At Ease With Overseas.....

"........remember that you will generally feel more at ease with other people who have lived overseas, probably for the rest of your life." 

(Ron Baker, Ethnomusicologist who lived in West Africa... gave this reminder)

A Tangled History In Africa

Much truth in this statement for international workers....There is always much history, happenings, and events that are influencing what you are observing. We will probably never know the full story, but we live among and love them anyway.

"Up to this point, I knew little about the nature of the conflict except that it was a power struggle. Three men aspired to a position only one could occupy
But like most aspects of life here, the situation was more complex than it seemed. Guiding events was a tangled thread of history previously obscured to me."

If You Are Disillusioned, You Had Illusions That Needed "Dis-ing"

"My wife is very health conscious and buys groceries at places that sell organic food. I found out quickly that organic groceries go bad more quickly than those that contain artificial preservatives. Is that true for all things organic, even churches? Will our movement eventually die? Is there an expiration date for organic church?

Christianity Today's Mark Galli wrote an article in his online SoulWork column last week titled "Long Live Organic Church!" In it he expresses some admiration but also concern for the wellbeing of some of the thought leaders of the organic church movement. And he worries that the bitter disappointment of seeing the inevitable failure of our movement may cause us to become bitter and fall out of service.

The concerns he expresses are not just valid; they are haunting realizations I have lived with for over a decade. Sustainability, longevity, and the threat of institutionalization are all subjects I have thought about considerably. On the other hand, holding unreal expectations and the disillusionment that can result has not ever been a concern of mine."

http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2010/januaryweb-only/12-21.0.html?start=2

A response to a critic of "organic church" by Neil Cole.

Never Wait!

"Do not wait for leaders; do it alone, person to person."

"If you can't feed a hundred people, then feed just one." 

Both by Mother Teresa

African Funerals.....The Economics of Dying in Africa

It have seen and experienced this same dilemma for many African years personally.

A sick family member, limited or nonexistent money, and a family meeting to discuss if we should use what little money we have left ( more often the question is should we borrow it from another at the high bush interest rate of 100% interest) for expensive transportation to get to some expensive kind of clinic or hospital care, and put the whole family at risk of starving or greater debt. Or, wait longer and hope that the sick family member, somehow, gets better on their own. It's not unheard of you know. Sometimes it works in your favor. But the majority of times not. When you are that sick, so sick as to provoke a family meeting over it, there are already great odds stacked up against you, it's obvious to everyone in the family by now. Time, nor bush economics of the poor, are not on your side.

When the death comes, an elaborate long funeral is hosted where all the guests, from miles around, must be fed and lodged for days of mourning. Goats or chickens are all killed to feed the mob that arrives, and after several days of funeral affairs, the family is left without their loved one, and now, added to it, their cash and food resources all cashed in with little or nothing left for the poor family, and often new debt too.

Makes me wonder why more effort to keep a person alive, in the long run, is not seen as the better economical choice in the end, if economics were all there was to it. I too never understood this "Funeral Thing" nor the thought processes or customs surrounding it in much of Africa. It's their culture, their tradition... I get that folks, but it is one thing about their culture and tradition I have never understood to this day. What is certain, is that what began as a family affair became a community one too.

"I really was almost too much to bear. I had great respect for the Kalambayan people and most of their traditional ways. But this custom of extravagant funerals was something I never quite learned to accept. It was one of those things here I eventually stopped trying to figure out for fear of losing my mind....The funeral for Kanyenda's brother dragged on for two more weeks, even after there was little left to consume." (Mike Tidwell. The Ponds Of Kalambayi. Pig 132)

Together

 "If you want to go quickly, go alone. If you want to go far, go together."

African proverb 

My T -Shirt Was Found in Africa

I can't verify the story. But I do trust the source. As you know all the donated cloths in North America and Europe end up in African and Asian markets and sold to locals at .50 cent an item. My friend Wayne, worked in Liberia for many years, and a short term work team came. During their stay, one of the young men in his late teens spotted a kid, with familiar T - shirt, walking down a dusty path in a village. The T-shirt was one he and his brother were given, and wore when he was younger, 7-8 yrs earlier. It was unique, and one of the American young man's favorite. He remembered the day it went missing in his drawer, and asked his mom where it went. She said she had cleaned out old and worn cloths in ever ones drawers, and thrown them out. She dropped them off at good will, or salvation army or something of the like.
Anyway, the young man ran down the kid, and turned up the tag just to see.... Sure enough, the stage had his name written on it. It was his T T-shirt. Of hundreds of countries, tens of thousands of  villages, and millions of kids, his parents bought it, and the original owner came to work in that same village for two weeks.

Buy Back Market in Liberia

My Friend worked in Liberia for 28 years. There was a section of the local market that was revered to as the "buy back market". If you had something stolen, it often turned up in this market. If it was something dear to you, and you really missed it, you could "buy it back" and take it home. But you had to quick, within a few days after the theft, or someone else just "buy it" before you had the chance to "buy back"

Refuse

When I lived in Côte D'Ivoire, West Africa there was a garbage problem, typical of any city or small town in Africa. There are no dumps, at least not official ones. So our yard boy, Joel (he cut our grass with a machette because a small glass powered push mower was about $3000 Canadian then), the garbage would disappear each day, going to some magical place that was, St the very least out of my mind, and view. One day I was walking down a dusty dirt road about a mile from my house and I was walking with my gaze fixed to the ground. As I walked I stepped over a piece of paper, a torn portion, which had a logo that instantly jumped out at me as being familiar. I stepped back, bent over and picked up the scrap, and sure enough it was from the travel agency I use. It was addressed to my name and had my Canadian mailing address on it. I took two more steps and found another scrap I recognized. It was then that it dawned on me that we need to be burning our papers,. Where Joel was dumping them I had no idea, but they were floating around the small town.
We soon clued in that street vendors would take our scrap office papers and wrap up there greasy alocho, or begnetes. The ultimate re cycling... years later the mayor, sick of the mess in the town,  finally instituted barrels for garbage pickup, and forded the locals to pay a modest fee. They would pick up one a week. Our barrel rarely needed emptying, as soon as the gate was closed after disposing new things each day, the local kids dug through, and  divided up what was in the 2 foot high can. It remained empty for most of three years until the day we left our African home for a new adventure.

Never Forgotten Faces Of Africa

"....., every time i pulled into villages and saw those skinny four-year-old children with the orangish red and puffy cheeks of protein starvation, I knew I couldn't leave without taking their faces with me. I didn't want that baggage. I didn't want those faces forever asking me if I had really done everything I could to stay. So I resolve to stick things out. I resolve to live with it, all of it...And I did.... Period. But no amount of determination could finish the daily strength." 

(Mike Tidwell. "The Ponds of Kalambayi". Pg59)

Angry At Poverty

"... he's angry. Because he knows that a lot of the crisis in the developing world can be avoided. Staring at people queuing up to die three to a bed, two on top and one underneath, in a hospital just inside of a Lilongwe, Malawi, and knowing this doesn't have to be so is too much for most of us. I am crushed. He is creative..... He can look up from the numbers and see faces through the spreadsheet, families like his own that stick together on treks to the far ends of the world."

(Bono's comment about Jeffery Sachs in forward to. "The End Of Poverty)

Water......

"Of all my time in Africa, I love the quiet moments by the ponds the best. There's something about bodies of water, something about rivers and lakes and oceans and ponds, that seems to hold and heal the human soul.... Whatever the attraction, it's clear that water has the power to make one grow contemplative and content...That's the way  it affected the village farmers and me."

( Mike Tidwell. The ponds of Kalambayi. Pg 25,46, 2011)

Bono on Poverty

"Two men to sleep beside each other on a long journey into Africa,.... One is fairly clean shaven, paper strewn around him. Mate black suit, eyes slightly hollow from no sleep, thoughts too big even for his big head. The other is a more bohemian mess. Unshaven, unkempt, he can't just have been up for days, his boyish face says years..... That's me. Let me introduce myself. My name is Bono and I am the rock star student. The man with me is Jeffrey D. Sachs, the great economist, and for a few years now my professor. In time, is autograph will be worth a lot more than mine." (Bono's forward in the book, "The End Of Poverty: Economic Possibilities For Our Time". Jeffery Sachs)

The Cave

Yep..... this song made me cry today... There are many people living with a noose around their neck.... maybe even myself included.... Thanks Mumford & Sons.

Criticizing the Poor!

"Here is what we seek: a compassion that can stand in awe at what the poor have to carry rather than stand in judgement of how they carry it." 

 (Tattoos on the Heart. Gregory Boyle, pg 68)

The Best Story

"The search for love and the search for wealth are always the two best stories. But while a love story is timeless, the story of quest for wealth, given enough time, will always seem like the vain pursuit of a mirage."

(Salt: A World History. pg 13)

Community Development A Shot in the Dark Sometimes.

" I was in Kalambayi and my job was to bring development. But where do you begin here? There was so much poverty and sickness. Even I was sick. The riddle was too complicated."

(Mike Tidwell. The Ponds of Kalambayi, pg 25).

Sick Far From Home.

I've been sick in a foreign country....Bad malaria etc, and I had three kids hospitalized with high fevers too.  It is as empty a feeling as you can experience.

"You are never as far away from home as when you get sick in a foreign country."

 (Mike Tidwell. The Ponds of Kalambayi, pg 24).

Poverty reflects Road Conditions?

"The further we traveled the more barbarous the roads became. Soon they really weren't roads at all, but simply loose federations of holes and gullies stretched over hilltops and down into valleys. The level of poverty seemed to follow the state of the roads, getting worse with every mile."

(The Ponds of Kalambayi, Mike Tidwell, pg 17)

Even Ugly People Look Beautiful

Commenting about the beauty of the light and time just around sunset in Congo....Great book, a memoir by a Peace Corps worker.

"So Sublime was this period between about 5:00 and 6:00 p.m. that in Tshiluba, the melodious and complex language spoken by the Kalabayans, it was known as `the time of day when even ugly people look beautiful'."

(The Ponds of Kalambayi, Mike Tidwell, pg 14)

I Left the Church and Found it

"I left the Church and Found It" David Hayward.
www.nakedpastor.com

Everybody Goes Awwwwwww!

I don't care who you are, this must make you laugh...

This just made me laugh..... “The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn, like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everybody goes "Awww!” -Jack Kerouac