Today, loving the Lord my God with all my heart and soul and strength, and loving my neighbour as myself, here in rural Tanzania, looked like answering an emergency phone call at seven am; getting up and changing diapers instead of the hoped-for sleeping in; making a care package of blankets, clothes, bottles, formula and supplements for a friend struggling to feed her newborn twins; hanging long lines of laundry in the hot sun; answering questions like “what happens to spiders after they run away” and “if I get in the bath, will my hair melt?” while answering the door and answering emails; scouring books and websites and messaging friends for ways to help a neighbour who has chronic stomach troubles; paying school fees for clusters of shy and bashful students who come to our door hoping for help; reading through the Psalms on the couch, bible in my lap, while my boys sit next to me and watch a video about cows (and another about gravity); tying Kai to my back while standing over the stove and stirring caramel; problem-solving for Visible Grace from the small screen of my iPhone; fielding requests from maintenance workers on the back porch while Abram meets with a fellow teacher on the front porch; practicing David’s memory verse with him over a lunch of chicken and sweet potatoes; nursing consecutive babies while chatting with two of our college students; filling water bottles and charging phones for neighbours and workers without electricity; sending Kai to the clinic with our nanny to be tested for malaria, and sending David, James, and James’s baby doll along as well, because they want to "go bye bye"; laughing with joy when Mary reports that, at James’s request, the nurse gave his doll a malaria test, too; talking to our lawyer and social work about potentially adopting Kai; planning a certain four year old’s birthday party and inviting our neighbours; planning backup childcare for tomorrow because Abram is preaching and I cannot handle four young children by myself for four hours; and lying in my hammock with David during naptime.
(I wrote this a couple weeks ago on a particularly busy day- so busy I didn't even have time to post it. Today, everything looks similar, but different.)
PS- David turned four!
PPS- I have a few pictures that won't upload, and I am running out of time, and if I don't post this now, I never will, so here it is. I'll try to post pictures another time. Grr.
Showing posts with label poverty. Show all posts
Showing posts with label poverty. Show all posts
Monday, October 8, 2018
Friday, March 20, 2015
Balancing sorrow and joy
Life here has been really heavy lately, and it's hard to know what to write about, or how to write it.
Some things are really too awful to even be discussed, but here are some highlights (or lowlights) of this lenten season we find ourselves in.
In what should be the rainy season, we have had almost no rain at all. This means crops will almost certainly fail, which means people will go hungry, and that more and more people will show up at our door, asking for food, work, help...anything.
It also means more illnesses.
It also means more funerals.
One of our good friends was recently fined by the village for not having a toilet on his property. He does not have a toilet because he cannot afford it, (they use their neighbour's), so he was basically fined for being poor. We paid his fine- which was minimal- but he needs a toilet. This is a basic human right.
One of our other friends is ailing and may be dying. He lives outdoors, and I would assume he has chronic malaria. He seems to be fighting an infection, but resisting treatment. I am not sure how much longer his body can hold out. And I'm not sure about the state of his soul.
Another man in our village has been very sick for some time. He was able to get treatment and medicine, but is still too sick to work, and is relying on the charity of others to keep food on the table.
On top of these things, we have good friends and family members who are fighting constant battles with malaria and typhoid, a friend who was robbed, a friend whose house is falling down around him and his four children, and many, many people- too many to count- who want their children to go to school, but cannot afford to send them.
Last week, Abram threw me (Ashby) a surprise party for my birthday. I felt so loved and celebrated, with a tinge of guilt- I'm sure most of our friends here have never had a birthday party of any kind. But our friends enjoyed themselves, enjoyed the cake and popcorn, and Abram pointed out that our village needed some kind of celebration, something to bring joy and laughter into these dark days. We can choose guilt, or joy. We can experience both sorrow and joy- they are not, apparently, mutually exclusive.
At the end of each day we relax in our home, which is much too big, and we eat food- we always have enough- and we play with the worlds' cutest baby, and we go to sleep under a secure mosquito net, under a secure roof. We don't feel guilty for these things- they are blessings from God- but we wrestle with the normal questions: why us? why them? why?
And we go about our routine, Abram teaching and researching, Ashby nursing, cooking, changing diapers, answering the door- and the not-so-routine, like when our car acts as an ambulance and our living room acts as a sanctuary. And we hope in our baby's future.
David continues to be a blessing to people. Our neighbours have begun calling him 'a child of the people'. Half a dozen women call him Grandson, and he may or may or may not think he has six parents. A common sight in the mornings is for a neighbour, or Abram's Tanzanian sister, or whoever happens to be at our house, to be walking around with David in their arm- as they water our tomato plants, or carry ladders from our garage, or talk on the phone, or answer the door. We are thrilled that David will hopefully grow up to be comfortable in our community, and to know our family here. We are also pleased that people can take comfort in him- what is more therapeutic than a baby who trusts you so completely that he relaxes into your shoulder and falls asleep?
Maybe this is why God gives us children.
Some things are really too awful to even be discussed, but here are some highlights (or lowlights) of this lenten season we find ourselves in.
In what should be the rainy season, we have had almost no rain at all. This means crops will almost certainly fail, which means people will go hungry, and that more and more people will show up at our door, asking for food, work, help...anything.
It also means more illnesses.
It also means more funerals.
One of our good friends was recently fined by the village for not having a toilet on his property. He does not have a toilet because he cannot afford it, (they use their neighbour's), so he was basically fined for being poor. We paid his fine- which was minimal- but he needs a toilet. This is a basic human right.
One of our other friends is ailing and may be dying. He lives outdoors, and I would assume he has chronic malaria. He seems to be fighting an infection, but resisting treatment. I am not sure how much longer his body can hold out. And I'm not sure about the state of his soul.
Another man in our village has been very sick for some time. He was able to get treatment and medicine, but is still too sick to work, and is relying on the charity of others to keep food on the table.
On top of these things, we have good friends and family members who are fighting constant battles with malaria and typhoid, a friend who was robbed, a friend whose house is falling down around him and his four children, and many, many people- too many to count- who want their children to go to school, but cannot afford to send them.
Last week, Abram threw me (Ashby) a surprise party for my birthday. I felt so loved and celebrated, with a tinge of guilt- I'm sure most of our friends here have never had a birthday party of any kind. But our friends enjoyed themselves, enjoyed the cake and popcorn, and Abram pointed out that our village needed some kind of celebration, something to bring joy and laughter into these dark days. We can choose guilt, or joy. We can experience both sorrow and joy- they are not, apparently, mutually exclusive.
At the end of each day we relax in our home, which is much too big, and we eat food- we always have enough- and we play with the worlds' cutest baby, and we go to sleep under a secure mosquito net, under a secure roof. We don't feel guilty for these things- they are blessings from God- but we wrestle with the normal questions: why us? why them? why?
And we go about our routine, Abram teaching and researching, Ashby nursing, cooking, changing diapers, answering the door- and the not-so-routine, like when our car acts as an ambulance and our living room acts as a sanctuary. And we hope in our baby's future.
David continues to be a blessing to people. Our neighbours have begun calling him 'a child of the people'. Half a dozen women call him Grandson, and he may or may or may not think he has six parents. A common sight in the mornings is for a neighbour, or Abram's Tanzanian sister, or whoever happens to be at our house, to be walking around with David in their arm- as they water our tomato plants, or carry ladders from our garage, or talk on the phone, or answer the door. We are thrilled that David will hopefully grow up to be comfortable in our community, and to know our family here. We are also pleased that people can take comfort in him- what is more therapeutic than a baby who trusts you so completely that he relaxes into your shoulder and falls asleep?
Maybe this is why God gives us children.
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