SamEpisco

If you don’t care for the darkness, light a candle.

The HIV/AIDS pandemic in Africa is much on the minds of the people of South Africa, and the Anglican Church here has clearly focused its energies and resources on the pandemic. This is an uphill battle. It is estimated that South Africa has the largest number of people infected with HIV on the continent. This is increasingly challenging in a culture and environment that is still coming to terms with the existence of HIV/AIDS in the first place. The nation’s health minister is advocating a diet of high doses of garlic to prevent HIV/AIDS and attempted to discontinue the governments program of providing free condoms across the country, a program considered to be the most effective distribution of condoms in the world.

The flagship ministry of the Anglican Church in Southern Africa is the Fikelele Project, which did a major study of teenage sexuality, and developed a broad strategy and curriculum for the church to respond to the pandemic. Fikelele has worked hard in developing a peer leader and education program called “Agents for Change” which trains teenagers to lead discussion about sexuality and HIV and faith. Fikelele also does advocacy work, as well as funds and supports HIV/AIDS orphanages. We visited one of the orphanages today, Heaven’s Nest, which is staffed and funded in large part by one of the local Anglican churches. This orphanage cares for 14 children between the ages of 6months and 8 years old. The children are sent by Children’s Services to Heaven’s Nest, where they live for up to a year, until they are placed in foster care and eventually adopted. The facility was beautiful, and very well run. Fikelele is encouraging the development of more orphanages that work with this relatively small number of children. As one of the women running the shelter talked to us about the operation, I felt the tug on my hand, and suddenly standing beside me was a young 4 year old boy, Seepo, who looked at me and smiled and asked (well, really instructed me) to sit and play with him. So, I did. It felt good to connect with a child again, and shift out of all these meetings and get back into having children sit on my lap and play with toys.

Earlier in the morning, we had visited the Medical Clinic located in the middle of Masiphumalele. This is a free clinic that provides a full range of care for the people of the township, including treatment of HIV/AIDS and TB.  Attatched to the clinic is another building which conducts HIV/AIDS research and data collection of those in the township who are HIV positive.  I asked the nurse how the people are able to afford the Anti-Retroviral Medications to treat HIV/AIDS. So, she took me into the pharmacy, and showed me the red bags of prepackaged bundles of various bottles of pills one must take for 6 months, and she explained to me that this are given free to everyone who needs them. I asked her where the funding for this came from, and she explained it is from the same funding as the research center, the Desmund Tutu Foundation!

The people at the clinic explained that the HIV infection rate within Masiphumalele looks to be about 10% among 11-19 year olds, and 30% among the adult population. They are particularly distressed, as the infection rates are trending up, and could reach an overall infection rate of 45% - 50% by 2010.

At one point in the day we visited with Father Cliff, the rector of a church that sits in one of the communities that the “colored” population was moved to during apartheid. The neighborhood sits on the border between a now middle class neighborhood, and an urban slum area filled with government housing, shacks, and over-crowded apartment buildings. While not nearly the scale of poverty as the black townships, these neighborhoods and communities are now overrun with crime and drugs (largely a crystal meth drug called “tik”.) We walked those streets for an hour with Father Cliff, where he is well known by everyone, from the elderly, to the drug dealers, and the young kids who were skipping school. All along the way, Father Clif walked with a bounce in his step and a vigor in his stride (I had a hard time keeping up with him, and he is clearly my senior!) As we walked, he greeted everyone with a smile, except for those who needed “reprimanded” for behaviors that need correcting, which ranged from teenagers who were skipping school, to drug dealers, or older men using foul language in the street. Each time, he was greeted with a “Yes, Father.” I asked him if he was ever in danger, and he said, “Oh, no, no, no” and then he paused as he sort of giggled and continued, “except from the really crazy ones.”

 Then he looked at me, and said something he repeated several times to me on the our walk, “if you don’t care for the darkness, light a candle.”

It clearly is a mantra for him. As we walked, and saw any signs of hope, he would say, “Sam, do you see? Do you see these people are trying. They are trying to spread some beauty in the midst of all of this. They are trying. If you don’t care for the darkness, light a candle. Its just that simple.”

 Is it? I wonder. Is it? Is it really that simple?

Coming face to face with the history of Apartheid

Father Brian Bolton invited us to dinner at the rectory to meet with some of the members of the parish in Oceanview, St. Claire’s. Oceanview was created during Apartheid as one of the townships for the colored population. It is a poor community that is struggling with drugs (one drug in particular, called Tik, is devastating the community, much like crack did in our inner-cities and Oxycoton did in Appalachia), and as these things go that means the crime rate is getting worse and worse in Oceanview. It isn’t a walled-in community of shacks like Masiphumalele, but it is s community stuck in the grips of poverty and crime much like some of our inner-city areas. St. Claire’s is the founding mother parish for the Chapelry of St. Matthew’s in Masiphumalele.

 

At the dinner were 3 or 4 older parishioners who are leaders in the church, and also a young adult woman, Genalee, who is on vestry and volunteers as the youth director working with the teenagers. The conversation eventually evolved from jovial, lighthearted conversation, into a much more in depth discussion about the state of South Africa, and the Cape Region specifically. I observed to the group how difficult it was for me as a outsider to try and understand and appreciated the very complicated social dynamics between the races, and that it might help me if I heard from them first hand some of the history and personal experience of how that had developed as a result of Apartheid and in particular, how that has evolved since the fall of Apartheid. 

 

They were all very open to sharing their stories and perspectives about a very painful past. I couldn’t discern if that is from a cultural ethos that has developed of telling the story and that they do this many times and are quite comfortable doing so; or if they aren’t encouraged to talk about it and are eager to do so when they are given the opportunity. I will ask Father Brian. 

 

So the stories began as they talked about being young children, 6, 7 or 8 years old, and the police and soldiers arriving with trucks and buses, forcibly removing them from their homes. They were only allowed to take the belongings that they could carry. It was a moving and awful picture that they painted for us, of them , the people we were sitting with, remembering themselves as children, crying as they were being moved against their wills, telling their parents they didn’t want to leave their home, asking their parents why this was happening. They talked about arriving in Oceanview, and being assigned living quarters. They told us about township curfews of 6pm when they must be in their houses, limited movement, shops and beaches and jobs not available to them any longer. 

 

Rich Nodar asked where it was they and their families lived before they were moved. One of the men answered, “Simon’s Town.” 

 

“That’s were we are staying and renting a small cottage, on Paradise Road,” Richard replied.

 

“That’s the street I lived on,” one of the women explained.

 

And as we explored that more, we found that the very row of 6 or so cottages are the very homes they were forcibly removed from as children. A lump formed in my throat, I could feel an awful feeling in the pit of my stomach. And as we returned home that evening, I couldn’t help by be bombarded by the images and pictures they had painted for us, as I walked up the narrow street to our cottage, of the trucks and buses that moved these people from these very homes, of the fear and anger of the parents, of the tears of the children, of the tragedy. I haven’t been able to walk in the cottage now without thinking about it. I can’t help but lay in bed wondering if it was this very room that man or woman slept in as a child. 

 

What is remarkable to me is that as they shared their stories, in the midst of the pain of reliving such an ordeal, there is still an openness , an understanding that this is in the past to be learned from, to be never repeated, but to be forgiven. The people of South Africa use the words “reconciliation and transformation” a lot. I think they understand these words much better than anyone I have ever met. They certainly understand these words better than me. I think they have a lot to teach the world if we would just listen.

Experiencing the people of Masiphumalele

It was quite a first day in South Africa, and moving through the township of Masiphumalele. The township is a leftover apparition of Apparthied, a township where the black Xhosa population was forcibly moved. The shack after shack lines are endless. There is an oasis in the middle of surrealistic scene where a library and small patch of green grass and playground for children, exist. Through the work and effort of another Episcoplalian, John Thompson, the library, the library and park exists, and Rich and Mary Nodar spend much of their time there supporting, and coming to know, the children of the township. 

We stopped at the library and walk in to yelps of joy and surprise from the librarians. A group of young boys approach Rich with warm smiles. This is the group of boys whom Rich has taught chess and started a chess club. They quickly, and easily, convince Rich to pull out the chess sets and start to play him. They clearly want to show him how much they have improved since he was last here. It is wonderful to see these boys experiencing something in which they can really take some joy, and pride.  Rich has helped build their self-esteem with the simple act of teaching a group of young men to play chess! 

Mary is over in another corner with a group of young boys and girls teaching them to read. There is pile of books building in front of them as they select more and more stories they are clearly hoping she will read to them.

Its like Rich and Mary have put on an old, comfortable shoe. They move so freely in this world. Both are glowing with joy as they are here with their friends who have come to meet so much to them, and vice versa.  I am experiencing so many thoughts and emotions as I watch them in action. Here are two people, living out the Gospel mandates to “suffer the children” and “welcome the stranger”, for as you treat them, you treat Jesus. Rich has told me his favorite saying is “Preach the Gospel at all times, use words only when necessary.” He and Mary are certainly living that out in front of my eyes. It is their faith that compels them to meet this community where they are, giving them what they have to help them know that we are all beloved children of God.

We went to St. Claire’s Anglican Church in Oceanview, the “mother church” for St. Matthew’s Chapelry, and I met Fr. Brian Bolton. He is warm and friendly priest, who loves to laugh! He preached a wonderful sermon about the workers’s in the vineyard. He said, “We are all the same in God’s eyes, and God treats us all the same.” The implication of course, is that we should treat each other the same, and that we are of all equal worth. It’s a challenging message for me to hear, as I realize that those who are stuck living in the township in those shacks are not being treated the same, that they are still living as second class citizens, somehow considered “less than human” than others. I can’t help but think a lot about it tonight as it is only 40 degrees and pouring down rain and I lay here dry, warm, and safe, while the woman librarian we dropped off in the township is trying to sleep with her child in a tin roof shack that is leaking on her dirt floor. She showed us the trench she dug so the water would drain out more easily.

We met briefly with the former rector of St. Clair’s and St. Matthew’s, Father Xhola, and I asked him why, if Apparthied has fallen, why do the townships still exist like this? Why isn’t anyone, the government, or the church, or some other NGO, proactively working to end these conditions. 

He said, “In the absence of the best, the worst becomes the best. We have political freedom finally, but now we need to free our minds, so that we can see what needs to change.”

In the absence of the best, the worst becomes the best. I don’t want to ever forget that.

First Impressions of South Africa

The transition from Tanzania to South Africa is a a remarkable one. The lack of infrastructure throughout the nation in Tanzania is shocking, and these were highlighted as I entered South Africa, experiencing a modern airport, let alone reliable electricity, drinkable water, and God-send of God-sends, my first hot water in three weeks! 

 

Rich and Mary Nodar met me at the Cape Town airport to pick me up, and we headed toward Masiphumalele. I felt like I had clearly left a 3^rd world developing nation and entered a 1^st world country where typical infrastructure and development reaches all parts of the country, and is fully accessible, or so I had thought. 

 

This is country where certain portions of the country has experienced 1^st world development for sometime, largely the white population, but the fall of apartheid and the arrival of a free country and democracy for all is still only 15 years old. In some ways, this made entering the township even more striking. While the laws for equal protection and access for all regardless of race have changed, the reality on the ground is that there are still many vestiges leftover from the apartheid system, and the most clear example of this is the townships.

 

The are three general descriptions of races here in South Africa: white, colored, and black. The colored population describes all the non-white races of any kind other than the white and the tribal black population. Both the colored and the black population are the people who were forcibly evicted from their homes and moved into camps called “townships”, and then apartheid laws were passed limiting their movement, rights and humanity. The black population was restricted even more than the colored populations

 

While the laws have been changed, and some reparations given, the reality is that the colored and black population don’t have the jobs and opportunities to move back to the homes and neighborhoods the once lived.

 

The reality of township living in Masiphumalele is awful and ins some ways beyond belief that they even exist. The extreme poverty is similar to the worst I saw in Tanzania, but in some ways even more troubling as it is surrounded by development, wealth and opportunity all around it. It just seems to make even less sense than what I saw in Tanzania. 

 

The township is an enclave on makeshift, dirt floor shacks, built with whatever throw away trash an buildings materials people can find. Some have electricity, very few having running water. As many shacks as possible are crammed into each small lot and those people pay some small rental fee to the plot owner. Masiphumalele is walled in and has one entrance, which is one way Apartheid tried to control the people living with the township. No one knows for sure, but the population is estimated somewhere between 20-40,000! The living conditions are unbelievably bad. 

 

It’s a moving experience to drive through the township with Mary and Rich, who have spent so much time here over the last five years working in the library tutoring children, going to the school to test hearing and fit children with hearing aids, working in the medical clinic and HIV/AIDS orphanage, and worshiping at St. Matthew’s Anglican Chapel. Their time here clearly means so much to the children and adults of the township, the result of which is, no matter what back alley we are driving through, in areas where I feel a little unsafe, you hear jubilant cries of “Dr Rich! Mary! You are here!”

 

I feel like, yet again, I am the beneficiary of traveling a path that has been blazed so widely by those who have come before me. Rich and Mary have created a web of trust and love that I think is able to support a lot of work that can help not only improve the life and on-the-ground reality of the people of Masiphumalele, but also can improve the spiritual life and outlook of myself and others they will bring, through being allowed deep inside the lives of those living in this poverty and unjust situation.

Trying to learn

On my flight from Tanzania, I had been running over and over in my head the conversation I had the night before with Samuel.

"Fire makes a very good servant, but not a good master."

What did Samuel say that to me?  Maybe he was just making conversation to break the silence.  Regardless, I felt like  maybe there was truth in this saying that I needed to consider.

Then, I felt like it just hit me while I was on the plane.  Perhaps it seems obvious, but in this context, after my talk with Samuel, it just seemed more powerful.

I had been so overcome with emotion for so long, I was started to get stuck.  It all was just seeming like to much.  Too much poverty, too much need, to much sadness, in the midst of too much graciousness of these children, but still too much to ever overcome. 

But, if that which has been stirred up in my soul only stirs me up inside, and stays there, then really, the emotion is for nothing.  It is no longer a servant used for the right purpose, but a master that has no focus, and does nothing, and may even do harm.

But, if know I act, or help others act, as a result of these strong emotions, then there are used well. 

The emotion must have a purpose, too effect change for these children, and other nameless children like them around Africa and the world.  Otherwise, the emotion is serving only a selfish, egocentric need.

"Happy are those who seek justice and do what is right."

Now I am ready.  I can leave Tanzania with some closure, and now head to South Africa, and see the Nodar's and experience what is ahead for me there. 

Fire makes a good servant, but not a very good master

I tried to have some dinner last night at the lodge by the airport, and I simply sat and cried, too tired any longer to care what the staff thought about me. 

ONe of the Maissai askari (night gaurds) started a fire with chairs around it.  I sat, thinking and weeping.  The Maissai stood next to me.

"Are you ok?" he asked.

"Yes and no," I replied, trying to smile, and I asked him, "What is your name?"

"Samuel," he replied.

"Mine too!" I said, perhaps to excitedly, and we both laughed.

He wanted to know what I was doing in Tanzania, so I told him my story.  It was amazing talking to the Maissai man who was clearly a bit more urbanized than those I had met at the orphanage.  He is a Christian (Luthern), 27 years old, single (looking for a wife.)  We talked about the extreme poverty in Tanzania, malaria, HIV/AIDS, medicine, condom use, women's rights, polygamy, literacy and education, America's role and reputation in the world,  . . . . We talked about everything. 

At the end, he said, "Sam, we are bother's who share the same name."

We stared at the fire, in silence, for quite a while after that. 

Finally, he looked at me and said, "Sam, we have saying, 'Fire makes a good servant, but not a very good master.'"

"What does that mean?" I asked.

He answered, "Fire is essential to help us cook, to keep us warm, and to light the night, and keep animals away. But when fire isn't controlled, it goes wild, and damages, and kills.  When it is used correctly, all is well, when its not, it can be very bad."

"Are you trying to teach me something, Samuel?" I asked him.

He smiled, and said to me, "It is a funny sayting we have, isn't it?"

We both laughed hard.  I needed to laugh, I needed to connect with someone this last night in Tanzania.  Samuel, the Maissai askari, helped me.

I told Samuel that I thought this saying was very wonderful, and someday I would preach on it, and I would tell people about the young Maissai who taught it to me, whose name is Samuel. 

"Happy are those who seek out justice and do what is right"

On Endings and Beginnings

Its hard to describe the emotion I felt the day I left the Rift Valley Children’s Village. The Psalm appointed for the day said, “Happy are those who act with justice and always do what is right!” I have experienced overwhelming happiness as a gift from working at the Village from these children, as I was trying to just do what is right. But, I wasn’t feeling very happy now. This is a day of utter sadness as I packed, and walked around waiting for my ride. I tried to take in the last of listening to the sound of the area; children playing, roosters crowing, and dogs barking. I try and pay attention to the smell of the African mountains, which is constantly mixed with the smell of smoke from charcoal burning to cook meals and fires burning trash at the neighboring villages. 

I am completey overcome by emtion, and in a constant state of grief about leaving these children. I have come to love them so much in such a short time.

Driving away is hard. I wasn’t able to say goodbye to all of them, so as we passed the school, some hung their heads out the windows and smiled and waved as we drove by.

Over the course of the next day and a half, I am finding myself randomly breaking down and crying at a moments notice, without any warning at all.

Images pop into my head of the children, Mole’, Isaka Benja, Raziki, Jane, Paulo, or I start to think of the mud huts we visited where Mama Monica lives with her little baby. The hut is somehow precariously placed on a small spot carved out of the mountain deep in the jungle. No water, no electricity, dirt floor, one room partitioned of with some sheets hanging.

The poverty is too extreme the people too gracious, the situation too overwhelming. I can’t hold back tears any longer. I will miss the people I met. I want to remember them, and hold onto what I have learned about them about Tanzania, about extreme global poverty and I want to start to piece together what they taught me about myself.

“Happy are those who act with justice and always do what is right!”

I am trying to act, but I’m not feeling to happy right now. Just sad.

Meredith Bown offers some perspective on the school

Meredith Bowen has been here at The Rift Valley Children's Village many times over the last few years, and has led us on this trip.  She spends much of her time "interpreting Tanzania" for us.  This a term and concept I read in Mountains beyond Mountains, the story of Dr Paul Farmer, which a Young Adult at St. Paul's gave me as a gift to read on this trip.  The author talks about how much of the time as he followed Farmer, the doctor was spending his time patiently "interpreting Haiti", so that he would understand the context, reality, and implications of a place like Haiti.  Meredith has shown us the same patience, love and nurture.

Meredith sent out this email to a group of people, and I asked her if I could post it on the blogsite, and she has graciously agreed.

Dear All,

Yesterday I took my mom, Sallie and Sam up to the local primary school for a bit of a tour.  It was important for me that they get a really up close and personal account of what a typical primary school looks and feels like.  I knew that it would be hard for them to see but necessary non-the-less.

Gyetighi Primary School is about 100 yards from the orphanage.  It is a typical school - one level building, aprroximately 8 rooms built around a common school yard.

Only one of the classrooms has real windows with glass.  All of the rooms have walls, floors and ceilings that look as if they might crumble at any moment.

Gyetighi has just over 400 students - grades 1 to 7 - and 9 teachers.  There are so many first and second graders that they are only able to attend school for half a day in order to accomodate them all.

Each room holds about 15 wooden desks with attached benches - each one is shared by about 4 or 5 kids depending on their size and the size of the class.  40 to 60 per class with one teacher.  Some classes don't have any books, some are lucky enough to have a handful that are shared by half a dozen kids at a time. 

By law every primary school should offer kindergarten but most schools don't have the funds for a teacher or an extra room and therefore they simply avoid kindergarten age kids.  Yesterday at the school a group of about 60 kindergarteners had gathered in a classroom because one of the teachers volunteered to work with them a bit during her break. 

There are no words to describe the situation.  60 four and five year olds dressed in rags sitting quietly in an empty room hoping for someone to come in and go over their colors and numbers.

Having recently signed the contract to manage the school, India has grand plans of renovating the building, buying textbooks, hiring new teachers (attracting them first by building propper housing), etc.  And as soon as she can raise the money the improvements will begin.

The school is currently deplorable.  But if enough generous people step up to help it will be vastly improved and the lives of hundreds of children - now and for years to come - will be immeasurably better because of it.

But then I start to think about the THOUSANDS of primary schools all over Tanzania.  Thousands in every third world country.  India is ONE woman doing amazing things in ONE area.  There is not someone like India living beside each school.

I don't say this to sound depressing or to make the problem look so big that it is insurmountable.  I say it to remind myself, and maybe others, that there is much to be done.  That when we say at the end of the day "what good works I did today for others" that doesn't mean that I can get up the next morning and say "well I did all my good work for others, on to something all about me."

Every single time I drive by Hathaway Brown or University Scool or Roxboro or St. Paul's Preschool, each with its own gorgeous kindergarten room filled with toys and books and teachers, I will now think of that empty room of 60 kindergarteners with nothing to do and no one to teach them. 

The US isn't perfect.  But we as Americans would never let this happen to American children. 

Thanks for reading - Meredith

How much can we allow ourselves to feel?

Today was a very hard day for me.  I have debated whether to really fully share it all in this blog.  I hesitate partly from a concern that I will fail in finding the right words to describe today, and partly from a concern of how transparent I really should be in a public blog like this. I wonder if it is wise to really be so transparent and vulnerable.

But yet, here I am writing, mostly because I am hoping that this process  will help me sort out what is stirring in my soul.

I have struggled all day, all week really, wondering how much I should let myself feel.  How much can I really let in.  How much a wall should I put up so I don’t fully feel all the emotion stirred up by being around so much poverty, need and injustice.

The group of us here have been talking about the Celtic spirituality understanding of being in a “thin place”, which describes those times and events in our lives that put us and our soul in a position so fully open to the presence of the divine, that there seems to be only a slim veil between us and God.  These are times when we seem the most aware of God’s presence in the world and in our lives.  These are times when we find our own emotions running close to the surface.

The whole group here agrees that being in Africa, and especially in this setting of service to the children, is holding us constantly in that “thin place.”

But for some reason, for me, today, it has been particularly acute.   Maybe it’s because I know that in only a few days I will be leaving, and emotionally I have started that process of disconnecting, and looking for some closure.  All morning, I was just feeling emotional, making connections in my head about how deeply I have been affected by these children, and the loss they have suffered  as orphans, and the extreme poverty that surrounds their lives.  And yet, in some twisted-upside-down-world kind of way, they are the lucky ones.  These 42 children, unlike the other 400 who attend school with them from this area, have food to eat, every day, more than once a day, and they know there will be plenty more food tomorrow.  These children have clean clothes to wear.  They have a safe, dry place to live and sleep.  They have clean water to drink at every moment, they can flush their toilet, they bathe everday.  They have access to health care.  They receive one-on-one attention and tutoring.  They are loved, hugged, and cared for everyday.    They are not beaten and abused.   

This brings me to today.

This afternoon, we visited the local primary school again, this time during the school day, in order to see it all in action.   We were warmly and excitedly greeted by the principal and other teachers.  The school is yet another extreme example of the paradox of Tanzania.  The school facilities are awful, and beyond the imagination of what is acceptable for children to learn.  50-60 children crammed in a rundown barren room, sharing 5 or 6 textbooks.  There are only 8 teachers serving the whole school, so many classes actually don’t even have a teacher in them, so when a teacher can slip away, they pop in and spend time with that class. 

And yet, each class we visited, we were greeted with joy, and a song.  The first moment we walked in the first class, all the kids stood, and began to sing us a song of welcome.  I, along with others in the group, were caught so off guard, we had to fight back falling into tears because we were afraid we would frighten the children with our emotional response. 

With each class, the welcome was repeated.  They would also sing their motto “Education is the key to life.”

There is such a palpable eagerness to learn from the children at the schoo, in spite to the overwhelming lack of possibilities for these children to escape their parents fate of picking coffee beans on the mountain all day long, only to struggle to live off the $300 a YEAR such work may bring in. 

The presence of four white people walking around the school, taking pictures.  certainly stirred up excitement in the school

It was a beautiful and awful experience all at once.

The Rift Valley Children’s Village will soon be moving into fuller oversight of the school, and many things will be improved in terms of facilities, supplies, curriculum, and teachers.  It will likely become a bit more beautiful, and a little less awful.   But it seems like it can’t happen soon enough, and I admit, I found myself walking around thinking we ought to be a part of that solution. 

And I fought the whole time wondering how much I could afford to allow myself to feel.

Our walk home took us by the local plantation workcamp, filled with falling down, brick walled, mud floor huts.  This housing has no electricity or indoor water or plumbing.  There is common spigot in the field for the villagers to access contaminated water.  A rush of young children dressed in rags came at us smiling and laughing, almost seemingly to serve as an exclamation point to the day.

When we got back, I finished reading another book that was giving to me by a young adult at St. Paul’s, Mountains beyond Moutains, the story of Dr Paul Farmer (more about that another time.)  I went to meet up with one of the children here, Benja.  We had an appointment to play a little video game on my cell phone before dinner.  It’s a really fun way to connect with him.  As we sat on the steps of one of the buildings, India Howell, the Director and Founder of The Rift Valley Children’s Village, came over and touched Benja’s head and said, “Hey bud, you doing ok?  I am doing everything I can to make sure nothing like that happens ever again.”

What I soon found out was sometime after we left the school, Benja was physically beaten by one of the teachers at the school.  We was hit on the thighs with a stick, as he lay on the ground in the  middle of the school courtyard.  He was beaten so hard, it left welts on him.  The other students witnessed the abuse, and reported it to India.  Why was Benja being punished so severely?  For being late in returning to class after recess. 

Corporal punishment in school is still legal, under some very strict guidelines, none of which were followed in Benja’s case.  But these laws aren’t in line with lingering cultural morays, and the abuse of children in school, and women at home, still occurs at alarming rates. 

As the orphanage moves into greater influence and management at the school, these not only will the physical improvements happen at the school, but so will these type of incidents, and abuse will not be tolerated. 

Every child deserves as much. 

And I fought the whole time wondering how much I could afford to allow myself to feel.

And yet, I decided I want to feel it all, I even had to say the words out loud while on a walk, “God, I want to feel it all!  I can do this, I can make it, I can be that open, that vulnerable.  I am afraid, but I know I can do this.”

Isaka cries

I have been tutoring Isaka everyday since I have been here.  Isaka is one of the smartest children at the orphanage and he is one of the happiest and easy-going as well.  He is a joy, and it so very easy to work with him.

Isaka was born on April 12, 1998, just outside of Karatu.  His father dies from HIV in 2003,, and shortly thereafter, his mother disappeared and has not been heard from since.  After he disappearance, Isaka and his younger sister Evlalina, went to live with their aunt at one of the coffee plantation workcamp villages.  However, their aunt was aleady caring for 7 other children.  Although the aunt truly watned to care for Isaka and Eva, their the two room house simply could not accommodate so many people.  So, the Rift Valley Children’s Village was contacted, and they took Eva and Isaka. 

Isaka adjusted quickly to being one of the oldest children here and understands that the other children look up to him.  He has taken on a leadership role with a maturity beyond his years.  When a child cries, Isaka runs to help cheer him up.  When anyone is unable to communicate because of language barriers, children or adults, Isaka happily serves as translator. 

In spite of all this, of course, he is still a child who has lost both parents.

We were working together this morning, doing our normal routine of math facts.  We have transitioned this week from addition to subtraction.  I gave him the sheet of simple subtraction facts I had made up earlier in the morning.  Isaka zoomed through the 28 math facts, cheerful and easy-going as ever.   He happily gave me the sheet when he was finished and adults and kids came and went as I looked it over.  I checked the ones that were correct (26 of them1) and circled the two that were wrong and has him to correct them.  He quickly saw his mistakes and fixed them.  We moved on the next sheet of more subrtraction work, but in a flash of an instant, Isaka was sullen.  He wouldn’t talk to me, he wouldn’t look up at me.  He anxiously looked past me into the front room.  I couldn’t refocus him on what we were doing, and he wouldn’t tell me what he was thinking.  I started to worry.  Had someone said something to him in Swahili and I had missed it?  Did someone he was scared of, or nervous about enter the room?  I couldn’t get anything out of him.  Maybe he had slipped into thinking about his parents or family, and was getting sad.

So, I thought we should just pick up our things and go for a walk.  Perhaps a change of space and scenery would allow him to feel comfortable again and start to talk. Isaka is normally a kind of kid who never shuts up, and now I can’t get anything out of him.  As we walked, he wouldn’t hold my hand, as is normal for him.  So I said,  “Let’s go sit, and I will give you all the time you need to tell me what’s happening, because I don’t understand.”  At this point, I see Isaka crying.  My heart starts to ache.

We sit down, and I hold out both my hands, palms open and up, and I point at my hand and say, “Isaka, this left hand is you being sad, this right hand is you being mad.  How are you feeling?”  He points to my right hand.  “Isaka,”  I said, “This left hand is you being mad at me, this right hand is you being mad at something else.  How are you feeling?”  Isaka points at my left hand!  I can’t believe it!  My heart breaks.  What could I have done?  I can’t figure it out and he won’t tell me.  It just stands silently crying.  Finally, I ask him if the problem is that he doesn’t know how to tell me in English what I have done to make him mad, and would he like us to go get one of the student teachers who can help translate.  Isaka strongly shakes his head “no,” with a worried look on his face.  So, I told him he would then have to tell me.  So, he picks up the old math sheet, and points at the two problems he initially got wrong and says, “You gave me a zero in math.”

Isaka thought the by circling the two he had gotten wrong, I had failed him in his work.  I tried and tried to explain that this was just not true, and that he had done very, very well.  He just wouldn’t believe me.  We finally ended our session without me being able to convince him any differently.

I felt so awful I wanted to cry.

I went and found India Howell, the director and found for The Rift Valley Children’s Village.  I tell him what happened, and she gently looks at me and says, “Oh Sam, I am so sorry that happened.  I can’t tell you how many times this has happened to me.”

India goes on to explain the pressure these young African orphans put on themselves.  First, they are fighting the emotional trauma of losing parents.  They very often believe that they are at least partially responsible for their parent’s death.  They also are know enough to realize that they are escaping awful and extreme poverty by being in this orphanage.  They eat 3 healthy meals a day, get decent medical care when they are sick, and have people who love and nurture them, while 350 other children at their school don’t.  Finally, they are not used to adults not giving up on them, and in fact, if they fail in important ways, they can become abused and/or neglected. 

All of this combined can sometimes be a recipe for them growing up putting a lot of pressure on themselves to be perfect in pleasing the adults around them., and Isaka is very much a kid like that.  His misinterpreting my circles sent him a message that after all these days of working together, Isaka thought I saw him as a failure, and who knows what conclusions he began to draw up in his mind.

It may seem like a small thing, but it wasn’t for Isaka, and I have got to say, it was no small thing for me.  Seeing his tears, and then piecing together what those tears where about, has knocked the wind out of me emotionally.  I have grown to really love and care about Isaka.  It hurts to think about how much he must overcome.