Insulated Houses

This has been a blog that has been a long time in coming. It has been long enough that I have composed and recomposed it enough times in my head so I no longer remember whether or not I have already written some of this in another blog. :)

One of the first things I noticed here is the vulnerability of the Kenyans to the weather. I particularly noticed it doing the laundry. As you can imagine, washing clothes by hand and ringing them out on a sunny day is a lot of work. Add to that rain and humidity and it feels like quite the futile effort! I was excited this past Sunday because I washed my laundry and all the clothes dried fast enough that they didn’t smell musty! There is no shelter to hang the clothes when it is raining. The simple fact of life is that when it rains, your laundry gets wet. I got to thinking about how at home, it didn’t matter what the weather was- I could always do laundry and get clean, warm, nice smelling clothes.

This train of thought continued onto the housing. Houses here are made from a variety of materials. I have seen shacks that look like the next big wind might just blow them over. I have seen houses that look like pieces of flattened metal paint cans nailed onto wooden posts. I have seen houses made of cinder with a tin roof. But one thing that each of these houses has is that there is no insulation. There are the basic walls to keep things out and in as necessary, but there is not the layers of ‘protection’ that we have from outside. There are no three paned glass windows that seal out the heat or cold depending on the weather. In the cold, wet season, they are cold and sometimes wet. In the hot season, they are hot. It is just a fact of life. Whatever the weather is, that is what you will experience. I think when I get home and turn up my thermostat, it will be a different feeling because I know that there are friends of mine who are cold and all they can do is pile on more blankets if they have extra. [Now, probably some of you are getting confused because I am talking about cold and Kenya in the same paragraph, but it does actually get cold here- I have worn a sweater on several occasions and when I wear a sweater, then the Kenyans are most definitely feeling the cold as well.]

But this is a fairly shallow sense of insulation. My train of thought actually has gone way past that into making some hopefully extremely uncomfortable statements about our life in the west. I think that we all live in insulated houses, in insulated worlds and often we fight to keep it that way. The last time I heard the numbers, 20% of the world was consuming %80 of its resources while that leaves %80 of the world to use the other %20. Stop for a moment and let that sink in. If you are like me (and I think the fact that you are reading this blog makes for a good chance that you are) you are definitely placed in that top 20%! Actually, probably somewhere closer to the top 5 or 10%. Let that sink it- it took me a couple years to really get it. You are being greedy in how you live your life. Your lifestyle is costing someone else. Possibly to the extent where your lifestyle is costing someone else their life. Think about the richest person in the world… the wealth comparison between them and you is less of a gap than the gap between you and much of the world. That is how wealthy you are.

But we don’t like to hear that. We write people who tell us this off as fanatics or really not getting our hearts because we really do try our best and we work hard for our money so we deserve it and, besides, we wouldn’t want to enable them or anything like that so what more can we do. We insulate ourselves from feeling the helplessness and sometimes hopelessness that can creep in when we realize the situation of our fellow humans around the world. We don’t like to feel uncomfortable and so we don’t.

And I am no exception. I don’t like it that people here keep asking me to find sponsors for, or to sponsor, the kids. I have even met the kids and it still makes me squirm. They don’t know I am unemployed, I tell myself and put up my one layer of insulation. I have to plan for the future- who knows what will happen! Another layer of insulation. Besides, the problem is so big- what could I do? And there is a third layer of insulation so that I can look at the face of a child and not feel pain when they tell me that their mother died when they were young, their father has never been around, and their grandmother who they live with, has no employment. I can write down the facts and move on to the next story. But wait a minute! This is a child. This is a child the same age as my sister! What if that was Taylor standing there talking to someone and telling them that she had no food. She had no assurance of affording her school uniform, let alone buying regular clothes or thinking about the long term future. I would hope that her story would get through the layers of insulation around people and make them see her and do something. I would want Taylor to have a care free childhood- one that wasn’t focused on getting food and water for tomorrow. But if life had it that Taylor were not my sister and was a Kenyan (or someone from many other parts of the world)- would I see her? Would I feel her need and would it break my heart?

My garbage can in my room is full. The fact that I have a garbage can is odd because garbage is something that is only starting to come into this country. I have been thinking about how much garbage I am making here as well as how much at home. It is a sign of how much I am consuming. I think it is normal to use so many resources because that is all I know. That is what everyone does. We drive cars, build really big houses, acquire a lot of needs and then spend a lot of time seeking to fulfill those needs. Getting away from all that gives a different perspective and understanding. Having a favorite food is a luxury! If you have eaten enough of a diversity of food to have a favorite- Wow! Or even if you have say in what you eat and it isn’t driven by what is cheapest and will make you feel fullest without hunger pangs, then Wow! We have favorite colors. We want our shirts to fit just so and then suddenly don’t like them when they are ‘out of fashion.’ We think entertainment is a legitimate thing to spend a whole bunch of money on. And the list goes on. We consume without thought. And there goes that chunk of world resources down our various tubes…

This topic is so big in my mind. There are so many injustices in the world in terms of resource use and the consequences of that, but those with the resources and therefore the power care so little. We tithe (good ole’ 10%) but if we really felt the pain of those in need, how could we justify using the enormous 90% that is left? Ack! It feels like I am mumbling and bumbling around something that just isn’t coming out. I wish I had unlimited internet so that I could research what your access to resources could do!

I found a quote in a book I read (which quoted this quote) that really struck me as pertaining to this and rather bold and challenging.

To believe in God is to believe in the salvation of the world. The paradox of our time is that those who believe in God do not believe in the salvation of the world, and those who believe in the future of the world do not believe in God.

Christians believe in “the end of the world,” they expect the final catastrophe, the punishment of others.

Atheists in their turn… refuse to believe in God because Christians believe in him and take no interest in the world…

Which is the more culpable ignorance?

… I often say to myself that, in our religion, God must feel very much alone: for is there anyone besides God who believes in the salvation of the world? God seeks among us sons and daughters who resemble him enough, who love the world enough so that he could send them into the world to save it.

Louis Evely, In the Christian Spirit (Image, 1975)

Another quote that I came across this morning from Richard Rohr is

Brothers and sisters, the irony is not that God should feel so fiercely; it’s that his creatures feel so feebly. If there is nothing in your life to cry about, if there is nothing in your life to yell about, you must be out of touch. We must all feel and know the immense pain of humanity. The free space that God leads us into is to be able to feel the full spectrum, from great exaltation and joy, to the pain of mourning and dying and suffering. Then we are no longer isolated, but a true member of the universal Body of Christ.


For the sake of the rest of the world and because it is wrong, bad, harmful or whatever other negative word that you can think of, to do otherwise, become aware of what is insulating your life. Refuse to not see. Refuse to be okay with injustice. Be uncomfortable! There is so much that each of you can do (and that includes my old students who are reading this even though you are young!). If the tables were flipped and you were part of the 80% with 20% of the world’s resources, how would you want someone to respond?