Our internet connect decided to take a holiday this past holiday as well. A couple of times the phone line went out, too. And the electricity. It’s been raining a ton. As a result . . .I’m breaking protocol and back-posting. Surely, there must be a blog-exemption from posts-allowed-per-day for people living in Africa - or Vanuatu - or anywhere where phone lines and cables are still bunched in bundles and sitting exposed to the elements.
And no - nothing magically tragic happened either for those of you who checked in and didn’t see any posts for a few days. Nothing exciting like a leopard climbing the Acacia tree outside of my bedroom window, crouching for hours on end and then eventually sneaking in when I least expected it - only to attack me as I showered in the small, steel basin which I use for a wash-tub. After which, I accidentally knocked over the candle I use for light starting a small fire, then I quickly elbowed the leopard in the gut giving me just enough time to grab the pipe upon which I hung my towel (now on fire) for privacy and then I beat the silly thing to a pulp - gutted it, skinned it and served it up in a stew.
With potatoes.
Its’ skin now covers my feet as shoes and its’ fur makes for a nice welcome mat at the entrance
to my make-shift luxury home.
Thursday, December 28 ‘06
No, nothing like that.
Just the thing like I said. No internet. Or - at least - no quick enough internet. We had the slow kind. Which is really, really, really slow and certainly not quick enough to upload a page, or two.
But it’s back now. So I’m posting a few at once. Which, in the process of doing - I went back and read my first “post-christmas-in-africa post” and
Her story rends my heart. I only met her this year as she is an older sister of someone I have known for the 6 years we’ve been here but for some reason - she never introduced us until now. Could be because the woman lives about an hour away. At any rate, she is a woman of around 50 years who has given birth to
kids in her lifetime. 3 sets of twins!!! Only 13 kids are still alive. Illness claimed 5 of them.
This woman [pic. to the left] is a widow whose husband was beat to death at his job for something that she says he did not do. When it happened - around 10 years ago - she could do nothing about it. There was no recourse for her to seek. He was simply buried. And she was left to care for the kids.
All of her life she has slept on the ground. The dirt ground. She has never owned sheets. Nor a pillow. She cooks with wood. Wood that she herself gathers from nearby trees. She didn’t get to finish school. She doesn’t have a job. Or land. Her story is told and lived a million times over on this continent. But seeing her and knowing her brings it home to me.
She went home this year with new beds, new sheets, a gas cooker and blankets. I wish everyone could have seen her face light up when she was handed the brand-new pair of sheets. You would think that she just got a brand new car for free.
She prayed for me before she left. The widow who brought me eggs as a gift prayed for me. After she gave me the eggs, she said a prayer. I told her thank you - that I needed all of the prayers that I can get. And also that her gift to me of the eggs was proportionately much more than I had given anyone this year - even though my house was filled with gifts and food to hand out.
I expect that her prayer will count pretty heftily, though. Thank God.
Really, it was the best gift I got all Christmas.
I will cherish it unlike I’ve cherished anything else. And ponder it in my heart.
Because of its realness & power . . . a power beyond the stuffy sinews of my far-too-human soul.
