Remember When...Taking Time to Give Meaning to Our Lives

Oren and Daddy making Sugar Cookies this week.  He took them to school to share with classmates.

I am having trouble finding the narrative unity of this week.  The biggest challenge for me of writing a weekly blog is to retell the week's events in a way that makes a point.  That is a personal goal, not a necessity I realize.  But perhaps this topic is a place to begin:

In our small group this week we continued reading the book of Nehemiah.  (by the way we have a new member, a single gentleman named Peter--an Australian, who has come to help out at the Montessori School where David goes for preschool).  I led the discussion and felt a bit challenged by chapter 9 which is primarily a long recounting of Israel's history--a retelling, by the returnees from exile as part of renewing the significance of the Holy Days of yore.  It is very long, pretty much recounting everything from Genesis to Deuteronomy.  Frequently the words "Remember when..." begin a new paragraph.  The telling is an intentional exercise, a conscious reminding to the Israelites and their children of how to understand the facts of their past.  It is told in the context of their God who is "ever faithful, slow to anger, and abounding in mercy"--the One who has put up with years of stubborness and disobedience from them and their forefathers.

This chapter, though, led to a very interesting discussion in our group about the importance of regularly recounting our own history.  History, we concluded, is a dead set of facts until it is retold.  The Jews at the time of Nehemiah understood this and ‘remembering’ their history was, (and continues to be), an important part of their high holy days.  But REMEMBERING is not simply recalling!  It is a retelling of the events with interpretation from a perspective.  In the case of the Israelites during the restoration, it was an act of seeing God’s steadfast love and abiding with them through all that happened--good and bad.

But what about us now?  I realize from my life, and especially in preparing for Christmas that what we call ‘traditions’ actually function in the same way.  It is not a mere repeating of past events or going through the motions of ‘what we always do’, but it is, rather, an act of ‘remembering’--a very present and future-looking activity based on an interpretation of the past.  We are ‘remembering’ things to our children that we consider important when we practice them in a ritual of repetition.  In our small group we recognized together the error that we as parents may make in thinking that our children unconsciously absorb or intuit our values by osmosis, without the intentional act of telling and reminding them.  Our children learn about us and our values in the times we take to ‘remember’ things to them.  Grandparents are great ‘rememberers’.   Children really love to be ‘remembered’ to, but often those of us in between childhood and old age tend to find the whole exercise a bit redundant.  We are often hurrying heedlessly through the very ‘productive’ years of our lives and can miss out on this very important activity.

So for me, this blog serves as my act of ‘remembering’ and that is why I try to find a narrative unity each week and commit to the tradition of Sunday evening re-telling of the weeks events.  That is, I am finding the meaning in what we did each week, from my perspective as a father, husband, missionary, and most importantly, a follower of Christ.  Some weeks I feel more up to the task than others, because ‘remembering’ is much more difficult than recalling.

That said, there were highs and lows this week which I will mention more in the way they impacted me than the order in which they occurred.  We continue to prepare for Christmas, with our young children.  The daily Advent calendars with chocolate behind each little door that opens is a big hit with the kids and a great teaching moment.  I might also mention that we have been blessed by no illness in the family for 2 weeks straight.

Among the personal highlights I want to acknowledge the steady improvement in my morning swim workout.  It is a spiritually important part of my day, (I do it right after dropping the kids off at school), and follow it with a daily reading from the Bible in a year and prayer.  It really prepares me to have a serene attitude before the many daily frustrations we face in trying to work and even live here.  But there is also evidence of real physical and technical improvement.  While I continue to swim a mile every day, I now do a full quarter mile of fly stroke (every 4 laps) as part of it.   Having the opportunity to swim here is a true blessing!

(I want to mention that I remain ever grateful to coach Ron Terwilliger in Poughkeepsie who taught me that swimming is truly a spiritual discipline.  He did this by opening up the Poughkeepsie Middle School Pool and preparing a work-out at 6am every morning.  I went twice a week for 2 years even on the coldest bleakest winter mornings--often standing shivering outside in sub zero temperatures waiting for the doors to open.  That was great preparation for enduring the hardships of mission work )

I am also very pleased with the progress I have made in painting the house.  The living room is almost done and looks great!

Among the aforementioned frustrations several have piled up in the past weeks.  The biggest one is related to the continued roadwork outside our house.  It is progressing at a snail’s pace as they are apparently planning to cobblestone our entire quartier.  Large groups of people (mainly women) come out daily to work with picks and shovels, digging ditches, and lining them with stone and concrete in preparation for the roadwork.  It is a project that appears to be on the scale of building one of the great pyramids of Egypt (only with smaller stones).  The problem is, nothing seems to move forward.  Often the same job is done over and over again several times.  Also, more and more ditches are excavated across roads each week and now every road out of our quartier is cut off from the main road except one single-lane path.  It is clogged with cars every morning and very difficult to  pass by.  

It is hard as a westerner to see planning not organized around western values of efficiency.  Instead of concentrating work around finishing completely some access routes, the philosophy is to do everything one stage at a time.  So all ditch digging everywhere is the current stage.  It appears that everything will be destroyed before the rebuilding phase begins.  Access routes will not be finished ahead of any other part of the project. 

The bridge to our house is still the makeshift wooden ‘ladder’ we must use, and continues to deteriorate.  Last week the workers removed it every morning to work on our ditch and we were forced to put it back ourselves every evening.  Sadly, while we left our car outside of our house in the late afternoon on Friday, someone quickly removed the entire rear light unit on both sides of the car, making it very dangerous to drive and a pain to replace.  Since it was done Friday we are needing to wait until Monday for repairs.  It is annoying and hard not to feel that as the privileged mzungus in this country we are fair game to be ‘eaten’ at any sign of imprudence and vulnerability.  I know that not everyone here is a thief but it is a real frustration to have our car (and our friends cars) preyed upon in this way anytime we leave them unattended on the street.  (The good news is that our mechanic can simply go to the black market area and buy the lights back for a much lower price than one would have to pay for new ones.  It is like a game here, and sadly, one of the few ‘creative’ income generating activities I have seen.)

Fortunately it is possible to keep all of the highs and low in perspective here, and while the annoyance of replacing lights is a pain, the rewards of being here are in evidence abundantly.  I don’t often talk about specific accomplishments at work, since administration of our program is not always glamorous, but I want to mention one:  I was very happy to have successfully advocated to MCC for an additional emergency grant for our program the Hope School for the Batwa.  I have to say, there are few foreign aid programs I know of in the world that do so much with so little as I see in this school.  

MCC, along with another donor supports the school, although last year the other donor pulled out of funding teachers' salaries.  This left the school with a shortfall of 4 months of salaries for teachers this fall ($6000).  (MCC essentially pays for the spring and the other donor paid the fall).   The school was in danger of closing as a result, but MCC was able to find enough money to keep it open until our new grant kicks back in next year.

What I want to emphasize though is the amount of money such a program requires compared to what it does.  The school pays $1500 per month for all teachers’ salaries.  THAT IS FOR 22 TEACHERS EACH MONTH TO TEACH 500 PYGMY CHILDREN!  The entire teacher payroll for the year is $15,000.  I know there are American teachers and administrators out there—can you imagine? A teacher here makes about $68 per month!  It is sad they are paid so little and often in schools here they do not end up getting paid even what they are owed because of shortfalls.  But they do such incredible work and in my opinion, are providing the only real hope for marginalized people like the Batwa.

What is sad to me is that much foreign aid passes over such projects as this because it does not ‘burn’ enough money.  Large donors (even Christian ones) want partners and programs that can use much larger amounts of money.  $15,000 per year is considered too cost ineffective to administer.

But that is what I love about MCC!  It is an organization that has fewer resources but seeks out small partnerships of people doing very effective work—a lot with very little.  The hardest thing for us is that often we can barely provide our partners with enough money to do the very good work they do, and yet must watch as larger organizations waste money on large projects that mainly subsidize corrupt officials, or line the pockets of unscrupulous managers (that includes church leaders here as well as others).   I have found that with foreign aid, less is more as far as direct grants, but it takes a lot more time and energy to find the right people to partner with to do meaningful work with integrity here.  Often much accompaniment is needed as well to help them get the most out of a grant.

We have continued to enjoy being with our children this week.  David has really been maturing quickly and his personality emerges more clearly everyday.  He is easy going, and quite a joker.  He loves to laugh even at the expense of teasing his hypersensitive brother a bit.  They do play together well in general though.  David is happy to be the ‘monster’ that chases Oren and his friends around the house when they come to play.   He is also getting bit enough to hold his own on the trampoline with them.

The most notable thing about him though, is his great love of all animals.  He is a bit of a Huck Finn, walking barefoot everywhere he goes, picking up frogs, lizards, snails, even cockroaches, guinea pigs, or any other living thing he can trap with his hands.  He is an expert at catching these often tiny animals and has a natural instinct about handling them gently.  It is fun to watch him bring a critter he has found running around the churchyard to show to a group of young girls at Sunday school and watch them scream.  His best friend though is Bella our retriever and I have no doubt he will be thrilled to see the soon-to-be-arriving puppies.

  I think that is enough remembering for today.  Until next week, I hope you will take the time to ‘remember when’ with those you care about this season.

Bonus Photo:  Saturday morning exercise and brunch crew.