Up and Down(ing)
A few days ago I had the pleasure of riding into Nairobi with John, a Kikuyu driver who grew up in Kijabe. There are many different tribes in Kenya, like the Maasai, Luo, Kalenjin, and about forty others, but the majority around RVA are Kikuyu.
As we drove through the beautiful countryside of Kenya on the way to town I peppered John with many questions, especially regarding how to say things in Kiswahili. But eventually he started teaching me greetings in his own Kikuyu language. We want to learn Swahili because that’s the language most Kenyans use to communicate between tribes. But as John encouraged me, if we really want to develop relationships with our closest neighbors, it would be worth spending time learning some Kikuyu.
John told me he knows of two people who served at RVA who became fluent in his native heart language (this is telling in itself). One of them was a man named Herb Downing. John wouldn’t have known Herb personally, who was one of the first Americans born in East Africa in 1905.
Downing’s father was a field director with AIM, which meant his childhood and early education were at RVA. He spent much of his time among the children of the African Christian leaders his father worked with, and so learned Kikuyu almost as early as English.
This upbringing, combined with a degree in Education from America and several years of teaching in the Pennsylvania public schools made him the ideal choice to be RVA’s principal in 1933. He was twenty-eight.
His command of the language and respect for the culture was not lost on the Kenyan community surrounding RVA. Phil Dow writes,
“This attitude of mutual respect provided opportunities for AIM and RVA that might have otherwise been impenetrable. Simply put, Africa was his home.”
