On crushing the serpent

As we move into the Easter weekend, we move into the spiritual battle that peaked on Good Friday but still continues.  As a mission we sense a call to pray specifically against some of the cultural forces that oppress people here in Bundibugyo.  I will give one example of corruption, since it occurred this week:

One of my former students went to obtain a driving permit so that he could legally use a mission motorcycle to help us with nutrition outreaches, and after many offices, fees, lines, bank transfers, and a day of effort he landed in an office in which he was issued yet more forms and told that the cost for the approval of these forms would be 50,000/= (about $30, a week’s wages for a mid-level professional).  He asked if he would receive a receipt for this, upon which the person behind the desk laughed at this absurdity and began to explain the way the world works to this young man whom he no doubt perceived as hopelessly naive.  My student then clarified that this money would essentially be a bribe, and gave the form back, refusing to participate.  In the end he was only able to get a provisional learning permit without paying the bribe, but I have to say his indignation over the entire affair gives me a glimmer of hope that the rising generation of CSB students will not accept business-as-usual when it comes to blatant corruption.  If only more people would take such a stand!

Culturally acceptable patterns of oppression can be vague and nebulous, hard to recognize, easy to justify away.  But God knows we are concrete and visual creatures, when He wants to present truth He often works through a story or a physical demonstration (compare the amount of the Bible devoted to history and parable rather than theological treatise, or notice the way prophets like Jeremiah used props like plumb lines, or consider the visceral nature of the passover meal and communion).  Good Friday commemorates the ultimate victory of Good over Evil in the paradox of the death of Jesus.  In Genesis this is foretold as the crushing of the serpent’s head while the promised One’s heel is bruised.  

This visual image of the evil one as a snake is very vivid to me today, because we had a snake in our house last night.  Everyone but me was in bed.  I had been at my desk and walked out into our sitting/dining room (the main area of our house) to turn off the lights.  As I walked in, a dark slithering form inched across the rug, right in the middle of the four chairs where our kids had been reading books before bed.  It was not so large, about 3 feet long and fairly slender, and not so fast due to the coolness of the night.  I called Scott and Luke to come with weapons, and Scott took the lead pipe we keep under our mattress and killed it with a few solid blows.  It released a putrid stench, and it’s blood smeared our floor.  We’ve had a few very small (juvenile) snakes in the house a long time ago, and cobras in the yard, but the sight of this fully grown snake penetrating the safety of home, well, it was unsettling, as if evil incarnate had come to fight back.

But this morning I sensed a good lesson in this image.  The snake was no match for Scott.  Yes, people suffer and die from snake bites, but invariably those occur when the person comes upon the snake in the bush of an overgrown garden, or when the snake slips into a home seeking warmth at night and goes unnoticed.  Unseen snakes are dangerous.  But in one on one open combat, a human can prevail.  The Evil One tries to slip unnoticed, causing harm by stealth, but will be defeated when seen and recognized.  

Defeated, but the bruising will also take a toll.  Please join us in prayer this weekend.  I will try to post some prayer guides by tomorrow.  If we could only crush corruption, apathy, infidelity, passive-aggressiveness, tribalism, fear, defilement of school girls, and other insidious evils with a lead pipe!  Instead we must pray and persevere, we must bandage our bruised heels and march on.

A Witness to Death

Stewart died this morning, the 7 year old son of our health center’s in-charge medical assistant Biguye. I’ve worked closely with Biguye for many, many years, and grown to respect his judgment and perseverance.  When he beckoned me in the rain Friday morning to his apartment on the hospital grounds as I arrived for work, I was surprised to see his young son lying on the couch, jaundiced, breathing hard, with an IV drip going into his arm.  Stewart had sickle cell disease, which is extremely prevalent here.  He had always been on the small side, and weak, but rarely acutely ill, and only had a history of one transfusion prior to this illness.  All weekend we conferred together, listening to his failing heart struggle more and more, praying, trying everything available to assist his fight.  A staff child, like a team child, draws on  my heart in a personal way, and I found myself going back a couple of times a day, hoping to see a change for the better.  But no.   By Sunday he was not responding sensibly to questions.  By this morning he was not responding at all.  I watched his growing restlessness and could only imagine the distress he was experiencing.  Many children die, many in my presence, but not usually when I know the parents well, and have to watch the inexorable progression of the demise over days.  It was painful.

After he died, the staff quickly cleared the room of furniture and laid his body on a mattress on the floor, wrapped in a sheet.  They functioned like one big family, crying, discussing arrangements for the burial, spreading the news, collecting money.  I think we all thought of our own children, of their vulnerability, of Biguye’s pain.  He’s a stoic man who has seen much of life, and he made a few short speeches thanking all of us for the help.  But I know his heart is breaking too.  

When someone dies, the onlookers shake their heads and say “it is God’s will”.  But it isn’t, not really.  God let his own son die because the death of 7 year old Ugandan children is NOT OK.  It is not the way the world is supposed to be.  And changing  this world requires suffering and sacrifice, the ultimate suffering and sacrifice paid by God Himself.  It is a mysterious truth that His people continue to pay.  And it seems this year that working at Nyahuka Health Center, confronting death on it’s own territory ever day, is exacting a high toll from our staff.  Jonah paid with his life and Biguye with his son.

Thanks...

Three months ago we cried out in the midst of our desperation during the Ebola epidemic for your help. The response was overwhelmingly gracious, and we are very grateful. We don’t want to fail to account to you for what happens with your gifts, so here is a brief update.

Africa Response Fund
WHM just sent out a letter thanking those who contributed to the Africa Response Fund. We are taking the button off our blog today, as a symbol of thanks for the way you responded. The gifts of nearly 300 people totalled over one hundred thousand dollars. Fifteen percent went to the immediate expenses of the team for flights, the superb help of the Herrons, and renting a large evacuation house for two months; fifteen percent went to the WHM Sending Center in Philadelphia for their expenses in supporting us; and seventy percent now has been carried over into two new funds:

1. The Jonah Kule Family Care Fund
2. The Dr. Jonah Kule Memorial Leadership Development Fund
   

The Family Care Fund will cater for the school fees for Jonah’s six children over the next 20 years, and build his widow a decent house. The Leadership Development Fund will sponsor a local person’s medical school tuition; we have targeted the medical assistant who worked in the epicenter of Ebola because his clinical competence and character of service most embody the legacy of Dr. Jonah.

We estimate that the family fund has enough for the next decade, but we will let you know if the children need more help in the future. It is possible that God will move more resources into the second fund for sponsoring more students in the future, but for now we are content to start with this one.

Goats and BundiNutrition
Right before Ebola broke, we put up a blog button for the give-a-goat Christmas tree ornament project, as a way to support BundiNutrition’s purchase of dairy goats for HIV-positive families. In spite of the distraction of a life-threatening epidemic, you gave enough for two full truck-loads of goats! The first shipment of 50 goats will arrive in April. BundiNutrition projects and needs are ongoing as we purchase not just goats but milk, oil, sugar and beans for feeding inpatients, peanuts and seeds for local production of nutritious outpatient food, and new chicks to replenish the egg project, and salaries and transportation for extension workers who train people to care for the animals and follow-up families back at home. Again we thank you. We are starting 2008 strong, and our costs (about $3000/month) are half covered. We hope many of our monthly nutrition donors will continue to give in 2008 to make up the other half of our needs ($1500 per month). The BundiNutrition designation number is 12371, and the links to that remain on the sidebar.

We can only pray that God abundantly blesses you as you invest in His Kingdom. As you put your treasure here we know your hearts are with us.

Strong Women

Some women this week have reminded me of the prominence of women in the Easter story.  I’ve been a single mom for only 8 days while Scott is at a conference, but it feels like months.  This morning I got up to make donuts for my kids as a Sunday treat, then was called to see a staff’s very ill child at the hospital, then two neighbors who were ill, all before church.  But when I am tempted to feel sorry for myself, as if I have too much to manage, I look around and realize that Africa is full of strong women, patiently plodding on.  Melen carries a quiet dignity, her smile comes more easily now that her baby boy has been safely delivered.  Her world is one of women, Jonah’s sisters and her girls, running a nursery school and managing a family, with little help from any men.  Nurse Agnes also raises her children and works at the health center while her husband is in school 10 hours away; she’s not even from Bundibugyo so she has no extended family to support her.  Olupa leaves her baby with a relative while she comes to work.  I sat this morning with the two wives of my elderly and slowly dying neighbor, they supported him from each side as he vomited, undaunted by the inevitability of his decreasing strength.  These women clean up the messes, prepare the food, hold the sick, listen to problems, show up for work, go to the gardens.  As in the days of Jesus, when the men run away, they will be the ones washing the body for burial, mourning at the graveside.  Even though they have been treated like property for centuries, the women of Bundibugyo are made in the image of God, and His glory remains in their souls.  Even if education is a struggle, and brothers or fathers quibble to make a profit of goats off their marriages, or husbands beat them to show who is boss, these women can not help but express the creativity and competence that God created in them.  So they sing and dance in the choir, and sew colorful fabrics into attractive dresses.  They scrape together small roadside stands to sell some matches or roasted bananas.  They are not all saints, but they do hold the fabric of life here together.  I’m humbled when I think of most of their lives, and my complaining is at least muted by their reality.  God’s best plan is for men and women to complement each other, and I’m ready for Scott to get back today!!!  But until he does, I take courage from the strong women around me.

Palm Sunday--on triumph and suffering

Scott has been at an Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation meeting for a week, one of about three foreigners in a sea of Ugandan district doctors and administrators, evaluating their programs and planning for the next year of effort to stop the transmission of AIDS.  It is messy.  I would like the same thing the people of Israel wanted on Palm Sunday:  a messianic power-show of defeating evil once for all, a definitive correction of the world’s ills.  For us that might mean a lovely clean hospital where we are in control and everyone shows up for work and drugs are in plentiful supply and we see cures left and right and everyone can come and see how it should be done . . . But that is not the way God chose to work.  We’re listening to a lecture series as a team, and NT Wright reminds us that God’s answer to evil is to get dirty, to come down, to involve Himself in the story, to transform from the ground rather than impose order from on high.  In a way that has encouraged me to slog on, to plead with passive-aggressive staff to do their work, to make phone calls about drug supplies, to confront, to pray, to hold on.  To go to meetings where we don’t quite fit in, to patiently work on establishing trust with the government, to press on in spite of imperfect programs.

Last week Kisembo preached:  it is easier to fight for Jesus than to die for Jesus.  I think that is so true.  This week as we remember the events of Jesus’ life and death, let us pray to enter the same way He did.  A King coming in peace, moving relentlessly towards the place of suffering, purposefully, soberly.  

A post for Kevin

CSB’s football team won their second match of the season, against Kakuka, 7 to 0 on Saturday.  They came out strong with beautiful passing and team work.  It was amazing how quickly and deftly they scored.  Mid-game was a mire of careless booting the ball, but in the later second half they revived their style.  Some of those boys have been coached for five years or more by Kevin and Alex, and it shows.  Besides good coaching, consistent practice and a real field to play on, our team  also had shoes, a clear advantage, I actually wonder if we shouldn’t try to have a stash of shoes for our opponents just to make a better game . . . Scores were made by Birungi (2), Kasoke (2), Richard (2), and Abdul (1).  Richard also had two great assists on Kasoke’s and Birungi’s scores.  Luke is practicing with the team even though he can’t play, just to benefit from Alex’s discipline and exercise; but I also sponsor five boys actually on the team (two starters who are among the strongest players, and three boys who at least get to sit on the bench in uniform and feel a part of things . . . ) and it gives me joy to watch them play and succeed.  So much of their life hovers at the margin.  Most of them are thrilled with grades that eek them past failure.  The kind of clarity that shines in a 7 to 0 score comes rarely to their psyche.  So my mother’s heart basked in their joy yesterday, and I wanted Kevin to know that his legacy lives on.

Don't let the world around you squeeze you into its mold

This is the JB Phillips translation of Romans 12:1, quoted by Marva Dawn in her book Truly the Community.  She talks about how each person has a unique aspect of the glory of God to embody and reflect, and a true community allows individuals to safely explore and express who they are.  Instead of cultural rules that stamp out deviation and constrict diversity by molding character from the outside, we should encourage that transformation, the emergence of who we were truly created to be, from the inside out.  I’ve been watching a physical picture of that in Birungi Suizen.  His sharp bony face and curled body had a certain reptilian quality when he came in.  Over the last week, he’s reminded me of chameleons, who molt as they grow, shedding one skin as a new one replaces it from the inside.  His scabby oozing outer layer peeled off and from underneath grew a healthier version.  He’s gained over a kilo, which for him is a 20% increase in body weight.  He’s getting feistier, more alert, hungry.  He’s talking.  As the medicine and milk went deep into his body, he was slowly transformed from the inside out, and the real Birungi is now emerging.  This kind of transformation takes time, a lot of time, and feeding, and care.  But when it does happen, it is worth the effort.  (Matte stood up Friday, still a bag of bones but less in pain, a hint of energy returning; when we backed off on the sedation for Ngonzi Christopher his tetanus-induced dyspnea worsened so he’s getting more valium, but hanging in there, thanks for praying for them too).  As frustrating as it is to deal with malnutrition and all it’s complicated mess of family dysfunction and poverty and oppression and evil . . . The reward sometimes comes, watching resurrection in a slow time-lapse of day to day glimpses.

And I want to see that in the other two main spheres of my life, family and team.  A good family and a good team are that TRUE COMMUNITY where the squeezing conformity of the world is released, and God’s glory can be nurtured and revealed in each person.  It is also a privilege, a slow but sure one, to watch my kids and team mates emerge and transform.  Yesterday the Pierces moved into the “headmaster’s house”, the home the Bartkoviches had occupied for many years.  Before they moved, they hired a work crew to do major renovations, knocking down walls, changing doorway patterns, subtracting some cabinets and adding others, painting everything an invigorating green.  I like the result, but more importantly the freedom to make those changes allows them to move into a position as themselves, not squeezed into the mold of those who went before.   Naomi danced around the mess of boxes and books and dust and sticky not-yet-dry varnish in delight, telling me this is really HER house, in a chattering out-of-the-shell way that amazed me.  She felt the new look reflected her choices, expressed the Pierce uniqueness, and that gave her joy.  (And I found out as we organized in her room that we are kindred spirits in not liking our sheets tucked in our beds when we sleep).  

As missionaries we are in double jeopardy of the squeeze, or maybe triple:  we have our culture-of-origin ideas about what is right that sometimes seem more important than they should as we flounder in the strangeness of a foreign land.  We have the strong squeeze of the host culture, often a place where the rules punish deviation harshly as  a survival mechanism for marginalized people to maintain identity.  And we have the added burden of being public spectacles and objects of curiosity whose lives and choices can be mistaken for representing God’s ways.  How we need the humor and joy and freedom of community, the team a place where each person can emerge in God’s image, not America’s, or Bundibugyo’s, or World Harvest Mission’s.  That takes inner feeding, time, and courage as leaders.  I pray for that.

Why I keep going

Today I remembered why I keep going.

There are three little boys at the hospital who need more than the paltry medical care we can offer to have a hope of survival.  The oldest is Matte, who at 15 weighs less than the average 5 year old, every bone prominently protruding from his shrinking flesh.  We think it is TB, from his chest xray, so we have started therapy.  He smiles and says “thank you” in English when I hand him a jar of peanut butter and tell him to eat a spoonful every few hours.  The second is Ngonzi Christopher, 8 years old, beads of sweat in an intricate pattern on his straining face as he spasms in the classic rigor of tetanus.  When the spasm passes he can answer my questions in Lubwisi, his breathlessness being the chief complaint, tetanus a disease that suffocates a person with their own uncooperative muscles.  We are sedating him and supporting him, but after a series of phone calls I have determined there is no tetanus immune globulin in the country, and no ICU that will take him.  So only quiet, fluids, prayer and hope remain.  The third is Birungi Suizen, age 4 1/2.  I posted his picture last week, when his pitiful condition made me weep.  Today I wept when his sweet spirit surfaced.  He’s been admitted now for a few weeks, against all odds still alive.  Like a chameleon, he peeled off his sickly scabby skin and a new layer is emerging from within.  For the first time he’s sitting, and I found him eagerly sipping the milk his mother fed him from a spoon.  Every day I give him a piece of candy which he grabs, my assurance of his mental alertness.  Today I held out my closed fists, and instead of one piece I had enclosed two. He chose the right hand, and I turned over my fist to reveal the two pieces of candy on my palm.  Two!  He looked at them, and at me.  Then he slowly took one in one hand, and took the other and handed it to his mother.  I wanted to cry again.  This tiny suffering person was ready to share his first bounty, not to horde but to give.  He is barely alive, his years of malnutrition and neglect have to have impaired his intelligence, but he understands love.  

That’s what keeps me going.

Keeping eyes open

As I rode down the road this morning, I could see the barren peak of the Rwenzoris in it’s post-storm clarity, a shadowy horizon against the blue of the day.  We’ve just had a spate of visitors and I find myself challenged to see this world from their fresh perspective.  So I kept my eyes out for sights that have become normal to me, but which I really should appreciate:

• Six people riding one motorcycle.  Yes, six.  Most SUV’s in the US don’t even drive around with six people.  They were expertly arranged with a medium kid in front, a smaller kid between the next two adults, and a woman at the rear with a toddler tied onto her back hanging over the rear wheel.  The perfect family transportation.
• Our muscular builder walking down the road holding hands with another man, a sign of friendship, not anything weird.
• A bright blue fluttering kingfisher alighting on our grass-thatched kitubbi as I left.
• My shrivelly old lady neighbor smoking a home made cigar as she swept her dirt courtyard.
• A couple of dozen women in a shuffling circle dance with wreaths of leaves on their heads celebrating the boys in their family about to be circumcised (we had heard the drums all night, but as Luke cheerfully pointed out better drums than guns . . . )
• A cow with 3 foot long horns that shouldered me off the road
• Coke bottles lined up full of thick orange palm oil for sale
• No one looking hurried, no matter how late they were for school, no one too busy to stop and comment or greet or stare . . . .except me of course, zipping by, almost too fast to notice the rest of the world.

Going Post-It

I remember when “going postal” was a euphemism for raging insanity, because of a postal service worker who shot his fellow employees.  When Scott travels, I find my center untethered, my sanity slipping, my patience fraying at an alarming rate.  A couple of years ago when I was coping alone I resorted to post-it notes, everywhere, to remember all the details of my usual responsibilities plus his, because our life is definitely a two-person job. Then I heard a silly song (Philadelphia Chickens CD) making fun of typical “I’m so important” busy-ness, and felt convicted.  I think I’m going post-it again.  Today I forgot to send my kids’ lunch to school, appreciate the irony of being called at the nutrition clinic by my son to tell me I forgot my own children’s nutrition.  I biked home to pull something together, then was leaving them and pulled out a list of things I was trying to remember from the hospital . . . And Annelise reminded me of my post-it note phase.  When I’m the single parent and single doctor and single team leader, life comes at me from all directions, and I find that I start to slip.  So the best prayer is to probably simply remember my sense of humor, sort out the truly important, and cheerfully let the rest slide.  But not lunch.