May 21st 2012

It's been 2 years in Africa!  It hasn't been easy, and has in many ways been a trial by fire.  But it has been good, I have grown as a person and been blessed to see a wonderful work grow too. 

I came here to do four things:  Love. Serve. Encourage. Learn.  On my 2 year Africaversay I think I want to revisit these words as a way of seeing how far all of this has come.

Love:  Is the answer.  Is the Key.  Is the only way to truly live.

Some people tell me I am good at loving.  Personally, I know I still need to seriously grow in this.  But I can say, without hesitation, that I do deeply love the Africans around me.  I just need to get better at remembering that all the time, and extending that love to ALL of them, even the ones trying to charge me too much money for things.

In terms of how has this goal played out over the last few years?  I think I’ve been able to be an instrument of love in a lot of crazy places.  Being white, people expect you to keep your distance from the average African.  I try hard to work against that.  Hugging people, laughing, dancing, celebrating, crying, praying, and working with Africans has been how I’ve tried hard to show and receive love. 

I love the love that we share at Cornerstone Veritas.  We have truly succeeded in creating a loving community.  My team is amazing, and has really embraced the family of friends model among us.  There is a lot of love between all of us, and that has been amazing and transformational!

 How do I want to improve over the next year?   Be more generous.  I think for me the way to opening my heart more to others is by giving more of myself to others.  This means my time, my space, my energy, my resources, and my abilities…create space where I can truly show love to people, come up with creative ideas for expressing appreciation and love! 

Serve:  I can say without any doubt that I have served during these two years.  Anything from dish washing and toilet cleaning, to teaching, training and mentoring, (and everything in between) I have tried my best to be at the service of those around me. 

Service has been a joy over the last few years.  I actually don’t mind too much not getting paid, it allows you to be more flexible somehow.  Yet, sadly, because of not being paid, I am starting to have to say no to some chances to work with different groups.  I am finding that my schedule is full of unpaid service work, and that I have to create time for fundraising or working connections that will pay.  This is frustrating.  I don’t mind saying no to service work, but some of these groups I would love to say yes to! 

I think an important part of service has been to empower the Ugandans I work with to do the work that we are doing with excellence.  This is taking time, but is worth the effort.  I hope that one day they are able to do this work without me, so I can serve elsewhere!

How do I want to improve over the next year?   I want to work hard to secure more personal and organizational funding, so that we can say “yes” to the groups that need us, but can’t afford to pay us.  Also, I want to see my team come up in a way that they can run what we are doing without me.  I also help my team to cultivate their ideas of how they want to serve their local communities and see those happen!  (Service multiplier effect!)

Encourage:  In a new cultural context is can be difficult to find ways to encourage people.  But I have tried.  I spend a lot of time talking and working with groups that just need to be inspired and encouraged in the work that they are doing.  This is something which I see as a big part of my role here in Africa, to help and encourage Africans to make their dreams for development come to pass. 

How do I want to improve over the next year?  In the little things.  I want to make a point to do little, encouraging things, especially for my coworkers.  Writing notes of encouragement, offering a kind word, and speaking into their lives with truth and love.  I think that this will continue to encourage those around me, and also encourage more community and love!

Learn:  These days I say “I’ve been here long enough to know something, but short enough to realize I know nothing at all.”   I think that is true.  Just as I think I understand something about life here, I realize that there are a billion other things I still don’t understand or know.  The learning curve is steep.  I’ve enjoyed learning many things:  how to dance, how to eat sauce with me hands, how to sing and greet in different African languages, how to get from one place to another without getting lost, how to get the price I need on something… but there is still so much I don’t know about life here.  I think I should probably be a lot more humble then I am about that too.

How do I want to improve over the next year?   Through focused, purposeful learning. Because I was not able to start my master’s degree this year, I have decided to focus on learning a lot of other things during this next year.  I want to focus my mind more on actual learning… about personalities, about leadership, about cross cultural communication and relationships, about development, about photo editing and document design.  Hopefully I’ll be able to discipline myself to do more reading and focused study during this time, in prep for getting my brain ready to do a master’s degree, and do it well!     

Love. Serve. Encourage. Learn.  Those were the 4 things I set out to do when I first came to Africa.  After 2 years of living here, it is refreshing to revisit these ideals and see where I stand. 

I could not have done any of this without all of you! 

Thank you for the years of support, encouragement and love!  I appreciate all of you very much, and hope that we can continue this journey together.

Morning Magpies and Malaria

I was happily asleep in my bed at 7 am this morning when I was rudely awaken by a noise at my window.  In my sleepy state, I was rather confused.  I live on the 4 floor of a tall apartment building.  I tried to ignore the tapping noises, but couldn’t.  I got out of bed to find a large and scary looking magpie trying to pry open my window with it’s beak!  It’s beak was huge and rather frightening.  I managed, in my terrified state to make enough noise and movements to scare it off... but then it came back!  Stupid bird! 

I noticed it’s mate in the jack fruit tree below, and was suddenly grateful for the specific magpie I was struggling with.  It’s mate was even more massive!   These things are freaky!  I’ve heard them before in the morning, but never on my window ledge trying to pop open my window!  I might have to get creative about deterrent methods. It was a terrible way to wake up.  I would like to fly Martin Moran to Africa with his magpie gun to help me out.

But I was fully awake, so I played guitar for a while (cause my housemate has a guitar!) and wrote a letter.  There was still no power in my place (36 hours off), so I am now in a cafe after having visited the post office.

I have now officially had malaria for the first time.  On day 5 I am still feeling weak, and would much rather be at home in bed then in this cafe. 

Malaria is terrible.  It makes you feel like you are going to dying in about 10 different ways.  Every part 

of your body has some sort of pain or problem, and you just want to cry.  You think about how nice it would be to die at different points in the process.

My malaria came on in Gulu, 7 hours from home.  That journey back was horrific.  I wasn’t able to eat for over 40 hours, and when I did there were consequences.  Fever comes and goes, but my brain has been strangely clear.  That’s frustrating because I want to do something, but then my body reminds me that any kind of action is forbidden.  Movies are great.  Thankfully I got the first part of Bones season 7 after I tested positive for malaria.

I’ve been in Africa for 2 years, and never had malaria.  I have to say that is pretty good.  I went off of preventative drugs after only 3 months of being here.  They are expensive, and I don’t really think worth it.  I have decided to stay on the malaria treatment for the next 2-3 weeks.  For some reason I’ve been getting eaten alive recently by a variety of insects... it’s not fun.  The medication isn’t cheap and will make me tired, but I think it’ll be worth it to clear the malaria from my system. 

Thankfully everyone understands.  All you have to say is “I have malaria” and all expectations are dropped!  Everyone knows how bad malaria is.  I don’t think I’ll make it into the office this week, and will need to take it easy next week.  I hate taking it easy, but I’ve been working myself to the bone over the last 6 weeks.. so I really need to ease up. 

I am tired.  When you are sick with malaria, it is totally ok for you to ask people to do things for you.  Which is really helpful... I didn’t have to do my own shopping this week.  I don’t think I could if I had wanted to.  

So.  I don’t recommend malaria. 

Babu washed my feet

I am in Gulu.  It's been a rough week.  We are giving the 10 principles of leadership at Mercy's Village Primary school for about 8 people (mostly teachers).  The course its self is going well. 

But Carol got really sick, I am crazy tired, and it's just been a trying week.

We were greatly blessed, the whole week, to have one of the most incredible people I know be with us on the course.  His name is Paul Lukwiya.  He is in his early eighties and just a lover of people.  One of the wisest souls I have ever met, he has spent his life being a "father to every child".

He now goes by "Babu" which in Swahilli means "Grandfather".  He inspires me whenever I am near him, eminating encouragement, love, acceptance and understanding.  He is simple, but profound.  I am hoping to work with another white friend to help him write his biography!  (if I ever get time)  Babu works as the chairperson for Mercy's Village (as well as does a million other things for Cornerstone Development).

On the 10 principles of leadership course, the way we help people understand servant leadership is by doing a foot washing.  This is a time of relection, where the lead teachers and the leader of the group where we are working all wash the feet of the participants.

It is always a profound moment.  At this point in life, I have washed more feet than I can count.  It's always deep, always meaningful, and always puts the point across. 

I usually don't let myself get washed, or do at the very end after everyone has been finished. 

Today, I wanted to go and wash Babu's feet.  He isn't able to move very well, so I was going to go to his seat and serve him.  But before I could he pointed to me, and indicated that he wanted to wash mine!  How can you refuse the holiest 80 something year old man you know.  He took his time to stand, moved his chair in front of the class, made me sit in front of him, and washed my feet in the bucket in front of him. 

This is love. 

Sometimes I forget the strength of what we do.  The work we do has the power to transform... it is transforming people, everyday.  And today, I was reminded of that transformational power.

Babu washed my feet.  And I saw Jesus in front of me. 

I saw the greatest becoming the least, and the world is turned on its head, and beautiful things begin. 

I pray I will always answer to mandate to go and wash other's feet. 


And if I ever think I am giving too much, I will just think of Babu and remember that I have clean feet.