Here's mud in your eye

In the DR Congo, Jim, Tedde, Chuck, Arloa and I went to visit a woman who was HIV positive. World Vision assists her by providing ARVs, nutritious food and other help. When we arrived, we were welcomed inside a mud-brick house that was about 8ft by 12 ft. There was no running water or electricity and so the door was left open for light. To accept her hospitality, all of us were given a seat and she stood by the door, which was the only space left. Bedding was located on the other side of a curtain hanging from a string at the end of the room. We were able to ask her questions about her condition and what life was like. It was terribly awkward because none of us wanted this woman to feel like she was on display for the visitors and, at the same time, most humans having trouble breaking the ice even when they speak the same language and the gap between their classes is not quite as glaring. But she was gracious and willing to answer our questions. Although quiet, she was not guarded, and we began to loosen up. Her 3-year-old daughter stood with her the whole time. The mother held the comb she had been using to tie the girl's hair in little tufts, a hairstyle that was unique to the DR Congo out of all the countries we visited. We asked if we could pray for her and she allowed us. Arloa, the pastor in the group, laid hands on her and we prayed. While we conversed through a translator, many of the local children gathered at the doorway to get a glimpse inside. When I went to take their pictures, they held up their own hands, as if taking my picture. Once I got outside afterwards, I saw that many of them had made little clay cameras. I asked the translator to have them show me their cameras again so I could take a picture.

Before we had left her house, though, I asked her why she thought the staff members of World Vision helped her.
World Vision is very clear in its policy statements about the fact that they do not proselytize and that they serve all people in need, without discrimination and without requiring that do anything religious to receive that aid. They believe that when they serve simply because they are commanded to by Jesus, that is enough. Often, receivers of aid get curious about why someone would help them and ask. Only then do they talk about Christ. I like that about World Vision and I wanted to see how the reality of this played out in the field. She responded, "World Vision is caring, loving and compassionate."

John 9:1-7 says:

Walking down the street, Jesus saw a man blind from birth. His disciples asked, "Rabbi, who sinned: this man or his parents, causing him to be born blind?" Jesus said, "You're asking the wrong question. You're looking for someone to blame. There is no such cause-effect here. Look instead for what God can do. We need to be energetically at work for the One who sent me here, working while the sun shines. When night falls, the workday is over. For as long as I am in the world, there is plenty of light. I am the world's Light."

He said this and then spit in the dust, made a clay paste with the saliva, rubbed the paste on the blind man's eyes, and said, "Go, wash at the Pool of Siloam" (Siloam means "Sent"). The man went and washed—and saw.

I love the disciples because they are just like me: totally clueless most of the time. They just don't get it.

But they think they do.

They're so sure that they know what's going on that they don't ask open-ended questions. No simple, "Why is this man blind?" They are so shaped by their culture that they believe that the question is multiple-choice. Ha. Like God ever fit inside the boxes we create for him, even the ones that can be filled in with a number 2 pencil.

Christ ignores the two possibilities that the disciples hand him and presents a third option that has nothing to do with what they offered: This man is blind so that he may be healed and show the world the Glory of God.

I love the theories of community development. I read book after book about them, attend CCDA conferences, participate on community development blogs, and will talk at length with anyone that's willing about why the poor stay poor and what can be done to achieve equal opportunity for God's people. I'm starting grad school at the University of Chicago in the fall so that I can effect systemic change in this world, rather than simply applying band-aids. Plus, thinking about the cause-and-effect relationships of our world just feels good to me. Like scratching an itch or watching baseball or holding small babies. It's entertainment and joy, wrapped up into something (my head) that I carry around with me all the time anyway.

This makes me, at times, ask questions like the disciples: framed in such a way that Jesus will give me an answer that I expect, or at least, one that I can process. Throughout my trip in Africa, I was thinking about how the resources of the world got distributed so inequitibly and how I could be involved in the remedy. Basically, I was asking God whose sin was being punished by Africa's blindness, what societal sin caused the situation to arise that this woman, her husband and their 5 children should be suffering from AIDS.

I was also desperately trying to dispell my own bias that secretly believes that I am entitled to my wealth and privelige, that I somehow earned them and that this makes me better than people who have little.

In three of the four Gospels, Jesus asks the disciples, "Do you have any idea how difficult it is for people who 'have it all' to enter God's kingdom?" He goes on to say that it is easier for a camel to fit through an eye of a needle than for people of privelige and wealth to enter God's kingdom.

This is a troubling verse. I know several good men that have spent the last 20 years trying to figure out how it applies to them. But I have recently begun reading several biblical scholars who believe that "God's kingdom" or "the Kingdom of Heaven" refers to our mortal life here on earth in addition to the afterlife. They believe that it describes the parts of this world and our lives that align with God's original plan for us. This means that the Kingdom of Heaven is anywhere people are in real community with one another, loving and taking care of each other, even in the midst of conflict that inevitably arises. People who have wealth and privelege usually don't have true community. I certainly fit that description, having spent the last several years of my life looking for it after not finding it in the drive-through suburban life I had been living. But time and time again, when I engage with "poor" people, they have what I lack. For their survival, they must know and cooperate with all of the people that live in their neighborhood, even those they don't particularly like. It is Christ's commandment to love our neighbors lived out of necessity.

So, when she said, "World Vision is caring, loving and compassionate," I realized that I was asking the wrong questions. Although it is important to figure out what causes poverty in order work towards systemic change, what is more important is being caring, loving and compassionate. Africa is blind so that when it is healed, the glory of God will be known. I am a child of wealth and privelige not because I am better than those who aren't but because when I am healed of my isolation and finally release myself into true community, the Kingdom of Heaven will grow larger, having brought one more person into its sphere of influence.

I thanked her for giving me the opportunity to be caring, loving and compassionate. Without her suffering and the suffering of her beautiful children, I would simply be dry dirt on the side of the road. Instead, through my association with World Vision, she offered me the chance to be mixed with the spit of Jesus and become mud in her eye.

Clothing makes the (wo)man

As we all know by now, I lost my luggage on the way in to Zambia. Maybe it was my fault for being late to the plane. Maybe they pulled the luggage off the plane as a security precaution and then the waves and eddies of the general African perspective on efficiency took care of the rest. What I found most interesting is that whenever we called to check on it, we would be assured that it would be meet us at whatever small airport we were headed to next. “Oh yes, it will be on the charter flight that meets you in Kipushi.” My favorite was when Larry got off the phone, looked at me and said, “We are getting more confident that the luggage is somewhere.” I am fairly certain that the people who made these assurances knew that they were untrue when they said them. I don’t know how to analyse that. Is it a cultural priority to avoid upsetting people? Do other Africans receive such assurances as these in the spirit they were given: generous conciliation but not to be relied upon? If this is the case, then it is hard to fault a culture for placing good will between people over cold facts. Americans like their facts above all else. But, is it a leftover from colonialism to tell the White Man only what he wants to hear? That’s a little more worrisome.

Anyway, I had three tops, only one of which I could wear out in the more modest rural areas we would be visiting and a pair of pants, which would also be inappropriate. So, Debi loaned me a skirt and we went out on our first adventure in Musele. The first act of the people in Musele who greeted our bus was to give us gifts. They literally surrounded the women with chitenge: two meters of cloth, hemmed at both ends, worn as a skirt by tucking in the ends around our waists. Their sure fingers, strong with a lifetime of practice, wrapped us securely. Most of us struggled to re-wrap our skirts as they inevitably loosened with our movement. If we were lucky, a local woman would take pity on our plight and tuck it for us again. I got reasonable at it over the course of the week. I think maybe all that crafting has made my fingers dexterous.

But think of that metaphor. Not only were we surrounded into the landscape and culture of Africa, our bodies were literally encircled by African clothing. Like the art of Christo and Jean-Claude, our familiar identities were rendered new by being wrapped, like the Reichstag.

Women in Africa use the chitenge as skirts, aprons, head-wraps and as baby-carriers. I noticed that on Sundays and formal events, they were in evidence more frequently and that on particularly festive occasions, groups of women wore matching chitenge. When we met with a government official in DR Congo, he had 8 or 9 hay bale sized bundles of cloth in his office for the women to wear in the upcoming Independence Day events. I love what this says about the culture. First, it says that when there are things to celebrate (church, the digging of a new well, the arrival of a beloved statesman, welcoming visitors from Chicago) it is important to emphasize our African heritage, rather than the western influence of jeans and plain skirts with waistbands. It also says that there is strength in belonging to a group. The entire staff of DR Congo wore matching clothing and provided clothing made to our measurements in the same fabric as a gift for us to take home. It is stunning to be included in a group by that group simply because we traveled all that way to see them. They were honored and I was honored. I did not have to prove myself to be allowed into the group, either in Zambia or in DR Congo. I was loved unconditionally and clothed as a reflection of that love.

Almost every woman in the parts of Africa that I visited wore two skirts. Frequently, I saw women hand babies to each other or pick up children from the ground and casually tie the children to their backs to carry them around. This vivid display of the concept of taking a village to raise a child was impressive. Women are always prepared to care for one another's children. And children are prepared to accept direction from any adult. We saw this frequently. Arloa and I saw a little boy, about 3-years-old, step on something and hurt his foot. He cradled the foot and cried a little. His situation drew a crowd and another little girl, not much bigger than he was, assessed the situation and then calmly reached down and pulled him onto her back.

In wrapping us in chitenge, the women of Musele were taking us up onto their backs, like children. And we were children in Africa. At least, I felt like a child. Everything was new and hard to process. I have very little context for what was going on, so things didn't make sense. Certain World Vision staff took me up on their backs and helped me, particularly Jenny, who works out of the Lusaka headquarters. She would explain things that I was looking at but didn't understand far beyond simple translation. She had a sense of humor similar to mine (just a little bit wicked) and a delightful sense of joy. I loved to watch her join into the singing and dancing of the women whenever we would arrive in a new place. She extended hospitality to us everywhere we went by becoming part of the group of women who greeted us. I became particularly indebted to her when she pulled me into the procession of women dancing toward the site where the well would be dug and showed me her footwork so that I could dance, too. She told me that the words of the song were thanking God for the well that comes from Chicago. That's her all the way to right in the picture.

Jenny also facilitated the creation of my Zambian dress. In most hero stories, there is usually a moment in which the hero is stripped of the clothes she wore from home and she is given fine, new raiment's that are symbols of her new status. Consider Luke Skywalker's all-black outfit in the beginning of Return of the Jedi to signify his status as a new Jedi or Neo's ragged sweater and pants after literal nudity when he was awoken in The Matrix. A woman from Zambia named Princess Kasune Zulu used to pastor at River City and she wore the most beautiful dresses. The were cut to fit her curves perfectly and she designed them to look like high fashion. I have always harbored a secret wish to look like Princess. Losing my luggage afforded me this chance to strip away my old identity and become African, even the slightest bit. I was so pleased that the tailor took the care to line up the elements of the pattern of the fabric with the pattern of the dress: putting a wedge at the neckline and centering the fish and crustaceans at opportune spots. I think that the shape of my body is very similar to the ideal African woman's shape. Ivan, our translator in DR Congo, described the ideal as "bottle-shaped." I feel like this dress emphasizes the bottle-ness of my body in a way that American styles of jeans and t-shirts can't always do. I remember reading an article once by an Indian immigrant and the significant change of self-identity she felt when she began dressing like an American. The forgiving and lovely silk of her saris and salwar kameez(es?) that had made her feel like a woman were replaced by unflattering pants and tops that made her look chunky rather than curvaceous. What a glorious gift from a culture that values women for what their bodies actually are rather than a media-swamped culture that tries to push all women into being something other than themselves. I understand why the tradition of the American work ethic makes jeans a staple in our fashion. But the necessity of having a second suit of clothes became an unexpected re-introduction to myself as a more authentic woman. And I am grateful for that.

Amonth later, my luggage has not yet been returned to me.

Compared to the insight I was given that accompanied the gifts of clothing, I do not miss it.

More excerpts from my Africa journal

6/23/07 - My first day in Africa

On the plane 1 hour out from Lusaka, Zambia, the first country we visited:

Debi, a staff person from World Vision, tells my seat partner and I to open our windows. The colors in the sunrise are like something out of a movie. Or the cover of a William Gibson novel. The horizon is totally flat, the land brown tinged with orange from the top. From the horizon and working up, the sky starts deep tangerine, almost pumpkin and fades into lighter tangerines and the to the color of navel oranges then to a buttery yellow. The color of the fancy butter at Mom’s house, in fact. It transitions to a cornflower blue the a mom-jean blue then a navy, brilliant rather than dull and dark. The lights I saw on the ground were reddish and warm, like campfires although I’m sure we’re too high up for that and I’m just romanticizing.

In a very small plane on the way to Solwezi from the Lusaka airport

Looking down, I see lots of small garden with irregular hand-tilled rows. Many are circular with spokes of path splitting them. They look like hand-appliquéd quilts from this height, with rich browns and various green with hand-stitching serving as the rows between beds.

We pass a section of very large, very solidly green circles, as well. The look mechanically maintained.

Some classic round, thatched huts.

A dried riverbed, black with silt, I assume.

Interestingly, the land seems to be delineated between areas of dense trees and areas that look evenly polka-dotted with trees. I wonder if the roots of these trees give off a proximity toxin, like mesquite.

4 reasons why I feel like a dummy international traveler:

1. Didn’t get any cash before going through security in Chicago. Since I was told I’d only need $50 for two different visas, felt safe when there were no ATMs in the gate area. Figured I’d get spending money from local ATMs. Customs in Zambia (first country of entry): $100. Cash in wallet: $60. Local ATMs: non-existent.

2. Did not have watch at Heathrow. Nearly missed plan to Zambia. "Paging Passenger Murphy. We are about to close the flight." Ran so far, so fast that the words on the signs on the gangway after I had given them my ticket were blurry, even though I was just walking. Mantel was waiting at the door. Said my father would be mad at him if I got left behind. Told him I would be mad at me if I got left behind. Felt like I might die for the first half hour of the flight because I'm so out of shape.

3. Almost forgot to put my address on my luggage. Had sinking feeling as I handed it to TSA. Called it back and tagged it. Watched luggage carousel anxiously in Lusaka. Could see the man unloading the luggage onto the carousel through the plastic flaps. No Rube-Goldberg conveyor belts here. It doesn't show up. Local charter flight lady expedites filing a claim. Only consolation is that 20 other people were also luggage-less. I'm the only one in my group. Mantel tells me that it happens to him about every other trip. After that, it's all OK. Shane Claiborne lost everything he owned in a fire on Wednesday. It could be worse.

4. There is no boarding pass for me on our charter flight. However, once the manifest was checked, I was on it and could get on the flight. Again, I'm the only one in the group that happened to. Well, at least I didn't have to worry that I was 3 pounds over the 26 pound limit.

Turbulence in small plane. Stop writing. Start paying attention to slow, deep breaths. Eyes flit quickly in front and a little up for something to focus on. Find red switch over the pilot's shoulder. His movement makes this a bad choice. Roam around visually, somewhat urgently, bypassing a rivet in the seat in front of me, the bar of the sun visor, and the speakers as some instinctual not-quite-right. My animal brain doesn't even consider thing not shiny or not in deep contrast to the mostly white interior. Finally settle on the ring of the overhead light. Not conscious choice. My eyes simply felt like they could relax. Hear descending guitar chords in my head from some Allman Brothers Band song. Duhn-duh-Duhn-duh-Duhn-dadada. Duhn-duh-Duhn-duh-Duhn-dadada. Finally my body becomes less likely to rid itself of toxins at any loss of focus or rigidity and get to close my eyes and rest my face in one hand, pushing up my sunglasses with still-rigid fingers. As it eases, I remember my iPod. First song: Fire and Rain. Perfect. Second song: Boy in the Bubble. Also perfect. Can see smoke on the ground as James Taylor sing about Jesus seeing him through. Although close to the source it billows, in the air above, it look motionless, in stasis, like a picture.

On the road in Solwezi:

fences of long grasses instead of pickets
children younger than four standing in clumps, looking at our bus
children in hats - where are my knitting needles? in the luggage
much staring and waving - I wave back after Jim waves first
mud brick factories - bricks drying on small end in the sun
Chuck points out the anthills - What do I care about anthills? Show me the people
roadside stand with rice(?) bags for exterior walls
a mini-market with 30 stands on either side of the road - all of them selling clothes - physical necessity? or dignity in the face of poverty? where is the food?
the thought, "This is more than I can process" I cannot simply take notes on the little uniquities. It is all different and new. I will have to let it sink in before I can encompass it with words. Some concern, though, that this first experience of Africa should not be absorbed later into a generic description
three babies - 2 years old, maybe 3 - stand in a loose triangle on the crest above the ditch. T-shirts, short pants - the one in front has a bulky white knit hat with a slightly pointy top. All stare with two-year old intensity, like Leoni, a boy I knew on Orcas.

On the hotel veranda, 5:00 P.M.:

I am having a dress made! We were at a shop that had received micro-loans from the Harmos initiative. He had traditional Zambian fabric for sale and I asked Jenny (who works for WVI in Lusaka) to help me. She spoke with a World Vision employee named Victor who is here in Solwezi to bring a tailor to the shop to take my measurements. His name is Joseph and he has plump cheeks. When our plane landed this morning, we were greeted by 6 little girls in matching dresses. Jenny and I asked Joseph to make a dress like that. He could do it with 4 meters of fabric, so I got to choose my favorite, which has fish batiked on it.

Big day, no?

Africa journal

From my journal, 24 June 2007, 2nd day in Africa:

If I had written this several hours ago, I would have discussed a sense of apathy I was feeling. I wasn't feeling any terrible sense of jet lag or culture shock, but I also wouldn't say that I had any great excitement over the people and the landscape of Africa, either. To be honest, as we drove in the rural areas, it looked like the zoo. Both Chicagoland zoos - Brookfield and Lincoln Park - have holistic African exhibits that mimic the landscape and habitat of the African animals with round, thatched gathering huts, small square buildings of mud bricks, plastered over and decorated with geometric designs or random and poetic word combinations. "Sunflower love." This is what I saw. Most huts had little wooden stands - just sticks driven into the ground with more sticks lashed to them to make a couter top about chest high - at the sides of the roads on which they displayed for sale any vegetables that they had harvested during the day.

After a three-hour bus ride in which the only toilets that existed on the whole route were behind a newly built police station, we were told to exit the bus: first women, then the men. 20-30 African men and women were singing and moving joyfully, greeting us with smiles and words and wrapping us women in traditional wrap skirts called chitenge while we were still standing on the bus steps. The men received hats made of some fibrous plant and carved walking sticks. The hats were ridiculous but most wore them well.

The church service that began after our arrival did not really impress me. I have a stereotype in my head of overly formal welcoming ceremonies from the grateful natives to the white saviors, and the opening events of this church service fit perfectly into my uncomfortable expectations. After the exuberant welcome, we were ushered onto a raised platform that had a thatched shelter built over it. We faced 200 people, who were arranged in u-shaped bleachers. Western and formally dressed officials to our left, the high school students in their uniforms directly across from us and the women and children in their brightly colored finest to our right.

But then the children sang.

In high school I discovered Ladysmith Black Mambazo and fell in love with the harmonies of Africa. It was the perfect extension of the recognition and comfort I feel for the harmonies of gospel music.

These children sounded like the Africa that spoke to me as a teenager.

These children were not the zoo.

Something shifted inside of me, away from apathy.


Then, our trip leader, Larry, lined us all up to introduce us. A local government official was present and we were formally introduced. Larry displayed a keen understanding of African humor and made the group laugh several times as he mocked himself and us. I was blown away.
Then, I had to go to the bathroom and edged away from the crowd toward the mud-brick building marked clearly, dividing the flow by gender to one side or another. Inside was only a hole and toilet paper on a stick wedged in the high window opening. Luckily, because of my Orcas Island experience, I was not daunted by the hole. It was fun not to be daunted. On my way back from the hole, a little girl, about 3 years old, walked toward me, away from the service. I squatted next to her and talked to her a little. Babies never make sense so the language barrier wasn't an issue. I was charmed.


Then, the high school boys put on a skit whose plot I couldn't follow but whose actors were so talented, I couldn't look away. One boy shaved the center of his head and rubbed mud along his jawbone to make himself look like an old man. His talent for physical and slap-stick comedy was greater than any kid I've ever seen on the Illinois Forensics circuit. This was the realization of universality that made me finally trade in my apathy for empathy. My experiences are not mine entirely because of privelige. Children of poverty are talented to the same degree as children of privelige. I know this in my head but I didn't apply the knowledge to Africa until that moment. I was enthralled.

Then, I opened up. I flirted with every little girl that I caught looking at me, just like I used to do at the Renaissance Faire. As we were forming a parade to get from the assembly grounds to the half-finished boys' dormitory that was being funded by several of the members of our trip, one of these little girls fell into step alongside me. We smiled at each other while we walked and while we were both looking forward, I took her hand. 2 or 3 other girls gathered around her as we walked. To one of them who seemed to want it - rather that just to giggle at her friend's audacity - I held out my other hand. She took it. These two girls led me to the front of the parade, just behind the choir. I was the only "visitor" that I could see. The experience of being in the middle of everything is different for me; I'm usually on the edge observing so that I can write it down later. I had fun. I didn't even mind when Larry took my picture.

We rounded a corner of a school building a walked along the wall. The music of the teenagers bounced off the wall and surrounded me. This was the first moment that I was so overwhelmed with emotion that I thought I might cry. The girls continued to lead me but at some point when we got to the front to be honored, as visitors, to see the new dormitory, the first girl on my left hand fell back, absorbed into her friends. I looked at the girl on my right to see if she wanted to go, too but every time I smiled down at her, she gave me the most beautiful smile, all the way to her eyes. So, I took her with me on the tour. I kept looking down at her and she kept smiling back up at me. I think we fell in love with each other a little bit.

At one point, I felt her touch the skin on my arm with just one finger. I'm sure she was trying to figure out if white skin felt different from the skin that she knew. I looked down after I felt the touch and tried to encourage her to explore more but she just smiled, almost as if she had never done it. LAter I noticed that she would rub her little thumb back and forth in the web of skin between my thumb and forfinger. The red dust from her hand mixed with the sweat of both out hands to form a paint that probably looked very different with my light skin as a canvas than red dirt on dark skin has looked. I wondered a little, with a sense of silliness, if she thought she was rubbing off on me. I think she's probably smarter than that.

She stayed with me all the way to lunch, whne I had to let her go. When I left her, she showed such a reluctance to be left. However, it was a passive reluctance. Her body didn't respond to my hug and she continued to drift toward me as I walked away, almost like static cling. No one would have called it following but she certaining didn't stay put, either.

For lunch, many women had gotten together and cooked for us. I ate sweet potato leaves, nshima, beans, cabbage, and a hominy-type corn with peanut sauce.

When I came out from lunch, the little girl was waiting for me. I tried to ask her name but it was too African for me to process. I couldn't spell it in my head. Luz something. Larry couldn't process it either when he asked her. She was standing with only a few other children in the courtyard outside the school room in which we were eating. I took her hand again and we went back to smiling at each other. However, I was suppose to go straight to the bus and had to say good-bye to her a couple of times, because it was the first day and I thought that everyone would jump when Larry said jump and was fooled every time. Again, the passive reluctance when I would say good-bye. Not protesting. Not aggressive. A subtle physical hope that if she kept close, she might get to go with me. Once she actually made it onto the bus steps. Larry encouraged me to give her the beans that I had bought the day before at the market from a woman who had received micro-enterprise loans from World Vision. I went onto the bus and got the bag for her. We had been instructed to offer gifts with both hands and so I knelt to be at her level and held the beans out to her. As cliche-ed as it sounds, she looked lost. None of her facial muscles were flexed so her face looked slack, yet she kept eye contact with me as her arms reached out to take the beans. Then, I got on the bus for good and looked out the window for her. As the other kids crowded the bus, she stood 20 feet back, looking back at me with the bag of beans draped over her small arm. It seemed like such an insignificant gift. She waved every time I waved and followed the bus for just a little while as we pulled away. Tears welled up in my eyes as I took a picture and waved good-bye.

I want it to be clear, though. My tears were not tears of pity. I wasn't imagining how hard her life must be for her. I wasn't picturing the opportunities that she doesn't have.

She reached out for me hand when I offered it. I needed her to lead into the middle of the singing. She needed me . . . I don't know why she needed me but her persistence tells me that she did.

Isn't that what it's all about? Haven't I been yattering on for years now about community and how our need for relationships with one another is the only pure desire we have? How our modern, drive-through, suburban culture lacks intimacy? Don't we all just want to be known? And loved anyway?

This little girl wanted to be known by me. And it turns out that I needed to be known by her. Maybe this could only happen in the midst of what the Western world would call poverty. When then only wealth a child has is the people she interacts with, then a little African girl can reach out to a grown American woman and they can know each other to the point of tears.

Without ever saying a word.

Art from Artists

I love buying art from the people that actually make it. I know the feeling of having something that I made bought from me and I have always gone home after that experience feeling satisfied that someone connected with my art enough to fork over money for it. Art gets made out of our identities, so when that connection occurs, it's like finding another person who sees the world in the same way you do.


While in Africa, I walked through the craft market in Livingstone, Zambia. It was mostly full of buy-and-sell African tchochkes. You know, carved hippos, wire and bead figures, giraffe spoons. But then I came across the booth of Zacharia Mukwira. I found these gorgeous paintings. They appear to be almost embossed. I guess he makes the carving, presses the paper down into it and then paints it. They have such depth. I had a great time choosing these three prints. I didn't even barter with him because I believe that artists should be allowed to state their own worth.



While we were talking, he said that he wanted to get his name known in the United States. I told him that I would post his work on my website, along with his email address. If you're interested in purchasing works from Zacharia, he can be reached at kentndhlovu@yahoo.com. I think that even if he sent an assortment to you blindly, you'd be happy with it. I loved everything in his booth.

How'd you let that guy jump the queue?

So, I don't know if you have been watching the news, but yesterday, after 10:30 am local time in London, only 3 flights got out of Heathrow because of a security breach. Man, am I glad I was on one of those flights. I didn't even grumble when we had to deplane, get our bags sniffed by adorable English dogs and then replane. I got home 5 hours later than I expected to and my head cold got much worse but I was so glad to just be home that it didn't even matter how miserable my body felt. Can you imagine how long it is going to take to get all of those people whose Chicago flights were cancelled slotted into the empty seats of the current flights? I would have been there for days! I wouldn't even have gotten to do any sightseeing because I am so sick.

A new morning? Is it really morning?

I am feeling better and just consumed a fantastic and stunningly decadent almond croissant and hot chocolate from Pret A Manger. As my family says, if you're eating, you'll probably be fine. Not so much puffy eye any more, just a little fever and stuffy nose and the world sounds like it is 50 meters away (still thinking in metric). My pocket is full of cold medicine that I got tired of politely refusing from my travel companions. The security lady here in London felt up that pocket to an indecent degree, in my opinion.

Just 10 more hours and I'll be home.

Home.

Nice.

I fell weird calling it Joberg

I'm in the Johannesburg airport in Chicago with free internet access since several of my fellow travelers have fancy travel lounge memberships and we bum-rushed the door behind them.

Good news, Doug! Your book is in the book store here! How's that for globalization?

My trip was huge. I'm plotting out several essays that I'll post here as I get them written. I'm not sure if I can confirm or deny that it was the kick in the pants that I've been looking for until the experience is juxtaposed on my everyday life once I get back. I'll let you know.

Mom and Dad, I look forward to seeing you at the airport. I developed one of my swollen-right-eye head colds last night, so I might hang out at your house until I recover, if that's OK with you. Nothing is worse than getting off 30 hours of traveling and going home to a messy, empty apartment with no food when your sick. However, on the bright side, I'll have a whole suitcase less to clutter up the car than I did when I left.

Yup, that's right folks, I've been wearing the same two pairs of underwear for my entire trip. Woohoo!

Heathrow Mall of the UK

I have an 8-hour layover here at Heathrow's International Terminal 4. Since my favorite thing to do in the world is sit and watch people, it's not actually so bad. I have my quote scrolls kit with me, so I can just sit with my hands busy, speculating about people's stories to my heart's content.

Most of you know that I'm a little nervous plunging into new cultures. If this were a Joseph Campbell-style hero's journey, this giant, expensive mall would be the threshhold, like the Cantina on Mose Eisley. I'm feeling OK, though. I'm writing a lot of observations, which is always a good sign. I'll share as many of them with you as I can before my time runs out.

I started by making a slow trudge around the circuit of the stores to get a sense for the landscape. I stopped in the first bookstore I came across because my friend Doug (the only person I know anywhere near London) said that although I'm one of the few people that he'd be willing to make the hour and a half drive in to the airport to have lunch with me, friends of his were getting married out in the sticks today. He said that I should look for his book, Owen Noone and the Marauder in the bookstores, though and if it wasn't there, make a big stink with the kid behind the counter, asking why not. I don't think I'm quite willing to make a stink, but I did look for his book. His last name is Cowie and I thought for a moment we had hit jackpot as my eyes found the C-Os, but alas, it was Douglas Copeland. However, there was a book-sized space exactly where his book would be if they were carrying it, so there is still a glimmer of hope.

Speaking of making a big stink, by this time I was letting loose a couple of really big, clapping farts, so I went to find a bathroom. Also, the music store across the hall from the bookstore played Creedence Clearwater Revival, followed by Procol Harum and the American classic rock was feeling just a little surreal. As I entered the gleaming white stall, I saw that the dispenser for the toilet paper had fallen open on the hinge located at the bottom, pushing me to the left as I sat. In the dispenser I saw pre-cut slices of toilet paper of the perfect size for one good swipe. Nothing stingy about it. The stall door was so big that there was no frame to indicate any sort of room-like atmosphere. Instead, it felt like entering a short hallway with an odd toilet at the end of it.

Leaving the bathrooms, a restaurant was piping Peter Gabriel's Strawberry Hill, a song that a boyfriend of mine called "ubiquitous" and so I've never been able to hear it (and you hear it a lot) without calling it The Ubiquitous Strawberry Hill in my head.

Interestingly, the duty free shops employ lovely young women to wear costume to sell perfume. In one shop, two light-skinned Indian women wore white beach clothes with white flowers over one ear and in another stores, two Pacific Asian women wore elaborate Hawiian costumes with grass skirts and ornamental belts. It reminds me of Jackie in That 70s Show, who wears the sexy Bavarian costume with a straight face while working for the Cheese Hut. To me, costumed sales girls reflects a time in American history in which kitsch and camp were not considered kitsch and camp but rather creative and clever. Or should I say, creative and klever?

There is a preponderance of novels in the bookstores that are unashamedly sordid tales of incest. They have titles like When Daddy Comes Home, Abandoned, and Don't Tell Mummy. I have seen at least 8 different books and they all have the same cover design: mostly white background with a large picture of a blond child's head and shoulders above the fold. The title is written out, as if in the child's own hand. I'm not sure what to think about this or what it's disturbing correlation is in American culture (I'm sure there is one). It's got me wigged out, though.

I sampled Pimm's, which I've heard about before on NPR but haven't gotten a chance to try since it's only available in the UK. One could get very drunk on samples of Pimm's in this mall since there are at least three stores offering very nearly full shots of it.

The cigarette packages don't pull any punches around here. They have warning that say in very big letters, "SMOKING KILLS" and "SMOKING IS ADDICITIVE AND VERY DIFFICULT TO QUIT." Amazing - the human desire to destroy itself.

I like watching strangers ask each other questions and get kind responses. My experience is usually with informational self-sufficiency: both my own and the people around me. We can look everything up on the internet ahead of time. It's interesting to see people creating even small community because they have needs.

Finally, I like my traveling companions so far. Three of them were on the flight with me from Chicago and none of the suggested that we hang out during the layover, nor did they linger upon being ejected from security. They went their own direction without a backwards look. They know we'll be spending plenty of time together over the next two weeks, so they're taking their last moments of privacy now.

My kind of people.

This might not be so bad after all. :-)

Big Boots

I have been walking around with a spiritual “Kick Me” sign pinned to my back for months now. God put it there when I read a book by Shane Claiborne called Irresistible Revolution. In addition to everything else he writes that blew my mind, he quotes Soren Kierkegaard, who writes:

The matter is quite simple. The Bible is very easy to understand. But we Christians are a bunch of scheming swindlers. We pretend to be unable to understand because we know very well that the minute we understand, we are obliged to act accordingly. Take any words in the New Testament and forget everything except pledging yourself to act accordingly. My God, you will say, if I do that my whole life will be ruined. How will I ever get on in the world?

My name is Rebecca and I am a scheming swindler.

Luckily, God stood next to me when I stood up and admitted that I had a problem. However, while He was there with His arm around me, loving me and supporting me, He stuck a “Kick Me” sign on my back. Apparently, He thinks that unless I feel spiritually afflicted for a while, I will continue to be a scheming swindler because I’m so comfortable this way. And too much comfort is not good for the soul. It gets flabby and has to stop and catch its breath a lot. So, to encourage me to start exercising for a healthier soul, I have been the target of a variety of folks who have written books and preached sermons and lived lives that kick me. And the motivation is starting to work. By their examples, I am coming to believe that I must stop hiding behind privilege and actually spend time forming relationships with the types of people that Jesus formed relationships with: the poor.

The only problem is that I’m not quite ready yet. My very human sense of self-preservation is keeping me from being able to trust that God will take care of me if I stop trying to control my life and start loving people full-time. So, according to His infinite wisdom, the “Kick Me” sign is still there. And now I’m both nervous and excited that something huge is headed toward me wearing big boots.

I am going to Africa.

I am going on a vision trip with World Vision, an international Christian humanitarian organization. We will be in Zambia, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Botswana, meeting the under-resourced people who allow World Vision to partner with them. It is my hope that spending two weeks being confronted with the immediacy of poverty in Africa will finally help me make the decisions that God has been wanting me to make about my own life. Maybe then, I won’t need the “Kick Me” sign to help me act accordingly on my understanding of the Bible. This terrifies me.

To distract myself from this sense of terror that I may soon be obliged to act accordingly, I am also going on this trip to gain professional perspective on the work I do with poverty here in the US. It is my hope that seeing development work stripped down to its essentials will help me focus on those essentials back home, where poverty is so complex. Seeing first-hand the difference made by providing a well to people who used to have to walk 3 miles daily for clean water must clarify for me the difference made by providing school supplies to inner-city kids.

Please pray for me. I hate traveling but rarely admit that to people because I want to cling so desperately to an image of myself as worldly and sophisticated. However, the reality is that I have experienced significant culture shock the few times I’ve left the country in the past, attempting to shut out the overwhelming experience by staying in my room, acting shy with people I encounter and reading my books whenever possible. I haven’t been anywhere but Canada in the last 9 years. Even Canada was hard. No joke. But I want to gather everything from this trip that I can and I’ll need the support of people that love me to find the courage to look up from my book and actually talk to and learn from people that are so different from me. I’ll also need to trust God that I will be OK when I do so. Trust. Always tricky for me. I’m a scheming swindler.

In addition to your contributions of prayer and love, I also need to ask you to consider contributing financially to my journey. It feels expensive but this is another area in which I am trying to trust that God will take care of me. I am committed to the trip and will spend grad school money if I cannot raise the money to cover my expenses. Please think about whether this trip and the insights I am hoping to gain are something that you can support. You can write a check out to me or go to www.firstgiving.org/rsmurphy and make a contribution with your credit card that will be deposited directly into World Vision’s account.

Thank you for caring about me and my attempts to align myself with God’ plan for me. I will welcome any type of contribution to this scary and important journey, including cards and notes of encouragement to take with me. I will be leaving on June 21 and returning July 3. Your prayers during that time will be especially appreciated.