“a project up our sleeves”
Here’s an old letter, verbatim, from myself in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo home to Mom and Dad in French Cameroun. The year was 1974. I was 17 years old, and in the Congo for boarding school, which I really loved that year.
Oct. 25
Dear Mom and Dad,
The Ali-Foreman fight is Wednesday morning at 4 A.M. and Wednesday is a national holiday. TASOK (The American School of Kinshasa) isn’t having school either. Feeling among the Zairois here runs so pro-Mohammed Ali. I really hope George Foreman makes it out of the stadium alive. Especially if he wins! Boy, it’s going to be a huge unruly mob, and feeling is running very high. Anything could happen, and I hope nothing bad does.
I am not going, though I almost decided to. A lot of my friends are going. It would be so exciting, but I’m going to stick to what I believe about the whole Boxing thing and not support it with my 5 Zaire ticket.
All the same, I hope Foreman wins and not Ali. Ali acts SO terribly big , strutting around, showing off and making fantastic claims about himself. He is so full of pride.
We’ve met a lot of people from Foreman’s camp, mostly his sparring partners and people, many of them black Americans. It’s been very interesting. They come to our basketball games and other things. (Note: what I really meant was that they came to our Friday night school DANCE that week, but since my parents didn’t really approve of DANCING unless it was squaredancing, I decided to get a little vague in my letter.)
One guy is really nice, by the name of Stan Ward. He is one of Foreman’s sparring partners, and another is Terry Lee. But some of the people that the fight has brought here are simply disgusting. A good many of the men in both camps have Zairoise women in tow wherever they go!
Report cards come out next Wednesday. Last week in volleyball intermurals our team moved up from last place to second in the tournament.
Tomorrow afternoon we’ll be playing the teachers.
Today C. and I got mail from you – two letters, since none came last week. When I read about Grandma’s trouble, I thought a pacemaker was a big metal machine that you must be in all the rest of your life, in a hospital, until you die. I was really upset!!
But I found out what is is – just something that they put in, and you can live a normal life. I’m so glad it’s just that. Thank you for the addresse(sic) – I will write her, and I guess we should all be praying for her every day.
It must be very hard to be so old, and still keep living on.
I’m glad Bible Club is working out so well. And D.’s reading. And Mom, I will keep praying about finding time to spend alone with M.
In Political Behavior (NOTE: one of my classes) we’ve got a project up our sleeves. It all started as our teacher’s idea – Bruce Bayliss. It will be authorized and sponsored by the school, and there will be two teachers – Bruce and another one – along. We will (with two or three people in a group) be dropped off for three days at villages, will live and work in the village for three days and will then be picked up again.
We’ll keep journals of all that happens.
The teachers will be close enough for contact if anything should arise and, as I said, we will be in groups.
Could I have your parental permission to do this, if and when the thing actually gets formulated? It would be a wonderful experience, and I would love to have it. Kinda(sic) like what Janet had in Kenya – only probably more primitive. The villages and sites will be checked out by a missionary , and we would be invited to come by the people before we went.
We’d probably have to get some shots or something before we went and we’d carry medicine and first aid stuff in case anything went wrong.
Thanks for sending those color prints! I’ll say goodbye now, cuz(sic) I’m yawning over the page!
Good night!
much, much love,
NiñadeSusOjos
“Be careful what you say”. Getting intentional about not speaking harshly to ourselves inside our own heads.
“We use language, but language also uses us.” – David Posen
There are probably many people who don’t have the tendency to speak harshly to themselves, inside their heads, but I think there are more who do. I’m one of these, and I’m trying to work on it. One of the first things we can do is realize that we’re doing it! Sometimes we’ve become so accustomed to these self-voices inside our own thoughts that we don’t realize we’re being FAR more critical to ourselves than we would ever DREAM of being, even in private thought, to or about anybody else!
On the subject of stress management…
On the subject of stress management Dr. Roger Mellot said, “Identify your values and support them behaviorally”. (Decide what’s important to you, and then live in a way that’s consistent with those values.) – David Posen, M.D.
I’m longing for some more fruit for myself!
“By their fruit you will recognize them. Matthew 7:16. Do people pick grapes from thornbushes, or figs from thistles?” Or guavas from mango trees?
Cochabamba Water Wars Close and Personal
It was the Cochabamba “Water Wars” that month. The government of Bolivia had signed off on a deal with a multinational company that would turn over the rights to 96 percent of the gains from management of citizen’s water to a Britain-based multinational company and raise 9X the citizens’ monthly water bill overnight. Nobody had been consulted; the people were angry, demonstrating and blocking roads by the tens of thousands in the streets of Cochabamba. Bolivia’s president used his authority to try to force the measure through and called the military in, supposedly to bring peace and order but really to force his measure through.
The masses became highly inflamed and more intrepid in their cause when some “franco-tiradores” (sharpshooters), dressed in civilian clothing, caught multiple times on camera and later proven to be military personnel, started mingling among the thousands of civilian protesters and inciting additional fear and death by shooting several people under cover of the general rioting and confusion.
After two weeks of this situation, the food in our home had gotten low, since we had spent most of our time inside, unable to go out in the streets much because of the security risks.
Friday evening I sat up very late listening to the radio. (Television and other media channels had been cut for a few days.) The report was that the conflict was ended and much rejoicing took place; many verbal assurances were repeated that an agreement had been signed and the crisis was over. I went to bed with a little plan hatching in my mind to walk out early to the open air market across the road and buy some food for my children and myself.
Saturday at seven a.m. I grabbed my Bolivia bags, one in each hand, took my key, and walked out our property door, down the street and across the main road where , beyond and a little to the left of some knots of anti-governmental forces holding the bridge, who had been there for several days already, I glimpsed the white muslin portable awnings, bright pyramids of oranges, potatoes, broccoli and lemons and rustic striped burlap sacks of rice, wheat and flours. It looked so peaceful and happy in light of the cabin fever, stress and uncertainty everyone had been going through for two weeks.
I’d no sooner bought a kilo of rice and was in process of loading a dozen green fresh oranges into one of my Bolivia bags, and was chatting with one of my favorite fruit seller ladies when the drum of thousands of stamping feet, all tramping fast in unison, reached our ears. The soldiers were coming!
“Senora! YOU hurry up and run home right NOW,” my fruit seller friend said urgently. “It’s not safe out here for foreigners.”
I was already turning, saying goodbye and walking quietly but quickly toward the big open road that marked the bridge into the center of the city. Reaching it, I turned west and walked two blocks away from the bridge that now had many anti-government men on it, blocking it and holding it against provision of a driving way into the center of the city.
Day-dreaming a little, thinking of other things, I stepped out into the big roadway, to cross over into the blocks where our apartment lies.
Like a breeze quickening from one second to the next, the piercing sound of whistles, shouts, catcalls and jeers filled the air. I glanced up and toward the bridge. More than thirty men, each with a rock, small boulder, or log of wood in their upraised hand, were RUNNING toward me, eyes intent upon my solitary figure crossing the highway! They were all running to attack me, to stone me! In the same split second I realized there were no other pedestrians, and not one vehicle for miles in that wide roadway. I was all alone and, it looked like, about to lose my life in the middle of a Bolivian street riot. The closest of the running men were advancing rapidly – this whole event was going to end very fast now.
I prayed in my heart, just one word – there was no time for more. “Jesus!”
I kept stepping forward, eyes ahead but at the same time, out of the corner of my eye on the side of the road I had walked out from, I saw a lone woman, small, dark, with a single braid of long black hair plaited at the back of her neck and curved forward over one shoulder. She had on old sweatpants and an old gray blouse. There were no other pedestrians in sight on that side of the highway; she stood there all alone. I had not seen her before.
The closest of my attackers, four or five stalwart young men running like the wind, were now within 12 feet of me. I kept walking forward; I was a little more than halfway across, so it made no sense to turn around. I realized I must be breaking some unwritten, unspoken Bolivian rule of riots, by crossing the main road that was being held against the government on that day. I continued to pray to God for His deliverance. All was happening within split seconds.
My would-be attackers were almost upon me. Suddenly I heard a low calm voice speaking. The dark small woman with plaited hair, standing behind me on the edge of that road was speaking to my attackers. I strained my ears to hear the words she said, but I could not quite make them out. Immediately the men slowed their running, lowered their arms with the rocks and huge sticks clutched in their hands, stopped running, turned, laughed and shrugged a bit with each other and began walking back toward their bridge. I continued crossing the road, gained the far curb, breathed my thanks to God and looked across the highway toward where the woman had been standing. There was no one there.
Psalm 9:9 The Lord is a refuge for the oppressed, a stronghold in times of trouble. Those who know your name will trust in you, for you, Lord, have never forsaken those who seek you.
Psalm 91:11 For he will command his angels concerning you to guard you in all your ways; they will lift you up in their hands, so that you will not strike your foot against a stone. You will tread upon the lion and the cobra; you will trample the great lion and the serpent. “Because he loves me,” says the Lord, “I will rescue him; I will protect him, for he acknowledges my name. He will call upon me, and i will answer him; I will be with him in trouble, I will deliver him.”
“Look the Right Way” from “Jesus Today” by Sarah Young
Excellent little devotional. Basically a variation on the “glass half-full/glass half-empty” thing. Ah perspective, it changes everything, well, almost everything. Believers have a huge advantage here, for in the end we KNOW that everything is going to turn out well, even exquisitely. But, even our believing is one hundred percent a GIFT. Have a wonderful day. I’m going to..
“Look the right way! In the world around you, there are vistas of bright beauty as well as dark, ugly wastelands. When you look the right way – toward what is true, noble, lovely – you are encouraged and strengthened. I created you with a great capacity to enjoy beauty and goodness. Your soul resonates with these blessings, drawing strength from them.
As you go through this day you will encounter things that make you cringe, things that are wrong or ugly. Deal with these as you must, but do not let them become your focus. Remember that I am with you, and listen to Me. Hear Me saying time after time, ‘Look the right way’.
There is beauty not only in the visible world but also in what is unseen. This world in its fallen condition can never satisfy you fully. You yearn for perfection, and I am the fulfillment of that deep longing. I am perfect in every way, yet I am able to stay close to you as you walk through this sin-stained world. So look the right way – toward blessings, toward Me – and the Joy of My Presence will shine upon you.”
Philippians 4:8 NKJV Finally, brethren, whatever things are true, whatever things are noble, whatever things are just, whatever things are pure, whatever things are lovely, whatever things are of good report, if there is any virtue and if there is anything praiseworthy – meditate on these things.
A Katie Davis Quote
“I have learned that I will not change the world. Jesus will do that. I can, however, change the world for one person. So I keep loving one person at a time. Because this is my call as a follower of Jesus.” – Katie Davis, from Brentwood, Tennessee. Now residing in Uganda, Africa. 24 years old.
Dreams, Oprah Winfrey and Missing my Kid Families
I read this quote about good dreams, by Oprah, and I immediately thought, ” That is exactly what it’s like for me when I dream a wonderful dream about living right next door to my kid families, and I’m missing more time and presence with them so much, and YES – this is IT!”
“THE BEST THING ABOUT DREAMS IS THAT FLEETING MOMENT, WHEN YOU ARE BETWEEN ASLEEP AND AWAKE WHEN YOU DON’T KNOW THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN REALITY AND FANTASY, WHEN FOR JUST THAT ONE MOMENT YOU FEEL WITH YOUR ENTIRE SOUL THAT THE DREAM IS REALITY, AND IT REALLY HAPPENED!” – Oprah Winfrey 
J.R.R. Tolkien
“If more of us valued food and cheer and song above hoarded gold, it would be a merrier world.”
Code Red Malnutrition in 13 Out of 15 Children
P. and I remain, for the moment, out of Bolivia and so, when an email in response to one of mine, from my colleague with the children, “S.”, popped up in my inbox the other day I eagerly opened it and read her news on how the kids are doing.
I knew they were malnourished. How could I not, working and playing with them each afternoon, feeling their thin arms hug me, their frail short bodies, some with distended bellies, pressing up against me – hungry for love.
Hungry, also, for milk and eggs and meat, it turns out. “S.” runs this whole outreach on a TOTAL shoestring. It’s amazing to me how far she stretches a peso. I HAD noticed, however, that, in feeding 57 children free breakfast, morning snack, noonday main meal, afternoon snack and a light supper the protein foods in the program seemed to be almost non-existant.
Yup. Dear, older, gracious Dr. Z. (I know him, from a different outreach years back), gave 15 of our younger kids in the program free medical checkups last week. Being a responsible M.D., he also ordered extensive lab work for each child, and that part of things had to be paid for. Hence, “S.” managed this for only 15 children and not the full 57.
13 out of 15 tested in the “severe malnutrition” range. They need some milk and eggs and meat in their diets, not to mention more green vegetables.
I share this as a prayer request.
I hope someday you grasp how truly loved you are. – GOD
I hope someday you grasp how truly loved you are. – GOD
An Excerpt from Sarah Young’s Book, “Jesus Today”.
“Cast all your care on Me, for I am watching over you. I am actually a very good Catcher, so throw Me your cares – your anxieties and concerns – with abandon………
Instead of mulling over your problems, look to Me lightheartedly and say, “Catch, Jesus!” Then fling your cares into My strong waiting Hands.” p. 324.
Excerpt from Kim Tew’s book, “Tears Water the Seeds of Hope”
“But we must come to terms with the fact that the word “faith” itself means believing in things that we have reasonable cause to accept as true, even though there is no proof. If we could knock on heaven’s door and simply ask God for the answers to all of our questions and doubts, then our trust in God would not be by faith, but by knowledge. We have incomplete understanding by our nature as human. If we presume to comprehend all matters of God and eternity from our limited perspective, then we are like the ant that thinks all there is to the universe is what he can perceive.” (from Chapter 15)
A VIGNETTE of WHAT I SAW AND HEARD ONE DAY
Four weeks ago or so, let’s see – it was RIGHT before CARNAVAL (Mardi Gras?) which is, of course, right before Lent starts, I was doing my regular daily afternoon four mile walk through an auto parts section of the huge native market of my city ( sometimes known as “the cancha”).
Threading and picking my fast-walking way around and over stacks of black tires and wooden trays and boxes of knuts and bolts, and people, I brushed right past two little girls standing, facing each other, both about five years old.
As I continued to keep a sharp eye out for obstacles (bags of auto air fresheners in the shapes of pine trees, held together in large bushy cellophane clusters. home-assembled car first-aid kits, and small metal fire extinguishers) that might hit me in the head, I saw these little girls out of the corner of my eye playing a delighted CLAPPING GAME with each other.
These are the words they were chanting as they clapped each others’ hands and danced.
“Chicha in the MORNING!
Chicha for LUNCH!
Chicha for my SUPPER!
Chicha for my SNACK!!!”*
What is “chicha”? In Cochabamba and Sucre “chicha” is a traditional strong and alcoholic corn beer.
Our Pull toward God
Have you ever wondered WHY every person on the face of the earth yearns toward God in some degree or another?
It comes out when one watches or works with little kids – their desire towards God, their enchantment, enthusiasm and interest in the things of God is not yet callused over, bruised away or utterly confused by politics or life in general.
Psalm 28:2 “Hear my cry for mercy as I call to YOU for help, as I lift up my hands toward YOUR MOST HOLY PLACE.”
Letting Ourselves be Shepherded
“The LORD is my Shepherd; I have everything I need.” Psalm 123:1, NLT
Psalm 28:9 “Save Your people and bless Your inheritance. Be their Shepherd and carry them forever.”
Could it be that WE, who believe, are God’s “INHERITANCE”? The Bible contains these statements in many different places. I wonder why the God who made the universe would want ME as his inheritance? An “inheritance” is a very precious thing!
And, God must really love me A LOT if He wants to shepherd me! (God knows, I do need shepherding in my heart!)
An old book, “The Lower Levels of Prayer” by George Stewart
This book was published in 1939 and is now out of print. It was published in Scotland.
Here’s a quote from it that I love.
“God is a seeking God, Whose love watches for any movement of man’s spirit toward Him and responds to that.” p. 18.
offering hot meals to glue-sniffers in the name of Christ
Our lives touched briefly, thrice.
Our lives touched briefly, thrice.
The first time occurred a number of years back, during a period of about 4 years when I was immersing myself every Sunday afternoon for four hours in a church of about 150 monolingual Quechua persons who met to study and worship God one half a block from the central square of our city, Cochabamba, Bolivia.
I’d set myself to become part of this group of people partly because I wanted to learn deeply and well the Quechua language, which is not one of the easier world languages. My personal goals for fluency in it were high, and I felt I needed more conversational and listening exposure, combined with an experience of sustained immersion in an authentic Quechua cultural context, in order to progress effectively toward reaching my foreign language and culture acquisition goals.
Every week during that time frame there were visitors from several different rural areas of Quechua Bolivia and a weather-worn woman in, maybe, her early sixties, with a strong distinctive face and her older, infirm-seeming husband always beside her, and a string of children and grandchildren always with them, their whole family from Pocoata, was one of them.
So, that was the first time our lives touched briefly.
The second and third times, the most significant times for me, were when one afternoon a year or so after this, I stood working in my kitchen upstairs preparing an evening meal for some guests who were invited to come over, and for our own family. I’d been helping our kids with their homeowork, getting in my self-set quota of self-set language study hours and calling some ladies about information for our weekly study.
My heart sank a little when the property front gate bell buzzed twice, then thrice, for our apartment.
Setting the timer for the bread loaves I’d just shoved in the oven, I opened the door and raced down the creaky rainforest mahogany front stairs, flew across the tile portico, the cement walkway and impatiently jerked open the heavy property gate.
“YES??”
I took in the petite, weary-faced figure in front of me. Her face had deep lines and crows’ feet etched by the harsh Andes sun and a harsher lifetime of toil among the rocks and clods of dirt on the hardscrabble Quechua farms of the high mountain regions. Dirt lay under her fingernails and a strong unwashed odor emanated from her. Hers was traditional rural Quechua clothing – homespun wool, coarse, faded and worn, undyed. Some of it looked like rags.
Her long black hair, streaked with gray, greasy and smelly, lay parted in the middle and falling down her back in two thin scraggly braids.
Black eyes, deep-set and infinitely tired, looked into mine.
I remember glancing down and noticing that her little wide bare feet were encased in mud-crusted coarse homemade sandals made of recycled rubber truck tires pounded together with cheap iron nails.
Her toenails were long and scraggly and even dirtier than her fingernails.
She carried no purse or wallet – only a faded and ragged striped homemade carry-cloth (agwayo), resting on her back, the thick ends knotted across one frail shoulder.
“Good afternoon, my sister.” In Quechua.
“Good afternoon, Sister. How are you?”
“My husband is very ill. He almost died. I took him to the doctor and, the doctor says he must have an operation to take out his gall bladder, tomorrow. We don’t have the money to pay for the operation. May I borrow one hundred dollars from you? I promise to pay it back in exactly two weeks from today.”
Socially acceptable REASONS for turning her down were already on the tip of my tongue when, from the outside street I heard footsteps approaching, then saw the tall form of my husband come up beside the woman and he greeted her in Quechua. She re-iterated her story , and he told her “YES”, went and got a one hundred dollar bill, and placed it in her hand!
She thanked us profusely and quickly melted away.
I was VERY ANNOYED with P. and told him so! We both “kissed the money goodbye” forever, since it used to be a common thing in Bolivia for people to come to Northamericans they may have had an acquaintance with, and ask to borrow money, and then not come back again.
Two weeks later, to the same time of the DAY, our doorbell rang again and I flew down those stairs and pulled open the round-topped heavy wood and metal door, expecting my teenage son who had stayed late at school to play basketball.
It was SHE, in the same clothes, same rubber sandals, same raggedness, same smells. She held a crisp one hundred dollar bill in her outstretched hand, and gave it to me.
“Thank you, my sister.”
2 Bolivian Quechua Friends conversing with P. in the Q. language and working on their weaving, the figures of which have been handed down orally and through imitation and practice for a thousand years.
What keeps me going in my writing dreams and goals.
A sense of story and self, shakily intact.
“(Writing) is work and play together.”
“(Writing) is work and play together.” – Anne Lamott, “Bird by Bird’, p. xxix
Some Children
Yesterday was a fun day at the project. Many of the 57 children were missing since it is still only two days past Carnaval Week and lots of the children’s moms remain out on drunken binges or are recovering from same. We all worked on school homework for the first hour, then I taught a flannelgraph Bible lesson with object lessons on seeds and plants, music and other supplementary activities. We broke out my new Crayolas from the States for them too.
Later, a cute sturdy little dark girl from the intermediate group, above the littlest ones where I’d been yesterday, poked her head in the doorway, black eyes just DANCING with excitement.
“Tía N., your…..uh…ohhh……ummm (she seemed to be searching for a word).
“My husband?”
She pounced on the word with relief. “Yes! Your HUSBAND. He’s HERE. He’s out at the street, in an AUTO!”
As I asked her if she had another minute free, to return to the street and ask my HUSBAND if he wanted to come in, and she accepted and ran off with alacrity to do so, another tiny girl, R., from next to me in the youngest children’s group, grabbed my hand and looked up with wide eyes, full of wonder, into my face.
“Tía N., you have a HUSBAND (UN ESPOSO)?? I thought you didn’t!”
P. then appeared in the doorway to the room, already with about 12 little kids hanging on to him. The kids chorused a respectful greeting to him, then S. and most of the children escorted him all around the place to show him EVERYTHING, while I finished gathering things up and straightening the room in order to leave.
Out at the car (I was amazed to see P. had dared to leave the car, even for a few minutes, in THAT street) the children piled around the car. P. opened the hatchback in order to put in the carry-bag and the bulky flannelgraph board. Immediately 8 kids melted into the wayback of the vehicle together with the flannelgraph board! But when P. gently asked them to please get out, they all did!
R. said to me, big eyes shining, “It’s a LUXURY AUTO!!”
Inwardly, I was just dying because our vehicle is a 27-year-old Mitsubishi short-wheelbase “jeep” model!
When I gravely told R. and the other children that the “auto” was 27 years old, E., a gentle boy 10 or 11 years old, marveled, “But, it looks like NEW.”
It’s amazing and humbling to me to see these children’s perspectives on things – to glimpse the world through their eyes. Our vehicle has scratches and dents and faded paint, but yesterday it was not in its normal state of being heavily coated with dust inside and out, since we had just sprung for a good washing, over last weekend.
When we said goodbye to the children and carefully started the engine to drive away, I turned around peering out the back window to make SURE no more children were still clinging to the back and sides of the vehicle to “catch a ride”, so I saw that one young obviously drunken and hung-over mom had strolled out behind the car from the ale-house across the narrow road, and was glaring suspiciously at all that was going on. She was puffy-faced and bleary-eyed. A waif of a slim braid-headed girl child from our project, ran over and put her arm out to her – “Hi Mom!”.
Quick thoughts generated this morning by seeing this photo.
P. and I are away from Bolivia at the moment on a work trip but as my eye fell on this photo today I thought of “our” 57 children, ages 3 through 18, in the “barrio” who are in “our” educational support, health, nutrition and Bible Truths program.
Before I left there the other day, in helping with the four-plus days/week teaching and activities programs with these children, during afternoon snack time in the youngest group ( 3 through 6 ) we were all relaxing and munching on our tangerines together, yummy juice running down our chins.
I happened to ask one of the six year-olds, “Have you ever gone to a movie in the movie theater, or seen a movie?”
“No.”
“Have you ever had a pukacapa (the round traditional Bolivian snack in the photo)?”
“No, I haven’t. What is a pukacapa?”
“How about a cuñape? (the lighter-colored round manioc flour and cheese pastry)?
“Oh, I HEARD about those one time, at school! They’re from jungle Bolivia, right?”
“Have you ever had a salteña (the other crescent shaped, traditional Bolivian meat pie in the photo)?”
“No.”
All of “our” children in the program are children of sex trade workers caught in situations of human trafficking themselves, as adults. Each of these adults, the parents of “our” children in the program, are preyed upon or predator and/or both at the same time.
My colleague, and the founder of this outreach, S., tells me that as she walks through the neighborhoods around the center daily and weekly, she very often, almost every day, sees our children in the long evening and holiday times in the streets, left to their own devices as the long hours wear themselves away, the children locked outside their own doors and gates by their own parents, wandering, sitting bored, making up little street games with each other, and living by the month and year without regular meals or nice snacks or “specials” for activities.
During these days in which I have to be far away from the children while P.and I. work on other aspects of our jobs, I can still be praying for the kids. I believe God hears and answers prayer. I will continue to pray for “my” children each day..
GlobeRoamer 