The Peaceful Place

Amani Gardens Inn on Church Road in Westlands, Nairobi, used to be called The Mennonite Guest House. For decades–in fact, since 1964, as anyone who stays here and logs on to WiFi knows, this remodeled British military barracks has been where Mennonite-affiliated missionaries, church workers, and NGO types wash up between assignments. It’s where they go for a break during those assignments, and where they drag their families years later when they want to go back and reminisce. It’s been the hub of Mennonite activity in East Africa since before I was born.

I first came here right after being born, in July of 1968. My Mom came up from where my parents were living in Tanzania and stayed here waiting to deliver her third daughter. I arrived on July 4, “like a firecracker” my mom always said because once I decided to come out, it happened pretty quickly with a lot of blood and tearing. Mothers never spare the details when retelling their kids’ birth stories.

My mom wasn’t supposed to be pregnant with me, having lost a five-month-old pregnancy, their only son, less than a year before. They named the baby Andrew, and being Mennonite, they refused to baptize him as an infant much to the dismay of their doctor. The baby died unbaptized, and Mom remembers they put him in one of those kidney-shaped hospital pans and took him away with the medical waste from the delivery. This was at the Nairobi hospital, and mom stayed at the Mennonite Guest House to recover. She got phlebitis and was bed ridden. When she went back to the doctor and her new pregnancy was revealed, he reportedly said “Oh, my God.”

Mom returned to the Guest House to be monitored in the last few weeks of her pregnancy, and this is where I spent the first weeks of my life. My dad had just trashed his old pikipiki in the mud driving around Tanzania in the rainy season, so he got a new motorcycle along with a new baby girl when he got to Nairobi. He took a ferry across Lake Victoria from Musoma to Kisumu, and a bus from there to Nairobi. Unfortunately, someone peed in the corner of the ferry’s cabin where he put down his suitcase, and he had laundry to do when he arrived in Nairobi. My first time at the Mennonite Guest House we all stayed in one tiny room–Mom and Dad, the new BSA motorcycle, and me.

Dad describes me in a letter written from the Guest House to his brother-in-law, Omar Eby, on July 16, 1968: “She is sort of Buddhist in her whole visage. Not the fat Buddha type that you once thought [our oldest daughter] Joyce resembled. I am referring to the Buddhist theology, which extols the middle road. Rose has no features which are grotesque either by their size or color or presence or absence. Her face is a perfect oval with black eyes. Her hair is neither absent nor abundant. Her nose is moderate, as are her ears and mouth and chin. She is thin with very long fingers. She is content most of the time. Everyone who sees her remarks how pretty she is. Edith and I cooed and cuddled her as though we had never had a baby before. One experienced couple even asked after observing us with Rose, if this was our firstborn” (from Rafiki: Letters to Omar, p. 87).

The Mennonite Guest House was where we stayed when we had business in Nairobi or when we traveled from Tanzania to the US. It’s where I squirmed out of my mom’s arms and fell on my head on the stone patio outside one of the rooms. It’s where I fell out of a jacaranda tree and had to be rushed to the hospital on a surfboard, everyone concerned I had broken my back.

We moved to Nairobi in 1976 when I was eight. Dad was put in charge of Mennonite church programming in Kenya: “the main function of this area office is to act as an agent to facilitate fraternal interrelationships and understandings between the African churches, missions, and other church agencies–all Mennonite, of course” Dad explained in his letters. Even though he was clear-eyed about what the job entailed when he reluctantly accepted it, I doubt he was prepared for how much it would take out of him. Mom was in charge of–by now–four little girls, which was usually the way things went back then. She was happy to be closer to civilization in the sprawling metropolis of Nairobi. The biggest change for us kids was that instead of going off to boarding school in the next country up, we now could ride to the same school, Rosslyn Academy, in a mini van shuttle that picked us up next door every morning and dropped us off again every afternoon. We lived in a three bedroom, one bath bungalow that was a short walk across the lawn and through a bougainvillea bush from the Guest House.

Every time I visit the Mennonite Guest House, now Amani Gardens (Amani means “peace” in Swahili), I think it will be my last time. We stayed here when we lived in Eldoret in Western Kenya and were visiting our boys at Rift Valley Academy. When we moved to Ethiopia and worked for MCC, we would stay here for work meetings or to see the boys, still at the same boarding school.

But this probably WILL be the last time I stop over here. Amani Gardens is for sale. By its 60th anniversary it will no longer be a Mennonite way station owned and run by Mennonites (the Mennonite Board in Eastern Africa, MBEA). I’m not sure how I feel about it. So much has changed, and hanging on to the way things were is never a good way to move into the future.

This is the walkway from the building where I’m staying down to the dining hall. The columns are hand hewn stone blocks taken from a duplex next door, also owned by MBEA. That building was torn down and the property sold to make room for Skyview Gardens, a commercial luxury high-rise apartment complex. The duplex and the cottage where I grew up were both slated for demolition and development, part of the reality of the real-estate pressure on small properties in a major international city like Nairobi. The cottage has not been torn down yet although that is in the long-term plan. The stone blocks from the first demolition were carefully salvaged and integrated into covered walkways, one example of making room for growth while remembering the past.

When Amani Gardens passes into new hands, there’s no telling what traces of the past will survive into whatever form it takes next.

A note about the sale of Amani Gardens from EMBM:

“For more than 50 years, the Mennonite Guest House in Nairobi, now known as Amani Gardens Inn
(AGI), has provided a place of respite and refreshment for EMM missionaries, other missionaries, and guests around the world. It is a place of beauty and peace and has been well loved by hundreds of guests. Over the last number of years, use of the facilities by mission and NGO personnel has declined to about 30% of total use. Other similar quality and priced guest house hotels were built in Nairobi, adding a significant level of competition to AGI and raising questions about AGI’s unique value in supporting mission workers. 

Due to the Lord’s blessing upon the sacrificial work of many EMM missionaries, there are now established Mennonite churches in Kenya, Tanzania, Ethiopia, and Uganda. EMM’s priority in the region is to partner with these churches in helping to fulfill the mission to which God has called them. EMM does not foresee placement of significant numbers of expatriate workers in East Africa in the future. Our church partners do not make significant use of or directly benefit from AGI. The sale of the property and the investment of the proceeds (possibly in East African social enterprises) would provide a significant source of revenue to fund mission priorities of church planting and development, discipleship, and theological training throughout the region.

EMM recognizes that the sale of AGI would feel like a great loss to many who hold it dear. We have been asking those who value the guest house to bless the release of this beloved resource for the sake of a new season of mission and kingdom work in East Africa. We will seek to find ways to honor the legacy of the property and the many memories there in the process.”