Showing Up
“Ninety percent of life is about Showing Up.” It is not the first time I’ve considered this quote, but today it hit home for me in a new way.
At 7:30 this morning some folks from “REALL cycle” (Recycle Education Awareness Leverage Life) gathered for community cleanup in the Gatina neighborhood of Nairobi. Within 10 minutes, their shoes, clothes, and rubber gloves were streaked with sludge and sewage, topped with a thick coating of fine, orange dust.
Picking up trash by hand, clearing drainage ditches of garbage and sewage by shovelful into wheelbarrows is hard, low work — all make it that much more remarkable that this local team of young adults has chosen to swim upstream against the neighborhood trend.
They Showed Up, which is an admirable feat in and of itself.
The morning was loosely organized. Volunteers came and went. The final result after 4 hours of hard group labor — two streets’ worth of cleaner ditches out of dozens — was so small compared to the enormous problem of garbage in the slum. In my results-oriented mindset, I can see how it would be so easy to become discouraged. I greatly admire our new friends who are actively answering the questions “Who do I know?” and “What can I do with what I have?”. I was walking with a new friend James when a man approached us and asked what we were doing. James answered his neighbor, “We are cleaning up a little bit and working for peace.” Showing Up.
At the same time one team was shoveling refuse, another team was leading 50+ young kids in songs, games, and Bible stories in the orange, dusty yard of the Light and Power Centre. Paul spent much of the morning boiling an enormous vat of tea for the kids, and Lucy spent hours yesterday frying Kenyan doughnuts to share with the whole group. Showing Up.
Lucy, Dave, Paul, Alex, James, Wilson, Geoffrey, Maurice, George, on and on. These guys are Showing Up every Saturday morning to love their neighbors in a tangible way.
Showing Up. With love.
:-)