Musings on a Sunday Morning

First trip to the beauty shop, Saturday, 16-4-2010
1) As I was waiting to have my hair washed, I watched an employee sitting nearby. She was taking large rectangles of tin foil from a bowl, smoothing them on front and back, and neatly putting them away on a shelf. It took me a few minutes to realize that she was recycling the tin foil that is used in the hair coloring process. For those of you who do not have your hair colored at the salon: In a U.S. salon, when hair is colored it is separated into small tufts and each tuft is painted with dye. Each colored/dyed tuft of hair is then folded inside a piece of tin foil. The same process is done until all the hair is colored and folded in separate pieces of tin foil. The tin foil keeps the colors from mixing. In this way, the finished hair color simulates a more natural look instead of having the artificial sameness of hair coloring that was done in the past. In the US, salons buy prepackaged tin foil of the right size and discard it after one use.
2) I was asked if I wanted a neck massage by the girl who washed my hair. I was of course thinking, oh no…big bucks, so I declined. When I told the other senior sisters, who also use that salon, that I had declined the massage, they gasped. They told me that you do not pay extra for the massage, that it is rejuvenating and doesn’t cost extra. One of the senior male missionaries goes to the salon to get his hair cut just for the massage.
3) When the stylist asked me how I wanted my hair cut I said that I usually looked at a picture but there didn’t seem to be any around. He brought me two books of hair styles, and I picked one. I am not as focused on style now as I was pre-mission, which is a good thing since my cut didn’t much resemble the picture in the book.
4) When the cut was done, I asked the stylist if he could apply some gel before drying my hair. He said he would put some spray on it at the end and that I could apply gel when I got home. (I realized that they don’t have any hair products except hair spray in the salon.) He dried my hair with a roller brush that was about the diameter of my thumb. He dried it COMPLETELY, and I tried not to flinch too much as the HOT air scalded my tender scalp, so used to drip dry. Then when he had made my hair as smooth as a helmet (and very much the same size…rather short), he sprayed a brush with hair spray and brushed it through my “do” to make it even smoother and stiffer. Though it wasn’t the style I was used to, I got some positive comments from John and others, so left the helmet in place. And since it looks unchanged this morning, I have not washed it. This is not a bad principle, sort of like using leftover food (I have been dubbed the “leftover queen by one of our children…from the pulpit no less). One of the reasons I love leftover food is because it saves not only money, but time when preparing the second and third meals. We will see how long this “leftover” hairdo remains before spoiling (same limiting factor when using leftover food).
5) You can see that in Kenya labor is cheap (recycling tin foil, free massage, laborious hair drying)and products are expensive…(tin foil, spraying hair spray onto a brush rather than spraying wastefully into the air, no gels or mousse in salon). As other examples of cheap labor, I have seen a large crew of people paving roads by pounding large rocks into small rocks to use as a base for the “tarmac” (asphalt) roads. Mowing grass here is done by hand with scythes. Hedges are clipped meticulously with small clippers. By contrast, how wasteful the throw-away mind-set of the U.S. seems where nothing is valuable enough to recycle (including cars and old people), where money seems to be the popular answer to most problems.
Spiritual musings on my Sunday morning 18-4-2010:
1) It is so nice to be relieved from the pressure of work, especially since we work from home and are never free from it except on Sunday. We were very tempted to work today because we have our supervisor from South Africa flying in tomorrow afternoon and staying in Nairobi to train us until Thursday night. We have so much material to sort through so that we will know the right questions to ask him. But we have decided to get up early Monday morning to continue sorting. Monday has it’s own challenges: we also have to fight city traffic to pick up wheelchairs and deliver them to some people in the city, go into the office to figure out how to do clear up some banking procedures, and prepare to host FHE in the evening (clean the apartment, fix refreshments, prepare program [we have asked our boss to speak, which should be of interest at the FHE since most of us are involved in humanitarian work…Perpetual Education Fund, Employment, Public Affairs]).
2) Reading the scriptures this morning (Lesson 14: Exodus 15-20; 32-34), following are a few of the many things impressed me:
a) Exodus 15:2 “The Lord is my strength and song, and he is become my salvation; he is my God, and I will prepare him an habitation; my father’s God, and I will exalt him.” This expresses my feelings about our experiences here. I have become so much more dependent on the Spirit and can see that the Lord is indeed the source of my strength as I grow.
b) After their dramatic exit from enslavement in Egypt, the Israelites were wandering through the “wilderness of sin” and murmuring against to Moses about being uncomfortable for various reasons (hunger, thirst, war, fear). I was condemning their ingratitude until I realized that I have similar bouts of forgetfulness and ingratitude that causes me to question whether God is attentive enough to my discomforts. However, just as the Lord continued to strive with the Israelites patiently, answering their needs one by one, I realized that the Lord is similarly patient with my daily requests.
c) I guess the thing that struck me most in the reading was that I saw Moses as a type of Christ. We have so little written of Christ’s actual life and role, or at least it is hard to discern. That is one reason I believe the Lord has given us types of Christ in the scriptures. I gained a better understanding of Christ’s role as mediator for us with our Father in Heaven when I read of Moses struggles with the Lord in behalf of his wavering people, as seen in Exodus 32-34. Despite all their (and my) wavering, the Lord gave them (and us) the beautiful promise in Exodus 19:4-5 “Ye have seen what I did unto the Egyptians, and how I bare you on eagles’ wings, and brought you unto myself. Now therefore, if ye will obey my voice indeed, and keep my covenant, then ye shall be a peculiar treasure unto me above all people…”
Church attendance 18-4-2010
1) We attended a different branch in Athii River. We didn’t tell the ward members that we are humanitarian missionaries so we didn’t get asked for any boreholes. It was a relief, and we were able to relate with the people on a basis of shared experiences.
2) In class this morning, it was pointed out that manna (name for bread that rained down from Heaven to feed the starving Israelites), in the Kamba tribal language, means free. Someone else said that the only things we REALLY have in life are free. Very insightful from people who have so little but continue to be happy.) The people in the class could really identify with the lack of water and the bitter-tasting water…two of the biggest struggles in Kenya. (When LDS Charities drills a well, sometimes the water is salty and cannot be used for drinking. I asked a woman at one well site that produced salty water what good the water was to them. She emphatically said that most of the water they used was for boiling food, washing clothes, dishes, and floors, and to water their animals and shambas [gardens]. The salty water could be used for these purposes, and they only had to buy one can of water a day for drinking.)
3) In talking with the RS president after Church, I found that the names of her children were Gretchen, Sandra and Rhino. She explained that when she married, she and her husband agreed upon the following naming rules: she was allowed to name the girls and he was allowed to name the boys with no rights of rejection by either husband or wife. She was not allowed to modify her first-born son’s chosen name. When I asked if she had an ultrasound and could be prepared with a name when the baby was born, she said that ultrasound used to be available in Kenya but that it had been discontinued because of problems. I thought she was referring to medical problems and started to protest. However she was referring to problems encountered with knowing that a wife was bearing a girl instead of a boy baby. Many Kenyan husbands want sons and will punish or leave a wife if they know she is carrying a girl. This is reminiscent of the recent news from China of the discovery of hospital waste found in plastic bags in a nearby river. The waste included the bodies of several newborn girls.
Sorry, that is a rather depressing ending for such a wonderful day.
Love, Mom/Roz