Last night thugs held up the emergency department with knives. They forced the interns and nurses to lay down on the ground, while one nurse was taken hostage to open up the cashier office. A patient was hit in the head and has a severe hematoma and a guard has a head laceration. They stole 80,000 shillings or around a 1000 dollars, a huge sum of money for Kenya.
This morning, Wednesday chapel was unusually full and many people stood outside and listened as the news was reported. Shock ripped through the assembly.
Kijabe is a bubble. Its a bubble of western culture in rural Africa where little old ladies sell English muffins and tortillas for a living to muzugus who are homesick. Where a party usually involves baked goods and Kenyan delicacies plus/minus a bunch of multinational children running around and/or an intense theological or medical discussion. Most folks both Kenyan and Western live in housing on the mission station that is often furnished and in close proximity to the hospital. We are a strange city on a hill.
What we forget is that the rest of Kenya is not like this. Its easy sometimes to forget about the slums of Nairobi that are only 40 mins away or the stories of violence that can fill the head lines of the Nairobi papers from time to time. We forget how much petrol costs or even the poverty that is so close yet so far from our day to day lives around Kijabe. I do not use poverty to justify the actions of the people who did this but I am reminded of how great the desperation can be. And how tempting of a target we must look with our peaceful, little village of muzugus and Kenyan professionals.
When I was in Mombasa last weekend (post is coming), I saw graffiti saying the following:
"Life in the Ghetto is Hard"
"Who will fight for the Poor?"
We should be in shock and sad and we should wish for justice and pray for peace to be restored. But let us not lose our capacity to try to understand, to offer compassion and in the truly divine way offer forgiveness.
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