tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-90759257287149486622024-02-07T11:42:45.610-08:00HIV in Africa: Churches Helping ChurchesThis blog will explore various topics around the HIV/AIDS crisis in Africa, the importance the African church can and does play in reducing the impact of HIV, and the roles American churches can play in assisting African churches to deal with HIV, as well as events occurring in the Smith's nascent ministry in this field.Brucehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08422217981031233334noreply@blogger.comBlogger36125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9075925728714948662.post-60986905523297373102014-02-26T11:12:00.000-08:002014-02-26T11:15:36.336-08:00Blessings Hospital and Malawi's Economic Tsunami<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-size: 11.5pt;"> </span><span style="font-size: 11.5pt;"> <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 11.5pt;">Economics, the course I found most difficult to comprehend in my
studies at Harding University, is having a devastating impact on Blessings Hospital. But, there
are some pretty simple economic truths that did make sense and stick with me
until this day, most of which my Daddy taught me before I got to Harding.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<ol start="1" style="margin-top: 0in;" type="1">
<li class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-size: 11.5pt; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">You can’t spend money you don’t have.</span><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.5pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p></o:p></span></li>
<li class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-size: 11.5pt; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">Loans cost more than savings earn (bankers
have to make a living too).</span><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.5pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p></o:p></span></li>
<li class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-size: 11.5pt; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">When the government prints more money, it is
relatively worth less.</span><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.5pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p></o:p></span></li>
</ol>
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<span style="font-size: 11.5pt; text-indent: 40.5pt;">And now, a brief summary of
the economic chaos which is Malawi today. For some years Malawi has been
very dependent on outside donors for the normal operations of government, not
just special projects. Forty percent of normal budgetary operating
expenses are paid for by outside donors, with England leading the way. In
August or September, while the president was out of the country, a high-ranking
budgetary official was shot in the face about midnight one night as he was
waiting for the gate to his house to be opened. Other high-ranking officials
were accused of being involved in this attempted murder. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 11.5pt; text-indent: 40.5pt;">Shortly after this a series
of low and high-ranking officials were found to be in possession of rather
large amounts of cash, extravagant houses, or other things far above their
means for which they could not account. Now, after some weeks of
international forensic auditing, it has been announced that $34,000,000 either
disappeared (half of it) or was grossly misused by government officials in the six months ending in the shooting.
England and the European Union cut off all aid to the country in
anticipation of this result, gutting that 40% of the country’s </span><b style="font-size: 11.5pt; text-indent: 40.5pt;"><i>operating</i></b><span style="font-size: 11.5pt; text-indent: 40.5pt;">
budget. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 11.5pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">The value of the Malawian
currency, the Kwacha, has plummeted, going from a fixed rate of 150 per dollar to a
depth of 430 per dollar in less than 2 years. The troops in the trenches were pressed as salaries decreased in buying power. Some non-governmental international aid organizations
(NGO’s) were able to make salary adjustments to the extent their income was in
dollars, but government no longer had such a luxury. Even the cost of
corn soared as the fuel to transport it and grind it climbed in price. Workers became very restless. Something had to be done. So,
the government gave all its employees a </span><span style="font-size: 11.5pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">50% raise. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 11.5pt;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 11.5pt;">This eased the
cries of the proletariat, but . . . where did the money come from? Within
a few months reports began to leak out. A friend working in a government
clinic told me that at their site, the only medicines which are available are
contraceptives, malaria medicine, and meds for HIV, all of which are supplied
through special projects mostly administered through NGO’s without the
government touching the money. Other departments reported workers sitting
in their offices unable to do their usual work due to no tools or ability to
take a departmental truck into the field. The one department that seems to
have increased activity is the Malawi Police Force: I have never seen so
many police on the highway handing out fines newly increased from MK 3000 to MK
5000.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 11.5pt;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 11.5pt;">The effect on
competition for workers with the private sector has been devastating. Due
to chronic shortages, the government and mission hospitals have not quit hiring
medical personnel. Mission hospitals (called CHAM hospitals for
their membership in the Christian Health Association of Malawi) have been
relatively protected because their clinical personnel are paid mostly by the
government. One large mission provider recently reported that 40% of its
income comes from the Malawi government, 40% from donations from outside the
country, and 20% is generated from church contributions within the country and
from hospital revenues. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 11.5pt;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 11.5pt;">Blessings
Hospital is in trouble. We are running out of nurses, and are unable to
hire others at our current salary level. The administration is working hard to
become a CHAM member, but it is estimated that the process will take 2
years. Most of our operating revenue comes from the care we deliver. Our
census is rising. The number of people we are helping is going up.
The number of babies born in our facility is increasing. By the
grace of the Sara Walker Foundation we are visiting an increasing number of
villages with a mobile clinic, villages that are far from medical care whose
only transportation is a bicycle. The same vehicle makes it possible for
us to carry patients who need it to a higher level of care. </span><br />
<span style="font-size: 11.5pt;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: 11.5pt;">Our biggest
acute problem is personnel salaries. We need to give our workers a
generous raise. We need to hire others. Desperately. We are
living off </span><i style="font-size: 11.5pt;">per diem</i><span style="font-size: 11.5pt;"> nurses who earn less, mostly government workers who
are willing to double on their vacation days. But, the time when most
people take vacation is about gone, and our needs are increasing as our nurses
leave. </span></div>
<span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11.5pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: 11.5pt; line-height: 107%;">If you would help us
raise a nurse’s salary up to a minimum level, or even <i>explore</i> a
partnership like that for one or two years as we process our CHAM papers,
please contact me at </span><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;"><a href="mailto:brucesmithmd@gmail.com"><span style="color: blue; font-size: 11.5pt; line-height: 107%;">brucesmithmd@gmail.com</span></a></span><span style="font-size: 11.5pt; line-height: 107%;"> We will be happy to share further details with you and
explain how to process your tax-deductible contribution so that it can be used most effectively. Learn more about Blessings Hospital through her <a href="https://www.facebook.com/BlessingsHospital?filter=1" target="_blank">Facebook page</a>, or for a tour of the hospital, <a href="http://landmarkmvt.blogspot.com/2012/04/blessings-hospital-tour.html" target="_blank">click here</a>.</span></span>Brucehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08422217981031233334noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9075925728714948662.post-63878325575675471472014-02-21T08:51:00.000-08:002014-02-21T08:51:41.147-08:00Ox-Cart Medicine<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">For
some time the staff at Blessings Hospital have longed for the security of an
ambulance with dedicated driver to provide a means to transfer complicated
patients to higher levels of care.</span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"> </span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">This
prayer was answered in January by the Sarah Walker Foundation with the
equipping of a used Land-Rover Defender (the famous, nose-down box that never
quits) and the hiring of a driver.</span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"> </span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">This
vehicle does many duties, one of which is to carry a clinician to outlying
villages within our service area, where local churches offer their building as
a clinic site, and then work with the chief and their neighbors to spread the
word insuring that patients come.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Yesterday
the clinic was at Chimbwala, some 20 km /15 minutes away<b>.</b> It was afternoon. The clinic was finished and the driver and
clinician were packing up their supplies to return when an ox-cart was
noticed moving unusually slowly toward
the church building, but there were no oxen!
Instead people were struggling, 4 pushing the yoke and 6 pushing from
behind, to move the cart along. In the
cart was a young man who was seizing.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">The
patient had complained the day before of body aches and fever, but people had
ignored him. He wasn’t much better when
he woke up the following morning, and in the afternoon he stayed home while everyone else went to a
soccer game with a rival school. When
his family and friends returned he was unconscious and seizing intermittently.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">Lacking
IV supplies, the decision was made to hastily move the patient to
Blessings.</span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"> </span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">Not too long later Harold
Banda, our administrator (himself a nurse-midwife), and William Banda, our
nurse on duty at the time, were chatting on the front veranda when they noticed
the ambulance careening around the corner into the hospital grounds, lights on,
flashers blinking. </span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"> </span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">(We don’t yet have a
siren or true emergency lights on the ambulance, and they were sorely missed as
the driver worked his way down Malawi’s principle artery in the late afternoon
traffic which was returning to the capital).</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; text-indent: 0.5in;">William started back
into the hospital thinking it was a ruse, but Harold urged him to wait and see:
maybe there really was an emergency.</span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; text-indent: 0.5in;">
</span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; text-indent: 0.5in;">The staff on board hopped out of </span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; text-indent: 0.5in;"> </span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; text-indent: 0.5in;">the ambulance almost before stopping and related
the essentials.</span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; text-indent: 0.5in;"> </span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; text-indent: 0.5in;">As they opened the back
door to extract the gurney, the patient was seizing.</span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; text-indent: 0.5in;"> </span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; text-indent: 0.5in;">He had not regained consciousness since they
first saw him.</span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; text-indent: 0.5in;"> </span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; text-indent: 0.5in;">The patient’s wife and
friends shared the history, and</span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; text-indent: 0.5in;"> </span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; text-indent: 0.5in;">malaria,
the most common illness in Malawi and one of the major killers, was immediately
suspected.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; text-indent: 0.5in;">Harold (who doesn’t
regularly work clinical shifts) joined William in getting an IV started.</span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; text-indent: 0.5in;"> </span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; text-indent: 0.5in;">Some blood was sent to the lab for malaria
testing, and IV Valium was pushed to stop the seizure. </span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; text-indent: 0.5in;"> </span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; text-indent: 0.5in;">Ceftriaxone was pushed as per Malawian
protocol in case of bacterial meningitis, and then the malaria rapid test
result returned:</span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; text-indent: 0.5in;"> </span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; text-indent: 0.5in;">Positive for malaria
antigen. </span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; text-indent: 0.5in;">IV quinine was begun,
and the patient later awakened.</span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; text-indent: 0.5in;"> </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; text-indent: 0.5in;">The
following morning a man walked into the hospital entrance, and he and Harold
recognized each other immediately:</span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; text-indent: 0.5in;"> </span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; text-indent: 0.5in;">He
was Harold’s head teacher in secondary school.</span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; text-indent: 0.5in;">
</span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; text-indent: 0.5in;">Questioning the occasion, Harold was</span></div>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEihvw07HrC_dVwerXWaOpFPMZ9eCq0dGT-399ThFnuJV1rPx25CBpaHvoA-ipszoacOp_6z6pRJQ1VUzzcTR4C_8dR16lMbBPTmEXnBBBTp5_OGJFUokjazwdZUhEXyCIc96GzyJflCFfwQ/s1600/ox+cart+man.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; display: inline !important; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="" border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEihvw07HrC_dVwerXWaOpFPMZ9eCq0dGT-399ThFnuJV1rPx25CBpaHvoA-ipszoacOp_6z6pRJQ1VUzzcTR4C_8dR16lMbBPTmEXnBBBTp5_OGJFUokjazwdZUhEXyCIc96GzyJflCFfwQ/s1600/ox+cart+man.jpg" height="150" title="" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 13px; text-align: center;"><i>The "Man in the Oxcart"<br />thanking Dr. Harry.</i></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; text-indent: 0.5in;">told by the visitor that the
malaria patient himself, also a teacher in the village where the clinic was
held, was his younger brother.</span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; text-indent: 0.5in;"> </span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; text-indent: 0.5in;">The
patient felt much better that morning, was awake and taking food and oral
medicines, and was discharged with his wife and brother to finish a three day course
of oral meds for malaria at home.</span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; text-indent: 0.5in;"> </span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; text-indent: 0.5in;">As is
customary here where transportation is often a barrier to care, he was returned
to his home in the ambulance.</span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; text-indent: 0.5in;"> </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; text-indent: 0.5in;"></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; text-indent: 0.5in;">Medicine, perhaps
especially in Malawi, at times presents occasions of great grief, futility and
frustration.</span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; text-indent: 0.5in;"> </span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; text-indent: 0.5in;">Malaria can be stamped out,
as it has in many countries, if the political will exists at national and local
levels, </span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; text-indent: 0.5in;">and if enough resources are applied to the task.</span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; text-indent: 0.5in;"> </span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; text-indent: 0.5in;">South of the United States, for example, in
two very different countries politically, Costa Rica and Cuba have eliminated
the scourge, but they are the only ones.</span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; text-indent: 0.5in;">
</span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; text-indent: 0.5in;">In spite of the many frustrations here in Malawi, there are thankfully
also occasions where all hands, including the neighbors,</span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; text-indent: 0.5in;"> </span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; text-indent: 0.5in;">do their parts well, everything works like it
is supposed to, and potentially tragic or fatal situations are redeemed to
life, joy, and ongoing service.</span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; text-indent: 0.5in;"> </span></div>
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Brucehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08422217981031233334noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9075925728714948662.post-64398007027118855242011-06-27T00:12:00.000-07:002011-06-27T00:14:52.048-07:00Perilous Passion<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"">“Is he always this passionate?”<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"">The inquirer was making a site visit from the Department of Health and Human Services, Maternal-Child Health Bureau, checking us out regarding a federal grant we sought.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>The question was rhetorical, more a commentary on my exuberance and enthusiasm regarding the needs of women and children in San Bernardino County and our proposed solutions than a request for information, but the answer Vanessa Long, our most capable program manager would have given was a decided “yes”.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Today the answer haunts me.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"">My just-completed four days in an excellent South African hospital revealed several key pieces of information about me and my little stroke.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>First, there is no evidence that the stroke was caused by a clot or bleeding inside the brain.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>It was deep in the brain in an area called the thalamus, not on the surface as many more debilitating strokes are.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Speech and thinking are not at all affected, thanks be to God, and there is little if any weakness.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>I’m numb on the left side of my body and a little uncoordinated on the left.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>And my head feels spacey (good medical term, “spacey”).<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>While there’s no plaque or fat deposits in the walls of my arteries, their muscles are thicker than average.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>But the most important information was that my blood pressure tends to go through the roof (192/106) under any emotional situation, positive or negative.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>The nurses caught it up there several times, though 130/80 was more common.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>The high pressure probably caused spasm in a small penetrating artery serving the affected area leading to hypoxia and maybe then “terminal” spasm.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Intense reactions to normal stimuli?<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Perilous Passion!<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"">The passion that got me here (“Something <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:normal"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal"><u>has</u></i> </b>to be done to help our brothers and sisters in Africa deal with HIV.”) could well take me out.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>And yet it has always created difficulties.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Beginning probably in grade school, some of you will remember the kid on the front row who got C’s in conduct in part because his hand insistently waved to answer every question.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>That passion has suggested to some that emotion has clouded reason, though I think it usually <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">follows</i> a reasoned conclusion. Some people resist the causes that passion supports just because of its intensity.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>“For every reaction there is an equal and opposite reaction,” and that may be true even within the body of this passionate individual.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>The current question is whether that passion can be controlled, modulated to avoid its destruction of the body which gives it expression.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Putting it in a box will not likely serve its cause.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"">A few years ago I was invited to a prayer retreat put on by Randy Harris, Rhonda Lowry, and the then youth minister at the Malibu Church of Christ.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>It was to run from early Friday evening until Sunday afternoon.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Getting across the LA basin took more time than I had allowed, and the retreat was beginning as I turned off Interstate 5 and headed into the Santa Monica Mountains.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>I relished the challenge of the mountain curves in my Honda Civic with the V-tech engine, and I got there, stoked, ere long.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"">What I remember most of the retreat was my feeling at the end after nearly two days of mostly praying, together and alone, with a little talk of prayer and meditation sprinkled in for guidance.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>First I didn’t want to leave.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>The place was not of paramount importance, but the rural setting was conducive to our goals, and the things that normally intruded were not there, so I loaded my car after lunch on Sunday so as to prolong uninterrupted the open-ended afternoon session in solitary prayer—just me and God.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>When I finally did leave, I felt no reason to rush, so no screeching of tires or exhilarating turns going down the hill, quite in contrast to the drive up.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>I felt no pressure to get home, not just because I had no appointments that evening, but none of the usual pressure that appeared within me raised its ugly head, created by my own internal demands to be busy, to <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:normal"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">do</i></b> something.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>And so I was content to stay amongst the big rigs at 55mph easing down the interstate toward LA in the right two lanes.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>I was at peace. I was convinced of the value of what we had done, but I was contrastingly almost reluctant to speak of it.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>That passion was somehow different.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"">That peace remained largely intact through the night.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>I made some changes in my behavior that were suggested at the retreat, spending more time in the Word, especially the Psalms, changes that have been largely maintained to this day.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>But, those things gradually became one more part of the “to-do” list, the <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:normal"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">must </i></b>do list and over a few weeks that deep inner peace gradually slipped away, crowded out by the press of a plethora of commendable activities, unprotected by my reading of the verses in the Psalms. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"">Today I am convinced that what happened at that retreat is a big part of the solution to the problem my self-destructive body is presenting.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Don’t get me wrong.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>I am quite aware that we all must die, but 60 is relatively young, even (or maybe especially) for our family.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>In addition, more than sixty years of resistance training for my arterial muscles probably will require medication to assist in the task of keeping the BP down (and I’m on it), but learning to approach life on a little more even keel will probably reduce that medication requirement, and medication alone probably won’t do it.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Finally, it was and is a good thing, that peace, in and of itself, and my colleagues in the kingdom would probably get along better with a Bruce no less committed but with a little less edge.<o:p></o:p></span></p>Brucehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08422217981031233334noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9075925728714948662.post-46651679167380372082011-06-23T10:04:00.000-07:002011-06-23T10:16:21.239-07:00Death of a (small part of the) Brain, Observed<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"">I suddenly felt light-headed and my left hand was tingling, then my toes.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>I was sipping a coke at one of our favorite cafes, waiting on my lunch.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>As they brought Beth’s plate, then mine, I shifted my weight, moved my shoulder, but it got no better.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>The left side of my mouth felt like I was at the dentist, but also the rest of my left face, top, middle and bottom (that’s not supposed to happen).<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>There was no headache.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Something was amiss, terribly amiss inside my head.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>A parasite (I recalled that pork kabob at Momma Mia’s, a little too rare, about a year ago) or a tumor had decided to manifest itself, or I was having a stroke.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>My left arm felt heavy, wanting to fall to my side, and when I eventually tried to stand, I had trouble walking.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>I needed help to stay on my feet.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"">“A stroke?!<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>I’ve no risk factors for stroke.”<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>My mind rebelled against the reasoned judgment of my new friend and colleague Jerry Koleski whose number I had at hand, an American internist at Partners in Hope hospital, a major HIV project in Lilongwe which helps with other medical needs in some circumstances.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Denial was working hard, but my entire left side was still tingling.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Lunch in Lilongwe was being interdicted by life, or maybe impending death.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>The owner of the Cappuccino Café rushed for aspirin suggested by my doctor friend who called back as it arrived:<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>“Don’t take it.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>If you’re bleeding it’ll make it worse.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Come on over to the house.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>I’m just three blocks away.”<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>After an exam confirmed his suspicions of probable stroke, several hours of negotiating with insurance companies, led by Jerry’s wife Elizabeth helping Beth, an air evacuation to South Africa was arranged as Malawi didn’t have what we needed.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>It would be no less than 12 hours later and maybe as much as 22, but it all fell through when the chosen company called at the hospital late that night to say they didn’t work with our insurance company.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Our missions minister visiting Tanzania en route to see us the next day with his wife and children got on the web (to which we had no access) and got us tickets on the commercial flight the next day at noon.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"">The 3 hour flight was relatively uneventful, and wheel chair assistance whisking through all immigration and customs stations got us into a taxi and out to Milpark Hospital the Malawi-based docs had used several times.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>An MRI followed our ER visit, confirming the stroke, an area of tissue about the size of an olive in the brain’s right thalamus being affected.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"">A stroke.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Part of my brain dying, starved of blood, glucose and oxygen.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>How much will I lose?<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Is my work finished?<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>I’ve not really gotten started.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Am<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:normal"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal"> I</i></b> finished?<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Will it get worse?<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Will it get well?<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Lord, what’s up?<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Why? <span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>What will I do?<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Will this eventually help in some strange way with what you want me to do?<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>As we’d gotten into the car that first day to see our friend I’d given Beth messages for our children.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>As I went to sleep that second night I again had a little talk with the Lord.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>I knew he was there, but like Jonah, who didn’t find the presence of the Lord as manifested in the storm or the fish too comforting, I didn’t either.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> I thought my wife would've been more comforting, but she'd</span> gone to stay with other new friends in Johannesburg.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"">I’m out of the hospital now.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>I’ve had a “lacunar” stroke, deep inside my brain.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>They often leave no symptoms (at least with the first one), and I’m walking better, but my whole left side is still tingling, including my left chest and belly, front and back.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>I’ve learned that my blood pressure tends to go up really high when I’m stoked or stroked.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>I’m on some meds for that, and one aspirin a day, though there’s no evidence that a clot played a part in this one.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>I left the hospital two days ago, and will fly to Malawi tomorrow, God willing.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"">I have no more idea “why” this happened than when it first began, but I am much more aware of my dependence on God for everything, including this breath.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>I am more humbled as to my place in the universe, and the importance of “my plans” in the will of the Lord.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>While I have no doubt the Lord is willing to work with me, to use me, in fact is working with me and using me to bless others through me, aware that I can and do have some part, however small, in the cosmic story he is unfolding, I am also more aware than ever that he doesn’t really <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:normal"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal">need</i></b> me. <span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>He is not dependent on me to complete the story or even to do “the task” that I’m currently called to do.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Rather when he calls, my task is to answer “yes” to whatever he wills, even if the call is, “Come home.”<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>If nothing else, I’m much more aware that, as the hymn says, “Today I’m nearer to my home than e’er I’ve been before.”<o:p></o:p></span></p>Brucehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08422217981031233334noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9075925728714948662.post-62843197887692884172011-02-25T10:30:00.000-08:002011-02-25T10:47:50.149-08:00Welcome Home!!!<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 18px;"></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span style="line-height: 115%; "><span class="Apple-style-span" >We’ve been in Malawi less than 24 hours, and it’s good to be home.<o:p></o:p></span></span></span></p><span class="Apple-style-span" > <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt">We arrived at 2:00 PM yesterday, Thursday, February 17, 20 minutes early.<span> </span>A good start.<span> </span>All our bags arrived.<span> </span>Another very good start! <span> </span>This was the first time all our bags had made the transfer in Addis Ababa on these flights. The new Ethiopian Airways schedule with a slightly longer layover in Addis is working.<span> </span>Napoleon and Gracian were awaiting us.<span> </span>Also very good.<span> </span>It is so good to see them again.<span> </span>Welcome home!</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt">A few hours after arrival we thought of supper but were told that the propane tank was empty.<span> </span>We had failed to blow out the pilots before we left (a mental note for next time), but after several meals on the plane we weren’t too hungry.<span> </span>We not uncommonly eat cold cereal in the evening, and there was some left and waiting, along with liters of long-shelf-life juice and soy milk.<span> </span>It was all good.<span> </span>We found some gas in the tank at the guest house, and swapped out the tanks for the moment.<span> </span>The first run to town would have to include a bottle of propane.<span> </span>Welcome home!</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><span style="line-height: 115%; "><o:p>A</o:p></span>s we headed for bed, we discovered that the electricity had gone out in the back half of the house, at least most of the electricity.<span> </span>Beth had turned on the bedroom water heater and left it longer than usual.<span> </span>We found all the plugs in the bedroom and all the lights that are switched in that room out.<span> </span>One light, switched in the adjacent family room only, was still working.<span> </span>I tried the circuit breakers, and one, when turned off and back on restored the current.<span> </span>But sparks flew when I switched it either way.<span> </span>We left the breaker off, hauled out a transformer and a long extension cord and rigged up 110 from the front of the house into the bedroom.<span> </span>The fan and C-PAP<span> </span>worked fine.<span> </span>(I’ve used C-PAP effectively every night for the last—well, nearly 20 years—to counter sleep apnea.)<span> </span>We could sleep.<span> </span>Welcome home!</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><span style="line-height: 115%; "><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><span style="line-height: 115%; ">We took melatonin at bedtime around 9:30, at the suggestion of fellow-travelers (where do doctors get their continuing education?) confirmed by Beth’s pediatrician brother.<span> </span>It’s apparently great for helping kids and international travelers get their days and nights straightened out.<span> </span>At some time between 2 and 5 AM I awakened, took two or three long, deep breaths through the CPAP mask and dozed off again, only to reawaken almost immediately and repeat the process several times.<span> </span>Finally I was awake enough to realize that the electricity had gone off—all of it, all over the house.<span> </span>The C-PAP mask was now doing more harm than good, so off it came.<span> </span>But the melatonin and fatigue danced well together and after shedding the mask we woke up much refreshed at 8:30—11 hours sleep.<span> </span>Welcome home!<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><span style="line-height: 115%; "><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><span style="line-height: 115%; ">It’s rainy season, and despite the roof patching done in December just before we left, wet spots are still appearing in the ceiling of the bedroom—not as bad as it was, mind you, and not coming through on the bed; just keeping us alert to the unlikely possibility.<span> </span>It’s been this way for years, leaving stains throughout the house, and black mold penetrating the ceiling in a few.<span> </span>We hope to change the ceiling, once we get the leaking under control, <i>when</i> we get the leaking under control.<span> </span>But the bedroom still leaks.<span> </span>Then at mid-morning it really started to rain, a gully-womper.<span> </span>The wind wasn’t that high, but suddenly, water was gushing down the <i>inside</i> of the front wall and window, soaking the curtains and the floor.<span> </span>It did this one day last year when we had first moved here.<span> </span>I knew the patching of nail holes through the zinc sheets wasn’t going to handle it, and it hasn’t.<span> </span>We’ll have to look at that design problem in the attic where the roof meets the porch overhang and rethink this once more.<span> </span>Hmmmm.<span> </span>Welcome home!<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><span style="line-height: 115%; "><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><span style="line-height: 115%; ">The electricity in the back of the house is out again, and a closer look with the campus electrician reveals a wire too small going into a circuit breaker.<span> </span>The breaker didn’t fail primarily, but where the inadequate wire was burned at entry to the breaker, the breaker is also burned, ruined.<span> </span>A new one will be necessary.<span> </span>Welcome home!<span> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><span style="line-height: 115%; "><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><span style="line-height: 115%; ">We needed to let Wes know we had arrived safely and well.<span> </span>There is no internet access at the house today.<span> </span>At the airport the signal strength is uncharacteristically weak.<span> </span>But Beth got on and the message is sent.<span> </span>We are well.<span> </span>Welcome home!<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt">There was a quarter tank of diesel in the car when we checked.<span> </span>Napoleon had told us there was a severe diesel and gasoline shortage.<span> </span>We’d read about it in the States.<span> </span>A demonstration had even been planned for the 14<sup>th</sup>, but it had been thwarted by the police who’d picked up the organizers at the meeting site.<span> </span>Now we needed diesel.<span> </span>Napoleon instructed us:<span> </span>“If you wait on the diesel, you will never find it.<span> </span>If you go looking for it, you may not find it.<span> </span>But you have a quarter tank.<span> </span>You can go to town and back twice, if you don’t drive too much in town.”<span> </span>Welcome home!</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><span style="line-height: 115%; "></span>We went to town, and asked at the first station—“No diesel or petrol.”<span> </span>Two semis waited at the second station for a delivery at some time in the future.<span> </span>A few trucks and buses were taking on fuel at the third station, but they denied us service; limited supplies were only for their big corporate customer.<span> </span>At the fourth we tried there was none.<span> </span>“Try the total at Maula.”<span> </span>As we neared, the line was evident, so we lined up, about ten or twelve cars back.<span> </span>One truck carried a very large tank on the back, several hundred gallons.<span> </span>Would there be any left when we got to the pump?<span> </span>Harold (the hospital administrator) walked off to take care of his business in a nearby part of town, and returned. We were next, and then we filled up--both tanks, enough for possibly two to three weeks if we are careful.<span> </span>Welcome home!</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt">As we waited in the line for diesel, a European whose pick-up was in front of us walked back to chat. He was a Dutchman.<span> </span>He had driven from Rhumpi in the far north of Malawi that morning to attend a meeting scheduled for 4:00.<span> </span>He had found no diesel between Rhumpi and Lilongwe.<span> </span>Would he get through the line in time to make his meeting?<span> </span>We learned that he is a doctor, having worked as a medical missionary in Malawi for about 17 years, including one stint on an HIV-related public health project.<span> </span>All medicine in Malawi is HIV-related, but he is now attending in the public hospital in Rhumpi.<span> </span>“Churches are not doing near what they should be doing to combat HIV,” he noted, blessing our plans.<span> </span>He told us of a bi-annual meeting in Kenya hosted by the American Christian Medical Society, two weeks long, granting enough CME credits for two years’ requirements.<span> </span>It will be held in February 2012.<span> </span>We exchange contact information.<span> </span>Welcome home!</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt">Out of propane.<span> There's a</span>n extra bottle at the guest house.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><span style="line-height: 115%; "></span>Electricity problems.<span> Our electrician friend is</span> on campus.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><span style="line-height: 115%; ">The roof leaks.<span> </span>But less than before, and only rarely reaching our feet (or even our heads!)<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><span style="line-height: 115%; ">Internet hard to get.<span> </span>But it will be better with a latte at the hotel (and it was!).<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><span style="line-height: 115%; ">Vehicle fuel shortage.<span> </span>Two full tanks after only an hours’ wait—and a new colleague and encourager to boot!<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt">Within a few hours’ time we are reminded why we looked forward to an “escape” to the States.<span> </span>But the reasons we were ready to return--the things we missed about Malawi--are still here, most of all the dear friends we made during the past year.<span> </span>And so we wander from here to there, thankfully never completely satisfied until we reach the home prepared for us and hear the words of the one who guides us from here to there:<span> </span>“Welcome home!”</p></span><p></p>Brucehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08422217981031233334noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9075925728714948662.post-76729454186627484162011-02-05T22:38:00.001-08:002011-02-06T19:59:01.642-08:00Going Home<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"">The sun is probably well above the Doa Mountains by now.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>My friends the guards, Moses, Wilson, Kay, McNight, and others have long left their posts, are probably eating breakfast by now, and may be soon returning for some piece work on Saturday.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Florence and Mtami would be coming soon for their occasional visits to the house in our absence, if today is the day.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>It could be raining hard, or have ceased after a steady rain through the evening, or be the day this week when the sun will shine.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Whichever is possible as we enter the heart of the rainy season, and I hope the patches applied to our roof just before we came here are holding up well, and that those which seemed less than perfect have not become a fountain into our bedroom and down on our mattress.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"">I am sitting in a men’s retreat at the YMCA Camp Chandler on Lake Martin just north of Montgomery, Alabama.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>It’s 10:30 or so, and my mind has wandered to now’s early morning in Malawi.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>It is good to be here with a bunch of men, about 80, who are dedicated to following the Lord, all from the Landmark Church that is our primary sponsor in Malawi, but time to return home is approaching and my thoughts slip smoothly between the comforts and challenges of the present and those to which we return in Malawi.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>It is cold in middle Alabama tonight, but the room is warm, and the husky singing of this male chorus is encouraging.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>It is one of many other beloved and caring “suitcase stops” on this six week visit in the U.S.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>These faces have been a blessing, as have all that we’ve seen while home, kin, and kin in Christ, encouragers all, each in his or her own way.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Folks in L.A. and Redlands, those from all over in Dallas at the medical missions seminar, in Kilgore and Shreveport, Jonesboro and, again from all over, in Searcy, now Landmark in Montgomery and University Church in Tuscaloosa next week. <span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Then home.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"">Home.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>The U.S. is home.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Malawi is home.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Which is really home?<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Or, which is more “home” right now.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>For all the wonderful hospitality and welcome oh-so-friendly cultural cues from dearly beloved brothers and sisters, American brothers and sisters, we are ready to pull our morning’s fresh clothes out of the customary drawer in the bedroom in the house on the hill, and toss them at the end of the day, damp from the day’s humidity without and within, into their designated corner in that same bedroom. Our bedroom.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Ours not by ownership but by use and custom. <span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>We’re ready to eat a little Weet-Bix (mixed with granola), to feel the surge of the six-cylinder diesel engine in the Patrol we’ve just been given by each of you, to hear the birds singing in the trees outside, to smell the smoke from the cooking fires, to hear the voices of the children from the orphanage, to see our friends.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"">Missionaries returning on furlough often long for something of home they couldn’t get “over there”.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Dr. Pepper is a common object of such desire, and once going down it usually doesn’t taste as good as was imagined.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>We were deeply disappointed by the Starbucks we drank on landing at Washington Dulles.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Now I look forward to a latte at the the Capucino Café in Lilongwe, and an expreso at the Italian Deli.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>I think that is a good sign.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"">Soon Harold will be unlocking the Hospital, Nelson will be arriving on his motorcycle, Napoleon may or may not be stopping by on his way to Saturday’s mission, but Salema or Berta will be opening the office.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>The workers at the plant will begin their weekly cleaning chores.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>But now it is 10:30 pm in Camp Chandler near Montgomery, Alabama, and I am being encouraged by the faith of brothers, and the words of my wife and my friend written for this occasion.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Today, tomorrow and next week—if God wills--we will talk about our work and be encouraged by you and others, and then on Monday we will fly to Washington, then Addis Ababa, then Lilongwe:<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>today’s home.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>And we will work to enjoy our new home, and prepare for the next, strangers and wanderers on this earth that we are.<o:p></o:p></span></p>Brucehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08422217981031233334noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9075925728714948662.post-26976617949865504532011-02-05T22:30:00.000-08:002011-02-05T22:35:12.927-08:00"In Your Prime"<p class="MsoNormal">The “Hello’s” we exchanged came natural, both of us being “southern boys”.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>I’m not sure who spoke first.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>I was raised in Texas, and we spoke to everyone, and the late teen with whom I exchanged was surely Alabama born and raised, as his accent portrayed him.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>I was walking across the Walmart parking lot in east <st1:city st="on"><st1:place st="on">Montgomery</st1:place></st1:city> to get the car.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>He was in the driver’s seat of the older model car, double-parked, probably waiting on his mom, his younger brother sitting in a back seat.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span><o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">As I crossed in front of his hood he lowered the window on the passenger side and hollered at me:<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>“Sir, you know where I can get some good weed?”<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">“Excuse me?”<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Maybe my hearing <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">is</i> slipping.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span><o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">“Weed?<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>You know.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Marijuana?<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Do you know where I can get some good stuff?”<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">“I’m so sorry.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>I really don’t have a clue.”<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">“But ya do use don’t you?<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>You do a little every now and then, no?”<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">“No, ‘fraid not.”<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span><o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">“But in your younger days you did, didn’t you?<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>You know, back in your prime?”<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">“No, sorry, never smoked a joint.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>I can probably count on one hand the times I’ve had a beer or a glass of wine?”<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">“Really?<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Well, thank ya anyway.”<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">“You bet.”<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Marijuana.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>I’m not sure who was more incredulous.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Those who know me know I am a connector, constantly suggesting that this one meet that one, that the guy in this business might like to know this fellow I met over there.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>But where to get good weed?<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>And, “back in your prime”?<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>I’m learning a new language, still running 10K on weekends.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Moses was 80 when he finally got his big assignment.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>I’m only 60.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>I don’t think I’ve hit my stride yet.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span><o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Then it hit me.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>The beard.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>The beard which <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">is</i> heavily streaked with gray.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>I’m having a little “re-entry cultural shock”, though.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Cultural cues.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Misunderstanding.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Miscommunications.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>It happens not only in Malawi, but here in the Walmart parking lot in East Montgomery also.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>And I am older than I admit to myself.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>The joints ache a little more, a little more continuously.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>But the time to quit has not come, though it will.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>And until the Lord does offer a little R&R, rest and then renewal, a new body with new joints to do new work in a new environment, I’ll do what he has called me to do, with all my might, sharing the story of how to live the best kind of life possible on this earth until he comes or calls.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span><o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">“In your prime!” <o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>Brucehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08422217981031233334noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9075925728714948662.post-56477563164574335362010-12-28T03:38:00.000-08:002010-12-28T03:44:15.777-08:00Have a Green Christmas (In Malawi!)<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><span class="Apple-style-span" ><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 18px;"></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><span class="Apple-style-span" ><span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"">“Have a green Christmas”, our missionary colleagues wrote via e-mail a few days before Christmas.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Far from a naturally consequential curse of over-eating (which some of you may have suffered), theirs is a sure blessing here in Malawi’s second month of rainy season.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>A white Christmas, barring a very rare heavy pounding of hail out of one of the frequent thunderstorms, is exceedingly unlikely. Today, on Christmas Day, arguably the most widely recognized, if not celebrated, religious holiday in the world, I thought I’d share with you what our first Malawian Christmas has found.</span></span></p><span class="Apple-style-span" > <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"">Backing up a few days, or weeks, we’ve noticed from our somewhat distant vista (we live about 30 minutes out of town and are not in the stores every day), the “Christmas spirit” did not really get off the ground in Lilongwe until a few days before Christmas.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>(The one exception: <span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>“Santa Plaza”, a variety store run by Muslims, complete with sleigh and reindeer blazoned on the front façade year round.)<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Yesterday (Christmas Eve) for the first time we heard carols playing over the loudspeakers in the grocery store.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>This late appearance of the Christmas “season” is a mixed blessing.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>We missed the music, but the blatant commercialization of Christmas is not so prolonged or extensive here as it is in America, largely because most of the population has so little money.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"">Gift giving in Malawi sounds somewhat like stories my parents told me about Christmas in the U.S. during the great depression, when oranges were likely the only gifts.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Similarly, a special meal, chicken with rice rather than the boiled corn flour staple, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal">nsima</i>, is often the center of Christmas, if not its only manifestation for a family, if they can afford that. <span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Christmas and New Year’s day are understood to be national holidays, and most workers get off, but the president didn’t get around to making the annual proclamation of such, essential for government workers to get a holiday, until late in the week.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"">Among members of Churches of Christ in Malawi, because an annual celebration of Christ’s birth is nowhere mentioned in the New Testament, Christmas is generally not recognized or celebrated, though there are exceptions.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>With the general lack of emphasis on gift-giving, the easily commercialized aspect of Christmas, and the pervasive poverty (political calendars are often wall decorations) it is easy to let this holiday slide, to ignore it completely, and often this happens. This is true of other more conservative, restorationist churches as well. Mainline churches, however, often have a service on Christmas Eve or Christmas day.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"">Christmas, at least on the surface of things, does not seem to be a big deal in Malawi.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"">Given this cluster of realities, what we should do as we interact with Malawi while having very different thoughts about Christmas is an interesting problem for a new missionary in early adjustment.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Opening some boxes of Christmas things proved quite helpful as we found termites had destroyed the box, with no real damage to the contents.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>We decorated a tree, put a wreath on the front door and a collection of candles in an internal window sill, and wondered how these would be perceived by our colleagues.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>(We also mounted a full-scale termite search, which may have saved a lot of valuables.)</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"">Beth gave Florence, the lady who helps her in the house, a bonus of about 22% of a month’s pay.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>We then took her and her apprentice from Mtendere village to town on Thursday (Florence’s first trip to town in about five years).<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>They split a hamburger and fries and a pizza, which Florence particularly likes. They then went to the market where Florence bought a new wrap-around skirt cloth, a new purse, and a new blouse.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"">Beth also baked banana bread, giving small loaves to many of our closer friends on the campus around us and some off campus.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>On Thursday night we went caroling, as was the custom in both our families.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>We visited several workers on our campus, including Florence, who live in a row of “apartments” which you would probably perceive as small “storage units” based on their size and shape.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>We stood at the end of the short row of about ten units and sang the three Christmas carols we had found in the Malawian Chichewa hymnal.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>We then visited a family from church whom we knew would not be offended by our coming.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Then we went to Mtendere, the children’s orphanage below our house.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"">By the time we got there it was after 8:00, and for the first time I saw no one out on campus at that hour.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>We sang the three Chichewa carols at five stations on the campus, adding “Joy to the World” at one point.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Because of the tendency for hymns in Chichewa to be sung to African tunes and rhythms radically different from those we know, Beth had been concerned as to whether the caroling would be appreciated. The next day one of the boys described one reaction to our coming.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>When singing was first heard from the opposite end of the campus, one of the boys looked at another and asked, “Have angels come to visit Mtendere?”<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Then another said, “No, somebody’s got their radio on and put it in their window really loud.”<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Then, as we moved closer to their house and began again, the first went to the window and stuck his head out.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>“No, it’s Bruce and Berta!” (Beth’s most common identity—the Chewa don’t handle “Beth” well.)<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>We’re certainly not professionals, but good music done reasonably well is generally appreciated across cultures, as it was here.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"">We had hoped to visit our son who lives about 500 miles east of us in Mozambique, but that proved impossible at the last minute, so we treated ourselves to a couple of days at a nice hotel in the Capital.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Christmas Eve we hosted a couple who have no support—she’s from the U.S.A., and he is from South Africa—for a marvelous dinner and several hours of good conversation.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>I really appreciate their insights into African culture and the involvement of church leaders in the HIV epidemic, a topic of particular interest to them as well.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>We slept in this morning, Christmas.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>I ran, and then we had a late breakfast.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>We’ve rested, read the papers, watched a movie (<i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">August Rush</i>—I recommend it), rugby and soccer games, and CNN news, all special treats to us.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>We’ve enjoyed the air conditioning in the humid weather and have skyped with several friends and relatives:<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>our Korea-based daughter and her husband who are visiting a friend in China, our son and his family in Mozambique, Beth’s brother in Arkansas, colleagues in Turkey and Tanzania, and our always-supportive Missions Minister at Landmark Church of Christ in Montgomery, Wes Gunn. We still hope to catch sisters and our son in California.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"">Tomorrow we’ll visit a large congregation in town, and then head back to the house, thankful always for our Lord who came to live among us, no matter what day he actually made his entrance on earth, the many blessings he gives us to help in our adjustment to living with and for Malawians, and the many relatives and friends who support us in this mission.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>In the end, all the hype, glitter, gifts, playing of Christmas music, and other customs, the “externals” which are so different between our family and our Malawian friends, are not what it is all about, are they?<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Whether Christmas is a “big deal” in this sense doesn’t matter one whit, but the effect of the coming of God to live among us, his life, his death and his resurrection on our lives, whether we also live “resurrection lives”—that is what it, life itself (not just Christmas) is all about, isn’t it?<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>If not, nothing else really matters. And by that measure Christmas may in fact be a bigger deal to the average Malawian than to the average American, in the heart, if not on the surface of society.<o:p></o:p></span></p></span><p></p>Brucehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08422217981031233334noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9075925728714948662.post-35985336847391120182010-12-15T09:32:00.000-08:002010-12-15T09:37:40.336-08:00Funerals--The USA and Malawi<p class="MsoNormal" align="center" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt; text-align:center"></p><div style="text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" ><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 18px;"><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"">I remember my first funeral well.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Some older person in our church had died, but I didn’t know him or her, and the funeral was to be held in Grand Saline, about 50 miles away.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>My Daddy was the song leader in our little congregation, and he needed a tenor.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>I was taken out of school, it was about the 7<sup>th</sup> grade, and carried to help form the quartet that would comfort family and friends with songs of heaven.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>It was a good, hands-off, impersonal preparation for my second funeral.<o:p></o:p></span></p></span></span></div><p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"">A few weeks later a boy in our small town (about 95 in my graduating class) was killed.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>He was one grade ahead or behind me; I think his name was George.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>He had lived, just around a corner or two, but we were not good friends.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>His single mom tried, but he ended up being one of the boys my mom didn’t want me to play with.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>That’s why he died.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>The square dance club met in the City Auditorium, an old frame building out by the rodeo arena.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>I was in that Auditorium only once or twice in my life.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>It was just the other side of the railroad tracks from down-town and our houses, mine and George’s, and about a mile down the tracks the other side of Main Street.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Drinking was strictly prohibited in the Auditorium by the Baptist members who’d broken into square dancing, but not alcohol.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>The Methodists conceded, but some folks kept a flask under their front seat to loosen up their turns between dances.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>And in a small town, nobody locked their car.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"">The County was dry, and booze hard to get, but George had figured this one out.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>While the fiddle scrawled and the gentleman called, George was helping himself outside.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>He was pretty drunk when the dancing ended for the evening, but he made it to the tracks without being discovered.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>He didn’t make it home.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>He just laid down on the ties and gravel between the rails to rest a bit.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>He was drunk enough to sleep in that unlikely bed, but not enough to sleep through the 2:30 train that came through town.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>He was too low on the track to be seen until he raised his head just before the train reached him.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>I remember a few things about the funeral:<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>almost everyone from school came; they didn’t open the casket; and it was generally very quiet but for his mother sniffling up front, fighting back the pain.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"">Malawian funerals are not quiet.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>No one is fighting back the pain.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Men and women who are close to the deceased wail almost continuously, even through the hymns, except when a preacher calls for quiet for prayer or an exhortation.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Most of the rest of the time, during visitation (12-36 hours) and the trek to the grave a host of mourners including the close family wail, and contort the body, some walking around outside the house where the body lies and calling on the deceased <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal">“mkazi wanga, mkazi wanga” </i>(“my wife, my wife”) or <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">“mlongo anga, mlonga anga”</i> (“my sister, my sister”).<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>My friend Steve Kay, who out of his own profound experience speaks and writes well about grief, especially male grief and its expression, would admire the Malawian men I think, bent at the waist, arms wrapped around their bent heads, weeping and crying, wailing and calling of their loss and for the departed.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>I am also reminded of the Biblical stories of funerals, where Jesus quieted the mourners before challenging death itself.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"">The body lies in state in the front room of a small hut, usually for less than 24 hours, but occasionally longer if some family must come from afar.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Wailing women fill the small room, surrounding the body, covering the floor, spilling down the hall toward the bedrooms. <span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>A thin path through the legs from the door to the head of the deceased, and sometimes out the back door allows others to view the body, or at least the face, where only a small portion is visible, the rest, including the mouth and nose, wrapped in cloth.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>The closest female members of the family are literally and bodily supported by other family members, propped up where they are sitting on the floor.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"">Male family members visit the body periodically, joining the wailing on entering the door, and sometimes continuing in the courtyard as they walk off their grief outside.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Clusters of men and women sit in their respective, quite separate areas all around the house, sometimes stretching throughout the neighborhood, but in these circles quiet respect reigns.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Stores in the close neighborhood are “closed” though discrete sales through a cracked door allow life to continue in this world of many funerals.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Some women bring in food (meaning <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">nsima</i>, the boiled corn meal which is the staple of diets throughout this part of Africa), while others stir the flour into pots of boiling water and prepare greens, beans or meat to add “relish” to the center of the meal.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>I’ve never seen a small funeral or memorial service.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Honoring the dead is a core part of African life, and everyone shows up who knew the deceased and knows of the death. All the neighbors are there, and friends and relatives from near and far.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Everyone is fed.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Contributions are made, and a list of civic leaders who contributed, and how much they gave, is announced at the formal service before the shift to the graveyard. <span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>The village chief speaks of the deceased.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>An obituary is read.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Singers sing. A preacher preaches.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"">When the grave is ready, or some other social marker unknown to me is reached, the body is witnessed by as many as possible as it is being transferred into the coffin.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>The tapping sound that followed puzzled me until I remembered the two hammer-bearers entering the house.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>The wailing, which had grown with the transfer of the body, swelled even more as the lid to the simple casket was nailed shut.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>The casket was moved to the bier, and the trek to the grove of trees marking the graveyard began, women leading if the deceased is female, men if male, but never mixing.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Sometimes the grave is near, sometimes far.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"">At the graveyard there is more singing.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>More preaching.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>And more wailing, but now by isolated family members overcome by the grief of the moment.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Some are comforted by others.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>One by one family members may be removed from the scene by friends or other relatives, perhaps because their display of grief is too much for that moment of the service, or perhaps for fear that the depth of their grief might become harmful to them on witnessing the burial.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>One wailing young man fell flat on the ground and was carried out, apparently unconscious.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Later another followed suit but was left to lie.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>At one point a young woman near the grave stood, turned, gasped deeply, and let out a short but forceful cry which ended with her swoon to the ground, arms and legs flailing.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Four women lifted her by her four limbs and carried her out despite the jerking of the appendages.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Most sat quietly as the casket was lowered, the dirt returned, and the preacher preached on.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>A choir sang a few songs.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"">When thunder and lightning neared, women began to slip away.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">“Mvula! </i>Rain!”<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>One said to Beth.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>“You’re going to get wet!<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">Tiyeni.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span></i>Come with us.” <span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>The preacher continued.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Men soon followed.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>The preacher himself soon gave up and the feeding began:<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal">nsima</i> and goat.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>The rain mercifully held off another 30 minutes.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Then we were on our way home, hurrying against the approaching darkness to get to the highway and then the city before the multitude of bicyclists and pedestrians scurrying home fade into the obscurity and danger of nightfall on the busy road. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"">Funerals in southeastern Africa have a major effect on business productivity, not only through the loss of skilled employees in their prime years (Malawi lost 6,500 teachers to death in the last three years) but also due to the massive social participation that is required of the living.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Funerals take at least one day, often two, and not uncommonly three days away from work, and each worker attends multiple funerals a year.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>We attended three last week.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Employers are expected to be major benefactors toward the costs of funerals in their role as the primary sustenance of the family.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Funeral support is in the budget of every major business as a line item, but in one recent year a major civic unit drained that item long before the year was over.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Some control of HIV (50% of those needing treatment in Malawi are getting it) and an increase in the line item budget for funerals have avoided the problem of running out of help in subsequent years, but deaths continue in large numbers.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"">The west has a short attention span, and the current waning attention to the African HIV problem is evidence of that.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>The US and Europe are moving on (actually around in a cycle) to attack once again Maternal-Child Health.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>While some shifts in AIDS budgeting may need to occur, the need for western government to support availability of the expensive medications needed to treat HIV still exists. Write your senators or representatives today.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Western Christians need to support widow and orphan care by local agencies and churches in Africa.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Just as the effects of previous efforts are beginning to be observed, the West is backing out.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>This is not the time to back out, but rather the time to press forward, to make treatment available for everyone lest the wailing never stop.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p>Brucehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08422217981031233334noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9075925728714948662.post-82587700353794087892010-12-09T06:35:00.000-08:002010-12-09T06:57:44.133-08:00Here Comes the Bride--But Who is She?<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"">It was a beautiful wedding.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>We got there late, but the service had not yet started.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>In fact, though only a few more entered after us, the wedding party didn’t come down the aisle for at least 45 minutes after we arrived.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>We didn’t see our friends who had invited us, but that wasn’t terribly unusual.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>About 250 people were there, a good crowd in a much bigger building.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Our friends were probably hidden on the front rows with other family members or helping out with last-minute, pre-ceremony details.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"">We didn’t know the name of the couple getting married, which calls for some explanation.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>You and I know how invitation lists are constructed for weddings in the U.S.:<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>carefully and thoughtfully, and input comes only from the bride and groom and their parents.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Even grandparents rarely have any say.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>In Malawi things are quite different.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>We’ve been invited to four weddings since we’ve been here. First, a lady who works here on campus invited us to her sister’s wedding.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>That felt really strange and uncomfortable—we didn’t know her sister.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>We politely declined, but afterward were repeatedly reminded that we <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:normal"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">didn’t </i></b>attend her sister’s wedding.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>That was our first clue that things were different here.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>We knew the father of the bride of the first wedding we actually attended. The announcement was made in church, of which he is a member, and he lives near the church building.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>It was a triple wedding, three couples tying the knot at once, but separate receptions.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>It seemed to us like the whole village went to the reception we attended—another clue that things were different. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"">Then a couple who are our dear friends at church, the Gondwe’s, invited us to attend two weddings, a week or two apart, which were for children of their relatives.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Our friends were responsible for many of the arrangements for these two weddings, but that wasn’t the big factor that led to our invitation. In Malawi any member of the extended family can invite his or her friends to a relative’s wedding.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>And family is defined very broadly by U.S. standards. We had a conflict for the first of the two Gondwe weddings, but we were here in this Presbyterian church waiting for the second to begin.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>With over two hundred people ready and waiting the keyboardist practiced his rifts and adjusted this and that. The music sounded great for a few bars, but invariably broke off too early for our satisfaction.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"">Finally the preacher appeared and the music continued for more than a truncated refrain. The first bridesmaid appeared in a purple dress and began her slow dance down the aisle.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>No simple walking, this procession.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>The beauty of the special people in special dress with special motion for the special occasion was designed to last as long as possible.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>As the maid neared the end of the aisle her groomsman counterpart appeared, matching her steps up the aisle to meet her then circling her on her left and catching up to her on her right, joining her in motion up and down, diagonally left across the aisle, then right, moving in multiple dimensions at once, but always steadily toward the dais.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>The church we were in had no center aisle, and the wedding party moved down the left cleft in the wooden theater seats.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>When they cleared the forward-facing main body of seats they worked their way right, toward the center, the groomsman leaving his maid to cross to the right side of the hall.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>As the ring-bearer, then the three bride’s maids, and finally the two flower girls (the children accompanied by supportive adults) each did their dances down the aisle and then were joined by their respective groomsmen, two gendered companies of swaying, stepping attendants assembled at the front.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"">Then the music changed, and after a bit the bride appeared and began her dance down the aisle, in the company of an older lady, apparently her mother.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Her progress was repeatedly accompanied by the high-pitched trilling of the tongues of the women so characteristic of African celebration, a little slower than that of Hispanics, as tongues are wagged back and forth across the mouth.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>As the bride neared the front, the groom appeared, accompanied by an older man, apparently his father.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>When they met, the trilling gained intensity, and he joined her with the same circling motion his groomsmen had used, complicated a bit by the train and the extra people in the aisle.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>The older couple fell back and together followed the younger couple past the last few rows.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>The about-to-be-weds moved to the center, the music came to a halt and then all sat in the front row.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"">The hymns, prayers and sermon were in Chichewa, so the scattered words I picked up meant little to me, but the scripture passages were much like ones I hear in American weddings.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>The exchange of rings and vows was followed by prolonged demonstration of the respective rings as each in turn was held aloft for long moments on its newly found perch for life for all present to behold, as if proclaiming “this one is now wed and I mark her/his covenant made this day”.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>The pronouncement of husband and wife was made, accompanied by much more trilling.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>A final prayer was said, and the recessional of the audience began.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>We watched several pass by, looking for our friends, but now both aisles were being used, so we joined the exodus and sought a spot outside where we could scrutinize the door for the emergence of our friends.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"">Outside we found traditional dancers, a row of women backed up by a row of men, singing loudly and dancing to the traditional drums and occasional shrill piping of a whistle.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>No slow swaying here!<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Stomping forward then backward, left then right, the steps were interjected frequently by sudden, almost violent suggestive pelvic moves that should have put several joints I hardly, if ever, use out of place.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Some were left and then right, some up and forward, then back and downward, but there was no sign of back trouble in this group as they celebrated the joy of the moment.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"">Eventually the bride and groom appeared and puzzled from the door about how to get from that observation point past the dancers to their car, appropriately decorated with colorful puffs of paper mums and broad ribbons.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>The dancers seemed oblivious to everything except the insistent beat of the drums and the shrill excitement of the whistle.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>But our friends were not present.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>The building was empty, and they had not been seen.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"">As we made our way from there, we called our friends' adult son who was Bruce’s second language helper.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>“Now, which CCAP church did you say your family’s wedding was to be at, the principal CCAP in Lilongwe?<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>We’re in Mama Kadzamira’s church in Area 12.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>[Mama Kadzamira is the first among Malawian women, the former ‘first hostess’ for Malawi’s bachelor first president.] Your church is not in Area 12?<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Which Area is it in?<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>You don’t know?<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Is it in Falls Estate?<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Yes?<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Ohhh.”<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>We had attended the wrong wedding.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>We talked with Jeremiah a bit about the reception to begin two hours later, but as we had headed down the road we decided not to try.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>We had invested a lot of energy in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">this</i> cross-cultural event, only to learn that it was the wrong one, and we were a bit deflated.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>We decided we needed a little time together, retreating a bit from our many cross-cultural experiences.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>We didn’t need to try a second one today.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Besides, we didn’t know the couple who had gotten married anyway—at the wedding we should have attended, or the one we actually did.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"">P.S.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>To our amusement when we went to the Capital Hotel after lunch to try to find a spot where internet connection was available, who should we see but the bride’s maids from the wedding we had attended! We had inadvertently also shown up at the reception site of the same wedding.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p>Brucehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08422217981031233334noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9075925728714948662.post-42188067624021154482010-12-09T06:23:00.000-08:002010-12-09T07:08:18.283-08:00World AIDS Day 2010: Bystanders Watching Death’s Onward March<p class="MsoNormal" align="center" style="text-align: left;margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; "><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 18px; ">We spent World AIDS Day thinking about funerals. We didn’t actually <i>attend</i> any funerals on Wednesday, December 1, but we were getting over one and planning for two others. I did not medically take care of any of these folks, didn’t see their death certificates, so I can’t say that any of the deceased had AIDS, but three funerals in one week? Malawi’s adult death rate is very high, much higher because of AIDS than it was 20 or 30 years ago precisely because of AIDS. If AIDS played no part in any of these deaths, it would be rather strange. It may have kissed them all.</span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><span style="line-height: 115%; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; ">The first funeral, on Tuesday, November 30, was for a man about 50.<span> </span>He wasn’t close to us, I don’t know that I’d ever met him, but a relative of his was an acquaintance and he lived very near.<span> </span>We’d not been to a funeral in our neighborhood yet, and I did personally know several of his neighbors (which I found out when I got there).<span> </span>We walked down the hill a bit and thankfully were met out on the highway by a person we knew.<span> </span>Every other funeral or like event which we’ve attended we’ve had the blessing of a friend to act as a social coach, and I was wondering how to handle some of the unknowns of this event when God provided the person we needed, a former guard at our complex whom we hadn’t seen for some months.<span> </span>We sat on the ground with our respective genders, Beth with a cluster of ladies on the periphery and I with our friend across the way.<span> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><span style="line-height: 115%; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; ">I was on the front row of the front cluster of several groups of men, scattered and strung out among the mud-brick huts in that part of the neighborhood.<span> </span>After we’d squatted on the ground I realized we were right in front of the bier, consisting of several tree branches lashed together, that would carry the casket to the grave from the house where it lay for visitation.<span> </span>Neither of us went in.<span> </span>My coach asked if we wanted to see the body, but I didn’t know the man personally and felt no need.<span> </span>Funerals, in my mind, are for the living.We had asked our coach how long we needed to stay, and he said, “Whatever time you want.”<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><span style="line-height: 115%; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; ">“Thirty minutes or an hour?”<span style="text-transform:uppercase"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><span style="line-height: 115%; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; ">“That’s fine.<span> </span>You’ve paid your respects.”<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><span style="line-height: 115%; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; ">I wanted to give some money to my acquaintance who was related to the deceased, as is the custom here, but I hadn’t seen her.<span> </span>I asked coach how to find her, since men aren’t supposed to be in contact with the women at funerals.<span> </span>Before we left, coach led me behind the house in front of where we had sat and motioned for one of the women who were cooking there to come.<span> </span>I realized it was Florence, Beth’s helper around the house who had asked the day off for the funeral.<span> </span>We I asked Florence to get our friend, and she went into the back door of the house where the casket lay and brought the friend out to us.<span> </span>I expressed my condolences with the one appropriate Chichewa word I know, <i>“Pepani”</i> (“I’m sorry”).<span> </span>She shook my hand, accepting the money:<span> </span><i>“Zikomo kwambiri”</i>.<span> </span>She returned to the mourners around the body in the little house.<span> </span>We slipped back around the house, sat for about 10 minutes more, then got up and went to the road where we met Beth who’d seen us leaving.<span> </span>“Coach” went back to the group, and Beth and I walked up the hill to the house.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><span style="line-height: 115%; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; ">The next morning, World AIDS Day, we were awakened by Florence who brought the news that the husband of another neighbor and closer acquaintance had died, a man who was maybe 30.<span> </span>I had met him, but did not know that he was that friend’s husband.<span> </span>He’d been sick for some time.<span> </span>In fact she’d been off work the week before to care for him, but he’d gotten better.<span> </span>Then he’d suddenly gotten very ill, having extreme difficulty breathing.<span> </span>A car had been hired and he’d been taken to a hospital about 6 miles north of us.<span> </span>By the time they got there his breathing had stopped.<span> </span>There was a need to move the body to his home village, and could I contribute?<span> </span>I gave Florence what seemed a reasonable donation.<span> </span>The funeral would be Thursday and she would be back to work on Friday.<span> </span>Would that be ok?<span> </span>“Of course,” I answered. <i>“Tionana lachisanu,</i>” (“We’ll see you Friday.”)<span> </span>We made a brief visit to this funeral, at a town 30 minutes north of us, on Thursday morning.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><span style="line-height: 115%; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; ">Before dark on Wednesday I got a call from one of my best friends in Malawi, my running partner.<span> </span>His sister, who’d been bothered for three months with severe stomach pain and intermittent headaches had taken a turn for the worse early that morning.<span> </span>She had gone to the nearest health center where she’d been sent to the nearest hospital which in turn had referred her to the regional medical center in town where she’d died shortly after arrival.<span> </span>He didn’t know what she had.<span> </span>Her husband was alive and well, and she left two children under five.<span> </span>She was 38.<span> </span>Women who are 38 do die in Malawi, but usually in childbirth.<span> </span>And this was a fairly prolonged illness.<span> </span>I asked if she had AIDS.<span> </span>He didn’t know.<span> </span>As many of our staff attended the funeral to our north, Beth and I carried several others the 2.5 hours south to this one, staying through the burial, getting back about 7:30 in the evening after stopping in town for supper.<span> </span>It was a day full of funeral.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" align="center" style="text-align: left;margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 18px; "><span class="Apple-style-span">AIDS is not something that is discussed over the dinner table in Malawi, or much at any other time, at least in a personal sense. People seem to think if they just don’t talk about it then it will leave them alone. And it keeps on killing people right and left, making its presence known in powerful and painful ways, at the most inconvenient times, even on World AIDS Day, 2010. </span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" align="center" style="text-align: left;margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 18px; "><span class="Apple-style-span">P.S.: The publication of this post was approved by the my friends and acquaintances who were kin to those mentioned as deceased and the reason for my attending the funeral.</span></span></p>Brucehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08422217981031233334noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9075925728714948662.post-70587036784232445662010-11-28T07:38:00.000-08:002010-11-28T07:56:33.510-08:00It's Rainy Season, and It's (Mostly) Cool!!!<p class="MsoNormal">Rainy season has begun.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>We are sitting through our biggest storm of the new season, and it’s only our second.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>It rained on us Saturday afternoon, a nice little shower, as we sat in the parking lot of the fastest internet service provider in town trying to Skype with the Mission Vision Team of Landmark Church of Christ, our primary supporting congregation. Yesterday we got our first good rain here at the house, but not this heavy or brilliant.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Now it is raining:<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>cats and dogs, buckets, gushers, raining up a storm, a real gullywhomper thunderstorm.<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">And it is lightening.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Most of the strikes are 2.5-3 seconds away.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>One was less, and threw our main breaker.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>I had just unplugged our laptop, the printer next to it, a heavy-duty surge protector which fed the electronic piano, and an uninterrupted power supply which carries our desktop.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Then the blue-white flash of light and “Craaackkkk”.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Our house is on the highest hill for some miles around.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>I am aware that we could use lightning rods, but our house built on a rock would have a hard time finding ground.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>How long can the lead wire be? <o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Two weeks ago it was hot, very hot.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>But about a week ago, as rain began to fall within sight of the house, the temperature graciously dipped as well.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>The clouds have been hiding the sun and the breeze has kissed our arms and brows after coming through the drops that we can see falling in the distance:<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>relief from the heat.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>The sun has passed overhead on its journey south in relation to the earth, and will be back in a few weeks, after its overhead rendezvous with the tropic of Capricorn.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Though my logic says it should remain hot, a critical point has been reached such that the updrafts provoked by those rays work steadily every morning lofting water droplets off Lake Malawi and the Indian Ocean which in turn cool, condense and fall to freshen the breeze blowing our way.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Even from unseen parts we feel the results.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Where seen, it is beautiful as the cumulonimbus billow overhead higher than we fly when coming here, sheets of rain fall, marching across the Lumbadzi River valley north and east of us, progressively hiding the Dowa mountains in the distance, visually demonstrating the process which brings us relief, and water to settle the dust and seemingly awaken the world.<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Many have already planted.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Others are doing so now.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Napoleon and other large farmers are busy spraying herbicides before their fields are taken over ere the corn even sprouts.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Fields prepared by hand have been ready for several weeks revealing freshly brown broken lumps of clay.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>A few are still being turned by hoe.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>But now it is planting time, and most are at it.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>The frogs form a deep-throated “amen” chorus, welcoming the gushers as the storm passes and the rain subsides to a drizzle.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>The birds sing after the rain as if it were morning again, and maybe it is, a seasonal morning of new life.<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">For several days now the little orange and blue-black beetles (see “Lava Bugs”, posted Wednesday, March 17) have swarmed our ceiling and walls.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>We’ve learned that the mosquito coils we use have no effect on them, but they occasionally do fall off the ceiling to crawl through hats and hair, down our necks or up our sleeves.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Interesting little critters—they do keep you awake in the late evenings with dim light and the press of the day every heavier on the eyelids.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>The mosquito population has not changed much yet.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>But they will soon catch up.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>We’ve been trying to get the holes in our roof patched and some better screens on our house, whose windows are filled with an eclectic ensemble of American and African architecture, each having its respective advantages, mostly in its proper place, but together conflicting frustratingly and preventing the best use of each the other’s features.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>The carpenters on campus have been tied up for weeks on other projects of higher priority, so we are making efforts to get those underway—and hopefully finished—soon.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Then the blessings of rainy season will not be slighted by its problems, and we’ll be able to enjoy without compromise the cool rebirth of life which will bless the next few months.<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Then today I learned that a dear friend and her husband are both infected with HIV, and he is ill.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>I am poignantly <span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>reminded in this season otherwise refreshing of the wise preacher’s comment that there is a time for everything: <span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>a time to be born and a time to die, a time to be happy, and a time to be sad.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>And sometimes in the many lives playing out before us, those times come to meet each other.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span><o:p></o:p></p>Brucehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08422217981031233334noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9075925728714948662.post-20280972907813066722010-11-20T08:05:00.000-08:002010-11-20T08:16:38.236-08:00A New Friend, Unwanted and Self-Detached<p class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 15.8333px; line-height: 21px; ">I have a new friend.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> Without invitation or welcome h</span>e first came into my sight on a recent Monday.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>One minute he wasn’t there, the next he was, off to my right and a little above center of whatever I was looking at.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>I call my friend “Maejong” because he reminds me of some of the characters on the playing pieces of that game.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>This new friend looks like a nest of folding dark lines with weighted strings hanging down, at times appearing as a jellyfish, at times like a ranger dangling from his parachute.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>I knew from first sight that my new friend was somewhere in my eye, my right eye.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>I can’t see him well as I can’t focus on him; he moves with my eyeball, always off to the right, always a little above the level of the object of focus.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"">I thought it was my cataract.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>About a year ago my family doctor (yes, I have one) told me I had an immature cataract in my right eye.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>I just thought it had caught my attention for the first time, <span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>that I was seeing it layered onto whatever I focused on.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>There was, however, one problem.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>The parachutist swung in the breeze at the end of his lines.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Whenever I looked quickly to the left, as my eyeball came to a halt, and with it most of my friend, the lower “strings” of my new friend swept up and left.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>When I looked right, my friend’s dependencies swung up and to the right.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>This is not what a cataract should do.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Then the lights came.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"">Six days later after I first saw my friend, on a Sunday evening just as dark fell I was walking out to the Blessings Hospital portal to welcome some friends who were driving out to visit us.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>I was reading in the dim light and my eyes were flitting back and forth across the page. When they moved to the right I saw a flashing band of blue light, over and over and over, line by line on the page, running from the top of my eye to the bottom flashing through the spot occupied by my new friend.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Light flashes are associated with retinal detachment which may cause loss of sight.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>My friend had my attention.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>But my impression was that there was no ophthalmologist living and working in Malawi.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"">Early the next morning I called my friend Perry Jensen, another family doc who has cared for AIDS patients in Malawi for ten years.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Perry knew of two opthalmologists in the country, one at Kamuzu Central Hospital, the referral hospital for the central region of the country, the other was at a Nkhoma Mission Hospital about 40 km south of the capital, and Perry knew him.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>I chose Perry’s friend, gave him a call, and was encouraged to show up as soon as possible that day.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"">Mtendere’s driver was able to accompany us, and we took off, arriving a little before noon.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>After discovering that we had met the hospital’s volunteer optician from Luxembourg in the immigration office, I had a thorough exam by a young ophthalmologist who looked younger than my son.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>You know you’re getting old when your doctors look like your children, and I got another gentle reminder when the doctor told me my new friend was nothing to worry about, just the result of a “maturing” eye.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>It seems the vitreous in my right eye, the gelatinous stuff that fills most of the eye ball, back in the back, is drying out, shrinking, getting a little wrinkled, and doesn’t need as much space as it once did.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Thus it has pulled away from the eyeball, a “posterior vitreous detachment”.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Some strings of tissue are literally hanging loose in the space that is left.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>There is a slightly increased risk of a future retinal detachment, which would be accompanied by a <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">different </i>pattern of light flashes, but nothing really serious at the moment.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>He will see me again at a hospital closer to home in about six weeks.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"">So I confidently play with my new friend, aware of his faithful presence when I move my eye, especially at night, enjoying the blue light, usually a bar, at times a ring around my visual field, but always a reminder of the sixty-one years walking on this earth.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" align="center" style="text-align:center"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"">“Today I’m nearer to my home,<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" align="center" style="text-align:center"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"">much nearer than before.”<o:p></o:p></span></p>Brucehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08422217981031233334noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9075925728714948662.post-65806673447269925182010-11-16T09:46:00.001-08:002010-11-16T10:30:32.790-08:00Wheels!!!—Or, “Lessons on the Importation of Diplomatic Vehicles Already in Malawi.”<p class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 15.8333px; ">Our quest for transportation for our ministry began at budgeting time about 18 months ago.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>We had been assured by Malawian missionaries that churches could import vehicles free of duty, so we counted on that, budgeting $55,000 for a Toyota Hi-lux or Land Cruiser allowing for addition of an extra fuel tank, bull bar, luggage rack, etc.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>A number of good folk shared with us generously (see below), but we always seemed a little behind on our budget, not quite getting there.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Then we moved to <st1:country-region st="on"><st1:place st="on">Malawi</st1:place></st1:country-region>, and a number of smaller “one-time” expenses came due, drawing down our fund.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Very early on here we learned that some Malawian churches had been passing out duty free vehicles to their senior members as benefits, not exactly what the law had envisioned when it gave churches duty-free status.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>So, seemingly overnight (was it by presidential decree?) churches were allowed only to import single cabin pickups, trucks or buses, none of which fit our needs for village visits in Malawi and travel to other countries in the region.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Our partner, Napoleon Dzombe, who is very well-known in central Malawi, and is also the imagination, brains and probably the biggest single contributor to the hard work behind the six different projects here on our campus, was sought out by the new Land Rover dealership to help them launch their sales campaign, trying to put Land Rover back on the road here.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Napoleon encouraged us to try to get the same sweetheart deal he’d been given, but the problem was we didn’t have quite that much cash.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Then when we got it, the Land Rover had gone up $10,000, and the next month it went up $10,000 more.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>We visited the Toyota dealership regularly and wrote letters seeking funds.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Another foundation offered us a challenge grant which would get us close to the purchase price.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>But we just couldn’t seem to get over the edge.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Then Napoleon went to <st1:place st="on">Europe</st1:place>.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">He had to get a visa via a European embassy here which, in Malawi, covers for its neighbor which Napoleon was visiting.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>The Malawian who was screening Napoleon asked him, “Would you like to buy a good car?”<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Napoleon learned that one of their diplomats was finishing his two year tour, and that he wanted to sell his personal vehicle which had only 30,000 kilometers (about 19,000 miles) on it.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Napoleon looked at the car, a beautiful 2008 Nissan Patrol and knew it was a very good deal, even if not inexpensive.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">He called us to a meeting before he left.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>“If you don’t buy this car, I’m going to sell <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:normal"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">you!</i></b>” <span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>We made an appointment to see it and were given a ride by the same embassy worker.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>It was a very nice car.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Not the luxury model, but very nice.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>It was not a steal, but the price was reasonable for what it was.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> And it would go to any village in rainy season as well as cover the mileage of southeastern Africa we'd be traveling. </span>The price would more than double, however, with the import duty, and we didn’t have that much money.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> S</span>ome modifications would also have to be made to bring it up to the standards we were seeking (bull bar, etc.).<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>A series of meetings with the diplomat began.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>He wanted to be paid in his home currency which would protect him against vacillations of the dollar.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>For the same reason, we would have rather paid in dollars.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Others wanted the car, but had trouble coming up with that much of the diplomat’s currency.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>We could get the currency, as our money was in a U.S. bank, but we wanted a guarantee that we would not go above a certain dollar figure.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>We dickered over this point, the diplomat refusing to sign a contract we drew up until the currency exchange rate was no longer an issue.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal">The diplomat wanted to keep the car until the day he left and all the money had to be in his bank account before he would hand it over.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>We wanted the deal to be called off if an accident occurred on his watch.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Eventually it became apparent that trust was necessary to make a deal, a trust greater than our brief friendship with this announced agnostic would support, even though he was also a gentle and wise senior statesman who cared deeply for the impoverished villagers and workers of Malawi.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>We could only trust him in spite of the many circumstance which could intervene to sour this deal by first trusting the Lord.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal">As the diplomat’s departure date moved back and forth we were rattled and frustrated.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>The dollar rose and fell against his currency, but never so far that the deal would have to be off.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Finally we had to say to the good brothers and sisters at church and the bank in Montgomery, “Just do it.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Buy the currency at the best possible moment and wire it to his account."<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>The best possible moment became “anytime now”; then it was done, at least in America.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal">The currency was purchased and wired on a Tuesday.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>The diplomat had promised that his assistant would help us with the paperwork for the two remaining steps, importation and change of title, but the assistant wanted the week of his boss’ departure for vacation.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>We had to finish all the paperwork before the end of the previous week.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>To change the title we would also have to demonstrate that we had insurance.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>We priced insurance on Wednesday and sealed a deal with the best offer.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>On Thursday morning we changed money at the ForEx (foreign exchange bureau), and purchased the insurance, receiving the certificate and sticker we needed.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>We visited the embassy and got the diplomat’s signature on the importation papers verifying that he was selling the car to us, at what cost, and his original cost of the car.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>The assistant brought the car for inspection to Customs who verified the VIN and motor number and certified that the price was reasonable for that car.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>It was then discovered that a mistake had been made on the documents by Customs and new paperwork had to be signed by the diplomat.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>This would be done Friday morning.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Beth got in line at the bank Friday at 7:30 to get a certified check for the duty while I went to the embassy nearby to pick up the re-signed papers.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>With those in hand we headed back to Customs.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>At the proper office no one was in.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>They were all in a meeting.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>We took the check downstairs and paid the tax (greater than the selling price of the car!).<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>On return, no one was there yet.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>An attentive ear at each door discovered the meeting, the door was cracked, the supervisor’s eye caught, and he came to help us.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>In five more minutes we were off.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">At the regional road traffic office we were told that a diplomat’s car had to be handled at the national office, thankfully only two blocks up the street.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>We raced up the way, arriving at 10:30.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>The staff was very pleasant with the bad news:<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>“Your papers are all in order, but the network is down.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Please come back after lunch.”<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>At that point the diplomat’s assistant left us to try to finish up some things at the office before his vacation.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>We were on our own.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">We returned at 1:30.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>The staff arrived at 1:45.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>The network was back up, and we got in line near the front.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Our turn came quickly, and the re-review of our papers was met with, “Where’s the letter saying the car is being sold to you?”</p> <p class="MsoNormal">“We have this sales agreement, signed by both parties.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal">“No, that won’t do. Here, use this one for an example,” and from the stack someone else’s letter appeared.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Beth quickly took notes while I called the diplomat.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">“We need you to sign another letter, sir.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>May we come over right now?”</p> <p class="MsoNormal">“Another letter?<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>My assistant said that would be all.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal">“Yes sir, we thought so, but they say we need another letter.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal">“Of course.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>I’m here packing.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Come right over.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>I live in Area . . .<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Do you know the way?”<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>I took careful notes on the directions.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">And, “yes,” the clerk responded to our query, “you will have to have the car inspected to complete your paperwork, but if you get back before 3:30 we’ll be able to finish everything.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal">Mtendere Children’s Village uses its truck on Fridays to shop for the next week’s operating supplies, so we had rented a car with driver for what we knew was going to be a harrowing and possibly feverish race against the clock.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>We were glad he was driving as Beth dictated based on the letter we’d seen, in the back seat I wrote by hand in a steno pad, trying to compensate for the bumps and curves.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>The assistant called me regarding why another letter was needed.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>His reply to my answer:<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>“Oh, yes.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:normal"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal">That </i></b>letter.”<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal">We arrived at the diplomat’s home just as I finished writing, finding the house on the fourth leg we tried from the appointed intersection.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>The maid ushered us to the patio and offered much-needed water.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>The gentleman appeared, inquired about the rationale again, then signed the letter handwritten on both sides of a steno page.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Then we told him we had to have the car inspected.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>This had not been contemplated by his assistant either, but the diplomat drove with us, I riding with him, Beth carrying the letter on ahead with our driver.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>The diplomat could not let someone else drive a car with his embassy’s plates on it.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">The diplomat’s presence provided a little grease to the wheels of bureaucracy.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>As I mentioned his presence to the clerks, and that he hoped this process could be completed today, the information was relayed to supervisors, papers were placed on top of the stack and returned in a few short minutes.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>A first payment was made downstairs, a computerized form generated, back to clerk, back to supervisor, back across the hall to the clerk, a second payment was made downstairs, and then the “last step”.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>“Where do we find the inspector?”</p> <p class="MsoNormal">“Oh, for that you have to go back to the regional office of the Road Traffic Department.”<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Back in the two cars we hit the busy main street and pulled into the front lot of the appropriate office.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>A quick inquiry revealed that we needed to pull around back to the inspection lane.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Having done so, I sought an inspector.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>One was engaged, took our paperwork, and eventually came out to inspect.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">The inspection lane is a narrow alley between two buildings with a dangerously deep center pit for underside inspections (absolutely unused for any of several cars I’ve seen inspected there).<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>With the diplomat in the car, the balding inspector, walking around the car to observe, shouted for him to turn on various lights and turn indicators.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>We could not figure out how to turn on the fog lights and the inspector gave up.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>They aren’t mandatory, just interesting.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>But it’s nearing 4:00 on Friday.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal">The diplomat was asked to wait on the side, the inspector slid behind the wheel, shut the door, sounded the horn several times, revved the 6 cylinder diesel, and popped the clutch.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Smoking rubber was left on the slick cement both on takeoff and on slamming the all-round ABS brakes two seconds later.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>The triad was repeated with braking after a run of about 20 feet onto gravel approaching a curve with a steep upward bank guarding the far side of the curve.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Our car joined the previous cars that had “Passed”, sliding into the curve with ABS complaining, coming to a halt before it hit the bank.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>“He’s no inspector, just a cowboy!” the diplomat expressed his disgust at the treatment of the vehicles.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>I was thinking about how much a tire balancing would cost and where I’d get it done well.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>But forms were checked off:<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>“Pass”.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>This was verified, as required, by a second official.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>“What next?”<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>I asked, as one man reviewed my papers.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">“Take this and hurry, <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:normal"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">hurry </i></b>to the front of the building and pay 1000 Kwacha.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:normal"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">Hurry!!!</i></b>”<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:normal"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal"> </i></b><span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>It was straight up 4:00.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>I ran.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">The office was closed at 4:02 but two or three others bargained through an open window.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>As I joined them the diplomat pulled the car around in front of us.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>“Good afternoon.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Please, this car is being sold by a European Diplomat, and he wants to finish today so he can leave the country shortly.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal">“You live in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">Lumbadzi</i>; you’re no diplomat.”<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal">“Noooo.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>I’m the buyer.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>See that car out there?<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>That’s the diplomat.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>See those plates?<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>‘10 CD <st1:metricconverter productid="8’" st="on">8’</st1:metricconverter>”.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>[CD = diplomatic corps.]<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal">“Well, all right.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>That’ll be 6000 kwatcha.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal">“I was told 1000.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal">“No, it’s 6000.”<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal">I handed over six thousand.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>“But I need a receipt.”<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal">“That paper you have is your receipt.” <span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>There it was:<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>1000 <st1:country-region st="on"><st1:place st="on">Malawi</st1:place></st1:country-region> Kwacha.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>I didn’t argue.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>The day was over.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>The deed was done.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>We had been helped. The cost of express service.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">We left and hurried back up the road to the national office, all our papers in hand.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>“Is there anything else we need to do?”</p> <p class="MsoNormal">“Just make your plates.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal">“And where do we do that?”</p> <p class="MsoNormal">“Just down the street here, at the bakery, just before the regional office.” The driver knew the place. </p> <p class="MsoNormal">It made no sense, but we headed for the bakery as the diplomat headed home to finish packing.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>I had been told that one of several [Asian] Indian shops could make the plates.<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">We saw the bakery, surrounded by several auto parts stores and pulled in.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>As we hopped out, appropriate documents in hand, an employee on his way out the door of one of the parts stores turned around and ushered us in.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Over the protests of the manager he asked for our number, the size of our plates (which we quickly confirmed on their samples), if ours was to be a <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">private</i> vehicle (yellow plates), grabbed the blanks, went aside to a machine, and quickly stamped out both front and rear plates.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>“Four thousand nine hundred kwacha.”<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal">“I understood they were twenty-five hundred.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal">“A decade ago.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal">More express service. We paid up and walked out, paint still wet, carefully propping our new plates on the floorboard and in the back seat.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>One thing was left:<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>the money for the sale had not yet arrived in the diplomat’s bank account. He had remarked that it was interesting that we were navigating the Malawian bureaucracy faster than we could that of U.S. capitalism.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Sometimes that’s the way it is.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">The diplomat called on Saturday afternoon to say that the money had been posted to his account.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Would we like to come get the car?<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>We declined, noting that we’d spent three days in town and were just “hanging low” at the house today with no desire to get out.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>We’d pick the car up on Sunday afternoon after 4:00 when we finished doing some internet work in town.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>A call from the diplomat Sunday afternoon noting an urgent matter at the embassy moved us to 10:00 Monday.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>We were able to get there in time with the help of Mtendere’s driver, change the plates out, and then drive off in the car which many of you have made possible. <span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal">We are thankful to God for this very unusual opportunity.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>We would not have bought so nice a car, but it was the only one we could afford.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>A new car never came within reach of our bank balance, and most used imports are 6-8 years old or older, too worn to take on international trips regularly.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>We are thankful to all those who contributed specifically to this effort (including some of you of whom I probably haven’t heard of yet), and those who are considering a contribution based on our recent appeal.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Though I know we’re close, I don’t think the car is paid for yet.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>(I’m not sure where our current balance stands, and the final cost of the car was more than we had planned due to exchange rates and higher-than-expected taxes).<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>To enable the deal, Landmark (<a href="http://www.landmark.org/">www.landmark.org</a>) has covered the difference to the end of the year.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>And, we still need some money for the add-ons I’ve mentioned and driving the car around the region next year for the seminars we will teach.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Our working fund is supplying current, “without-a-car” needs, so one-time or regular contributions would still be of help.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">Those whom I know have contributed toward our “one-time” expenditures, the largest of which is this car, include:<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" align="center" style="text-align:center">The Church of Christ Foundation (of southern California)<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" align="center" style="text-align:center">Christopher Matthews<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" align="center" style="text-align:center">Henriette Baker<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" align="center" style="text-align:center">Sunny Hills Church of Christ, Fullerton, California<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" align="center" style="text-align:center">Mr. and Mrs. Russell Presley<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" align="center" style="text-align:center">Otter Creek Church of Christ, Nashville, Tennessee<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" align="center" style="text-align:center">David and Rebecca Matthews<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" align="center" style="text-align:center">Peter and Pamela Bogdanovic Charitable Trust<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" align="center" style="text-align:center">Body and Soul Ministries (BandS)<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" align="center" style="text-align:center">Pleasant Valley Church of Christ, Little Rock<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" align="center" style="text-align:center">Warren and Phyllis Skaug<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" align="center" style="text-align:center">Boyd Pate<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" align="center" style="text-align:center">Ezell Foundation<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" align="center" style="text-align:center">Christian Service Committee, Searcy, Arkansas<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" align="center" style="text-align:center">Margaret Peters<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" align="center" style="text-align:center">Julie Commander<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" align="center" style="text-align:center">Summer Darnell<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" align="center" style="text-align:center">Kelley Maltby<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" align="center" style="text-align:center">An Anonymous Foundation Supporting Mission Efforts in Churches of Christ<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" align="center" style="text-align:center"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" align="center" style="text-align: left;"><o:p></o:p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 15.8333px; ">Regular contributors include:</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><o:p></o:p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 15.8333px; ">University Church of Christ, Tuscaloosa, Alabama</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" align="center" style="text-align:center"><o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" align="center" style="text-align:center">Chandler Street Church of Christ, Kilgore, Texas<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" align="center" style="text-align:center">Redlands (California) Church of Christ<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" align="center" style="text-align:center">Linda Taylor<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" align="center" style="text-align:center">George and Kris Conner<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" align="center" style="text-align:center">Henriette Baker<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" align="center" style="text-align:center">Robert and Allison Berger<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" align="center" style="text-align:center">Paul and Judy Teeter<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" align="center" style="text-align:center"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" align="center" style="text-align: left;"><o:p>Our primary salary and support come from Landmark Church of Christ, Montgomery, Alabama.</o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><o:p> "</o:p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 15.8333px; ">To God be the glory,</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" align="center" style="text-align:center"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 15.8333px; ">Great things he has done,"</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" align="center" style="text-align:center"><o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" align="center" style="text-align:center"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 15.8333px; ">And continues to do.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" align="center" style="text-align:center"><o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>Brucehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08422217981031233334noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9075925728714948662.post-29807185359136646682010-11-14T06:40:00.000-08:002010-11-14T07:00:06.301-08:00A Needless Death-II<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"">She was about 25.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>She hadn’t done well in school, so at a young age she had decided to try her hand at something else where she might do better—marriage.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"">She found a man to marry her and they began their life together.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>No wedding, just a coming together with an announcement to the community: “We’re married now.”<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Two children were born.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>One died of malaria, and the community became suspicious of HIV.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"">A divorce occurred.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Her brother did not know why or what the circumstances were.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Now she was a single mom with one surviving child, and HIV.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"">Her test had been positive, and at some time she had begun on antiretrovirals, life-saving medicines that have normalized the life span of HIV patients who are diagnosed early in the disease’s progression and while they are still young—if they take their meds like their lives depend on it; they do.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>She was young, but apparently not diagnosed early.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>The hospital was not very far away, but she was sick a lot, and going even a few kilometers on foot was a problem when sick.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>She was very poor, and probably ashamed of her status.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>It was not easy to get a ride.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>So she missed an appointment and then ran out of meds.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>She may have stopped and started her meds several times.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>And then she died.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"">Primary Cause of Death:<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Unknown, but some opportunistic infection, possibly tuberculosis, malaria, or cryptococcal (fungal) meningitis. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"">Secondary Cause of Death:<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome—AIDS<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"">Tertiary Cause of Death:<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Infection with the Human Immunodeficiency Virus--HIV<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"">Contributing Factors:<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Stigma, Shame, Poverty, Unfaithfulness, Single Motherhood, Social Isolation.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>All these are things which the church must address in its God-given mission to help the helpless, defend the fatherless and the widow, offer forgiveness to the guilty and hope to the hopeless, to love the apparently unlovely whom Jesus loved enough to associate with, to care for, to speak up for (as his Father and ours has done since the beginning of time), and then to die for that we (yes, we are among them) might live to tell the story to others who need to hear it and to live that ongoing story in relationship with them.<o:p></o:p></span></p>Brucehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08422217981031233334noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9075925728714948662.post-82153270111065828902010-11-10T09:09:00.000-08:002010-11-10T09:23:51.632-08:00“We are One”<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"">I have been reading psychiatrist F. Scott Peck’s, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">The Road Less Traveled</i>, which was recommended to me by the late Dr. Henry Farrar, inspiring mentor to many of us, just two weeks before his death in February.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Peck talks about the peace he had as his wedding approached, peace that lasted until he arrived at the altar where he was almost overcome by terror:<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>he suddenly realized the magnitude of the commitment he was making, and the implications of that commitment being permanent, and conversely of it being anything but permanent.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"">A few weeks ago Beth and I began to eat lunch at Mtendere Children’s Village, the home for over 100 orphan children which is located right behind the house where we live.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>We looked forward to the help for our Chichewa from conversing with the children and staff, as well as the increased time with them.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>We paid the administrator of the orphanage, Gracian Chisema, for the first couple of meals, a very small sum, probably less than we spend at home to fix lunch.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>We missed several days after that and then started up again, and talked to Gracian about payment.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>“Talk to Tiwonge” [his operations manager].<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>“She’ll take care of it.”<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>We talked to Tiwonge, and she refused to take our money, referring us back to the administrator.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>When we saw Gracian again, he said, “Yeah, Tiwonge talked with me the other day and said, ‘We all eat down there from time to time, and none of the rest of the staff pay, so why should the Smiths pay.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>They’re just as much our staff as anyone else.’<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>So, you’re not going to pay.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>We are one.”<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"">“We are one.”<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>That’s quite a statement.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>It’s a sword that cuts two ways.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>First, it’s a really high compliment.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>At this stage in our language learning to be told, “You are just as much a part of our staff as anyone else here,” is really an honor.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>We are not staff. <span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Not for the orphanage, nor for the food processing plant, nor for Feed the Children, nor for Educate the Children, certainly not for the School of Agriculture for Family Initiative [SAFI], nor even for Blessings Hospital.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>We are students of Chichewa working toward a new HIV project which will be based on campus because we are here.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>We occasionally chauffer the staff here or there.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>I hold a devotional with the older boys of Mtendere two or three nights a week.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>One or two of the guards run with me most mornings.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>And, we are the only biological family living on campus.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>But we are not really staff.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Something is happening, however, that is bonding us to them--and them to us.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>This blessed something is also a two way street.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 15.8333px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 21px;">W</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 15.8333px; line-height: 21px; ">ith privilege comes responsibility.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Beth and I have been reading a couple of relevant books: <span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal">African Friends and Money Matters</i> discusses the clashes between American values about money and African values about money, and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">Leading Cross-culturally</i> points out that many American (and some African) values about money have their roots in the Kingdom of Darkness, the Kingdom of this World, not in the Kingdom of Heaven, the Kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Africans are much more communal about money.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Americans are much more individualistic about it.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>For Africans, what is mine, or yours, is often ours.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>For Americans, what’s mine is mine unless I decide to make it yours.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>And don’t push me!<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>It’s still mine!!!<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>For Africans, whoever has a lot of money is a welcome part of this sharing community, a tremendous potential resource.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>And though we Smiths may have much less money than we did not too long ago, we still are so, so rich compared to most of our colleagues.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>We thus qualify:<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>we’re a tremendous resource.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>I must add here that this is not consciously nor conspiringly considered any more than “It’s mine!” is consciously or calculatingly contemplated.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>They are, respectively, each in the place where it rules, just part of the unconscious fabric of life.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"">I’m not sure I want to be “one” with anyone but Beth and the Lord, and at times I have my doubts about them.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>I want to keep what’s ours.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>I want us to use it the way we want to.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>I don’t want anyone considering mine to be his or hers.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>But (the books also point out) that is not the way of life in the Kingdom of Heaven. (Read the ends of the </span><span style="line-height: 115%; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; "><span class="Apple-style-span" ><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:115%; font-family:"Times New Roman","serif";mso-fareast-font-family:Calibri; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-latin;mso-ansi-language:EN-US;mso-fareast-language: EN-US;mso-bidi-language:AR-SA">2<sup>nd</sup> and 4<sup>th</sup> </span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" ><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 12pt; ">chapters of Acts.)</span></span><span style="font-size: 12pt; "> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" ><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 12pt;">And as I exhort some of you to give up some fairly large chunks of “yours” to help us do what we want to do here, I run a great risk of standing condemned on my own appeal.</span></span><span style="font-size: 12pt; "> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" ><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 12pt;">Now don’t get me wrong.</span></span><span style="font-size: 12pt; "> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" ><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 12pt;">In Africa there are ways of saying “No”, ways to save some money, there is wisdom and foolishness with regard to money.</span></span><span style="font-size: 12pt; "> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" ><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 12pt;">But current relationships are more likely to rule than the bank balance or fears for the future. Days are taken more one at a time.</span></span><span style="font-size: 12pt; "> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" ><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 12pt;">I think there’s something about that in a book somewhere too, isn’t there? </span></span><span style="font-size: 12pt; "> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" ><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 12pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"">And so “We are one.”<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>As we by fits and starts, through hesitation and willingness, stubbornness and submission grow in these new relationships and by so doing learn more of what the Kingdom of Heaven is like, what the guidelines are for really trusting the Provider of us all (and not our own strength, or financial acuity, or business skills or any other aspect of “me” which I’ve been really been given by Him for service to others, which I’ve supposedly entrusted to Him as part of our agreement), as we learn what the guidelines are for living the best kind of life possible, pray that we will receive them, live them, and demonstrate to the world around that we do know the One who is three in one, who invites us to be one with him, and with each other</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 15.8333px; line-height: 21px; "> through <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal">trust, </i>to his praise and glory, and the growth of this life-giving oneness throughout the world.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span></span></p>Brucehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08422217981031233334noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9075925728714948662.post-24320511295796124992010-10-23T05:02:00.000-07:002010-10-23T05:06:25.855-07:00Of Good Grooming, Light Sabers, Working Wages, and the Lord’s Supper<p class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 18px; ">“My elders have reported to me that they are out of razors and have asked if I might help them get some.”</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"">The speaker was K. Banda, a guard (yes, male) at our complex and a friend.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>He had asked me one Sunday in August to go with him and another brother to church in Mponela for a gospel meeting, which turned out to be a pleasant visit to a church in a village within Mponela’s jurisdiction, a village which neighbors K.’’s home village.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>We were able to meet K.’s wife and at least one of his children and lots of church members from all over Mponela who had come for the event.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>We know his church, which now needs razors.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"">I wondered why.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Some African Americans have to shave regularly or grow longer beards with a dangerous interim where curly facial hair tends to turn inward and cause bothersome if not serious infections on the face.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>I presume Africans might have a similar problem, but I’ve not seen or heard of it firsthand.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Kay asked me how much razors cost.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"">I use one of those multibladed gizmos which Gillette sent me and every other American male in the mail on the “if you try it you’ll like it” theory, and then I’m buying the heads from them for life--or until something better comes along.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>I clean up my beard once a week here and haven’t bought razors in ages.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>I have not a clue how much a pack of Bics would cost here in Malawi, but I’ve seen them and their Chinese knock-offs in the stores.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"">I’m trying to explain all this to Kay, who speaks very little English--I’m not even trying to touch this subject with my Chichewa.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Malawians do not differentiate between the “R” sound and the “L” sound, so I begin to correct Kay’s English since I’m not making much headway explaining permanent handles and replaceable heads of multi-bladed razors.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>“Laser.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>That’s a special kind of ‘torch’ (the English word for flashlight in this part of Africa) which is very powerful, very strong.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>It can burn holes in things.”<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>If I can’t explain razors how am I going to explain lasers which I myself hardly comprehend, but I’m on a roll.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>I write in the dust “Laser”, then “Razor”, then we do a little speech therapy.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>(I get a lot of this from Malawians.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Turn about’s fair pay.)<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>K., probably more frustrated than I am at this point, writes out in the dust his understanding of the word, “Raises” and we launch into the even more foreign concept, at least for Malawians, of getting paid a little more. <span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Actually, this was a big cue to what he was really after, but I missed it completely.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"">Then, like the locks on some of our doors around here, the conceptual key finally falls into place and the mental bolt turns.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Kay explains that he’s looking for “What’s used for Holy Communion instead of wine.”<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Raisins!!!<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>In a laudable attempt to be Biblical about worship, to do what first century churches did, many congregations in tropical Africa, churches in villages which have no electricity and have no spring for a spring-house, soak and then boil raisins to extract the essence of grape as juice:<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>fruit of the vine, African style.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>The only problem is that raisins are almost as rare as grape juice.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Both can be bought here, but grape juice is considerably more expensive.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Both are imported—no grapes are grown here, and it costs a lot to move all that water around the world.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>(Most liquids we consume, with the exception of hard liquor--greater than 100 proof--are mostly water, heavy and costly to move.)<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>African struggles to do communion right, however, are another story.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"">Kay Banda was not looking for a shave for his friends at home, or a light saber, much less an increase in pay.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>His elders are just looking for a little help in getting raisins to make “fruit of the vine” for the Lord’s Supper.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Transportation issues and other short-term problems have kept us away from the grocery store for several days, so we may be in town this afternoon, certainly before the weekend, and we’ll see how much raisins are for Kay and his church back home.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>And we’ll continue plugging away at better communication skills with our Chichewa friends here in Malawi.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>Brucehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08422217981031233334noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9075925728714948662.post-7392485611053045202010-10-09T02:10:00.000-07:002010-10-09T02:23:41.580-07:00"St-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-ppp!!!!!!!"<p class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 18px; ">It was all I could say, but it was enough.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"">The driver of the car was a young man, and in that exuberance and impatience of youth which most of us show at one time or another, he was anxious to be out of there, out of the parking lot that was much too small for its clientele.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>The ten shop mini-mall is shaped like the state of Mississippi, and the parking lot fills what would be that piece of Louisiana east of New Orleans.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>The lot will hold only about 12 cars max and today there was a 14-passenger van and a 25-passenger tour bus which the small car’s driver had to maneuver around.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>So he jerked his small sedan back out of its space next to the patio where we sat, and then forward.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>I thought he was clear to move ahead to the gate, but he thought otherwise, paused, and the back-up lights came on as he prepared to head my direction again—in reverse.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>He didn’t see the boy.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"">We were eating at the best Italian restaurant in Lilongwe, which occupies the southern extension of that map of Mississippi which this property forms.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Where that southern leg joins what would be the main body of the state, right in the angle, there are steps going up from where we were eating to the rest of the “strip mall,” the first business on the left being an Italian deli.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>The toddler and his mother and father of course were eating at the first outdoor table at the top of the steps.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>The boy, probably tired of sitting as most toddlers shortly are, escaped down the steps, and failing to get his parents attention at first move, proceeded full bore into the parking lot.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Dad had his back to the parking lot, and Mother was seated to one side.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Neither saw what was developing until it was too late.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Dad leaped down the stairs, but he wouldn’t get there in time.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"">I had seen the child’s exuberant escape, distracted from the weekly comics Beth and I were reading together via internet, but I thought the car would be gone before the boy would come into danger.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>The driver’s decision to insure his clearance of the bus was synchronous with the boy hitting the parking lot. <span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>As the car reversed, I was out of my chair.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>The boy came into the car’s path, saw it coming and froze, out of the driver’s sight well below the trunk line.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"">I was moving when the back-up lights came on that second time, but I wasn’t going to make it, and if I had, the car would have hit us both as I crouched to scoop up the child.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>I threw out my <span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>hands in front of me, still in full forward tilt, and gave it my best game voice, “St-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-ppp!!!!!!!”<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>The car came to a halt, the father caught the child and scooped him into his arms, hugged him and started back up the steps.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>(No whipping or shaking, thank goodness.) With both adults and the child out of the way, the driver decided he already had sufficient clearance and accelerated out the gate.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"">The couple sitting at the table next to us said “Thank you.”<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Squished child does not help the appetite on the patio of even the best Italian restaurant.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>I thanked God the boy was ok.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>I guess it pays sometime to have a little ADD.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Even our weaknesses, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">especially</i> our weaknesses, can be used as a blessing to others to God’s praise and glory.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span><u style="text-underline:double"><span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span><span style="display:none;mso-hide:all">Dd<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span></span></u><o:p></o:p></span></p>Brucehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08422217981031233334noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9075925728714948662.post-26939507107870838562010-09-26T06:05:00.000-07:002010-09-26T07:15:00.503-07:00A Needless Death<p class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 18px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">She was 40.</span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Her oldest child was 20, her youngest 7.</span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Her second child, like thousands of other children across Malawi, is waiting the results of standardized testing at the end of “Form 2”, his sophomore year in high school.</span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">These results will determine whether he enters Form 3 or repeats the first two years.</span><span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Her husband died about four years ago, and she tested positive for HIV.</span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">She steadfastly refused everyone’s efforts to get her to take anti-retroviral medication.</span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">When she came down with active tuberculosis she also refused treatment falsely stating that she had several small children at home whom she could not leave for the intense initiation of treatment at the District Hospital.</span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Instead, she returned home to the little house she occupied with all her children.</span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Finally they convinced her to go to the hospital and begin treatment, where she died shortly after admission.</span><span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:11.0pt; line-height:115%;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif";mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi">There really is no reason for anyone to die early of HIV.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>A recent study, admittedly in the west, found that people who started treatment for HIV early in the course of the disease and who were younger (I believe that was not yet 60) at the time of initiation of treatment were as likely to live to an old age as their peers who were not infected with HIV.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>While the medication that has been available in Malawi until recently (the protocols are undergoing revision) are not the regimens that are currently recommended for initiation of therapy in the U.S., they served my patients extremely well in the opening days of multi-drug treatment, leading to prolonged suppression of the virus for those who took them as if their lives depended on it.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>As it turned out, their lives did depend on taking them exactly as indicated, always.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Some people had been on the medications for 10 years or more with no evidence of the virus in their blood since starting them.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:11.0pt; line-height:115%;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif";mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi">Medications are not as readily available for many Malawians as they need to be.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Some people have to walk many miles to get to a center that offers the life-saving drugs.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>That may have been part of the problem for this woman.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Yet, that does not seem to have been the case.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>She was in contact with people who could treat her, and her family could have cared for her children intermittently.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Her brother, a friend of mine and the source of this information, is a medical professional who tried to persuade her.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Why did she not submit to treatment?<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:11.0pt; line-height:115%;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif";mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi">The reasons for this sister’s actions will probably never be known.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>She may not have held any hope for the medications.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>She may have heard how “horrible” they were, and difficult to take, full of side-effects, and thus refused, not wanting to add insult to injury.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Often, however, stigma is the problem.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>People are afraid to take the medications because then people will know that they are HIV positive.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>“And we know good people shouldn’t be HIV positive.”<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Sometimes, however, the stigma is so deep that people stigmatize themselves.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>The worst kind of racism is that in which people hate themselves or others of their own kind because they belong to the group.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>This is also probably the worst kind of stigma around HIV.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>“Because I am HIV-positive I am a no-good, worthless person.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>I deserve to die.”<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:11.0pt; line-height:115%;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif";mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi">I have had a few other patients who had such an attitude.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> One</span> never took medications for HIV and she died of her disease eventually, after being pulled “out of the fire” on several occasions for opportunistic infections.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>She was a deeply religious woman, Roman Catholic, and she made statements to the effect that she deserved to suffer, that her suffering might somehow save her.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>For another similar case, see my blog at this site, “Shame, HIV, and the Body of Christ”, February, 2010. <o:p></o:p></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 18px; ">I wonder if something like this was not working in the sister who died today.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:11.0pt; line-height:115%;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif";mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi">At any rate, I am deeply saddened and very angry on the occasion of this needless death.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Needless!<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>All of us must die, but this woman need not have died leaving a seven year old and a son anxious over his grades, and others.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>She need not have died leaving her children with neither parent.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>The death of her husband should have been a wake-up call that saved her.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>But she refused to look to the help that was there.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Why do we continue to accept death from the evil one when we could take life from the Father of us all?<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Pray that as we increase in linguistic skills and embark on this ministry we will be able to join the Lord in offering life, to compellingly offer the resources of the Kingdom of God for life, convincing the wounded and afflicted to reject the Evil One’s seductively compelling offers of death.<o:p></o:p></span></p>Brucehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08422217981031233334noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9075925728714948662.post-73687792834997674472010-09-23T10:51:00.000-07:002010-09-23T10:54:03.988-07:00It's a Snake!<p class="MsoNormal">We have a den of squirrels in the attic, and tonight a mouse ran across the living room floor several times, so it shouldn’t surprise us that our rodent zoo would be visited by a slithery friend.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Last night, headed down the long hall to our bedroom, what should we see but a small snake moving right along with us.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span><o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Beth had passed into the bedroom when from the left of the hall it wiggled onto one of the steep down-hills and half slid down the slope.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>The brightly enameled smooth concrete floor didn’t offer much traction for crawling as the snake tried to reverse direction, so we had plenty of time for Beth to toss me a shoe (in this circumstance I have more confidence in a loafer in my hand than the identical shoe on my foot) and for me in turn to give it a few licks with the heel which eventually hit strategic places, and it lay still.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>I thought it was probably not poisonous, but this was our first encounter and I have yet to find a reasonable guide with illustrations of the snakes of <st1:country-region st="on"><st1:place st="on">Malawi</st1:place></st1:country-region>.<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">We cut off the head for good measure, lest it recover from a traumatic swoon and seek to join us in bed (I’m not too up on vital signs in long, thin reptiles), and left it in the hall for a closer examination in the morning.<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">When asking locals, there are only two or three kinds of snakes in Africa, the cobras, the mambas, and the puff adders, all highly poisonous, some proving fatal within fifteen minutes.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>But the book on the flora and fauna of a neighboring section of <st1:country-region st="on"><st1:place st="on">Malawi</st1:place></st1:country-region> that I saw in the bookstore on Saturday mentioned seven or eight classes, only two of which could present a direct health risk for humans, the cobra and the mamba.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Alas, there were no pictures!<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Everyone on campus who saw the snake said, “It’s a cobra!”<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>In response to my query, “What about this snake leads you to that conclusion?” I was rewarded with, “If this snake bites you on the leg, your leg will swell up very much and you may die.”<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>“Yes, but what do you see about this particular snake, this one right here, when you look at it that tells you it is one of those snakes?”<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>The reply was, “It is black and the tail gets smaller and smaller to the final point.”<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Now, this may well define the African cobra adequately (I know that it doesn’t have a hood like its Indian cousin), but I’ve seen lots of round, black snakes with smooth, sleek heads back in east Texas, and they weren’t poisonous.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>But again, that was East Texas and this is Southeast Africa, and I think the diamond head of the pit viper of the southern <st1:country-region st="on">U.S.</st1:country-region> is not characteristic of <st1:place st="on">Africa</st1:place>’s potentially dangerous snakes.<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Our snake measured about 8.25 inches long.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>It had a total of 167 body plates from just below the rear portion of the jaw attachment to the anal plate (I read something about number of plates in that book on Saturday) and I found no fangs of any kind while probing its mouth gently with my pocket knife. I must admit never having seen the “rear fangs” of one of <st1:country-region st="on"><st1:place st="on">Malawi</st1:place></st1:country-region>’s poisonous snakes, however, so I may have missed them.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span><o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">The snake probably entered via a garden door that opens into the hall and will not seal, though it has a double locking system.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>This week we’re going to the hardware store to buy rat and mouse traps.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Somehow I think if we can get the mouse to take the bait, we won’t have him around baiting the snakes.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>In the meantime if there’s an amateur herpetologist among my readers, tell us what you think, and what I should look for to know if there’s really a threat.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>And if anyone knows what to do with the squirrels, please pass that along, too.<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">(A week later on our morning run we came across what looked like a large rattle snake without rattlers who’d lost a fight with something, probably a car.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>We finished our run and returned in the Mtendere truck.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>This one had a diamond head and fangs, and is probably a puff adder as it looked like the one my son killed in <st1:country-region st="on"><st1:place st="on">Mozambique</st1:place></st1:country-region> in 2005.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>And they are colored just like a dried corn field.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Add that one to the list and keep watch in the corn.) <o:p></o:p></p>Brucehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08422217981031233334noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9075925728714948662.post-11296320323642418092010-09-11T07:13:00.001-07:002010-09-11T07:17:59.457-07:00Driving as Culture Shock<p class="MsoNormal">Living in another place requires adjustment which doesn’t come without the experience of stress.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>High-speed driving in the <st1:place st="on"><st1:country-region st="on">U.S.</st1:country-region></st1:place> is usually associated with the Interstate.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>In contrast, we live on the principal <st1:street st="on"><st1:address st="on">Malawian Highway</st1:address></st1:street>, M-1.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>M-1 has two lanes, and usually narrow, considerably variable shoulders, with nothing but a very faded, dashed line “separating” you from the oncoming traffic.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>I drive M-1—on the left side of the road, with the steering wheel on the right of the car and shifting gears with my left hand—and I occasionally run or walk along it, so I’ve gotten a closer look than I want at times. <span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span><o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">The shoulder along M-1 is defined with a yellow stripe, also quite faded.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>The shoulder may be as wide as a meter, or erosion may actually eat past the yellow stripe into the road-bed proper.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>The asphalt shoulder gives way to portions of gravelly clay undersurface which in turn transitions to the grass growing in the similar red clay of the surrounding soil.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>At times the transition from asphalt is very smooth, but even at entrances of dirt roads, it may present a four to six inch drop; at times it is up to 18 inches. <span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>At some points the deep indentations look like chunks of road bed have been taken by a giant “cookie monster”.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>This makes it difficult for pedestrians to walk beside the road or get off when the traffic is thick.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">While M-1 is full of cars and trucks of all kinds, sizes and shapes, including double trailers with six axles on each, the motor-powered vehicle is not the principle means of Malawian transportation.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>There are many more pedestrians and bicycles than motorized vehicles on most sections of M-1.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Pedestrians are usually aware, even wary, of the vehicular traffic, but occasionally they stumble home drunk as one young man I saw this evening.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Some times children run toward the road, but I’ve never seen one actually on the surface who wasn’t carefully crossing and of an age to do so.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Bicycles present a bigger challenge with occasional cargo of grass bundles three meters long, one meter presenting on the highway side, or the man I saw today carrying about a dozen five gallon pails fashioned out of tin on the back of his bike; at least he was walking, using his bike as a cart.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Mattresses, bamboo, goats and pigs, as well as people, get a lift on bikes, and these combinations present challenges coming down the edge of the highway.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Today I saw a bike strapped crosswise on the luggage rack of another bike:<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>a bicycle wrecker!</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">The most common means of long-distance transportation is the incredibly polyglot fleet of “mini-buses” that run the roads of Malawi.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>These 7 or 8 passenger vans which have been modified to optimally hold 12, but not uncommonly have 16-20 passengers, ply the roads, stopping suddenly to pick up or drop off passengers, re-entering the road with little warning, racing one another while fully loaded and occasionally resorting to blows to settle disputes with other drivers or passengers (they usually stop for this).<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Minibuses are crewed by a driver and a “conductor” who collects the fares and buys cans of gasoline while the driver recruits other passengers on the road side by the station.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Stress jumps a notch at 6:30 in the evening when it is already quite dark and many people are still working their way home, bright and errant lights shine in your face, and the ability to see and adjust for pedestrians or bicycles on the road is limited, and you<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>struggle to time your approach to reach them when there is not an oncoming car preventing your “swinging wide”.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>The worst-case scenario finds bicycles on opposite sides of the road passing pedestrians while you meet a tobacco truck whose cargo is hanging over by about a meter on each side, and behind him is a mini-bus driver hanging over the center stripe looking for his opportunity to pass.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>At least the truck is driving slow, where a car wouldn’t be, so that either can make the heart race and surely raise the blood pressure as well.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>It really gets wild when the approaching driver has his high beams on, you reach down to flash your own lights, and find you’ve sprayed washer fluid all over your windshield!<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Most modern autos on M-1 like to travel at 110 to 120 Km/hour.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>(70-75 mph), though the speed limit is 50 to a max of 80 (31-50 mph).<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>The big trucks usually are well under limits by necessity, but that generates tremendous impatience in the lighter traffic and motivates risk-taking.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Then there are the aged and decrepit.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Saturday night as we returned home late, we saw a faint light in the distance rounding corners, going our way.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>As we quickly overtook it, a pick-up with no tail lights (we finally saw reflectors as we approached) putted along, its engine trying to keep up with its electrical system.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>The one front light was on the left and pointed toward the ditch; when on dim almost nothing of the road could be seen; when on bright you knew a car was there.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">We drive no more than we have to (not having our own vehicle is a blessing in this) and we particularly avoid the hours just after dark.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>We absolutely refuse to be hurried on the road, and we take preventive measures to avoid the flying flak should others have accidents while taking risks around us.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>The most common cause of death for expatriates living in <st1:place st="on">Africa</st1:place> is an auto accident, and we take care to not become a part of the numerator in those data sets.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Pray that we may avoid the foolish and the temptation to become too condemning or bothered by others’ behavior on the road, that we may have eyes to see the obscure (go carrots!), and that we’ll never be perturbed by others’ impatience with us or their insistence that we get somewhere now.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>And as you enjoy your next drive down the interstate, send up a prayer for our safety on the road along with your own of thanksgiving.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span> </p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>Brucehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08422217981031233334noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9075925728714948662.post-9401088551781463592010-09-07T03:34:00.000-07:002010-09-07T03:43:08.826-07:00The Breathing “K”<p class="MsoNormal">What’s the difference between a guinea fowl and the possessive “my”? It’s the “h” that comes right after the “k”.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Spoken language not uncommonly includes sounds that are not indicated in the written form.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>The “h” after the “k” is one such sound in English.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Put the back of your hand right up close to your open mouth and say the word “Coke”.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Feel the puff of air against your hand after the “c”?<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>That’s the “h” (unwritten in English) that follows the “k” sound.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>“K” sounds in English when followed by a vowel, whether represented in writing with a “k” or a “c”, have that “h” behind them.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>We learn it as a part of the “k” sound without ever being told it’s there.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>So it doesn’t have to be written.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>“K” sounds at the end of words, however, such as the “k” in “coke” may or may not have the “h” after them!<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>(Bruce doesn’t, Beth does.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>How about you?)<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>And we learn that (whichever way we do it) without being told either.<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">For Chichewa, however, the national language of Malawi which we are learning to speak, there about as many “k’s” without the “h” as there are with it, even in the middle of words, and all are followed by vowels.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>So when a “k” appears you have to indicate whether you want the “h” with it, or not, (and, of course, say it) and the difference can be crucial.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>For example, the word for guinea fowl, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">nkhanga</i>, has the “h” after the “k”, but an almost identical word without the “h” is one of the eight different ways you can say “my” or “mine” in Chichewa.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>(Yes, eight different ways, each with its own particular place!<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>But that’s another story.) <span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>If you’re not getting the “h” right, though, there always the “n” before the “k” in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal">nkhanga</i> to distinguish “yours” from the fowl.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>But that’s another story too.<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">So try saying both “k” sounds in “coke” (or “cake”) without creating the puff of air which follows.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>I call it “swallowing” the “k”.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>You simply put the middle of your tongue up against your palate and pull it off just <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">before</i> making the vowel.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>It’s almost a quieter form of the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">cuckle</i> or <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal">click</i> you do when you pull the front of your tongue sharply away from your palate, and just one of a wide number of new sounds we’re learning to make.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Instant regression to one year old! <span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>But also a reminder of the terrible frustration that must come to little ones when their sounds are not understood.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>It probably won’t take us 2-3 years to be saying sentences, understanding and being understood, or will it?<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Please pray that it won’t.<o:p></o:p></p>Brucehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08422217981031233334noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9075925728714948662.post-42633716132486920182010-03-17T11:10:00.001-07:002010-03-23T11:55:37.405-07:00The Lava Bugs<p class="MsoNormal">I was staring at the ceiling reciting a sentence from the “opening prayer” I am memorizing for use on Sunday morning (in Chichewa, of course), when an ill-defined shape on the ceiling caught my attention.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>It looked somewhat like a balloon, maybe six to ten inches in diameter, somewhat ovoid, somewhat transparent with a fuzzy demarcation of its outer limits, and it “oozed” its way around the ceiling.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>As I watched several other blobs with ill-defined borders appeared and disappeared.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Some moved faster than other, some even seeming to dart, while most seemed to slide or roll, “ooze” is the best way I can say it, around and around.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal">It rained today, very, very hard.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>And some of the stains on the ceiling are a little larger than they were this morning, so I thought maybe I was seeing bubbles easing through a reservoir on the other side of the sheetrock.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>But these shapes moved forward and back, and always in somewhat of a circle on the ceiling.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>I then began searching for the source of the circle, as I realized these were shadows, and saw the bright light in the middle of the circle criss-crossed by lines, with a somewhat lesser light fading away from the darker circle in which the shapes moved.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>I was looking at the projection of the lampshade on the ceiling.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">We (Beth had joined my observations) have recently been invaded by little orange beetles with pearly blue-black wings, and with today’s rains they had renewed their efforts to take our house by storm.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>At least thirty of the pesky little critters ( their wings work, but their flight paths are not always in agreement with those of us who presume that we manage the house) were crawling all over the lampshade, and those who walked on the upper rim were well-illuminated against the ceiling, magnified many times.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal">The projection on the ceiling reminded of those “lava” lamps whose oil and water contents (or whatever it is) are in constant flux.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>But our lamp had no such features.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Just little orange bugs, like most of the rest of our living room (including the computer screen, and keyboard, and the front of my shirt, and sometimes the back of my hand.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>They really look wild walking across the upper rim of my glasses.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>No, I don’t eat them—see our newsletter at www.HIVemSA.org.)<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>We laughed about our immediate choice of entertainment, perhaps excusable what with a limited selection of books (though we haven’t read all at our fingertips), no movies (some are on the boat), and an extremely intermittent and slow-when-its-there internet.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>But do we really need an excuse for enjoying the “nature show” projected on the ceiling while we work on Chichewa.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>No, we’re not going crazy, just making do quite nicely with what we have while being encouraged to work on what we’re here for.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Tiwonana (see you later)</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>Brucehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08422217981031233334noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9075925728714948662.post-85039071132852653852010-03-17T11:05:00.000-07:002010-03-23T12:05:53.194-07:00Nsima and Finger Bowls—An Inadvertent Compliment?<p class="MsoNormal">I noticed it first in the gas station.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>I’d gone in to buy water while adding a little diesel to the truck’s tank (yes, large bottles of potable water are sold in the gas station next to our favorite spot for doing internet), and the clerk stood up with an ear-to-ear grin to ask me <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:normal"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">in Chichewa</i></b> if I wanted to buy water.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Then at the airport the next afternoon, the agent at the fee booth rattled off a string of Chichewa phrases when I walked up to pay.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>In both cases I’d told them at a previous time that I was studying Chichewa and asked them to correct me if I made a mistake.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>I’d even carried on a considerable conversation at the fee booth at the airport, telling Joram (I remember his name after the third or fourth time) a little about my children, grandchildren and wife.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Both had remembered me the next time I returned, and were taking me up on my implicit offer.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>I was studying Chichewa, and they were going to take their chance to teach me a thing or two.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>They both stretched me, and that was good.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Thanks to the LAMP system devised by Dr. Betty Brewster of Fuller Theological Seminary, and her now deceased husband, the world is becoming my teacher, and the rest of them are enjoying it a little more than I am.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>But this is good.</p><p class="MsoNormal">The supreme compliment came at the airport restaurant, however, a place we’d also frequented to send an e-mail or two (no, we don’t have any internet access at our house).<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>We’d also talked with the waitress a time or two, and she probably also remembered that I was studying Chichewa.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>I had ordered a vegetable curry with Nsima (a large patty of finely ground corn meal mush boiled down to a solid), while my friend had ordered the same curry with rice.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>When the two came, they didn’t look much alike at all.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>On his plate the curry was on a bed of rice which rose around the curry in a protective surrounding mound with cole slaw sprinkled around the outside.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">My</i> vegetable curry came as a stew-like dish laid to one side of a normal dinner plate, with a relatively small amount of broth.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>On the other half of the plate were two slightly overlapping mattress-shaped patties of nsima.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>But the big surprise was that my friend had a fork and knife wrapped with a napkin, while I was brought only a rather large fingerbowl.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>I was expected to eat with my fingers.</p><p class="MsoNormal">Traditionally, nsima is eaten with the bare right hand, scraping off a small portion from the patty on one’s plate (or in the large central common bowl for the table) rolling it around the hand into the correct shape (or until it loses enough temperature to hold still, at least in my case), then opening a hollow in the ball with the thumb into which the vegetables and sauce of the curry are pushed before shepherding the whole mess to your mouth.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Every three of four morsels it is necessary (for me) to rinse my hand in the bowl that is provided, or lick my fingers, though finger-licking is probably less acceptable in Malawi than in the US—I’ve never seen anyone else do it.</p><p class="MsoNormal">I’ve eaten nsima with a fork before, just last week at a banquet at a hotel was the last time, and I think all the others at the table ate it with their forks also.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>And while the airport restaurant is not quite as nice as that at the hotel where the banquet was held, “niceness” wasn’t the point.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Nsima is a finger food, just like fried chicken is in the south and much of the rest of the <st1:country-region st="on"><st1:place st="on">U.S.A.</st1:place></st1:country-region><span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>So my waitress had assumed that if I wanted nsima that I would want to eat it the normal way, with my fingers.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">We actually don’t eat that much nsima.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>This is only the third time I’ve had it since I’ve been here, which would say to most Malawians that I am extremely deficient somewhere, perhaps between the ears:<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>nsima is eaten at every typical meal.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Malawians often say, “Nsima <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:normal"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">is</i></b> food. Whatever else you have is just relish."<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>If you haven’t had nsima, you haven’t eaten.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal">I really can’t say for sure whether the absence of a fork and knife had anything to do with my language learning, but I like to think it did, that as the others have appreciated my efforts, were willing to include me, to stretch me, this waitress was also willing to include me, to treat me “normally” to serve me nsima without a fork.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>I would eat with my hands just like her father, her brother, her husband, and her sons.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Just like she would.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>And that in itself is a little encouragement (I’ll take it where I can get it) to get back out there and play the two year old in the community, stumbling over words and laughing with all the others at who-knows-what I’ve just said.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>And, God willing, it will come.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">Tiwonana (See you later!)</p>Brucehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08422217981031233334noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9075925728714948662.post-19205897236020169332010-03-17T10:59:00.002-07:002010-03-23T12:25:12.997-07:00Slammed by Technology--But Why???<p class="MsoNormal" align="center" style="text-align: left;"></p><p class="MsoNormal" align="center" style="text-align: left; ">With tele-medicine and the world wide web transforming the way business is done across the globe, including patient care, access to such marvels is of course of interest to us.<span> </span>Our own access to world-wide communications is multi-media:<span> </span>not really, it just seems that way.<span> </span>Actually, all our eggs are in one basket.<span> </span>It’s name is Zain, and for us it’s three cell phones.</p><p class="MsoNormal">One of the larger cell phone groups here in <st1:place st="on"><st1:country-region st="on">Malawi</st1:country-region></st1:place>, advertised in a daunting hot pink color, offers a variety of services.<span> </span>First, the usual cell phone package.<span> </span>Though I’ve been told monthly contracts are available, almost everyone buys time as they go and adds it to their account via the self-same cell phone.<span> </span>The cost of a local call is not too bad, but calling the other end of the country can be costly, and calling the <st1:country-region st="on"><st1:place st="on">U.S.</st1:place></st1:country-region>, it’s prohibitive.</p><p class="MsoNormal">When I tried to call the States a few days ago, I went through most of my $10.00 allotment in just a very few minutes.<span> </span>We didn’t put a stop-watch to it, but we estimate the rate at $2.00 to $4.00 a minute.<span> </span>And when we called our colleague on the other end of the country (we’re talking about less distance than LA to San Fran.) the same sum disappeared in about 20 minutes.<span> </span>We were thus relieved to learn from that same colleague, Mark Thiesen and his wife Era, of a service in the <st1:country-region st="on"><st1:place st="on">US</st1:place></st1:country-region> whose rates are about $0.27 per minute.<span> </span>I think we can live with that.</p><p class="MsoNormal">GlobalPhone pulls it off like this.<span> </span>You call on your phone to a <st1:country-region st="on"><st1:place st="on">US</st1:place></st1:country-region> number and let it ring once, and only once, and then hang up.<span> </span>Detecting the “missed call”, the machinery on the States-side calls you back (at low-due-to-competition <st1:place st="on"><st1:country-region st="on">U.S.</st1:country-region></st1:place> rates) and asks for the number you want, and then proceeds to connect you.<span> </span>They deduct up to a pre-authorized amount per month from your credit card at a fraction of the cost we’re now paying.</p><p class="MsoNormal">Zain, our current one for all, also sells modems which plug into your computer with a USB connection, but actually are their own little cell phones.<span> </span>When you connect to the internet you first plug in the modem and “activate” it via your computer, and voila!<span> </span>You’re connected!<span> </span>The neat thing is that it appears that the machine only counts units when you’re actively down-loading.<span> </span>So, connection is not a costly thing unless info-packets are actually coming down or up the wire.<span> </span>But you have to watch your account balance.<span> </span>Again, we buy about $10.00 worth of units (about 1,000 units) and “load” them via our computer. <span></span>But they can run out.<span> </span>And the modems are decidedly not fast.<span> </span>(The estimate on downloading a printer driver for the printer, which was already here and driven by another computer e’er we got here—was 4 hours.<span> </span>No thank you.<span> </span>We’ll be talking about a disk with the next visitor, Jeremy.)</p><p class="MsoNormal">Needing to contact several of you whom we’ve invited to partner with us in our our project around transportation, and hearing of GlobalPhone, we fired off an application via internet, received a confirmation request asking for photocopies of identity documents to be faxed in.<span> </span>We got that all ready, ran down to the airport and sent those in last Saturday afternoon (at almost $10.00 per page, mind you!), and wondered when they’d get it up and going.<span> </span>Well, GlobalPhone apparently honors the Sabbath and Sunday too, because it wasn’t until sometime Monday that our e-mail came in with some important little access characters.<span> </span>We were in business, at least for a while.</p><p class="MsoNormal">So, we dashed off a test call of a very few seconds to our missions minister, and it worked! (Mark wasn’t sure that cell phones would handle it.)<span> </span>Then we called “one of you”, only to find you out to lunch, but coming back in 30 minutes.<span> </span>It’s bed-time here, mind you, but around noon where you are, but we’re going to get this communication thing worked out.<span> </span>We had some questions about our tax return, so we rang up the accountant and hashed through all that. <span></span>Wonderful, though near the end of the call a pleasantly haunting voice chimed in:<span> </span>“You have only one minute remaining.”<span> </span>And then it got dicey.</p><p class="MsoNormal">I’d promised your assistant I’d call “you” back, and I’ve been trying to get in touch with you for weeks.<span> </span>We last talked three weeks ago, two weeks before I left the States, and we’ve played quite a bit of phone tag, so I didn’t want to be cut off in the middle of the call.<span> </span>Beth and I searched for the paperwork about the system.<span> </span>Somewhere it seemed I’d read something about security systems and “pro-rated rates of use”.<span> </span><span></span>Never found those explanatory papers, but did find an invitation to call a U.S. 800 number or fire off an e-mail if ever we needed a little more cash on our account.<span> </span>Now our internet modem is down to 37 units, about out of gas.<span> </span>We finally got into the new telephone account's information over the web.<span> </span>We’d spent four dollars of our fifty for the month, but we had only $0.31 <i>available</i>. (And only 3 units left of internet.)<span> </span>Security!!<span></span>Call "you" and risk getting cut off . . . or call customer service for GlobalPhone.<span> </span>We chose the latter.<span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span>I heard the ring indicator sound on the other end and I hung up.<span> </span>About 10 seconds later the phone began to vibrate and ring.<span> </span>I answered, dialed the 800 number on prompt, and then that haunting, sweet voice:<span> </span>“You have less than one minute.”<span> </span>A menu is presented, another menu.<span></span>Surely they won’t hang up while I’m asking them for access to a few more of the dollars I’ve already paid them! <span></span>A voice comes on the line, “How can we help you?” overlapping at the end with the haunting lady:<span> </span>“You’re out of time.<span> </span>Click.”<span></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal">Tomorrow I can run by the airport, literally, unless the driver brings the other key fob back in the morning.<span> </span>The keyless entry/security system on the pick-up has a dead battery.<span> </span>We got into the car, but can’t start it without a working “clicker”.<span> </span>(Now you see why we need transportation.)<span> </span>(As it turns out, though the keyless entry is weakening, I had left the lights on Sunday, draining the battery.<span> </span>Someone else is lamenting shared transportation.)<span> </span>At the airport I can pick up internet minutes and contact GlobalPhone, and maybe I can call “you” tomorrow night.<span> </span>Or maybe not.<span> </span>We’ll see. And we hear broadband is coming this year.</p><p class="MsoNormal">[We finally got in touch with "you", and you sent sent us $1500 toward the vehicle we will need. Thank you so much for your generosity, your patience, and your care for what we are doing. And, we've talked with folks who think they can reach us in six weeks or less with 1 megabyte/second internet speed at rates comparable to the U.S. Yes!]</p><p></p>Brucehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08422217981031233334noreply@blogger.com0