This year’s Christmas Eve was really frightening for me. I have never been so far way from home and family and familiarity (and anybody that has known me for more than one year) during this season.
Here is an excerpt from a very long, and long awaited email I wrote to my mum on Christmas Eve:
“during this time of year we are celebrating the birth of Jesus, His first coming and all that it means, as we anticipate his second coming when everything will make sense again, be put back into its place, maybe the low things back up, the high things back down. i am so thankful for Emmanuel, God with us. This is everything, i always say, and this year my words must deliver because i have nothing else. Emmanuel, God with us, is the only thing that I have this season. Christmas has been reduced, all the excesses scratched off, to the bare bones of meaning and origin. No christmas tree, no ribbons, no ornaments, no garlands, no lights, no road trip to tahoe, no turkey, stuffing, or pie in the oven, no mulled wine, no christmas parties in the city, or with church people, no presents, no wrapping paper, no cold winter evenings to bundle up for, and worst of all, no family, and only a tenuous and unstable sense of “friends,” all of whom have become so strangely absent, and only more absent-er as the 25th draws nearer. they have all left to their various upcountries, back to their various families, off on their various adventures. and i was invited along to so many of these things, and somehow i managed to turn them all down, or to passively not say yes to any of them. none of them felt like the right thing to do. until i found i had run out of options to turn down, i had run out of things to not say yes to, and now i have been left here. i don’t know if this should crush me, or give me a quiet space and time to be me, to refocus, to take care of myself and my secret place before God, which has been woefully neglected of late. and i have a real fear that i might not find Him when i look for Him. either way, i feel lonely, in a suffocating way. in a way that makes me wonder and wonder and wonder and i feel my lungs being compressed. i don’t know why my lungs, that’s just how it is. and loneliness feels like panicking, it is a shortness of breath, a sudden remembering that: there is nobody! it is just me. here. and on the other side is everyone else.”
“i think there were 10 vague half baked variations of how this christmas could have gone: 1) long time ago L invited me to go to shanghai with her fam, and i’ve never been to china. or gone skiing. but I can’t afford the plane ticket. she’s there now and says it’s so friggin cold. 2) go to J’s upcountry with his family, which sounded fun, at his grandma’s place with all his family from england, south africa, other parts of kenya. 3) go to A’s upcountry with his wife and family. sounded too random of a way for me to spend christmas. 4) go to L’s upcountry in western kenya, which is supposed to be beautiful, fresh, and green, to help her bury her mother in a proper grave. but L was let go from SON recently, and i also don’t know how much i trust her, because of some incident that happened with some money i lent her for a medical emergency with her family. 5) M asked me if i wanted to go to korea with her, undisclosed reasons for why i turned that down 6) S told me i could go to kampala, uganda to hang out with her and her friends. sounded fun, but i feel like i’m not cool enough for her and her crowd. plus i’m like 10 years younger than everybody. 7) the w’s mentioned that i could plan a trip to zanzibar with them. but i don’t want to be recruited into anything else, and i don’t have enough money for zanzibar. 8) M said they are having a family reunion in i forgot where and i could come with her. i just wasn’t feelin it. especially with the way her brother P has been bothering me nonstop. he’s just like that. it’s ok, just annoying. 9) Z asked me if i wanted to go to the coast with her. but Z is different when she’s around other people than when she’s around just me. when it’s just me, we laugh and run around and act crazy and carefree and get into trouble, but we also talk about flowers and mornings and rain and children’s homes and our parents and our futures. we are thoughtful. but she’s something else around other people. it makes me feel suddenly estranged. 10) S asked me if i wanted to go to turkana with him. i wanted to. but i was afraid for my safety. traveling for me is a different thing. i stand out, and i have to account for the fact that anywhere i go everyone in visual proximity will have noticed me, and that can mean many things. and i’m a girl. i wish i was free to just pack a bag of some change of clothes, water, bar of soap, glucose, some lunch bars, and hop on a bus and go places. but i can’t. i am too responsible to do something like that. i want to see places, and meet people as they are. but i can’t. or i was too afraid to. and i didn’t have enough information or time to feel like i could assess things properly. so i said no. and i was angry with him for leaving me behind. because, mum, i feel like everyone has left me behind. “
i decided that morning, of Christmas Eve, that i would fast until dinner time, or maybe the whole day. because i felt like God was far away. and the whole point of Christmas is God, so it made sense for me to do that. i’m scared of hunger, especially when i’m on my period, when i am already feeling lonely, emotional, and weak. but I was looking for Somebody and I was determined to look with all desperation until I found Him. i’ve had one thing in my hand, it was a promise, and it said, "I am a Rewarder of those who seek Me.” I was thinking about this quote that i read awhile ago which pretty much sums up my thoughts on fasting: “this struggle has taught time to value hunger; to embrace it as a means of getting God, rather than thinking of this hunger as an enemy. it’s like fasting. God commands us to fast, but not so that he can prove he is as good as a cheeseburger by making our hunger go away. The goal of fasting is not for God to remove our hunger, but for us to learn that in the midst of hunger he is trustworthy. the feeling of hunger is the point of the fast. it teaches us to hunger for something better.”
that morning, as i made my way to the cafe that i sat down to write in, I nearly started dancing in the middle of jacaranda avenue, from joy. it came from nowhere. it came from knowing He makes me come alive. and i spent that whole day writing. ok maybe not that whole day, but atleast 4 or 5 solid hours, which hasn’t happened in a long time. i felt very weak. but not in a bad way. and after i finished writing, i picked up some groceries and basics from chandarana, and then i made a slow turtle walk the mile back home, looking for God, talking to Him, and wondering how He would show up.
once i arrived home i realized my phone had run out of phone credit, and the most guaranteed kiosk at this hour was about a mile up gitanga road, across from valley arcade. and since For You Chinese Restaurant was there too, i decided i would treat myself to chinese take out for Christmas Eve, and to break my fast. the sun was setting and i carried as little with me as possible. on the way there, the round white disc of the moon rolled itself along the tangled telephone wires and i had to stop to take a photo. i composed a couple mediocre shots, and then continued. up ahead i saw a very ordinary-looking man approaching me. he was looking at me and he had his hands behind his back. (i have learned to be aware of everyone around me when i’m out, and i always look for where people’s hands are.) i was alarmed that i could not see his hands, or what his hands were holding, and i tried to figure out why they were clasped so tightly behind his back, and that’s when i noticed the end of a black handle barely visble from behind him. i swear everything inside me shut down except for this one thing which was panic, and it drove me to run, nearly straight out into two way traffic so i could cross the street, and be very seen. i wasn’t thinking straight, and my legs decided for me that i would rather be hit by a car than have a gun pointed at me again. when i made it to the other side, i looked behind me, and saw that the man had continued walking forward as if nothing had happened, and behind him was a black umbrella, clasped between both his hands. i don’t know what i felt… relieved, angry, stupid. i began shaking, and i could hardly walk. but i was already halfway to the kiosk, and it didn’t make sense to run home, and i couldn’t run anyway, so i continued. and i prayed earnestly, for this country, for its instability and corruption and debilitating inefficiencies, for the giant and ever growing gap between the rich and the poor, which can drive individuals to do certain unimaginable things to survive… i bought 200ksh (2USD) worth of credit from the red coca cola kiosk, and walked into the haven that For You was for me. I was so flustered that i accidentally broke my fast when they put a bowl of chips in front of me as i waited for my order of one spring roll and one sizzling chicken. haha.
on the walk back, it was dark, and i began to pray and praise God and tell Him all the things in my heart and head and stomach and hands (things about my problematic grey-area second year here, about where God wants to put me in the vast shifting coordinate planes of this complex world and all its complex issues, about Christmas, about where He was, about my anxiety and fear, about the promise I was still holding in my hand), and then i thought about the stray kitten in the compound that I’ve been feeding. when i got home, i heated up half a sausage on the stove, cut it into pieces, put it in the sauce bowl, and brought it downstairs. the night guard took out his torch and helped me look for the kitten, as he always does, and we found it playing aside the pile of cut tree branches. i set out the small plastic bowl on the tree stump as i did before, and sat on the ground waiting. I think I freaked out some neighbors, who saw this quiet asian girl that they know nothing about, sitting underneath the mabati shelter between two cars on the floor of the gravel parking lot, doing apparently nothing, on a Christmas eve. i waited for half an hour, as cars and neighbors passed in and out of the parking lot, and the kitten, that i call Baby, only came once to the tree stump, but never ventured to eat anything. i felt irritated and embarrassed and S called and told me to just go back upstairs and check on the cat later.
i officially broke fast with a soggy spring roll. i was happy. and i ate for the sake of Christmas eve. i didn’t really feel hungry.
D whatsapped me. how was the fast? it was very good, i said. i felt very weak, but in a good way, and i was very hungry for God all day. All i was certain of was how God is the One thing, the One person I hungered for most all day, and I felt like that was a good thing to be certain about.
S called me again and said, i miss you and i miss you and i miss you. i want to come back.
I was talking to D when midnight came and it became Christmas for me.
When I went to bed, i felt sad because i passed through the whole day and i saw, aside from the night guard, nobody i recognized, and nobody who recognized me. i hate that, being Anonymous for a whole day, especially on a day like this. i asked, God where are You? Do I fall asleep so I can escape this horrible loneliness? Do I fight to rejoice, to choose joy? Do I fight to trust in You as I worship You, to trust in You in order to worship You?
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