Wednesday, May 13, 2009

I really wanted very badly to surprise Susan, but in the end I just couldn’t wait any longer to tell her. I had managed to hold out all of ten minutes!

I remember cringing after I got to America when I got Godfrey’s email telling that me that Susan’s bus was going to need to go into the shop in Iringa for probably three to four weeks for some major repairs and that he had made the decision to pull one of our construction vehicles out of service and to use it instead to transport people to the hospital every day. Susan has now nearly 850 people who need to get from our villages to the Lugoda Hospital two and a half hours away to get their ARV drugs. With those drugs they live, they are able to work in their fields, they are able to take care of their children – but if they can’t get to the hospital every month to get those drugs they’ll all die within a short time and we will have another 3000 orphans in our villages. I tried to imagine seventy maybe eighty people, many with young children, riding for several hours each way to the hospital in the back of that truck. I thought of how difficult it would be for many of them even to climb up into that truck. From the sudden comforts of my world in America it all seemed rather surreal, like a black and white movie with grainy pictures crowding into my brain. But I wrote to Godfrey to say that it was without a doubt a wise and compassionate and good decision that he had made, and that I was glad that he had made the right decision, but what were we going to do when the truck inevitably got stopped by the police? His answer was a pithy one: “Even a policeman, Mzee, is a human being. No one would dare deny these people the chance to get to the hospital.”

Every day I worried about it though. It was without a doubt the right thing to do. But I worried about an accident. I worried about the truck getting stopped by the police. I worried quite frankly about everything. I read Susan’s letter that she wrote to a friend of hers: “Thank you for praying. This week I have about 200 people traveling in the back of our Fuso truck. They will be divided between three trips Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Please pray that God will divinely protect all these trips. The trip is hard enough in the bus for some of these folks, but for the really ill, I cringe thinking about it.”

I cringed every time my mind wandered and I found myself thinking about it.

At our VSI board meeting on May 1st we discussed many matters of importance for the overall running of this ministry that God has given to us, but as important as all these things were and are, I know that much of what we talked about will soon be forgotten. But I will not forget the words of the chairman of the board when in answer to someone’s question it came out that with Huruma in the shop for a month Susan’s friends were being transported to the hospital in the back of Chapakazi, our construction truck. Obviously moved by genuine compassion, he told me quietly but firmly to get a second bus for Susan’s friends. It was a miracle of course, but it was easier said than done. I phoned Godfrey from America to ask him what he thought. God would not provide us with the money for a bus and then not provide us with a bus to buy Mzee. We have to believe that the bus for us is already there in Dar es Salaam and it is just waiting for us to arrive.

And so Friday morning Jonathan and I boarded our flight in America, and Godfrey, Emmanueli and Joshua boarded a bus in Iringa – all of us heading for Dar es Salaam. Friday night Jonathan and I slept on the airplane; Godfrey, Emmanueli and Joshua slept in the home of a new friend of ours in Dar es Salaam. Saturday while Jonathan and I made the long flight from Amsterdam to Dar, Godfrey, Emmanueli and Joshua visited every import yard in the city and found Namba Mbili (Number Two), a beautiful bus that looks just like our first bus, that can seat 29 people comfortably, a bus that someone else had already agreed to purchase, a bus that had already cleared customs, had all of its documents in order, a bus whose original purchaser had backed out on the deal a couple of days prior because he couldn’t come up with enough cash, and so they signed the papers while I was still in the air, and on Monday morning we withdrew the money from the bank and drove away with the bus. The bus. The one that clearly had been prepared and was just waiting for us. Me of little faith.

What began with Susan borrowing one of our cars in 2006 to take the sickest people to the Lugoda Hospital and then mushroomed into that car going every day, then twice and then three times a day, not with 5 or 6 people in the car but with 12 or 13 every time, that had morphed, thanks to the wonderful provision of God, into a bus that could comfortably take 29 people each trip, that started making two trips, and sometimes 3 trips a day, taking not 29 people, but often 35 and then 40 and sometimes 50 people. And now God has provided a second bus. Two buses to carry people so that everyone will get a seat now, so that no one has to make the trip standing up. It will make life easier for everyone, and it will mean that even if there is a day when one of the buses breaks down at least there will be another bus that can continue to make the trip to the hospital. Chapakazi (Hard Worker) will haul bricks. Huruma (Compassion) and Namba Mbili (Number Two) will carry people.

What I will remember though is not just the story of how God provided us with a new bus to help these people. What I will remember is what Susan wrote: “I never even hoped for another bus. I sent a prayer for help but I had no idea what “help” looked like.” Tomorrow evening we begin the long journey across the country, by Wednesday night we should be in the village, and Thursday morning, Moses and our truck Chapakazi will be off hauling sand, and Namba Mbili will be making his first trip to Lugoda Hospital.

Just as Godfrey had said to me, Namba Mbili had just been waiting for us to arrive.