Round The Ball

We are having a bit of a renaissance in our experience of summer here in London, of all places.  The sun is still going down at 10 p.m.  The afternoons are breezy, warm and full of light.  We keep the back door and the windows open.  We pull out the lawn chairs and sit in the front, or the back.

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Today after church we did a spontaneous picnic on the grassy public area back behind our house, just off the street.  Spreading out a blanket underneath the shade tree: cheese, crackers, veggies, cuts of meat.  Berries and cream for dessert.  We savored our meal with the kids, took it slow, and spent the afternoon on the grass.

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It may be hard to believe, but we didn’t actually get to experience this much in San Francisco.  Mark Twain’s famous quote, “The coldest winter I ever spent was a summer in San Francisco” proved true for us — fog, cold, clouds . . . good but not great.  These London summers seems luxurious in comparison.  We’re loving it.  More people are out and about in the neighborhood.  People seem more willing to engage.  A group of young guys regularly hang out near the entrance to our flat.  Summer time blessings!

One of the things I like best about life in London is the leisurely way our church friends spend their Sunday afternoons together.  I don’t know if this is a British thing or not (some say London is NOT really England), but we’ve noticed that when people invite you over for lunch after church on Sunday, they are really not in a hurry.

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Seems like in the States, after-church invites either a) didn’t happen at all, b) were invites to lunch at a restaurant, or c) happened in an hour or so and then we were on our way.  Here, we get out of church at 12ish, don’t start eating until 2ish, do desserts and tea at 4 and are still hanging out at 4:30!  I like the leisurely pace and the open-handedness of the hospitality — and our kids are really into being at other people’s places too.

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Yesterday we spend the afternoon in Waterloo, just south of the Thames with a great couple from church and a number of other folks.  These unhurried, pleasant Sunday afternoon meals seem to be the way the church was intended to be: worshiping, and feasting together in one anothers’ homes.

When the new Mayor of London was elected on May 1, he immediately announced a ban on drinking alcohol on all public transit, to take effect June 1.  If that’s hard for you to understand, it’s because prior to this ban you could have an open container — a veritable cocktail party if you wanted to — on any bus or Underground train.  We’ve been witness to some of the drunken carryings on that can happen with no open container law.  But nothing like last night . . .

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With the ban soon to go in effect (at the stroke of midnight), Londoners from everywhere decided it would be a great idea to have one last drink on the Tube.  Through the weekend and late into Saturday this evolved into a full-on mardi gras like revelry all over London’s public transit.  I was en route to the showing of a friend’s band on the other side of town — and witnessed train cars and station platforms swarming with costumed people drinking and carrying on. The whole thing seemed entirely un-policed and out of control.

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By 11 p.m. when I headed home from the show,  several Undergound lines and stations had been entirely shut-down due to unruly behavior and vandalism on trains.  I hopped on a bus and was one of the last people to make it on before the buses stopped picking the partyers up too.  As the bus proceeded, I witnessed swarms of young people crowding the sidewalks everywhere — holding beer cans, wine bottles and plastic cups.  Drunk people stumbling across the roads in front of the bus.  Closed off train stations that looked as though they had been trashed in riots.  Police cars and sirens going off in all directions.  All for that last night of drinking on the train.

It’s a lazy Saturday morning at the Prince household.  I’m sipping freshly roasted coffee from Dominican Republic.  The kids are getting a little Saturday morning cartoons action.  Pam is off to a day of meetings with our church leadership.

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This has been one of those weeks where I’m almost stunned with the amount of change I’ve had to adapt to as the week moved along.  We’re a week away from kicking off our summerXchange internships — seven teams going to seven locations to serve for forty days.  But just in the last week we’ve had an unusual amount of “turbulence” — a couple people dropping out last minute, one person jumping in at the last minute, some tense discussions about the political situation in South Africa, etc.

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Yesterday I spent nearly four hours on the phone with Tim Lockie — my ‘co-conspirator’ in San Francisco on all of the internship stuff.  One of those conversations where decisions are carefully mulled over, and then made with a fierce kind of urgency that sets so much in motion.  It’s easy to forget that these are people’s lives we’re discussing — and that small things from t-shirt sizes are right there in the mix, and just as important, as the potential risks of sending a team to South Africa right now.

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The quiet Saturday morning is welcomed.  As is the cup of coffee, the sunshine, and the promise I’ve made to myself recently to “hang it up” on Friday afternoons and leave the in-box ignored over the weekends.

It’s actually been so long that I’ve blogged that I’m not sure anyone’s paying attention anymore. But I’ve been convicted recently that I’m letting my desire for perfection get in the way of what could be (even if what could be might just be only ‘good’ or ‘okay’). I’ve got too much a writer in me who is constantly drafting, editing and ultimately filing invisible posts in my mental-blog-brain all day long . . . it’s just that they never seem to make it to the web. So maybe I’ll do better this time around.

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Incidentally, my wife’s blog has turned out to be pretty amazing. Her carefree way of posting random stories that happen in her world is actually really amazing. Her blog is a joy to read and has contributed, interestingly enough, to my want to start telling our stories again. She makes it look so easy!

This was a full one.  I joined my dad and JP from World Relief in a meeting with a great organization here called “Possibilities Africa.”  This is a group of young Nairobi guys who are generating small business ideas through partnership with the local church.  This was also an opportunity to see my dad in his “business and marketing” element — he listened to each of the business plans and shared plenty of his “grey-haired wisdom” around the table for a solid couple of hours.  Don’t tell him this, but even I ended up jotting down a couple of good ‘take-away’ points — and I don’t have an entrepreneurial business bone in my body!

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From there we headed off to the Rift Valley towards Kijabe to visit some folks working at the Moffatt Bible School there near the hospital.  This was both an incredibly scenic drive, and some good time in the car with dad and JP of World Relief.  I’d been to Kijabe before, but was great to return — and good to interact with the person at the Bible School who puts a lot of their curriculum together.  (I’ve always got a nose for some of the training, curriculum design partnerships out there!)

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I’ve got some great stories to tell about our return to Nairobi and JP handing over the keys to his car so that dad and I could drive over to a neighborhood where future InnerCHANGE folks might be living.  Yes, I was driving the car.  Yes,  my dad was a wee bit nervous.   We had a great time though, and had a good look at the neighborhood there.  (Driving in downtown Nairobi in rush hour was exciting too.)

After a non-eventful flight on a mostly empty airplane (I had a row to myself to stretch out on), I shuffle my way through the Nairobi airport and step into a dense, unforgiving early morning fog. The familiar smoke and rubbish smell of Nairobi welcomed me with the mist. This time it feels familiar and welcoming.

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My dad greets me and off we go on a wild “by-pass” route that circumnavigates the city traffic jams and affords us what feels like an off-road safari.

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There is already talk of more political unrest on the radio-waves. The peace talks are disintegrating and Kofi Annan is talking of walking away from his mediating role. Many foreigners are actually talking of taking their kids out of school tomorrow and keeping an eye on their “exit” plan in case things turn into chaos. I’m not sure it’s really all that serious, yet. But the situation here is still tense and has that “on the verge” feel that makes some people nervous.

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There’s no way to replay it, but I sat in a meeting of pastors, NGO leaders and other people with national connections that reach all the way to the top as they discussed the fragility of the political choices set before Kenya at this point in time. Its a fascinating seat to be in — listening to nationals (from both tribes and all political persuasions) contemplate the future structure of their government.

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My dad and I were invited to join a World Relief inspector on a walk into Kibera slum to verify that food aid was reaching the right people. Dad took some great pictures (something I’d never have the guts to do) — and we had an experience in a school-room full of children, mostly AIDS orphans, that I simply can’t put into any words right now. I’m not sure whether Pam would have smiled and sang with the children, or joined me in my inner desire to weep.

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This was my second time walking through Kibera, and it was no less moving. How do I capture the impact of over a million people living in rusted tin-shacks with no running water?

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These are just a few of my first day encounters. I’ll try and update more in the morning.

When our building ran out of water a few days ago, it was, at first, a fascinating sociological study.  We soon became acquainted with people we had only shuffled past in silence before.  They were coming to our door, each one of them, to see if they were the only ones who didn’t have any water.

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Yes, we called the water company.  Yes, they said they were working on it.  Yes, the trucks and workers drilling into the street behind us probably have something to do with this.

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But then our last drip of water trickled out of the tap over the weekend — we had been managing without a flushing toilet or running water upstairs, but still had a steady flow in the kitchen –  so when the last drip of water ANYWHERE in the building disappeared, the pitch took a higher tone.  Young Bengali neighbors, translating for their elderly parents, came by our door.  Only this time they were angry; incredulous that we’d all been left by the Council and the water department without some kind of emergency provision.

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“This is unsanitary,” one young man spat at me, as though I was the water-department myself, rather than a similarly-afflicted neighbor.  “How are we supposed to wash our hands, use the toilet, or prepare food?”

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Pam and I were slow to complain.  On days two and three we figured the problem was bad but would probably get better.  After all, we were having a truly “two-thirds world experience” — and we figured our Bengali neighbors were saying to each other “Hey, this is still better than Bangladesh.”  But on day four, when the water really did run out, we were on the phone in a flash — making it clear we didn’t intend to spend another day drinking bottled-water and fishing refuse out of the toilet-bowl.  At least put some portable-toilets out in the courtyard and deliver some water, please!  At least tell us you’re taking care of the problem and you’re really sorry!

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The water company got the hint — and we don’t honestly know if it’s because enough of us finally called in, or because some of us happened to have the right accent when we called to complain.  But things started getting taken care of, finally.  By Saturday night we had a trickle of water running in the kitchen again.  But to date we still don’t have any water running in the bathroom.

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This was one of those great InnerCHANGE situations where our first instinct was to just run out and buy a bunch of water for our neighbors . . . kind of drumming up a Santa-esque evangelistic  door-to-door campaign with water bottles from the Great-White-Americans downstairs.  On second thought, however, it was much more of a bonding opportunity than a problem to throw money at and solve.  In an environment where getting to know neighbors has been slow and rare, a total water shortage has brought more people to our door than anything to date.

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So here we are, our laundry piling up, dishes stacked on the kitchen counters, going on four days without bathing, explaining to our neighbors in our thick American accents that, no, we still don’t have water either and, yes, we’ve called the water department again today and they say we’ll have water by tonight.  I’m standing outside in my robe feeling just as sorry for myself as the next guy - co-miserating with irate neighbors about the insanity and unsanity of it all.

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So, if you’re praying for us, I’m not sure how to tell you how . . . it’d be nice for the water to come back on before Christmas — but it’s also been a great way to connect with the neighborhood.

We have visited about eight churches since landing here in London, but none so fascinating as the one right on our council estate right here in Stepney.  I’ll leave the name out of publication, to be fair.

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It began with bells . . . church-bells chiming over the neighborhood like a call to a grand cathedral.  This church, however, had been bombed in World War II and never quite recovered.  Though it had been rebuilt — just a 30 second walk from our front door — most of the church-goers began moving out of the neighborhood in the 1970’s when the Bengali’s started moving in.  That explains why there were only five other people there the morning I visited.  Five plus the vicar and the deacon, that is.

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Now, I’m all for small churches, but when the priest is stealthily pointing a remote-control at a jukebox that plays the pre-recorded organ music for each hymn . . . something’s wrong.  When there are only five other people besides the visitor and nobody really looks at or talks to the visitor, something’s really wrong.

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It’s a lovely space, honestly.  To think of the building itself sitting so close to our house, and smack-dab on our estate full of thousands of people who don’t claim the name of Jesus — my mind starts spinning at the possibilities . . . gathering space, kids’ clubs, office space, training space.  A place just to come an pray in quiet.  The list grows long.

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But then I remember that Jesus often uses the small things to confuse the wise and the proud.  I can deride the church for not making a stranger welcome — but can I really judge it for it’s smallness?  God, what are you doing here that you might want us to be a part of?  Does the pastor need encouragement?  Do the aging congregants need companionship?  Where are you in this?