Friday, January 23, 2009

Some days are just not good days.

The boys have been sick since this weekend, Susan is terribly sick and weak and can’t get out of bed, we’re having those temporary “cash flow” problems here that are inherent and very normal but that are just stressful right now as we try to juggle this and that, and I have so much work to do, and have had so much to do these past few weeks that I feel simply overwhelmed with it all.

And so this morning I got up late simply because, well, simply because I did. The email system was down again so I started the day knowing I’m falling further and further behind on taking care of business on the American side of the world. And so I walked up the hill and found that Emmanueli had gotten up early and had already moved our big truck Mwanaume into position so that the students could unload all of the boards. The students were already hard at work unloading the hundreds of boards that Emmanueli had hauled last night and stacking them in one of the classrooms. But my mind wasn’t on watching them as they worked. I joked less with them this morning that I usually did, I rallied the troops a little less than normal -- the truth was that I was deep in thought. As the boards were being unloaded I stood there and disappeared deep into my own little world where I could have the talk with God to tell Him really how tired I was, tired of everything seemingly being so frustrating right now, how nothing the last couple of weeks had been easy. Oh, the big picture of things was grand, grand indeed – and I knew in my heart that I shouldn’t be sweating the proverbial “small stuff” – and I knew I should say in my heart “too blessed to be stressed” – because I know it’s true, and yet, and yet I wasn’t feeling that. I haven’t been feeling it. We’ve had victory after victory if you will since the beginning of the year. What could be more strategic than getting the approval finally to build a Community Treatment Center that will help hundreds of Susan’s friends? What could bring more happiness than the rather fantastic results of our students on the national exams? What was wrong with me? How could I not be happy seeing seven new wonderful missionary teachers and seeing them go through the training so well. We’ve got another new school opening in a few days, we’re being invited left and right to come to new villages, we’re looking at the Minister of Education coming soon to visit us here in our little village, to see our school, to visit our students. And so I realized that it was useless to ask God to change my circumstances – things were as they say as good as they could get – the truth is that it was me inside that needed changing. I wasn’t weary because of my circumstances, I was weary because of me. It wasn’t the frustrations that were making me weary, it was simply me that was making me weary. I knew it. And yet…

My conversation with God and with my soul was interrupted many times in that hour our students were working unloading all of those boards – I remember at one point chuckling to myself and thinking that I need to have a shower here in our village because that’s where I could have an uninterrupted conversation – and as I look back on it I guess I really wasn’t listening to anything that people were asking me because I was in my own little world, because I had agreed to talk to some kid Makande, our new school registrar, wanted me to talk to. I didn’t want to talk to anyone. I wanted to talk to myself, I wanted to talk to God, I wanted God to solve the problem of my heart. That’s what I was asking him to do, to do something in my heart.

But they finished the boards all too soon. With 300 kids working they finished unloading all of the boards in less than an hour, it was time to sing the national anthem, to start the school day, and I had to walk into the office and get going on my “in-box”. And maybe God had listened to me, but he hadn’t fixed my heart. I wanted Him to help me. I was as weary as ever. But the show must go on, even if inside the actors don’t feel up to acting. And so I walked into the building, down the hall heading for my office, and Makande came running after me. You said you would talk to Luka. I sighed. But I turned back, and walked into Makande’s office to see what in the world I needed to talk to Luka about.

Luka was a small kid. He stood up as soon as I walked into Makande’s office. I want to go to school. Where are you from son? Ihanu. Do your parents know you’ve come all this way? My mom and dad are dead Mr. Vinton. What about your uncles? They’re all dead. There’s only my grandmother left. “Does she know you’re here?” I asked him softly. I told her goodbye, that I had to go to school, and she said it was for the best, that I should try. Did you pass, were you chosen to go to the government school back home in Ihanu? Yes. I didn’t have to ask why he wasn’t going there. The kid has no shoes let alone any money to pay to go to school.

Where are you going to sleep tonight Luka? With my friend Mika. Who is Mika? We went to school together. He came here last week and found a place for us to stay and now he sent for me. He told me he would help me. He said he’s planting flowers for Mama Vinton and he’ll help me go to school. What about his mom and dad? They’re dead too.

I had to leave. I had to get out of that office quickly. The room suddenly just seemed too small. I had to get out of there. I had to quickly tell Makande to just sign up the kid up and then take him down to see Babu (grandfather) and tell him to plant flowers in the afternoons. It was the first time Luka smiled.

Luka came all this way with $6 to his name. The little kid worked for someone in his village planting seedlings and that was his pay. I walked back into my office, closed the door behind me, and let myself finally have a good cry. Does it matter if the email doesn’t work, if I’m behind in everything, if juggling the money is hard, if everything these days goes wrong and is hard and is frustrating? If Luka can smile, then Steve Vinton sure had better figure out how to smile. With all of its frustrations, the fact remains that we still ended up with the best job anyone could hope for in the world. We get to build schools so that kids like Luka get to go to school.

And I thought He wasn’t listening to me.

Friday, January 16, 2009

We just got word that every single one of our students at Madisi passed the national exams – including our son Joshua! Pauline, the principal of our school at Idiwili, made the trip from her village into the city of Mbeya to go to the inspection office and confirms that she saw with her own eyes that everyone at Madisi passed. You all should have heard the kids roar when I shared with them the message she sent. All the details will follow in the next couple of days or weeks, and I guess that the details really do matter -- and of course we’re still waiting with great anticipation for the results of our students at Sawala, Kising’a and Lukima -- but what we know already is that it definitely was not a fluke what happened last year when every one of our students passed the national exams. You can indeed take the poorest kids from the village, the kids with no shoes, the orphans, those who only get one meal a day, and given the chance to go to school they can not only do as well as the other kids, they can actually outperform them.

Now at first glance that makes very little sense and there is no doubt that it is a puzzle for a lot of people. And with good reason! After all, the government chooses the best and brightest and then sends them away to boarding schools where they get fed three meals a day, where they have electricity to study by at night, and quite frankly those are the kids who probably should pass en masse. But the exams students have to take in these country after their first two years of secondary school are very purposefully meant to be difficult because they are designed to weed kids out. If the cream of the cream in the country still fail these exams, then what is supposed to happen to the students in a school in a little village in the middle of nowhere? Afterall, we’ve said that in our schools we take everyone -- even the kids who didn’t get all As, those with the Bs and the Cs and even the Ds and Fs. We do indeed take the kids with no shoes, those who only have one pair of pants and only one shirt, we take the kids who have been orphaned – and because there are so many of them we can’t change life for them – we don’t feed them, we don’t pass out pencils and notebooks, we don’t give them kerosene for their lanterns to study at night. The only thing quite frankly that we give them is the chance to study.

That’s not really true, though. We give them hope. We give them love. We give them discipline. We make them work hard. We make them study hard. We make them believe that they can do it. And we tell them over and over again that just as God has given us something wonderful to do with our lives, He’s got something wonderful that He wants them to do with theirs.

I found in my computer the little update that I wrote at the beginning of August when I was wondering aloud if we could dare to hope for the impossible, if we could dare beg for an incredibly outrageous favor. As I re-read it, I thought of all of the times in the last five months that my faith has wavered, when my frustration has peaked and gone over the top, when I’ve simply said to myself that we’ve been trying perhaps to do something that was just beyond what was really reasonable. I had spared Susan these past five the gory details of all of the roadblocks and frustrations that had, on occasion, driven Godfrey and I to the point of despair – because I hardly needed her to worry about that or to get upset about it. But last night after a long day in town, Godfrey returned, smile on his face, an envelope in his hand. He handed the envelope to Susan to open. And in the envelope was the piece of paper – the magic piece of paper – the one that gives us the official government authorization to build and to operate a Community Treatment Center in the village of Igoda that will mean that all of the nearly 800 people Susan has been helping get to the hospital to get their ARVs will now be able to get their medicines right here in our village.

The only way that I can think to help you as our friends to fully understand the significance of all of this is to share with you what I have kept thinking of every time I’ve sat in an office waiting for hours only to be told to come back “tomorrow”. Each time, I’ve forced myself to think of the woman whose husband died a couple of years ago and left her with four kids, who was sick last year to the point of no longer being able to leave her house, who desperately wanted to live for the sake of her kids, and who Susan put on the bus to get to Lugoda Hospital, who started the ARVs in time, and who today is able to work again in her fields, who is able to be a mom to her kids, and who gets up at 5 am twice a month and walks a half hour to where she can catch our bus Huruma for the two hour ride to get to the hospital. That woman spends the whole day there at the hospital – and she does it with no food – waiting for her turn to get her medicine, then waiting until everyone else who came on the bus had gotten their medicine too, and then when the last person is done, then she and everyone else gets back on the bus to travel home, and then after the long ride back, she gets home to see her kids in the late evening. And she’s thankful, even though she’s waited all day at the hospital, even though she’s had nothing to eat while she was there, because she has returned with the precious supply of ARVs, given to her for free at the hospital, the ARVs that she could never afford to pay for, a huge and wonderful and gracious favor that is beyond wonderful. And so she never complains of spending her whole day there, she’s just happy to be home at the end of the day with her kids. And so for her and for the other 783 people on Susan’s list, we can wait in offices and be told to come back “tomorrow”. They think they’ll wear us down and in the end we’ll tire of returning. No. Not a chance. We’ll wear them down until they’re tired of us returning. Because the whole time we’re sitting there waiting, we’re thinking of the woman who is waiting patiently for her medicines. For her – for all of them on Susan’s list – we can wait.

And for them we can also build. And so today, the paper in hand, we begin building in earnest. A special clinic, a clinic for all of the hundreds of people in these five villages who have AIDS and who want very desperately to live. A clinic right here in our village. And so as I think of all of Susan’s friends, I want to read one more time that little update I wrote on August 4th last year. If you’ve got time read it again with me. And for those of you who prayed for what we hoped for but that we thought was impossible, please accept our thanks and our invitation to rejoice with us. This is truly a cause for real joy. And now Susan’s envelope that was empty on Christmas morning is finally filled.



August 4, 2008

I sit here stunned.

I can remember only a few other times in my life that I wanted to ask God for something so nearly impossible that it was as if the words would stick and not come out of my mouth. I even fought against letting my brain think these words.

Here as Godfrey and I travel on a week-long trip in the south of the country, we talk of many things. In the middle of a thought though Godfrey will shake his head and say something like it really would be wonderful if it would happen. I sit in silence. I don't even know how to respond. If I think even a little about it I feel tears start forming in my eyes.

I remember when Susan first told me of people she was meeting in the village who very obviously had AIDS and who needed somehow to get the hospital. She started helping a few of them with money to get on the bus. They would come back with the confirmation that they were HIV+. But they would also come back with ARVs, the powerful drugs that reduce the effects of AIDS. And as more and more of them got better, Susan and her little band of students began sending more and more people to the hospital. Who would have ever imagined that the medicines would really work! They didn't call it the Lazarus Effect for nothing. The numbers rose. 50 people. 100. 200. Now Susan and her students are helping over 700 people every month to get to the Lugoda Hospital two hours away to get those ARVs. In the beginning it was a matter of buying bus tickets for them, then our car started taking some of those who were the sickest right to the hospital door (because the bus dropped them off on the main road and for many it was just too much to walk those last few hundred hards). In the beginning, the car brought four or five people a day, then was jammed with ten or eleven or more very desperate people, and making two and finally three trips a day. For even a healthy person it was at least a twelve hour trip on foot; for these people, the hospital was impossible to get to. And yet to get there meant life.

And then God provided us with a bus that could take 29 people in a single trip.

And then a couple of weeks ago Susan and I were visited by two of the staff from the Lugoda Hospital. We weren't expecting anyone and so I remember rather embarrassingly that we only had rice and beans to share with them. But we talked. And finally as they got ready to leave I asked why we couldn't do something, anything, so that rather than all of these people going all the way to Lugoda Hospital to get their medicines once or twice a month, why we couldn't figure out a way to someone bring the medicines to our village? I didn’t want to sound ungrateful – after all, all of Susan’s

friends were getting those incredible life-saving and very expensive ARVs for free – all we had to do was get them there! I didn’t want to sound like a spoiled kid who wasn’t grateful for what we were being given. But for a few seconds I let myself say what was in my heart. Couldn't someone just tell me what exactly to build? I'll build whatever they want. Someone just tell me what to do! I'll do it. Make any conditions. Make them hard, make them very hard, just tell me what to do. Wouldn't it be possible once a week, perhaps even on Saturdays when the hospital staff is off, for trained

people to come to our village and distribute medicines to those who were already in the program? I was embarrassed after my tirade. I remember walking them to the car. We thanked them for all they were doing. We'll figure out a way was the last thing that they said.

I'll confess that I didn't give our conversation another thought. I knew the rules and I knew it was hopeless. I knew that I shouldn't have even bothered them.

And now the text message from Susan. They called Susan. The doctors from Lugoda Hospital called Susan asking if we could visit them on Thursday. The district and regional medical authorities have taken notice of these five little villages where there are 700+ people being transported every month to the Lugoda Hospital and they want to meet with us to discuss a plan to have hospital people come once a week to distribute the ARVs. I can’t hardly believe it.

700 people who won't have to travel anymore. Dare we hope? I don't want to hope because I don't want to be disappointed. I don't want to hope because I know it can't happen. I do know the rules. But right now I have resolved to dare to hope. I dare to ask God to somehow give me enough faith to pray for that which is impossible. And so I have enough hope with in me to ask you as our friends to also pray for the impossible. If we will all be disappointed, then let us be disappointed together. But maybe we can hope. And maybe we can pray. And maybe we can dare to beg for an incredibly outrageous favor to be granted to those who live in the villages of Igoda, Luhunga, Ikaning'ombe, Mkonge, Iyegea.

Sunday, January 11, 2009

Hashim’s mother had gone back to the village to try to sell their field to get enough money to pay for his operation, so when Susan and I got to the hospital we only got to see his father. Hashim had just died in surgery.



Susan and I only knew of Hashim, that he was a good kid, one of the brightest of our students at Kising’a, a fine Christian – so it was good to get Andrew’s email from Canada and I’ll let his words speak to you of Hashim as his words spoke to me.



I remember Jeff and my first day at Kising'a Secondary School. The first two people to greet us, as the Head Prefect and Secretary, were Vatoga and Hashim. Hashim was one of our best students always scoring in the top three students. And he always studied hard to achieve such grades. He was a great football player. He was among the student prefects, as secretary. He often led the chapel with worship and reading the scripture. He was also very involved in one of the local churches. But it wasn't just what he did, but more significantly who he was. He was always smiling. He was welcoming and friendly. He was extremely respectful and had great discipline. I know that both Eddy and Justin could add a hundred things and a hundred stories.

Where I come from, when someone so accomplished and so full of potential dies, there most certainly would be a newspaper story or report on the evening news about him/her. Though Hashim will never receive such fanfare, if anybody deserves it, it is him. He was the kind of student who I think VST is so fortunate to be able to help: he finished primary school and I can't believe that he didn't get accepted into a government school, but he certainly couldn't afford it. He spent 3 or 4 years out of school, when Kising'a Secondary School opened 6 hours from his home village. With the help of VST and the headmasters, he was able to afford to study. He always seemed like the kind of leader that VST seeks to develop, and he might one day have been a leader within VST. And without doubt in my mind, this is not just a loss for his family or Kising'a Secondary School, or even VST, but indeed, this is a loss for Tanzania, for I believe Hashim was on track to do valuable things for his country.

Andrew is right. There will be no fanfare for Hashim here, no article in the newspaper, nothing on the evening news. Hashim was the son of a poor family from a poor village. But he will be missed by his family that had counted on him, he’ll be missed by the students at the school who studied with him and who benefited from his leadership. Andrew was right when he said that VST is so fortunate to have been able to help Hashim. Most people of course would see it the other way around – Hashim’s family certainly did, Hashim certainly did – they saw that Hashim was the one who was so fortunate to be helped to go to school by VST, and there is no denying that this is true. But Andrew, after having lived for a year in the village of Kising’a, sure got it right when we understand that we all in VST were the truly fortunate ones.

Wednesday, January 7, 2009

There was a light rain falling when Godfrey and I arrived in Bumilayinga, but there were nonetheless hundreds of parents who had turned out for the meeting and several hundred more who began coming when they heard our vehicle enter the village. The classrooms that they had built really did look nice, beautiful even, but as straight as the walls were, and as really well constructed as the roofs were, the fact was inescapable that the classrooms simply were not finished – there no cement floors yet, the walls had not been plastered, no doors were hung. The latrines were not yet finished, the walls of the administration and library building were still being built and the roof wasn’t on yet. In fact, the truth was that nothing at all, not a single thing could be claimed to be completely finished.

The meeting nonetheless started out wonderfully.

Godfrey did a wonderful job of congratulating them, not at all in a patronizing way, not even in that fake kind of polite way that I hear so often in meetings I attend, but instead he started out by retelling the wonderful story of what he had heard that they had done in three fabulous days in August, working from early morning until after midnight, loading the three trucks even in the darkness as they hauled stones, and bricks, and sand, making possible through what truly was a heroic effort on their parts, everything that the builders had succeeding in building. Their faces started to beam as he retold the story of what they themselves had done, they laughed with him, and you could sense this wonderful spirit crowding out any sense of failure. They had come into that meeting – I could see it on their faces – very apprehensive that they were going to be told what was so obvious for all to see, that the buildings weren’t finished. You could sense that they were expecting to be scolded at, shown each little bit of work that still needed to be done – as if it weren’t obvious and somehow needed us to come and tell them. And of course to be told that there was absolutely no way that school could open this year. I saw all of that apprehension melt away as Godfrey’s retelling of the story of all that he had heard that they had done brought about this amazing transformation on their faces and a collective transformation of the whole atmosphere.

And yet we were indeed there to discuss failure.

But not really failure. Not really. Because there is no way that anyone in their right mind could say that the people of this village had failed. They had simply set a totally unrealistic goal. They wanted their kids to study this year. And that desire, that so totally natural desire, had caused them to be irrationally exuberant and to aim for something that humanly speaking was impossible. They pushed themselves for months to work beyond what anyone could have realistically expected of them. And yet, our VST schools are to re-open on January 12 and here we are six days away from opening day and there is no way. The classrooms simply are not finished. And the glorious stories of their heroic efforts simply cannot change that stark reality. And no one in their right mind could believe that with only six days remaining that there was any way at all that even working around the clock that those buildings could fully become a school. All the promises even of a thousand people couldn’t make it possible. There are times in life that you want something so badly that you make goals that simply cannot be met. Aiming to open school in September 2009 would have been a realistic, achievable goal that with a measured pace these people could have met, and yet somehow they had believed that if everyone worked at a feverish pace that their kids could start school in January. They had deluded themselves.

A woman stood up.

I want my daughter to go to school this year.

A simple statement. And the whole crowd became so absolutely silent you could have heard a pin drop.

And then in front of everyone Godfrey took a step back, turned around to me and gestured for me to stand up and I found myself almost in a theater with Godfrey and I as the two actors, with Godfrey as the director, coaching out of me lines as if I knew what was coming next and we had practiced for hours. I could see where he was going, where he was leading me, where he was leading the crowd. Mzee do you realize that it was four years ago to the day on the calendar that I met you in Dar es Salaam at the airport and you and Emmanueli and I began the work of Village Schools Tanzania? Mzee do you remember how we began, do you remember beginnings of Village Schools Tanzania four years ago? And suddenly it was all coming back as he and I told to the whole crowd the story of our first days in the village of Igoda, of the building of the first classrooms, of how our first school was born, how people had willed something into happening. Mzee do you remember where we slept the first night in the village? I chuckled. I did remember. And Mzee do you remember when Emmanueli and I wrote to Mrs Vinton that we could not possibly have the house ready for her to come that she wrote back to us and said that she was coming to teach in the school even if it meant sleeping under the stars? I couldn’t answer him because I was afraid my voice would crack so I just stared back at him.

And then Godfrey turned to the crowd. Are you willing for your children to study for a couple of weeks in a classroom without a cement floor yet? They roared back yes. And since there are no houses built yet for the teachers, will you find rooms in your homes for our teachers to sleep in. And they roared back yes. And then Godfrey said well, if we are all agreed, then school here we’ll open on January 26th with as many as students as want to come. And as people cheered he yelled out to them to send word to all of the villages that we want every child to come, every girl, every boy, those who have parents, those who have no parents, tell everyone that Bukimau Secondary School in the Bumilayinga Village will be born on January 26th.

And then I saw Godfrey, who used to be my student, now the masterful story teller, lower his voice and tell them to also spread word that on Sunday we had seven more teachers coming from America. Tell everyone that those seven teachers will be at Madisi with our students there for two weeks while we train them. And tell them that I am sure that among them there is one we can choose who will say like Mrs Vinton did, that it doesn’t matter if it means sleeping under the stars, and it doesn’t matter if the classroom floors don’t have cement yet, and it doesn’t matter if there are no window panes yet in the windows. And tell them that on Saturday, January 24th I will bring that teacher in our car and ask you to receive that teacher. Will you receive that teacher? And for the third time, the crowd roared yes.

And so on January 26th it seems that our fourteenth school in this country will be born. And as Godfrey and I drove away all I could think of was that woman’s simple statement, I want my daughter to go to school this year. May it be so. Truly, may it be so.