Kucheza Wimbo

Recently I ventured back to Kenya on a medical mission trip 3 years after my first trip there. In a way, it felt like going home. I left a big part of my heart there, and for so long my heart had been bursting to go back to reclaim the pieces I had left behind. I missed everything about the country. I missed the people and their smiles. I missed the smell of the crisp air in the mara. I missed falling asleep under a million stars to the sound of hyenas and elephants roaming in the night. I missed having red dirt in every crevice of every article of clothing I owned. I missed being the good kind of exhausted, the kind of exhausted where your bones hurt from working for a purpose. But I think what I missed most of all were the maasai children. 

The maasai children are very unique from any other group of kids I’ve ever encountered. They uphold a sense of honor for their elders. Whenever one approaches an adult, they bow their head and wait for the adult to place a hand on their head as a sign of a blessing. They are unceasingly grateful. They get excited over the smallest things- stickers, bubbles, bracelets, face paint, beanie babies, soccer. They love to play and play hard. Their energy is unmatched and contagious. And they especially love to sing. 

I learned some basic words in swahili in my time in Kenya. But probably the most important words I learned were kucheza wimbo: play a song. And when we wanted to keep going, I would say, kucheza wimbo mwininge: play another song. They would erupt in traditional maasai songs and even english songs about Jesus. And they would dance and smile and laugh with a joy so pure and wonderful. It was contagious. 

At first, I felt a little silly when they would ask me to dance and sing with them. But looking back on the experience, I’m reminded of something Rob Morris, founder of Love146, said once when he visited a safe home: 

“When the broken ask you to dance, you dance.” 

These kids really have so little. Many of them walk for miles to get to school and more to get clean water. They have just enough food to get by. Their clothes are few and torn. They have little access to medical care. They have no electricity, no running water. And many come from families of very broken circumstance. 

In the eyes of the world, these children would be considered very poor and very broken. But when I looked them in the eye while they were dancing, I locked eyes with the richest human beings on the earth. They were abundant in the joy of their father, of their mungu baba. I, the middle class American, was the one who was empty and hollowed by the mundane cycle of conformity to the western world. The broken asked me to dance, and in turn, my brokenness was exposed. But the sweet thing about dancing, is that when you dance, you dance with abandon. All brokenness is taken aside and healed when you dance in the center of joy with the Father. 

I’m so grateful the Father asks me to dance with Him. For the joy that was set before Him, He was broken for my sinfulness and conquered death so that I may have life in Him. So that I may dance with Him. He invites the broken to dance with Him in the center of joy. And in that perfect joy, that sweet dance on our Daddy’s feet, there is healing. He asks the broken to dance. And the broken are made whole.