This has been my first weekend in Kampala. True to my fears, I’ve been getting eaten alive by mosquitoes. Fifty-seven bites on my arms alone last nigh—with a mosquito net. I’m not exaggerating either. Se la vie.
There is so much on my heart that I am simply going to write and not think about what I am writing. Just write the confusion and pain and anything else. I has been a simultaneously lonely and enjoyable experience, a more magnified example of what the whole of my time in Africa is like: surrounded by amazing people, a few of them friends, and yet there is a loneliness that is ever present. In truth it has been present for years now. So Africa, then, really is just a further magnification of the actual perceived state of my life. I hope you do not read this with pity, for I do not benefit from pity, nor do I warrant it. My life is blessed for while everyday is intimate with devastating struggle, at least I know I am alive.
Something “switched” in my heart some time back. It would not be accurate to say it was a moment; rather it was a number of moments, all tied together in one narrative. You may call them “insight” if you prefer psychodynamic terms, “epiphanies” if you prefer human terms, or “revelation” if you prefer spiritual terms. I cannot—will not—speak to those things directly because I do not yet have language to convey how I see things past a few “simple” truths. I t is possible that part of me is unknowable for even I am frustrated by the poverty of verbal language that can be used to explore “reality”. I have long mused that perhaps that is why art even exists. Obviously I am not the first to say such a thing but when I see the debates about what art “is” I have to chuckle for such a debate is necessarily removed from art, from beauty.
Beauty too is something I’ve mused on for a number of years. I do not yet understand it and hope to never understand it in a way that makes it benign or safe. I cannot speak to its essence, but as Justice Steward once said about obscenity, “I know it when I see it.” Moreover, I think Dostoevsky spoke truthfully when he said, "Beauty is not only a terrible thing, it is also a mysterious thing. There God and the Devil strive for mastery, and the battlefield is the heart of men.” Why is that important? Because my heart is definitely a battlefield. It is as much a battlefield today as it has ever been. I refer to myself as “bifurcated” because that is one of the few words I know to accurately and succinctly state the condition of my heart. Dostoevsky’s protagonist Raskolnikov from Crime & Punishment means “schism”, which I think is an apt descriptor of my own heart, and that too is a germane term. James (would likely call it a “double mind” (likely Orwell would as well). And this is but one thing I am trying desperately to understand, but I am at war with myself and cannot find solace in the dichotomies I often wrestle with. I am always wrestling with the Sermon on the Mount when Jesus puts the finishing touches on his epic sermon by beseeching those heeding his call to “not be like them” (Matthew 6:8), that is, those who do not call Him King. There is a separation here and that is what I’m focused on. We could make a simplistic interpretation, arguing that the simplest idea is likely the most correct (law of parsimony), but we deceive ourselves if we believe his commands have tame, moderated applications. As I wrestle with his call on my life it becomes more radical and demands more and more from me. But I do not know if it produces more righteousness or peace. This tree may bear no more fruit today than some time ago. It truth, grace probably has to bridge that gap so that I can operate as a child of the King, not as one obsessed with complexities and the overwhelmed by the anxieties therein. To be free from that, to truly love and live would be an indescribably joy to me and yet they are only viewed in a mirror dimly lit. Yet love and freedom are inexorably linked. I think of the last part of my favorite poem, Lovelace’s To Althea, From Prison: “If I have freedom in my love and in my soul am free; Angels alone that soar above enjoy such liberty.” Thus, God’s love manifest for us in Christ is expressed through grace. All, after all, is Grace.
It is probably only in Africa where I can indulge in such truthful (and esoteric) reflection. I do not attempt to deceive in the West, but I am an product of my beloved environment, and assimilate well, keeping much to my cerebral self, and feeling, but only talking of logic and intellect. Here I am both participant and observer. There is little safety here, in the broad sense. One must live engaged in life to survive. My time is spent as the unfortunate child of privilege, my host country affording me far more respect than I deserve. I hate how I am defined my race and nationality, but in truth, my perceptions of Africans, despite my many friendships here, is largely of seeing them as “other”. Not dehumanized—far from it—for I am intimately aware of the humanity around me. How can I not weep when reading a book about the Rwandan genocide when the events happened less than 100 miles from here and involved people very much like the people all around me; involved people very much like me? And yet I am other here and cannot arrest that terrible self-awareness. Even so, as I write this I am indulging in my privilege, drinking cheap lattes that cost more than the average Ugandan makes in a day. So I am keenly aware of the separation. I feel it more here than when I amongst dozens of forgotten kids that haunt the consciences of the privileged. Even in the street program, interacting with those who Jesus used to wrap in his arms, one can feel lonely. And I do. This loneliness isn’t relational although I’ve felt “romantically” lonely, mostly by my own doing, for as long as I can remember. But what I speak of here is different and still not defined. That’s why I’ve managed to just write things as they come to mind instead of attempting to communicate something defined. I’m just telling you what I don’t really know. This is merely a mindsteam, born out of a heart that pains….
Last night while at a store a Ugandan girl about my age was hitting on me and asking me to take her to America. She smiled and gave me what I take to be a look of interest. I will never be good at these things. She asked me if I had a phone and I said yes, and I pulled it out. In my confusion, and because I was looking for some legit peanut butter, I handed it to her when she asked if she could see it. She put her number into my phone. In her one small action, so much was revealed about the state of man. Granted, I am not interested in this girl, but I started to think about what it means for me to have the capacity to be her escape. What colonial history so created me into a “rich white man” supposedly “superior” to others? Why was I born with the power to take advantage of the situation this girl has laid before me? What did I do to deserve the grace that has afforded me the wisdom to know that taking advantage of her desperation would be evil? It is grace, after all. As Brennan Manning would say, “All is Grace.” And it is true. A part of me just wanted to tell her, “I’m sorry. I’m sorry for things I could not possibly explain. Can you forgive me?” Perhaps it is shame or even fear that holds me here, but perhaps I want to just confess and beg forgiveness for a world as unjust and broken as the one I see every single day no matter what continent I am on.
As I am about to send this out someone knocked on our door. I answered the door and there stood a small street boy named Hiiya. He is about 9 years old and he came in hoping that we would just take him in. He did not ask, but what does a young, young boy living on the streets need to say? He needs to be loved, to have a home, to get off drugs, and to have a place, even for just a night, to lay his head where his life is not in danger. We brought him in and Gina, with the tenderness of the grandma that Hiiya has likely never known, washed him and cared for his small wounds. She asked him many times about his life and where he has been. Kisenyi was the answer, of course. It’s the slum A Perfect Injustice no longer works in. He has been hiding out/living there after running away from the API home twice to go back to drugs. It was clear he was high and that the huffing was exhausting his slight frame. Much of the time was spent in silence and I just watched Shawn and Gina take care of his wounds, both emotional and physical. Then we had to return him to the streets, a perfect injustice for a small boy.
As Shawn gave Hiiya a piggy-back ride to the street I asked Gina, “What is the hardest part?” She just said, “What part is easy?” Touché. He had, after all, just come in to be treated like a human for a little while. I don’t know how I would have answered the question I had asked Gina. I may seem verbose in my writings and from personal experience, but I am remarkably taciturn here. I am more observer than participant. As the wound was being patched I just watched and contemplated life. I do not know what I felt. I do not even know what I feel now. Perhaps I don’t feel much of anything and maybe I am just numb. Maybe we are born of dust and to dust we do return. Perhaps we should take out sackcloth and cover ourselves in ashes. Perhaps we should just cry out to God for mercy.
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