Wednesday, December 24, 2008

What does one possibly give for Christmas to the woman “who has everything”?

Flowers are out of the question for a woman who has a whole hillside in bloom. Jewelry seems a little out of place for a woman so naturally beautiful. A new cloth? Josh is old enough as our son to buy that for his momma, and besides our wonderful co-worker Redford just brought Nuru to share with us their plans to get married and they brought Susan a cloth that’s far more beautiful than anything I could pick out. The truth is that I’ve known for months that Susan hasn’t been wishing for flowers or for jewelry or for a beautiful Tanzanian cloth for this Christmas. I know the one thing that Susan would really love to find under the Christmas tree on Christmas morning.

And so I’ve been plotting now for weeks, actually longer really.

And that is why this past weekend we went far away to Iringa and we stayed an extra day so that we would be gone on Monday. That was the day that Godfrey was hosting a huge delegation of government officials – literally over a third of the district assembly -- who thought they were coming to check out of all things our, admittedly, ingenious water system. But while they were touring the dam that our students built, probably enthralled with the spillway they had dug, their eyes almost certainly glazing over as they inspected the intricacies of the ingenious ram built by a guy we found from Njombe, well Godfrey was telling them about how this missionary lady who had come to teach English at our school had started out in 2006 helping a few of the parents of our students who were HIV+ to get to the hospital at Lugoda to get the ARVs which kept them alive. A few people at first. Then twenty, then a hundred, then 200, now nearly 800 – people who are all HIV+ who she and our students help get on the bus to get to Lugoda Hospital to get their AIDS medicines that keep them alive. He told them that if those people stop taking those medicines they will die and they will leave behind just over 3000 more orphans in our villages here. And then he walked them the hill to see the stones, the bricks, he let them see the metal roofing and the sacks of cement, all to build the Community Treatment Center here in our village so that all of Mrs Vinton’s friends who have AIDS will no longer have to go on the bus all the way to the hospital to get their ARVs but instead we’d have the building right here in our village. I wasn’t on the hillside as they stood there as he showed them what it would all look like one day, but I can hear him telling them that it’s all Mrs. Vinton talks about, it’s all she wants. She just wants her friends to be able to get their medicines right here in the village.

I could almost picture their frustration growing and demanding to know from Godfrey so what was it that he was waiting for to get started on the building. Godfrey has gotten to be a good story teller and knows how now to wait for just the right moment to say just the right thing. I can picture after a long pause Godfrey telling them that there is the matter of this piece of paper that is sitting on a desk in Mafinga that needs a signature from the District Medical Officer.

My plan would be wonderful. Christmas morning the house would be full of kids, we’d open presents and stuck in one of the branches would be an envelope and after everything was done and finished I’d have Joshua reach up to the branch and pull out the envelope.

The envelope will be there tomorrow morning. But it will be empty. The very last signature that we need, we need it from a man who was urgently called away to the capital city and who won’t be back until next week. But the envelope will be there for Susan. She’ll know that we knew the one thing she really wanted for Christmas. And that we wanted to get it for her.

An empty envelope.

One day I’ll fill it up for her. Soon.

Wednesday, December 17, 2008

Maybe it was because we were so close to Congo that I decided to tell the people of the fishing village of Kazovu more of my history than I've ever shared with people in any of the other villages we have visited. Maybe it was because there was so much time on that hour-long ride in the boat on Lake Tanganyika as we went past one fishing village after another until we finally reached Kazovu. Maybe it was because I spent most of that time staring out across the water, looking out over across the huge lake to the hills of Congo, my mind remembering so many things from my past. Maybe it was because the guys in the boat were telling Godfrey and Anyisile the stories of the war that had come to the towns and villages on the other side of the big lake. And while they were telling their animated stories of bombs they had heard and of a war that they happened far across the lake in a world they had never visited -- for me, it was a war I had lived through, a war that I had survived, a war that seemed like it was so long ago to them, and sometimes like it was only yesterday to me ...

... The bay in which Kazovu was located was nothing short of beautiful. I could imagine Jonathan swimming in the beautifully clean water. The beautiful white sandy beaches one day will probably be discovered by some tour company, but for now the place is a hidden gem. And unfortunately for the folks who'll be looking one day to put in a resort at this place, the village has chosen positively the most beautiful place on the whole bay to build the school. I could see from the boat the brick kilns of already burnt bricks. I could see the huge pile of stones for the foundations. And so I knew before we ever came ashore that the meeting we would have in this village would be a good one ...

... The town meeting was held in the shade of several huge mango trees -- mercifully -- because it was indeed hot. They clearly already understand the gist of our program for partnering with them. It had all obviously been explained to them by someone who knew the details and who had hidden nothing from them. They knew that there would be no silliness that we were going to come build a school for them. They would build it with their hard work, they would build it for their own children, they would work for months and months, hauling stones, making bricks, carrying sand and water, it would very definitely be a huge effort that would involve the entire community ...

... I spoke of my grandfather who eighty years ago had left America because he was not content to know the true and living God himself alone, to have good health himself alone, to have a good education himself alone, to have clean water himself alone -- he wanted to make sure that the people in villages in Congo also had those same blessings! I told them that my grandparents had lived their whole lives in a village, that my father was born in a village and grew up in a village, that I first met my wife in a village, that she taught school in a village, that we now lived in a village and that our sons were growing up in a village. I spoke of how it was thirty years ago that I came to see for myself that while it was wonderful that I knew the true God, that I was educated, that I had good health, that I had clean water and everything else that made life good, that it was not right for me to have all of those blessings and to not share them with those who did not yet have them. I told them that I believed with all my heart that it was wrong to be blessed and to not care if others are not blessed with those same blessings.

And then I paused. And even though there were probably more than a thousand people there it was dead silent. And I let us soak up the silence for a few important seconds.

And then I spoke of Francis.

Francis, the boy they all knew who had grown up in the village. The boy whose father had sent him hundreds of kilometers away to a school, who had traveled first by boat as I had traveled to day, then by bus, and finally on foot. The boy from the village who got to go to school. Who clearly also believed that it was wrong to be blessed and to not care if others were not blessed with those same blessings. That's why he returned to the village with the news that if you made bricks and carried stones that he would take a letter from the village elders to us to ask us to come so that one day there might be a school in this village.

And then in front of everyone I turned over and asked Francis how much it has cost his father simply for the boat fees and the bus fees for him to get to school. 37,000 shillings. The crowd gasped. Now I know that 37,000 shillings (about $35) is not a fortune to me, and probably not to you, but for those in the village it clearly was. Just for him to go far away to go to school. His father didn't know when he put him on the boat and gave him that money to travel far away, where he would sleep that year he would be away at school, or how he would eat, and paying for school fees was a burden, but still he had saved money and sent his son far away so he could get an education.

I looked out at the hundreds of kids in the village and asked the obvious question -- who would ever have the money to pay 37,000 shillings for each of these children to go hundreds of kilometers away to go to school. Francis could have simply taken his blessing and kept it for himself. He could have smiled at his good fortune, studied hard, made something of his life, and forgotten about everyone else left behind.

He certainly could have done that.

Instead he refused to be blessed alone.

And so he was the one who returned to the village, brought news of what we are trying to do in this country, spoke to the village leaders, encouraged people to make bricks and haul stones and for the village leaders to write to us and invite us to come.

As I got back in the boat with the sun setting I looked over across the lake to the hills of eastern Congo and I was glad that I had spoken to these people of my grandparents. I was glad I had told them about my wife and my kids. But I was so glad that I got to tell them about Francis. The boy who refused to be blessed alone. They'll forget the stories of my grandfather. They'll probably soon forget about me. But for all of the hundreds of students who will study at the school that will soon hopefully be built on a beach on Lake Tanganyika I hope that they will always remember about the boy named Francis, the boy from their village, the one who purposed in his heart not to be blessed alone.

Tuesday, December 16, 2008

"Lemusi asked that we visit you." Lemusi had died earlier this week, so as I thought about it afterwards, this probably wasn't a very wonderful or comforting way to start out the conversation. But how else could I have explained to this woman I didn't know why we had walked across the hills and through the fields and shown up at her house out in the middle of no where? I started by explaining that there was this virus infecting and killing people in our area and I wanted to be sure the everyone, even those who lived in remote places in the hills, new about it, and before I could get much further, she asked me what day she her husband could go and get tested.

Wow.

Rather than resistance, the whole subject was embraced and off they went this week to get tested along with 5 other friends she had join her. On that day, only she and her husband tested positive for HIV and her five friends didn't. Chatting on my porch, they seemed relieved and looked forward to receiving treatment. They like many others simply want to be around to raise their children. But what was odd about that afternoon was that we showed up at the wrong house. Lemusi had pointed "over there," but we had arrived at the wrong "over there". Lemusi had told us about a woman with a boil on her side who had shingles. The woman we spoke to that day didn't have those problems, but looked completely healthy -- but she still has the virus, and without medical intervention she would soon be yet another statistic. Another day we will search and find out just who it was that Lemusi had intended us to meet. For now simply know that it wasn't His plan that we should meet her that day. His plan, as always, is better than ours because He knows things we can never know.

Unlike this woman who Lemusi mistakenly sent me too, most young people are not happy to talk about HIV/AIDS. They resist and resist until it is too late. We watch their skin change, sores crop up, shingles take over, weird illnesses that anti-biotics can't cure weaken them further, and then their bodies waste away and disappear before our eyes. At that point -- when they are scared and their families are scared -- they agree to go get tested, but by then it is usually too late. And then witchcraft becomes the scapegoat and the "witch hunt" begins. Accusations fly and things can get nasty. It was a most unusual night though when I broached the subject of AIDS with Stella's family. Stella was lying on a mat that night, unconscious and burning up with fever. She was only 23 years old. The extended family had been called from other villages to be with their dying relative and to discuss why this was happening to her. Witchcraft had to be the culprit. What else, after all, could explain the rapid decline of a young adult? And so I had the opportunity to explain the family gathered around the fire that night that Stella just recently agreed to go and get tested, but she had agreed only after three months of me visiting her and talking to her and trying to convince her. And now it just might be that unfortunately she ended up waiting too long. I had the opportunity to explain to them that our community has an enemy and without knowing this enemy, we will never be able to fight it, and if we can't fight it, we can't win against it. And so I gave them all the wonderful news not just that we can take a test and find out if Stella, or anyone else, has the virus, but also if we get to the hospital in time, there is medicine that will help. And then I prayed with them for Stella's life. They were genuinely and profusely thankful. There wasn't going to be a witch hunt this time and they made plans to take Stella to the hospital at Kibao where she was released just today. Gosh, I hope she makes it. Not just because after three months of getting to know her I don't want Stella to die. I also can't bear the thought of adding yet another name of another child -- hers -- to the "motherless group" of those who are left behind as orphans. It was a good night for the family. Unfortunately her husband was none to happy with me for setting the record straight, but if Stella is going to have any chance at all of living, the truth -- spoken in love -- has to be made known.

There is much hope here among my seemingly ever-growing circle of friends here, but there is also a tremendous amount of grief. Most days there is more hope than grief, but sometimes the grief is huge and sometimes it hurts hard. Today I grieve the loss of my friend Anisia who died this morning from an allergic reaction to the ARVs she had just started taking. It is called Steven-Johnson syndrome. It is horrific and the community health implications are grave indeed. As the afflicted loses all of the skin on the body, there is no way to control the fluid loss. The fluid goes everywhere as children and animals walk through the puddles and family care-givers try and help -- yet another way that HIV can be passed here. Anisia was going to make it -- I really believed that -- but she was pregnant, and her body simply couldn't handle in addition to everything else the strain of having a baby. Her child died yesterday in birth; she died today. Anisia was a lovely Christian woman. I will always remember her as a truly gracious and brave woman. We did what we could to save her by sending her to the Unilever hospital. They admitted her to the company hospital, something that they absolutely never do, simply I think because they couldn't close their eyes to her utter misery in spite of the company's policy. And yet we lost her. I feel as though I have truly lost a friend. And so I grieve because I hurt. But as much as I hurt, there is joy in knowing that one day I will see Anisia without this illness being our point of contact. Our contact will then be sharing together in His glory in the place He promised to build for us. That hope overcomes grief.

In His service, Susan

Sunday, December 7, 2008

It was in the village of Mpepo, the last of the villages we were visiting in the Ruvuma region, that it finally happened ...

So much had been going well on this trip. Godfrey had done a superb job in meeting after meeting, he had skillfully handled quite a number of delicate situations -- and I had really totally enjoyed myself speaking on this trip. Things just simply came together well in place after place.

In the village of Ulolela, we had the kind of meeting with parents that I love -- the kind that takes hours as you slowly work out ideas in the community to bring everyone to a consensus. I also got to hear students and many of the parents, some of them almost tearfully, tell me that they didn't want Brianna to leave their village and their school and go back to America, and I got the real pleasure of getting to talk with Brianna herself and in that conversation to slowly come to get a picture of why it was that the first missionary to ever come live in the village of Ulolela had managed to work her way into the hearts of people the way she had.

In the village of Maguu, the part of my being that just loves education soared at the sheer wonder of seeing how our new Headmaster Samwel had transformed himself in such a short time from being a well-liked and competent teacher into being the masterful leader of 484 students. I could see it sitting in his office. I could see it written all over the faces of his students when he rose to speak before them and to introduce us. A Christian man indeed, but even more than that, a Christian man with principles, one who knew where he wanted to take those students and one who was clearly succeeding in taking them there. He had done it in his classroom, now he was going to do it in his school. Samwel was clearly a man with a mission. Getting to speak to his students was good, very good, a pure pleasure.

From Maguu we were off to Malindindo, and one of the best meetings possible with a group of parents. They were in a good mood, there was legitimate cause for optimism about the future, and they were saying so many almost embarrassingly nice things about what we were doing for their kids but they were doing it in such a clearly sincere way that it really made me thankful for what was happening in that village. Rain or no rain, they were going to build more classrooms!

But in spite of how well the trip was going, I found myself disappointed, very disappointed that we had brought Mahenge on this long trip with us, but nothing seemed to gel right with him. This was the first time he was traveling with us and I’m sure he was nervous. No question, he was learning from being with us -- he was listening to the way Godfrey handled things, he was hearing me speak, and we were talking in the car with him after each visit. Sort of how I imagine interns do with the doctor after a surgery as they discuss the good and the bad and what could have been done differently. But I was beginning to fear that we were going to end our visits to all of the schools and Mahenge would remain totally in the shadows. At each place we introduced him and gave him a chance to speak but in each village, he was brief, more than brief. In fact, his words were so few as to be almost uncomfortable.

I really was troubled about this as we drove into the village of Mpepo. As Godfrey stopped the car at the school and I got out to walk through the crowd and shake a million hands and as I smiled and waved and did all of that, I wondered how we were going to somehow make Mahenge be an important part of this. Our last school, my last chance, and really I was at a loss. Three long hours in the car getting there and I hadn’t come up with a plan. By almost every measure this had been a good trip, even a great trip, but it simply had not come together the way I wanted it to happen for Mahenge.

Our meeting was an open-air meeting at Mpepo and I like those. I had fun praising them for all of the bricks they had made as students. I got to talk about the more than 35,000 bricks that had been made by a single man from their village as his gift to these students and to those who would follow them. And then it finally clicked in my brain. I saw in the sea of faces, in the greatly increased numbers of students something absolutely wonderful.

And I decided to tell them that it wasn't enough.

117 students. They deserved to be praised, the teachers deserved to be praised - they really had done a rather heroic effort to end up with 117 students in such a difficult place. But instead of praising them, I found myself telling them the story of Moses, but talking to them not so much about Moses, but about the Israelites and how when they left Egypt, they all left, that they didn't leave anyone behind in slavery, that they took every single person, men, women, young and old, and Moses led them all out of Egypt. I told them how during the war in Congo that when people from a village fled as the soldiers advanced that you made sure that everyone left, that no one remained behind. That in the city when you leave a burning building, you count and check afterwards to make sure that everyone is out and that you don’t rest until you make sure that not one person is left behind. And I said that it was simply wasn’t right – that it was morally wrong – for those who had gotten the chance to get an education to leave others behind. They all knew of someone else out there who was not studying, they all knew of at least one, if not two or three or ten others who were not at school.

And then I turned over to Mahenge and I had him stand up. And he and I proceeded to tell together the story of years ago when he was my student and I was his principal, and one day in chapel just before Christmas vacation, I read to them the parables that Jesus taught about the one sheep that was lost, the one coin that couldn’t be found … Mahenge told about how I had challenged them as students leaving on Christmas vacation to return to their home villages and if necessary to go door to door and then to return back to school with as many as would listen to them. Mahenge went to his village of Kazikatonto, he did as I had asked him to do, and he returned, not with one friend, not with two. He came back with 16 new students! He had not been content to be blessed himself; he had used the blessing he had received in order to bless those 16 other lives.

I have no clue really how many more students those 117 students will go and find and bring. The area around Mpepo is a difficult one, the geography impossible, and the truth is that 117 students is almost certainly nearing the limit of what we can reasonably hope for this year. But if they bring even a few more kids to school, it will be a few more who have been pulled into the lifeboat. But no matter what happens in the village of Mpepo, the truth is that something changed for Mahenge that morning there in Mpepo. I could tell in the way that we talked in the car afterwards. He now had something deeply compelling from his own life that he could now use to spur our students on to greatness. He wasn’t just someone extra who was tagging along in our shadows. He had something of real importance to share, and he could share it from his heart, from his own experience, from his own life. It had finally happened.

Friday, December 5, 2008

After three hours in a spectacular downpour I was really tired; Godfrey more so since he was the one doing the driving. Had anyone been able to see us we would have been quite the scene, something almost out of a movie, complete with spectacular lighting, wipers on full force, the rain making it barely possible to see as we strained to see through the windshield. After the first hour I suddenly let my muscles relax and I found myself marveling at Godfrey's careful driving, as he maneuvered through the bad spots on the muddy road as water gushed sometimes from the hillsides. We didn't talk much -- it was hard to talk with him concentrating on the road and me gripping the whatever that bar is called. I was so glad I wasn't driving. A few times Godfrey afforded himself the luxury of having a chuckle at me with my white knuckles holding on tightly. And I chuckled with him. But it pleased me.

It really pleased me.

Here he was, the guy who had been my student, who I had spent hours after school slowly over a period of months teaching him to drive, now he was not just leading very skillfully a large organization and maneuvering all of us as a team through a whole host of obstacles, he was also driving this car very safely. It was time for me to relax, not simply because you can only physically remain tensed up for so long, but because in my heart I finally after a whole hour had to come in my mind to see that I needed to trust his hands at the wheel of the car just as I trusted his hands at the wheel of this work. I might have been the one who taught him to drive, but I had to admit that he had driven us more skillfully and more carefully through places I honestly don't think I could have gotten us through. The sides of the road were littered with those stuck in the mud. I would have almost certainly gotten us stuck with them.

And then finally when it seemed that we would never get there, we did indeed come down the last hill and we could see the lights of the city of Mbinga. Only to find that the road was completely blocked by two huge trucks! We had to turn around make our way through a side road and finally we were mercifully on the tarmac and ready to enter the town and it could rain all it wanted and as hard as it wanted we were now on paved roads! I could relax and Godfrey could relax and it was time for a good laugh. We had made it.

The rain had slowed us down and although it was only a few minutes more to get to Hyera's house I had this feeling inside that while it would be easy to explain why we were so late showing up at nine thirty at night that it was still just plain rude. If anyone was offended though you would never have known it. You would have thought for the way we were received that it was just the most natural thing in the world for guests to show up in the rain and the thunder and the lightening in the middle of the night. Hyera wasn't just a top-ranking government official in the town of Mbinga. He wasn't just someone from the village of Maguu who had from the beginning received us with open arms and done more than you can imagine to ensure that the school we wanted to build in his home village actually got built and the 484 kids in that school today got to study. He was someone who had genuinely become in the process of it all, our friend. And his wife was now treating us as if we were royalty. She had a wonderful chicken dinner on the table waiting for us, delicious rice, a fantastic gravy, the whole thing I believe would have tasted good even if we weren't hungry from being on the road all day. Sometimes there honestly is no way to say truly say thank you enough for people's goodness and generosity.

Over the next four days, Godfrey and Mahenge and I will travel to the villages of Ulolela, Maguu, Malindindo and Mpepo. We're going to have meetings with students and teachers, parents and government officials, we'll discuss problems and plans, we'll figure out together how to push forward even faster the building programs we have for our schools in these four villages, and we'll figure out how to make sure that every single last kid -- every boy, and every girl -- gets the chance to go to school. I'm looking forward to the times when I know that I'll get to speak. I love that about these trips we make together. But Godfrey's hands are at the wheel of more than just the car. His hands are at the wheel of this organization and I'm looking forward over the next four days to watching him skillfully maneuver us through the good -- and the bad -- sections of the road we are on as a team of people who believe God has given us a mission to do and who believe that God has given Godfrey the job of leading us as we perform that mission. I remember that there were two places when the car began slipping on the hills, and over one bridge in particular, that I prayed that God would simply save us, that kind of prayer that you pray when you aren't even in control of what you pray. In my less panicky moments I much more rationally prayed that God would guide Godfrey's hands. Godfrey is a skillful driver; he's an even more skillful leader. But it comes to me now that just as I prayed that God would guide his hands on the steering wheel of that car, it really would make sense to ask you as my friends to join me in praying that God would guide his hands, and his mind, and his heart as Godfrey leads this team of people here.

That, quite frankly when you think about it, is of infinitely more importance than whether or not we end up spending the night in a ditch!