How does a team, a group, a community, become a family?
As the CSB year draws to a close, the reference to the school's collection of teachers, staff, students, workers as a family has surfaced several times. The seniors said goodbye this Sunday, having completed the gruelling month of nationalised standard exams, one or two half-day papers per subject for 8-10 subjects. The education system in Uganda is evolving to incorporate more innovative hand-on projects and ongoing grades but until this point, these exams are the sole determinant of performance, the sole measure to sort out who gets to proceed on a university or job path. Tomorrow they will check out of school, but today they led worship in chapel with a song that repeated a chorus of thanks for each teacher by name. They were genuinely celebratory of all they had received. Their class teacher, Dean Desmond, who after 20 years here carries the vision and mission more deeply than any other staff, gave the sermon from Luke 21. Like Jesus, he did not promise them a glorious path of ease, in fact he told them the truth, that they would look back on their years here as amongst the best as they go out from here to face hardship, hunger, conflict, thieves, witchcraft, jealousy. But the assurance of Luke 21 and Lamentations 3 is that when the Lord is all you have, you have enough. They go out in faith knowing they will not escape troubles, but they will never be alone. The foundational connection of shared faith, shared roots, shared geography, shared experience, unites.
A week ago, that same teacher had traveled across the country back to his home village to bury his mother, and while he was gone his wife went into labor with their third son. Hard to imagine a more stressful week in a place where labor and delivery too often end in tragedy, where the greeting for a new mother translates "thank you for surviving", for working your way through this danger. While we were still in Burundi, the school staff came together and in spite of extreme distance and the ongoing exams and rainy season and limited funds, decided to send the deputy head teacher to take several cross-country bus connections to the burial to be with Desmond and his extended family. And the school nurse and others accompanied his wife here in Bundibugyo to the hospital, stayed with her through labour, and brought her and baby Hammond back to their home in the staff apartments. Once Desmond finally made it back to Bundibugyo, he sent the whole staff a long and heartfelt acknowledgement that this community stepped in like a family, to fill the gaps when there was need. It struck me that this CSB staff has come to function just like we try to encourage a Serge team to be: they live and eat and worship and work together, but more than that they are the reliable first line of provision when emergencies arrive. That sounds like a family.
Common roots in ancestry and the interdependence forged by challenges in life make a clan a family, and make a school staff or a Serge team a family too. We call God our father, and we hold each other up in the storms.
CSB Chapel in the rain this morning, CSB board at the end of our meeting Friday below
Preaching to ourselves, because it's been a stormy week. The seasonal rain drenches us, but we hit the ground after the Burundi trip with a drenching of sorrows. That is the nature of living in a place with fewer barriers to insulate one from poverty, so that daily encounters with broken things, hungry people, sick children, thwarted plans, just keep pounding down. Our CSB board held it's second meeting of the year, and while that is encouraging in many ways as we pour over the annual reports with parent and political representatives, teaching and administrative staff, and missionaries representing the founding body (our enrolment this year of 255 students is 49.4% female, our kids went on a richly immersive "geography" trip, our girls' football went to nationals, 7 of 8 students who qualified for university scholarships from our district were our grads, we have upgraded our computer lab and improved security, and so on), a significant part of the 8-hours of board deliberation includes the general sentiment that fees are too high for parents to afford while at the same time complaining that the school should buy a bus or build more buildings. All good things, but not humanly possible to accomplish. We struggle with funding, accounting, deficits, rising food costs, and a thousand details, with cultural understanding and trust. And that's just this local team, the 11 teams in 6 countries that we're supposed to supervise and support all have similar struggles.
As we begin a new week, we know we wouldn't be bobbing along in this stormy mess without family. Our Ugandan colleagues and Serge team and area, our Serge leadership network of life long friends, our financial and prayer supporters, own kids and siblings and mothers who cheer us on. Scott's mom Ruth turns 91 today, and our daughter Julia is there baking her Nana and friends a lemon meringue pie and taking her to church. If a family comes from a common root and a trial-by-fire life, we take today to be thankful for both.
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