Old Stuff

I cracked open my journal from January 2008, the month I traveled to South Africa.  I have not thought about the trip in over a year; I think I was anxious to move on from it.  Today, though, I felt a desire to remember what I was thinking during those bewildering few weeks. The eclectic nature of the following 'snapshots' is a very truthful reflection of my experience of contrast throughout the entire country.  Here goes. 

Babes

 Today I sat with a woman dying of AIDS. Her name was Babes, and her smile was like a crescent moon in an otherwise diminished face. Babes asked me questions even though the process of forming words seemed laborious.  She talked more than I did, because finding language in my brain was like dipping a bucket in a dry well.  

 I perched like a nervous bird on her bed, awkward because of my backpack and because of the dirty sheets, and I am embarrassed to say that the first thing I thought as she reached for my hand was, "What if I have an open cut where the virus could creep in?"  (the answer was yes and no: yes, a small cut on my pointer finger, and no, her hands were eerily clean and elegant.)  

It felt like acting on television.  Was everyone in the room watching the white woman crouch over the dying coloured one?  My colleagues receded into the background. Visitors and nurses watched silent as gravestones.

Her fragility was luminous. Maybe people close to death get a little extra beauty, or maybe beauty ordinarily hidden by the trappings of daily life shines more clearly because it is all that is left?  Either way, Babes is (though now she is probably a "was") beautiful in the truest sense. 

How does beauty accompany death?

Cranky

I don't want to go back to the home stay where I feel awkward and cramped. I don't want to make conversation with our hosts. I want my bed and my blanket and to make my own food and not be around any people. I don't want to eat whatever the hell it is Touma is making.  I am tired of meat I don't recognize.   

I want an apple. 

Today I am sick of South Africa. 

African Hope

 The world is a cold gray ember (I read yesterday in Gilead) that God blows into a flame which flares and burns for a moment, or a day, or a lifetime, and then dies leaving no sign that it was ever related to fire.  But the flame does come, and it takes courage both to witness the transfiguration and to hope for another. 

Perhaps in Africa I need more hope, not less.  

I have been reading in Isaiah and the passages of restoration and redemption are almost painful for all that they seem so unfulfilled.  How does the person selling ostrich feathers and beads for a living interpret the rich promises of safety and blessing?  Was Isaiah a false prophet?  Or, for the more sophisticated, a prophet writing from specific context and history?  Or, did he dream of a future reality still undisclosed?  

Or maybe their lives have a richness that I in my relative wealth and busyness cannot fathom.  

Maybe hope has nothing to do with apparent reality.  

Naughty Monkeys

Andi left her window open and the monkeys got in.  They got the marshmallows and the instant coffee and left sticky, caffeinated fingerprints on her wall.  "Naughty monkeys," said Zama. "Damn rodents," said Andi.