"Buy me Dinner"

After two solid weeks reading case-files filled with raw accounts of police abuse of power, tonight I had an up-close and personal experience with corruption myself. I was returning home from a wonderful evening spent with my new roommate and her girlfriend. We went rock climbing at a local bazar called Diamond Plaza. After rock climbing, we enjoyed an amazing meal of Indian food and some great conversation. Driving home, we decided to stop for ice cream cones. Overall, it was an extremely pleasant evening, one so familiar to any good Friday night enjoyed back home. As I've written before, Nairobi is developing at a quick pace, and with indoor rock climbing and late night soft serve joints, it's easy to forget where you are. On the way out of the little plaza with the ice cream shop, my new friend forgot to switch her headlights on. Before we even pull onto the road, we are waived over by two uniformed policeman, both armed with AK-47s. My friend, although American, has spent most of her life in Kenya and she greets the police in Swahili, trying to determine why they've pulled us over. The cop informs her she is driving without her headlights on and says she has violated the traffic code.

In Kenya, the police do not give out written citations for traffic offenses. If you violate the traffic code, you go down to the police station to sort out your citation—an ordeal which can take hours. The cop knows we don't want to go through that, and after a few moments it becomes clear he expects us to “settle it here.” Now, I have never been confronted with a situation like this, but my friend has handled several. I'm in the back seat not knowing what to do, but she manages the situation like a pro and insists she only wants to do what's right. After pressing her a bit using vague terms that an inexperienced person in Kenya might take as perhaps the way a traffic violation is handled, it becomes clear this office is simply looking for a bribe. He tells us we can go if we buy him dinner. My friend insists that if she must go to the police station she will, but she is not giving him any money. Eventually, after several rounds of this, he lets us go. 

I was thoroughly delighted with the way my friend handled the situation. She was respectful to his position, but not to his demand. She used humor and a feigned naïveté which kept the police man off guard but in good spirits. She stood her ground, but allowed him to feel in control of the situation. She smartly prolonged the conversation and the length of the encounter in hopes the policeman would lose interest in a fruitless endeavor, and that's how it went. She handled the whole thing with grace and poise. It was truly impressive. 

I, on the other hand, was seething inside. I was so angry that this man would use his authority in such a base and corrupt manner. I had a good look at this guy as he leaned in our car, so confident in his ability to control us. The tone of his voice oozed the subtle violence of abusive power. “You broke the law, judge yourself,” he says. It's this arrogant self assurance that his station and his AK are all he needs to get what he wants. I was disgusted, but grateful that I was not the one doing the talking and that while it was unnerving, it was short lived. I wanted to say to him, “Either fine us or let us go, but we are not paying you anything....and you ought to be ashamed of yourself...you're supposed to protect and serve the people not coerce them into giving you money.” I don't know how well that would have worked out. Thankfully I had the sense to stay quiet while my friend masterfully handled the situation.

Earlier I wrote that I had almost forgotten where I was, and that makes me think about a lot. First I think about home and just how easy it is to take for granted the wonderfully simple, yet globally rare, concept of safety. Safety to enjoy a Friday night with friends and loved ones, free from the threat of violence in all its forms. Safety is always relative, but at times, back home, I've been sitting in a park, or walking down State Street, and I think to myself, “The last thing on anyone's mind right now is the thought that they could be victims of violence. Their minds are filled with a million things, but the idea that this peace could be shattered is not one of them.” What a glorious gift we have in safety. It frees us to experience the simple pleasures of community and allows joy to flourish in our interactions.

On the other hand, that leads me to think about another thing, my offense. Why am I offended by the officer's demand? Why do I have such a visceral reaction to this relatively insignificant injustice? As a middle-class white American, my experience with law enforcement back home is much different than, say, a poor black American. My sense of injustice at me being the victim this first time might be comical to some of the blacks I've known who have experienced racial profiling and actual physical police abuse multiple times throughout their life. But does my unfamiliarity with police corruption necessarily lessen the injustice I feel when confronted with just this brief encounter? I'm not shouting out “Poor me, poor me, I'm a victim!” No, I'm describing what my first personal taste of injustice felt like. And where does that sense come from? Why is it that this action was wrong? In an age of moral relativism, is it not so plainly clear that when a person uses the power given to them by the state—with its monopoly on violence—to extract personal gain from a citizen, such an act is wrong? I think it is. I think that even though it would be so simple to do, to hand this guy what would only be a few dollars so he can buy dinner, would be to acquiesce to evil. 

I read all day long about police who don't just let the folks go after they hit them up for a bribe. No, when these extremely poor folks cannot pay, they become the victims of the most grievous forms of violence. Beaten. Raped. Killed. All because they are poor. All because the police can. Although we could have suffered a lot more than just a few awkward moments, a car full of white Westerners is not exactly low profile for a police officer to push his luck on getting a bribe. However, when I read the files of IJM clients, they don't get such a benefit. I have no idea on how to go about fixing a problem like this. I do know that the only way to start fixing it is by confronting it. That's what IJM does, and that's yet another reason I'm proud to be here doing the work I do.

Off to a good start

The Nairobi skyline as seen from my office. 

Well, I've just finished up my second week here in Nairobi. The first week was a blur of jet lag and currency conversions. Now, I am starting to settle into a routine, and life in Kenya is unfolding. It feels like I've been here longer than two weeks. The pace of life is pretty up-tempo. The work here will be pretty all consuming. I don't necessarily want this blog to be all about my work at International Justice Mission, because there are many confidentiality concerns and internal IJM communication policies. However, I've quickly learned that this work is going to become a defining factor in my life for the next 12 months. After that first week of orientation and falling asleep in meetings at 1:00 in the afternoon, I was quickly placed in the assignment rotation. There's a lot of work to do, and our case load is pretty chalk full for the relatively small legal staff.

It's such a nice thing to have work that you can pour yourself into. Law school was challenging for me because there was a lot of theory, and hypothetical, and a lot of made up fact patterns for made up exercises with made up clients. For me, it was hard to take a lot of that seriously, but here at IJM, I am dealing with people's very lives. My clients are facing serious injustice, and knowing that every research assignment, every case analysis, every memo, every meeting, and even little e-mails are all a vital part of securing justice for them is good fuel for the worker's soul. It's good to have work that has serious meaning. It's good to be in a place where you are pushed and motivated by the dire need of someone else.

It's also going to take some getting used to. The theme of our casework isn't exactly a joyful refrain. My office focuses on child sexual assaults, extra-judicial killing, and illegal detention. Heavy stuff. But even in my two weeks here, on several occasions the office has burst into shouting, cheering, and celebration as our field office director peeks out of a meeting to announce a conviction, or an arrest, or other good news in a business so colored by suffering.

Rocco DeFilippis, Justice Seeker.

Nairobi is an odd place. Having traveled to six African countries, some multiple times, Nairobi is by far the most developed city I've been to. Everything is under construction here. There are buildings going up left and right. Yet, even with all of this development, there's still a lot of poverty present. For example, you will walk past street children begging on the side of the road as you enter a fancy modern mall with posh restaurants and a movie theater showing the latest summer blockbusters. It's odd. I haven't seen much of the city yet, because, well, it's huge and sprawling. I spent a few minutes in the city center, switching from one matatu to another on the way to church. A matatu is a minibus taxi that, while privately owned, serves as the only form of public transportation. Downtown is odd. It has modern skyscrapers and lush parks, yet, it has this feel of danger to it. I don't know if it's all the security training I've been in, or if it's all the stories I've heard, but Nairobi has a dangerous feel to it. I mean, it's nickname is Nairobbery. I constantly hear from folks I've been talking to things like, "Oh, but don't go there alone" or "I wouldn't walk there at night." Everything has large walls, razor wire, electric fences, and private guards. The Marine in me says, "It can't be that bad," but then again, the Marine in me says, "Situational awareness, force protection." It will be interesting to see how the security situation effects life here. Already, there's a church I'd like to attend for a Wednesday night service, but walking home a half-mile might not be the best idea at night.

Overall, I'm starting to get into the swing of things. I look forward to exploring more. Unfortunately, I've forgotten my battery charger somewhere along the way from Wisconsin to Nairobi. It's either in Ohio or Washington, DC. So, I'm limited in the amount of photos just yet. Plus, now I'm all paranoid about getting robbed, so I don't know how often I will be bringing the camera out. I'll figure it out.

Westlands neighborhood. I live a bit behind the two tallest buildings on the upper right. 

Spiritual Birthday Reflections

A year ago my life changed dramatically. I've been thinking about this change very much lately. I want to write about this change and tell you about it, but I don't want start on the wrong foot. The most important thing is, I didn't change me. Well, I've changed things about my life. I've changed routines, the media I consume, the way I spend my Friday nights...I've changed the way I act in many ways. But the change in me is much deeper than those things. The changes I've made have been in response to the deeper change God has made in me. I've been walking as a disciple of Jesus Christ for 365 days now. On June 3, 2012, I had an encounter with God where I truly grasped the simple beauty of the gospel message. The idea that I was unable to have a relationship with a holy God because I was a slave to my sinful nature. And yet, even in that state of separation, God loved me so much that He died to make it somehow possible that I could have a relationship with Him. So a year ago, in my sister's basement, I committed myself to knowing more about this God and living in that relationship which He paid so much to make possible. That same morning, I gave my heart and life to Jesus after a beautiful gospel message I heard at City Church in Madison, WI.  So with that said, I hope to get across the idea that I cannot take credit for the change in me, the Holy Spirit rightfully receives all the credit for this regenerative work.

A new man...just three weeks after my encounter with Jesus in 2012.

So, what's happened this last year? Well, seeing as how we serve a God of order, it seems only right that He brought me through four quarters of lessons and growth. The first quarter was amazing. It was a time where the joy of salvation was the dominate theme of my life. I realized why Christians used the phrases that they use, like Born Again for example. I felt Born Again. I felt like a new man. He freed me from the anxiety and depression that marked my adult life. I used to worry about everything. When I heard the gospel preached that June 3^rd morning at City Church, I heard Jesus tell me that I didn't need to worry about my life anymore. Matthew 6: 25-34, what a life changing teaching. Anyway, the point I'm trying to get across is, for three months, I lived in the joy of salvation. Scripture came alive with a richness I cannot explain. God was speaking to me in everything. From what I was reading, to the sermons I would listen to online, to the things I heard at church as I began to integrate myself into the body of Christ. It was awesome. 

The second quarter though, that was a different story. The old doubts came back. You see, I was raised in a Christian home, and I professed to be a Christian for many years, but when I left home after high school, I drifted further and further away from God. In my mid-twenties I started looking into (and buying) philosophical arguments against the existence of an all powerful, all knowing, all loving God. The problem of pain, suffering and evil caused me to abandon the God of the bible completely. I lived like a complete pagan for many years, finding my own spirituality in a weird mix of Eastern mysticism and New Age...stuff. So here I was, three months into this new relationship with the God of the bible, and these old doubts came back. I wrestled against them and came to a point where I felt so close to chalking my whole conversion experience up to some kind of brief psychotic delusion fueled by repressed emotional longings for a god who isn't there. But I learned something very important in that season, the promises of scripture are true. First, faith doesn't come from me. I can't just make it. Faith is a gift from God. The journey of faith with God requires that we immerse ourselves in His Word (Titus 1:13-14). In His Word, I was reading that there were people who struggled with their faith, and they asked Jesus to increase their faith, and he did. So I asked him too. I asked God to help me, because I didn't understand so many things, and it was kind of hard to believe that this whole story was true. I mean, who orders their entire life around a collection of writings which are thousands of years old? It's 2013 for crying out loud...we have the Internet! But little by little, God increased my faith. I can't really explain it. I did find things like debates and other videos on the internet where really smart people would discuss these things, and what they said helped. I mean, William Lane Craig is truly a blessing for Christians who struggle with believing the Bible and being intellectually satisfied. But it wasn't just some video I watched, or some treatise I read. No one really answered the deep objections I have to the problem of evil, and I'm still mulling over those things even today...but something is different now. I have faith now, and I can't really explain it outside of the idea that it is truly a gift from God (not to open any doctrinal worm cans about where faith comes from). For me, I can't really explain it any other way. I pleaded with God to help me through this valley of doubt, to not leave me, to help me understand, to give me faith...I had many people pray with me and for me, and I really struggled through...and then one day, I just believed..........the historicity of the resurrection of Jesus helped ;)

And speaking of doctrinal cans of worms, that brought me to the next quarter, the School of Amateur Doctrine. For the next three months, I was brought through this place where I was really concerned about doctrine and all that. I really struggled with the idea of Biblical inerrancy and what it meant. Did Noah really fit a million different species of animals in the ark, or was it okay to view it as allegory? What about Calvinism vs. Armenianism. What about the sign gifts...tongues and prophesy and people falling down and all that weird stuff? You see, God put me in a pretty charismatic church in City Church, and I really struggled with a lot of the doctrine stuff because I was learning things from my own perspective, based a lot on what I had learned in the fundamentalist church I was raised in. I dove into the doctrine stuff to see what I believed on things like soteriology, eschatology, and the sign gifts. And I've come out to comfortable answers on each of these major questions. I lean pretty heavy on the reformed side...I believe the 5 Doctrines of Grace are what scripture teaches about the nature of man and the nature of salvation. I believe the sign gifts are not for today. I think I'm amillennial, but still have no real clue about what the heck is going on there. So yes, I've worked out some of these things, but that's not the point. First off, I've only been doing this for a short while and still have so much to learn. More importantly though, the Lord taught me something extremely important in this whole process. You see, at first it was about me finding the right answer. There had to be a right way and if you didn't believe the right way you were either ignorant, misled, or a heretical wolf in sheep's clothing trying your best to do the devil's work of deception on us elect chosen ones. Ha. But seriously, I was really hung up on this stuff and allowed it to rob me of that joy I experienced so much in that first quarter. I'm still pressing out the doctrine stuff. I know it's important, and I'm not just going to be like, “Oh, doctrine is not really important, all you need is love.” I think that's a wrong attitude which leads to misunderstandings about the nature of God and His desire for how we should live. But what the Lord really impressed on me was this idea that He sees my heart. He sees our hearts...that inner part we can't disguise. We cannot fool Him. We cannot heap up the right platitudes, the right words. There is nothing we can do externally that will cause Him to miss the internal. Looking at Christian life, at church life, and at doctrine from this perspective has really helped me move away from some legalistic quest to figure it all out, into a more comfortable place where I accept different interpretations on the non-essential doctrines and have more liberty to allow people—and myself—to worship God with their heart.

My best attempts to mimic a great theologian during my transition from Doubt to Amateur Doctrine.

Lastly, like any good period of instruction, the Lord put me through a season of practical application. I drove a taxi cab for the last three months leading up to my departure on this great African adventure. You see, what is the point of the Christian life? Why does God keep us here after we receive salvation? I think the easiest answer I can come up with is that God wants sons and daughters...and to do that, He sent His son, to redeem us and bring us in to relationship with God. Then the Holy Spirit renews us and makes us more like His son, which is to say, God sends His Spirit into us to make us more like Jesus, or to put it a different way, God is making us more like Himself. Not into Him, but into His likeness. So what does this actually look like? Well, we know a lot about Jesus' character from the four gospels. He gave us pretty clear instructions on how we should live. He told us to love God with all our heart, soul and mind, and similarly, to love our neighbor as our self. Two commandants to replace/restate/summarize the whole of the law and the prophets. So, in that taxi driving season, God showed me my neighbors. He showed me poor people, drunk people, rich people, honest and hardworking people, reallllllly lazy people (who takes a taxi two blocks?...*cough*...frat girls...*cough*) kind people, arrogant and rude people...people from every walk of life. I played a pretty intimate role in their lives: I drove them around on their errands, heard their conversations, listened to their stories, and was able to see life in my city from a new and different way. He showed me all kinds of things in people, taught me all kinds of practical lessons about humility, patience, preconceived notions and prejudice. He showed me the reality of poverty (even in wealthy city like Madison). I shared several painful moments with people...the two separate times I drove women to the ER while they were miscarrying their unborn child come to mind. I prayed with complete strangers. Tried to speak God's truth and the message of His joy into their lives. I tried to be like Jesus more and more. I practiced listening to people, really listening to them, not just letting them talk or waiting my turn either. I don't know. Maybe I'm being dramatic, or maybe when God says we are being transformed into His likeness, He isn't kidding. Again, I've only just begun this journey, and there is much work to do. But in these last three months, the Lord has impressed on me the importance of imitating Christ, and the importance of loving my neighbor.

So that's a year. Three months of Cloud Nine, three months of the Valley of the Shadow of Doubt, three months in the School of Amateur Doctrine, and three months in field, living out the gospel. What a work the Lord has worked. What's more amazing is how He worked that work...namely through His people, speaking His truth into my life. I am so very grateful for the men and women God has put in my life this last year. Those who took time to pray with me, to encourage me, to share with me, to listen to me, to guide and mentor me, to show me, through their example, how to be more like Jesus. For some reason—I haven't quite figured it out yet—God chooses to accomplish His will through humans. He works through His people. I don't understand it, and I would surely do it differently if I were Him. But He does. How will the world see Jesus? He will transform the lives of sinners so that they will exemplify His love for the world. For some reason, I think that's going to be a big part of what He teaches me over this next year. He took a pretty serious sinner—washed him, clothed him, fed him, taught him, equipped him and now, He's sending him. I don't know what this year in Kenya will bring. I don't know what lessons the Lord has for me to learn. I don't know how many months will be spent on the mountain, or how many in the valley, but I do know this....He who began a good work in me will carry it out unto completion. That's pretty cool. 

Full circle...a year to the date in Washington for IJM Orientation.