Sunday, April 20, 2008
Monday, April 14, 2008
Vanessa's Blog (It actually happened!)
Well, we are passed the halfway mark and I am officially writing my own first blog. I have been contributing ideas for the previous blogs but unfortunately my writing skills just aren’t on par with Dougs! (that is why I am a nurse and not an English major!) So I will attempt to write a blog, but I feel as though Doug has set some high standards, so as soon as you are prepared to lower the bar a little (or a lot!) you can continue reading on.
Our time here has been flying by and we are both now into somewhat of a regular routine. I am working alongside Mary Jane who is a nurse midwife, she is a great person and I have really been enjoying working with her. On Mondays and Fridays we go up to the clinic to do baby/child health clinics. We weigh the children, chart their growth, talk to the moms about how the child is feeling and if they are well, and give immunizations. These clinic days are always busy due to the fact that there are ALOT of children living in Kahunda and also due to the fact that Mary Jane’s clinics are free. We had one clinic day where we saw 169 children!
Unfortunately my Swahili isn’t the greatest so that makes communication difficult, I can understand a few simple nursing words (which gets me farther than I thought it would) but when they start speaking long fast sentences I’m usually looking very lost. So Mary Jane does the talking with the moms and then I get the medications that are needed, check the children for anaemia and enlarged spleens and give the immunizations. The children are very cute and seem to like me until I give them their immunizations. Many of the children that we see are treated for malaria and many are malnourished. Mary Jane gives health education to the moms about how to feed their children properly with the resources that are available in Kahunda.
There are a lot of strange beliefs here regarding health and wellness. Many of the moms bring their children to the clinic and expect to get LOTS of medication and they believe that the only way their child will get better is if they are given a needle (doesn’t seem to matter what the needle is for) and if you treat the child with oral medications the moms will either not give it to the child or will take the child to the witch doctor. The witch doctors are a huge problem here, especially on the islands. This has been a widely accepted practice for many years so most of the local people have very little trust in the clinic’s treatment. Many people who see the witch doctor end up coming to the clinic, but by then no one knows what has been done to the person at the witch doctor and it is usually too late to do anything to help so they usually end up dying. Another strange belief here is the idea of children being born with plastic teeth. Many parents believe that if you can see the white under a child’s gums then it means that the child has plastic teeth, so they pull them all out......this makes perfect sense.
On Tuesdays we do an antenatal clinic for the pregnant women. This is also a very busy day. Again because of the language barrier Mary Jane does the talking and I do the practical part of the assessment. So after Mary Jane is finished with her questions then I feel for the baby’s position and based on the size of the baby and position of the uterus I estimate how far along the mother is and then we find the heart beat. This is a very different area of nursing then what I am used to, but I am learning a lot a really enjoying it. A problem here with the pregnant moms is anaemia. Many of the women are very anaemic which puts them at risk during their delivery. We check them for anaemia and treat them, but if they are a big risk they will be told to come to the clinic to have their baby. Most of the women have their baby’s at home, but if they have had any previous bleeding complications, or the baby is not in a good position then they are told to come to the clinic. Unfortunately many don’t listen to the advice and have their baby’s at home and then when they realize that things are going well they rush to the clinic, but by then they have lost too much blood and the baby and/or mom end up dying on the way to the clinic or at the clinic. This is frustrating for Mary Jane to experience because this is exactly what she is trying to prevent, but what can you do when people choose to ignore what we view as common sense advice? It is very difficult to educate people on the whole idea of prevention and planning ahead. Most women don’t come to the clinic because either they don’t have the money to pay the clinic or their husbands won’t give them the money. What they don’t understand is that it would cost them 5000 tshs (which is about $4 CND) to come to the clinic or take a bus to the closest hospital to have their baby, but if they come when there are complications it will then cost them 50 000 tshs (about $45 CND – which is about their whole weeks wages) to transport them to the hospital. It is at times very frustrating for Mary Jane, she does so much educating for these moms and really cares about them, but unfortunately she just isn’t able to convince them all.
On Wednesday and Thursdays we go up to the clinic to do HIV/AIDS testing. These days are very limiting due to the communication barrier, but Mary Jane is very good at utilizing volunteers and she keeps me interested and busy. These clinic days are optional for anyone in the village to come and voluntarily be tested for free. Mary Jane provides a lot of education during these clinics. She starts off by asking the patient about HIV/AIDS to see what they already know. She then goes on to explain how you contract the disease and what it does in your body when you have it. Many of the people have very little education of HIV/AIDS and a common response to what it does in your body is “it eats away at your stomach”.
There are some very strange and scary beliefs about HIV/AIDS here. For example some believe that a woman can get it from a man, but a man cannot get it from a woman. Another belief is that if you get tested three times and everytime you are negative then you will never get it. The scariest belief is that is you sleep with a virgin you will be cured from the disease. The witch doctor is also believed to be able to cure people with the disease; unfortunately what the witch doctor does to treat HIV/AIDS involves cutting. So after they are finished with the HIV positive patient the next patient comes is and is also treated using a cutting procedure using the same knife, so while the doctor has “cured” the HIV patient they have now passed the disease onto this patient. Polygamy is another practise that contributes to the spread of HIV/AIDS, along with the fact that many of the men are fishermen and go off to fishing camps where they may live during the week and only come home on the weekend. In many of the fishing camps HIV/AIDS is running rampant. The fishermen are not faithful to their marriages and I was told by one of the other missionary nurses that does HIV/AIDS testing on the islands that in the fishing camps the percentage of HIV positive people is as high as 80%! There are many people who choose not to be tested for fear of being positive. Mary Jane does the HIV/AIDS clinics very well and she has made it possible to allow herself to witness to the people coming to be tested, she has a very interesting way of witnessing to the people. After she has done all of her educating and we are waiting for the test results she asks the patient “Do you know Jesus?” Here are some of the responses:
1) No, but I might recognize him if I see him.
2) Patient: No, but I heard that he is coming
Mary Jane: He has come, and is coming again
Patient: I guess I missed him the first time, hopefully I will see him next time
3) No, should I?
4) Yes.
Mary Jane: Where will you go when you die?
Patient: Heaven
Mary Jane: And why will you go to heaven
Patient: Because I’m a good person and don’t do bad things
These are some of the humorous (and sad) responses, but have given Mary Jane a great opportunity to witness to these people. She then spends time talking with each individual , invites them to church and gives them some reading material and tells them that if they have any questions to come and talk to her or to the local pastor or evangelist. Mary Jane feels that the Lord has really opened up doors for her and is very excited about these opportunities.
Another part of the job here is going to the local islands once a month to do these same clinics but for only three days a month. So on Wednesday we will boat the island Nyamongo. Mary Jane tells me that these will be a very busy three days, she said we will work sun up to sun down...I am really looking forward to this experience.
So, that is what I am doing for work during the week. The rest of my time I feel like have spend trying to figure out how to do things here. The cooking has been quite the experience. We have market here once a week where we can get some produce and the meat. They do slaughter a cow once a week (they pick the oldest, skinniest cow in town, which makes for some tough meat!). I have learned that there is no such thing as “whipping up a meal” here. Like for example at home when I feel like making an easy dinner I may choose to make hamburgers (you would think this would be easy!) but then I realized that when you have to ground the beef yourself and make homemade hamburger buns, this may not be the meal to choose if you feel like ”whipping up a meal! I will say though that my loaves of bread are looking better all the time! (my first loaf didn’t rise at all because I killed the yeast with boiling water!) I also realized that I can get quite a work out kneading the bread!
Our power situation has been quite an experience here. I think Doug may have mentioned this, but I feel the need to address it again. It seems to be a pattern, it starts raining and then the solar powered batteries run out so the lights die. Then the generator gets hooked up to charge up the batteries which causes the generator to break, then we run out of water because the generator broke while trying charge up the battery, so now we can’t pump the water. Then we call over our neighbour or a local fundi to fix the generator, the generator gets fixed a couple days (or a week) later, we charge up the batteries and pump the water with the fixed generator, the sun comes out and charges the solar panels, a few days later it clouds over and the cycle repeats. I guess this is what they meant by being flexible!
The other thing that has been causing me some grief is the washing machine. At first I was thankful that we actually had a washing machine, but I think I may have changed my mind. When we first got here, the machine wasn’t working because the generator was broken (surprise, surprise), so Emma (our house help) said he would just do the laundry by hand. Now I feel the need to comment on house help........ it is a different feeling. I am not used to having someone in the house doing things for me and being around all day. I feel bad if I leave dishes and ask him to do something, I mean if I’m not doing anything I could just do it myself. I also feel weird having a man that I don’t really know do my laundry for me. So the first time I gave him some of Doug’s white shirts to wash by hand, let’s just say that when the laundry was done they didn’t really look like clean white shirts! With some bleach and an overnight soak they were back to new, but I still had to figure out how to do the rest of the laundry. After we had run out of clean clothes I decided that I would just do the laundry by hand myself (how hard could it be), so after three baskets of laundry done by hand I realized that it was a lot more work than I thought and I also realized that I had scrubbed the skin right off my knuckles! A few days later the machine was up and running and I was soo excited so I washed our sheets and towels only to discover that the machine while washing spits out oil/grease, so our sheets and towels now have some new designs on them! (I also would like to add that the machine runs a little differently, you have to add buckets of water to the machine before and during the rinse cycle). So I’m still stuck with what to do with the laundry.
So I think that this brings me to the end of my blog. I feel as though I have written alot, maybe even too much! The time here is going very fast, and I am sure that June 3 will be here before we know it. My blog writing routine seems to be to write a blog every 72days so I guess this will be my last blog until we get home!
Our time here has been flying by and we are both now into somewhat of a regular routine. I am working alongside Mary Jane who is a nurse midwife, she is a great person and I have really been enjoying working with her. On Mondays and Fridays we go up to the clinic to do baby/child health clinics. We weigh the children, chart their growth, talk to the moms about how the child is feeling and if they are well, and give immunizations. These clinic days are always busy due to the fact that there are ALOT of children living in Kahunda and also due to the fact that Mary Jane’s clinics are free. We had one clinic day where we saw 169 children!
Unfortunately my Swahili isn’t the greatest so that makes communication difficult, I can understand a few simple nursing words (which gets me farther than I thought it would) but when they start speaking long fast sentences I’m usually looking very lost. So Mary Jane does the talking with the moms and then I get the medications that are needed, check the children for anaemia and enlarged spleens and give the immunizations. The children are very cute and seem to like me until I give them their immunizations. Many of the children that we see are treated for malaria and many are malnourished. Mary Jane gives health education to the moms about how to feed their children properly with the resources that are available in Kahunda.
There are a lot of strange beliefs here regarding health and wellness. Many of the moms bring their children to the clinic and expect to get LOTS of medication and they believe that the only way their child will get better is if they are given a needle (doesn’t seem to matter what the needle is for) and if you treat the child with oral medications the moms will either not give it to the child or will take the child to the witch doctor. The witch doctors are a huge problem here, especially on the islands. This has been a widely accepted practice for many years so most of the local people have very little trust in the clinic’s treatment. Many people who see the witch doctor end up coming to the clinic, but by then no one knows what has been done to the person at the witch doctor and it is usually too late to do anything to help so they usually end up dying. Another strange belief here is the idea of children being born with plastic teeth. Many parents believe that if you can see the white under a child’s gums then it means that the child has plastic teeth, so they pull them all out......this makes perfect sense.
On Tuesdays we do an antenatal clinic for the pregnant women. This is also a very busy day. Again because of the language barrier Mary Jane does the talking and I do the practical part of the assessment. So after Mary Jane is finished with her questions then I feel for the baby’s position and based on the size of the baby and position of the uterus I estimate how far along the mother is and then we find the heart beat. This is a very different area of nursing then what I am used to, but I am learning a lot a really enjoying it. A problem here with the pregnant moms is anaemia. Many of the women are very anaemic which puts them at risk during their delivery. We check them for anaemia and treat them, but if they are a big risk they will be told to come to the clinic to have their baby. Most of the women have their baby’s at home, but if they have had any previous bleeding complications, or the baby is not in a good position then they are told to come to the clinic. Unfortunately many don’t listen to the advice and have their baby’s at home and then when they realize that things are going well they rush to the clinic, but by then they have lost too much blood and the baby and/or mom end up dying on the way to the clinic or at the clinic. This is frustrating for Mary Jane to experience because this is exactly what she is trying to prevent, but what can you do when people choose to ignore what we view as common sense advice? It is very difficult to educate people on the whole idea of prevention and planning ahead. Most women don’t come to the clinic because either they don’t have the money to pay the clinic or their husbands won’t give them the money. What they don’t understand is that it would cost them 5000 tshs (which is about $4 CND) to come to the clinic or take a bus to the closest hospital to have their baby, but if they come when there are complications it will then cost them 50 000 tshs (about $45 CND – which is about their whole weeks wages) to transport them to the hospital. It is at times very frustrating for Mary Jane, she does so much educating for these moms and really cares about them, but unfortunately she just isn’t able to convince them all.
On Wednesday and Thursdays we go up to the clinic to do HIV/AIDS testing. These days are very limiting due to the communication barrier, but Mary Jane is very good at utilizing volunteers and she keeps me interested and busy. These clinic days are optional for anyone in the village to come and voluntarily be tested for free. Mary Jane provides a lot of education during these clinics. She starts off by asking the patient about HIV/AIDS to see what they already know. She then goes on to explain how you contract the disease and what it does in your body when you have it. Many of the people have very little education of HIV/AIDS and a common response to what it does in your body is “it eats away at your stomach”.
There are some very strange and scary beliefs about HIV/AIDS here. For example some believe that a woman can get it from a man, but a man cannot get it from a woman. Another belief is that if you get tested three times and everytime you are negative then you will never get it. The scariest belief is that is you sleep with a virgin you will be cured from the disease. The witch doctor is also believed to be able to cure people with the disease; unfortunately what the witch doctor does to treat HIV/AIDS involves cutting. So after they are finished with the HIV positive patient the next patient comes is and is also treated using a cutting procedure using the same knife, so while the doctor has “cured” the HIV patient they have now passed the disease onto this patient. Polygamy is another practise that contributes to the spread of HIV/AIDS, along with the fact that many of the men are fishermen and go off to fishing camps where they may live during the week and only come home on the weekend. In many of the fishing camps HIV/AIDS is running rampant. The fishermen are not faithful to their marriages and I was told by one of the other missionary nurses that does HIV/AIDS testing on the islands that in the fishing camps the percentage of HIV positive people is as high as 80%! There are many people who choose not to be tested for fear of being positive. Mary Jane does the HIV/AIDS clinics very well and she has made it possible to allow herself to witness to the people coming to be tested, she has a very interesting way of witnessing to the people. After she has done all of her educating and we are waiting for the test results she asks the patient “Do you know Jesus?” Here are some of the responses:
1) No, but I might recognize him if I see him.
2) Patient: No, but I heard that he is coming
Mary Jane: He has come, and is coming again
Patient: I guess I missed him the first time, hopefully I will see him next time
3) No, should I?
4) Yes.
Mary Jane: Where will you go when you die?
Patient: Heaven
Mary Jane: And why will you go to heaven
Patient: Because I’m a good person and don’t do bad things
These are some of the humorous (and sad) responses, but have given Mary Jane a great opportunity to witness to these people. She then spends time talking with each individual , invites them to church and gives them some reading material and tells them that if they have any questions to come and talk to her or to the local pastor or evangelist. Mary Jane feels that the Lord has really opened up doors for her and is very excited about these opportunities.
Another part of the job here is going to the local islands once a month to do these same clinics but for only three days a month. So on Wednesday we will boat the island Nyamongo. Mary Jane tells me that these will be a very busy three days, she said we will work sun up to sun down...I am really looking forward to this experience.
So, that is what I am doing for work during the week. The rest of my time I feel like have spend trying to figure out how to do things here. The cooking has been quite the experience. We have market here once a week where we can get some produce and the meat. They do slaughter a cow once a week (they pick the oldest, skinniest cow in town, which makes for some tough meat!). I have learned that there is no such thing as “whipping up a meal” here. Like for example at home when I feel like making an easy dinner I may choose to make hamburgers (you would think this would be easy!) but then I realized that when you have to ground the beef yourself and make homemade hamburger buns, this may not be the meal to choose if you feel like ”whipping up a meal! I will say though that my loaves of bread are looking better all the time! (my first loaf didn’t rise at all because I killed the yeast with boiling water!) I also realized that I can get quite a work out kneading the bread!
Our power situation has been quite an experience here. I think Doug may have mentioned this, but I feel the need to address it again. It seems to be a pattern, it starts raining and then the solar powered batteries run out so the lights die. Then the generator gets hooked up to charge up the batteries which causes the generator to break, then we run out of water because the generator broke while trying charge up the battery, so now we can’t pump the water. Then we call over our neighbour or a local fundi to fix the generator, the generator gets fixed a couple days (or a week) later, we charge up the batteries and pump the water with the fixed generator, the sun comes out and charges the solar panels, a few days later it clouds over and the cycle repeats. I guess this is what they meant by being flexible!
The other thing that has been causing me some grief is the washing machine. At first I was thankful that we actually had a washing machine, but I think I may have changed my mind. When we first got here, the machine wasn’t working because the generator was broken (surprise, surprise), so Emma (our house help) said he would just do the laundry by hand. Now I feel the need to comment on house help........ it is a different feeling. I am not used to having someone in the house doing things for me and being around all day. I feel bad if I leave dishes and ask him to do something, I mean if I’m not doing anything I could just do it myself. I also feel weird having a man that I don’t really know do my laundry for me. So the first time I gave him some of Doug’s white shirts to wash by hand, let’s just say that when the laundry was done they didn’t really look like clean white shirts! With some bleach and an overnight soak they were back to new, but I still had to figure out how to do the rest of the laundry. After we had run out of clean clothes I decided that I would just do the laundry by hand myself (how hard could it be), so after three baskets of laundry done by hand I realized that it was a lot more work than I thought and I also realized that I had scrubbed the skin right off my knuckles! A few days later the machine was up and running and I was soo excited so I washed our sheets and towels only to discover that the machine while washing spits out oil/grease, so our sheets and towels now have some new designs on them! (I also would like to add that the machine runs a little differently, you have to add buckets of water to the machine before and during the rinse cycle). So I’m still stuck with what to do with the laundry.
So I think that this brings me to the end of my blog. I feel as though I have written alot, maybe even too much! The time here is going very fast, and I am sure that June 3 will be here before we know it. My blog writing routine seems to be to write a blog every 72days so I guess this will be my last blog until we get home!
Tuesday, April 8, 2008
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.
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.
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