The Last Chipate

I stood up in the front of the church with a small red book in my hands. Although every inch of the pews were packed and there were masses of children standing in the back, I was not nervous. I was smiling. Every eye in the church was looking at us. And it wasn’t because we’re stunning creatures of mankind. It was because we were white.

Two buses, six feet and a car carried us to the Masai church on top of the mountain in the dying land. Samsoni had asked us to come live with his tribe for the day, beginning with the five-hour church service on top of the Masai lands. Thanks to the unfailingly unpredictable African bus system, we were two and a half hours late. We made it to church just before halftime. And about five minutes before halftime, they asked Monica and me if we had anything we wanted to speak in the service. We looked at each other in surprise. Or we would have if we could have been surprised at anything else that we encountered that morning. Sure, we said. We’d get up there and speak, fully knowing that in Masai land, there is no bullet-point message. It is a blood-letting of emotion purging the soul of disbelief, of doubt, of a fever of humanness.

I waited until walking up to the front of the church before deciding what I’d say. The thirty minutes of worship before then would have been ample time to prepare seeing as I knew none of the Masai language, but truth be told, I was too deep into thought to think about much besides the world around me. A world called Masai.

Samsoni’s tribe was one of the more modern Masai tribes, having inducted itself into the evolving African culture by way of Western clothes and Coca Cola. Even following Christ is a sign of change among the Masai. But if you were in the church, you’d hardly feel like you were elsewhere besides the inner atrium of the heart of the Masai. They may have looked like they walked in the 20^th century but they sat, moved, and stood like they were Masai. A row of elderly women with earlobes down to their chins and hunched backs sat in the very front of the church. At any given moment someone or several someones would get up and dance with an enchanting, repetitive rhythm in the movement of their heads and necks. Six different people led worship and at any time they would starting dancing up and down the single aisle like a party doing the train at a wedding dance. Three steps forward, two steps back. Three steps forward, two steps back.

I almost didn’t go to the village that day. The night before Monica poked her head into our room where I was sitting in the dark at 9:30. The electricity had gone out, so I was doing what most people do when the lights are gone. Nothing. Actually, that’s a lie. I was deep in thought. English cut through the silence like glass shattering in an abandoned house. “Samson is going to his village for church tomorrow and wants to know if we want to come with,” she asked. I turned over. The chance to go to Masai land was impossible to say no to, but at the same time, it came at the cost of not going to the church in Arusha. I decided to sleep on it and, until about ten minutes before Monica and Samson were supposed to leave, I was still undecided. And laying in my pajamas in bed. As the drowsiness of sweet slumber faded into increasing consciousness, suddenly my heart completely changed. To serve these people you have to know them. And how can you know them if you can’t live among them? I was instantly awake and in three minutes I sat on the blue bench outside my door, ready for Samson and Monica. I sat on that blue bench longer than seven minutes, cursed African time. An hour later, Samson finally came out. God bless Africa.

The bus ride took longer than usual that day, but I hardly seemed to notice since it was my first time riding in the very front seat of the bus. And when I say front, I mean front and center. The driver hit my knees every time he shifted gears. I was the peanut butter sandwiched between Amani, one of the Masai students at the base, and the crazy driver who kept trying to put six people in five-seat rows, seven if there were kids. The bus journey gave way to a small, white Toyota Corolla that carried us from the paved road off into the ageless village.

I wish I could show you what it was like but there is no way to put it in a picture. The land was caught in one last breath before waiting for long-desired rain. Enormous crevices, like dried up rivers, cut a maze through the dusty plains. Samsoni sat in the front talking to his father’s brother in the driver’s seat but took time to look back and tell us that he played in the ravines and crevices when he was a kid. The church was at least a twenty minute drive from the main drag of the village. It sat high on a mountain hill, kilima in Swahili, along with two other buildings for a school and a small playground by the cement toilets.

The view was incredible. Samsoni pointed to a small dot of a building far off in the distance. It had to be at least three miles from where we stood, not counting the winding path you’d have to make around deep ravines and thorny patches. It turned out to be his schoolhouse as a kid. I stared at the schoolhouse in the distance. We had passed Samsoni’s house coming in from the village, in the exact opposite direction of the schoolhouse. For seven years of primary school, Samson walked over an hour each way to school. Suddenly Bill Cosby’s standup comedy line about walking uphill both ways to school seems like toddler’s play. Samson walked more in a week than I did in my first eighteen years of school.

As I stared out in the distance, envisioning a young, stick-like boy scampering across the plains, a white-haired man picked up his feet and began the long journey down the mountain, not even thinking of another way to go. I wondered how many times he had walked that mountain to church, leaving in the heat of day, wearing full length sleeves and dress pants. He was the man who we’d laid hands on and prayed for as a congregation, asking for the healing of his shoulder. When we finished praying he said the burning pain had left immediately. Slowly other Masai women began to trickle down the mountain after him. I realized only then that we were the only people in a hundred to be driven to church.

When we left we had eight people in the Toyota, three of which were village boys who sat on our laps in the backseat. Samson knew we needed to be back to Kilimanjaro that afternoon, but rather than taking us to the village, the pastor took the steep mountain road going straight down side of the mountain and, passing the church people who had left twenty or thirty minutes before us, wound the car around a high curve until we pulled into the series of buildings where they lived. The led us into a long living room with a small table in the middle. Two women brought glasses and plates and, after a short while, a plate of chipate--thick, heavy flatbread that feel like somebody poured cement in your tortillas--and chipsi--sliced potatoes fried in sunflower oil. Chipate is rolled and eaten with the hands, as are the chipsi unless you’re staunchly Western. After we finished eating the pastor came back and the women brought more food for him. There was one last chipate on the plate.

The pastor rinsed his hands and leaned back. “I am glad both of you came,” he said. Monica and I had both preached on different Scriptures in the New Testament and shared what we came here to do, adding at least thirty minutes to the church service that day. This is a people that loves to go to church. He thanked us for giving testimonies and then settled with hot coffee in his hands. “What you two said was good, but especially what you talked about,” he nodded towards me. In describing my heart for coming to Africa I had mentioned taking care of little kids and working in an orphanage. A horde of kids from Compassion International stood in the back of the church, so I knew that they were familiar with the mark of AIDS, with losing parents to early death, with abandonment. “I have a heart for the kids, too. More than anything. I like being a pastor, but I have always loved teaching the kids. You don’t realize that here, they all have nothing. But they could be everything if they had anything to start with.”

I sat smiling on the couch, thinking about all the kids I saw in the back of the church and every African baby I’ve met since I’ve been here. You can’t imagine everything it takes to be Masai and to minister to that people with flawless love. To serve these people you have to know them. And how can you know them if you can’t live among them? I could spend an entire year learning about the ways of the Masai and never feel like I was a part of the bush. There is something that would always be white/American about me. But the man on the couch, he had the voice, the hands, the feet that served. Although Masai himself, he had been schooled in Dar es Salaam and had good tutors his whole life. He seemed privileged, but he could still understand his people. He was the first Christian in his village, and 23 years ago gave up teaching to become their pastor, too. In that one choice, this man had changed his entire village. He served.

When his father finished speaking, Samson pushed the last chipate our way. It seemed like sin. We were full beyond belief and drinking coffee to boot, and there was no way there wasn't someone keeling over from the pain stomach acid causes when you are long past hunger. What is this? Overeat, now? However, these men and particularly the elder, who had been a pastor in the village longer than I had been alive, did not seem to define the measure of a servant by the last chipate. They take their people seriously and yet they do not take themselves as saviors, just harbingers of African hospitality. The difference between serving people and saving people, between honest service and acting like a surrogate savior, crystallized. He shoved the plate towards us and tore it apart, setting a half on each of our plates. The last chipate was for us that day.