Malawi. I came off debrief head in the clouds, ready to change the world. No matter whatever happened everything was going to be okay. God was going with me through every step of the way.
While at Debrief, I was reflecting about my time in Zim and Zambia, I felt as if I was not being challenged enough. Sure, I was growing, but I was ready to face a hard month. Overall being in the African culture had not been my favorite. Their was something I could not put my finger on. Yes they were loud, energetic, exuberant, and welcoming. However, there was something right underneath the surface that I felt as if the entire culture was hiding, if not out right suppressing.
I had heard the way the adults talked about how much they didn’t have.
I had heard the way young adults talked about how the streets of America were paved with gold, and how people in Africa couldn’t find jobs let alone drive on paved roads at all.
I heard young kids talk about how they didn’t want to be black, and how my skin color was better then theirs.
This broke my heart. So I asked God for two things coming out of debrief and entering my month in Malawi.
1) That God would redeem my view and perception of the people in this section of Africa.
2) I was ready for a harder month.
Ha!
Team Dynamic Pursuit, finally whole for the first time in since being a team together, arrived in the most beautiful location I have been to on the race. At Debrief we had sunsets on the Lake, and now in Nkhata Bay I had sunrises on the Lake.
We had an absolutely wonderful host, AJ. AJ was a British ex-filmmaker, who started a volunteer based hostel. Over the last 10 years she has built 2 nursery schools, as well as a primary school. She was also in touch with the chaplain at the local prison, to which we could go visit 3 times a week. This month was almost too perfect.
Because the hostel was volunteer based, and not specifically christian based, with a bar on the lake to which lots of local art venders would gather around, the team dynamic became flustered and unsure of itself.
Coming from Zambia, where I felt as if I had more a parental role in the group, I wanted to make sure this month we gelled together as a team. Therefore I put aside all my own ambitions for the sake of the team. If someone had an idea and was having trouble following through, I would come alongside and try to help facilitate the completion of their idea. Unfortunately, in doing so I was beginning to overwork myself, while putting aside all my own ideas and ambitions. The team was floundering, and I alone could do nothing to save it. In fact, in the act of trying, I floundered myself.
Plus, for the last 3 months, my first weeks have always been hard. The allure, the sexiness, the newness of the ‘race had worn off. Therefore I was forced to take a massive introspective look at myself. Many times this meant I would beat myself up mentally, questioning everything about myself. Specifically, why and what I was here for, and am I executing my own ideas well? Or was this all a waste?
Seriously… it is not, was not, healthy … and I felt as if I was alone in this struggle. I am my own worst critic.
Then came the 2nd most famous Christian Holiday, Easter. Christian Holiday’s usually throw me for a whirl, because very rarely is their an absolute, concrete reason to why we celebrate a holiday. For instance…why did Jesus die on the Cross and rise again? You ask one person and you might get ‘penal substitution’ theory, ask another person and you might get ‘for the forgiveness of sins’, ask another and you might get ‘to start a new covenant’, ask another ‘Christus Victor’. The problem for me is the variety.
Which is ironic and hilarious.
As we, as a team, approached the holiday there was lots of talk of sticking to ‘our guns’, and ‘standing our ground’ against the ‘atheistic volunteers’. Plus you add the constant conversation of SIN, and I shut down almost completely.
I don’t subscribe to the idea of ‘original sin’…I know I know call me a heretic now.
Yet that is my problem. I am automatically defensive, and believe that people will call my crazy when they hear my abstract, non-mainstream Christian ideas. I assume how people are, and how they are going to perceive me. So I shut down, and did not feel safe in my own team.
The days progress and the SIN talk progress as well, that Jesus is the only way to live in heaven after we die. Like the Philippines I needed to understand my own gospel, and I needed to be able to explain it. As I have embraced the mystery of the cloud in the darkness of the uncertain that is YWHW, it had become harder and harder to explain let alone put into Christian terms. Yet it was time I tried.
As Easter approached I called an impromptu team time. It was there I gave feedback to myself and said that I was not being true to myself, and not ‘sticking to my guns’. I lead with vulnerability, and the team was open. I said how I had a problem focusing on the cause of Jesus’s death was to cover us from our sins. How taking that narrow view misses the greater point of what the death and resurrection means. How God does not care about our sins, and how (to quote Bill Johnson) the goal of Jesus’s death was not to get you into heaven but to get heaven into you. That eternal life does not start when we die, it starts now if we want it to. I was tired of focusing on SIN & HELL, and we should start focusing on the vulnerability of the Divine in Jesus who entered into our world so that we could participate in our suffering. That because of the new covenant created symbolically with the Death of Jesus, as the atonement lamb, we could house the presence of the divine as temples of the Holy Spirit.
It may be the same thing for some people. But for me this subtle change, changes the way we see God. No longer do we see how evil we are, but how great God is. We take our eyes off ourselves and we step out of the boat and keep our eyes on Jesus.
Easter was the next day, and the vulnerability hangover was real thick. (WHAT DID I JUST SAY? WHY DID I DO THAT?) I was also feeling feverish for the last two days, so it was time I address that something might be wrong with me. As we were all sitting in the admin open space, our host came in looking as beat up as I felt. She had just taken a Malaria test which came back positive for Malaria. She figured it was time I took one too. I pricked my finger, drew the blood, ran the test, and the results came back negative. So as she went to pharmacy she said she would get me some antibiotics.
Drugged up, I began to feel better, and believed I had turned a corner. After another 3 days, my fever had come roaring back. I had an arrangement with Emily that if I still felt like oven we would go to the Hospital.
(So in Africa I had visited a clinic every month, without paying anything. Yet everyone else I knew who had come down with an injury/illness had paid over $100 for treatment. I of course was apprehensive about seeing any African doctor, plus I did not want to pay that much for something I could figure out).
We arrive at the government Hospital, with the hope they can run a blood test on me to see if anything is up. We spend 4 hours in the Hospital. I explain to the Doc’s that I am on Doxy, I took a Malaria test that came back negative, and I have no idea what is going on. Just the fact that I have no idea is the part that bothers me, and worries me more then anything.
I get a blood test done. The results come back, and now the Doc’s are as stumped as I am. The blood test is inconclusive. Nothing is wrong with me. My numbers are great. So they send me to get more antibiotics.
I am more then irritated, and my fever has been steadily rising. Delusion is starting to creep into my brain. Good ol’ feverish Caleb delusional. But good point, I made it out of there without paying a cent.
We arrive back home, and I have enough energy to make it to my tent and crash out.
(YES I HAD BEEN SLEEPING IN A TENT ALL MONTH, AND IT RAINED EVERYDAY).
I woke up hours later, fever boiling. At this point I had not taken my temperature, and I figure I knew. I muster up enough energy to make it to community table. There I meet Laura and tell her my plan. She gets her thermometer, as AJ walks up. After 3 days of Malaria medication she is feeling back to normal. I have a temperature of 103 degrees. As I tell AJ the story of our Hospital experience, she suggested I take another Malaria test. This time the test came back positive. I was flabbergasted and relieved. AJ told me that at times Malaria can give false negatives. She then arranged for a taxi to pick me up some medication, to be delivered to the hostel.
3 days of medication and I was right as rain. AMAZING. Just in time for travel day.
Of the course of the 10 days of me being sick, I lost all my motivation to have an agenda. I let things come to me, I had no energy to do anything, and therefore I accepted things as they were, and people as they were.
In that time, I found a groove within the hostel, that I had not found through the first 2 weeks.
….
It was in this time, that I began to see the art dealers as people. At first glance the countries I was in felt like nations of used car salesmen. Everyone is trying to get you to buy. They look at you and all they see is dollar signs. It makes you feel real dirty, because you get in the mindset that no one is actually authentic. This was especially true in Nkhata Bay, which was a tourist city, and therefore the dealers knew you were only there for a short amount of time. So they slimed you up right away…
“HEY FRIEND”,
“HEY CAN I SHOW YOU MY ART”,
“OH I WILL SEE YOU SOON”.
They would trap you. They would tell you sob stories, trying to get your money. Yet by the end of one week, they figured we were not going away. By the last week I finally understood why they approached life like this. That some dealers feel as if they have no value, that they also feel like scum because of their occupation, because of the nature of the work, and how they have to approach people. Many of their stories included trying to help their sisters go to school, growing up on the streets, helping orphans in the villages learn a trade, wanting to give back to their community, feeling isolated and alone. Their stories were inspiring and tragic, learning English any way they could. Mostly learning from Missionaries. Always training and trying to elevate the next generation. Always wishing they go to a simple life. Sometimes turning to alcohol or ganja to keep the pain away, or using it to get close to potential customers.
Life for this class of people is hard, and I judged them. They really do want the best for their community, and for themselves. They are doing everything they can, everything they know how to do to try and make it. Just like most of us. We, lots of time judge based on the outside appearance, or by the actions people take. However if we are too emulate Christ we need to look towards their hearts, and that takes context, patience, and open mind, and a willing heart.
….
Yeah Malawi was not easy. The Valley of the Real is way real. It is hard. Sometimes I think I can just push through, instead of letting the environment come to me. There is a balance there, and I have yet to find it.
