With Ears Wide Open

Church Commute

I’ve always considered myself to have a relatively sharp sense of hearing.  I’ve found it to be helpful when empathizing with some of my patients with autism, and I’ve found it to be a big fat pain when trying to sleep through the night in Chicago.  I’ve been known to wear earplugs to spin class and preach the dangers of noise damage to my rockstar baby cousins; I thought I got it.  What I took for granted though, what I never fully considered, is that I’m from a generation and culture abuzz with noise.  So without that ambient cacophony here in Kenya, and maybe for the first time in my life, I am actually learning to listen.

Cheeky Mischief

I’ve learned how distant funeral drums sound from the neighboring farm as they pay their respects well past sunrise, several consecutive nights in a row.  I’ve imprinted the melody of dozens of African children singing together, out of key, but in their finest Christmas outfits.  I recognize the sound of the cows coming to join us in our field as we play, and the pathetic mewing of the mama cat that wakes me each morning to beg for my breakfast.  I’ve memorized the giggle of each of the children as they squirm under my tickling hands, and their whispered voices as they tell me their Swahili secrets, unaware that by its very nature, their secret is safe with me.  I recognize the sound of the generator kicking in just before our power returns, and the nighttime scratching of rodent feet on my tin roof.  I’ve been taught that the sound of a siren implies someone has already died.  I know the rhythm of our Swahili hymns sung in church, seemingly repeatedly hundreds! of times.  I know the haunting sound of someone suffering from cerebral malaria as she incoherently wails from her hospital bed just meters from my own.

Baby Train

I am also learning the sounds of silence.  I know the hungry silence of famished children as they shovel platefuls of rice down their throats.  I recognize the sudden silence of oncoming thunder that usually precedes the rain.  I know the commanding silence of the police checkpoints: engines off, music silenced, drivers anxiously rifling through their pockets for the bribe demanded of Kenya's finest.  I know the suspicious silence of a quad of little boys who are invariably getting themselves into mischief.  I’ve witnessed a tangible, aggressive silence as it transformed inquisitive daughters and tender wives into silent shadows of the bully they call daddy and husband.  Theirs is a deafening silence that demands our response.

This evening as I was finishing my dinner I overheard the kids laughing and singing at the top of their lungs.  I couldn’t resist running back to see what they were up to, and found them on their dusty porch in the dusk, having a dance party.  The musical accompaniment to their sweetly piercing voices was an imaginary keyboard in the form of a plank of wood.  They were a quite a sight.  But even more than that, they were the most perfect, joyful sound I’ve ever heard.  And I was happy to listen.