Voiceless

A few days ago, I woke up without a voice.

Without much of one, anyway.

I wasn’t particularly surprised, as I was several days into an epic battle with whatever monster had set up residence in my sinuses and throat.

But the thing about living amongst folk whose first language is not English is that talking kind of takes a back seat. There’s a lot of time for contemplation and thinking here in the bush. I think while I scrub my laundry. I think while I wash the dishes. I think while I explore the bush trails to figure out which ones are faster than the roads (basically none of them, at least for the places I want to get to). I think while the neighbor kids kick the living tar out of the single solitary soccer ball we own, whose days are surely numbered.

So somewhere in there, I started thinking about what it is to be Voiceless.

It’s kind of a buzzword in social justice. Unborn babies are Voiceless. Homeless families are Voiceless. Victims of abuse or trafficking are Voiceless. This week one of the neighbor kids was sick and needed medical attention outside of designated clinic hours (sigh, oh all of the sighing), and one could have referred to her as Voiceless. You might even call the kids who are currently climbing my mango tree—the kids whose access to education and healthcare and opportunity is obscenely limited compared to Western standards—Voiceless.

But let me tell you something.

They have voices.

OH, do they have voices.

Their voices are loudest between the hours of 1pm and 3pm, when Teresa is trying to sleep.

Their voices say kind things, but also unkind things, and so sometimes their voices tattle to tell me that others’ voices are “sulting” (insulting) them.

Their voices cry “Odi!” when they approach my front door, which is the verbal equivalent to “knock-knock,” and then their voices chatter happily back and forth as they deposit the bowl of tomatoes that their sweet mother sent to my tomato-deficient soul and return to give her my undying thanks.

Their voices sing songs whose words are lilting and unfamiliar to me, and their voices count to thirty when they play on the swings at the playpark, because EVERYONE wants to play on the swings and so after 30 pushes you have to get off and let someone else have a go.

Their voices are patient and only a little teasing when they slowly repeat that Bemba word over and over until I finally get it, and then their voices dance in laughter across the fields as I try out my new vocabulary on unsuspecting villagers.

They are NOT Voiceless.

But it is true that they, and others like them, are not always Heard.

So in all of my thinking this week, it occurred to me how twisted it is that we use that term for them: Voiceless. And I know there are all kinds of layers and connotations to the word, and that the term is at least partially more a commentary on a society that gags than it is on those who are silenced, but still… That word. As though they are the ones who lack something, who are deficient in their ability to speak or say or sing.  It occurred to me that perhaps the rest of us… the world’s 1%... maybe we should be the ones wearing the label. Maybe the tragedy is not that they are voiceless. Maybe the tragedy is that we do not listen. Their voices work. Our ears refuse to listen.

We are Deaf.

We’ve been in Fimpulu a bit over 2 weeks now. We try, daily, to be slow to speak and quick to listen. We have much to learn about life here and much to unlearn regarding patriarchal tendencies (no matter how unintentional) or misconceptions about Zambia(ns) we may have picked up in the past. We are surrounded now, on a daily basis, by obvious and undeniable need. Of course, we cannot meet them all. And I do not believe we are called to.  But one thing we can do is listen, and learn, and acknowledge the personhood and dignity (and sheer volume) of the voices.

Traveling Mercies

At 3pm on Monday Oct. 12th, dear friends scooped our suitcases and our family into their cars and caravanned to the airport. With the Cubs hitting some bizarre streak of luck this year, there was an unexpected game at 5 that night, so we fretted the whole way there that the traffic would make us late (we’re just not used to the Cubs still playing this late in the season…). But an easy hour later we were at our check-in counter at O’Hare, double-checking our suitcase count and parting ways with prayer and not a few tears.

Over the next couple hours, Teresa tested every single water-fountain in the airport. You’ll be delighted to know they are all in working order. She also managed to cute her way into free juice at the taco restaurant in terminal 5.

We had anticipated Teresa sleeping for most of the 13hr 40min overnight flight (fools, I know…), but flight attendants are nearly as helpful as nurses, poking and prodding and flashing lights and brushing past every hour or so just to liven things up. The cabin lights didn’t dim until roughly 11pm CST, and therefore neither did Teresa. She did, however, scream bloody murder from 9pm on just to alert all peoples in the stratosphere that it was in fact past her bedtime.

For the past year of her life, she has been very strictly a daddy’s girl. Either daddy puts her to bed, or she simply will not sleep.

UNTIL WE GOT ON THE AIRPLANE. Mommy had a Teresa-shaped sweat/drool stain down her front after holding/wrestling the little demanding diva for the whole night. No sleep for momma.

On a side note, Emirates gives these great toiletry bags and kid toys out on every flight, which is a huge bonus since they strictly weigh their carry-on bags, thereby reducing the amount of kid paraphernalia we were able to bring ourselves.

Tuesday about 7:15pm Dubai time (10:15am CST), we found ourselves on the tarmac in Dubai, thinking some mixture of “Dear sweet heavens it is hot” and “Praise the Lord for solid ground.” We received a series of conflicting instructions from multiple people at multiple points in the airport (which is massive and beautiful) regarding where and how to catch shuttle to the hotel. Up the hall, downstairs, ‘round the corner, go to that counter, no go to that counter, now wait outside for the shuttle with the lovely German couple who missed their flight, whoops go back inside to the designated chairs to wait because the shuttles only pick up people who are escorted by their personnel from the chairs, now wait another half hour, now click your heels 3 times and sing the hokey-pokey, and PRESTO!

The hotel was wonderful, especially in regards to the two large beds that we pushed together and sprawled out on, and the complimentary buffet that included the best paneer I have ever eaten (high praise). Teresa popped up bright eyed and bushy tailed at 2:45 am, long before our 6am wake-up call, so Daddy took her down to play in the lobby.

Fun story: David’s watch battery ran out some time ago, which is no big deal to fix, but is complicated significantly by the fact that the little knobbies that you use to change the position of the watch hands don’t work anymore—you can only move them about 10 min worth in either direction. He brought it with him on our journey anyway “just in case,” but basically, he needed to have his watch battery changed at precisely the time shown on the watch.

Which was, serendipitously, 2:45.

Thank you, dear Lord.

Wednesday morning at 7am Dubai time (10pm CST), our shuttle picked us up and deposited us back at the airport. We held our breath as Emirates weighed our carry-ons (again), then scurried up to find a place in line to go through screening and find our terminal. We chatted with a wonderful Australian couple who had opted to forego a wedding party in favor of a world-travel honeymoon. We swapped stories until it was our turn to talk to the very stern lady at the counter, who looked at our boarding passes and passports for half an eternity before pushing them back at us and, instead of waving us through to the other side, with no explanation as to why, directed us to “the fourth office down the hall,” which was labeled something to do with customs, passport issues, and fees. Yum. Again, we waited as the lady in front of us was fined $300 for some unknown transgression, then nervously waited while our boarding passes were reviewed, stamped, and returned to us.

Finally, at the very furthest terminal, we collapsed in some squeaky airport chairs and waited for boarding. Teresa made friends with two other toddlers, an Indian girl and an African boy, all of whom galloped like a herd of wild horses around and around the terminal. At one point the girl’s mother asked me if my kids were twins, which was confusing until I realized that Teresa was scurrying around so much that the woman thought there was two of her.

And finally, around 4pm Lusaka time (9am CST), we stumbled into the airport in Zambia, waited through the visa line at immigration, grabbed all 9 of our bags (which all arrived safely and intact), and hugged  the Colvins with all the exhausted sweaty airplane-smelling sleep-deprived joy we could muster.

A couple nights in Lusaka to tie up a few loose ends, then a long journey north truncated by another night with another truly delightful missionary family (by a lake so big and beautiful and ethereal that it hardly seems possible), then finally, finally, Home.

Never could I ever have imagined the magnitude of sheer joy that could come from something as simple as a house. We’re across road from both the clinic and the preschool (could that possibly be any more perfect?). I’m in love with the curtains in our sitting room. Teresa slept through the night for the first time since Monday (because Home). There’s a mango tree in our yard (which does not appear to be producing anything, but I love its scraggly little self anyway), and a house full of kids next door (two of whom have already played with every children’s book and puzzle that we own), and the stars!

Oh, the stars. They are only vaguely familiar to me, like the edge of a memory, or a dream you’ve all but forgotten when you wake. But I sit on the corner of our porch and wrap my fingers around a hot mug of tea and breathe in deeply the smell of the earth while my daughter runs and plays with the other village kids, and the disquiet in our souls that has refused us rest these past few years lays at peace, and though we are neither nursing nor teaching in any capacity at all yet (or even fully unpacked), we know, without a shadow of a doubt, that we are right where we are supposed to be.

Almost There

Two more days.

Monday, our dearest friends will collect us from the back porch of the church that has been our home, figuratively and eventually literally, since soon after we moved to this frozen forsaken tundra  Chicago. I remember that day—it was cold, and I was pregnant, and grad school housing, and then I got anxious because the move was not moving fast enough for me so I single-handedly shot put a very heavy microwave on top of the fridge, pulling a back muscle in the process and then subsequently spending a night of intense paranoia counting baby kicks just in case I had managed to pull one of her muscles too.

We’re a bit more experienced at this whole moving thing now, and we have a system worked out. I organize the items, whether physically or just on paper, and come up with a detailed plan of attack. Then I take our tornado  darling Teresa far far away so Daddy can execute said plan.  This has successfully resulted in 7 fully packed suitcases to take to Zambia and box after box after bookcase after knick-knack to bequeath to our unsuspecting friends, or just rid the world of entirely.

There is such relief—such deep, raw, piercing relief—in paring down your physical belongings to a series of suitcases. Folks keep asking if I think we’re forgetting anything, and the honest-to-goodness answer is that it really doesn’t matter and I really could not care less right now. We’re going to be just fine. And yes, it will be hard, and we will miss the luxury and the simplicity and the efficiency of life as we have known it, but I think it is time for us to try a different kind of life.

We desire an environment that repeatedly brings us to our knees.

We do not desire to experience fear, or pain, or for those around us to experience those things.

We desire to divorce ourselves from dependence on material possessions that delude us into overconfidence in our own agency.
We do not truly desire to go without.

We desire to answer the call set before us and go.

We do not desire to part with those who, by the mercy of God, have loved us truly and purely and unselfishly enough to send us out.

We desire to share the Gospel in deed and word, to put our hand to the plow and not look back, to shoulder our crosses daily.
We look at each other, and our precious daughter, and we desire to be safe.

We desire to never ever pack a suitcase ever ever again.

We desire to never ever pack a suitcase ever ever again.

So we are occasionally consistent.

Our hearts are full and miraculously at peace in anticipation of the journey before us. David keeps sneaking into the yard to practice juggling the soccer ball. I’m “busy” gleefully nerding out and compiling study materials for the beast-of-a-nursing-exam that awaits me on the other side of the pond. Teresa has been dragging this suitcase around for 2 days now, or else demanding that we drag her around inside of it…

And so the dueling desires pick at each other a bit, but the desires of our souls sing louder and louder as we remember, time and again, that perfect love drives out fear. Fear of pain. Fear of want. Fear of loneliness. Fear of danger. Perfect love does that.

So off we go, in all of our imperfection, to teach and heal, but surely also to learn and be healed. Because really, that-- all of it-- that's kind of what the nitty-gritty day-to-day of the Christian walk is.