Back to ‘civilisation’ (30 May, part II)

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From there it was another two-and-a-half hours drive along more dusty roads to Nairobi. We had been invited to the safari company owner’s house for lunch, but through some miscommunications ended up going to one hotel for a toilet stop before checking in at the other. By this stage it was 2:30 and everyone was getting pretty irritable. We made our way to the house, and there the fun began.

I am not sure how big the house was, nor do I really want to know. The parts that we saw were enough to make me speechless. First we were ushered into a room with a veranda and enough space for about five couches; in fact with fourteen of us plus the host and two staff waiters it was not at all crowded. After drinks and a brief history of her family, we were presented with gifts of banana leaf pictures of animals. I saw these for sale at the market in Nairobi and didn’t like them at all, so I guess mine will be on TradeMe fairly soon – with more reasons to follow.

After this we proceeded downstairs: through a room that had a pair of elephant tusks making an archway for its entrance, down some steps into the room set up for us. There were three tables set for six, and would have been room for another two. All of the rooms we saw were literally full of African things – gourds, statues, carvings, tapestries… The family was third generation Kenyan, of Goa Indian heritage. The food had been prepared by the cook and her assistant and was served by another waiter. There wasn’t a lot there that I actually liked, so that made me wish I had stayed back at the hotel and got something from the restaurant, but there was even more to it as to why I was upset about the whole shebang.

Once I got back to the hotel, I managed to put my finger on it. Basically, it wasn’t fair. It wasn’t fair that a safari tour operator could live in this ridiculous house, while the vast majority of the rest of Kenya were living in one-room shacks and mud huts. Now I know there is a dispersion of rich and poor in any country, but this was too much. In New Zealand I would estimate two orders of magnitude as the absolute maximum disparity in income (i.e. x 100 between poor and rich). In Kenya it is more like four (i.e. x 10,000). As for the house, ok in Beverly Hills, but not in Nairobi, where just down the road you have a million people living in a slum with no running water. Nor am I saying that everybody in Kenya should be poor, just that the level of disparity is too great.

Paul had said that he had staff members visiting CCF projects who ‘went a bit troppo’ when they returned back home and questioned the manner of their existence. Well I went a bit troppo today observing this. To top it all off, she asked our table what we had been doing in Emali. When we said we had been visiting our sponsored children, she replied, ‘Oh, we sponsor children too. Last year we took twenty children from our project to Las Vegas to sing, and advertise our tours.’ Excuse me?!

Anyway, back to thinking it’s not fair.
It’s not fair – if material possessions in this life are the sole measure.

I know some far richer people living in a small village Samuli in the hills behind Emali. Their treasure is in the next life: all they have in this one is faith in Jesus Christ and a steadfast hope in His return. But that is all that matters in the next life. And I am convinced that the mansions they will have in heaven (John 14:2) will be far better than those of most people living in luxury today.

Ok enough of that rant. I know not everyone feels the same way so I do apologise if anyone was offended by what I wrote.