Reconciliation in Trans Mara

One of the duties not included in my job description was that of ambulance driver. Since the Ogwedhi Sigawa Project (OSP) had the only functioning vehicle in the community, since it was a Christian charitable institution devoted to the welfare of that community, and since I was the only licensed vehicle operator, it was my unwritten duty to serve as the on-call ambulance service driver. This meant I would be experiencing a lot of unexpected and inconvenient adventures at a moment’s notice.

I accepted this service as a part of my ministry. I felt I was assisting God in answering the many prayers of suffering people who had nowhere to turn for help but to God as they understood him. I believe I received much benefit from the deeply grateful people who wished me, “God bless you!” As I served, I felt the blessings stacking up!

For example, one Sunday in July 1986, we arrived home after church to find a man waiting for us to take his two-month-old child to the hospital. I skipped lunch and rushed off to the hospital in Migori. When I returned about three hours later, I found another person waiting for me to take a sick man who had urinary blockage. So, off I went to Migori again.

It was getting dusk when I returned only to find a party of Maasai waiting for me. One of our church women’s nine months-old baby was very sick. Could I please take them to the hospital at Kilgoris? I was quite tired after the rough journey, and the car was low on fuel, so I could not go to Kilgoris, which is farther away and has no petrol station open at night. I persuaded them to go to Migori instead. Arriving back home after 11:00 p.m., I was ready to sleep!

At times, my service was extended to that of hearse driver as well. A memorable case occurred when I took a prominent Maasai elder’s ten-year-old daughter to a clinic nearby. Due to her condition, she was transferred the next day to Migori Hospital.

Several days later, when I attended a church leaders’ meeting in Migori, we were informed that the little girl had died. Her father was at the hospital. He had no other way to take the body home.

The Maasai traditionally did not bury their dead. Since they were nomadic, they simply put the body in the bush and moved away. Now they were settling and burying their dead, but they did not like to see or get close to their dead. When we went to collect the body, this father took only one identifying glance at his dead daughter and walked out of the morgue.

I and an attendant put her in a coffin, a rough wooden box that was six inches too short. We had to break the lower end of the box to let her dead feet stick out. Then we carried it out and placed it in the back of our pickup.
When we got to Ogwedhi, the father hired a man of another tribe to bury his dead. This grave digger and I took the body out to the bush where a place was selected by a friend of the father. We unloaded the coffin, and I left it there for the other man to bury all alone. The father did not even see or select the place.

When I got back to town, I found the father waiting. He asked me if the job was being done. Satisfied, he went home to inform the mother and family that their daughter had passed away and was gone. Whereas most African cultures make a big thing of funerals, the Maasai are very uncomfortable with funerals.

Another time, there was an all-day combined worship service with the various Luo and Maasai congregations coming together at Ogwedhi. After the service they held a fundraising activity to collect money to build a church. Then a light meal was served, after which I was asked to drive the honored guests to Migori.

We set out with the guests at about 5:00 p.m. Just as we were leaving the church yard, a Maasai man flagged us down, pleading for help to take a sick woman to the hospital in Migori. The young woman had given birth six days earlier and now had serious abdominal pain, indicating a bad infection.

This was a priority, so we asked our guests to get out of the truck and wait at Ogwedhi while we went driving in the bush looking for the sick woman. We found her lying in her dark mud and grass hut about nine kilometers away. We seated her and another woman in the cab with me and returned.

By that time, it was about 6:00 p.m., and a dark threatening cloud appeared on the horizon moving in our direction. We hurriedly picked up our guests and headed out for Migori.

Imagine the scene: a little green Toyota pick-up truck with me at the wheel and the sick girl with her mother, I presume, both occupying the other bucket seat. On the open back are the eight guests, mostly women. We are racing down the dusty, rocky, eroded, rutted, African trail with a huge, black, threatening, storm cloud chasing us in hot pursuit, while we are frantically dodging potholes, boulders, gullies, cows, and people, trying to stay ahead of it!

Well, it caught up with us about halfway to Migori with a torrential downpour of rain and hail. The road turned into a rushing stream as the floods poured down the hills in the wheel-rut channels. The low places became a sea of mud and water. The rain continued its deluge, pummeling us the whole way to Migori. We dropped the patient, her mother, and the wet husband at the emergency entrance to the Migori Catholic hospital and then took the soaked, shivering guests to their respective homes seven kilometers beyond Migori.