Uganda 2012: 3rd Photos

impending

“impending”

This is not an “Africa Journal”. This is a mindstream taken directly from my journal, recorded just about an hour ago as I watched a massive, ferocious storm light up the sky. It is simply my thoughts, feelings and memories as they came to me. This is effectively unedited. Please excuse the use of both past and present phrases. listen, do not fear.

I watched the storm approach. A tempest was already raging deep inside of me. I thought of Ronan’s timeless, inked words, “These are not words. They’re only feelings. There are no sounds that you can hear. There are no forms that you can touch. I tell myself, I keep repeating, that your ways are bringing you to me.” Yes, I thought to myself. I watched the storm approach the same way you watch the approaching moment your best friend marries the love of his life. It is that particular mix of joy and longing that steeled my soul in that moment. As the stars disappeared it felt like a warm embrace from a lover long since removed. I reveled in the moment and in impending fury.

The whole day I’ve spent considering the narrative of my life and the struggles and pain that seem to grow stronger every day. The flashbacks are more constant now as a dozen spent pens can attest to. There was this moment that came amidst the thousandth page of other’s pain that I was reading in which I started to feel myself. The loss and anger broke through the numbness and deadness that are my constant jailors, enslaving and yet protecting me from this overwhelming urge to stand in the lightening storm just to test my life, to prove that I’m still alive. It’s not safe to feel like this and people will ask, “What is wrong?” as if the catacomb of silence is an almost necessary state to experience the truth of my experience. How can I describe what it means to be an iceberg with the danger laying mostly beneath the surface? And yet that old friend, violence, having breached my prison bars embraced me. Now with the storm enveloping me I took the time to embrace back. It had been too long.

I thought of the stories that I’ve heard, both the hundreds and the few that have truly, utterly broken my heart. I remember the stories of others that have cost me more than my life. I consider that embrace, that rage, that impeccable desire for both wrath and shalom, that violence that courses through my veins. I can hear it pumping in the ringing silence of my ears. The storm is still too far away to be heard, but I know it draws nearer. The tears run stream down my face picking up the ashes that are imbued in my sackcloth soul in some ceremonial gray mud of remembrance. I stifle a scream, a scream to protest with God. “Why?!” is not a sufficient question. “You.” That is the accusation I level at the nameless, faceless person who embodies that which took everything and took it in the name of God. I would take your life. I would rip the page from the book and burn it alive.

Violence, I know. The streaks across the perilous sky remind me of counter-battery fire and the death that each audible report attests to. I think of the charred bodies, the blood stained glass, and the open graves. This, after all, is war. I think of the exchanges of hatred and fire and how such violence is the manifestation of that rage, that fury that is both boundless and patient. “You”, I whisper in to the now windy emptiness. It is black as sin out here despite the magnificent flashes and the irony is not lost on me.

“I hate you with the justice of a thousand nights that I’ve longed for, prayed for healing.” Yet I know that my own anger is second only to another’s. And by what right do I have to take their pain and make it my own? But it is now my own. I do not know where theirs ends and mine begins. “Someday”, I think. I stare intently at the flashes ignoring every close sound in hopes of hearing the distant sounds of fury. I want to hear it, but more than that I want to taste it. I want to know it. I want to remember that I was not there at the foundations of this earth and yet I will brace like a man for the impending gale. My heart and head collide as I hear the chorus of breakdown ring in my ears as I scream inwards, “Make him beg for his life!!!!” With the intensity only learnt through years of waiting for the opportunity.

But then the prose of feeling drops dead from my lips and as it hits the ground I stomp on its lifeless existence a couple of times just to make sure. The blood is again pumping in my ears and I think of the knife and the cold intimacy it represents. In the end only one of us walks away.

The wind is harder now. I wonder if it will carry me home.

And to think, I am standing here because of love.

Uganda 2012: 2nd Photos

Africa Journal #12: the update you’ve all been waiting for with bated breath…

Africa Journal #12: the update you’ve all been waiting for with bated breath…

Part 1:

Sometimes it is hard to even remember that I am in Africa. Of course that is exceedingly obvious from an outside perspective, but through these weeks of sickness I’ve been mostly by myself or in my own head. When I’m with others it has mostly been other Westerners. Westerners mostly have been taking care of me (thanks Gina!). I’ve been reading Western books and I’ve mostly been eating “Western” food (incredibly, it is healthier than food here). I’ve mostly been drifting through African life rather than partaking in it. I can honestly say this is the first time I’ve ever been in Africa and done that. It’s somewhat disturbing. Even recently when I was walking around Kampala and I felt distant, rather than a part of what was going on.

This morning, however, I feel like I’m back in Africa. I’m drinking tea on this fine Ugandan morning with Uncle Peter and I’ve been writing postcards and he’s reading a book I got for him on leadership. He loves it. Leadership books put me to sleep. He’s also eating roasted ants. That’s Africa. Generally speaking, I’m known for doing “crazy” things, so you may be shocked to find out that I will not eat the aforementioned ants. I’ve decided that I have a rule: I won’t eat anything, unless it comes from the sea, with more than four legs; safe rule, right? That keeps me from having to eat the millions of ants my friends here roast whenever the nasty creatures decide it’s a good time to emerge from the earth en masse. But Peter rather enjoys them and it’s good to feel like I’m somehow “back in Africa”.

A lot has gone on since I’ve last written an update. For me I’ve been more of an observer than a participant. This sickness, which is so uncommon for me, has really gotten me down and kept me out of the action. I’m still not at 100% as my body tries to recover from whatever virus it was that I had—the doctors failed to identify it. Now the headaches are almost gone and I’m probably just days away from having all my strength back although I have noticed that even my slight frame has lost considerable weight and muscle mass over the past two weeks. The remedy, of course, is more meat, more peanut butter, and more chocolate. Fat and protein is what I need! My caloric intake is already much lower here than in the US so it’s always a struggle to keep weight on here, but the sickness has taken it to the next level. My goal for my final weeks here is to “make up” (which is the Ugandan term for working out) everyday and to put some muscle mass back on and hopefully improve my cardiovascular situation after the relatively sedentary lifestyle I was forced to endure. So what have I missed out on recently? Well, a few things. I’ve missed doing much “ministry” as I could barely get around on my own. That’s thrown quite a wrench into the schedule of things, but that’s just how it is. I’ve also missed a number of other things. I was supposed to go to African Hearts in Ssenge, but was unable. I was supposed to be in Rwanda this past weekend, but was unable. One of the boys in our street program died last week and I would have liked to go to his funeral as well, but again I was unable. Speaking of death (sorry, no segway), it is continually an eye-opening experience to see how often it occurs here. If you remember from my previous musings on the topic, the mean age here in Uganda is 17. In the US it’s around 37. That means death occurs at quite an alarming frequency in this country with an almost record-breaking birthrate. One of the women in our women’s ministry had to bear the news that her son had been murdered in prison. Gina, the missionary here that works with the women’s program, went with her. Another woman Gina knows had her baby die when the baby fell off a boda boda (motorcycle taxi). Death, of course, is par for the course of human life and the global mortality rate will always be 100%, but not all cultures view life and death in the same way. One thing about here is that death is a community affair and not hidden from the population as it is in many ways in my/our culture. I am still trying to ascertain the real beliefs about death here, but they are definitely different than in the West where we have so many safeguards against death that most people here simply don’t have access too. Here God gives and takes away. In the West we tend to believe science and medicine give and take away. I remember being in Malawi where the HIV/AIDS rate is well north of 30% of the population and seeing funerals almost all the time. In Africa death is viewed with a particular perspective that I would do well to understand…

Part 2:

Because a number of you have asked, I will fill you in briefly on how my computer was miraculously returned to me. To be blunt, if you have ethical issues (as I actually do) about the use of bribery you should probably stop reading now. That’s an indicator of where this is going…

Contrary to my nature, I’ll make this explanation as simple as possible. As soon as my computer was stolen, Gina, the aforementioned missionary here, called an Uncle at a different home for street children, a home that only takes in teenage street boys. That in and of itself is worth commenting on. It must be known that it is very rare for anyone to take in street boys who are 14+. To be blunt, they are steeped in violence, thievery, drug abuse, and any other number of vices. They are the few survivors of their group in society, and they didn’t make it to their teenage years on the streets by being moral. On the streets the just perish. So this home is a radical concept of the gospel that says, “none should perish.” Yet Gina knew that the boys in that home knew where we lived and knew that if they wanted quick access to the expensive gear mzungus have, this was where to get it. So! She called the Uncle of that home and asked if any of their boys may have possibly stolen a Macbook Pro. He said he’d try and find out. Long story short, it became apparent that one of the boys had stolen my computer. We’ll call him Joseph for the purposes of this disclosure. One of the other boys had ratted him out to the Uncle and so now we knew who had taken it. However, by the time Joseph finally admitted to stealing my computer, it had changed hands four times, with money obviously exchanged in the process. Gina wasted no time. She went to the ATM, pulled out 500,000 Sh. (about $205 USD) and then went to the police to start to track down the computer. First she had to pay/bribe the police to do anything. That’s how it is here. Then, long story short, she had to pay each person off to say where the computer had gone. Incredibly, by the end of the day, she’d located my computer with a random Ugandan who lived in the Kivulu slum. He’d paid some 80,000 shillings for a computer worth over 1 million shillings. She paid him to get back the obviously stolen computer. It would seem that all is well at this point in time, but then there is the question of “justice” and it is not one that you would think. Somehow, and this is incredible, amidst the being paid off and everything else the police decided they would in fact want to arrest the perpetrator for stealing the computer. This is uncommon, in case you’re wondering. Usually there is no drive to arrest someone, especially if arresting someone may be a hassle, unless they are paid specifically for that. Nevertheless, they wanted to arrest Joseph, which they did. Now, you may be thinking, “That is just. He stole your computer and should face the consequences.” In a perfect world, I may agree with you. But Gina knew well enough how I viewed justice and knew that I would be appalled if this teenage boy went to prison because of his theft. He wouldn’t “learn his lesson” there. A boy who had never known an ounce of justice in his own life, a boy who had no one in his life who loved him besides the Christians who had taken him in, a boy whose own family rejected him, would not experience justice in going to prison without a judge, jury or trial. What he would experience would be sodomy, violence, and perhaps death. In there this young, impressionable boy would become a cold man. So the police were then bribed to not send him to prison. Joseph, our young thief, was set free. God be glorified for getting my computer back to me.

Personally there are few things in life I am more interested in than ethics… and yet as I’ve consider what it means to bribe the police to free this boy from ultimately being taught to hate I can think of no more sound of an ethical decision. Granted, my ethics have developed over the years of trying to practically apply my faith and don’t fit a “system” per se, but they are grounded in the two basic Kingdom ethics: Justice & Mercy… God’s ultimate justice and his mercy that we are to model. Those two cannot exist without the other. Let me offer and example. There is a famous scene in Victor Hugo’s preeminent classic Les Misérables in which the Bishop Myriel hands two silver candlesticks to the thief, Jean Valjean, who has stolen from him after the police return the man they saw leaving the city and suspected of stealing. The context you’re probably familiar with, and you’ll then remember that the Bishop Myriel leans over to the man and whispers, “and with this I have ransomed your soul. I have purchased you from Satan and am giving you back to God.” These words are some of the most beautiful in the history of European literature. The moral concept holds fast as well. I do not want to give stark moral equivalency to this timeless story and the freeing of a young Ugandan thief from prison via bribing, but I think we do well to understand what ends ethics has in mind. Bishop Myriel knew that he had been sinned against, but he knew to an even greater understanding that Valjean had experienced terrible things in life and he too had been sinned against. Bishop Myriel knew that as a representative of God he could pursue man’s limited notion of justice, or he could trust God with justice and insodoing, could do something divine and offer forgiveness and freedom from earthly consequence. He is afforded to opportunity to offer the fullness of mercy and chooses to do so. I believe that is the demand placed on us all. If we’re all truly God’s representatives in a broken, fallen world, then such radical mercy is the demand placed on us. Not as a legalistic demand, but as a response to the grace we’ve been given. We are free to offer mercy.

I had already forgiven the thief for stealing my computer. I was furious at having it taken because it is such a helpful tool in this life, and yet I could not really be angry with someone who had acted, in truth, as rationally as I often do. Abject poverty is a devastating circumstance to bear. It disallows me to really judge those who are caught in its web. When I learned that the thief was in fact a street boy, it was all the harder to cast judgment into the waters. I do however look forward to meeting this boy. I want to tell him that I forgive him and yet tell him of my side of the story so that he understands that taking from another isn’t a zero sum game. I want to give him an opportunity to speak about his side of the story as well.

The rest of the story is even more incredible. I was encouraged by a couple friends to try and raise the money that was lost by the theft of my computer. So I made a paypal support widget on my facebook profile. Within some 72 hours my friends have raised over the value of what I had suggested. It was profoundly humbling to be on the other side of the earth and to have my friends via the “faceless” world of facebook, raise over $700 to replace my computer, my portal to the modern world. Then my computer showed up, negating the need for the money… and yet every single person told me to keep the money and use it for any needs that I currently have or use it on ministry here. I wept when I thought of just how much God continues to use people to speak about his goodness. It is his church and the relational aspect of God in which I most experience His lovingkindness. And so now I find myself with a decent amount of money, enough to purchase some software to recover a portion of the data the purchaser of my computer erased, enough to give me some space to think about how I can bless someone here with this money. I am a blessed man and every day I run out of more reasons to believe otherwise. Thank you, friends.

So that is the story of the past few weeks. I will continue to update you as I can, and I have a lot of writings that I want to share, but thank you for reading and considering my thoughts. You all bless me. Please pray for the remainder of my time here. I want to be effective in my counseling and Mending the Soul groups. I want to heal so that I’m not so weak all the time. I want to be emotionally prepared for my return to Phoenix and the short turnaround that I have before going to Portland. Thank you.

Dan

Africa Journal #11: "__________!"

Africa Journal #11: “__________!”

Most of my tropical-fever nights I’ve been musing, perhaps obsessing, over what would be a catching, quippy intro to my latest and greatest journal update. As you can see, not much is the result. But of course I had better things to feverishly dream about, such as last night’s classic “I dreamed I joined the Coast Guard” dream. You know you’re delusional if you even dream of joining the Coast Guard, right Ryan? I mean real men join the Navy or a department therein, right?

Either way, it’s Sunday morning, I feel 60% and I’m drinking coffee because I love it and because I’m hoping the caffeine will help rid me of the constant headache I’ve had since Tuesday. With stimulants currently combating the malaria or whatever is in my bloodstream I am going to update you on my life. I fear this will be long, but not really. As most of my friends have said over the years, I’m waging a war on brevity and definitely emerging victorious….

I could either start with the computer debacle or the disease, but I believe it would be prudent to go with the latter before the former. So! I’ve been having an oscillating-intensity fever, constant headache, come-and-go appetite, and general achiness since Tuesday. That was about the last time I have been able to think clearly or be productive. I’ve had swings of jovial moods amidst the sickness to dour, cynical generalized bitterness. The first few days I just sucked it up thinking, “I’ll get better; I always do!” But that didn’t happen. The last time I was deathly ill I didn’t go to the hospital of course because of, well, if I’m honest, American political neo-liberal macroeconomic failures of the past 30 years masqueraded as, “you don’t have health insurance, Dan.” So I just sucked it up and hoped I didn’t die. It’s the legitistan way. This time, far removed from the medicinal properties of my beloved Arizona home, Africa got to me and tried to kill me. So this past Friday I went to a local clinic for Mzungus like myself. In truth, Gina, a hardcore Arizonan woman here who is taking care of me, made me go to the hospital.

“The Surgery”, as it is awesomely called, is located in the beautiful and relatively affluent part of North-Central Kampala known as Garden City. Granted, I’ve been jumped here, so it isn’t necessarily a cut out of Scottsdale, but it is really nice and far more beautiful than Scottsdale. I had to wait just over an hour to see a doctor, and he was a very kind, intelligent Ugandan man and took good care of me. Initially he, a specialist in tropical medicine, thought that my symptomology (is that a word?) leaned more towards bilharzias than malaria, which is what I thought I had. I would have gotten bilharzias, a small worm that tries to kill you, when I went swimming in Lake Victoria my 2nd week here. The gestation period was right on and the initial effects of being “infected”, if you will, were the symptoms I was currently experiencing. So Dr. Conrad, which was his name, had me do it DUI style: Blood, Breath, and Urine. Ok, so breath was irrelevant and possibly contagious but I had to give blood and urine. Urine, of course, is par for the course. Blood…. Well, I’d rather get a back piece tattoo for 13 hours than have someone stick a needle into an arm vein for 2 minutes. Ugh. Hell is hospital in my feverish dreams…

Anyways, they took blood—I didn’t watch—and then I had to wait. In the next partition over there was an Indian man who had obviously been in a really bad accident at some point in time having some regular maintenance done—I guess. His intermittent screams of pain and genuine laughter with the Ugandan doctor were singularly disconcerting. I think I was at 100+ degrees at that point in time, so not too bad, but feeling hyper-sensitive to sound, smell, and needles. About 30 minutes later Gina snuck in to my room to check on me. She’s a grandmother after all and won’t take “no” for an answer. I’m sure my mother would understand. Soon after Dr. Conrad came in and let us know that the results came back negative for bilharzias and malaria and that I likely had some sort of virus. I asked, “like what….” Thinking, “well, I know it’s not HIV, so that’s good….” Anything else was possible. Africa has some pretty cool diseases that I will never have a chance to fight in the U.S. In fact, I heard that the village I currently live in a couple years ago had one recorded case of Ebola. It was the only village in Uganda to have an Ebola case that year, again, allegedly. So maybe…. but no, there is no chance of me having Ebola because Ebola comes from certain monkeys that live in mountainous areas (like the primate SIV strain which is where HIV and HIV2 both come from); fun facts, terrible ways to die. So, that didn’t really narrow it down. Heck there are probably like 14,000,000 other viruses. That being said, Dr. Conrad said, “I don’t know what virus it may be. Likely you’d fight it for a while and then you’re immune system would overcome. [I’m thinking, ‘Sweet! New antibodies!’] We’re going to watch that. What is also possible, Dan, is that you have malaria it’s just of a strain that is harder to detect or it has not left your liver yet because that is where malaria hides out. So what I want you to do is not take your anti-malarial medicine so that if you have malaria it can show up and we can treat it.” I’m thinking, “or I will get malaria in that period of time on top of my other disease.” But I’m a cynic. So with that he let me hobble down to pay the $39 that my medical care cost. Seriously, what a deal! Yet another thing the U.S. has to learn from Africa.

That was a couple days ago, so tomorrow I’m to return to do the tests again to see if anything has shown up. The doctor has also ordered that I stay in Kampala until I get better… which is advice I’ll likely take. The hospitals are close here; they are pretty far in my village of Kikubampagi. I figure that 28 is a tad early to die, but if you’re going to die, Africa is the place to do it. I mean honestly, the worst way to die is of “complications” at a phenomenally expensive hospital in the United States that has miraculously kept you alive for $36,000 a day to age 84 despite the myriad of otherwise-life-ending conditions your corporeal state must endure. I will not pretend that my illness has this 20-something contemplating death, for that is not true in the way it seems to be true for people I know who edge into the later years of their life. But, I also don’t live my life to survive, but to thrive. I know that sounds overly poetic, but it is true. I know that thriving will in turn lower my life expectancy, and from an evolutionary biology perspective, lower the chances that my genes will go on in the species. Perhaps I’m not “fit” or perhaps I’m not the least of which concerned about fitness and believe wholeheartedly that such things belong to God and I need not worry about them. In truth I am scared to die. Very scared (in general). There are so many things I will have wished I had said, so many things I would have wished I had done. But a more alarming and pressing fear is that I will have squandered life in the hapless pursuit of living longer. That’s a personal conviction and I will preach it to few. Being decently sick of a tropical disease in a modern state in Africa is hardly the harrowing story of survival that it may sound to some. I’m in literally almost no danger of dying from anything disease-related, but I do, in a sense, have more opportunity to make decisions here that could willingly place me further from the safety net that my Western life has always afforded me, health care or not. It is, and always will be, a question of values. What do I value most? The “correct” answer is saying that I want to die for the Gospel and yada yada. A part of me does and a part of me doesn’t. A part of me wants to die for my lover or for faux-selfless reasons. None of me wants to die for my country—sorry. But I am bifurcated, as always. I do hope, however, that the net effect of my life, whether I die young or old, is that I somehow communicate to a profoundly broken world that the faith I attempt to believe has something to say for the chronic illness we all carry. I want people to somehow receive that if they look in the mirror they are looking upon something incredibly valuable and beautiful, even if they’re “the worst of sinners” and have taken life or innocence. Then they can address the rot that plagues their heart. This world is an ugly place and none of us escape alive. Just some thoughts.

God has been good to me in this time. I’ve not been able to get on the internet much because it require movement and presence of mind, but the few times I have and read even a fraction of what people have said I’ve been overwhelmed with the support. Whether fundamentalist Baptist or dyed-in-the-wool agnostic, many of you have emailed, messaged, texted, prayed, offered positive thoughts, and even sent “good vibes” my way. My personal conviction is in the efficacy of prayer, but I do believe God sees the hearts of all men (and women) and listens to the beseeching of his children for healing and restoration. I live in expectation of healing. Part of that is faith, part of that is statistical reasoning. Yet I know that God is working in all the crazy events of the past two weeks, and a lot I haven’t mentioned has gone on. Africa is always a little wild, but this is starting to push it a bit. I’ll write more about that (and about the crazy story concerning my computer) in a bit, but this will have to suffice for now. It’s Sunday morning and I’m skipping church here in Africa to listen to my mentor, Pastor Bob, give a sermon on beauty from Romans. Oh, and it can be found here: http://www.moonvalleybible.org/sermons.php

Can’t wait.

I love you all.

Dan