remembering

it's been six months.
six months of long days and nights working in the hospital. six months of my pager beeping as soon as i get food or sit down or fall asleep. six months of asking people why they came to the hospital. six months of being called doctor (and often nurse) yet still having no idea what i'm doing. six months of survival. six months of health. six months of being near family, of living with a sister who leaves chocolate and reminders to "just keep swimming." six months of grace.

it's been one year.
one year since the dark days of sickness that left me unable to move without oxygen wrapped across my face. one year since the endless days of fever and gasping for breath and tears and enough daytime tv to last a lifetime. one year since i've needed a chest x-ray or any new medicines. one year of survival, of fighting to get enough sleep, of swallowing handfuls of pills to stay well, of taking each day as it comes. one year of grace.  

it's been five years.
five years since i walked through customs back into the united states. five years since i've used my passport. five years of speaking (mostly) english. five years where my shoes aren't stained with red african soil. five years where my heart is on the other side of the world. five years of waiting and praying and wanting to return. five years of sickness and schooling that have kept me from a tiny african kingdom. five years that i struggle to call grace because it's hard to be away. it's hard to feel powerless in the face of overwhelming need. to read the news stories of famine yet not be able to offer rice and beans to a hungry neighbor. to know their are thousands of kids without parents but not be able to hold at least one of them. to have friends who grieve the losses of aids but not be there to grieve with them. it's five years of weak prayers uttered to the heavens, of letters and packages with airmail stamps, of sporadic updates. five years of telling stories that keep my heart remembering the love of my beautiful swazi friends. five years of grace.

   

telling hope stories

it is difficult when an organization or non-profit or mission group enters a place of extreme need, to know where to begin.  so triaging occurs, attempting to reach the most broken places. the problem is sometimes gaping wounds remain untouched while attempting to salvage the most devastating injuries.  when i got to bulembu, swaziland, the gaping wound looked like this:

children, too young for school (or old enough for school but unable to pay school fees), would stay home while their parent worked.  there was no day care; even if there was, it was unlikely any parent living on US$60 a month could afford it. and so once a child was too heavy to be carried on her mother's back during work, the child would be left home, under the care of older (meaning age 5-6) children.  a pot of room-temperature cornmeal mush would be left for lunch. 



it was painful to pass these children. to know the work i was doing with children orphaned by hiv was important and necessary, but to still pass these hungry, left-alone children with scabies under their skin who were fortunate enough to still have a parent.  my housemate and i could not keep doing nothing.  we knew the organization did not have the capacity at that time to establish any long-term solution. but we knew we couldn't keep walking past, doing nothing. so on saturday afternoons, we toted tins of grapefruit and a dysfunctional can opener into their neighborhood and would play with these kids:

we were a band-aid (if that). a desperate attempt to do something, to not close our eyes to what was happening around us.  we were limited.  we cried and we prayed and we hoped that someday things would be different for these kids.  an answer to those prayers came shortly after i left swaziland: a woman from the uk came to bulembu to set up a care center for those very children that had evoked my tears and worry and food and prayers for so many months:

it is called enduduzweni, which means "place of comfort."



my friend zandi works there now. the care center has grown over the past 5 years, and it now expanding to include baby care.  i am told that zandi does an amazing job, that she has a gift for working with children. i knew that though.

this story is incomplete. it is only a small part of the story, limited by distance, detached from the daily struggles of those who now carry these children.  i am not trying to romanticize what is chronically an uphill battle.  i cannot speak to the gaping wounds that still exist that break the hearts of those who are there now.  

i know that love poured out during the day doesn't negate neglect at night. that tummies filled at lunch time may not be filled again until the next morning. that moms who build loving families and still get hiv from dads who work in the big cities. that summer floods wash away roads and houses and crops and threaten a precarious economy.

but it is still a story of hope. of tummies now filled during lunch that would have otherwise been hungry.  of kids left alone on doorsteps while their moms work now with safe places to play and learn and be cared for. of people choosing to offer love despite struggle and suffering and cost. i know what was, and what is now. and it gives me hope.  
i know that the story of these children is not over. the story of edudzuweni is not over.  the story of swaziland is not over. and so again, still, we wait for hope to come true.

"for there is still a vision for the appointed time;
it speaks of the end, and does not lie.
if it seems to tarry, wait for it;

it will surely come, it will not delay." - habbakuk 2:3

(ps - if you want to give to enduduzweni, click here. it costs US$150 a day to run the center - which feeds 100 children, pays the salaries of 8 caregivers and cooks, and assists vulnerable children with medical care and school fees.)

one of those days

"i think part of the struggle just of everyday life is

remembering that the love is there...to wake up in
the morning and realize that love is there in the world -

if i can do that, that's half the battle." - kathleen norris

i was grumpy. and exhausted. and sick.  and i had an out. 

but i was also stubborn and trying to prove i wasn't that weak, and i said i would go see patients in clinic that afternoon anyway.  then take a sick day tomorrow. 

i regretted that decision as soon as i walked into the building.  it hit me how very tired i was. how i could be home napping instead. but it was too late now.  oh well.

the first chart i grabbed wasn't that heavy. i figured it would be an easy patient. until i realized that this was chart volume 2.  i scanned the face sheet: hiv. bone disease causing 2 hip fractures. cancer. depression. chronic pain. neuropathy. 

as i was heading down the hall, the nurse practitioner gave me a heads up: he just got a new electric wheelchair. and he cut his hair.

i walked in the room, expecting someone grumpy and bitter and sick.  instead, he was smiling. 

how are you, i asked. honestly, i think this is the best i have been in my life, he said. 

how is the pain? it's there. but i have this new wheelchair and it's totally opened up the world for me. i can go places now, i don't have to sit in my apartment. i may try to take a computer class at the senior center soon. they offer them sometimes.    

i hear you cut your hair?  yeah, i donated it to locks of love. i wanted to give back. i smiled inside, wondering what kind of wig would be made from middle-age, graying, ex-hippie hair.

the attending physician came in. we talked some more, sorted out some medicines, set up follow-up visits.  at the end, the attending prayed with him: god, we thank you for the blessings you have brought in this man's life, for his health, for your grace.

i cringed inside.  blessing? very little of his story felt like blessing.  but he took those small moments - leaving his house without the pain of walking and giving away his hair - as gifts.  and i was humbled...because i know there is sickness in my body too. there are limits and exhaustion and fevers and feeling like i am missing out on life and worry that these little symptoms now could be harbingers of a coming disaster. but there are moments of grace too - people that notice when i need a day off, sunflowers blooming on my walk home, sisters who don't care if you use their popcorn maker, dinners with friends, and patients who remind me to name the good in my life.

on healing

do you think god will heal anyone who asks and has faith? my sister asks me. 

me, who witnesses sickness every day in the lives of my patients.
me, who lived in the nation with the highest hiv rate in the world, who buried friends before they reached age thirty because they were born in the wrong place as the wrong gender.
me, who carries sickness in my body every day. 

if the answer to her question is no, then why pray?

and if the answer is yes, then where have my prayers for healing gone? why do my swazi friends still fight HIV despite their prayers (and lives) of faith?  why does my body still feel like it's breaking even though i have lit candles and cried out, "how long, o lord?"

i don't have an answer for her question. i only have a story, one i re-tell myself in the moments i feel faint:

i met jabu shortly after i arrived in swaziland.  her name means "happiness" and that is what she was.  she got sick quickly though as HIV spread through her body.  she shuffled slowly down the hill as if every step took all that she had.  she seemed to get smaller every day.  soon, she just stayed home. 

i stopped by to visit jabu one afternoon, like usual.  only this time, she was barely moving, barely opening her eyes. her mom stood fanning her, trying to move the heavy african air across her feverish body.  we lifted her into the car and sped across the 30km of curving dirt roads to the nearest hospital.  by the time we got there, she wasn't opening her eyes at all.  her blood pressure was unreadable on the archaic cuff they used to measure it, barely palpable.  the doctor looked at us sadly: we have no beds left. and there is nothing we can do anyway. 

 we begged for them to keep her, knonwing if we took her home, she would surely die.  knowing too that if she stayed, she would still likely die.  the doctor finally caved, offering the floor under the bed of another patient.  we left her that night, her tiny body on the floor under the bed of another dying woman.  chickens walked past her spot on the floor.  a meager bag of IV fluids hung - the only attempt at treatment offered for her. 

the next morning she could open her eyes, and was discharged to home.  miraculously, over the coming weeks, jabu regained strength and life. 
we were sitting on her bed one afternoon, laughing and talking. i asked her what happened that day when we thought she would die.  she answered: i was lying there, and i was flat. i couldn't open my eyes, couldn't speak. but in my heart, i prayed "lord, extend my days." and he did.  i will never forget what the lord has done for me.  

she never forgot. she never stopped praising. one month later, jabu went to be with the one who had heard her prayer and extended her days. i'm pretty sure she's still singing her praise.

why i hate missions

a letter in the mail, penned across an ocean.  i know it is filled with words of grief.  recently, her sister lost.  but her words of loss go deeper: the leaders are fighting with the donors, and they are no more sponsoring our town. 

it was a town imbalanced from the beginning.  built up the sides of two juxtaposing hills, the potential for rifts and separation is always present.  i don't know what happened here before the british colonists, before the asbestos mine opened in 1939.  i do know that the mine owners and skilled laborers built beautiful houses on the higher of the two hills.  and i know the unskilled miners were allotted small mass-produced homes that were packed onto the side of the smaller hill.  those who lived there at the time tell me it was split black and white, with the swazis getting the short end of the stick. 

as if colonialism (further tainted by apartheid spilling across the south african border) wasn't enough, the town took another blow.  the mine closed.  initially only portions of the mine closed.  then in 2001 it completely closed (likely due to the world-wide awareness of the dangers of asbestos). workers were told they had 24 hours to leave. so jobless and homeless, they scattered.  the town was abandoned.  textbooks left in school desks, the night's assignments still on the chalkboard.  hospital wings lined with beds and posters describing treatments for tuberculosis.  houses with large pieces of furniture, dishes, anything that couldn't be carried.

for four-ish years, the town sat empty.  the surrounding villages fell into further poverty, cut-off from the only local economy.  and hiv swept through the country, reaching even these abandoned places with further destruction.

a christian missionary with a vision saw this abandoned town as a place to breathe life into a dying nation. valley of hope, he named it. he relocated several missions groups there: a home for abandoned babies. a church-building company. a school. a clinic. food donations. a continuous stream of short-term mission teams from the united states eager to renovate the abandoned houses to become foster homes.  

it was imagined as a microcosm of good.  but there was fighting. there was racism and elitism that lives in our hearts, that comes out even in the places we are supposed to be loving.  a similar split to the old mining days occured, this time with white christian missionaries in the beautiful houses on the higher of the two hills.  it took a few years, but that organization crumpled.  another one quickly took its place.  this one continued many of the programs already started, and added some of its own, including a dairy farm and bakery in hopes of creating a sustainable economy.   apparently, there is fighting again, and a withdrawal of funds that empties the economy of this mal-developed town.

which brings us to now.  to zandi.  who lived through the closing of the mine. who was employed then unemployed by the first mission organization.  then employed again by the second. who now sits in uncertainty again, yet still fiercely believes in the god in whose name all who have destroyed her town have come. 

i don't know what to pray for this town that has changed my life, to this town that angers me yet taught me hope.  i don't how to end this, so i close the same way zandi closed her letter:

I said in my heart, God will judge the righteous and the wicked,

for he has appointed a time for every matter, and for every work.
-ecclesiastes 3:17

thunderstorms

"what if your blessings come through raindrops

what if your healing comes through tears?"

- laura story

heart cries

"God is within her, she will not fall;
God will help her at the break of day." -Psalm 46:5

lots of deep breaths.

i look at the schedule for the month, and i'm not sure i can make it.

i'm okay at the moment.  four carefree weeks of quenching wanderlust and catching up with friends and sleeping late has seemed to silence the disease that hides within me.

but what about the coming days?

the easy prayer is to beg over and over that i would be well. it becomes compulsive, enslaving, demanding.  the hard prayer is to ask to be sustained, for grace to survive whatever comes - whether sickness or wellness or a chronic state of unwell, for eyes to see the love around me, for a heart of compassion for those in my care. 

and so i wait, and pray, and hope for health, knowing that may not come, and step forward into this new place anyway.