It’s not the White House...

...but now I can say I’ve lived on 16th in Washington, D.C., just like the Obamas (they live at the intersection of 16th and Pennsylvania), who also happen to be former residents of Chicago just like me.

Tonight is my last night in my first home in D.C. For the past six weeks, I have been living on my own as a temporary bachelor in a tiny, one-bedroom studio apartment. It has its own full bathroom (with a shower only) and a small kitchen area (with just a two-burner hotplate). It’s a room in a large, three-story house where several other people live in small rooms too, I’m sure (I’ve never seen the other ones), although I think they use the common kitchen on the first floor, which has a full stove with an oven.


This place is located in the Columbia Heights neighborhood, which is largely filled with immigrants from Central and South America. So I’ve heard a lot of Spanish spoken these last weeks. The way I like to describe my location is that if I get on my bike and ride directly south for exactly three miles, I run smack-dab into the White House! It’s so cool to live in a city and in a neighborhood where I can go just a few blocks and see the Washington Monument and have the White House come into view.

It was strange that I ended up on this very street as my first residence in this city because it’s where some other members of my family – three generations of them – have started out and/or lived. My great aunt (my grandfather’s sister), who lived in D.C. for decades (from the administrations of FDR to George W. Bush!), lived in a grand old apartment building called the Chastleton a couple miles south on 16th with her mother. When my own mother was young (younger than I am now), she moved with her sister from Seattle to D.C., and they moved in to this apartment with their aunt and grandmother. Later they would get their own apartment in this same building, and my mother would meet my father, and they would get their own apartment in this same building. I think this is the story of who lived where and with whom, but if I don’t have it all right, suffice it to say there was a lot happening in this one building with previous generations of my family, all on 16th, the same street where I happened to have ended up when I first landed in this city to start a new life.


Today this building has been renovated and is now all condos, with each selling for upwards of $176,000. It’s in the hottest part of town, mere blocks from Dupont Circle.

My parents were married at Grace Lutheran Church, several miles north, but also on 16th. This is the street where everything happened, and the same is true today. We have an active new president who is marking his first 100 days in office today, and from a busy White House down there on 16th, he and his family have established themselves in this city and have gotten down to business in these first 100 days, planting a new garden, modernizing the Easter Egg Roll and sneaking out from their home to try some of the restaurants in town.

Tomorrow I move to my second temporary residence, a larger place that can accommodate three of us, since Sarah and Lexi will join me here at the end of next week when they come from Nairobi. We’re renting the first floor of a house in the Brookland neighborhood in the northeastern section of the city. It’s in the shadow of The Catholic University. We’ll be there at least through the end of August.

I’m a bit sad to be moving away from my neighbors on 16th – the Obamas. But further adventures await in a new part of the city – parks to walk to on summer evenings, a Franciscan monastery to retreat to, and a college campus with a bizarre shrine to our country’s patron saint, Mary, Mother of our Lord. It’s all a testament to how interesting this city is.

What I did for Easter in New York City

This isn't a post about happenings with all of us in Nairobi/Kenya/Africa, since I, Stephen, am now living in Washington, D.C., while Sarah and Lexi stay behind in Nairobi until Sarah's work contract is finished in early May.

Since I am here alone, I went up to New York City for the Easter weekend to see some friends and family. For the last few years, my brother Andy has been making artistic costumes and hats for the various parades that NYC has throughout the year (for Halloween, Easter, etc.) from Metrocards, the fare cards that the city's subway system uses.

So on Sunday afternoon, I gathered with him and a group of friends to be in the Easter parade, which is actually just a big street party where people show off their creations, mostly around St. Patrick's Cathedral. The New York Post TV unit interviewed us. You can see me, my brother and a friend in this clip about three-quarters of the way through. My brother is talking, and I'm wearing a hat in the shape of the Brooklyn Bridge.

This is the story that goes with the video:

LOW 'COST'UME PARADE

By AMBER SUTHERLAND

In an Easter bonnet, with yesterday's frills upon it.

With the economy in the tank, recycling was on the minds of many who stepped out on Fifth Avenue yesterday for the Easter Parade.

For example, a Florida woman, Molly Churchill, 47, was dressed up as a giant Easter Cake, which was made by her husband, Mark, 48.

"We had this costume from another parade. It only cost $100 to redecorate it for Easter," Mark said. "We're recycling. It's very economical. It was a very small expense and the costume amazes people."

Kenya and the U.S.: The differences aren't paper-thin

This may seem odd, but one stark difference between the U.S. and Kenya/Africa that I noticed fairly soon after arriving in Washington, D.C., is how much paper is used in the U.S. in various parts of daily life. Of course, I had been part of this high paper consumption before myself, so it’s nothing really new to me, but it’s something that I noticed after living in Africa where not nearly as much paper passed through my hands on a daily basis.

• Much of what caused me to notice this in Washington, D.C., and not in Seattle, where I spent several days first, immediately after arriving in the U.S. from Kenya, is that I attended a conference for about three full days during my first days in D.C. Not that I attended many (or any) conferences in Nairobi, but I don’t think they would have distributed and used as much paper as they do in the U.S. Participants in this conference received a paper folder containing various papers at registration, and at each workshop, the leader and other speakers handed out papers. If you strolled through the exhibit areas, you could pick up more paper from various organizations. At every place at the tables in the rooms where workshops were held, the hotel provided a pad of paper to take notes on. It seemed normal to me at the time when I worked for the ELCA in Chicago and I would come home from a conference with a stack full of paper to sort through, but now that seems like a real task – and almost wasteful! - after this conference. Also, this conference was held at a big, fancy high-rise hotel (a Hilton). In the bathrooms, you could dry your hands on paper towels (the garbage can for this under the paper towel dispenser was always full), and near the entrance to the bathrooms, they had a box of Kleenex. When they provided a means to dry your hands in Kenya (which was rare to begin with anyway) at a public bathroom, it was often an air hand dryer, not necessarily because they wanted to save the environment, but purchasing a continuous supply of disposable paper towels is expensive.
• Also while living in Kenya, we took a hiatus of sorts from mail and specifically junk mail. Since there aren’t mail carriers in Kenya – mail is not delivered directly to residences (both people and businesses have to go to the post office to pick up their mail) – businesses couldn’t find us to send us ads and junk mail. We really received only what was essential to us. Junk mail is certainly a major way that a lot of paper passes through our hands every day. (As an aside, I did not really like this hiatus from mail, even if most mail these days is junk mail. I’ve always regarded mail as a gift that comes every day – I love being sent things that regularly without even asking for them!)
• I am reminded that in homes in the U.S., people use paper towels in the kitchen and paper napkins at meals. We certainly could and did do this in Kenya, but having disposable paper for this purpose isn’t something you see in a typical African household – a poor African can’t afford to buy disposable paper products. A speaker from Kenya at this conference also noted this – how American households have a roll of paper in the kitchen and bathroom and everywhere else and how badly it makes her feel that trees are being wasted.
• At the conference, the only meals that were provided in the conference costs were essentially lunches. And for those, we were given boxed lunches – that we ate at the hotel! So what a waste again by the hotel/the conference’s organizers. We each had a cardboard box that we threw away on-site where we got our lunch, and immediately after eating it – we didn’t really need to carry our lunches far in the box. At fast-food places, we do the same. There are boxes for Big Macs and fries that we throw away a few minutes after we’re given the food.
  

One bright spot in this often wasteful situation in the U.S. is that we recycle here. Thankfully, much of this paper that passes through our hands daily is recyclable, and people do recycle it in their homes.

From those still in Africa

It’s lonely here without Stephen though his sister comes for 2 weeks on Monday so that will be nice. Lexi and I have had several dinner engagements since Stephen has been gone so don’t think that we are just sitting here doing nothing. We have been going to bed early as we have both been tired.

This morning we went to church at our usual place. The African organist has actually been on time the last two Sundays; he handles the hymns well (even at a nice speed) but the liturgy just makes me cringe. He definitely isn’t playing all of the music but I can’t pinpoint exactly what he is leaving out – something in the melody, I am pretty sure. Stephen would be going nuts if he was here! They are having a church cleaning day next Saturday; I really wonder how many people will show up. Getting people to do anything besides come to church on Sunday morning seems to be a problem.

The weather is still very nice though it has been a little cooler in the mornings. It has only been overcast and will look like rain but it hasn’t been raining. People are getting concerned that if the rains don’t come at the right time, things will be even worse with the food crisis. The other major regional concern relates to Sudan; with the arrest warrant out for the President, things might get ugly.

Lexi and I have booked our tickets back to the U.S. My mom will come two weeks before and fly back with us so that I don’t have to handle Lexi alone. We are leaving on 6 May. I am SO excited about it. Lexi and I (and maybe Stephen, too) will get to see my entire immediate family – nieces and all! Yesterday, I went through my clothes and now, along with Stephen’s, we have a large box of things to give away. And on Friday at work I did all (or 95%) of the filing that had been piling up as well as threw some things away so I feel I have really accomplished something the last two days.

From the capital of Kenya to the capital of the U.S.

Time for an update on my/our relocation plans. The execution of the plan has begun!

I left Nairobi on the night of Sunday, March 1. It was a very long journey to Seattle that involved a very long flight that was extended unexpectedly. The Dubai-to-NYC leg of my flights was long anyway – normally 14 1/2 hours – but we circled over NYC because of the snow, which was preventing any planes from landing there. So add another hour on this plane. We finally started getting low on fuel (as if 14 1/2 hours in the air wouldn’t do that in the first place), so we landed in Philadelphia to refuel, which meant we sat on the plane for another hour. Then we went back to NYC. By the time we finally landed, I had missed my connection at JFK to Seattle. But I ended up spending the night in NYC at my brother’s place in Manhattan and having lunch the next day with a good college friend, so it wasn’t all bad. Plus I got to sleep in a horizontal position that night, since I was headed into my second straight night of sleeping on airplanes.

Once I arrived in Seattle, I stayed there for ten days. My main purposes in going there were to:

• see many friends and family (and I was crazy busy seeing everybody over lunches, dinners and coffees and the unexpected phone call with some)
• sort through and clean out my stuff that has been stored in my parents’ basement for the last 18 years and get it ready to ship to Washington, D.C. One of our reasons for moving back to the U.S. is because we now desire a house (i.e., a detached, single-family home) that has more living space so we can spread out, a place that includes a yard for our children (so far just Lexi) to play in. This is our chance to get everything we own in one place (stuff that has been scattered around the country for the last several years) and then enjoy many of the things we have collected on our travels around the world.
  

It is strange to be back in the U.S. Whenever I visited the U.S. while we were living abroad, and especially returning now after living abroad for 5 1/2 years, I feel like a foreigner in my own country. It’s strange because this environment and culture is familiar to me, but it’s not what I’ve been surrounded by for the past year or so. The culture of Europe was closer to that of the U.S., but the African culture was further removed from the American culture. It’s difficult to keep two cultures that are so far apart together in my mind. It was doubly strange being in Seattle as well. Even when I visited Seattle when I was living in Chicago, I never felt like I fit in anymore there. It is the place I lived as a child (until I was 18 and left for college on the East Coast). It is not a place I have spent much time in as an adult. Where I feel comfortable and where I fit in now is Chicago. That’s a city that suits me as an adult.

I have just arrived in Washington, D.C., and will begin the next – and main – phase of our relocation. What steps do I plan to take/what will happen now (the question I’ve been answering a lot since returning to the U.S.)?

• I made my travel plans to arrive in D.C. in time to attend Ecumenical Advocacy Days, an annual event put on by the D.C. advocacy offices of the mainline churches (including the ELCA) and their related advocacy agencies. This is a good chance for me to network with a crowd I would like to work with, although I have pretty much already exhausted all job possibilities with these offices for the time being.
• For the first several days after my arrival, I will be staying with a friend who lives in a central location in D.C. One of my first orders of business will be to find a longer-term place to live. I want to find a furnished apartment to lease/sublet for the short-term – for five or six weeks – until Sarah and Lexi join me. I may be able to find a place that’s big enough to add another adult and child later so I won’t have to move again, but I won’t know until I start looking at some places.
• Another task - my main one in the coming weeks – that I will start immediately is looking for a job. I believe that I need to acquire things in this order: a place to live (a place on my own – an apartment – see above), then a job, then I can get a mortgage to buy a house, and then (or maybe at the same time as the house), a car for our family. So this is my list of big tasks in order of priority. Then we will be able to execute the moving arrangements for our stuff to come from Seattle and Salt Lake City and have a house to receive it in. Can I even look for a job? Yes, I am finding plenty of openings on various websites that I am monitoring for my line of work (nonprofits). These are openings that I am qualified for, interested in (more or less), and at places (in addition to nonprofits, I am finding openings at universities, trade associations, foundations, etc.) where I could work.
• As I job hunt, I also have various other networking events I am scheduled or plan to attend and individuals I have planned or can contact with to meet for networking purposes. Friends and family have given me the contact information for many people who are working in D.C. whom I can contact with for job help or networking. But I am open to more contacts if you want to share them with me.
• In between all of this, after my “job” of job hunting, I hope to get out into D.C. and enjoy some events – concerts, festivals, etc. – that are offered and visit some of the great landmarks of the city.
  

As you can see, I have been and plan to be quite busy in the coming weeks and months executing my plans as I’ve described above. If you want more details or need to know more about why or how I’m doing something, unfortunately, I can’t respond to every inquiry. I hope I’ve provided enough details (about the how and why) on what I plan to do for the time being, and in several weeks, I will write another update on my progress. I’m hoping to satisfy the curiosity and interest that is coming from many of you with these written updates, and I’m sorry they have to be for a mass audience, but there are many of you out there, and I can’t take the time to repeat this information for everybody who asks.

In the meantime, I thank all of you who are supporting me in various ways – those who responded to my first update and who keep in touch through various means, those whom I saw recently, and the rest of you who read this and who silently offer your good thoughts for my well-being.

An encounter with Kenya’s president

This morning we attended a ceremony to open and dedicate a new building at our church. The most regular church we have attended during our time in Nairobi has been Uhuru Highway Lutheran Cathedral (the fact that it’s called a cathedral is a misnomer because it’s not the size of nor does it look anything like a cathedral). Next to the church building during the time we have lived here, a multi-story building with commercial and office space has been under construction. The offices of the congregation and of the denomination’s local diocese will also be housed in the building, which is now complete.

It was an interesting experience, but not totally a surprise in all respects, considering that this is Kenya/Africa and knowing how things don’t always go as planned or smoothly here. We had been told the ceremony was to begin at 10:00 a.m., and we arrived in time for that. There were tents set up around an open stage area in front of the building in the parking lot. The area was already full of police officers and armed guards because Kenya’s president had been invited.

Strangely, although the president was going to speak at the ceremony, there were no security checkpoints for the guests to go through. Nobody checked us for weapons, we didn’t walk through any metal detectors, and nobody searched our bags. Throughout the entire ceremony, we didn’t see any other signs of security to guard the president. I could have easily walked up in front of the dais at any time to throw my shoes – or hurl something worse – at the president.

After finding our seats and sitting for a few minutes, we got our hands on a program, and then shortly afterwards another program was handed out. The first one was a color program from the church (the national denomination, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Kenya). The second one appeared to be the official program that the president’s office had put together because he was taking part in the ceremony. This second program was quite detailed and indicated that the president would arrive at 11:00 a.m., which meant that’s when the program started. So already things had changed to an hour later – not a surprise here in Africa.

So we sat and watched the proceedings, some official, some not. At just six minutes before 11:00, large rolls of faded red carpet were still being brought in and rolled out, then swept and vacuumed. In the last half hour before 11:00, the podium was brought in. It was all glass, and someone was using a spray cleaner to clean it. Four flags (one was the American flag) were also put on poles in one spot, but they weren’t anchored very well, so as soon as they were up and flying, the wind started blowing them over, and the flags were touching the ground, a real violation of flag protocol, but no one seemed bothered by this at all. At one point the announcer called for some attention to be paid to the flags so they wouldn’t fall over. He also reminded the crowd before the president arrived that we needed to stand when he entered the area and that no pictures would be allowed when he was present, that only the accredited press could take photos. What a contrast to the way things would be at a ceremony the American president would be attending. All the setup would have been done hours before the start of the ceremony, everything would have been perfect and done according to the highest standards, and flags would not be falling over, carpets would not be faded, and people would not be vacuuming them at the last minute.

The president arrived a few minutes after 11:00, and the ceremony began. There were scores of ELCK pastors and all the bishops of all the church’s dioceses present. There were lots of prayers, with each bishop reciting one, and in between, choirs from churches across the country sang. In the program printed by the ELCK, the prayers were written out, and there were all sorts of typos and errors with capitalization – very unprofessional in what they wanted to be a professionally produced and printed program. But even the government’s program misspelled the last name of the Lutheran World Federation’s General Secretary, Ishmael Noko, who had come from Geneva as a VIP (he was Sarah’s ultimate boss in Geneva). Midway through the ceremony was the part where the president went to the front door of the building to cut the ribbon, and then they scheduled a tour for him of the building while the rest of the crowd had to sit outside and wait. Well, there were some choir numbers to entertain us during this time. Surprisingly, to keep things moving, the MC cut off two choirs’ numbers and eliminated the performance of a children’s acrobatic group because they would have had to tumble across bare cement.

Only after the president finished his tour did the long line of speeches in the program begin. The church’s archbishop had delivered a short sermon after a Gospel reading was recited at the very beginning of the ceremony, and truly it was short (amazing!), but then he did another, longer, unscheduled sermon before any of the other scheduled speakers in the second part of the ceremony. The program indicated that this government minister would introduce the vice president who would then introduce the president, but of course each person had to give his own speech. A representative of the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod was present and gave a little speech because his church had given the ELCK a loan to build the building. The last scheduled speaker was the president himself, and having seen him on TV before, we knew that he speaks very slowly. His speech wasn’t unbearably long. But he’s an old codger. This is the president who basically stole the last presidential election and had himself quickly sworn in again before there could be any arguing over it. Like another president in Zimbabwe, it is about time for him to go. And at one point, various gifts were presented by different people to the president, and he had to stand up to receive each of them, so whenever he stood up, the whole crowd had to stand up too, so there was a bunch of up and down in quick succession.

Sarah and I had seats with a fairly good view of the dais where all the VIPs sat. We were under a tent, although I was sitting at the end of a row, and so when the sun got overhead, I was in the sunlight, but an American lady behind me let me borrow her large umbrella, which shaded me.

The press was there in full force, it seemed. In African countries, from what I’ve observed, usually one of the top news stories on the evening news every night answers the question, “What did our president do today?” even if it was something of little leadership substance like cutting the ribbon to open a building. So the photographers and cameramen were hanging on his every step.

By 1:15, two and a quarter hours after it began, it was all over, and the crowd quickly broke up for a catered lunch inside the new building. We were not invited to that. Sarah had to attend this ceremony anyway to represent her organization, and I wanted to attend just for my own interest and because this event was at our own church. It was also good to see the president in person, the head of state of the country where we’ve been living, and since we’ve been living in the capital city, and especially for me to see him mere days before I’m set to leave Kenya.

One last mountaintop experience in Africa

Yesterday, as a way of saying farewell to Kenya and Africa (for now, at least), I climbed Mt. Longonot. I figured one last foray into the African wilderness was a good way to close my time here. The mountain is a fairly low one and is on the floor of the Great Rift Valley. It’s a volcano that blew its top many millions of years ago and now has a huge crater inside. We only recently discovered that it’s a fairly easy and quick climb, so I decided to squeeze it in before I left.

The drive to get there from Nairobi is not very long – a little over one hour. I drove Sarah to work then drove north, almost to Lake Naivasha (where we have taken some of our visitors). I arrived at the gate of the national park where the mountain is, paid my fees, got a guide, and started up the mountain at exactly 11:00. Two guidebooks said the climb to the rim of the crater takes “about an hour.” We reached the rim at exactly 11:59. I thought this was fitting for the occasion – reaching the summit in time for high noon. The climb wasn’t so bad. First of all, the duration isn’t long – I knew I wouldn’t be climbing all day. There were certainly steep parts, and because it’s an old volcano, there is a lot of volcanic dust and regular dirt. There was a stiff breeze the whole time, which was good, since it was at our backs going up, and which helped cool us off in the noontime sun. But it also whipped up the dust regularly, and it got everywhere – in my eyes and ears, and occasionally I was tasting it. But the terrain alternated a few times between relatively flat areas and steep climbs along loose, dusty trails that I was concerned I would slip on (especially coming down). But I never felt it was dangerous or never felt scared. It was also good that I am in shape and do my cardio exercises (which includes the stair climber) every other day at the gym.

As soon as we reached the rim of the crater, I could look down into the crater. We were standing at the top of a sheer cliff face, but it was different because the cliff circled around in the shape of a mountain. So it was like a big bowl, and on the floor of the crater, which was huge, was a dense forest. One can walk in a complete circle around the crater rim, which normally takes two and a half hours, but my guide said because of our good pace that we could do it in only two hours. I hadn’t planned on doing this, and we just spend several minutes at the top of the rim only. But the rim is jagged and goes up and down, and there’s a higher peak on the opposite side that one can climb up and get a higher view of everything, including the opposite side of the Rift Valley. One can also climb down into the crater, but this is an all-day trip, and one needs to spend the night camping on the crater floor, something that would be interesting to do. I imagine the stars at night looking up from a mountain floor would be spectacular, along with other sights.

The views looking out from the mountain are spectacular too, of course (the elevation of the point I climbed to is 2,777 meters). I could look out across the Great Rift Valley and see other mountains in the distance. I also saw Lake Naivasha not so far away and places on or near it that I had visited – Crescent Island and some of the commercial flower farms around the lake.

Heading down was harder than going up, and fortunately my guide let me borrow his walking stick, which helped. It took us about 45 minutes to get down.

On the way up and down, near the bottom of the mountain, one can see some wild animals in the game park. I saw some giraffes, zebras, hartebeest and some antelope on the way up and down. One can camp in other places in the park too, and you would see many more wild animals if you stayed longer.

On my way home, I took an alternate route back to Nairobi that we don’t normally take when driving up to Lake Naivasha. It was very scenic, and I was able to see Mt. Longonot from a distance at several points as well as the whole width of the Great Rift Valley. Before I climbed the rim of the Rift Valley (in the car), I stopped at a small Catholic chapel that had been built by Italian prisoners of war in 1942 in a scenic little corner of the valley.