The sky-scapes here are by far some of the most beautiful that I have ever seen. The air is thick with the heat of the Sun. When the breezes come, there is sweet respite, as the coolness of the sweat on your skin shudders through your entire body. When it rains, it smells like eucalyptus and mud. Mango trees line the dirt alleys. The women are beautiful, and the men, stoic. Children wrestle one another or throw sticks at raggedy dogs to pass the blistering hours of the day.
I bathe in a plastic tub whose circumference is smaller than half of my body. I have now managed to bathe my entire body, including my hair, with only half a gallon of water. I rubbed my fingers across my chest last night and removed what seemed to me like “dirt paste,” a conglomeration of sweat, dirt, bug spray, and sunscreen.
This is Africa. Where the dirt seeps through your toes like red sand and oppression travels the land like contaminated waters through skeletal bodies. This is Africa. Where scars run deep, bandaged and covered by hatred and violence.
This is the Africa most people will probably only come across while flipping through pages of National Geographic, listening to pop songs by Shakira, or watch on the big screen in theatres while munching on double buttered popcorn. Africa: the continent of orphaned children, blood drenched histories, “unfortunate circumstance,” and rampant corruption. Yet the pages are always layered, stacked, and put away. The songs always get old, and the film has a conclusive ending where the good prevails and the bad are reduced to white post-text on a black screen. Africa is erased once you buy a plane ticket out. Africa is the third world. Africa is depressing. Africa is the continent that is too far from salvation.
Maybe you’ve heard stories from volunteers who’ve donated a small portion of their existence to the “cause” – bringing the comforts of home: malaria medication, bug spray, hand sanitizer, and Emergen-C, hoping that their contribution will somehow bridge the gap between here and there. Maybe they were like me, and they wake up every other day thinking that at least at the end of it all, they get to go home – That this nightmare of a place will at least have a conscious state to be woken up to, and the ending is a happy one. Or maybe they’ve gotten to the point where they ask, “How can I possibly make the slightest difference?”
Daddy, there must be more that I can do.
“But those who die in the Lord will live;
their bodies will rise again!
Those who sleep in the earth will rise up and sing for joy!
For your life-giving light will fall like dew
On your people in the place of the dead!”
Isaiah 26:19
In light of what I knew I’d find here, and what I’ve actually found, my faith feels so small. I lack so much. Shall I cling to the knowledge of knowing that in my wealth of insufficiency, my God is more than sufficient? In this land of the dead, He brings life. In this darkness, He pours out His light, restoring and refreshing each morning like dew. Daddy, come and save this nation – come and save Your beloved, Jèsu, because I know that I cannot.
