Some Quick Notes and a Few Pictures

Well, it took us about a week to recover from the pathogen’s visit to our tender sensibilities.  I will spare you the details.  Now that we are no longer limited to a 100 foot radius from a bathroom, we have regained our range and stride - Julie and the kids are back teaching full time and I had another adventure in Gambella.

This week Eliza conducted a first grade class of her own (the teacher didn’t show).  Evidently, if you are the youngest of 5, you yearn for such moments – she tried to take them all the way to fifth grade in a single class.  Mostly true.

Caesar, a teacher here who is blind, cornered Sophie to ask her if she was Mexican.  True.  

I bought three cell phones, one for me for when I am in Gambella, one for Julie, and one for the kids when they are about and about with friends.  Regardless of which phone rings, it is always for Sophie.  Mostly true.

Lily found a way to impale her foot with a towel rod in the shower.  True.

Benjamin’s classes enjoy perfect attendance.  Partially true.

More substantive posts are on the way. There is so much happening here to our little minds that we can’t get the thoughts out fast enough.  We are drifting on a big sea like little boats but we are getting swamped.  More comes in than our little pails can return.  Hopefully we don’t sink.  If we do, God will lift us up – He always does.

This is Benjamin and Girma – I had to ask them to switch places because the auto focus/light balancing feature on the digital camera made the boys disappear.

Girma and the Kids

Because we have to boil water to do dishes we have started eating out of the same dish – just like a traditional Ethiopian meal.  This was the last of the apple pie Julie made tonight…what an American Mom…

I was in Gambella again this week trying to line up some supplies.  These are children outside the Pokewo Clinic.  Hopefully we can fix their solar PV system next month.

More about Girma

[Post from Julie]

We’ve struggled some this week, coping with two sick children without the benefit of a bathroom. (Both Lily and Eliza are on the mend thank God, and our bathroom is due to be repaired this week!!) As I hung out the many laundered sheets and towels we’d washed in the kitchen sink, it occurred to me that the challenges we’ve faced this week are the same ones most Ethiopians face every day, no indoor plumbing and a sick, or perhaps hungry, crying child. 

We met one of those former hungry children last week as he was introduced to us by a widow from Arizona. Dorothy’s parents were teachers at the school where we work when she was a child.  She married in the US and lived and worked there as a nurse.  When her husband died, she returned to the place of her childhood to live out her life serving the people of Ethiopia.  Dorothy met Girma when he was a young boy of about 11 selling tissues to automobiles along the roadway.  She was captivated by his friendly smile.  Girma has no memory of any family.  He ended up at the Sisters of Mercy (Mother Theresa’s group) after three different bouts of sickness from living on the streets without shelter in the rainy season.  It was there he asked for a  name and how old they thought he was.  They gave him a name and made up a birth date for him (June 18^th).

On a couple of occasions, Girma has been our guide in the markets of the city.  He negotiates prices for us to make sure we are safe and not taken advantage of.  He is a young man of (approximately) 17 who walks an hour each morning to get to school with the hope that he will one day become an engineer.  He lives with another young man in a place without running water, takes showers at the soccer club when he can find the extra money, and carries not an ounce of bitterness in his countenance.  Instead, he is hopeful that if he studies hard, he will score well enough to continue his studies at a University some day.  He told me that he does sometimes worry about his future because he knows he will never be able to afford college and he cannot get a job easily unless he has connections.  He shrugs as we walk along, “Without family, jobs aren’t easy to get.” 

  We’d asked him several times if there was anything he needed while we shopped.  He continually shook his head “no.”   Our last stop was at a stationery store to purchase a couple of pens and post-it notes.  Girma eyed a small calculator in the case.  Benjamin noticed and asked him if he needed one.  Reluctantly, he smiled and said that he did.  When the shop girl placed the calculator in his hands, his eyes lit up like he was given the keys to his own car.  Perhaps it will help him go places - one small $5 dollar tool that might help him get somewhere. 

[Girma is surprised by Pop Rocks!  before and after shots]

Weaned Children

“Oh Lord my heart is not proud, nor have my eyes been arrogant; neither do I concern myself with great matters or things too wonderful to me.  Surely I have stilled and quieted my soul; like a weaned child with its mother, like a weaned child is my soul within me.”  Psalms 131: 1-2

Well, all things considered, I had a good trip to Gambella rekindling the relationships established on our last visit.  Hopefully, the stage is set to fix a well, restore two health clinics’ power (so they can keep vaccines cold and have some lights so women don’t have to deliver their children in the bush at night) and maybe secure a block making machine – for them to build their assembly hall and make some money selling blocks to the town…we’ll see..

[here is a picture of a delivery room - what you can't see is the bats flying around in the eaves.  What you can't smell.....]

I have spent time with some extremely seasoned, experienced American missionaries – whose personal accounts from decades of living and ministering in “ground zero” places (Malawi, Congo, Sudan, Uganda and Ethiopia) during the worst of what man can do to man – make one feel somehow small and unqualified.  All you can think is why didn’t you get the heck out of there?  Some have had children die in their arms (their own and/or others), some have been shot at, all have been robbed, yet none have run back to the US for safety.  They clearly believe that this life is not all there is.

Though they are careful about their personal safety – it is all within a framework of practical limitations – when your number is up, your number is up – here or there we all die sometime, better to die doing good, right?  They have each received a “call” to stay and love and help; delivering babies, digging latrines, outfitting clinics, teaching in schools, counseling victims of violence and facilitating peace building workshops between blood lusting factions – and above all, explaining and teaching that God Himself will redeem this world – engaging His church to do it and that Jesus will be back – when, no one knows.

Some come from generations of missionary families (“as a young girl, I lived in Burma, until the Japanese came”   - “I met my wife on Mt. Sinai” - “When the Marxists came, they took our homes and forced us to leave”) Though they sound like Americans they float outside our culture – they know little about pop culture, US politics, financial markets – they live on pennies, speak several languages, and have no concerns about what they wear. When asked if they have ever thought of writing their blockbusting autobiographies – they demure – they have little time for or interest in themselves, they have this singular focus on spending it helping others.  “But, it might inspire others to come and help”…They doubt this, and leave a lot unsaid; they resist judging others who don’t do what they do.  They pray all the time – and testify to the joys and miracles they have seen while grieving the ones they have not.  They see themselves as weak and needy. They hold degrees from the US’s top schools (you have to ask where they went to school).  They have their foibles yet invest little time in hiding them.  They know about Evil, have seen it, confronted it and do not think of it as concept but as a physical kingdom that opposes Good. 

They ask African Christians to pray for America and suggest it won’t be long until Africa is sending missionaries to the US to help us regain our spiritual lives. The Ethiopian Evangelical Church now has 5.2mm members and is growing rapidly – up from some 4,000 five decades ago.  Some quotes from conversations I have had:

“People say we pray a lot – when you are poor, you have to pray for everything – you are absolutely dependent on God for everything.  In the US you have the luxury, or misfortune, of depending on other things.”

“When you are a persecuted church, you cannot afford to be careless.”

“Don’t fool yourself, we are only here for a short time, therefore we must always do our best.”

“Perhaps the US Church will become strong again, but only after it becomes marginalized.  That is happening – that can be a type of persecution – and that might strengthen it.”

“We don’t know what God is doing with our histories, but we know that in the end, no one will be able to say it was not good.”

Finally, this quote, from a missionary who was recounting his early days in Egypt; his Muslim dinner host was trying to convert him, to which the young missionary replied that Muslims can believe whatever suites them, and in turn, he [the missionary] could believe what suits him…

“The man slammed his fists into the table so hard that everything on it flew up into the air – ‘How can we have a real dialogue when not even you believe what you say you believe?!!’  He had a point, and it made me consider whether I really was a believing Christian – that was one of those moments when I had to decide if I was serious about the faith.”

 [a literacy class being greeted]

[a Heifer type project being evaluated - i.e. PC USA has given some cows to generate food and income]

Some Gambella Pictures

Today we went to Abobo and had their specialty.

There were dozens of half naked children where ever we went.

 Most seemed oblivious to their poverty and were pretty regular kids. 

This boy wants to be a driver when he grows up...

The watering hole...

and my favorite find:

Arriving in Gambella

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“Eye has not seen, ear has not heard, nor has entered the heart of man the things that God has prepared for those who love him….A natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit, for they are foolishness to him and he cannot understand them because they are spiritually discerned.  “For who has known the mind of the Lord that he may instruct Him?”  But we have the mind of Christ.” 1 Corinthians 2: 9,14, 16

Today I travelled to Gambella – the flight was full of representatives from USAID, the UN, Samaritan’s Purse, World Vision, OxFam, Berlin Mission Society, some Irish delegation, 5 folks from PC USA, and a Bishop from the Ethiopian Orthodox Church. Gambella is in the cross hairs of all of these organizations for a variety of reasons that are best not to “blog” about.  Though I can say I left the Gambella airport with a military escort – that would be misleading; it was really just a courteous and honorific welcome for the Bishop.  Everyone else had to wait until the convoy was well underway – we ate their dust, as they say.

Though I had been warmly received here before (the Church had sent their choir and drummers to the airport last year), I was not expecting something beyond this. Well, we were met again by the choir and drums outside “baggage claim” and then when we arrived at the compound, the people formed two singing, clapping, drumming lines along a path of freshly strewn palm leaves.  Half way down it, we were made to sit down so they could wash our hands face and feet.  Here were two of the fiercest/proudest tribes the Anuak and the Nuer (with a shared history of violent tribal conflict) signing together joyously at our arrival. There we were, pasty white Americans smeared with sunscreen not knowing exactly how to hold one’s face so that it can be washed.  Thankfully, the Africans in our delegation were also greeted in this way – so it wasn’t just for us “forengies” – however, if your “politically correct” sensibilities are getting inflamed right now then I won’t recount to you the sermon…more than to say it could have be titled “Thank God for the Americans Because They Brought Us the Light of the Gospel.”  Though the cynic in me tried to recast the reception as merely intense and well rehearsed “donor relations,” there was something much greater afoot here.  Something that put tears in your eyes and made it hard to breathe – and when you looked across the way and saw that many of them were crying too – you just thought, good Lord, what is going on?  The emotional content of this moment was NOT that we were not being treated as saviors (believe me they “get” the US’s complicity in their suffering and they know about our problems) RATHER that we were being treated as brothers and sisters in Christ.  Something, speaking just for myself, I knew I did not deserve. It was Grace they were showing us, just Grace and it was very beautiful.

Held in Relief

[posting pictures is still a challenge  - after I post them, I cant see them, evidently I posted 2 of the same one in the last post - I think I have fixed it.  I will add a picture of Girma and Dorothy to this later]

“I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace.  In this world you will have trouble.  But take heart, I have overcome the world.”  Jesus – as quoted in John: 16:33

From our balcony we see acres of corrugated tin roofs, punctured by the occasional minarets and steeples and halfway completed high rises. The Muslim’s call to morning prayers (duly amplified) at the mosque start at 5am sharp, is soon met by the singing of the psalms from the orthodox church (equally amplified) and then the buses and trucks start their chirping and bleating, then the breakfast coal fires start filling the air with a sweet smelling smoke – and then the day is upon you like a stiff wind.  Because we have been going to bed so early, the 5am stirrings are no bother; they are a gentle sort of beckoning to another day of the totally foreign.  We get up, say our prayers, eat breakfast, have a little family meeting (trying to figure out who goes where) and then plunge into Ethiopia. Amharic is an enchanting sounding language but it is difficult for our stiff, fat tongues to lift the sounds delicately enough to match our hosts’ prompts.  Their thick accents make even make English sound foreign. 

Well, there is nothing quite like surrounding yourself with the totally unfamiliar to distill yourself down to your own basic personal recipe – your character’s “DNA,” if you will.  You wind up feeling somewhat naked, separated from your own culture - the one you have spent your life mastering, the one you can deftly manipulate in front of others to cover yourself and present a more elaborate, less vulnerable version of yourself to.  Over here, you feel peeled and basic; your person’s list of core ingredients is frank, short and unflattering:  Spoiled, selfish and untested.  You easily discover so much to repent of – there is nothing else to do – your favorite hiding places aren’t currently available – so you repent, ask for forgiveness and wait.

Against this broad theater of the “human condition” (conflict, depravation, tragic suffering) as parents, Julie and I think of our preoccupation in the US with keeping ourselves and those we love safe and comfortable; somehow all the mental energy we invested in that seems manic, if not comical.  It reminds me of my grandmother, who during World War II would take turns with neighbors watching the skies for Nazi bombers.  She was living in Hartford, Connecticut.  What have we been afraid of?  If these people can trust in God, why haven’t we?  Do not worry…says our Lord – like I’ve said before, such words have new meaning here.

Our hosts have made us feel so welcome, so important, so valued that it is hard not to get a little puffed up.  They are very protective of us and want us to be comfortable.  “You are very welcome to be here. Whatever you need you ask me, ok? All arrangements can be done for your satisfaction.  We will make you a nice home….”  Here at the church compound they work long hours, face arduous daily journeys on an astonishingly elaborate network (albeit v. fragile) of public transportation.  Simple things turn into day long trials of patience and wit.  (I spent half a day looking for a single 7 amp fuse.  It was something like joy when I found one in a little hole in the wall store in a dusty ally.) Despite this, they still smile a lot and genuinely enjoy each other - they never rush us or seem to busy to listen. 

They insist on doing for us, buying us tea, snacks, and even meals.  Sometimes, they crack a bit, they get you alone in an office and ask for a computer, or a hearing aide, or a scholarship for their teenage child.  “My child is berry intelligent, but there is not good future here, please, make for me a scholarship so she get good degree.”   You want to help and assume you should try to figure something out.  You talk it over, but can’t help feeling bewildered, knowing there are thousands of yet to be spoken requests by all your other new found “friends.”  The next day, the petitioner finds you, apologizes, ashamed of their forwardness – “just pray that God help us.” If you are at risk of any sort of Messiah complex, this place will expose that ruse within seconds.

Each person here seems to have a personal story that knocks the wind out of you – one that makes your own story seem akin to “born, bred and over fed in a padded, clean room.”  This morning we met a 16 year old boy, Girma, who is being sponsored in school by a local missionary.  He is a mix of tough and sweet.  Both of Girma’s parents died when he was very small, so he lived in the streets.  He was given a job selling little packages of Kleenexes – but then he got too big (the smaller, more pitiful children sell more).  He somehow lucked out by finding this missionary (a widow from Arizona, mind you) and petitioned her for money so he could go to computer classes, from there he has been working to get caught up in school (school isn’t free here) and the missionary helps him as best as she can.  He still lives on the streets with a friend, but he has a plan, he has faith and God has presented Himself in this boy’s life in the form of a white haired elderly widow who seems to simply love Jesus. 

As Girma (prompted by his sponsor) recounted his biography, my kids sat listening - watching him as one might watch an actor from Slum Dog Millionaire being interviewed for TV.  Is he an actor? Can this all be true?  That can’t all be true, right?  I would love to get into their minds and see how they are processing all of this.  They seem to be faring well.  We’ll see.

Lily and Sophie and Their Students

We have had a full week and are glad to have a weekend to decompress a bit.  I have some more posts to add, but wanted to get this pics up and Lily and Spohie's comments as well - They are  actually teaching their own classes.  We are a bit surprised by this, but both seem to be embracing the challenge - a few pics and their thoughts below...

Lily:

The children here are the most affectionate I have ever met. Although I have only been teaching for two days, I have found it to be an incredible experience. It is somewhat of an interesting one as well – I consider myself still a “kid” but these children address me as “teacher.” All of the children I have been in the classroom with are highly motivated and have an intense desire to learn. They beg to be taught, even during their recess. They ask many questions and I can see that they respect me. What they do not know is how much I respect them for their diligence. Today, several children surprised me with little gifts, the majority of which were pictures drawn on torn pieces of paper. These presents are now my treasures, as are the children.

Sophie:

The kids in my classes are very grateful to have an American teacher helping them with their English. When I first walked in the classrooms I was shocked to see so many kids in one room. There are 50 kids to a class and the rooms are pretty small. The kids take school very seriously. During break time the children all circle around you and ask you many questions. Their English isn’t great so it’s hard to understand them. I nod my head a lot and say yes like in the movie Madagascar. I’m very excited to be teaching here and to be getting to know my students.