At 4 a.m. on Sunday, most of N Squad left Maputo, Mozambique and headed towards Beira, Mozambique on, what we were told was, a 13-hour bus ride.
As I write this, it is now noon on Monday and we are still on the bus. And we still have at least six hours left to travel, according to our driver.
This blog, however, is not a travel day blog about how it took us three hours to cross the Mozambique border, or how we had to wait on one side of a bridge for almost three hours because of an accident, or how the patrol station closed at 7 p.m. and we arrived at 7:07 p.m. and had to sleep at that checkpoint until it opened at 10 a.m. the next day. (That blog will be coming soon, though, so look for it.)
This blog is about the current condition of my heart.
As you know, if you read my previous blogs, I rejoiced when I landed in JoBerg, South Africa. I felt like I was home again. As I evaluate it now, however, it wasn’t quite home. Hopefully, my little example can explain it better.
You know when you go on a trip away from home- either to another state far away or to another country- and you’re gone for a long time, but you finally start to return home? You know that feeling you get when you enter the States again (if you’re traveling internationally) or when you enter your home state (if you’re traveling within the States) and you rejoice and think, “Almost home!” You feel so close, but then you know you’re not really home. But then you walk in the front door of your house and you feel it—you’re finally home! You fall into your home and your routine; you are back!
That’s where I was.
And, that’s where I am now.
Upon entering South Africa, I was back in my home state, but had not made it to my home. I loved it there; I felt so close to being home. But something was missing; I didn’t quite feel “home”.
Entering Mozambique, though, I unlocked the front door and stepped into the familiarity of my home.
I cannot tell you how much my heart has longed for this familiarity.
As I watch children in school uniforms, no older than 10, walking down the street together as we breeze past in the bus, almost knocking them from the road
As I see street vendors running after the bus, trying to sell us nuts and fruits
As I see the bloated stomachs of children peeking out from their shirts as they stand amazed, pointing and staring from their dirt yard
As I see some children who are used to seeing big trucks and buses and pay no attention to us, but continue drawing in the dirt, their clothes and faces stained from playing in it all day
As I see trucks piled with more crap than you can imagine they would be able to carry- stacked no less than eight feet high and five feet wide, all held together in one mass by rope
As I see boys lining the roads in police uniforms and strapping AK-47s to their shoulders- most can’t be older than mid-20s
As I see mud huts and stick huts strewn among the countryside, with the occasional brick store thrown in around
As I see trash littering the hills and plains and as children play in it, finding treasures and laughing
As I see four trucks passing each other on a barely two-lane road that is corroded on either side
As I see men walking down the street holding hands and laughing
As I see queues wait at water pumps and wells for their turn to fill their jerry cans for the family’s water
As I see bicycles pettled down the dirt roads by children with jerry cans of water strapped on both sides
As I see goats and cows are herded through the grass by the owner, grazing and moving at a slow pace
As I see people bathing and washing their clothes in the rivers we drive over
As I see the children at the patrol station that I am playing with cover their mouth after the burst out in laughter at the ridiculous noises I am making, as if they don’t want me to know they can laugh
As I hear the hawker at the border yell something in Portuguese that begins in “Hello, mzungu!” and my heart rejoices and my head, instinctively, turns to look at him. He smiles, as if he knew how I felt in that moment.
I am a mzungu and I can’t believe I was so happy to be recognized as one again!
My heart is back in its state of comfortable uncomfortability.
I am comfortable here because I am anything but comfortable here.
The poverty breaks my heart. The abandonment and rejection rests heavy on me.
But, I know I God has given me this load to carry for a reason. I know I am called here, probably not to “fix” the poverty or to provide an answer for all the problems I see.
I know I am called here to love.
To love these people, specifically the children, as God has loved me and overflowed it through me.
I love them because God has designed my heart to do so. Not everybody has the capacity to do so, and it’s okay because I lack things that they possess; that’s how our giftings work!
As I watch the slightly-less-red-than-Uganda dirt pass by on the roadside, I am reminded- for the hundredth time this Race- that God knows the desires of my heart and loves to spoil me by giving them to me, even when I don’t expect it or even realize it’s happening.
This is Africa.
This is my Africa.
This is home.
