District Champs

Christ School - Bundibugyo triumphed in the District Football Final game yesterday, 1-0, against Simbya St. Mary's Senior Seconday School. It was not an easy game. Our boys came out strong, passing, dominating. But by half we were only up by one, and in the second half our best striker was injured and out, and we played hesitant and uncoordinated football. Not our best, but good enough. Interestingly this week Luke (who has been practicing with the team, a whole new ball-game since he's 6-2, and not the slow little kid anymore) was pushing one of his friends to be more aggressive in play, and the boy told him "but then either I will be shamed or the boy I'm attacking will be shamed". I think we felt that in the finals, a holding back lest anyone look too bad in front of the biggest crowd of the year, against our nearest rivals. Hoping that they will loosen up at the national tournament (VERY far from home, the last week of April) and have more fun.

On to Masaka! Praying it will be a time of bonding and discipleship as the team travels and stays together, an eye-opening interaction with kids from all over Uganda, a confidence boosting memorable treat, and a chance to represent both Christ and Bundibugyo in good ways.

On demand (again)

Twice on Friday, we encountered the disgruntled and demanding.  This is the season of "Child Health Days", a spread-out-from the hospital into the community push that is designed to top up all the immunizations and public health prophylaxis that keeps us from preventible death.  World-wide, neonatal tetanus causes 7% of deaths in the first month of life, making it one of the top killers of newborns.  But I have not seen a case in over five years, which is certainly the result of immunizing young girls and pregnant women.  Measles epidemics are deadly in the malnourished and displaced, but our last one here was over a decade ago, thanks to immunizations.  Great stuff.  So it was discouraging to hear the staff return from their first school-based outreach to complain that the teachers at the school refused to assist them at all.  Why?  Because said teachers were DEMANDING a cut of the action, a greasing of the palm, a little something in payment.  The assumption of everyone is:  the government wants us to do these outreaches, so money must be allocated, so I deserve to get some of it, and if I don't, it's because someone else is "eating" it, and I'll never see a shilling unless I make a demand.  As it turns out, there are no funds for teachers to participate.  And once people were convinced of that, their attitude changed.  Second example:  later I heard that the football team were complaining that their usual perk of an extra egg and chapati a day (after all they train for a couple of hours every evening on rather minimal calories) had been dropped.  I'm sure they also assumed that someone was "eating" the money designated for their goodies, and if they did not push for it, they would never get it.

This culture is fueled by demand.  From the time a child is born, it is his duty to cry in order to be fed, to ask and grab for what he needs.  It is the patients' responsibility to ask every six hours for their injections on the ward.  It is the employees' responsibility to file endless paperwork and make endless trips to personnel in order to be paid.  It is the wife who must throw a tantrum to get a dress. It is the inlaws who must haggle goats from the bridegroom.  It is the right of any relative to ask for whatever is needed from those who have more.  The up side of this is that people are in touch with their desires, and that parents/teachers/supervisors feel relaxed and free whenever someone is NOT in their face, they aren't necessarily mind-racing ahead to the next good thing that COULD be done, but more content to wait until it becomes imperative to do it.

The down sides are also there, however.  The malnourished lethargic kid who does not cry for food can easily be neglected.  The zealous missionary who takes seriously every request (and then also thinks ahead to self-imposed potential duties) becomes exhausted.  The average person can't assume that anyone in a position of responsibility will spontaneously do their job, so there is this constant push and pull of disgruntled demanding and passive-aggressive threats.  

And our culture most surely impacts our view of God.  The demand culture, I think, leads to honest and constant prayer for every need, which is Biblical.  But it also can paint God as some cosmic disinterested being from whom we must demand attention.  Do we have to push for everything we need?  Not in my experience.  Rather, we are bowled over by the extravagance of His grace.  Is that just our culture, where plan-ahead duty-driven self-push is the norm, or at least the ideal?  Or is there a deep truth to mercy?

A little fire kindles

This past week in our Life Together study, we focused on the tongue, that little fire that kindles great forests (James 3).  WHM employs in our training a famous homework called "the tongue assignment" :  for one week do not gossip, complain, put anyone down, defend yourself, etc.  The impossibility of it drives us to grace; and an analysis of WHY we want to speak so often on our own behalf reveals our real values.  Bonhoeffer writes about holding one's tongue, meekness, and listening as the foundation for true ministry.  This is a risky study, and a risky assignment:  as a leader, of course, we have to be the first ones to repent.  So in the group I found myself telling stories about what the Spirit had revealed during the week: as visitors came, I saw how I lay out our ministry or tell stories of the past in a way that makes me look good and puts down people who have been difficult.  I don't listen when I assume I know what someone else (usually Scott) is going to say.  I was critical of one of my students until later I realized that his complaints were legitimate, I had forgotten a promise I made.  I use my tongue to be the opposite of meek:  to defend and promote and justify myself.  Not lovely.  

It is also a risky topic cross-culturally.  We wondered, would anyone relate to this, or is it too abstract?  But God is answering prayer, and on the move.  One of the participants fell under strong conviction about harsh words he had showered on his subordinate, and asked for help in seeking forgiveness and reconciliation.  Angels blew trumpets, I'm sure.  It's not easy to repent anywhere, and moreso in a hierarchical society for an elder to repent in front of a younger man.  Then even more amazingly, he decided to share the story with the whole group, putting himself in a very bad light.  Two others expressed their struggles as well.  Past seminars (Kevin's Sonship and Donovan's Teaching Redemptively) were mentioned, demonstrating that the Word is still slowly percolating, that fruit will still sprout from those days.  

It was a holy evening.  We continue to pray for real all-things-new wholeness in our hearts and our colleagues', the emerging character of leaders that will transform Bundibugyo.  This was a glimpse of the answer.

Great Start

The campaign to end chronic hunger in Bundibugyo took one more step forward today, as we were called to a meeting in the District Health Office to evaluate a 30-page proposal by WFP.  Interestingly, Stephanie Jilcott who worked on our team to set up the BBB program after she finished her PhD in nutrition, was visiting, and it was her data that documented the shocking 45% stunting rate in this district that got this ball rolling.  She and Scott Ickes combined their missionary service and academic research in a unique way that drew attention to the pervasiveness of undernutrition in Bundi.  Today she, Travis, Olupah and I joined a half dozen others from the district to discuss plans for radio spots, dramas, community mobilization, and general education and focus on the crucial issue of child feeding.  The conversation ranged from the possibility of establishing a radio station (any takers?) to the nuances of language choice and the motivations behind cocoa production.  We're big advocates of emphasizing the connection between school performance (highly valued by parents) and early nutrition (harder to see and value).  Rather than policing how much land a family devotes to vegetable production, teach them the importance of a varied and calorie-adequate protein-rich diet and then let them make good choices.  

A month or so ago, before the big launching party, some reporters visited our hospital.  They are just now filing their reports, so if anyone wants to read a story from the national paper on Easter, here it is: http://www.newvision.co.ug/D/9/34/715143

 In case you're wondering, I'm Myra and Nathan is Eldad.  

And the catchy song that says that REAL parents feed their children:   Uwe mubyaye weniniye, olisiya abaana bawee!

It's jingling in my mind even as I type.  This is our five loaves, the breaking and giving of our small resources in a way that can multiply and feed thousands.

one wedding and a funeral

In the last three days we've spent two afternoons at different neighbors' houses, Monday at a funeral and Wednesday at a wedding.  Both were times to experience and participate in the solidarity of community.  The funeral was by far the larger and more significant event, attracting hundreds of people.  We sat on dried cocoa leaves under the shade of the cocoa trees, as the grave-digging was completed a short stone's toss from the front door.  As soon as the clan leaders spied Scott they announced he would be giving a speech, and so he was called forward into the bright sun of the courtyard to talk about community, mourning, relationship, and the preparation of our hearts for the inevitability of death.  Burials represent probably the largest community events in this culture, and by their very nature times to ponder immortality and the Gospel.  It was hard for me to watch Richard, only a few years older than Luke, hunching his shoulders and wiping his eyes as his father's body was lowered into the freshly dug hole.  The next morning I went back to take some tea to his mother.  It is traditional for close family to spend four days sleeping outside the deceased's home, on the ground together, a long watching and supporting.  Solidarity.

Yesterday's event was more intimate.  We had been informed that we should come, but I had forgotten completely until I walked in from a very long morning at the hospital at almost 2 and found Scott waiting to go.  Our direct nearest neighbor Tabaka, brother of the late Mukiddi, was receiving bride-price for his daughter from a family in Congo where she had "married".  In traditional culture a couple often "elopes", pays a fine of a chicken to show they are officially together, and it can take a year or two or more for the formal family negotiation legitimizing the marriage.  I think this couple had two kids already.  The Babwisi have incorporated some Baganda culture into their marriages in the last decade as this place has become less isolated.  The whole event is rather dramatic, with appointed spokes-persons for each side, the two family groupings seated facing each other, and much bandying back and forth.  The groom's group has to present the goats they have brought; the bride's family makes a great show of inspection and rejects some on the basis of their size being too small or their fertility being unproven, then the groom's family will make them "grow" by adding on an envelope of money.  Besides the goats there were a list of concrete demands such as "7 litres of paraffin" and the men on the bride's side had to open the bottle and smell the liquid to be sure they weren't being cheated with plain water.  The 15 kg of sugar when counted out turned out to be 14 and a half, but the bride's group agreed to forgive. 

Lots of laughter, but also the underlying cultural appropriateness of the DEMAND.  A woman is something to be haggled over, and the exchange of a daughter for goats and crates of beer and soda is considered a fair deal.  And the last chance to press for more, so take it.  ( Our weddings in our culture could also be seen as mercenary, with the expectation that all guests bring gifts . . . ).

So, a couple of observations.  The wedding had very little to do with the bride and groom.  They were peripheral to the whole affair.  The event yesterday was an bonding of two families.  It was a negotiation of alliance, and exchange of goods that sealed a relationship.  The last order of business was formal recognition of the "mukwenda", the go-between, who is related to both sides and will serve to relay messages and confirm rumors and smooth conflicts between the two groups in the future.  The burial was also about family and clan rather than a dead individual.  In the speeches and the customs, the lineage, the property, the descendants, are the key points of interest.

Second, it was a privilege to be drawn into both.  Particularly at the wedding, we were called to come as part of the bride's family.  In fact Scott has had the opportunity to care for both of her parents at times over the last 16 years when they would have died otherwise.  Tabaka, who is now in his 70's and the elder of the whole affair, and recipient of the don't-try-this-at-home surgical procedure Nathan blogged about a week or so ago, made a formal statement early in the ceremony.  He came into the courtyard and introduced Scott as his son to all present, so that we were not attending as guests but seated with the family.  One of our "adopted sons", boys we sponsored through school, was the MC of the affair.  Two other young men who have been very connected with our mission sat near us.  The "maid of honor" I had also sponsored in school, and another "bridesmaid" young woman is one of my patients.  

Sitting under a tarp laid with banana leaves for coolness, in the bright afternoon heat, straining to follow dialogue in a foreign language, claimed by a rascally clan of sometimes-devious always-generous people who have forgiven our other-ness and drawn us in, thankful for moments of inclusion in a life that is often disjointed, but always interesting.

Rolling Stones

I suppose it was the smashing, tumbling drama of the small boulder that Pastor Kisembo rolled in the Easter Sunday service yesterday that has stayed with me.  The resurrection itself has little witness, the flesh forming back over the 39 lashes, the life fluttering behind eyelids.  By the time anyone saw Jesus he was up and about in the garden, and mistaken for a gardener.  But somewhere between the stirring of breath, the swinging of pierced feet down from the slab to walk out of the tomb, and the meeting with Mary in the garden, there was a cataclysmic force that rolled the massive sealed stone door, open.  A blinding light, frightening rough soldiers into a dead faint.  

Because the women who were approaching the garden at dawn worried about how to get inside the tomb to embalm the body with their spices, we know it was no small rock.  And because they wanted to get IN, I think I've always thought of the "stone rolled away" in terms of our access to Jesus.  But primarily the stone was removed to give HIM access to US.  He was the first one who crossed that threshold, coming OUT.  

And I find that encouraging today.  God is willing, and able, to blast away anything that might stand between Him and His will.  Bethany posted on Easter using a phrase from a Mundri saint:  God will not be defeated.  Nothing will stand in His way, tons of stone, or hearts of stone, He will always break through to get out into the world, out among us, to find us, to speak and touch and heal and change.  To make all things new.

Easter Sunday: resurrection and reality

Easter Sunday faded into cloudy light as our team gathered at the Johnsons to sing hymns and be led in a meditation on John 20 by Travis, looking at the ways Jesus comes to the many characters in the story, from Mary to Thomas. Then we all dispersed to our homes for family breakfasts, ours an unusually leisurely waffle production (we have a cast-iron one-by-one pan that cooks over the gas flame, allowing for extended coffee and conversation). The church service began in a pouring rain but ended in steamy sunshine, almost four hours, including about four different singing groups, and the two main choirs must have done 8 to 10 songs each. Kisembo brought an actual large rock to illustrate the sermon, which he dramatically rolled down the steps of the front dais, with a crash! Many people brought produce as their offering, and a business-man visitor in a suit bid up the post-service auction to the highest prices ever, much to the delight of all concerned. In the afternoon our whole team, and a few friends, came to our house where we had spread a long table in the shade and we grilled meat and feasted. People stayed around to chat as the day became cooler, kicking a ball, making phone calls home, playing ping pong, eating cake, and finally resting under the stars by candle light. It was a lovely day.

But reality broke in, too. We got phone messages as we were preparing for the team dinner, that one of our neighbors had died. Milton was the father of a boy we sponsor in school, a boy who has played with our kids and been our friend for most of his life (he's about 21, and we've known him since he was 5). Richard finished CSB this past year, and we sent him last month to be trained as an electrician in a trade school in Fort Portal. By evening he had received the news and come home, and Scott, Luke, and I left our party and walked up the road to his house. From the sparkling table-under-the-trees spread with food and surrounded by laughter, we went to Richard's where I crouched on a dirt floor strewn with banana leaves next to a dead body while Luke and Scott sat with the men outside. No glorifying death here: wailing tears, a man basically our age who worked as a laborer and lived in extreme poverty and struggled with alcohol and died in his home gasping for breath after three days of a pneumonia for which no one sought medical help.

Since my Dad also died on Easter night, it was a bit surreal for me. I gave Richard a big hug. His dad could not provide much (which is I believe a huge factor in the numbing attraction of drink for men here) but he was the anchor of that household, and now he is gone.

Songs and friendship and feast are part of reality . . but only made substantial and sweet by the dust-to-dust contrast of a soon-to-decay body in a soon-to-crumble mud house. Resurrection, come.

Saturday

Yesterday's focus on prayer and memory was good, but absolutely exhausting. More than the long hours, I think there is a draining energy of pushing back against evil in prayer.  Some encouragement came from scattering the invites and finding between 15 and 20 people showing up in the afternoon after a morning's church service, missionaries outnumbered by Ugandans, a diverse cross-section of men and women, young and old, church leaders and teachers, indigenous to Bundibugyo and working here from other parts of the country.  Praying for things like gardens and protection from thieves and justice in government and strength in marriages and even the much-hoped-for pneumococcal vaccine provision.  Praying for miracles. Later in the evening we missionaries met again, about half the team, to meditate on the Cross and then enter into a half-night of prayer.  Since our work is usually very hands-on and public, it is good to acknowledge that yesterday's work is the real deal, the hidden and effective push behind that which is seen.  Our focus for the night was from Heb 12, the paradoxical mixture of suffering and joy that characterized Jesus' approach to the cross, the fatherly scourging that draws us into the unshakable Kingdom.  We prayed for endurance to run the race, we prayed for our WHM teams in Sudan and Nairobi as well as our own, for unity and love, for seismic shifts in endemic corruption, for clear signs of new life.

But today, I feel the cost in weariness, and a rebound of discouragement.  

Which should not be surprising.  The cross was a fully costly experience for Jesus.  He gave up every vestige of wanting to be loved by others, was disfigured, misunderstood, silent, accused, revolting.  There was absolutely nothing in His walk to death that was calculated for popularity, that pushed His own agenda.  The Son of Man did not come to be loved, but to love . . the cross was a full emptying of any right or desire to demand love, an in its place a full sacrifice of unreturned love towards others.  

That was Jesus.  That is not me.  And that's why Saturday feels long, and tiring.  How to thrive in a life of giving love rather than seeking it?  I think a big answer is the continuous way Jesus prayed, which is strikingly portrayed in the movie the Passion.  Psalms drop from his lips and flow from his heart.  Patrick from our mission wrote a post about this a few days ago, the continuous prayer that taps into the power of God.  Power to love. Because I can't, none of us can. May the morning's celebration of resurrection begin there, a fresh-from-the-garden encounter with the One who has the power to love, and to share that with us.

Good Friday

Our church here in Uganda always spends Good Friday morning meditating on the seven "words", phrases really, that the Gospels record Jesus speaking from the cross.  It is a smaller service, more somber, the faithful come, but the crowds do not.  And I always find something new in the way that people from a culture closer to Jesus' read and understand his words.  Today, for instance, when Jesus speaks to John about his mother, the preacher drew a picture of how a boy might bring a friend from school to his home, to eat, and then later if that friend came alone (without the real son of the home) he'd be welcomed by the parents based on the friendship with the son.  So Jesus was showing us that those he calls friends are now part of his family, and welcome, even in his absence.  Or the phrase "I thirst" . . . was very analogous to the first words anyone would say coming in from a morning's work in the garden.  We're on the equator.  We sweat.  Everyone leads lives that involve physical exertion.  So to hear Jesus say the same thing makes sense to them, it is a word of his humanity, of his connection.  He is not over-spiritualized into someone inaccessible or opaque, rather he is portrayed as he was, a flesh-and-blood man in agony, pouring sweat, and feeling real thirst.  Seeing Jesus through the eyes of others makes him more real, to us.

On the night he was betrayed . . .

Jesus ate, with his friends. He knew he was walking into the end, and yet he took the time to celebrate, to feast, to honor tradition, to build community over a meal. To drink the four cups of wine, to consume of the sacrificial lamb, to break the crisp unleavened bread.

In the stress of conflict and impending arrest and torture, Jesus did not consider such an evening of fellowship optional or expendable. And he knew what physical, concrete creatures we are, how we need to be anchored in the rhythms of community and remembrance. How we need the drops of deep red wine, the tang of bitter herbs, the texture of shared bread, to understand reality. And how we need each other, how meals bind. These friends would soon desert him, but in the act of this meal he affirmed his love and set the tone for bringing them back together on the other side.

And so this year once again we relive the Passover, a doubled vision backward of the Exodus and the Crucifixion, and a peek of vision forward to the Supper of the Lamb. Holy and deep with analogy and meaning, but also immediate and accessible in the familiarity of a dinner with friends.