Hi,
I am almost out of internet time but I wanted to let you all know quickly that Nqobi is doing better. He came to stay with us for a few days and it was very good for him. He ate like a king and fell asleep in my arms 3 nights in a row. When his father came to get him and walk him back to the people he stays with he cried. Please keep him and his father in your prayers.
I am just outside Bulawayo for the rest of the weekend and then we are driving to Nkayi where we will do ministry and get some teaching on mother-child health from the hospital there. After 2 weeks we will go and stay in the village to provide some healthcare for them. I am excited for that. You can see the stars with awesome clarity when you are in the bush with no electricity. I will be back in South Africa in a month and then heading home for Christmas. See you then!
Isimbi Johanna
Saturday, October 24, 2009
Friday, October 16, 2009
Nqobisitha
The first time I saw him he was sitting next to his father under a tree on a hot sunny afternoon. I was tired. I had just walked 2 miles to get back to where we are staying but some things make you forget exhaustion. I had never seen trachoma in person before but Nqobi is already at stage 4 so even with my little training I could recognize it as soon as I knelt down in front of him. Have you ever seen an 8 year old who has given up on life? This kid has. He would barely lift his shoulders to look at me even though I was right in front of him; partly because the light hurts his eyes so much. They were swollen and crusty with discharge. He can barely see at this point because of the gray film over his pupil. Needless to say Nqobi impacted me.
On top of his eyes he is so malnourished that he is the size of his 4 year old cousin. His mother died when he was 2 and although his father loves him he can't take care of him because he has to work. Nqobi stays with some cousins who are struggling to provide for themselves. Over the next few days after I first met him our team visited his home to begin treatment on his eyes. It was a dramatic improvement just by washing them.
On Monday Nqobi is coming to stay at the base we are living at. They have a home for orphans there and they will temporarily take care of him while we continuing treating his eyes. We can clean them up but we can't cure his blindness. We do, however, serve a God who can and therefore we are expecting and asking for a complete recovery. The most important treatment we can give people as a medical team is prayer.
I wanted to share Nqobisitha with you because he is the reason I did this school. I could tell you all about the primary school we do health teachings/health care at or the home visits we make to the community members. I could tell you about how we got permission from the chief of the community to do a community-wide teaching on HIV/AIDS last Saturday. For me, though, it comes down to people like Nqobi. People who need help from someone to show them that life is not hopeless, that there is a God who loves them and created them, and that they do not have to die from something we can prevent.
I have been in Zimbabwe for just a short time but it will certainly affect the rest of my life. In a week I am going from the bush to the bush-bush or in other words we are traveling farther into Zimbabwe to work in a village. Obviously, I will have no internet connection so I will talk to you in December. Thanks for your prayers and support! I love you guys!
Isimbi Johanna
On top of his eyes he is so malnourished that he is the size of his 4 year old cousin. His mother died when he was 2 and although his father loves him he can't take care of him because he has to work. Nqobi stays with some cousins who are struggling to provide for themselves. Over the next few days after I first met him our team visited his home to begin treatment on his eyes. It was a dramatic improvement just by washing them.
On Monday Nqobi is coming to stay at the base we are living at. They have a home for orphans there and they will temporarily take care of him while we continuing treating his eyes. We can clean them up but we can't cure his blindness. We do, however, serve a God who can and therefore we are expecting and asking for a complete recovery. The most important treatment we can give people as a medical team is prayer.
I wanted to share Nqobisitha with you because he is the reason I did this school. I could tell you all about the primary school we do health teachings/health care at or the home visits we make to the community members. I could tell you about how we got permission from the chief of the community to do a community-wide teaching on HIV/AIDS last Saturday. For me, though, it comes down to people like Nqobi. People who need help from someone to show them that life is not hopeless, that there is a God who loves them and created them, and that they do not have to die from something we can prevent.
I have been in Zimbabwe for just a short time but it will certainly affect the rest of my life. In a week I am going from the bush to the bush-bush or in other words we are traveling farther into Zimbabwe to work in a village. Obviously, I will have no internet connection so I will talk to you in December. Thanks for your prayers and support! I love you guys!
Isimbi Johanna
Prayer for Political 'Stability'
Continue to pray for the political landscape of the country of Zimbabwe which has had such a convoluted history in recent months, years and decades. The unity government of the past year appears to be dissolving and that could in turn lead to political violence and further turmoil and hardships for the population of the country. See the following Reuters story for further detail.
Tuesday, October 13, 2009
Experiencing Africa
Since Johanna will be mostly 'out of touch' with the global electronic network that we are so used to experiencing here in the developed western world, we have decided to provide occasional excerpted 'readings' from several great resources about Africa until she returns.
To begin I would like to recommend a treasure of a book (unfortunately now out of print) by John Charles Kerr called Hidden Riches Among the Poor: Reflections on the Vibrant Faith of Africa. Mr Kerr has served for a number of years in Kitwe, Zambia (one of the countries next door to Zimbabwe). The following quotation is one of the best written synopsis of the region that I have seen. *
...you notice a kind of softening of attitudes in Africa. For starters, there is an easing up on all rules and regimentation. Pockets of efficiency probably exist on the continent but, on the whole, Africa is under a soft haze sprinkled with laughter and the notion seems foreign. There are no distinct lines of demarcation here, no precision. There is more of a blending, an almost infinite tolerance of the vagaries and digressions of life. Watercolor seems the perfect medium, with sightly blurred edges, wide margins, wide margins. Africa is a very human place.
In Africa there is no "point A to point B" transit. Rather there is something like "point A to point Z," with so many interesting happenings along the way that you may never reach your destination. The process of getting there is just as important as actually arriving.
This was pretty hard on us, the esteemed visitors from the industrialized and well-managed west. Either we change and enjoy the ride or we go away muttering invective. We need to change not just how we make progress but the kind of people we are. Africa is so resistant and tough that it forces a softening on you. Here the idea is not so much to impose the imprint of our know-how and programs upon a setting and 'have an impact." Rather Africa seems to say, "Let me impact you!" Africa forces you to become malleable. It allows you to be acted upon rather than just acting.
This makes Africa a wonderful setting for change. Of course, it does not impose change against one's will. But it offers to those who enter its life something like a liberation. Africa makes you feel like you have cast off a hard shell and entered a new kind of freedom. The margins of life have widened. The hard lines we have imposed upon ourselves gave way a little.
Slowly but surely, one's thinking undergoes the same transformation. It seems to me now that Africa has accomplished in two years, in its soft yielding soil, what several years of Western resolve could not manage: meaningful change. The indirect approach of Africa, which seldom like to address any issue head-on, may have produced what the concentrated approach of the North American mindset was utterly incapable of. it is as though your life has been exposed to the diffused light of dawn rather than the intense glare of the searchlight. Africa, obdurate and resistant -- as thousands of missionaries and visionaries who lie beneath its soil would testify -- Africa, the most unchanging of continents, has a residual power to change us. I think of Africa along the lines of the 'cornerstone' (1 Peter 2:6) of Scripture, which has the power to grind you to pieces if it falls on you and to break you if you fall on it. It seems ironic: the continent which seems to have the least to teach the western mind turns out, for me at least, to be the agent of change. I find Pierre Pradervand's Listening to Africa to be aptly titled. Africa has much to teach us, about achieving consensus, about giving, about patience, about relating to the elderly and vitality under duress -- if we can listen.
And Africa does more than teach in a didactic sense. As you enter into its life, she imposes change on you the way strong African fingers break off a piece of cornmeal sahdza and work it into an edible lump, ready to be dipped into hot sauce. In this same sense it functions like the best of teachers. One can only hope that it will retain its cornerstone strength for the good of the human race, right to the end.
* Quoted with the permission of the author...
Lee Beachy
To begin I would like to recommend a treasure of a book (unfortunately now out of print) by John Charles Kerr called Hidden Riches Among the Poor: Reflections on the Vibrant Faith of Africa. Mr Kerr has served for a number of years in Kitwe, Zambia (one of the countries next door to Zimbabwe). The following quotation is one of the best written synopsis of the region that I have seen. *
...you notice a kind of softening of attitudes in Africa. For starters, there is an easing up on all rules and regimentation. Pockets of efficiency probably exist on the continent but, on the whole, Africa is under a soft haze sprinkled with laughter and the notion seems foreign. There are no distinct lines of demarcation here, no precision. There is more of a blending, an almost infinite tolerance of the vagaries and digressions of life. Watercolor seems the perfect medium, with sightly blurred edges, wide margins, wide margins. Africa is a very human place.
In Africa there is no "point A to point B" transit. Rather there is something like "point A to point Z," with so many interesting happenings along the way that you may never reach your destination. The process of getting there is just as important as actually arriving.
This was pretty hard on us, the esteemed visitors from the industrialized and well-managed west. Either we change and enjoy the ride or we go away muttering invective. We need to change not just how we make progress but the kind of people we are. Africa is so resistant and tough that it forces a softening on you. Here the idea is not so much to impose the imprint of our know-how and programs upon a setting and 'have an impact." Rather Africa seems to say, "Let me impact you!" Africa forces you to become malleable. It allows you to be acted upon rather than just acting.
This makes Africa a wonderful setting for change. Of course, it does not impose change against one's will. But it offers to those who enter its life something like a liberation. Africa makes you feel like you have cast off a hard shell and entered a new kind of freedom. The margins of life have widened. The hard lines we have imposed upon ourselves gave way a little.
Slowly but surely, one's thinking undergoes the same transformation. It seems to me now that Africa has accomplished in two years, in its soft yielding soil, what several years of Western resolve could not manage: meaningful change. The indirect approach of Africa, which seldom like to address any issue head-on, may have produced what the concentrated approach of the North American mindset was utterly incapable of. it is as though your life has been exposed to the diffused light of dawn rather than the intense glare of the searchlight. Africa, obdurate and resistant -- as thousands of missionaries and visionaries who lie beneath its soil would testify -- Africa, the most unchanging of continents, has a residual power to change us. I think of Africa along the lines of the 'cornerstone' (1 Peter 2:6) of Scripture, which has the power to grind you to pieces if it falls on you and to break you if you fall on it. It seems ironic: the continent which seems to have the least to teach the western mind turns out, for me at least, to be the agent of change. I find Pierre Pradervand's Listening to Africa to be aptly titled. Africa has much to teach us, about achieving consensus, about giving, about patience, about relating to the elderly and vitality under duress -- if we can listen.
Africa can teach us about time... time that is not tied to the pursuit of objects and money; but to an openness and spontaneity -- the time of just being and having relationships, rather than doing or achieving. Above all, it is the time of the present moment, of living in the now, rather than in a constant projection into the future... Africa has a unique and profound sense of kairos (the master moment of golden opportunity). If it is true that the continent needs to master chronos (the tick-tock that keeps us rushing from one appointment to another), without being mastered by it, we need African kairos more.
And Africa does more than teach in a didactic sense. As you enter into its life, she imposes change on you the way strong African fingers break off a piece of cornmeal sahdza and work it into an edible lump, ready to be dipped into hot sauce. In this same sense it functions like the best of teachers. One can only hope that it will retain its cornerstone strength for the good of the human race, right to the end.
* Quoted with the permission of the author...
Lee Beachy
Monday, October 12, 2009
Safe Arrival in Zimbabwe...
Johanna called home for a just a couple of minutes in the early morning hours on 10/12/09 to let us know that she had arrived safely, was doing well, and to wish her brother a happy birthday! Thanks for your prayers and support!
The NH Beachys
The NH Beachys
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)