Mortification—literally, ‘making death’—is what life is all about, a slow discovery of the mortality of all that is created so that we can appreciate its beauty without clinging to it as if it were a lasting possession. Our lives can indeed be seen as a process of becoming familiar with death, as a school in the art of dying. I do not mean this in a morbid way. On the contrary, when we see life constantly relativized by death, we can enjoy it for what it is: a free gift. --Henri Nouwen, A Letter of Consolation
A small mercy, a glimpse of redemption, to ponder that the pain of death, of goodbye, of change, of loss, even though representing wrongness in our world, can become a way God loosens our grip on the temporary and fills our hearts with a longing for the eternal.
We prayed this morning about the brokeness of this world, both around us and in our own hearts, and asked for eyes to see the redemption God is accomplishing even here in Bundibugyo. The ripping apart of our team life as the Barts depart is yet one more area of brokeness—as I prayed the words came to me that we were created for permanent relationship, not for project cycles, so that coming to the end of even a decade of good work and closure still feels painful. Yet we have hope that our true community transcends space and time, as we move through life we are continuously moving back towards each other and the perfect friendship we will have in the New Heavens and the New Earth. And we get a glimpse of that permanence and continuity as we keep in touch with each other after departure. Scott Ickes taught here for only a year, yet left his mark on our community and in our hearts. I have thought of him often this week as the track he labored to create for the CSB cross country team has been getting a new layer of marum. Then I checked his blog, which has been dormant, and found he had posted a great poem that expresses the pain of leaving here. Check it out: http://scotticcus.blogspot.com/
Luke took a lot of pictures on our hike to the Semuliki river yesterday (and Scott took a few when he could get his hands on the camera). He has a creative eye for detail, color, lighting, motion, and composition. A handful of his photos are included in our "Bundibugyo-General" FlickR set.
We walked 24 km (about 16 miles) through areas of old-growth forest (ironwood) with a sky-high canopy and quiet, through palms and vines, with glimpses of red tailed monkeys and the calls of hidden chimps, the trills of piping Hornbills, the confetti of bright butterflies. Another side of Africa, the green side.
The departure of the Bartkovich family, though mentioned in the last post, deserves a fuller story and picture. We have lived with the impending reality for some time, but have honored the Barts’ request to delay disclosure because of their concern that public awareness of their plans could negatively impact the school. However they told the teaching staff on Friday, and today Pat reminded me to tell the church. So I’ll repeat here on the blog what I said in front of the congregation (though you won’t read my tears which came in spite of all efforts to focus them away this morning).
Kevin and JD moved to Uganda ten years ago to start Christ School, at the invitation of the mission. I will not even attempt to sum up that decade of effort, except to say that we now see the fruit as several hundred students per year receiving a solid grounding in Biblical discipleship and the best education in the district. They planned to stay six or seven years, then that stretched to 8 as the process was more complicated than they anticipated, and their own hearts became so tied to the team and community that the “next steps” they assumed their career would take looked less attractive. At the 8 year mark they told the team they would definitely need to leave by the 10th year, so we should pray for their replacements. Soon after that meeting, in one of our more frequent trips to the US due to my Dad’s ALS, a member of our main supporting church heard the need for a new future school administrator and called her daughter and son-in-law, and a few whirlwind months later the Pierce family joined out team. For the last year and a half they have been coming alongside the Bartkoviches to learn and partner. But now the moment of transition is upon us, and even though we can see God’s hand and thank Him for His provision, it is hard for all of us. Hard for Kevin and JD, for the Pierces, for the team, for the school, for the community. Taking the Bart family out of the Bundibugyo team is like tearing off a piece of our body, a real wound, that will take time to heal.
I asked the church members to take time to say thank you, for many of them have had children who were blessed by the school, and even if none of their children have yet attended we know that the long-term impact of CSB will bless their families for many years to come. And many people who read this blog will have the opportunity to meet the Bartkoviches in the coming year, and also thank them face to face. They will be on “HMA”, Home Ministry Assignment, a time to rest and reflect, to be nurtured, as well as a time to thank supporters. As they thank you, please take the time to thank them! They will be based initially in Charlotte and then in Durham NC. They do not know what their next step will be, only that they will not come back to Bundibugyo. They are leaving by choice and by plan, but after a very stressful and draining year. They would appreciate your prayers for their renewal, and for vision.
I ended with the most frequent command of the Bible: Do Not Fear. That needs to be said so often, to all our hearts. It is important for the community, who see missionaries come and go, to put their trust in God not in a particular person. And important for them to be assured that WHM is still fully committed to CSB, and that David Pierce will be in place as the new headmaster as Kevin goes. The elders prayed not only for the Barts this morning, but for the Pierces in their new role, and for all of us missionaries in our grief. It feels like a long week ahead, culminating next weekend as the entire team escorts them out as far as Fort Portal where we’ll spend a day and night in honoring them and saying goodbye.
Holy moments, slices of our time on earth when we glimpse behind the veil to what is more real. One of those occurred yesterday when I read a comment on the post “But the Kingdom Comes”. Look for it. It is signed “Cindy”, as in Cindy the mother of Jessica, the 21 year old woman who died in a car accident while at our pre-field missionary orientation on her way to join WHM’s Spain team. As a mother she could be bitter, angry, bewildered, hopeless. And if those emotions are part of her grief in this fallen world, then she could find plenty of psalms, laments, and Biblical cries to reflect her protest. But instead she wrote to connect with and encourage us, a holy bond of grief and common cause. I held my breath reading her words, unworthy to be included in her burial-day thoughts. The closest I can come to imagining her loss were three babies of ours dying by miscarriage in 1991 and 1992, starting the month we joined WHM. An unseen baby nearly broke my heart; how much more a 21 year old daughter. So I can only thank this woman for expressing her faith on this blog, and choosing to hold on to God in the midst of her storm. A friend and fellow-missionary in Prague put an excellent book on grief into my hands Lament for a Son by Nicholas Wolterstorff, which I’ve been reading. Whether we infer that there is an Enemy working against the Kingdom by murdering new recruits, or just that following a call from God does not serve as a ticket to a long and easy life untouched by the chaotic evil of illness and injury, Jessica’s death sobers us all. The Kingdom is, once again, confirmed to be serious business. People get hurt.
A few other holy moments this week:
- Annelise and I both got sick, and at about the same time took the uncharacteristic decision that we needed to go to bed in the middle of the day . . . When I got up I found that (unbeknownst to either of us) her kids had had been dropped off at our house. . . And they had a holy afternoon of great play, allowing both of us to rest and recover, entertaining each other harmoniously. Whenever kids of disparate ages who have spent months apart from each other are able to be happy and independent for three hours, there is a sense of God’s presence.
- Friday, Luke’s birthday, the three friends he had invited did not show up all afternoon, and at nearly 7 pm we had almost finished cooking his “feast” and were searching for ways to soften the blow of disappointment in this season of disappointments for him, when they at last arrived. When my kids can spend a weekend with friends who are 3 to 4 years older, and of a completely different life background, and yet laugh and watch a video and hike through the forest and play cards and read books and eat . . .I sense the holiness of God’s presence with us.
- Also on Friday, Kevin was finally able to share with the CSB staff the Bartkovich family’s plan to leave Bundibugyo after their long service to CSB. Though most probably realized that a trip to the US was in their near future for one of the Home Ministry Assignments (HMAs) we all take, they were appropriately distressed and shocked by the news that he would not return to CSB after this break. I’m thankful that Scott and David could be present to witness that moment, and Annelise and I were able to be together at home praying for Kevin’s words and heart as he spoke. This is a huge turning point for the school, and the team, and a bit more like Jessica’s death in that we glimpse behind the veil here to believe God is present and at work, but the rending of the veil is painful.
Today is Luke’s 15th Birthday, here in the very spot where he celebrated his 1st Birthday. Then he was a strawberry-blond toddler with a skinned nose from learning to walk on the rough cement floors of this house which we had moved into a few days earlier, delighted by the attention of the “big kids” (Matt and Libby, Lydia and Luke H). Now he’s tall, strong, competent and accomplished, and by far the biggest kid around. We gave him a couple of photography books, as he enjoys the artistic composition of pictures as well as the technical challenge of working with digital imagery. Today the only person (besides his parents!) who was present when he turned 1 as well as 15, Pat, will have him work with her on a mural she’s painting on the Paediatric Ward. Tonight he’ll have three school friends eat with us and sleep over for a big hike through the Ituri rainforest tomorrow, one of his other passions being the African wilderness with its unpredictable beauty and the physical challenge of a day’s trek. Pause with us to thank God for Luke. It is no small thing to grow from baby to man in Uganda, no small thing to have not only survived but to have come to love this place and have friends here. We’re grateful.
As a team, as a mission, it is much more clear to see that the World Goes Not Well this week than that the Kingdom comes. Violence continues in Kenya, the death toll is getting uncomfortably close to 1,000. Those are not just numbers, they are real people who fled for their lives, whose last moments were terrifying and painful, almost all due to the blunt force of machetes and similar weapons. A Kenyan friend Esther called us this week, to assure us she was still OK. The Carrs and Kimberly are bravely attempting to aid the displaced and disoriented while the country struggles to regain equilibrium. On Sunday we felt tremors from earthquakes that hit Rwanda and Congo. Today we learned that one of the newest WHM missionaries, a 21 year old woman appointed to the Spain team, was killed in a car wreck in Colorado when she traveled from the pre-field training program (MTI) to church. I’ve chronicled some of the heartache of disappointment and loss in the last couple of days here.
Yet the Kingdom comes, even when we can’t see it. Stephanie led a great meditation this morning, hearkening back yet again to Psalm 130, which God seems to be bringing to us over and over, the idea of watchmen waiting for the morning. In the darkness we strain, knowing that light will surely come. She spoke of deliverance, which sometimes comes so subtly and quietly we fail to notice the mercies that flow over us, food and friendship and sunshine and health. Sometimes, it comes dramatically in the 11th hour, just when hope seems to be beyond our grasp, as God keeps us in suspense and stretches our faith. And sometimes it comes after hope has gone, after the worst has happened, after what we dreaded has occurred, as in the death of Jonah. This deliverance is only found in the resurrection, the assurance that death is not the end.
So today let me give a small testimony to 11th hour deliverance, to a taste of Kingdom Come. Mumbere is alive (see his picture above from today and one below from one year ago). I left him yesterday comatose, grunting, floppy, with a body full of malaria parasites and thick snot flowing out of his lungs when I tried to give some chest PT. I really did not think he would pull through this time. As I biked to the hospital this morning, I was trying to decide if I could still manage all I had committed to today if I went to his burial, because I’d really want to be there. But when I walked through the doors, there he was sitting with his grandmother. Awake, alert, grumpy. I gave him a piece of candy I had in my pocket, which he snatched up and opened with no problem. Amazing. His life still hangs by a frayed thread, but he’s not gone yet. The Kingdom Comes, in small slow steps, in small dark bodies, one at a time.
I’m reading Tales of the Kingdom aloud at night, and in it the Rangers call out a watchman-like greeting: “How goes the world?” And the answer is “The world goes not well. But the Kingdom comes.” Tonight is one of those nights where the NOT WELL aspect of this world weighs heavily. I was sitting outside a government office today when one of the officials came to greet me, and commented “You really love Bundibugyo, don’t you?” And I said “Yes, but sometimes it is not easy to love.” How many trite and cliché verses are written about the danger of loving something weak and fragile, the way love opens us to disappointment and suffering. That is how I feel today.
For starters, as I was trying to zip through patient rounds in order to get on with the other pressing concerns of the day (see below) a nurse brought me a patient who had not yet been evaluated but was “bad off.” I was tempted to find some reason someone else should see this kid when I looked up and realized it was Mumbere, the little boy with AIDS who has been revived in the care of his frail little grandmother. Now he’s a chunky 11 kg (probably quadruple his weight when he was dwindling with AIDS) and thriving on ARV’s, until today, when he arrived anemic and gasping and unconscious. Probably just malaria, but in a kid with marginal immunity and in a family without the resources to get him care until the situation became desperate. Our nurses and lab staff rallied to resuscitate him and he’s still alive tonight, but I fear for him. He’s the one with the grandmother who said “Of course I want to take care of him, he’s the only picture I have of my daughter.”
Then on the way home I got a call with Luke’s O Level results. He and five of his classmates received Division 1 scores, which is good news, and means CSB earned 6 of the district’s 9 Division 1 passes even though they had only 10% of the district’s students. And NO FAILURES, even though 11% of students in Bundibugyo failed. Reasonably good news for CSB. Since Luke is a few years younger than the average student and did not take all the classes others did, we should be very proud that he scored in the top 2% . . . But the good news was marginal when he heard his actual grades. Most were significantly worse than he had scored on practice tests, and certainly much worse than he expected. In one class he was particularly committed to and confident of (he had never made less than a 1 in that subject) he earned a 5, even though post-exam he had gone over all his answers with others and was quite sure of his performance. So it was another example of frustration, of his perception of disconnect between work and outcome, of the inscrutability of the system. Another experience of being told “you’re not nearly as good at this as you could be”. Another reason to question the value of his education.
From that emotional low I headed up to Bundibugyo town with Ivan, a 13 year old boy who is one of our family’s best friends here (especially Jack). He was hoping to get into CSB but his PLE exam score was inadequate, and I was told today that though he’s on the waiting list he’s unlikely to be offered a spot. Hard, because he really wants to be with Jack and Julia, and they with him, and I suspect he’s at least as bright as most of the kids I sponsor, but has had a rough life and poor education. So our plan was to put him in P7 (final year of primary) in the “best” primary school in the District, located within Bundibugyo township 12 kilometers from our home. They had 10 PLE Division 1’s last year. Not exactly like a Kampala school, but OK. He had to take a surprise entrance exam in the headmaster’s office which he at least passed. While he was struggling with that another student helped me rummage around town for the requirements, including a mattress, basin, cup and plate, red socks, books and pens, a small metal trunk to lock things in. A few hours later we were escorted for a tour, and I just wanted to cry. This is Bundibugyo’s best primary school, but the conditions were no better than anything I saw in Sudan, in fact I wondered how different they were from a concentration camp. Small space, open unfinished mud-brick buildings with dirt floors, no grass, a room about 15 by 15 feet square to house over 30 boys in stacked bunks, kids standing along the reed fence with nothing to do after class, no running water, no electricity, no library, no books, a shack of a kitchen, and I even spotted a teacher “caning” a line of students (smacking them one by one on the bottom with a stick as they knelt). “Isn’t that illegal?” I asked. I held back tears as I left Ivan there. He wanted to stay, he’ll grasp at this hope for education, this possible ticket into CSB next year. But I wonder if it is worth it.
And if that was not enough in the realm of pounding on my heart, in facing the vulnerabilty of kids I love . . . My third task of the day was to take scathing letters to the headmaster of our local primary school, the District Education Officer (DEO), and the Chairman LC5, about the teacher who sexually abused my young neighbor N. She is improving, but a shell of herself.. And I heard today that as schools started the man was not in jail but instead reporting back to teach!! I rarely am able to push this kind of advocacy this far, and even today I faltered, as convinced as I am that this situation is evil and must be fought. If I was intimidated, then I can see more clearly why so few of these cases get reported. The local school seemed to be in favor of “look the other way” and “what can we do.” The District Education Officer was absent. But the Chairman LC5 at least said the right things, called it unacceptable, asked others in his office “what if it was your daughter”, agreed that the man should lose his job at the very least, and called in an assistant DEO to affirm that. Then he sent me with this assistant DEO to the police station, where we moved from office to office trying to locate the proper file and number and person in charge. In the process we learned that another teacher, who is also a neighbor and friend, was briefly incarcerated in conjunction with aiding and abetting the abuser in the case, but had been released on bond that morning. At the end of the day I went to report all I’d done to the family, including her bed-ridden father and his elderly brother, and to make sure that her younger sister switches to a hopefully safer school.
So a day of disappointment, of sitting in offices and pleading, of lamenting drunk police and shabby surroundings, of the stench of corruption just below the surface. Not to mention that I have a nasty cold, and that it is now 10 pm and Scott is at the hospital where he took a friend’s wife who was in respiratory distress. The world goes not well, for Luke (somewhat, though relative to all the other problems his sadness is not so bad), for Ivan, for N, for Mumbere and his grandmother, for Oliva. For me.. It is a badly broken place. But the Kingdom comes.
The O-Level Results are out at the national level, and we should know more about our local Bundibugyo results tomorrow when Kevin travels to pick them up. On Friday the Ministry of Education announced the completion of the grading, and gave summary results for the districts. Most schools near Kampala have rushed to collect the “pass slips” for their students, and the paper is full of happy stories of high achievers.
In order to make sense of the results, here is a short primer for those not used to the British system. Before entering Christ School, the boarding secondary school that is part of our WHM team ministry, children study in primary school for seven years. At the end of P7 they take the PLE, Primary Leaving Exam, in four subjects: English, Math, Social Studies, and Science. The best score per subject is 1, the worst is 9 (failure). So PLE scores range from 4 to 36, with anything up to 32 (4x8) considered passing. Most of our CSB students have entered with PLE’s in the mid twenties, though the performance has improved steadily year by year, and we’re starting to get a good number in the teens. There are schools in Kampala, many, which take only students with 4’s and 5’s. So by the time our kids start at CSB, they have usually endured five or six years of marginal early childhood nutrition, lived in a home without even a single book to read, and then sat through seven years of primary school in institutions that are nearly the worst in the country. Just to put it in perspective.
In secondary school there are four “Ordinary Level” (O level) years, S1 to S4, after which students sit for the Uganda Certificate of Education (UCE), which is commonly referred to as O levels. Students study on average 10 classes, but the best 8 are the ones included in the score. The UCE functions somewhat like a high school diploma in the US system, but academically more on the order of 11th grade. Successful students can then study for two more years, “Advanced Level” (A level), S5 and S6, usually narrowing to three or sometimes four subjects. Then they sit for A levels, which determine admission to University. Completion of A levels is like finishing a year of community college in the US. University Bachelor degrees are completed in 3 years.
So back to the O level scores. Again 1 is the best in any subject, and 9 is a failure. So the best “best of 8” score would be 8, which some of the thrilled teenagers featured in the stories in the paper have received. These are tough exams that cover their entire four years of classwork in numerous subjects. Besides the “best of 8” aggregate, there is a grading something like A, B, C, D called Division 1, 2, 3, and 4. The cut-offs are a bit complex. Division 1 means the student a) passed five subjects with “credit” (6 or above) including English and b) passed at least one course each in math, humanities, and science and c) the total score in the best six subjects adds up to 23 or less. It is not a straight number cut-off, so that students who take more difficult work are not necessarily penalized, and those with a broadly good performance are rewarded. Division 2, 3, and 4 allow for mere passes (7 or 8, not only credit 6 and above) in required subjects and progressively more lax totals.
NOW . . . . If anyone is still with me . . . .the district-level results can be compared by percentage of students passing in Division 1, or by percentage passing at all. But even that can be misleading, if in a rural poor area most children are unable to attend secondary school, then the passing rate of the few who do make it that far could look excellent because the scores of an elite few are not diluted by the average kid. So take it all with a grain of salt.
79 districts were listed in this morning’s paper. The top district has a 16.7% Division 1 rate, the average was 8.4% in Division 1 among the nearly 200 thousand kids who took the exam. Bundibugyo had only 9 of 481 students in Division 1. All were boys. We don’t know what schools they attended, but hope that most are from CSB! That is an overall Division 1 rate of 1.9%; and that means our district ranks 67 out of 79 (12 were worse). If the districts are ranked by failure rate, ours was 11.4%, which was third from the bottom (2 were worse).
Which means that we still have work to do here, and lots of it.
Friday mornings we have staff meetings at NHC. Today was the first since Ebola disrupted our lives so severely. The acting In-Charge and I decided it was long overdue, to sit together and begin to move forward into the rest of life. He asked me to start, so I prayed and then read from James chapter 1. The Bible does not gloss over sorrow, it assumes that trials and suffering form the fabric of our normal lives. We lament and we grieve, but we do not despair, and we cling to the hope that this suffering is producing perseverance. Yet when I tried to talk, the grief which I have kept at bay for weeks stealthily crept up on me. Friday mornings, squeezed onto simple backless benches, with the 20-some staff with whom I have spent much of the last decade, was all very familiar. But today, without Dr. Jonah, the former center of these meetings. His absence brought tears, and this being a culture where people don’t talk much of the dead or cry for them after the funeral, most of the staff were a bit uncomfortable as I took a few minutes to recover.
But the meeting did not end there. Once I opened the door, several other people spoke. It was good to acknowledge the passing of an era, the change in our lives. One thanked us (WHM) for remaining in the struggle with them, and actually said to me “we are of one blood”, which I took as a high compliment to someone like me who so clearly does not look like anyone’s relative there. A small redemption, the kind of subtle good that God waters from the seeds of death.
And then we turned to welcoming a new nurse who just joined us this week, and introducing all the staff to her. Instead of dry introductions, I asked each person after giving their name to share one good thing that happened in their lives in the last year. That turned out to be a blast. Everyone loosened up, laughed, clapped for each other. People gave thanks for degrees completed, children with good exam scores, weddings, babies, houses built. The biggest explosion of happiness came when one of the porters (janitor) stood up and said that he bought his first phone today! In a season of grief, in acknowledging our loss, it was therapeutic to remind each other of the good things that have happened, too. And to witness that sharing both grief and joy binds us together in community. And that is part of what produces perseverance.
