Last Day in Najile

The wind is blowing over the dusty land. The constant sound of it buffeting the dry savannah bush is punctuated by the boys at the secondary school singing and dancing their masculine Maasai dances. This place has only had a handful of significant rain days in the past year. We need rain. This is my last afternoon here in Najile. Its not sinking in. Even though the house is empty now, except for our mattress on the floor.

This afternoon I didn't have a thing in the house to host any visitors, not even chairs so I went and spent the afternoon under the tree at my friend Ann's house so anyone who wanted to see me could find me there. We cut cabbages and onions and plucked a chicken. She is a hero of mine- bold and respectful, passionate and so wise. I will miss her.

Last night we put the kitchen table on top of the car so we could take it to its new home. Working in the night to pack the car, I started to get more of a sense that this is really happening- just for a moment. That table was the center point of our life and work- if there was a three year time lapse photography of our lives in Najile, that table would be a point around which we revolved. 

In church yesterday, the church chairman preached. Whenever he gets up front to speak, I get nervous because he likes to single us out, talk directly to us from the pulpit, sometimes in Maa, sometimes in English, in the middle of his long Maa speech. We always have to be on our toes or else feel foolish. Sometimes we feel foolish even on our toes. You never can tell what he might ask us to do or when. This time, he spoke directly to us to tell us that they  appreciated having us here in Najile. We never gave them any problem for three years and we had... (he paused and searched his English vocabulary) human hearts. Hmmm. I wasn't sure what to make of that, but I believe he was meaning it to be something positive. 

Tonight we will have dinner for the last time with some of our dearest friends here, Ann and Daniel and their children. Perhaps we'll tell stories one last time and exchange a couple gifts. And we'll feast on the food that has been prepared all day long as a gift of love by one of their older daughters.

The richness of these last moments with the community and this place is so hard to express. It swells and flows over and around us in rainbows of color and warmth. There are threads of pain, too. We've been here long enough to connect deeply to the fear and anguish in the community and culture. We are caught in swirls of God's beauty reflected in resilient, generous people, but our guts wrench at the horror of entrapping brokenness.  This place is not unique. We see no difference between the situation here and that of our home communities with regard to this brokenness and beauty. Near or far, the rock of God's grace is the refuge we find.

Doug and I just watched our last Najile sunset, intensified by huge clouds of dust, painted purple- orange like smoke across the horizon. Goodbye Najile.