Seeing as I’m months behind in blogs, bear with me as I play ‘catch-up’ these next few days and tell a favorite story from each month up until now. Today’s story comes from Tanzania, my first month in Africa, a month of immense growth, team changes, cultural reality checks, cramming into packed and dirty buses, church-dancing and children-loving.
I had anticipated the three months spent in Africa with a little hesitation, but mostly unexplainable excitement and joy. While I had never actually been to the land of mud huts, masses of children, and conga lines of praise in church, I knew it was a place I would call home, a place that the Father was calling me to and exactly where I was supposed to be. And the moment I stepped on African soil, everything changed… Immediately my heart softened and life itself slowed down and each beautiful detail was magnified beneath a microscope with a lens that only God can give. I laughed a little louder, loved a little deeper, saw a littler clearer and felt more alive than I ever have. It was as if my eyes were opened in a new way to this world around me… More open to God and where and how He was moving, to His creation, and the people He placed in front of me. But along with the blessings I was so newly aware of, came vision of a broken world, a broken nation, and broken people. And while the realities of a broken world hit me full force, the grace of God was magnified above all.
The dirt path beneath my feet stretched for miles.
“It’s only a little further,” Pastor Celcius told Ken, Kate and I.
We had already been walking for close to an hour. The landscape around us was dotted with brown mud huts, green fields, and mountains in the distance as we trudged along with our fearless leader to our ministry for the day… Preaching in a high school a few towns away. I was enjoying the walk, the sounds, the sights and the company, despite the distance and despite the ankle-length skirt that constantly constrained my boyish walk. We passed through small villages, most people stopping and staring at the wandering ‘Mzungu’. (‘White people’ in Swahili)
At one point a large group of women spotted us, a few of them abandoning their entourage and walking in stride with us, their hands held out, obviously asking for money.
“They don’t have money,” our Pastor said in his foreign tongue, waving them away.
They pointed and laughed and stared at the pale creatures invading their territory, surely not believing a word Pastor was saying. I stopped for a moment, looking closer at the pack of women merely 15 feet away, noticing the sticks and stones in all of their hands. Suddenly, I spotted her. A young girl, maybe 14 years old, in the middle of the throng of angry women, shirt tattered and torn, hanging limp off her body. Fresh scratches and welts adorned her arms and legs and tears streamed down her face with a cry of help in her eyes. All at once I watched the woman holding her tightly by the arm begin to drag her away along an unworn path as another women behind her swung her large stick with obvious force into the girl’s legs. The girl let out a cry, but walked without a fight.
“What are they doing?” I asked Pastor Celcius.
“I’m not sure,” he said. “Just keep walking.”
“But they’re beating her! They’re hurting her!” I cried, fear and sadness shaking my voice.
We stopped walking and turned around, all of us facing the crowd of women now actively and brutally beating the young girl before our eyes.
“Do you want to do something to help her?” he asked me point-blank.
“What can we do?” I asked.
Pastor Celcius told us to wait where we were and he descended slowly down the small hill we had just walked up. I watched as he calmly spoke with one of the women, obviously questioning the reason for the violence.
He returned a short time later and explained the situation. The girl had been caught stealing a small sum of money from one of the woman in the village and she was paying the price. Pastor explained that in Tanzania, as in most of Africa, the government is so corrupt that the people are forced to take the law into their own hands. The punishment for stealing, even only the equivalent of 10 cents in American dollars, is often death by beating.
“Are they going to kill her?!” I cried.
“The women say they won’t kill her, but she’ll definitely get beaten,” Pastor said. “Now, if they were to take her to the men of the village, she would be killed without question. But the women say they only want to teach her a lesson. They’re walking her to her grandmother’s house right now.”
As he was talking, the women made an unexpected turn and began walking straight toward us. We stood where we were, confused as to why they were bringing the girl in our direction. As they walked, various women raised their sticks and slashed them into the girl, while others took their stones and threw them at her torso.
Eventually, the women made their way over to us and soon we were surrounded on all sides, the young girl in the middle of the pack, still crying. Pastor Celcius motioned for us to continue walking, while he waved the women and the girl away claiming they only wanted more attention. At one sharp slap of a stick and cry of the girl, I turned around and looked into her desperate eyes, and in a moment of panic (and stupidity), stepped between the women and girl.
“Stop!” I yelled. “Just stop! Stop hurting her!”
The women looked at me, looked at Pastor, and looked at each other. I stood, shaking like a leaf wondering what and why I had really just done. I slipped out of the middle of the group and stood on the outside as Pastor exchanged words with the women and they slowly began descending back down the hill, the terrified and now wailing girl still trapped in their hold.
Pastor ushered us away, all of us silent, replaying the events in our mind. “Where is the grace?” I kept asking myself. “Where is the grace? Where is the grace? Where is the grace?” My mind was spinning with thoughts about the girl. Maybe she was desperate. Maybe, like so many other children in this country, she supports her family. Maybe the few cents she stole was the difference between her siblings having food to eat that day or starving. Maybe stealing was the alternative to selling her body for sex to make money. Maybe she doesn’t have a mother or a father to love her and take care of her, and maybe she doesn’t know Jesus. So much unknown, so much to be explained.
As we continued walking, Pastor explained more about the current state of Tanzania, how every day you hear of people being killed for petty crimes, of the police who demand bribes and never follow through with justice. He told us of the people who try to make change or take a stand, those who defend the victims, and how most often they find themselves dead as well.
My heart ached the remainder of the day, and as I write this blog the feelings of hopelessness come flooding back and the familiar lump rises in my throat. But the thing is, there is hope. There is justice. There is grace. His name is Jesus Christ and he died an unjust death on a wooden cross, humiliated, tortured, and killed for people just like that girl in the village. For people just like you and me. Because of Him, our sins are forgiven, our slates wiped clean, and our lives spared. For God so loved. He so loved you, He so loved that girl, He so loved me, He so loved the world that He sent His one and only Son, that whoever perishes shall not die, but have everlasting life. Life abundant. Life to the fullest.
That day in Tanzania the realities of this world, of this life, hit me full force. The brokenness and the hopelessness were so evident in our interaction with a group of women who didn’t know Jesus, with a young girl desperate to be cared for and loved. We live in a broken world, in a world desperate for the love of Christ, desperate for the truth that it is done. We find ourselves fighting for justice, taking matters in our own hands because we don’t know or trust the One who holds us in the palm of His. But it constantly amazes me how it’s in the hardest of times and darkest of places that God’s glory shines the brightest… How I can see His obvious presence and grace in people who don’t know His name. How they may be in need, but that I could walk away from that girl, from the women, from the brutality, from the violence and know and believe that He makes all things beautiful in His time, that He has set eternity into their hearts and mine, and that He is faithful to complete the work He has started.
It is my prayer that those women, the girl so badly beaten, will come to know the sacrifice their Father in heaven made for each of them… That the price was paid, their price was paid. And that His love for them extends beyond measure.
“For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.”
Ephesians 2:8-9
"He has made everything beautiful in its time. Also, he has put eternity into man's heart, yet so that he cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end."
Ecclesiastes 3:11
