Kwaya Music

Mambo Sawa Sawa

Mambo Sawa Sawa . . . Mambo Sawa Sawa . . .

[Things Are Good, Very Good!]*

That refrain from a popular song –at least in the Lutheran Circle in East Africa- is one that was often stuck in my head during my time in Mombasa and Iringa. Truth be told, it is actually the tune that popped into my head after my run-in with the mwizi in Kariakoo.

In many ways, it sums up many of my experiences and encounters with communities of faith –predominantly Christian ones– in Afrika ya Mashariki. There is a palpable sense of joy, hope, and optimism among the members of these communities that is difficult to put into words. To know it you must experience it.**

This attitude stands in stark contrast to the assessments/observations made concerning a congregation that has grown near and dear to me here in the CT. . .

WORRIED ABOUT THE FUTURE: Almost everyone I spoke with (with the exception of the youth) seems to understand the dire situation in which the congregation is in, They worry about the congregation’s future. Many don’t expect the congregation to be here in ten years. Uncertainty is the common denominator.

Worry & Uncertainty.

Right here in Connecticut, one of the wealthiest states in the nation.
Land of jobs, homes, food, and easy access to healthcare.
Surrounded by abundance, the dominant theme is scarcity.
Fear of losing what they have.

Sifahamu.
I don’t understand
. . . the source of that fear
. . . how to combat it
. . . where faith, hope, and trust went

Is it Cultural?

. . . Societal?

. . . Theological?

. . . Political?

Regardless
We need help

What would it take
. . . to see opportunities instead of roadblocks?
. . . to dance while giving an offering?
. . . to sing –and mean - mambo sawa sawa?

My dream
To bring the fearful
In touch with the hopefilled
So that they might be changed

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*Check out the song in the video clip below.

** It is a far cry from being there, but hopefully the afforementioned clip gives you a slight taste of a Sunday Service in East Africa.

Sunday in Mombasa

On Travel & Tourism

Preparing for semester in Bali in the fall of 2000, these passages from Errant Journeys: Adventure Travel in the Modern Age struck a chord with me. Now, some seven years later, I find that they still resonate:

This type of tourist, corresponding to what has been called the adventurer or original drifter rejects his home society and culture and seeks in the strangeness of the world of others, at the very least, experience of real, authentic life. At the most he is in quest of an ‘elective center’ which will become a new spiritual home to him, an alternative to that modern world he has rejected. He therefore travels by himself or in small groups, in an unhurried manner, spontaneously changing his plans according to his interests, disposition, and opportunities. As it was for the traveler of earlier times, travel is ‘work’ and not mere ‘leisure.’ (pg 49)

The edge of travel begins by deconstructing our previously held, loosely fabricated images of places, it continues by establishing new and personal relationships to the places that we visit, and often it concludes by reshaping the place we left and our very notion of it. Such metaphorical journeys, linked to travel in a classical sense . . . are not possible in the short run, nor can they be attained in the commercially programmed tours or in the sightseeing clichés that produce the tourism landscape that we now find scattered around the world. Therefore they remain inaccessible to mass tourism – literal tourism which produces such landscapes. (pg 92)

3 Months 3 Bags

From September 3

All of my life in three little bags

Thousands of miles. Ninety days. This was my world.

Back in New Haven, they remind me of how far I’ve gone, how far I’ve come, how much as changed.

On the floor of my apartment, they are tiny. Seemingly inconsequential. They are dwarfed by shelves of books, games, and movies. A twenty-seven inch TV and red Poang chair. All of this stuff; my accumulated wealth from twenty-eight years seems foreign to me.

Whose apartment is this? Who do these things belong to?
Their owner –the former occupant- is gone.

It is weird . . . feeling like a stranger in your own home.

WHERE is home?

For that matter,
WHAT is home?