The Food Down in Africa
Mount Kilimanjaro, a Tea Farm, the Rain, the Food, GAFCON, and all the things I have to do when I get home.
All of you in America—there must be a few of you up suffering the horrors of insomnia—should be tucked in your beds, wiling away the dark hours before the next long work day begins. I, on the other hand, have slept the bilious sleep of the overfed, trying to recover, as it were, from a most refreshing and beautiful time in a place called Amboseli, down in the southern bit of Kenya, so close to the border of Tanzania that our phones kept welcoming us to use their cellular system.
My mother, in all the many years of her sojourning in East Africa, insists she has never seen Mount Kilimanjaro in such stunning clarity:
Kilimanjaro, they say, is a shy mountain, one slightly embarrassed, eager to wrap itself in clouds and mist. But for whatever reason, it displayed itself in bright glory for our searching phone lenses.
I have never in my life once thought to myself, ‘You know what I need to see? Mount Kilimanjaro.’ As a child of West Africa, I have, I am sorry to say, been vaguely, and even condescendingly bemused by the idea that the rest of Africa ‘is even Africa.’ Just because Toto is always crooning over missing those rains down there ‘in Africa,’ they could not possibly compare to our rains up here, in ‘Real Africa,’ or so I said to myself. Just because no one would purchase a tourist visa to Mali to see elephants and lions because there are no more elephants or lions, doesn’t mean anything. We are the Real Thing. This is some version of the game we used to play at school—“Who Has It Worse.”
Nevertheless, I repent myself in dust and ash—or rather torrential downpours and mud, for the rains have indeed come. No one, right now, could possibly miss them. The landscape is lush and green. The cows and lions are fat and contented. And more than all of that, The. Mountain. Is. Amazing. The way all the animals arrange themselves so decorously in its shadow—well, it is practically a cliche, but one of the very best I have ever non-cynically (what’s that word? “sincerely”…oh no!) enjoyed in all my life.
Matt is putting up his pictures, if you want to go find them on Facebook. Mine were not great because I was too short to see very well, standing up, pointing my phone wildly in every direction from the open lid of our safari van. I mostly sat hunched looking out the window, craning my neck trying to spot all the wild creatures. It was the perfect way to stop thinking about The Anglican Troubles TM for a few minutes. Also, this was our “tent”:
Not to mention, before that, we drove to what I think is called the Highlands to a hundred-year-old Tea Farm where we not only drank tea beyond all other manners of tea I have ever drunk…
but also overate ourselves at luncheon…
Not to neglect yesterday’s groaning table of traditional Kenyan food at the house of some lovely friends:
So now it is back down to earth. We fly out tomorrow night and hit the ground running (metaphorically, it is to be hoped, as I trust it will be the wheels of the aircraft that hit the runway and not my actual feet). All the things I didn’t manage to do before I left are scheduled to come home to me the moment we get back. It will be a mad dash from here to the end of the school term the first week of June.
One thing I hope won’t get lost in all the running around trying to restore order and sanity to my small and quiet world—besides the pleasure of having a good long gaze into the gentle eyes of so graceful a giraffe, and practically speaking over to myself my favorite lines from The Long Grass Whispers as the first rays of the sun fell on the backs of Jackle and Warthog—is what an immense honor and delight it was to be at this lastest GAFCON.
I know I’ve said it like fifteen times, but I was so surprised and, not to put too fine a point on it, honored to be asked to be on the Writing Team. I definitely felt out of my league but the group was so gracious that all my insipid and unhelpful suggestions were met with kind humor rather than horrified censure. I loved several things about it—probably too many to name, so I will limit myself to three:
Bishop Michael Stead and his wife Felicity—Bishop Stead was the chair and guided the work to a precise, swift, and brilliant conclusion. Felicity sat and typed with unerring precision and unflappability. The whole room talked volubly and yet she could hear and distill what was being said without once becoming raddled.
The nature of the task—It has not been the case over twenty-five years that Christians in the Anglican Communion could have been described as being “of one mind.” Indeed, conflict and disagreement have been our Bread and Butter (or ugali and sukkuma wiki if you prefer) as we have tried to face down the continued rejection of the Bible by one set of provincial “leaders” after another, culminating in the Mother Church. Imagine my surprise, then, to be in a hotel with 1000+ other Anglicans, and then in one room with ten or so, and to be all desiring to say the same thing—The Archbishop of Canterbury and the other Instruments of Communion have failed to hold the communion together. They have not defended the faith once delivered to the saints, they have abdicated their authority, and that authority is no longer to be recognized. Anglicanism is grounded in the Scriptures and, therefore, new orthodox structures will be created. The task was to find a way to say this as clearly as possible.
The rest of the group—It had to represent all parts of the communion. All the cultural voices had to be heard, and to be heard quickly. There wasn’t time to litigate everything. Therefore, trust had to be established within a few hours. It was strange, then, to discover the providence of so long a time of working this issue out. Anglicans around the world have had to learn something of each other. The last decades of painfully encountering the peculiarities of each provinces’ troubles make this statement not a reactionary flash in the pan. On the contrary, it represents the Christian commitment to each other not only of common theology, but of commitment and honor. In 2003, the “Anglican Communion,” for me, was some sort of amorphous, out-there-potentiality about which I knew very little. Twenty years of thinking and praying and learning suddenly culminated in the particular people in that room being able to understand each other and assess the needs and concerns of each place. The Kigali Commitment, if you read it, says a lot about coming together across cultural boundaries to work together. It might sound pie in the sky but it is not. It is already happening. It is God working together for good those wicked sins of the past and the present to bring about his glory in the world.
There are a thousand other things I could say, but I need some more caffeine. Have a nice day!
Anne, I was so excited when I found out you were on the team--I knew it was going to be great. Of course, that huge bank of Anglican wisdom and experience, and the work of the Holy Spirit were also pretty important. ;-) But reading the statement filled me with such joy--the candor, the precision, the holy compassion, the Gospel truth, the decisiveness, the concrete plan going forward--all the things for which we've been aching for the past two decades... It's all here. Thank you... And the response from Lambeth would be uproariously funny if it wasn't so utterly tragic.