Joyful in Hope

The little fingers on my thigh startle me. I jump and bobble the items in my hand—a camera, a chitenge, a half-empty water bottle. She’s clawing at me in an almost desperate fashion. I turn expecting to see one of “mine.” I anticipate a familiar face, one that has probably buried itself in my shoulder after falling during a soccer game, or stared intently into my eyes as I clumsily tried to sew a tattered skirt back together.

I miss the African sun today. Perhaps it’s because the days are drawing shorter and colder, and the forecast seems to have burrowed into my soul. It has made my soul so very tired. There is something magical—Narnian, even—about the African sapphire sky. It dares you to believe in something. It whispers that it’s worth it. That they’re worth it.

I’ve never seen this little girl before, though. She is completely unfamiliar. She is absolutely filthy—enough so that I am a bit taken aback by it, because it’s Mutomboko, and everyone wears their best during this very important ceremony.

The sky is different in Nashville. Muted. Caged, somehow.  Not that it matters, really. My days simply do not contain even an ounce of spare time that could be used for staring into the sky. Even if I did, the city lights swallow the stars at night.

Her dress has stars on it. Or maybe just ragged and faded polka dots. She is so very small. She does not say a word. Later I wondered why. Usually the little ones will speak to me here, either babbling away in Bemba that I barely can follow or trying out the few English phrases that they know. But she just clings to me with a surprising amount of strength, hugging me over and over again, as if I am her best friend in the whole world and we have just been reunited after months apart.

This semester is different from any other I have ever had. I am taking Pediatrics and OB. The former I love; the latter is a little bit disgusting. Both are vitally important to healthcare in Africa. And after the toll that last fall took on my spiritual and mental well-being (because, ladies and gentleman, re-entering the Western world after three months in the bush is something akin to being bodily thrown into a sea of ice water just as you remember that you can’t swim), I knew I needed something to throw my energy and focus into this semester. I needed something to keep me grounded and motivated.

The man at the food stand advertising “Hygiene and Save Food! Sausages and Chips” is impatient with my little surprise distraction. My hands are instinctively embracing this little girl, but I turn the upper half of my body to face him and request an order. Nevermind the random preschooler wrapped around my body; mostly I’m just worried that I won’t be able to choke down the sausage. A particularly noxious bout of food poisoning secondary to sausage ingestion the first time I came to Zambia has made me nearly incapable of even being in the same room with the stuff.

So I lock myself in my room, and I study incessantly. I’ve thrown myself into school. These are tough classes. Peds is notorious for wrecking GPAs and decimating mental stability in senior nursing students at Belmont. Seems like a nice challenge, then. So I decided I would just get an A. That should keep me busy. Then the little voice in my head (maybe Peds is affecting me more than I thought…) wakes up one day and decides to try and convince me to go to grad school. “No, little voice,” I replied smartly. “No amount of cajoling and manipulation could convince me that subjecting myself to more time in a suffocating classroom would be a good idea.” The voice is very persistent though, and it stayed up ridiculously late one night researching its options. Turns out the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine has a program that the voice knew I would instantly fall in love with. Of course, to qualify for entrance into their MSc in Infectious Disease program, I have to get a perfect 4.0 this semester. So much for ever sleeping, relaxing, or eating in the next two months…

A woman stumbles out of the crowd laughing. She is missing a few teeth, and I think she is drunk. “Musungu, feed my baby! Oh, I cannot feed her!” Her smirk angers me as I look into the pleading eyes of the little girl. I realize this woman has sent her to me to beg—perhaps promising that if she hugs the white girl, she will get to eat dinner? The child’s knees buckle a little, and the full weight of her little body presses into me. I notice the woman is holding a Mosi beer in her right hand.

But then I think of all the things that would stand between here and there. Entrance exams. College debt. Finding a job. Figuring out where to live after graduation (some days I just want to throw a dart at the globe). The application for the school is straight up ridiculous. I will struggle to find an academic reference—not because I haven’t done well, but precisely because I have. I never needed to go to any of my professors for help outside of class, and I never really thought to deliberately build a relationship with them in any other context. Looking over what they want for a reference, I honestly don’t know if any professor on this campus knows me well enough to write it. Few of them know my name.

I am unbelievably hungry. We left the orphanage really early that morning and have walked in the sun for much of the day. It is now well past noon. The man hands me my lunch—a small bag of French fries, and a sausage wrapped in paper. I break off the top third of the sausage and hand it to the little girl, hovering over her while she stuffs the whole thing in her mouth. I’m afraid if I leave her to eat it unprotected, the mother will take it. I’ve seen that happen before. The mother and several others who are now watching laugh raucously at me, as though I’ve been suckered into something and have no idea that they have “tricked” me. But I didn’t do it because the mother asked. I did it for the little girl. I did it because she was hungry and unable at that age to get food for herself, and I had food. What other reason could I possibly need?

I don’t know if I really want to do grad school anyway. Some days I do. Other days I don’t at all, or maybe I just get so overwhelmed with everything that the next year will hold for me (and those closest to me) that I cannot imagine adding to that plate.

The little girl stands and watches me walk away as we shoulder through the crowd of hundreds of Zambians to seek shelter under the awning of Aunt Josie’s building. My suspicions soon prove true: I cannot eat the sausage. I took one bite and dry heaved. I instantly regret not giving her the whole thing, but I know I would have been swarmed by dozens of other kids wanting something too. I’m surprised I wasn’t anyway. It wasn’t a problem that I normally had to deal with in the village center or around my neighborhood anymore, because I knew enough kids on a personal level to keep it from happening. There was usually some kid who knew me who could keep the others in line. Mutomboko attracts people from all over the area though, and I’ve barely seen a friendly face all morning. David trades me the rest of his fries for my sausage stub. I tell him about the little girl. I know as I am telling him that he would have fed her too, and I am thankful for that.

We talk about it all over dinner—about writing theses, Honors classes, GPAs, GREs, test scores, hopes, fears… We reminisce a little, and we talk about the kids we left behind there. Some of them are easy to keep up with—I can always check in on the kids inside the orphanage. The others could all swim the river and set up permanent camp in the Congo tomorrow, and we would never know what happened to them.  Mostly we talk about the right-now or the future though. We proofread and brainstorm and type like maniacs, slowly chipping away at the iceberg of assignments that is this semester. Mostly I am hopeful, and so I cling to that reminder to be “joyful in hope.”  I whisper a prayer as I flip through another stack of study note cards—a prayer for protection, grace and mercy for them all, but especially a prayer of thanks, because we will all fall asleep under the same sky tonight, even if it doesn’t feel like it sometimes.

And somehow that knowledge makes them seem just a little bit closer. Somehow, for right now, that makes them just close enough.

His Gift

I don't really remember the first time I met Gift. At some point, he just started showing up to play ball.  With the timing of evening activities I didn't make it out every night, and it took me longer than David to get everyone's names down.

I do, however, remember the first time I noticed him.  As we would scramble and fight for the ball, tiny little kids would make their way to the front steps of the orphanage.  Some of them wanted to play but were just too small.  Others were too sick.  Still others were just there to watch. Two- and three-year-olds would show up with babies who could barely walk strapped to their backs or tottering behind. 

A side note about Africa-- life is just harsher here. I don't think anything of tiny little kids wandering around by themselves.  The fence to the village clinic has 10 foot gaping holes interspersed periodically around its perimeter through which the area farm animals can conveniently enter.  There's a bare mattress on a bed frame in the delivery room, but you have to step over a pile of goat droppings to get to it.  On of the boys who played soccer with us each night was covered, head and torso, in ringworm, and he hugged me goodbye the same way everyone else did.  It's not that I don't recognize the sadness or comical oddity of some of these situations; it's just that in the midst of them, when I'm surrounded by them, I'm not really fazed by them. You just handle it and move on. 

So anyway...

The first time I noticed Gift was when Kunda and Musonda were scrapping over the ball. Kunda kicked it with so much force that I'm pretty sure it broke the sound barrier. It sailed straight past the players and bowled little Eunice Mwense, age 3, right off of the stairs. It hit her in the head. Hard. And then she landed on her head. Hard.

Gift got there before I did. He scooped her up and sat on the porch with her, running his fingers across the back of her head. She had thick matted hair, tinged orange with the characteristic protein deficiency of Kwashiorkors. He tenderly worked his fingers through it, talking and singing gently the whole while and looking her over repeatedly. She seemed to be okay. She sported an impressive goose egg, but she was going to be fine.  I reached down to take her, and Gift looked up at me. Then he took my hand and placed it on Eunice's legs.  They were crusted and scabbed with the sores that come from malnutrition and a dirty living environment. He didn't say anything. He just looked at me.

And he knew that I knew, and so now he knew that I couldn't just do nothing.

But I'll tell Eunice's story later.  This is BaGifti's story.

David and I remarked to each other on several occasions that Gift would be a great dad someday.  Sometimes he would get bored with the game and would go heckle the little kids.  He would lead them in chants and cheers, gesturing for them to scream louder and dancing with them on the steps.  All of the post-game dance parties were his brainchild.

David and Gifti after a realllllly long sudden death match.

That's really no surprise though, because Gift's eyes are always dancing.  His laugh is infectious, and he rarely takes anything seriously if he can avoid it.  Right before Mutomboko, it became very difficult to play in the street because so many "important" people kept rolling by in their vehicles.  This is another example of Africa's ability to confer a casualness upon circumstances that would make the average American soccer mom's hair curls. Allan (who happens to be Gift's cousin) darted across the road to get the ball just as the Ministry of Edcation (yes, that's how they spelled it... ha!) truck, packed full of proud and stuffy administrators, was chugging slowly down the middle of our field... I mean, the road.  Allan was a good 25 feet in front of the vehicle.  I didn't think a thing of it.  Neither did the driver of the truck at first, but 20 yards down the road he changed his mind and tried to reverse. After zigzagging across the entire road a few times he managed to make it back to where we were. He shook his finger sternly at Allan and began angrily shouting, over and over again, "That is bad manners! Very bad manners!" Allan was bewildered.

But Gift came to the rescue. He side-stepped in front of Allan and began mock-pleading with the man behind the wheel for forgiveness. He's quite the actor, and if I didn't know Gift better than that then I might have believed the performance. The man kept yelling about manners. Gift fell to his knees with his hands clasped in front of him, "Ah, yes! We are just poor rude village kids. Thank you so much for your kindness and your teaching! We will always have good manners now! Sorry, sorry, so sorry!" I faked a sneeze to hide a snort of laughter. The man in the car nodded to signify appeasement and then chugged away. Gift winked at me and said, "Those kind, they are all the same." Then he flashed that smile of his, motioned for the little ones to cheer him on, stole the ball, and bolted for the opposite goal.

Gift will make his way into many more of my stories and in fact may have more than one future post dedicated to his antics. He traveled with us to Lusaka when we were on our way home, and I could write a whole book about that. For now, though, these few anecdotes will have to do.

I have to say-- I miss this kid.