomenon. (It certainly rings true when applied to the greatest gift ever given, which I long to share with the world...) Whatever the cause, these women, who possess so little, have more to give to the wealthy of the world than could ever be repaid in gifts of dollars, cents, or cows.

When Mike returned from the conference, he reported that the pastors are really digging into the material. It seems his harvest is just as plentiful, but he still hasn't been served any corn.