Musings on April and Aslan...

"April is the Cruellest month" for a number of reasons.

1.) We are now officially past the halfway point. It is hard to believe we’ve been in Tanzania for over two months already. However, this means that home still feels miles away in space and time when we look into the future, but our time here is going to be but a moment if we look into the past. (I guess I’m just impossible to please).

2.) The lake-flies are back with a vengeance.

3.) I am reminded that it has been two months since I’ve had a good cup of coffee.

4.) We have missed birthdays and anniversaries of friends and family back home.

5.) Today is the final game of the NCAA tournament...and it is the first time in a long while I don’t even know who is in it. The experience is not liberating, it’s depressing.

6.) I realize I have lost all touch with the events taking place in the larger world. Russia could be at war with China for all I know.

7.) It has been two months since I have heard a sermon which I understand.

On a more positive note, April has also brought the rainy season in full force. It is not what one would expect when they hear the term "rainy season." As I write this the sky is blue and the sun is shining and the waves are lapping outside our front door. In fact, it’s more than a week since it has rained here, but the storms, when they come, are awful (in the original sense of the word).

Nothing of great excitement has happened since the last post. Vanessa and I are definitely in the full swing of things though. We realize that this is perhaps the nicest part of going on a longer term short term project like this, we have time (just enough) to settle into a community, make some more permanent friends, and have more of a lasting impact on the people here. Vanessa has been really busy the past week with the clinic with children clinics, pregnant mothers, and HIV/AIDS testing. She has some good stories, but once again, I will let her tell her stories (she has promised to post something sometime!).

Life at the school is interesting. I was a bit worried about how I would like teaching and how the students would respond to a young Mzungu teacher (I explained last blog how they really respect the elderly in this culture...well the unfortunate corollary to that is there is a lot of disrespect for young people). Yet I have been pleasantly surprised at how quickly the students have warmed up to me and are willing to talk with me about the lessons before and after class. Currently I am teaching Form 3 and Form 4 the basics of narrative compositions and am looking forward to reading their first assignment, which was to write a short story about a significant moment in their lives. Not as exciting as Elves, Trolls and the realm of Faerie, but I hope to introduce that soon enough. I’m curious what their imaginations will come up when we turn to creative writing. I’ll keep you posted.

I wish I had Capote-like recall with the many conversations I have had with students and teachers – there are many funny moments of miscommunication – but I will save those (the ones I remember) for when I get back. Today I went up to teach and found that the students were nowhere to be found. Apparently it is a national holiday for "Kulume" (unsure of spelling) who was the first president of Zanzibar. Now our headmasters name is "Kunume" and I could have sworn the student who informed me of the holiday said that today was "Kunume day." Well he didn’t and it wasn’t. It was "Kulume day" not "Kunume day" and boy was my face red when I shook the headmasters hand (in front of all the other teachers no less) and said happy Kunume day. In my defense I thought it was only a coincidence that Josef and the first president of Zanzibar shared a last name, but the teachers believed that I thought the holiday was in honour of Josef, the headmaster. At least that is how I explained their laughter to myself. Apart from school, I’ve decided to help the doctor at the clinic, Makoobi, learn English as well. He’s a great guy and our Thursday afternoon English lessons out on the beach with a bottle of Coka is a nice change of pace from the hectic classroom with 90 students.

Life at home is going well enough. Our generator broke down and the "fundi" (a Swahili term for a Jack of all trades...usually an expert mechanic or builder) tried fixing it, then went A.W.A.L. for a week. As I type this, he has the generator dissembled on our back porch (again) trying to make a diagnosis. Since I understand generators about as much as I understand Richard Simmons (or want to) I am keeping my distance.

Also, we’ve had a bit of a rodent problem. It started when Dutchess, our female dog, killed a 27 inch rat which had been apparently living under the back porch. Then, we had both been waking up at 2 or 3 each morning hearing loud "cheeping" noises. We debated if it was a return of the bat, or maybe something new like crickets or birds, but it turned out to be mice. Apparently kicking Lily the cat out of the house has allowed for somewhat of a resurgence of the rodent plebeians. Emma, our house helper (Male...Emma is short for Emmanuel) set a trap which to date has killed five mice. Some during the evening, but most at an inconvenient hour. The trap doesn’t kill the mouse but pins it against a board where the mouse suffers a long and painful death unless one of us gets out of bed to empty the trap in front of Lily who makes short work of the matter. Last night, Lily was nowhere to be found so I decided to let the mouse out and have the heel of my sandal do the work of the cat. However, the mouse had other plans. As soon as I let him out of the trap he bolted for the beach so I bolted after him armed with my cell-phone flashlight and a brick I picked up, wearing nothing but sandals, a gitch and a smile. Strike that actually, it was a frown, it was midnight and I was losing a race to a maimed mouse. Duke, our male dog, deciding to join the fun and helped me spot the mouse in a clump of grass...or what I thought was a clump of grass. In what I believe was the mouse’s final (and quite noble) attempt to "stick it to the man" it decided to curl up on a piece of Duke’s dung. As I stomped the mouse into eternity I couldn’t help but wonder at this small twist of fate. It was almost like the mouse had flipped me the bird in passing. Instant Karma I guess.

Jeff, Vanessa, and I decided to take the Gilmour’s canoe out the past weekend. We ventured to one of the nearest islands, Easyneezy (that’s how the word sounds...definitely not how it is spelled). The island is not inhabited by people, but had hundreds of interesting birds and huge monitor lizards sitting on the rocks. Jeff and I decided that we would venture to the heart of the island the next day, which we did try, but found the undergrowth was so heavy you could hardly pierce it with a machete...and believe me, Jeff tried. After swinging his machete like a maniac for a few minutes, he carved a 10 foot path and then gave up. After that we just used the machete to cut stuff down, Jeff got a little overzealous though and ended up swinging so hard that he cut a branch straight through, hit a rock, lost his grip, and dropped his machete into the lake. We also attempted to canoe to the next nearest island, which turned out to be not-so-near as we expected. Judging distance on water is, in my mind, next to impossible. After rowing for almost 45 minutes, the island that was "probably 20 minutes away," looked no bigger than it did from our front porch. Yet when we turned around, our front porch was a speck on the horizon. I like to think we entered some time/space warp and were merely paddling on the equivalent of a water treadmill, on some invisible overlapping seam of reality, and since I like to think that, that is the answer I gave to Vanessa when she asked why we had made such pathetic headway to the big island.

Our time here is also bringing us closer to God. There is something humbling about living and working with people you never fully understand and who will never fully understand you. It almost seems that without the alternatives of our friends and family at home we are driven to ask God for protection and health and grace in a way that is hard to articulate. I almost want to say that the temptation at home (at least for myself) is to see God in purely abstract ways – a talking point more than a reality. I’m beginning to see that knowledge of God, his Immutability, Aseity, Eternity, etc. – all interesting points for theological speculation – are utter nonsense if we haven’t first believed in the reality of God. In Aristotle’s Poetics he writes that the two effects good rhetoric should be to arouse pity and fear. In regards to our experience of God, perhaps we can add a third: wonder. The thought of God, something so separate from the creation yet so intimately involved with it should cause us to pity our miserable condition when we understand how far we have gone from the life we were intended for, Fear (and trembling) at the power and terror of a God whose presence in the temple demanded the lives of those who were not permitted in the Holy of Holies, and Wonder at how this God has torn the temple veil and seeks to dwell within us and assume us into the Triune Godhead.

As I type this I am listening to a song by Sufjan Stevens called "Seven Swans" which recalls to my mind an episode with a friend in Ottawa. My friend – a "Sufjan Stevens fan, despite his Christianity" – informed me that this song has one of the most chilling descriptions of God. Sufjan sings: "If you run, He will chase you. If you run, He will catch you. And He takes, and He takes, and He takes. For He is the Lord." I was not surprised that my friend picked out these lines that I had so often heard but glazed over since he is much more musically (and poetically) inclined than I am. I was surprised, however, that being an atheist he found such a description of God "chilling" and not merely comical. Perhaps, I told him, that chill you feel is the God Sufjan is talking of chasing you. To which he laughed. But if God is truly God and He wants you or me, why won’t he chase you? And if he chases you, why wouldn’t he catch you? Perhaps God doesn’t bring anyone into heaven kicking and screaming, but He sure does drag most, if not all, of us to the gate. And this is what is so scary for those outside of Christ. Paul says that the light of the gospel will only be darkness to those outside of Christ, it is an unpleasant aroma, a message of death, but within the fold it is comfort, light, salt, and the smell of incense. I can only find comfort in Sufjan Stevens poetry about a God who takes and takes and takes when I first realize that he has every right to such taking because everything is already His that he gave and gave and gave. And who am I anyways?

God is scary and beautiful and wonderful. He created the cosmos that stretch into an eternity the human mind can’t grasp and who knows how many different dimensions, yet he is involved with the most solipsistic recluse. Again, all of this is hard to explain. Maybe one last attempt will do before I sign out and it has to do with an experience I think most readers of the Narnia series share. I remember a time when I was in grade three or four and I had just finished reading the Narnia series back to back. I happened to finish the series right before the 4:30 afternoon service of Trinity and I remember hearing a particularly dry sermon and I would have, given the right words, agreed with Nietzsche and his crew that "God is dead" – at least God felt dead when compared to the vitality of Aslan. I remember praying fervently during the congregational prayer that God, in the form of lion would rush the church and wake everyone up (including those who were awake...it was a different sleep I was stumblingly thinking of). In fact, when I look back on this moment I almost think I prayed to Aslan. Weird, I know. Of course I was wrong. God was not dead. The term itself is an oxymoron. If God is God he could never die – neither to cease His existence in reality or in our imaginations. What was dead was me, or something in me. And sometimes I think what killed it was Doctrine. Knowledge of God killed my belief in God. I don’t agree with those who see Doctrine as the water of knowledge to the flame of belief. Doctrine is vital to a healthy mature spirit. It is the meat and potatoes. But Meat and Potatoes can choke a child, almost like too much paper on a small flame does more harm than good. Now I am at a point where I can make more sense of my childish impulse to pray to Aslan – God was never a dim shadow or echo of Aslan; it was the exact opposite. Aslan with his ferocity and tenderness is but the refracted light from the source which both He and Lewis, his sub-creator, find their being. Perhaps if I was where I am now, the sermon and the doctrine and the "knowledge" of God I heard that afternoon would hardly be dry. Perhaps not. A dry sermon is a dry sermon (not all our meat and potatoes are cooked to perfection), but nevertheless, Credo ut Intelligum. I believe in order to understand...

So, we are making some tentative plans to go to Mwanza with Andy for a day or two in the near future to stock up on supplies. That means we will most likely be able to post some new pics from Bob and Esther's.