It is only 5:30 and I am already in my pajamas. I have eaten dinner and am ready for bed. The sun has set. I’m beat. My face is gritty from the sandy roads on G-l-o-r-i-a the Scooter. We still don’t have water. Two weeks now I think.
Sunday morning I get a text from my student Cesar. His father has died. I’ve told you about Cesar before. His father has been sick and he has often told me, “I’m in a bad way”. His mother died a long time ago. His text said, “I’m parentless”. I can feel the weight of his new responsibilities, doing life alone, in his messages. He says, “I know my life’s gonna be totally different coz none of my parent will be here to tell me what to do”. This scenario is all too common here. With a life expectancy of about 53, so many in his generation are orphaned way too early. So I am carrying Cesar around in my heart all day. I feel helpless in so many ways but also glad that I am here for him. I asked if he needed anything and he said he did not. He will find me when he returns from the village and from burying his father. I have a feeling he is now going to ask ME what to do and I get to tell him. What do I know about raising teenage boys? Henrique first and now Cesar. I hold them at arms length because of my exit strategy and all. But I cannot help but desire to be there for them and offer them good advice and simply encourage them. After all, that is why I am here. Lofty plans mean nothing. Dreams, visions and strategies, numbers and programs aren’t the focus, people are and love is. So this week, already I find myself investing in people and the programs are taking shape too.
You’ve met Veronica, my cleaning lady. She is so incredibly reliable and responsible and hardworking. She is the one who came to work the day after she gave birth! She astounds me. Today she complained to me about how a former missionary had promised her money for a business and then left without giving her any. She told me she wanted to have a business for her children. She even said she wanted to have a business so she would have the money herself and not have to ask me for money to send her children to the hospital. She has no clue about my little loan program. Cesar is also a recipient. I tell her all about it. I sit down with her and show her a calendar and tell her about the payment plan. She says, “let’s do it”. I have a feeling she will pay me back in record time. I just wish I had the time and resources to help really monitor her business and help her get good prices on the goods she wants to buy and help her market and advertise and find a strategic location, but I have to let her run with it and do it in her own way as she knows the culture, the opportunities and demands.
Iris recently went on a large mission trip to the north with a large medical mission team from the US. They were in need of translators and I offered the opportunity to a few of my students who speak Makonde and English. They told their friends and a few of the students who had no business going went along with the crowd and joined in. They weren’t qualified in having the proper English to do the job, but they heard they would be paid so they signed up. They returned this weekend and I got bad reports on “Grace’s boys”. Sadly it was both groups of those who could have translated well and those who had no business being there. Reports back told me they were lazy, they rebelled, they complained and were up to all sorts of “no good” that I won’t even say. Just think, Junior High Field Trip Unsupervised. They went a little wild. But these are not children, these are 18, 19, and even 20something year old men. I could wring there skinny little necks. I was livid. Today, they got a good talking to and I got a good look at myself as a mother. An angry mother. I almost lost sleep last night over it because I was so mad and rehearsing just what I was going to say and not say. For 20 minutes this morning I lectured them. I started with sharing with the group, the ones who didn’t go, about the opportunity that our students had had this weekend. I told the other students about it being a paid position and how I am daily seeking internships and opportunities for them as well. I was calm and cool and incredibly collected. But then, I let ‘em have it. It reminded me of that childhood experience of when you actually got in the car. All was well. But when you got in the car and doors were closed, Mama let you have it. You had no idea you had misbehaved or even been caught and suddenly you are in the backseat, hot Ford Escort pleather on the back of your thighs and you cannot escape and she is glaring at you in the rear view and then you start crying and...Well, there were no tears. But heads hung low. I gave them a speech about honor and about treating others the way you want to be treated. I announced that they had lost all chances of future jobs with the Clinic or Hospital. I am crushed about that for them. I told them their actions reflected poorly on me and how they had let me down. I told them how sorry I was that life had brought them such insecurities, how they always feel they are the victims and have to retaliate. I belabored the point about treating others the way you want to be treated. I told them how horribly disappointed I was in them. The guilty didn’t make eye contact for the rest of the day. The innocent one came to me and apologized. I am still a little sad about the whole thing. But it was good. We had our first serious Family Meeting. I realized I could be a little harsh and I could discipline lovingly too. I can be a mother to teenagers, I can love and be fuming mad at the same time. I also realized I still have the utmost hope in each of them.
This weekend I went to the sea with a European friend. I asked her about what she struggles with most in being here. It is always my question. I am seeking survival techniques. She says it is hard, that it is “all hard”. But she finds when she goes home, nothing has changed. Everyone is the same and nothing much changes. She steps right back into her family and friends and their lives are essentially, not drastically any different. Their days remain a cycle of sameness. But she is completely changed, everything about her is now different as a result of being in this place and she gets to share the changed part of her. She gets to share her hard learned lessons to help others in their walk. Some people are starving for the stories, some ambivalent. But most, she says, are impacted by simply the change in her, the new her. I am for certain ever changing. I am not the same person who arrived here a year and a half ago. I’ve grown up. I have become a “mother figure” to Ernest T. Bass AKA the Little Dutton Boy (who I had to stop from getting in a fight today over who had stolen his English worksheet today in class) and a dozen or more just like him. I’ve become a little survivor in my own way. I’ve become tough and resilient but oh so more sensitive. I have fallen more in love with our Savior as I lean on Him for absolutely everything. My life has become an open book for you to come and read. And I pray my change, my constant change, never ending change, and drastic life has changed you too.
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