Kalokuruk

A forty minute walk from my host home, just outside Kotido is a rock called Kalokuruk, meaning: a place of the crows. The rock is sloped on one side so that it reaches the ground and you can walk all the way to the top where it abruptly drops off. At the base of the rock where you begin to walk up is a small pond of water, beginning half way up the incline and ending just above the pond is a smooth, slippery groove where hundreds of bodies have created a natural slide throughout the years. Kalokuruk isn’t very tall, perhaps a few hundred feet; but, the view is spectacular, and especially now as the dry season is approaching the wind is astonishingly strong.

The rock is not only home to the crows, but also a variety of song birds, hawks, and many lizards and snakes. The morning I walked out to the rock, warriors and women were bathing in the basin of Kalokuruk, birds were singing, and many crows were flying overhead. I reached the top of the rock and found a comfortable place to observe nature and rest for a while. I couldn’t help but think of the story from I Kings where the Lord appears to Elijah after he had fled to Horeb. In my NIV translation the story reads:

“Then a great and powerful wind tore the mountains apart and shattered the rocks before the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind. After the wind there was an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake. After the earthquake came fire, but the Lord was not in the fire. And after the fire came a gentle whisper. When Elijah heard it, he pulled his cloak over his face and went out and stood at the mouth of the cave. Then a voice said to him, ‘What are you doing here, Elijah?’”

In Akron, Pa during orientation an outline of our emotions was charted out and projected on the wall for us to analyze. In that moment of preparation it was hard to feel anything but excitement for the coming year, but as I have grown accustom to Kotido I have remembered that chart and found myself to be a perfect model for the proposed emotions at this point of the year. Perhaps a bit of discouragement regarding how slow things seem to be moving in my service assignment, and a lot of asking myself the exact same question God asked of Elijah, “What are you doing here?”

I had to re-evaluate my own attitude about being in Kotido on Kalokuruk, I needed to step back and realize that not everything moves at the speed I would like it to, and above all I needed to realize that God is in the gentle whispers of life not necessarily life shattering explosions. Currently I am reading The Brothers Karamazov one character, Ivan, is a man searching ardently for life’s meaning and purpose. In one conversation he has with one of his brothers, Alyosha, he states that our human minds were created to understand three-dimensional information. We will not, and cannot ever hope to understand God. I completely agree with Ivan, I can never hope to understand God’s mystery but in moments when I embrace my human fallibility and look to God for strength I disagree with Ivan because there is one thing I am sure of about: God is good, all the time, all the time, God is good.

One view from the top of the rock

A low flying Kite (hawk) was looking for breakfast

If you look carefully there's a lizard in this picture