I have to admit, I felt pretty invincible going for ten weeks in Africa without getting sick. But for a month of wanting brokenness, sickness came as no surprise this week.
On Monday, a few of us woke up with nausea, stomach pains, and other lovely symptoms of traveler’s diarrhea. (I’ll spare the details here.) Some of us think it was the shrimp we ate last weekend, but we don’t know for sure. (Regardless, I love to take chances and still think that meal would have been worth getting sick for.)
We’ve been serving at the Emkhuzweni Health Center for a few weeks now, and Dr. Christian heard about our health through our teammates and wanted to check us out. After our first meeting, he prescribed me an antibiotic (Cipro), an anti-microbial, a painkiller, and some oral rehydration salts. The total cost for his visit was 3 emalangeni (about 35 cents!) and the drug perscriptions ended up being 5 emalangeni (about 60 cents!). Even as surprising as that is, one girl ended up getting an IV for a few hours and her cost was the same.
That wasn’t the best part though. Later that day, a missionary told us it was a miracle that Dr. Christian even saw us. He specializes in HIV and AIDS treatment, and normally everyone else has to wait in a long line at the other side of the hospital to see “doctors” who don’t really know what they’re doing.
So our hospital visit wasn’t exactly what an African would experience, but it was a lot compared to seeing a normal doctor in the US. Even though we’ve been spending time at that hospital for most of the month, it felt much different as a patient. The feeling is much brighter when you’re filled with compassion and want to help the sick, but when you’re actually sick, it gives a better taste of the life that most poor Africans have. It can be hard to know what an African hospital is like until you’re actually one of the patients. The concrete buildings and contrasting sanitary conditions bring a third-world feel that most wouldn’t expect along with their own medical treatment.
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Part of my answer in praying for brokenness this month comes with a question: What exactly is brokenness? For me it’s not the common answers because I don’t have the same common struggles as everyone else, such as adapting in travel or community. I love the idea of leaving what I know for a radically different environment and I adjust well to close-knit community like the World Race promotes and develops.
On the surface, brokenness is being sick in a mud hut in rural Africa, covered in sweat and mosquito bites, and having to wander through the dark with a broken headlamp and poor eyesight to find the pit toilet when you have the squirts. (Don’t feel bad for laughing at that, I laughed when I wrote it.) On top of that, it’s having grass allergies, a recovering eye infection, and no sunglasses to wear.
But that’s not the real brokenness. I can always retain the ability to laugh at myself, even in situations like this where I have stories to tell afterward. The real brokenness has come from realizing that I have trouble going beyond myself when broken on the outside. I’m a survivor at heart, but through self-survival I can close off and lose mental focus of what I really need to learn.
I can laugh off what would bring most people to brokenness, but I need to let myself learn the lessons that should come from being broken. For example: what is God teaching me through being sick at an African hospital? I shouldn’t keep laughing off experiences without learning viable lessons from them.
So with that insight, my focus has changed. Instead of seeking what I’d consider to be “brokenness,” I’m now trying to see what lessons I can learn from what I wouldn’t consider to be “brokenness.” The funny part: I don’t exactly know how to do that. But God has been using this month to teach me to be comfortable with what I don’t understand.
Ironically, this lack of understanding is taking on a new definition of brokenness that I never would have expected. I love being familiar with what God is doing in my life, through understanding the themes, symbols, and literary devices He likes to use. I love being able to understand what’s going on and be understood, but He’s teaching me to let go of this.
As I’m rediscovering the ways He wants me to be broken, I’m learning a new lesson: trust. I need to trust what God is doing, even when I don’t understand it or feel understood in the process. When I don’t know where I’m going, I just need to buckle up my seatbelt and just trust the driver.
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Many people face brokenness in different ways, and it can be harder to trust God when you don’t understand what’s going on. I didn’t fully see this at the African hospital until I became a patient. The paradigm change gave me better insight into not only their brokenness, but also their trust.
A lot of Africans are Christians and their astonishing trust in God continues to teach me a lot. When they’re chronically sick with TB, AIDS, and other ailments that bring brokenness, they still persist in their trust and ask us to pray in ways we’ve never prayed before. They hunger for God to work and move in their lives, and without knowing it they encourage us to do the same.
As I spend more time with people like this, I will learn many new lessons, like how to trust more through uncertainty. I now seek a different perspective of brokenness, but I know the answers will come through ways I don't expect, such as being sick in an African hospital.
