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New Year’s greetings from Nairobi! After an unscheduled sojourn in the US in November and December (see below), we arrived back in Kenya on New Year’s Day to the peace and sunshine of the tropics—not! We actually arrived in the midst of unseasonable El Niño rainstorms and flooding, endless mud, on-again off-again power cuts, and a new term of classes to start teaching immediately at the Nairobi Evangelical Graduate School of Theology (NEGST). But it’s great to be home. We’ve now finished two weeks of class and the sun’s starting to shine again, so compared to many of you in the northern hemisphere who are still digging yourselves out of the snow (and of course to everyone in Haiti), we’re doing just fine.
Bill is teaching Systematic Theology—the second course in a sequence of three required for MDiv students, this one focusing on christology—and a new-to-him course on Contemporary Theology. The Contemporary Theology class covers theologians from the 19th century up to the present, so Bill is having to stretch his mind a bit to make Hegel and Schleiermacher relevant to African students as well as figure out how to integrate a variety of African theologians into one overarching trajectory for the course. The good news is that with the much faster internet connection we have in Kenya compared to our days in Ethiopia, Bill’s been able to find much of what he needs from the internet. As he wrote on his blog recently (condensed here):
I was happily beavering away in my office tracking down primary sources for my Contemporary Theology students when suddenly it struck me just what I was doing. Here I am, at a theological college two degrees south of the equator on the rest of the world’s favorite poster child of a basket-case continent, and I was, gasp, finding resources! This astonishment of mine, I know, will be incomprehensible to anyone who has never traveled outside the confines of North America and Europe. Before coming here to Nairobi, I taught theology and history for a number of years in Ethiopia. Not only were academic resources thin on the ground, the prospects of increasing our collection were rendered just slightly to the left of impossible not only because of the high price for academic books but because of the even higher cost of getting them to Ethiopia. Getting textbooks into the country for every new class was the equivalent of planning for a major expedition. I made the mistake in 2000 of shipping most of my personal library to Ethiopia by surface mail. Twenty-six months later (yes, that’s 26), the boxes finally arrived in Addis Ababa, after apparently having done penance in a warehouse in Djibouti, otherwise known by everyone who’s actually been there as purgatory.
Well meaning friends in the States and Europe, when they would hear us complaining, would often gently direct us to the internet as a wonderful emerging source for educational materials. But you could tell that these people had never been to Ethiopia. If they had, then they would know that the government was the only internet service provider (this should be an immediate clue that things might not be as good/helpful/useful/user-
Coming to Kenya has been, and continues to be a revelation for this professional educator, with respect to the availability of resources (at least from my previously impoverished perspective; Stephanie refers to Kenya, compared with most of the rest of the continent, as ‘Africa with training wheels’). I can go out on my patio and skype with my daughters back in Virginia on wireless broadband internet. Again, I know, ho hum for my friends in the land of the unthinkably well-resourced who panic if the power goes off or their Blackberry crashes. But for me and for here, this is just amazing.
(You can read the rest on his blog, ‘Onesimus Online’, at http://onesimusonline.
Bill also somehow managed to get himself designated Acting Head of the Theology Department, since his Ghanaian colleague and department head capitalized on Bill’s presence to take a very long overdue sabbatical this term. Among other things, this means Bill represents the (now essentially one-man) theology department on NEGST’s Academic Board—a rather intriguing cross-cultural experience which you can also read more about: http://onesimusonline.
While Bill’s busy doing theology and blogging, I (Stephanie) am teaching Exegesis of Greek Narrative to a hardy group of advanced students, and an English Bible course, 1 Corinthians, to a bunch of others. The Corinthians class is a somewhat new one for me, at least in this form, and I’m loving it. For better or worse, the situation in Corinth and the situation in many African churches (not to mention in Western churches, too) are so similar that the course just about teaches itself. Last week we talked about the Corinthians’ propensity to follow and imitate ‘superstar’ preachers—see 1 Cor 1-4. With the ubiquitous presence of international televangelists beamed into African homes and churches courtesy of satellite TV, no one had trouble making the connection. This week we tackle 1 Cor 5 and the disturbing tendency in cultures where patronage is a pervasive part of the social structure, for influential church members to enjoy impunity regarding their moral choices. Later in the term the students will be doing practical seminars relating the different topics in 1 Corinthians directly to the churches they work with. Can’t wait to hear what they come up with!
I also have a pile of other things to do, including serving as member-at-large on SIM Kenya’s Area Council and continuing in my role as Accreditation Officer for the Accrediting Council for Theological Education in Africa (ACTEA). But I have to confess I’m not overly disappointed that since the global recession means ACTEA’s funding—like NEGST’s and every other Christian organization we know—is significantly down this year, as a result my ACTEA travel for the next several months has been cancelled and I’ll be working mostly by email. As you probably know, I just spent seven weeks in the US, most of it dealing with my late father’s and brother’s estates and clearing out my parents’ house. With our regular ‘home assignment’ last summer, then ACTEA travel to the Ivory Coast and Hungary, and then this extra trip to the US, I only managed to spend 60 days of the last six months of 2009 in Kenya. Rather disorienting, and I find myself wondering quite where I am or belong at any given moment. So it’s reassuring to think that I can attach my feet to one bit of ground here in Nairobi for the next few months.
My time in the US was bittersweet, but made sweeter by the help and encouragement so many of you gave along the way. Thank you! I’ve been feeling relieved that I got everything done on my parents’ house that needed to be dealt with while I was there. But then yesterday morning we got word that the heat pump (integrated heat/AC compressor unit outside the house) was stolen Friday night. A weird thing that almost never happens. So I guess it’s an ongoing saga… we’ll keep you posted. Our basic prayer request now is for the right buyer at the right price at the right time for my parents’ house, and then the right house at the right price at the right time sometime by March 2011 for us Blacks, whatever the Lord considers the ‘right’ answer for each of those to be. We appreciate your prayers!
And of course the best part of our time in the US, once Bill joined me in early December, was celebrating Christmas with Linnea (21) and Caroline (19) and Bill’s family in South Carolina—a wonderful, wonderful holiday. Linnea’s boyfriend William also joined us for part of that. We appreciated his driving eight hours to South Carolina in a blizzard to meet us, since Bill and I aren’t scheduled to be in the US again until 2011—although I do realize we parents were probably not the primary motivation for all that driving… Caroline spent the rest of her term break visiting one of her UVA housemates in China, during what turned out to be the coldest winter in Beijing in 59 years. She reports that they were able to see and do a lot in spite of the biting cold, but that tourist sites like the Summer Palace are probably a lot better in the summer! Both girls are now back at the University of Virginia for the new semester which starts tomorrow.
So that’s our news and here are a few current prayer requests:
- Prayer for Bill and Stephanie teaching at the Nairobi Evangelical Graduate School of Theology (NEGST): Systematic Theology and Contemporary Theology this term for Bill, and Exegesis of Greek Narrative and 1 Corinthians for Stephanie.
- Praise for a productive time for Stephanie in the US dealing with her late father’s and brother’s estates and clearing out her parents’ house; prayer for ongoing struggles with the house, for its sale, and for the right family house to buy for us Blacks.
- Praise for Caroline’s good (and safe) trip to China, and prayer for Linnea and Caroline’s studies this semester at the University of Virginia.
Thank you for all your support and encouragement for our teaching ministry in Kenya. We look forward to seeing what the Lord has in store for NEGST and for us in 2010!
blessings,
Stephanie
for Bill, Linnea and Caroline Black
Here’s what was happening at NEGST today (Monday 18 Jan)…
Bill meeting with Theology Department student advisees
And teaching his Systematic Theology class
Evidently that’s some sort of time line of the development of Christology he’s constructing on the board…
…and explaining with great gusto.
Stephanie in her office
(Glad the photographer caught me while I was actually working on my Greek Exegesis lecture rather than looking at Caroline’s China photos on facebook!)
Students relaxing between classes
Kennedy (left) is not short, he just looks it standing next to one of our Sudanese students.
Instructors browsing in the bookshop
Library staff at the circulation desk
And there’s Bill hanging out in the library, catching up on Kenya news (just about all he has the energy to do after four hours of Systematic Theology lecture…)
Faculty colleagues in the foyer of the Faculty Office Building
Stephanie at the reception desk
I was standing there trying to convince the receptionist (who controls the faculty printer) to allot me enough paper to print my lecture notes. Because NEGST is taking long overdue but draconian steps to balance the budget, we don’t always have printer paper. I needed seven sheets of paper and she only had three on hand. But eventually she found four more—by cutting some oversized sheets into halves, I think—and I went away a happy customer.
Cute little NEGST kids (children of students)
They assured me they were hard at work on their homework.
And this month’s family photos…
Caroline (red plaid shirt) & Linnea (white shirt) & cousins celebrating Christmas—or something… Not sure exactly what they’re all up to here, but we did have a great holiday with Bill’s family!
Linnea & William at the Virginia Military Institute ring ball in November. This is the dress she ordered from Hong Kong, which I arrived in the US just in time to hem all three layers of. (But since I don’t usually get to be nearby to do those mom things, I’m not complaining :) )
Caroline (right), our Africa child, visiting the Great Wall last week in record-breaking cold
But fortunately in this one (at the Olympic Bird’s Nest) she looks a bit cheerier about it
