two and two makes five

What's that? A blog post? I'm off to Zim again!

Who knows? This might be the start of more blogging... then again, maybe not.

I'm off to Zimbabwe today to deliver three ServLife interns to Musha Wevana home for children - I absolutely love hanging out around this tree while singing and dancing with the kids. I'll see those beautiful children again in a couple of days and I'll see South Africa again next week.

Vusi will be in Gainesville on Sunday afternoon (attention people of Gainesville, Durham, and other great places)

Vusi Mahlasela (no, not Vusi Nicholson) is touring America with Bela Fleck (a "banjo virtuoso," apparently) and is going to be performing near you soon! Vusi Mahlasela is one of South Africa's great musicians and singer/songwriters. His music is generally in a folk style - his guitar and his amazing voice singing together in a number of South African languages - and is worth making an effort to hear.

You can buy tickets online to the following shows:

• Kansas City today
• Knoxville on Friday
• Savannah on Saturday
• Gainesville on Sunday
• Durham on Tuesday
• Nashville on Wednesday
• and so on... (Philly, New Bedford, Boulder) 

I know it is late notice, but I also know I have great, music-loving readers in and around a few of the listed cities. I can't vouch for the banjo-man, but you won't regret seeing Vusi Mahlasela.  

Get your ServLife Africa Podcast now!

Oh - and d/l the latest episode of the ServLife Africa podcast... should be up now, or very shortly. While you're at it, d/l the first two episodes that you didn't listen to yet. :)

http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?id=300695464 

or 

feed://feeds.feedburner.com/ServlifeAfricaPodcast

Stuff I Never Blogged About

When one blogs as sporadically as I do, one is bound to have tons of ideas for blog posts that never made it online. Lucky you, I've decided to post again - but the cheap and easy way by clearing out my blog idea folder. It is a very big folder that only grows and never shrinks... here is one small step toward the shrink.

• Eberhard Arnold's free .pdf version of the sayings of early Christians, including Polycard, Origen, Clement, and other people with fun-to-say names. Yes, a free .pdf book. What are you waiting for?
• The best article from issue 6 of theotherjournal.com of Mars Hill Graduate School. Issue 6 was all Africa, the best article was by Emmanuel Katongole, and The Other Journal is good to read. How this didn't ever merit a post, I have no idea. 
• Born, raised, and married in a refugee camp - the title pretty much sums up this story. This is real life, and I have no idea how to communicate this reality to Americans.
• A short article on controversial "slum tourism" in Kenya. This hits us as well - we don't take visitors to the shacks, slums, and townships "just to look." Well meaning, kind hearted, caring people want to see what it looks like in the informal settlements, but it's hard to find a way to let them know that it isn't cool to drive through and look at poverty. Another dilemma.
• I found the rejesus "Faces of Jesus" gallery fascinating, which led me to plan to explore the rejesus site. Turns out I never did that, although I was interested enough to plan to do it and then blog about it. So maybe someone out there will figure out what rejesus is all about and let me know. Thanks.
• I've read lots and lots about our old home, New Orleans, which as you may have heard, had a bit of water around just before we left for South Africa. Amy and I loved most everything about New Orleans, which made articles like this one (from almost two years ago) really sad and worth blogging about.  
• I also wanted to write more about Juba, South Sudan, which led me to this article describing the money changers under yellow umbrellas with big stacks of lots of different kinds of money. I've told lots of people my stories about these guys with stacks of money under umbrellas, and I finally found a legitimate news source to back me up. I thought that was worth a blog post. Alas, it only got a bullet point.  

  

Seriously, that didn't make a dent in my "want to blog about" pile. And that pile doesn't even include actual original ideas, which is a whole separate pile that I keep avoiding because you'll all be mad at me when you find out what I really think. :) 

Which leads to this question - did anyone actually read anything linked in this post? If so, what? And why did you choose that link? I'd love to know, because I'd like some help rethinking this blog. Until then, I'll just keep digging through that folder of old ideas that never made the cut.

A Month and Seven Days

It has been a month and seven days since my last post on this lonely blog. In case you were wondering, based on my last post, I'm actually back from Zimbabwe. Have been for a while.

A lot has happened in a month and seven days. Speaking of Zimbabwe, there is a new "unity government" with power shared between Robert Mugabe's ZANU-PF party that has been in government since 1980 and the two factions of the MDC. The MDC party(ies) holds an extra seat in Cabinet and the majority in Parliament, but no one believes Mugabe is down and out. We are hopeful that a new era has begun in Zimbabwe, but in any case, this welcome news is just the beginning of long road toward recovery. Keep up with Zimbabwe here.

On the home front, we've been busy with preparing for new business skills training, this time with a local partner. The sponsorships and Kids' Clubs in South Africa are on track, again, with local churches involved, and we're busy planning another Umzimba African Missional Theology Conference for July... yes, led, taught, and developed by local pastors and leaders. In South Africa, they say "local is lekker," and we believe that's true. Whatever we can do to empower and equip local churches to lead the way toward growing churches and sustainable development, we will do. 

ServLife is growing. We have new staff in Indianapolis HQ supporting us and a new West Coast coordinator. This is exciting, and we are off to Thailand next week for a time of team building and strategic planning with ServLife team members from Asia and the USA. 

Vusi is growing too. Seriously, he's the world's biggest and cutest baby. We can't believe how blessed we are to be his parents. He is a great gift, and we love him like crazy. Don't know if it will be before we get back from Thailand, but I'll post some pictures. You'll agree - he's off-the-charts cute.

And my parents are in town. To prove it, I'm posting a picture of my Mom that I took on my cell phone. Mostly, I'm just posting that to get her back for nagging about my lack of blogging. Love you Mom! Great to have them around, just hanging out, getting to know Vusi (and spoiling him, of course!), and helping out. They've been to all the tourist hot spots before, so this has been a great trip for Gram and Pop to spend time with their newest grandson.

Finally, I'm a little unsure about the direction this blog should take in the future. It has gotten pretty stale of late, with a few personal updates, a few ministry updates, and lots of links to information about Africa that you probably didn't read. Hmmm... this question is still rumbling around in my brain, so stay tuned.

Thanks to both of you, dear readers, for sticking around. We'll see if we can't spruce this blog up in the coming months.  :)

Off to Zim... Again

Back to Zimbabwe tomorrow for the second time in as many months. The crisis there deepens daily, and we are fortunate to have some new friends making the trip with me, as they have raised a nice chunk of money to help out the kids in the church home for orphans with whom we partner. 

Not that I ever blog anymore, but the blog will be on hold for a week while I'm away. In the meantime, here are today's newspaper stories from Zimbabwe...

• Armed police patrol as Zim crisis deepens 
• Zim doctors vow to uphold strike

Here's hoping Uncle Bob had a nice overseas holiday while his countrymen starved.

 

Last Zimbabwe Post of the Year

The brother and family arrive in a few hours. I haven't been grocery shopping, haven't cleaned the house, and generally haven't prepared anything at all. So instead of posting, I'm passing on four "must-read" links. Take a minute between glasses of champagne to read and remember Zimbabwe - there is no celebration there tonight.

• "How Mugabe Gets His Bullets" - The UN reports that despite all sorts of bans and sanctions, the Mugabe government in Zimbabwe is getting Chinese made ammunition and weapons through third-party shipping across the DRC and other neighboring countries.
• "New $10 Billion Bill" - Whoops - forgot to post this article from 19 December. Too bad it is already so out of date. In the 12 days since then, Zimbabwe has released a new $50 Billion note. Of course, it is not the same $50 Billion note that is sitting on my desk. That is from earlier in the year, before 10 zeroes came off the currency, but from after the first zero slashing that dropped three digits. Going back to the pre-zero-slashing days of a couple of years ago, the newest Zimbabwean note is actually a $500,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 bill. I have no idea what that number is, but it is the true reflection of the currency's worth - 50 billion with the thirteen artificially removed zeroes added back on.
• "Dollar is Key To Zimbabwe Survival" - A realistic account of how difficult it is to survive in Zimbabwe these days without access to hard currency (ie, the US Dollar). Without USD or South African Rand or Botswanan Pula, one can't buy anything. Now a shortage of USD in Zim is causing massive US Dollar inflation in the economy there.
• "The Death Throes of Harare's Hospitals" - The Harare central hospitals are closed. Closed. There is no specialist care available in the country. Surgery has stopped. Families were called to pick up their patients. One doctor puts it bluntly, "Everyone is being referred to private clinics, and if you don't have money, you die." 

The last two stories I heard repeatedly on my last trip to Zimbabwe a few weeks ago. I interviewed three anonymous Zimbabweans about their lives - a private school teacher, a government doctor, and a poor working woman. I could tell their stories, but you wouldn't believe me. Instead, listen to their stories on the new ServLife Africa Podcast here.

Get the podcast - the quality isn't the greatest, but you need to hear these three stories.

 

A Very Southern Christmas

I'm used to celebrating warm Christmases. After all, for 29 consecutive years, I spent Christmas day in the American South - specifically in Florida, Georgia, or (I think maybe once or twice) in South Carolina. It was possible for Christmas to be cold in Georgia, but not that cold, and in Florida, a cold Christmas was rare at best. I never dreamt of a white Christmas, I never heard sleigh bells in the snow, I never roasted chestnuts on an open fire, and I certainly never understood why any old man would wear such a thick fur-lined velvet suit in a Florida mall. I remember that it dipped below freezing one year on Christmas and we ran the garden hose over the deck the night before to make icicles. That happened once. I remember several years when the neighborhood kids quit playing outside with our new toys because it was too hot and went swimming instead. I suppose that to some that wouldn't seem like Christmas, but it does to me - that was Christmas in the South.

But this will be our third "Very Southern Christmas." You Yanks just had the winter solstice - the shortest day of the year and the beginning of winter. The sun sets well past 8PM here now and it's time to hit the beach. Our roads are packed with the upcountry hordes swarming to the ocean for summer holidays. All my sweaters are packed away and I've only been wearing shorts and sandals for a while now. My Christmas dinner will be spent with friends outside around a braai - the South African grill/cookout. It's summer and it's Christmas.

Even though I've had many more hot Christmases than cold, a summer Christmas is altogether different. Even in Florida, summer and winter have a different rhythm. And there was at least the potential of a cold snap around Christmas. Evergreen trees and warm drinks and crackling fires and songs of snow weren't entirely out of place - we knew they made sense somewhere nearby, somewhere familiar, at that moment.

The "colonial" Christmas, if I can call it that, is out of rhythm, out of place, out of tune, and is making me feel out of sorts. Our Very Southern Christmas is imported from Somewhere North and still involves men in furry suits and scenes of snow and warm drinks and fat Christmas hams. It doesn't feel right.

So this Christmas, I've decided to embrace summer. I won't sing of decking any halls with holly, won't drink any warm drinks, won't wear an atrocious sweater with snowflakes on it, won't decorate an inside tree when the garden outside is full of flowers, and I won't sip eggnog and sing carols around a fire. And I won't be a Scrooge either - I'll just be enjoying my summer, and the kind of Christmas that is called for in the summer. Maybe I'll learn to surf.

Have a very Merry Christmas, whether warm or cold, whether Northern or Southern Hemisphere, regardless of your customs or traditions. I'm starting to get the hang of this new Very Southern Christmas...

Gugu's my new friend...

This is Gugulethu (Goo-goo-lay-too), or Gugu for short. At least that's what he is called at Musha Wevana children's home in Zimbabwe where he now lives. Gugu has got to be one of the cutest little two year olds I've met - he loves attention, climbing up into my lap and perching himself there for the duration of each of my visits to his home.

Gugulethu isn't the name given to him by his mother - no one knows that name anymore. Gugu was with his mother when she went to the local hospital late one night looking for treatment. When his mother snuck out in the early hours of the morning, she left Gugu behind - no doubt wracked by guilt and shame, but so near death and with no means to provide for her son that she felt there was no alternative. The Zimbabwean hospital had no food - "not a single bite," I was told by the doctor - to give to Gugulethu, so he was brought to the Musha Wevana home run by friends of ours at a local church. The home is already overcrowded - 20 children have been permanently added since September - but it is the only place in town where Gugu had a chance at survival. 

The desperation in Zimbabwe has reached a new level that I had not seen before - children are routinely left in hospitals, city parks, and even open fields by mothers and caregivers unable to supply even one more meal or one more drink of milk or clean water. Knowing their child might die abandoned must rank as a better option than facing the certainty of watching the child starve in the parents' care. The fortunate ones are found and brought to places like Musha Wevana. The others are buried in unmarked graves when their bodies are found. 

This is the reality of today's Zimbabwe. ServLife is partnering with the local church charged with the care of the 84 (and increasing) children at Musha Wevana, helping to provide food, shelter, clothing, medical care, and the hope of an education in a loving, Christian environment. It only takes $30 a month to assist the church in their work - please become a sponsor today. There are still around 30 children from the original group in need of sponsors - only when they are supported can we begin to find sponsors for the children like Gugulethu... my newest friend.

Back from Zimbabwe

I returned home today from a quick trip up to Zimbabwe - so many sad stories to tell - but I am in desperate need of a shower and warm bed. 

For now, I can confirm that this is a lie.