Sue in Africa

Wow, here I am again in Lome, Togo . Once I got on the planes in the U.S. , I settled down internally, no more anxiety; I felt like I was setting about my business. Met up with the Campbell’s in Paris’ Charles de Gaulle International Airport as we planned, then continued on to Togo together. This trip was the most uneventful travel I may have ever experienced: no delays, absolutely no problems. Hurray and thanks for praying! I left Eric and Julie’s house on Friday morning around 5am to 3 inches of snow and more coming – arrived here Saturday around 7pm in Togo (1pm Midwest time).

Flying in over north Africa, crossing Mali and Niger , I noticed great swirling reddish clouds below extending from horizon to horizon. This is the beginning of the Harmitan season when winds pick up the fine red sand of the Sahara Dessert into the air and begin driving it south. We will likely experience the reddish skies in another few week in this region – harder to breathe, but beautiful for sunsets and the large orange setting sun. Landing in the Togolese airport, the capital port city just a few degrees from the equator, I began to notice changes since I was here last. It’s way more friendly to the visitor: no visible soldiers and guns, less interrogative tactics coming through customs.  But really, the first thing I noticed was the familiar smell of the old buildings, the local vegetation, the damp hot air (85 degrees this evening and 85% humidity), the smell of dirt, and friendly sweaty bodies pressed together. It is a good smell to me today.

I’ve unpacked and settled into my small apartment on the campus of West Africa Advanced School of Theology. As you can see, the internet is up for me here. Yeah! Tomorrow morning I’ll join 2,000 other worshippers in the campus chapel that I understand is growing in huge ways. I look forward to the drumming and full voice singing in French! I look forward to meeting with God here. I’m away from home, but it kinda feels like home…

Tell you more soon. sm

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Henri Nouwen writes of Displacement… “In voluntary displacement, we cast off the illusion of having it together and thus begin to experience our true condition, which is that we, like everyone else, are pilgrims on the way, sinners in need of grace. Through voluntary displacement, we counteract the tendency to become settled in a false comfort and to forget the fundamentally unsettled position that we share with all people. Voluntary displacement leads us to the existential recognition of our inner brokenness and thus brings us to a deeper solidarity with the brokenness of our fellow human beings.  Community, as the place of compassion, therefore always requires displacement. The Greek word for church… indicates that, as a Christian community, we are people who together are called out of our familiar places to unknown territories, out of our ordinary and proper places to the places where people hurt and where we can experience with them our common human brokenness and our common need for healing.”
                                                        
Henri J.M. Nouwen, D. Morrison and D. McNeill. “Displacement.” In Compassion. Quoted in The Dance of Life. Doubleday. 1982. p 139.

Finally! I’m on my way. At this writing, it’s midday on the 28th and I’m in the Minneapolis Airport -  on my way to Amsterdam, Paris, and then Lome, Togo by tomorrow evening. Once I got on the airplance, I settled down… like, ahhhh, this is what I’m supposed to be doing. I told my daughter Molly last week, “when I get to Africa I’m peaceful inside.” There have been hundreds of details to tend to, now I’m seeing the fruition of the planning.

Last week, I was with my family, celebrating Christmas and the birth of Zachary on Dec 10th to Lori and Roger. Eric and Julie took the brunt of hosting us all and putting me up several nights. Of course, it meant time to play with the grandkids!

I invite you to explore the entries on my blog. The narrative, is a story created out of my experiences a few years ago. I think of this as the stepping-off point for where I am now. Enjoy!

           Bouncing hard over the deeply rutted road and looking beyond the tall elephant grasses, Johanna spotted the unfinished structure of the open air church. As the jam-packed mini bus carried its great load around the last bend, shouting children announced the arrival of the small medical team in the remote village north of Manya Krobo.
            Lone bicycles could be seen two kilometers away, a puff of red dust speaking of their eventual arrival. Small clusters of brightly dressed women walked up invisible paths, babies carefully tied to their backs with multi-patterned green and yellow panyas. Some draped their panyas over their heads and shoulders against the cool morning air. A few old men walked slowly toward the church, wrapped in the customary five lengths of cloth with partially covered chests. Stray dogs and an occasional waiting vulture surveyed the gathering crowd.
            Pastor Kwami and his small congregation welcomed the visitors with enthusiasm. English is Ghana ’s national language, but the Westerners strained to understand the strangely spoken syllables as the two groups carried supply boxes together. The curious crowd waited with their assigned numbers, talking and pointing speculatively in the local Twei dialect. Many would wait all day to be seen.
            Johanna separated herself from the medical team to move among the local people. She wouldn’t be on duty until later. Stopping to greet a happy group of jostling children, she scanned their bodies for health and nutrition clues. Johanna was educated but not medically trained. She simply cared. Now, later in life, she’d made herself available, learning what she could and listening to the Spirit within for direction.
           Yesterday, Dr. Cynthia had trained her in the basic HIV/AIDS education flip chart with pictures the villagers could identify. Practicing the training on a willing teammate, Johanna remembered to include a simple message of hope in Jesus—this was the real reason for their coming. A nurse friend volunteered as a patient, while Johanna learned finger pricks to collect blood samples for the simple AIDS test.  
           Beyond the children, she noticed a well-groomed and attractive young woman among the helpers. Something about her exaggerated friendliness betrayed her. Will I meet her today? Johanna wondered.
           Pastor Kwami drew the mixed group together for prayer. This was basically a good-will mission to bring awareness of a newly planted church in the valley. Praying for each other, the new African and Western friends called boldly on the God of all Creation to meet them there, to heal both hearts and bodies. 
           The open-air clinic buzzed with friendly activity. Team members worked with translators. Relationships began developing. The Spirit moved across language barriers. A sense of contained chaos continued throughout the day as crowds grew. Clinic workers were in their element. Everyone struggled with the heat.
           Johanna walked among the workers, praying silently as she brought them bottled water and cool cloths for their dripping necks. She directed villagers to meet with a local counselor in the shade of an acacia tree. Before they departed through the high grasses again, someone would pray with them and introduce them to the Great Physician.
           Meeting with her helpers during the last hour of the morning, Johanna trained her team of Twei-speaking young adults committed to address AIDS in their community. Johanna finally met Clarice, the attractive young woman she’d seen earlier.
           This is a more developed African nation, thought Johanna. The AIDS prevalence is low, only 3 percent, and there is a strong Christian presence, close to 70 percent. Expecting little need for her new skills, she wondered, Why bother?
           She sent up another prayer and began their training in earnest. Johanna explained carefully how HIV carriers initially look healthy while the virus is silently multiplying. “It is without preference to social status, cannot be passed by shaking hands, eating food together, or giving hugs.” She continued, “The HIV virus is passed through blood, mother’s milk, and sexual secretions. In this country, it is mainly passed through heterosexual contacts.
           She watched faces and body language, particularly that of Clarice, explaining a compassionate Christian response would be inclusion – not exclusion. “Fear and wives tales perpetuate the pandemic. There is great value in being tested in a confidential and supportive setting.” She offered biblical reasons for abstinence until marriage and monogamous sexual practices, talking more in familiar stories rather than straight lecturing.
            After a mid-day meal of spicy rice and lots of bottled water, a long rest was in order. Johanna chose the time for reflection, walking out to the grassy hillside above the church-turned-clinic. Looking over the valley, she sensed great spiritual issues beyond her understanding and the mysterious hovering of her great God. Yielding to this mystery, she entrusted herself again to the Lord.
           She recalled the time in Burkina Faso where she stayed for five months with a young nurse missionary to assist with HIV/AIDS awareness among congregations. It was amazing to see how much ignorance and syncretistic belief existed, mixing traditional folk beliefs with Christian thought and misinformation about disease.
           She remembered the first time she went from Ouagadougou to the predominately Muslim community of Bobo-Dioulasso for a pastor’s training where she presented a session on how Jesus regarded women from New Testament Scriptures. It was a profound moment to hear village pastors respond with great thanks. They’d never understood these Scriptures to apply to their own wives, daughters and sisters.
           For Johanna, it was a unique time when she felt a deep echoing of something  from God, something pointing to the future. She tucked the moment away in her heart. Afterward, an old African man, a pastor sitting on a hand-hewn bench, said with a twinkle in his eyes, “C’est le commencement de le change pour nous.” (Translated: “It’s the beginning of change for us.”) 
           A simple teaching… A great need… A request to return and tell them more. 
           Returning to clinic, it was time to work. Johanna and her interpreters met with small groups of villagers to tell in story form how AIDS works to destroy bodies, lives, families, and communities. She and one trusted translator worked into the evening—counseling  and testing one after another. Leaning into the Spirit for guidance and understanding, they shared the pain of village lives, hearing  stories beyond imagination.
           Night falls quickly near the equator and the clinic was shutting down. Waiting coworkers prayed silently for the ministry taking place behind a hanging sheet curtain by the light of a single lit candle. 
           One young adult AIDS team member was found to be HIV positive. Only Johanna knew and she was sworn to secrecy. The young woman trusted no one on her team to carry her burden well. She left in pain and loneliness, a stark reality even in this believing community.
           Clarice had further questions for Johanna in private. “Yes, she was sexually active, but couldn’t the razor at Prince of Peace Barbershop pass AIDS?” She was ambivalent about testing, unsure whether she wanted to know the results. She asked how would she live with what she knew? Convinced there would be little support if she tested positive and no hope for recovery, she left untested. 
            Lord have mercy, hear my prayers. Johanna offered up her heart to the only one who could understand. How can I continue to enter their pain? Who will walk with them afterward? Only you have the answers. Your church needs a response that’s an extension of you! She continued pouring out her concerns to her unseen, all-knowing soul companion.
            At the end of the day, a young mother called Naomi entered for counsel and testing. She arrived late, hanging back most of the afternoon, herding two young children through lines to see the doctors, and stopping periodically to nurse her three month old infant. A friend now waited outside in the dark with her two other children; her sleeping baby rested in the crook of her arm.
           Through the interpreter, she quietly asked in Twei if they could do the teaching again. She stopped Johanna often to ask questions and clarify words. Johanna suspected rightly this woman was concerned for her own family. She learned the husband traveled frequently, was emotionally closed, and would blame Naomi if she tested positive. He embraced folk traditions and would likely blame her even if he carried the disease. She would be turned out with the infant.  Yet, through some inner strength of her own, Naomi chose to go ahead with the blood test.
            Before proceeding, Johanna took a few moments to pray with Naomi. She restated important information and told Naomi again of God’s love for her, that he would never abandon or walk out on her. She reminded her that Jesus was her hope, knowing that after receiving the test results, Naomi would hear very little else. Naomi said she was ready for the test.
           The test was positive.
           Naomi received the information quietly and somberly. Then she stood and handed the sleeping infant (wrapped in a much-used panya) to Johanna who was weeping her own silent tears. The interpreter explained Naomi’s desire to have a few moments to herself.
           Then, returning for the infant, Naomi’s face was closed and her eyes averted. She took her baby and went out into the night.
           The clinic shut down and the last box was slipped into the now-waiting mini-bus.
           Johanna asked for a few minutes alone. Walking again up the grassy hill, she knew she was shook to the core. Feeling pain to her very depths, she lifted her face to the now starry sky and closed her eyes for a very long moment.
           Returning to the exhausted waiting team, someone asked, “Johanna, are you OK?”
          “I think I just experienced a soul earthquake,” she said.

 

(This fictional narrative is based entirely on my early experiences in Burkina Faso and Ghana. It was one of the beginnings that God has used to draw me back to Africa and to consider exploring the possibility of a vocational commitent there. Thanks to friends and professors for encouraging me to write and E.C. for editing suggestions.)

           

Greetings this Advent season as we celebrate the coming of Christ who offers new life. For me, this has been a year of deep personal growth in recognizing the breadth and love of God for His Creation, including those whose lives and beliefs we don’t understand. I’m so thankful for you who love me and know God’s history in my life. His great grace offers a plan for each of us; a place to rest with who we are.This letter is to invite you into a partnership with me, partnering in prayer and awareness that will allow me to step into another realm of trust, exploring vocation in HIV/AIDS prevention in Sub-Saharan Africa.
 
This theme has been the focus of an integrated research and thesis project in my seminary studies at Mars Hill Graduate School . Now I have expanded it another semester to include a three month journey into six countries in Africa to observe and participate in programs that focus on AIDS prevention in developing regions. In a few places, I will do some training. As you can imagine, there will be great diversity in my experience of culture, language, travel and relations as I visit Togo, Senegal, Uganda, Kenya, Botswana, and South Africa . I am totally reliant on the One who both sends me and dwells with me - the One in whom I live and move and have my being. It’s important to recognize the spiritual dynamics in some places of real darkness. I believe strongly in the power of prayer to protect, heal, and transform lives!
 
So, I ask that you would please pray for me beginning now and though the month of April 2008. For those of you who aren’t inclined toward prayer, keep me in your hearts! At the beginning and end, I will rest and reflect with my kids and grandkids. I look forward to cuddling with Zachary Allen, Lori and Roger’s new son, born Dec. 10^th.
 
It is a delight to realize, as a widow with grandchildren, that God continues to have a plan for me… a very good plan. Share the joy in the journey!

In His great grace,