Ever Versatile. Ever Roaming.

The Ever Versatile Honda Element, Filled to the Gills - June 2009

Has it really been nearly three years since I took a similar picture and composed a similar post? It is as if those 1019 days flew by in the blink of an eye. Tomorrow morning Tom (aka my brother) and I hit the highway and my sojourn on the East Coast comes to an end.

The recent weeks have been filled with Graduation and Road Trips and Dinners with friends. There are oodles of stories to share but for now they can wait - for this is one tuckered out puppy and the road is a calling. . . Calling me home . . . (And to Cedar Point for some sweet sweet coaster action on the way)

One of the 64 different seating configurations of the Element.

I like to call it 'Haul Mode' - June 2009

Faces of Care

A week ago I was flown to Minneapolis to give a keynote presentation at the 2009 Ilula Lutheran Hospital fundraising gala. This photo montage was created for that presentation and (hopefully) helps to evoke what studying and practicing pastoral care in and around Iringa last summer was like.

The whole week was a pretty surreal experience. I turned in my final, Final Paper on Monday and hopped a plane to the Twin Cities the next day. Walking into the Humphrey Center at the U of M Thursday evening it struck me how fitting (poetic even) that this was my first action after finishing up my master degree, for it was with many of the people in that room that this latest journey began.

Back in 2002, when our feet first hit the soil of Afrika ya Mashariki, I don't think any of us had a clue where the intervening seven years would take us. The Ilula Hospital partnership had its genesis on that trip as did my own vocational wandering and wondering. . . the way lives have been woven together by our continued journeying is a source of both encouragement and amazement.

Soon I'll be flipping the tassel and then it is off to Malaysia and God-only-knows-where beyond that.

Eyes search the clouds as the sun sets . . . zooming out from Ilula and Iringa and people and faces I've grown to know and to love . . . Off to explore new horizons and encounter new faces of care . . .

Was that really goodbye?


[FYI - The photos in the video montage are all mine while the music comes from the Minnesota band Cloud Cult - a constant companion on my ipod during my time there. For better results playing it back, click HQ for a higher quality video.]

What a Trip . . .

More than graduating from Yale, this month also marks the end of three years working with the youth of First Lutheran Church of the Reformation in New Britain, CT.

What started as a side-job to earn cash for car payments has become a pretty significant part of my life. . .

Bulldog, Bulldog, Bow-Wow-Wow

Yale, in the form of my youth group, appears in front of Harvard's Library - April '09

Three weeks to go. 

I've been forewarned. Harbingers of the end times - like Cap & Gown orders, Senior Pictures, and Appeals for the Alumni Fund - are popping up all over the place. 

And then there are the Final [for now] Final Papers - one a week due between now and May 4.

It is going to be a wild ride. The gauntlet has been thrown down. The game is on.

And then it will all be over.

Spring Soon

Icicles Over Orange Street - March 3

It'll be a while before I see a scene like this again. Icicles dangling in front of the window, hovering dangerously over the 6-10 inches we picked up as a Nor'easter worked its way across the region Monday. The temperature has been hovering just below freezing, although a thaw is now in the works: 41 today, 46 tomorrow, 51, 58, and 56 degrees after that. Change is in the air. . .

It is a different story in KL these days: 88 today, 89 tomorrow, 88, 88, and 88 degrees after that. Indeed as I've been tracking temps there, it has consistently been within three degrees of 90 each day. My guess would be it is close to the same story year-round. Now THAT is going to take some getting used to. . .

On a different note, exactly two months from today all of my course work will be complete and turned in. Four years of study will have come to an end. It is almost unbelievable. Almost. . .

Piecing it Together

Kuala Lumpur - 3 Degrees North of the Equator and Home for a Year starting in August

While most of my coming year of being a pastoral intern in Malaysia remains shrouded in mystery, pieces of the puzzle are starting to fall into place. 

For starters, I've learned that folks in the know don't really call Kuala Lumpur 'Kuala Lumpur' all that often. Rather, they call it 'KL.' I like that. It is short and sweet. This helps to explain why their Monorail is called the KL Monorail. True Story.

More importantly, I've recently learned that I'll be working in a parish setting with the LCMS [that's short for the Lutheran Church in Malaysia and Singapore. Sorry Missouri.] 

While the exact congregation has yet to be determined,  based on its affiliation with the LCMS and the loose description of duties, it sounds as though I'll be working primarily with Malaysians, as opposed to a large Ex-Pat congregation. Apparently a few of the LCMS churches around KL do indeed conduct their services in English. This will be an added bonus.

This is going to be an experience unlike any other I've had so far. Given its geographic location and especially KL's position as a major economic center in S.E. Asia, this will likely be the most multi-cultural, multi-racial, and multi-religious context in which I've worked or lived for an extended period of time. 

In comparison to the U.S. and East Africa, Christianity in Malaysia is most definitely a minority religion, with somewhere around 10% of the population claiming any sort of church affiliation. Among Christian denominations present in Malaysia, the LCMS is the third largest Lutheran Church in the country. According to the Lutheran World Federation records it has 8,942 members in 52 parishes.

To put that in perspective, one American congregation like Shepherd of the Valley has more members than the entire Lutheran Church in Malaysia and Singapore.

Needless to say, I'm excited about this next adventure and am chomping at the bit to learn more and get going. In the mean time I should probably turn my attention to those pesky classes that stand between me and graduation day.

For Thirty

Daybreak in Pommern - July 2008

Ten years ago tonight, my roommate Andy George & I had dinner at Outback Steakhouse near Country Road B & Snelling Ave in Roseville, MN. Returning to Manor House on Hamline's Campus, I walked in our room only to discover that it had been filled waist-high with balloons. Kinda feaky, kinda cool. . .

Even freakier and even cooler things happened as bodies starting rising up out of the balloons. My first thought was killer clowns but fortunately that was a fear was quickly alleviated as I began to recognize the faces of my friends. Apparently they had neglected to come up with a trigger word or action at which point they'd all jump up and yell 'SURPRISE!' Instead, I was treated to a slow-motion, semi-terrifying reveal that was shocking in its own right.

Thus started my twentieth year and a decade that has been full of its fair share of unexpected twists and turns. It began with Hamline and Waypost and Plays and Habitat. I landed an amazing, full-time professional job and as a result had the opportunity to work with hundreds of amazing indidviduals - despite having a muffin crumb lodged in my eyebrow. Four years there and now nearly four more in school . . . man, how the time has flown.

Then there has been the Globe Hopping, from the tropical island of Bali off to France, El Salvador and of course Afrika ya Mashariki - five times in the past seven years, simply unbelievable.  I've learned to speak in Indonesian and Swahili and through those languages been able to enter into lives and places I only dreamed of as an mtoto. 

And now I'm mzee - or a little bit closer at the very least. 

Thelathini. Tiga puluh. [I had to look this one up]

Thirty.

Not even a day into it and already this decade is off to a surprising start. There were no balloons or cake attached to this one. Instead it came in my e-mail inbox and began with the following phrase: "You have been offered an international Horizon internship in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. . ." I had a hunch, a clue perhaps, but I am nonetheless floored.

The details at this point are still sketchy.

Much more is unknown than is known.

Where things go from here, Mungu tu anajua.

A new adventure is set to begin.

For this - for all of this,

For where I've been and for where I'm going,

For those who have and continue to accompany along the way,

I have nothing but gratitude.

For thirty

For now

For ever

I am grateful. 

With These Hands - A Video From the CIW

Immokalee

Fresh from the Vine in Immokalee - January 2009

I will never look at a Tomato the same. 

More specifically, I will never look at a Tomato without first imagining the hands that picked it and the life connected to them.

The tomatoes you seen in the grocery store and on your fast food sandwiches at this time of the year (if they are grown domestically) likely were grown in and around the town of Immokalee, Florida - an impoverished region of the sunshine state just 45 minutes inland from the wealthy snowbirds who roost in coastal cities like Ft. Meyers and Naples. Each was picked by hand to preserve its beauty and visual appeal in the hopes of attracting and pleasing a consumer further up the food chain. Machines simply aren't up to the delicate task, although they are used to harvest tomatoes used in sauces and salsas. To harvest the tomatoes, the food industry employs thousands of migrant farmworkers annually. To use the phrase farmworker though sounds cold and mechanical - in fact they are often treated as little more than a means to a profitable end. 

Used and discarded, these are fellow men [young men mostly] and women created lovingly in the imago dei. They arrived in Immokalee and other farming communities across the American Southeast after traversing thousands of miles of dangerous highways, landscapes, and seas in order to find a way to better support their loved ones that they left behind in Mexico, Haiti, Guatemala, and countless places in between. 

Here the lucky ones vie for work daily in the parking lot of La Tienda Fiesta #3 at 5am - hoping to be selected for a day of work in the fields where they fill, haul, lift, and empty  34 lb buckets of tomatoes in the hot Florida sun. At 45-cents per bucket, they must pick 125 or more buckets to make perhaps $50. That is 4000 lbs of tomatoes per worker per day. After literally picking 2 tons of tomatoes these young men return to a series of ramshackle trailers and doublewides near the parking lot  for which they pay upwards of $1000 a month in rent. To afford this, the workers cram into these tin shanties by the dozens. Some might call it supply and demand . . . others might call it despicable.

Those are the lucky ones. The unlucky ones fall victim modern day slave masters who take advantage of the workers condition of being strangers [some legal, some not] in a strange land. Human trafficking and enslavement are alive and well just a couple hours south of Disney World and the Magical Kingdom. In the last decade, there have been seven cases involving well over 1000 workers prosecuted.  

Driving past a former slave site three minutes away from binocular wielding tourists in the Audobon Society's Corkscrew Swamp (where just a few years ago 30+ workers were effectively held captive in a trailer) I had to keep reminding myself that this is all too real and happening in my own country. In many respects it felt like being in the middle of some forgotten place in the developing world.

While the campaign of humanitarian shock and awe I witnessed was incredible, what I found even more striking was hope, resiliency, and courage demonstrated by the workers themselves. They have come together and organized themselves to form the Coalition of Immokalee Workers. As such, they have been pursuing (and winning) actions against some of the largest buyers of tomatoes in the country - the fast food companies and supermarkets. By mobilizing hundreds of thousands of their allies across the country they are building momentum and power as they fight to ensure that migrant workers across the country are treated fairly. The issue here is about basic human rights for individual farm workers - regardless of their immigration status.

The next time you  pick up a tomato at the store, bite into it on a sub, or scrape it off your burger consider not only the hands the grew it but also the power that is in your own. What we do with them, where and how we choose to spend the money that is in them is an exercise in power. Thinking of the workers in Immokalee and elsewhere, how can I not act?

 

Winter Wonderland

Christmas Market in Union Square - Dec 20

What could be better than a day spent facing the brisk winter weather, tromping through the streets of New York City, watching Spamalot (now with Clay Aiken), and eating tasty food in a hip and trendy environment, all in the company of a good friend?

Nothing, I say, nothing.*

*Well, maybe a little less Aiken. Shucks. Apparently I'm no Claymate after all. . .  Who knew?

'Tis The Season

The Nativity in Stained Glass, First Lutheran Church of the Reformation in  New Britain, CT

The streets of New Haven are quiet tonight, blanketed beneath several inches of freshly fallen snow. The last remnants of the storm give shape to the orange cone of light coming from the street lamps. The neon glow of a corona sign reflects off the icy front stoop of Orange Street Liquor. 

Soon I'll head boil some water, steep some tea, and savor the evening. 

A day of rest following a semester of work.

Tomorrow it is New York. Sunday it is New Britain. Monday it is back to the 'sha.

Christmas and family and time at home are drawing nigh.

But tonight. . . Tonight is a silent night.

Uncertain Horizons

Millennium Park - Chicago, Dec 4, 2008

Standing before the 'Cloud Gate', I am but a speck on the sphere

Having daydreamed

Having worked

Having strived

Having worried

Having applied

Having traveled

Having interviewed

Having done all that I could do

and going as far as I could go

Now I wait

For committees and teams to meet

For matches to be made

For the Spirit to work

Emptied, Humbled, and Eager

To Find my Next Place in the World

Macy's Revisited

To Infinity & Beyond - At The Macy's  Parade '08

Creepy Clown & Small Children

Speaking of Creepy Clowns, Ronald McDonald & Hello Kitty

Together Again at Last - Harold & Me 

550+

Nursing and Laboratory Service Offered in Tungamalenga - July 2008

Thanks to the hard work of the youth I work with up in Hard Hittin' New Britain and the generosity of the congregation, more than $850-900 has been collected to purchase mosquito nets in the Iringa region. With matching funds from Thrivent the total will come closer to $1800. 

As the rains begin to fall again in the next few weeks and malaria carrying mosquitos begin to breed, hatch, and infect, more than 550 families will now be able to sleep safely beneath treated mosquito nets - one of the most effective ways of preventing the spread of the disease. Made and purchased in Tanzania, the gift will also bolster the economy in this corner of the world.

For me, it is gratifying to be able to give back and help people who have been instrumental in forming me over the past several years. Even more, it has been exciting to work with the youth to reawaken the missional and theological imagination of a congregation that has by and large dormant in recent years.

With Thanksgiving just around the corner, all I can say is 'Bwana Yesu Asifiwe' indeed.

Kusherehekea

The Dance Goes On - July 2008

Bwana Yesu Asifiwe!

            Bwana Yesu Asifiwe!

The voices of those gathered – accompanied by the ululating sounds of the women

Reverberate off of the handmade, mudbrick walls of the chapel

Shaking the sheet iron roof above them with their force.

BWANA YESU ASIFIWE!!!!!

            THE LORD JESUS BE PRAISED!!!!!

In Tungamalenga and Makifu,

Iringa and Idodi,

The chorus grows louder daily.

The Christian Faith is on the move,

Leaving behind the crumbling cathedrals and relics of Christendom,

Christ is dancing across Africa and Asia and Latin America

He calls to us.

            THEY call to us:

“Rise up, oh Sleeper, Awake!”

In silver birds, we arrive.

Around the Communion Rail we gather

Maasai and Hehe, Americans and Tanzanians, Men and Women.

Sharing in the bread and the wine

As the Global Body of Christ.

Wisdom Obscured

'Joe Scholar' or a Sculpture in Yale's Sterling Memorial Library - 17 Oct 2008

"What is grand is necessarily obscure to Weak men. That which can be made Explicit to the Idiot is not worth my care. The wisest of the Ancients considered what is not too Explicit as the fittest for instruction because it rouzes the faculties to act. I name Moses, Solomon, Esop, Homer, Plato."

-William Blake, 23 Aug 1799

Confessions of a Leaf Peeper

Bike + Farmington Canal Trail = Lots of Peepage

I think I might have a problem. 

I skipped out on a [non-class] lecture yesterday. I had been planning to go for a week or so. I even got in my car to go there. But instead of turning leftt on Whitney to head down to Luce Hall, Sprout [my car] went right. It was as if the car was operating by some unseen force . . . independent of my will and caving to temptation, my hands turned the steering wheel away from the straight and narrow toward the wide path north out of the Haven. 

The desire to see lady nature reveal herself simply proved too tantalizing to resist. Enthralled with her charms, I hopped on my bike with camera in tow and lost myself in the pleasure of an autumn day in New England.

Coming to terms with these choices has been a rough but necessary step in the healing process. It is time that I declare the truth to the world. I am a leaf peeper through and through . . . and I'm darn proud of it.

The Bee Slayer

Nosey - Aug 2008

Look out bees. This dog likes nothing more than jumping up in the air and catching you between his teeth. The unfortunate side-effect for you is that you get bit in half in the process.

Like all superheroes though, he does have a weakness. His kryptonite is the ordinary housefly, a dastardly creature that makes the pup tremble in his crate with fear. Poor guy. . .

The Mayor Revisited

Tobacco x Two - Aug 2008

It has been two years since we last checked in on it and Lloyd's stash is still going strong. 

Perhaps 'going strong' is an understatement, on could say that the illicit stash of tobacco products our 80+ year old neighbor and unofficial 'mayor of the block,' Lloyd hides from his wife Vera in my parents grill has been fruitful and multiplied.  

Seriously, the sight that greets the eyes when one lifts the cover of my family's red webber grill is simply stunning: What had been a sole tin of 'Grizzly Wintergreen' is now the tag team of Red and Marlboro Men - in wintergreen and classic flavors respectively. 

Over the past couple years as I've visited my folks back in the 'sha, I've grown used to the now-familiar site of Lloyd's powder-blue fisherman's cap scurrying past the kitchen window followed by the tell-tale sound of the grill cover being lifted. It is oddly comforting, and yet still has a touch of creepy about it.

The whole thing leads me to wonder a couple things . . .

1) Is Wintergreen Snuff [whether it be Grizzly or Redman] an easy gateway 'drug'?

[The evidence here points to a big-old 'Yes']

2) Is there a product less P.C. out there than Redman Moist Snuff?

[I certainly hope not]

Hello?

-Solid German Construction in Iringa-

The talk now asks further, "What is your occupation in life?" 

The talk does not ask inquisitively about whether it is great or mean, whether you are a king or only a laborer. It does not ask, after the fashion of business, whether you earn a great deal of money or are building up great prestige for yourself. 

The crowd inquires and talks of these things. 

But whether your occupation is great or mean, is it of such a kind that you dare think of it together with the responsibility of eternity? Is it of such a kind that you dare to acknowledge it at this moment or at any time? 

-Soren Kierkegaard 

 Purity of Heart is to Will One Thing

-----------------------------------------------------

Back now at YDS, the floor is beginning to fall away.

My gaze is increasingly focused on what is to come.

After the handshake and tassel flip in May, what next?

With a month and miles of distance

ten weeks in Tanzania still stands as a punctuation mark

yet to reveal itself.

We talk about call a lot,

both external and internal.

This summer, both hit home.

Walking the dusty roads of Pommern and Tungamalenga,

the bits and pieces that make me 'me' were fused together in action.

There was wholeness, completeness . . . One.

Telling stories and taking pictures

to invite and to engage others in a world I've come to know.

This I love. This brings great joy.

"When are you coming back?" they would ask.

"I don't know . . . inategemea (it depends)," I would respond.

In my heart I'd whisper "hopefully soon."

As the year progresses 

and life unfolds,

tutaona.

(We will see)

We will listen

and we will see.

Adrift

-Last Morning in Iringa-

If there were any doubts about where I was Monday morning, the large chocolate shake at MickeyD's eliminated them.

The artificially flavored faux-dairy mix, guzzled through a red and yellow straw from an unnecessarily oversized plastic 'commemorative' cup, flooded my taste buds and sense memory with the disturbingly delightful yet oh-so-unnatural flavors of the good ol' U.S. of A.

Like a stranger in a strange land, on Monday I was shuttled from JFK to exotic Cincinnati before landing in Milwaukee and the great state of Wisconsin - an extended 13 hour coda concluding a thirty hour journey.

While wandering Waukesha and playing with the pup, the swirling mass of flotsam and jetsam from ten weeks in East Africa is being filtered and settling into recognizable and manageable forms. Anecdotes are collecting in the tidal pools of memory and pithy stories are slowly being built, layer by sedentary layer.

As that happens, I find myself culturally adrift and linguistically limited. No longer the stand-out Mzungu who knows Swahili, I'm just another dude walking through Highland Park wearing a Tusker shirt. From being the obvious one thing that isn't like the others, I'm immersed in a sea of similarity - nothing distinguishing about me. Apart from a tan and a $2.50 buzzcut, by all outward appearances I'm no different than when I left. As if the intervening 10 weeks never happened.

Having landed back in the States I'm floundering . . . waiting for questions . . . searching for words and ways to describe what has happened and where I have been.

Only then will I be able to move on. Only then can I begin to make sense of -begin to explore - this newfoundland.

The Long Road Home

-Highway in the Sky-

Ten Weeks sounded like a long time. Two and a half months. One-fifth of a year.

A lot can happen in that amount of time. A lot has happened in that amount of time.

I don't think I'll fully realize the enormity of where I've been and what I've done until I can examine it from the mental/physical/emotional place that can only be reached by a 9000 mile journey. From that perspective the events and experiences of the past seventy days will be set into relief and slowly find their place in the larger -still unfolding - tapestry of my life.

I carry with me more stories and thoughts and observations than I know what to do with. Like my suitcases, my mental storehouses are overflowing. As those thoughts begin to trickle out and to coalesce in the weeks and months to come, I hope to commit them to paper, to post them here and elsewhere. While the fieldwork may be drawing to a close, the process of discovery is only just beginning.

Tomorrow I head to Dar. Sunday it is off to Dubai. Monday brings me to New York in the morning and Milwaukee in the evening.

Home at last.

Or Home again.

From one home to another.

Until then.

The road.

Pharmaceutical Roulette

-Sunnydale it is not. The Commonwealth War Graves -

I'm a creature of habit. When illness strikes at home my first move is to the local healthfood oriented store for a couple large bottles of Lemon Ginger Echinacea juice. Then it is off to Walgreens [a place I only enter when ill or in need of mug shots/id photos that exude a major creep factor thanks to the wondrous tint of flourescent lighting and the surly photolab tech behind the camera] for Dayquil, Robitussin, Mucinex, and Claritin - or some magic combination thereof.

Alas, when deprived of my trusty brandnames [or their Walbrand knock-offs] I'm as good as gone. My ineptitude in picking out produce pales in comparison to my misadventures in the duka la dawa

The fact that sickness finally caught up with me shouldn't be all that shocking. Infact, having spent ten weeks working with the wagonjwa, you could say that I was begging for it. In some respects I consider it a parting gift from them, 'an opportunity' to try on their shoes, rather than a side-effect of my vumbi-filled lungs breathing in the dry winter winds.

In seeking a to treat a nagging yet not so diseasey cough, I confidently strolled into the Acacia Pharmacy thinking I'd be able to pick something up quickly, pound it down, and have a very merry final week.

It didn't seem too ludicrous at first, but when the pharmacist brought over an armload of elixirs all packaged and labeled with indecipherable eurobabble I realized I was intuiting myself to my own demise. Even the trusty active ingredients -what I assumed would be my rosetta stone - had been rendered into some bastardized gobbledegook.

Among the few written in semi-English, I found what appeared to be a winning option. Dry Cough? Check. Irritating? And then some. Unproductive? Amen to that.

Like Alice, I took the pill - or in this case a couple swigs of a brownish liquid. Unlike Alice, I wound up not in Wonderland but the morass of mafua mabaya.

Technically I'm not sure if it was the poorly chosen Benylin Dry Cough or fate that did it, but whatever tenuous balance between good and not-so-good health that had existed was obliterated.

As the mound of used floral-scented facial tissues [another unfortunate choice] by my bedside and fullout wheezy-hacky-coughing demonstrate the past few days have been less than sawa. The perk, however, has been my daily trip back to the pharmacy to find to spin the barrel and pray for the magic medicinal bullet.

Now, having more or less rejoined the land of the living and sampled some of the finest pharmaceuticals that a couple bucks can buy, I think I may have found the winning combo:

- COLDRIL [rather than Dayquil] is a winner in my book

- A 'Dry Cough' should not be mistaken for a 'CHESTY COUGH' [huh?]

- Also, when the antioxidant rich Lemon Ginger Echinacea juice is AWOL, a couple shots of KONYAGI fills you with the spirit of the nation.

Paper Dates

-Hazy Sunset-

[From 6 August]

The mountain standing over Image fades to blue-grey in the distance, absorbed nearly entirely into the blue-grey sky. The dust –vumbi in Kiswahili – kicked up by the dry winter wind, combined with smoke –moshi- from farmers burning the remains of their crops, has greatly diminished my sightlines. The mountains to the west of Ilula, behind which the sun will soon sink, are equally veiled in obscurity.

In June, from this same porch, the horizon seemed limitless.

“You’ve started transitioning home.”

This observation, stated matter of factly, caught me off guard. Standing in the doorway to the room I’ve claimed in 3A, rattling off a list of things needing to be done before leaving, I didn’t realize how true that statement was.

The sea of shambas spread out before me, waiting in dormancy until the rains return in December or January, no longer have me in their thrall. In their place, I dream once more of lakes and forests and brats and corn on the cob . . . sights and tastes of a land half a world away . . . as much a home as this one. I think of family and friends and roller coasters and roadtrips and know each safari must have an end.

This transitioning, this pulling out and shrinking of the horizons is arbitrary. It is predicated by a date on an airline ticket and a start date on an academic calendar. Truth be told, if my departure was open ended and my stay indefinite, I’d be surveying the landscape before me with a very different set of eyes. And yet . . . and yet that is not the case this time around. Once again, I'm set to move on.

6x6

-Welcome to the Hospital-

[From 3 August]

6am – Bongo flava beats blasting from the TV, the first person we meet is a grieving woman – her stomach cut open by a caesarean section, her heart by the loss of her barely born child. Three beds up and across the aisle, two young girls huddle for security against their grandmother. “Some stupid man raped these little ones,” tells me. We pray. My tongue sticks to the roof of my mouth. All of this before breakfast. . .

6pm – “PETRO!” A familiar voice in a sea of unfamiliarity and pain. Consolata and others have come to celebrate the birth of a friend’s new baby. There is more than enough laughter and rejoicing to go around. Someone suggests that they name the little guy after me. I’m not so sure that they were joking. . .

6am – A visit to the Psych Ward. ‘Jafeth’ and ‘David.’ Jafeth, “compelled by Christ himself,” burned down his house. In Ob/Gyn, a spirit is blocking a woman’s healing. I don’t even blink as Haule begins, “Shuka! Shuka! Shuka!” Around the periphery of the room, old women pray under their breath. It sounds like Pentecost.

6pm – Prayers in the Annex with a group of women, one of whom is preparing for surgery and receives extra prayer support. The following day when we learn that the woman lost her child due to complications, Haule is visibly crushed. “I don’t have the strength to see her,” is all he can muster to say.

6am – Jafeth’s mother calls us back to the Psych Ward. “He is speaking.” Still intellectually skeptical, all I can say is that even I could clearly see that something else was looking out through this young man’s eyes. The Exorcism begins promptly. Coughing, Twisting, and Writhing followed by peace and calm. “The demon remains but he has been contained for now.”

Leaving the gated ward, Haule points to a man in a tattered blue sweater pacing in circles. “This man died and was buried in the ground for seven years,” Haule tells me casually, “Then, one day, he came back to curse his father, a wizard. Somethings even I don’t understand . . .” His voice trails off as we exit the Hospital Compound under a bright sky that can only be called Iringa blue.

------

Day in and Day out, the life of the Chaplains serving the Government Hospital in town is dictated by 6 and 6. Fulltime Pastoral Care positions are unheard of here. An hour in the morning, an hour in the evening, and a fulltime position at a local congregation is the norm. The pace is grueling and intensity unrelenting.

How Haule and others manage to keep going is beyond me. I stand in awe and admiration. Too, it leads me to wonder –both here and elsewhere – who takes care of the caregivers?