We had no idea we were going to be this cold, this often. I am sitting in my tent, layers of clothes and my winter hat on. We are sheltered in a concrete house which has been abandoned for sometime, thieves have smashed some of the windows, and stolen everything that was not bolted down. Even the wires were stolen, so we have no electricity.
Because the windows are broken, the wind howls through. We are almost on the very top of a hill, with no wind protection. Our next door neighbors are a water tank and a radio antennae. The trees which grow close to the house offer no protection. At night the branches rub against the tin roof, sometimes sounding like a leopard is trying to dig his way in, other times sounding like kids are banging rocks against the house. Echoing in the bare concrete rooms, mixing with the cacophany, the sound of snoring. Not a rhythmic vibration of the soft palette, but gurgling sounds, like a person drowning in snot. Someone trying to surface, fighting for survival, nose full of irritants and dust.
We have a huge propane coleman lantern lighting the kitchen. We have a huge coleman propane burner, on which Linnea is warming water to wash her hair. We are keeping our milk in the mission house/bible college about 2 football fields down (probably a 12 percent grade) the street, we keep the milk in the fridge, I assume to keep it from freezing.
I have not been able to put down the book by Percy Fitzgerald, “Jock of the Bushveld”. Jock is the writer’s bull terrier. The book tells stories of Percy and Jock as they live out in the bush, hunting, working oxen on wagon trains, and searching for gold. I read the stories and wish I had been there with those guys. I have never even hunted, and these guys are telling stories of being charged by buffalo, stalked by leopards…and I almost crapped my pants when the lion shook the fence a little back in Swaziland (see my blog, ‘Crazy Lion’). It is fun to be reading these stories that happened right in the area we can now look out on from the broken windows of our temporary residence. Instead of herds of wildebeest, now there are city lights and automobiles.
As I read of the life these men lived, I wish I could be there, out in the open, the wild, living off what you can catch and weak cold coffee- even as I complain about being cold…my belly is full of chicken and pasta and tuna, I can’t even say I am hungry. Reading about Jock does make me miss my dog more, though, and want a bull terrier.
I had to put my book down at some point today, as we helped with the Arco Iris feeding program. A handful of ‘gogos’, the women who keep the people together, cooked ‘pop’ and chicken for maybe 100 kids, from 4 months old to, I am guessing, 20 years old. The white people played with the kids, and talked to them. There is just so much need for people to give of their time to these kids, they are so hungry for our attention. Every person reading this is needed somewhere in this world by kids like this.
One 12th grader I spoke to wants to be a journalist, and is trying to get into the university. I watched him eat a tremendous volume of food, and asked if he likes to write. He didn’t really seem interested in talking about school, studying, working…. I told him dreams can come true, but hardly convinced myself that I was serious, and thought about how bleak life is here.
I thought about his dreams, wondered if he was serious, if he really had plans to be a journalist, or if these dreams were simply what he escaped into. I wondered if these dreams were like a beautiful woman that a man doesn’t want to talk to. The girls at the gym that the guys all like to stare at in the mirrors, but don’t want to speak to. Because then there is a chance for rejection, maybe she would not like to be approached. But there is also the chance the beautiful woman has terrible breath. Major halitosis. Smells like she licked a turd before her workout? Now you could not even make eye contact, and the woman that was motivating you to squeeze out extra reps when you really are ready to go home and have a beer has now become “stinky girl”, and the dream dies. The girl falls off her pedestal, like castles in the clouds come falling down. I wonder how many people give up on their dreams in life, worried just as much that success won’t bring satisfaction, as they are worried about failure.
After talking with this guy, I got up and made the younger kids cry. We were having a really good time of wrestling and tickling when my elbow pinned a boys lip against his front teeth and he started with the water works and drooling blood, so we took a timeout, and then the games were on again. For a solid hour we rolled in the grass, me and about 10 of the boys. I love this stuff, and am sure I will have more ringworm from it, but the worst is how itchy the grass gets me. I am still scratching, every few words that I type, I need to stop and scratch my neck, my head, my back.
I will lay down now, to listen to the wind, the trees on the roof, think about the day, try to pray, totally exhausted and feeling like it is a great day to be alive.
