Editor’s note: This is the second of a five-part series on Father Dean’s recent trip to Africa.

I’ll have to skip 36 hours.  It’s getting too late.  But I need to mention the spectacular storm last night.  It drenched us all alike, stalled the busses for an hour, and split the darkened sky with dramatic bolts of lightning and thunder that shook the ground.  There we all huddled together, drenched.  As the storm lightened, I used my suitcase for an umbrella.  As we stood there waiting for the bus that seemed never to come, a woman walked up to me and said something loudly that made Harun laugh aloud.  “What was that about?” I asked, already used to the title “Mzungu” (white man) that everyone, from children to teenagers to adults in the street, were applying.

You see, hardly any Mzungus were visible publicly during my travels in East Africa, and amidst the very black people of those nations, I must really have stood out – above all because they are so excited about Obama.

“She said, ‘How are you doing?’ meaning, ‘what are you doing out here in the middle of nowhere at night in this storm?’”  I must have looked lost.
The most difficult part of these travels in East Africa would turn out to be, not the language, nor the lack of non-Africans, nor the lack of amenities, but rather the condition of the roads in Kenya.  They, so far, are horrible.

Next to an overnight trip down Baja California to La Paz, the worst bus rides I’ve endured have been here.  Last night’s bordered on sheer torture.  Today’s, back to Nairobi from Kisumu, was nearly as bad.  Conditions were so extreme that a baby with a heart condition went into tachycardia.  Panicking, the mother began to scream.  Someone remembered that there was a major hospital nearby.  We veered off the highway onto a rural road.

Yes, we had found the right exit, but no one knew that the hospital was, for reasons only God knows, nearly inaccessible.  After worsening the little girl’s condition with the slamming into potholes and swerving around the many obstacles, the bus skidded to a halt before a tight rounded tunnel.  It turned out to be the end of our detour.  But, by the grace of God, at that very moment an ambulance appeared out of nowhere, loading in the child and her mother.  As for us, we managed to turn the bus around, only to find ourselves locked in Nairobi stand-still traffic for the better part of an hour.

What made the long hours more bearable was the presence next to Harun and myself of a young Moslem couple.  He was from Uganda, she from Kenya,  He was raised by a devout Catholic mother, but eventually opted for his father’s religion.  Bright, animated, young, and good-willed, Juma initiated a conversation that lasted over four hours.  We covered a very wide variety of themes.  But all the progress we’d been making in mutual understanding and appreciation broke down when it came to the issues of punishment and retribution.  Although Juma works with Islamic youth who oppose terrorism, he couldn’t understand why we objected so vehemently to the practice in many Moslem countries of cutting off limbs of those who steal.  We went round and round with the arguments, but to no avail.  This led to the question of retribution. revenge, and killing the accused criminal for the sake of defending a victim’s honor.  And, before long, it appeared to be Juma who would take upon himself, if necessary, the task of justice.

Suddenly, this delightful young man with his intelligent wife wrapped in turquoise blue veils holding the smiling baby appeared to be someone else.

Yet when the panicking mother began screaming about her daughter’s heart rate and mild convulsions, it was Juma who ran forward, scooped the baby up, brought her to the back, laid her down, and with my help took care of her for the twenty minutes that the bus careened down the valley gorge to a place of hope.  Meanwhile, Harun, the most peaceable of us all, looked on quietly.  I found it encouraging that I, a Catholic priest from the United States, could join a devout Moslem from Uganda, in caring for a baby from Kenya, while a Hindu couple looked on and a Pentecostal woman from in front interceded. In the end, our actions speak much louder than our words. We’d all agreed about rallying to defend the innocent.

With that, I’ll sign off for the night.  Typhoons, earthquakes, tsunamis, fires, and other natural disasters have riveted the world’s attention, while poor Kenya tries to get its act together.  My Kenyan companions follow the soccer matches in Britain and I look for the next cup of tea.  The slum not far from here keeps growing, and most of the world just wants to survive, and then somehow get off the planet with something to look forward to.

I, myself, need to get some sleep before the long ride to Kilimanjaro, and to send off this article before the battery dies.  So, with gratitude for your prayers and your reading of this article, I leave the world to Almighty God.

Afterward (Friday afternoon at 5:00pm): Tipape, a student at Nairobi’s Daystar University, met me downtown today at 8:00.  We had missed the first mini-bus for Rombo, in the heart of Maasai territory.   Motorcycles proved to be our only recourse.  It was a harrowing ride, weaving in and out of traffic, on shoulders and dividers, narrowly missing pedestrians and merging vehicles, then finally speeding down the “freeway” four miles at 100 k/m until, at long last, we reached our transport.  I thought that part of our ride would be the most difficult, but no: once again, it proved to be the interminable hours overland across potholes and torn-up roads, crammed together with others, smothered in fumes, covered with the dust of draught.

Reaching Rombo, I realized immediately it had all been worthwhile.  Not only was I reunited with my brother in this oasis in a sea of parched land, but today, Friday, happens to be the day when Maasai and members of other tribes converge on a large open market.  Nearly everyone dresses up in traditional garb.  And tomorrow, they’ll host a big party and cultural celebration for us.  Douglas, my brother, and I hope that the festivities will help them forget, if just for a day, the fact that their cattle and their culture are both threatened with extinction.  May the Lord bless them in their need.