Serendipity or Providence?

ser-en-di-pi-ty: n. -- the occurrence and development of events by chance in a happy or beneficial way

pro-vi-dence: n. -- the protective care of God or of nature as a supernatural power


One of my personal pet peeves is when Christians observe serendipity in their lives and equate it with providence -- as if it's a supernatural leading of God, or at least some indication of God’s will. To do so is not wrong in and of itself. [I would argue that the entire point of the story of Esther in the Bible is, essentially, this very thing. The reader is meant to draw the conclusion that Esther’s story is NOT simply a tale of happy chance, but is rather a remarkable example of God’s intervention in human events for the sake of preserving His people from extinction. Ironically enough, I conclude this even though the book never even once mentions God!] Nevertheless, this practice annoys me because of its imbalance compared to other things that the Bible clearly says ARE God’s will for us, like being sanctified (1 Thess. 4:3-7), being thankful in all circumstances (1 Thess. 5:18), submitting to civil authorities (1 Pet. 2:13-17), or suffering for doing good (1 Pet. 3:13-4:6), and others.

But beyond this, I have a philosophical/theological problem with calling serendipity, "providence," because if we can claim that events of a happy chance are the supernatural will of God, then could we not also claim that events of an unhappy chance are also the supernatural will of God, simply on the basis of the events happening by chance? This is problematic for several reasons, primarily because Jesus Himself directly addresses this very thing on a couple different occasions. For example, Jesus explicitly says that God does not show favoritism with the weather; everyone gets rain sometimes, and everyone gets sunshine sometimes (Matt. 5:45). If it happens to rain on a day when I need it to rain, then by all means I should thank God for the rain, but Jesus’ words hold me back from concluding that the favorable weather is some sort of supernatural occurrence for my personal benefit. Or what might be worse, concluding that an unfavorable chance is somehow the work of God for my personal harm (or the harm of others), which Jesus addresses in Luke 13:1-5. There was a tower in the area of Jerusalem called Siloam that fell and killed 18 people, and Jesus asks a rhetorical question, “Do you think that they were worse offenders than all the others who lived in Jerusalem?” Jesus goes on to say, “No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish.” I take it from these words that Jesus is gently rebuking his audience here, that if you conclude that unhappy chances are somehow the judgment of God (as I heard numerous people claim concerning Hurricane Katrina, as a modern example), then you are the one who needs to repent!

To boil it down, we cannot correctly credit “good” fortune to God’s specific supernatural action any more than “bad” fortune simply on the basis of it being “fortune.” God specifically says in Scripture that He doesn’t act that way. Yet, for all my ranting here, there are times in our lives when we experience serendipity and cannot escape the conclusion that it is God’s providence and not mere happenstance. The books of Esther and Ruth are perhaps the clearest examples of this very thing. This has not happened very often in my life, but there are a few specific incidents that genuinely seem this way to me.

I’ve said all of this as an introduction to telling the story of buying our new vehicle, because the entire story of buying this car has felt so unexpectedly serendipitous that it has sometimes seemed providential. It’s a great story, and it needs to be told. But my conscience demands that I first discuss all of the above before expressing even a glimmer of a hint that it is somehow God’s supernatural will for us to own the vehicle we now own. God doesn’t work that way. We had good fortune to find an amazing bargain for a high quality vehicle, and the story of purchasing this vehicle is simply an awesome story because of the elements of serendipity contained within. So we offer thanks and praise to God, because to do so is both good and right, as the liturgy admonishes us.


And now, the story…

A few weeks ago, I was at my friend Matthew’s house to hang out and play some music. [He plays drums, so we often get together to jam!] Well, we were chatting about our upcoming move, and he asked me what we were going to do with our Honda Civic. I nonchalantly said that we were going to take it to South Africa with us when we moved. He then said, “You know, Joel, you can’t register that vehicle in South Africa, because it’s an import. They won’t register it. You’ll either have to keep it registered here in Swaziland, or sell it and get another car.” I said something like, “Whoa. No, I didn’t know that. I’m really glad you said something.” Well, there’s no way I was going to establish legal residence in South Africa while holding a United States drivers license and driving a Swaziland-registered car. That’s a recipe for disaster anywhere, but even more so in a place like South Africa where encounters with police can be wildly unpredictable. It didn’t take too long to come to the conclusion that we would simply need to sell our Swazi vehicle and get another one.

This was disappointing to me, because we had paid cash for our Civic, and it’s nowhere near the end of its useful life. [My goal was to drive the Civet (that’s what we call the Honda, because we’ve taken it so many places that it probably shouldn’t be driven — but hey, this is Africa! If you’ve never heard of a civet, it’s a small, African mountain cat) until it died, because car repairs are almost always cheaper than new cars.] But Allison and I had been talking about possibly growing the family, in which case we would need a bigger vehicle anyway. Furthermore, a number of our friends have expressed interest in coming to visit us once we move to Stellenbosch, and we wanted to have room in our vehicle to carry passengers. So in the end, perhaps it wasn’t such a bad time to upgrade our vehicle anyway.

So I began searching for a vehicle in our price range with capacity for at least 6 passengers and less than 200,000 km “on the clock” (that’s what they say here). Specifically, I was hoping to find a Toyota, either a Condor or Avanza, which are medium-sized crossover vehicles that seat either 7 or 8, depending on the specific model. The selection was pretty slim, and there was nothing that really stood out as a terrific value. But there was another problem. As Allison and I continued talking about it, she communicated that she was really worried about driving a manual transmission, and (as far as I could tell) all those vehicles were manual transmission. She really preferred an automatic transmission vehicle if we could find it. So I adjusted the parameters on the Auto Trader search engine for automatic transmission, and it came back with 200+ vehicles in the whole country of South Africa. I began paging through them all.

This was Monday evening of the week before last. There were some decent candidates, but they were all too far away to make the purchasing practical. Again, nothing was standing out until I saw a 2006 Volvo XC-90 2.5T 7-seater with 184,000 km (about 117,000 miles) which had had one owner and full service record for sale at a dealership in Johannesburg, about a 4 hour drive away. I immediately picked up the phone and called the salesman, even though it was after hours. He answered and told me that the car was still available. I told him that I was interested and would call him back at 8am sharp to discuss the vehicle.

In the meantime, I began researching. Having rebuilt the engine of a Volvo sedan I previously owned, I knew without a doubt that the high mileage would not be a major concern. If taken care of properly, Volvo engines run cleanly for a long time. Their safety record is impeccable, and their cars are both well-designed and well-built. I carefully read all the online review sites I could find on that particular year and model, and while some reviews were mixed, most all commenters were very bullish on the ’06 XC-90 2.5T and included no major mechanical complaints. Normally, we would be priced out of that vehicle, but this particular dealership was trying to get their stock off the lot and was having a massive sale. This particular car was priced in the same range as the Toyotas I was looking at earlier, low enough that we could pay cash for it and not have to finance it. Allison and I talked about it at length that evening, and we decided that if I felt good talking to the salesman about it on the phone, then I would travel to Joburg the next day to look at it and buy it.

Now it just so happened ... that my friend Matthew had just started a new job and needed to drive to Joburg the following day for corporate training to last the remainder of the week. So I called him up and asked if I might be able to catch a ride with him in the morning. He said yes, of course. I phoned the salesman in the morning, and he gave me the whole rundown. It had been previously owned by an employee of the dealership and had blown a gasket, so he traded it in. The dealership had the engine rebuilt and was selling the vehicle nearly at cost because of the amount of cars that they simply needed to get sold. Also, there was a 1-year warranty on the major mechanical engine components following the rebuild. I told him that I was coming to look at it that day and would probably buy it if I liked what I saw.

Within an hour my friend Matthew picked me up, and we had a fantastic drive, just enjoying each other’s company and chatting about everything that 30-somethings men talk about (you know, mostly telling stories of dumb things we did when we were younger). Truthfully, I couldn’t have asked for a better way to spend a 4-hour commute. The dealership was only a few miles from where he needed to go, so he even dropped me off! I met up with the salesman, and we went out to look at the Volvo. I told him that I wanted to inspect the car thoroughly, and he said that he had to talk to his manager about something anyway, so he let me have at it. I dug my penlight out of my bag, got down on the ground, and started looking over every inch of the undercarriage, starting at the front left corner and working my way around the car counterclockwise. Everything was clean and tight, no body damage, the interior was immaculate, even the tread on the tires looked fairly new. As I came around to the front right corner, I saw some fluid on the bottom side of the plastic shield guarding the engine. I dabbed it with my finger. Motor oil. The salesman came back then, and I told him that I’d found an oil leak. We opened the hood, and I could see oil on the right side motor mounts as well, but it was impossible to tell where it was coming from.

I went inside to meet the sales manager and have a chat with him about it. I told him I thought I wanted to buy the vehicle, but that I wanted the oil leak fixed first. He answered that he would have to send the car back to the mechanic who rebuilt the engine, and I was free to go along if I wanted. So the salesman and I hopped in and drove it down to the shop of a very pleasant mechanic named Willie (pronounced “vee-lee”). He and his assistants ran the car up on the lift and started removing guards and covers in an attempt to find the leak. I watched them work for about 15 minutes or so, then Willie decided that there was a good many more parts he would have to remove to find the leak. He said he needed three days to be able to take it down enough to find the leak, fix it, and then test it to ensure that the leak was fixed. I phoned Allison to give her the rundown, and we decided that we would wait the three days for them to fix the leak, and then buy it. So I returned to the sales manager and paid a small deposit for him to hold the car for me, then the salesman dropped me off at my friend Matthew’s hotel.

By this time it was nearly 5pm, much too late for me to catch the bus back to Swaziland, so I needed to stay overnight somewhere. I didn’t want to pay to stay in the ritzy hotel where Matthew was staying, but I remembered a place where I had stayed last year when I came to Joburg to take the GRE exam. It was a backpackers place that rented cabins for less than $20/night. I met up with Matthew and phoned from his room in the hotel. They had space for me! So Matthew and I hopped in his car, and off we went, GPS in hand.

Now Barefoot Backpackers is on Pretorius Rd. in a suburb of Joburg called Midrand. The problem is that there are three different streets in Midrand called Pretorius Rd. [No lie.] It was raining. And it was rush hour. In Joburg. I don’t know how long us it took us to get to Barefoot Backpackers, but it was much longer than it should have been. And we had great fun the whole time. We eventually got there, I checked in, then we drove off in search of victuals. We found a Debonair’s Pizza that was still open, and had a really meaningful chat while eating dinner. All in all, that day turned out to be the most “just pure fun” I’ve had in quite a while. From my cabin later that night, I sent an email to another friend in the States, telling him that the whole day had come so out-of-the-blue that it felt almost providential. The next morning I took the commuter train to the bus station and hopped the bus back to Swaziland.

 Now, it just so happened ... that another one of my friends here, an expat from Sweden named Matz, was flying in from Nepal and headed back to Swaziland on the same bus! So on the 4 hour ride back, Matz and visited for a good long while and had a great time catching up (I hadn’t seen him since coming back from the States).

[Here, an interlude. In the days while I was waiting for the oil lead to be fixed, I had some restless evenings. It’s hard for me to spend a bunch of cash all in one shot anyway (well, it’s hard for me to spend, period), but it’s tougher to spend money on a vehicle (much less a Volvo!) when there are so many physical needs around us. In a way, this emotional reaction is a healthy one. The presence of poverty in our lives and experience rightly prompts us to examine our consciences, especially in regard to decisions with what we do with money. And this is true regardless of where in the world you live. But there is a flip side to this coin as well. The reality of the world is that there is very little that I can physically do to alleviate suffering from the poverty around me. I know, that doesn’t sound like a very pious thing to say; but I think it’s an important reality to accept for someone to be effective in the kind of environment in which we live. There is not just a practical reason for this (burn-out), but also a theological reason. I don’t save people, Jesus saves people. But as I was weighing all these things in my mind, another thought that came in which I think accords with the truth…

I can’t fix all the money problems in Swaziland, but I can pray and ask God to fix them, and I should do that. And actually, I do do that already. But the lesson for me was deeper than that, I think. The lesson is, when I feel guilty about my position of wealth, the best immediate response is to pray to God. Buying the Volvo is a good use of money: the vehicle will meet our needs for the foreseeable future; it’s a quality vehicle that should last; and we’re not spending any more than we would if we bought a Toyota. And we are actively involved in meeting the physical needs of people around us to the extent that is realistic and (as far as we can tell) mutually beneficial, and even on some occasions, personally sacrificial. I have no reason to feel guilty, and I have every reason to pray. Praying places one’s trust in God, not self. Praying is an action in line with God’s character as the omniscient, omnipresent, and omnipotent Creator of the universe. I can pray for the person I give money to on the street. I can pray for the gogo (i.e. grandmother, or old woman) I pass by whose skin is sun-hardened, her spine permanently bent from labor, her face etched with the creases of life. I can pray for the children I meet in passing. You get the point here; it’s a good lesson.]

Well, it turns out that when the engine was rebuilt some exterior bolts hadn’t been torqued quite up to specs. The mechanic tightened the bolts, cleaned the engine off, and let the thing idle for a day to make sure that the leak was stopped. The following Monday, I got back on the bus to Joburg to test-drive the Volvo. It ran like a dream, and there was no sign of oil anywhere upon returning to the dealership.

As we were walking around finalizing everything that needed to be done to complete the sale, I walked across the new car showroom and happened to glance up and saw this:

Now, it just so happens ... that this is Charm City, USA -- yep, good ol’ Baltimore. Looking north on Light Street from downtown Inner Harbor, to be exact. I instinctively said, “Hey Alecs!” — that was the salesman’s name — “see that? That’s Baltimore, the city I used to live in. I’ve driven on that very street! Crazy! I’m gonna take a photo!” He said something like, “Yeah man, that is crazy!” Obviously, I was more enthused about it than he was, but he appreciated the moment, too.

Serendipity?  Providence?  Either way, it’s a great story.

An hour later, I was driving home in our new used Volvo. Thanks be to God!

A Tin Can, Spinning

You know that bit about how people in dangerous situations seem to experience them in slow motion? Totally true. It’s also true that adrenaline gives you dry-mouth with a really bitter taste. It’s been almost 12 hours since the crash, and I can still taste it. I’m writing down this story now because: 1) I can’t stop thinking about it, and need to talk it out; 2) I’m feeling some funny emotions about the whole thing, which is to be expected; 3) as silly as this might sound, I need affirmation that I did the best I could; and 4) I want to get it down before I forget what happened.

Our ZBC team was driving to a small town called Mliba this morning to hold our monthly class there. We were running behind normal schedule, so our team leader (who was driving) probably was feeling a little rushed. Everyone else was in the car when they picked me up in Manzini at about 7:50am…

[Now before I go on, you need to know that I ALWAYS wear my seat belt under ALL circumstances, and have ever since I attended this seat belt safety seminar in high school that was taught by a state trooper. In the space of less than two hours, he’d told enough stories to convince me that wearing a seat belt in a car is the probably the most important safety precaution in the world. And now I’ve lived one of those stories. It’s because vehicles are designed so that the safest place to be in virtually any accident is in your seat, and seat belts are designed to keep you in your seat regardless of what happens to the vehicle. And not only that, but seat belts also prevent some accidents this way (by keeping the driver in their seat), thereby giving the driver the best chance to control the vehicle for as long as possible.]

…The funny thing about this particular pickup is that I didn’t fasten my seat belt right away (I don’t even remember why). Then, when I noticed that I didn’t have it on, the thought actually went through my mind to leave it off. I have no idea why I thought this, I never have that thought EVER. I have absolutely no clue why it went through my mind on that occasion. Anyhow, I put my seat belt on. And it turns out that if I hadn’t, I might very well have been dead right now. As we pulled out of town and starting going faster, I noticed that the car was shaking a little more than seemed normal. It caused me a little concern, but the driver didn’t seem worried about it, and in Africa you wouldn’t go anywhere if you never traveled in a vehicle that caused a “little concern.” It’s simply a different world here than in developed countries, and it’s difficult to understand unless you’ve spent a good bit of time in Africa.

The accident happened sometime between 8:15 and 8:30am, just outside the village of Luve, which is itself about 15km from Mliba. I was in the front passenger seat (that’s the left side for you Euro/American types), the wife of my team leader was sitting behind me, and one of our students was sitting behind the driver. The driver was wearing a seat belt, but the two women in the back were not. [Another side note: often people do not wear seat belts in Africa, for various reasons. Sometimes there are too many people in the car, sometimes cars are old and the seat belts don’t work, etc.] I don’t know exactly what caused the car to skid, I was looking at my phone at the time and not paying attention to the road. However, my best guess is that something broke on the left rear wheel, which caused the rear of the car to swing wildly to the left. When I felt the car do this, I looked up, and I estimate that we were going at least 100kph (60mph), maybe faster, but I don’t know for sure.

START CLOCK. [I’ll explain what I mean in a minute.]

When I looked up, my analysis of the situation was literally instantaneous. I knew that there was no way that the driver would be able to save the skid, we were about to be catapulted off the road to the right. I could also tell from our speed that the car would roll multiple times once we hit the ditch. The thought that then went through my head was, “I might die right now.” It was really surreal — the only thing I can guess is that adrenaline was already coursing through me — but there wasn’t any emotion attached to the thought at all. No terror, no fear, no panic, nothing like that. It was simply a matter of fact. If I had to describe what I felt in that instant, I would describe it with the phrase, “well, here we go,” although I didn’t have that specific thought at the time.

As we hurtled off the road, I instinctively (not deliberately) raised my right hand above my head to shield myself from the top of the car as we started to tumble. I had my eyes open and my mind was active and alert through the entire crash. It was strange and surreal. In that moment, I lost all perception of everything outside the car, it was as if the universe had shrunk to a car-sized tin can. I even lost perception of the others in the car during that moment — it was just me and a spinning tin can. I was only cognizant of one thought going through my mind, and it almost makes me laugh at (again) how matter-of-fact it was. I thought, “Well, this is what it’s like to be inside a rolling car.” I felt an impact on the roof. No pain. I was still OK, but I knew there would be more. Another impact. Still no pain. Eventually, the tin can stopped spinning. Immediately, my brain told my body, “GET OUT!” It wasn’t a scream like that, but it was not the same matter-of-fact thought as the two previous. I must have unbuckled my seat belt (although I don’t remember doing that) and pulled the door handle. I didn’t expect it to open, but it did. I got out.

STOP CLOCK.

[Now, all of what I just described in the last two paragraphs must have occurred within the span of about three seconds; or at most, five. But it felt like an eternity. I know, that’s what you always hear, right? But here’s the thing. There’s no other way to describe it, really there’s not. I can’t say it felt like three minutes, because it didn’t feel like three minutes. It didn’t feel like three hours. It didn’t feel like three years. The only way to describe it is: it was three seconds, but it felt like an eternity. I was keenly self-aware during the entire crash, and it was exactly like watching it in slow motion. It was, undoubtedly, the most surreal experience of my life.]

The next 20 seconds or so went like this: I looked in the car. I remember feeling afraid of what I would see, but it was almost like the fear was somewhere else at the moment, like it was unimportant just then. I saw the student first. She was alive, moving, and bleeding from her head. But our team leader’s wife was gone. I think I cried out her name, looking for her. She had been thrown from the car, and was on the ground about ten feet behind and to the right of the vehicle. She was moving around and moaning in pain, but no blood that I could see. She was calling out her husband’s name, who had been driving. I came back around to the front of the car to see his condition. He had a large gash in his head that was bleeding, but he was conscious and moving. No one was dead, and it didn’t appear that anyone would die immediately.

After these 20 seconds, the next 30 minutes are an utter mish-mash. I could tell that I was not myself, but I was lucid, and my clouded brain was entirely focused on one task: I have to take care of the others. The student was struggling to get out of the car — she was the most vocal about needing help, and her injury appeared to be the worst. She got out of the car, and I took my fleece jacket and put it on her head to slow the bleeding. She was able to hold the jacket against her own head, so I went to check on the driver. By this time he had gotten out of the car. He was bleeding, and his eyes had a look like he’d been hit in the head. I said something to him, and he muttered a reply that I couldn’t understand. [I’m sure he was concussed.] I took off my shirt and gave it to him, and he was able to hold it against his own head. He was in a bad way, walking around kind of aimlessly. All the while his wife was moaning and clutching her left shoulder, I thought some part of it was probably broken. By this time vehicles were stopping, and people were starting to come around in order to help. I found my phone in the car, amazed that it still worked. [My Facebook page was still up, even. In fact, all four of our phones came through the crash and still worked. I couldn’t believe it.] I called our principal who was at his house in Manzini. telling him that we were in an accident and needed an ambulance. I told him what I knew at that point about the injuries that I’d seen.

I don’t know what specific order all the rest of these events happened. [I said earlier that I was lucid, but not really. I was uninjured (as far as I could tell) and even-tempered, but I was in shock. Many people were asking me if I was hurt. On two different occasions in the next hour I tried to save a man’s number to my phone, and failed both times. I have no idea what I did wrong. The second time I even seem to remember typing the man’s name into my phone and pushing “Save,” but it didn’t save, so I must not have.] The man I just mentioned was one of the first to arrive on the scene (I think?), he was the one who ended up taking the others to the hospital. He was a government employee in the Ministry of Works, he said that he had called the police. The student was starting to act hysterically, so I checked her head again, a little more thoroughly this time. She was bleeding from at least two different wounds, and because of her hair I couldn’t tell how large those wounds were. She was bleeding from her ear, part of which was missing. I asked her if she could lie down, which she did. I looked at the nearest woman and asked her to hold the fleece jacket over the wounds, keep pressure on them, and not to let her go to sleep. Well over a dozen people were around now and starting to move the wife into the man’s bakkie (i.e. pick-up truck) to take her to the hospital. She was still moaning, and getting worse. The husband was still walking around aimlessly. The principal called me back to say that he had called an ambulance to come, and I told him that people were starting to load up the injured to take them to the hospital. There was quite a bit of confusion now as I was trying to ascertain what everyone was doing, communicate with the Ministry of Works employee (whose bakkie it was), and communicate with the principal on the phone. The principal told me to wait until the ambulance came, which I acknowledged and then hung up because I was needing to communicate with the bakkie man. Other people had brought the student over and were loading her in the bakkie as well. The Ministry of Works employee told me that he was going to rush them to the hospital. I told him that our principal had called an ambulance, that it was coming, and that I thought we should wait for it to arrive. He asked what direction it was coming from, and I replied that it was coming from Manzini. He said, “Ok, we will go and meet them on the way.” The student, now in the bakkie, asked me to fetch her bag out of the car because it had some money in it, so I did and brought it to her. Our team leader (the one who had been driving our car) was still holding my shirt on his head and wandering around. I told him to get in the bakkie because he needed to go to the hospital. He asked me if I would stay with the car and supplies, and I said that I would. The bakkie left, carrying all three who had been injured.

Since there was nothing more I could do for any of them, I turned my attention to myself. I had blood on my arms and hands, and nothing but my tie with which to wipe it off. That didn’t work very well, and now I was starting to be concerned about getting blood off me as soon as possible (which is a major concern in a country like Swaziland with high HIV prevalence). At this time I was also able to locate all my belongings except my small satchel bag, in which I had been carrying money. Not a terribly large amount by American standards, but not insignificant. I was looking for it when the police came. They started questioning me about a number of things, and I communicated to them that the others in the car had been hurt and were going to the hospital. They left to follow, saying they would come back to get my statement. I returned to my attempt to find my satchel, and the paramedics came.

This was now between 30 and 45 minutes after the crash. I asked the paramedics if they had met anyone on the road, and they said, “no.” I briefly explained what had happened, and they asked to check my blood pressure. They checked me out thoroughly, confirming that I had no discernable injuries. They also wiped some of the blood off my arm. Before I had come out of the ambulance, our principal had arrived. Having no else to check out, the paramedics left. Some time after that, the bakkie returned. The driver said that he had passed the ambulance and tried to flag it down but was unsuccessful. He had taken the others directly to the hospital, and they were receiving treatment. The principal and I loaded as many things from the wrecked car that we could salvage into his vehicle and drove back to Manzini. I could feel my sense of shock starting to dissipate, and I was starting to have brief waves of emotion. I also began to feel soreness in my left arm and right wrist, just minor bruising from the impact. I’d asked the police, the paramedics, and the principal if they had any wipes with which I could clean the blood off, but no one had any. I was now starting to be concerned about the length of time blood had been on my skin. I was pretty sure my level of risk was 0%, especially since I didn’t see any cuts on me, but I didn’t want to take any chances. We returned to the principal’s house where I washed myself thoroughly and changed out of my undershirt (which had blood on it).

At this point I was safely out of danger and away from the scene of the crash. I still had no physical pain to speak of, but I could tell that my brain was not right. The principal told me that I was walking slowly and unevenly, and he asked me directly if I was sure that I was all right. I assured him that I was, because I didn’t have any external pain except on my left arm and right wrist, and the paramedics had checked me thoroughly for signs of internal injuries. The police officer found us, and I wrote out my statement. That was an interesting experience, because my brain still felt kind of drugged. I kept having to scratch out words and rewrite what I was really trying to say. It turns out my satchel had been placed in the bakkie with the injured folks, so I walked over to the hospital and retrieved it. I was amazed to find all the money was still in it — thanks be to God! — especially because the reason I was carrying so much money was so that I could give it to our principal for his orphan care project. I did so, and the principal drove me back to the bus rank (i.e. the transportation center, where all the taxis and buses and kombis arrive and depart from) so that I could get home. My sense of shock had worn off now; I felt very, very weak, and it was starting to get hot (about 11am now). I stopped at the Tandoori Express and ordered a small dish of fried rice, a Russian sausage, and a fat cake (i.e. a bun, deep-fried and usually sprinkled with a little sugar). I sat down and ate all of everything, after which I had much higher energy levels.

I got on the next kombi headed for Mbabane and sat in silence. The crash kept playing over and over again in my head, and I had to exercise immense mental discipline to not let myself imagine what that experience would be like had my children been in the car. I knew that if I let my mind go there, I would get hysterical. My phone rang. It was the principal, calling to tell me that the student had gone in for x-rays and the doctors thought she might have broken vertebra in her neck. I hung up, telling him that I would be praying. Then another thing started happening - I started trying to evaluate myself and what I had done after the crash. I kept second-guessing what I did, thinking that maybe her injuries would have been less if only I had done this, or that, or the other. But as I thought about the situation, I decided that everyone involved truly did the best they could. Maybe I could have made different and better decisions if I’d been more-clear headed, or if I’d had more information at the time, or if I’d been able to to communicate better. But none of that was the case. Those were all irrational lines of thought, and I needed to focus on what was true.

When I got to Mbabane, I saw that I would have to wait a good long time to catch a kombi back to my house. I wasn’t sure I wanted to go home quite yet, anyway. My thoughts and emotions were still really whirling around. I went across the street to the shopping center, hoping that I might run into someone I knew who could take me back home. Sure enough, in less than two minutes I saw my friend Viki (who, with her husband Barry, had had us over for dinner on the Friday previous). My friend Viki is awesome anyway, but she was just the right person for me to see at that moment. Of course she asked me how I was, and I told her that I’d been in a car accident. I was on the verge of breaking down. She could see that I was really shook up, and I told her plainly that I wasn’t quite right in the head at the moment. She said something like, “Oh, you dear,” and gave me a big hug. And it really helped settle me down at that moment. Then she said, “Well, if you can stand to wait about 10 or 15 minutes while I do my shopping, I’d be glad to drop you off at home.” We chatted while she bought her items and during the drive home. As we were close to arriving, I profusely expressed my gratitude and appreciation to her, that I was really feeling better than I had thirty minutes earlier. She replied, “I’m so glad, I think you just needed to talk. Now just sit down and put your feet up for the rest of the day!” I wasn’t able to quite do that, but she was right, I needed to rest.

As I walked in my door I looked at the clock, and it was 12:35pm — almost exactly 4 hours since the accident. I texted the principal to tell him that I was home. After a few minutes, Allison arrived home bringing William from pre-school, and I told her everything that happened. (I had been unable to reach her all morning because she had inadvertently left her cell phone at home while she’d been at work.) We decided that I should go get checked out by a doctor, especially because there was a possibility that I’d been exposed to HIV. Neither I nor anyone else had seen any cuts on me (which is an utter miracle!), so I thought that I was at zero risk of infection. But HIV isn’t something you should leave to guesswork, so I went to the clinic to at least talk to doctor, get checked out, and see what the best course of action might be.

I got right in to see the doctor, and he checked me again for broken bones and other internal injuries. Nothing. He told me that just because I wasn’t feeling any pain then didn’t mean that I didn’t have injuries, because the adrenaline will mask them, and the adrenaline was still in my system. He said that the area of greatest concern with vehicle accidents is the neck, because of whiplash-type injuries, of course, but also because the muscles are strained very hard while trying to keep the head immobile during the crash event. He said there was also to potential for the spine to swell inside the skeletal structure surrounding it, so he recommended wearing a neck collar for at least a couple days. He prescribed me anti-inflammatory tablets, a neck collar, and a course of post-exposure prophylaxis drugs for HIV. I filled the prescriptions and went home.

It was now 3:20pm. Allison loaded the kids up and went to her Tuesday afternoon play group, and I laid down on the living room floor (the hardwood felt good on my sore muscles, actually) and slept for a while. We went through our normal evening routine, and after the kids went to bed I sat down to write this. It was therapeutic, especially because I was starting to feel bad emotionally. I started having the same thoughts again as I’d been having earlier in the kombi, and I was having to discipline my mind quite severely to keep my thoughts from running away with me. It took me until 1:30am until I was finally ready to lie down and sleep, which I did. And I slept pretty well, I think … about 5 hours of good quality sleep. I woke up the next morning in a much better place then when I went to bed.

It’s now the evening after, as I’m writing the end of this. In the final analysis of the situation, I think this is the truth: I did the best I could in a very difficult situation to try to take care of people who had suffered severe physical trauma, using what I knew at the time and what I was able to communicate to others. I had suffered trauma as well, it just didn’t look like it because I didn’t have any visible injuries. I think the correct view of the situation is that all of us, including myself, could have died, and perhaps even should have died. But no one died — thanks and glory be to God. Everyone, myself included, did the best they could with the information they knew they had. It’s just a horrible situation, and it’s difficult for me to be the only person in the car who walked away unscathed, so to speak. But there’s no legitimate reason for me to feel guilty (or privileged) on that account — it’s merely a matter of fact.

Both the driver and his wife were released from the hospital this morning. The wife broke her collarbone, and the husband received stitches for the lacerations on his head.  I never heard if the doctors confirmed he had a concussion.  The student did not have broken vertebra, but rather dislocated vertebra. She was transported to Johannesburg today and will undergo surgery tomorrow to straighten the three dislodged vertebra in her neck. Then, we all need to heal.

Blessed are you, O Lord, the God of our fathers, creator of the changes of day and night, giving rest to the weary, renewing the strength of those who are spent, bestowing upon us occasions of song in the evening. As you have protected us in the day that is past, so be with us in the coming night; keep us from every sin, every evil, and every fear, for you are our light and salvation, and the strength of our life. To you be glory for endless ages. Amen.

[A Collect for Evening, Book of Common Prayer (Anglican), p.113]

Re-patriation, in brief

Here are a few personal thoughts and observations, unfiltered, from our visit to the US this year.  Take them for whatever they are worth, whoever you are:


American money felt fake to me; the bills were too large, and the coins too small (and too light).

American houses looked huge, and it was strange to see building made from something other than concrete.

The mere size of everything in America was overwhelming, and sometimes alarming.

So many trees, especially in the city!

When visiting Baltimore, a city that is 60% African-American, most Americans probably think to themselves, "Wow, there are a lot of black people here!"  The thought actually went through my head, "Wow, there are a lot of white people here."

It felt weird seeing so many white faces.

Americans are loud.  [Guilty as charged!]

Americans have a lot of stuff.

Using my left hand felt weird and made me feel self-conscious, so I just used my right hand for everything.

American drivers don't share the road very well.

Americans want to do everything themselves.

Americans don't think very much about honor/shame in conversation.

I found myself communicating in an African way, especially in avoiding the appearance of shame.

Americans don't smile or hug as much as Africans.

At O'Hare airport in Chicago, on the way back to Africa, I heard my friend Zachs (a Nigerian) speaking his African accent, and I immediately thought, "Ah! These are my people!"

Flying into O.R. Tambo airport in Johannesburg felt like coming to "my airport."

I had struggled to adjust back to American traffic/driving, but returning to South African driving was natural and automatic.

Returning to Swaziland felt familiar, but not quite like coming home.

my worst travel experience EVER (in a world controlled by malevolent computers)

I considered if I was succumbing to hyperbole with such a title, but I don’t think so. I’ve had some real travel disasters in the past, but never with an 11-month old baby strapped to my front, who is even less amused by the situation than I am.

Here’s some travel advice: NEVER BOOK THROUGH A THIRD-PARTY WEBSITE. I have had this travel rule in the past, after some traumatic experiences. But the Expedias of the world (yes, I’m naming names) are so alluring, with their slick search engines and nice fares and promises of doing multiple tickets in a single itinerary.

BUT IT’S NOT WORTH IT. Most of the time things will work out just fine. And then sometimes, something will go disastrously wrong and you will be told you have no ticket or the wrong ticket and there will be a big fight about it between the airline and the third-party website, and you will be stuck in the middle, standing at a ticket counter for hours at a time with an 11-month old baby strapped to your front and a full bladder and no chance to go to the bathroom, wondering what you did to deserve this.

That was me. Today. And the plane left without me, and I am now in an airport hotel room, making my third call of the day to Expedia, and once again on hold for a small eternity, which means I may as well vent through blogging a little.

Cassia and I started our travels this afternoon in a minivan of fellow travelers, which left Mbabane late (I don’t know why I expected any different), and then took a much longer break than the driver said he would at the Alzu rest stop (I don’t know why I expected any different), and then we were close to an hour behind schedule and I began to get worried that I wouldn’t have enough time at the airport for the complicated task of checking in with a baby, too much luggage, and not enough hands. Also, Cassia was not thrilled with 4 ½ hours in her carseat, and made a great big stink about it for much of the trip, in spite of having a very kind mkhulu sitting next to her who talked to her and let her pull his gray curly beard whenever she wanted.

But we got to the Johannesburg airport two hours before the flight left. All good. I went to the check-in counter. The British Airways agent frowned and typed and examined our passports for ten minutes, and then told me that she couldn’t find a ticket number for Cassia, so I needed to go to the B.A. ticket desk. Which I did, a bit disgruntled about having to lug all my stuff all the way across the terminal. But we still had plenty of time, and I wasn’t worried.

When I booked through Expedia, I had definitely booked an infant-in-lap ticket for Cassia. (On international flights, they charge you a few hundred dollars for an infant-in-lap, and they need a ticket, unlike on U.S. flights.) And when I checked my reservation on B.A.’s system, Cassia was definitely in my reservation as an infant-in-lap. But somehow she never got a ticket. Don’t ask me to explain this. So the B.A. ticket agents got to work trying to get her a ticket. First there were two working on it, and then three, and then four. Gradually their conversation with me changed from, “Of course we’ll get you on that flight,” to not answering my questions about whether the flight was still being held for me or not, to “Sorry, the flight is closed.” They said it was Expedia’s fault. They called Expedia, and Expedia put us on hold again and again, and finally after an hour and 13 minutes the B.A. ladies said they weren’t going to keep paying for that international call and they had to close up shop anyway (it was now nearly 10), so they hung up.

It’s hard to tell who was enjoying themselves less during those 2 ½ hours standing at the ticket counter, me or Cassia. Cassia cried on the outside. I cried on the inside. And then, when I thought about how exhausted I was and that I was only barely starting my trip across the world and still only a few hundred miles from my starting point, and already down to only 10 diapers in the diaper bag, I cried a little on the outside as well.

It’s now 12:30 a.m. and Cassia just fell asleep (finally) and I have been on hold with Expedia for 20 minutes (after that incredibly long, totally unproductive call at the airport, I also had a 25 minute call from the hotel that got cut off, and now this 30 minute call, and every time I have to start all over with a new person and explain everything and then get sent to that person’s supervisor and so on). So I actually still have no idea who is going to agree to re-book me, or on what flights, or how much of my cousin’s wedding festivities I will miss.

I still feel mostly in the dark about the problem, but as best as I can understand it, when I booked with Expedia, they couldn’t actually book Cassia on an infant-in-lap ticket because there was a U.S. segment (Seattle to Billings) in which she didn’t have a ticket at all, because for U.S. flights an infant-in-lap doesn’t need a ticket. So somehow this threw their whole system into chaos, and they couldn’t give her a ticket for the international segments either. And somehow, the way that Expedia had booked me meant that British Airways couldn't book her in my itinerary because she was already there but ticketless, and they couldn't book her in any other itinerary because who lets a baby travel on an itinerary without a minder, and so they tried a dozen different ways and simply could not ticket my infant. In spite of the fact that I was standing right there, at the airport, with the little passenger in question, pleading, “Please let us on this flight! I’ll pay! I just have to get on this flight!”

Once upon a time, I believe people just paid actual money and were given actual tickets, and then were allowed to get into a plane or train or automobile and travel from Point A to Point B. What an ingenious solution, so simple! How have transportation systems become so complex that four people working hard for an hour can’t figure out how to sell a woman a plane ticket for her baby? I would be having a good laugh at the absurdity of it, if I weren’t sitting in a hotel room still on hold with Expedia when I should be on a plane to my cousin’s wedding.

… That was all written last night while on endless hold with Expedia. At 1:30 a.m. a very nice young man in India told me none of this was my fault, and even started to give me possible itineraries out of here, and I started to be hopeful that Expedia would do something to help me. At 2 a.m. his supervisor told me that she just had to very quickly talk to her supervisor. I begged her not to put me on hold for a long time as it was 2 a.m. and I was finished. At 3 a.m. she finally got back on the phone to tell me that the best they could do was cancel my ticket and refund me the money (which she seemed to think was a favor as technically I was a “no show” and could have ended up with zero back on the ticket). She told me the whole thing was my fault since they sent me an email in January telling me that they couldn’t book the infant ticket. I never saw the email, nor did I notice that they never charged me for the infant ticket. So it was kind of my fault. Also, I was dealing with nine different plane itineraries for this summer trip. NINE. Details get missed.

But would it have been too much to ask for either Expedia or British Airways to flag the issue in my online reservation (which I checked on both of their websites multiple times), or for an actual person from Expedia to call me to discuss that the “ticketed and confirmed” message in my online reservation wasn’t actually true? British Airways, for their part, says it definitely wasn’t their fault as they had no idea the infant hadn’t been ticketed, until they tried to check me in. And no one can explain why four B.A. agents working hard for an hour couldn’t actually get me an infant ticket. That will have to remain one of the unsolvable mysteries of the universe.

So bottom line is I had to start all over and book a brand new ticket for today, which was of course expensive, and none of the multiple very pleasant B.A. agents I talked to had any authority to lower that last-minute fare or to get me a seat that isn't a middle seat (with a baby on my lap). Who does make such decisions? The computers?

I am on the verge of saying I am never going to book through a computer or website again, only with an actual travel agent. (This never would have happened had I booked with a travel agent.) Do travel agents even exist anymore?

At the very least, I am really, truly swearing off booking through third-party websites. I told Expedia (in our five hours of phone calls yesterday) that I would warn everyone I knew about them and their lack of customer service, so there you are. Be warned.

From Cape Town to Cairo

There's an expression in Africa ... "from Cairo to Cape Town" or the reverse "from Cape Town to Cairo."  It's the African equivalent of the American "New York to L.A." way of talking about the whole country.  Somewhere along our Christmas adventures, it dawned on me that we literally did go "from Cape Town to Cairo" -- well, with a couple stops in between.


Cape Town

Nelson Mandela died the morning after we arrived in Cape Town, which was kind of weird and surreal.  But I'm profoundly thankful to have been in South Africa when he died.  It's impossible to deny that the entire nation was grieving with deep pain.  But it seemed to me that the timbre (in Cape Town, at least) of this grief did not reflect so much the loss of a hero, but rather the celebration of one dearly, and deeply, loved.  At the waterfront area, there were temporary gazebos set up with blank greeting books -- they looked just like an ordinary guest book --where anyone on the street could write a farewell message to Madiba (which I did).  For me, the most memorable memorial to Mandela was a huge image of him projected with green light onto the side of Table Mountain.  I don't know exactly how they did that, and the quality wasn't very good because the rock is pretty rugged on that cliff ... still, it was amazingly impressive.  It's an image that will stay in my brain forever.

I've only had a handful of magical moments in my life where time seemed to stand still because of the sheer grandeur of what was happening, or what I was seeing, around me.  One of them occurred while watching the sunset atop Table Mountain.  I don't know of anywhere else in the world where you can watch the sun set over the ocean from 3,000 feet above sea level.  It's hard to describe it; but from that height, I suppose because of how the light reflects on the water, the horizon appears to be behind the sun.  It honestly looks like the sun sinks into the sea.  It was utterly magnificent. It's also pretty incredible to be looking down on a major metropolitan city, skyscrapers and all, while standing on the ground rather than sitting in an airplane.  At some point in my life, I'm definitely going to go back and spend some time exploring Table Mountain ... it's a fairly indescribable wonder.

A taste of Table Mountain

Actually, I could say that same thing about the entire cape, from Table Bay (on which Cape Town sits) around the Cape of Good Hope to False Bay.  We spent several hours driving the entire length, and after a couple days in Stellenbosch, continued along a stretch of highway called "The Garden Route" which hugs the southern coast between the towns of Mossel Bay and Plettenburg Bay.  We turned north in the city of George to head back through Beaufort West and Bloemfontein en route to Johannesburg, where we would fly to Cairo.  Well, along that stretch of the N12 between George and Beaufort West, just north of Oudtshoorn, there is a canyon through the mountains (the range that separates the lush coastal plain from the arid Karoo desert) that I assume was cut by the small river which runs along the bottom.  The road runs alongside the river and sometimes on top of it, and that's about as wide as the canyon gets, with several-hundred-foot-high cliffs of orange-ish rock on either side.  I don't think there's even a name for this canyon, but it's just as impressive as the Glenwood Canyon in Colorado.  It's not as large or spacious, but the majesty of this canyon comes from its closeness and antiquity rather than raw scale.

...the photos don't really do it justice...

I'm disappointed that I was not able to take any photos of Khayelitsha, which is the slum outside Cape Town.  [The batteries of the camera were dead when we drove by.]  Truly, no treatment of Cape Town is complete without the inclusion of Khayelitsha.   It's not exactly just on the other side of Table Mountain from Cape Town, but almost -- it's another 10 miles or so.  The point is this: when you see all those great photos of Table Mountain taken in Cape Town or from the bay, if you could see on the other side of the mountain you would find a slum with 1,000,000 people living in it.  Khayelitsha is a metropolis of dilapidated shacks with corrugated tin roofs, a city reeking of sewage (you could smell it from the car driving past) that is growing, rapidly in fact, filled with poor blacks who hope to scratch out a meager living by working in the city.  In case you don't know, the name "Khayelitsha" is a Xhosa term meaning, "New Home."  The name is the story, the slum the legacy of apartheid, the tragedy the reality of sin and oppression in our broken and fallen world.  The work of Madiba, and of Jesus, is not yet finished.


Cairo

After being in Cape Town for a week, it was hard to fathom that Cairo is on the same continent.  Cairo does not have the same feel as Khayelitsha, but the circumstances are very similar ...  only multiply the number of people about 25 times.  It was my second time to visit Cairo, and we stayed right downtown, a long city block from Tahrir Square.  The food, even a shwarma from a street vendor, was delectable.  We were warmly welcomed and received by everyone with friendly hospitality.  Cairo may not quite live up to the hype as "Paris on the Nile," but it's a memorable place.  I really like Cairo.

[I don't any photos from Cairo on this computer, I'll have to upload them another day.]

We had the experience that, really, you can only have in the Middle East.  One evening we went to the old part of the city, by the large market called the Khan-al-Khalili, and as we stepped out of the cab met a man named Samir.  He offered to take us around, so we dutifully followed and had a wonderful time weaving in and out of narrow alleys and shops, largely manned by friends and acquaintances of his.  Samir walked with a slight limp, and he informed us that he had worked a trade job before his legs could not handle it any more.  Now he works as an instructor at what is considered the second-oldest university in the world -- the school which convenes at the Al-Azhar Mosque.  We spent some time that night with him, as well as the following evening.  We saw the Mosque, drank tea and ate delicious Egyptian food,  climbed a minaret in another mosque for a great view of the night-time cityscape, and bought some small hand-crafted jewelry boxes inlaid with shell and bone. 

We decided to spend a day at the pyramids.  Now, I want to talk about a particular kind of cultural experience we had there in contrast to an experience I had here in Swaziland shortly before we left on this trip.  The differences were amusing to me.  Back in September I received a call from an American iwoman who had just come to Swaziland to work at the American embassy here.  She had heard that  taught music lessons and wanted to know if I would teach her son piano.  I told her that my schedule was full, but that I would call her back if I ever had an opening.  Well, shortly before we left on our trip, we had gone to embassy as a family to pick up Cassia's "Certified Report of Birth Abroad" -- the equivalent of a birth certificate for an American citizen born overseas -- and I recognized the name of the woman who brought it out to us.  I introduced myself, saying, "I think we've spoken on the phone before, you wanted me to give your son piano lessons."  A look of recognition flashed across her face, and she said, "Oh, I remember!  Yeah, I'm pissed at you for that!"  She was joking, of course, in her New-Jersey-like way.  She was hoping, through some relationally-derived humor, that she might persuade me to acquiesce to her business-related request.

A similar thing happened to us at the Pyramids, but in a way that worked exactly opposite.  Let me explain.  At our hotel, we paid for an arranged tour to go to the Pyramids.  This tour included lunch and but not entrance to the Giza area  (I'll call it a "park"), which we didn't realize until after we had already bought the tour.  Further, the Giza area is huge, and most tourists either hire a camel-drawn or horse-drawn carriage to tour the park.  The place is entirely sand, so you can't drive around, really.  You either hire a camel or a horse, or you hoof it on your own two feet over the vast complex.  We didn't have a lot of cash (because, you know, we thought we had already paid for everything!), so we were negotiating with the camel tour operator to at least go in and see the park.  We ended up paying less than half of what he originally asked for, but he wasn't terribly happy about it in the end.  Actually, we probably would have paid for except that our driver realized our predicament and talked him down even further than we were planning!  Anyhow, it was something that the tour operator said during the negotiations that struck me, particularly after having recently had the experience with the American woman that I just described.  During a somewhat tense moment in the negotiations when we were saying that we probably would not be hiring him at all, he said something like, "It's OK, you will have my friendship, even if I don't have your business." Now he was sincere in this; but once again, he was relying on a sense of relationship with us in an attempt to get something he wanted in a business environment.

Here's what struck me: the American woman suggested relational distance, whereas the Egyptian man suggested relational closeness -- a stick versus a carrot, so to speak. In essence, they were each doing the exact same thing, but in the exact opposite way.  There are lessons here, both on the human level and on the cultural level.  I felt better in the second instance, even though the actual situation was much more foreign to my own culture and experience.

[By the way, it's experiences like this that make cross-culltural living so challenging yet so rewarding.  As humans, we are truly enriched by interacting with other humans that are culturally different from us.]


If you ever get to Cairo, make sure you hit the following locales:

- the Egyptian Antiquites Museum (the photos of King Tut's mask from your history textbook are woefully inadequate; it's a completely different experience to see it there in the glass box, 6 inches from your face)

- the Pyramids (duh!  but really, they were there when Moses was born ... probably Abraham, too!)

- the Khan-al-Khalili, the huge bazaar in Islamic Cairo

- Islamic Cairo, and walk the mile-long stretch of Bab el-Wazir street from the Bab-Zuwaila (a gate from the old city which dates to the 11th or 12th century) to The Citadel

- the Al-Azhar Mosque, the oldest Sunni mosque in the world (dedicated in 972)

- the Blue Mosque, located on the Bab el-Wazir street near The Citadel

- The Citadel (the old fortress constructed by Saladin)

this thing called prayer, Hindus bearing peanut butter, and why I hate orphanages

There is a white African woman with gray hair who I see at church, but before today had never exchanged a word with. (By white African, I mean a Caucasian with multi-generational roots in Africa; there are lots of white Africans in this part of Africa.) She always has Swazi children with her, and before today all I knew about her was her name (Robyn) and that she ran a baby home. She’s always struck me as very quiet and plain. Today I had the chance to hear her story, and for three hours, the tears wouldn’t stop running down my face. By the end, I couldn’t imagine how I had ever found this radiant woman to be plain.

I’ll tell you some of the story, but first let me cut to the punch line. The phrase that jumped out at me and seared my heart was a handful of little words early in her tale. “So we started to pray,” Robyn said. And then she told the most incredible stories, always coming back to a couple simple refrains. That God had told her to do such-and-such. That she had done it, sometimes with less than enthusiasm, always wondering who she was to do it. She said, several times, “I’m just a housewife.” (Spoiler alert: she’s far more than a housewife.) She also said, over and over, “But God did it.” I guess her words, “So we started to pray,” pierced my heart because it’s such a simple answer to all my questions over how I can respond to the needs of this country. They started to pray… and then everything happened.

Today Robyn and her husband Gerry run a home for dozens of children called ABC Ministry. They have seen many many dozens pass through, and many be adopted out. I wouldn’t call it an orphanage, as their firm intention is to foster these children until they can be adopted or returned to their birth families. Unfortunately, no adoptions have taken place for a number of years, due to government policies. I’ll explain that later. They are the only home for children in Swaziland which is willing to adopt children out. I won’t try to explain that, because I would probably say uncharitable things about the other orphanages, and probably there's a lot I don't understand about their motivations and decisions. I will add an addendum to this post explaining a little more about orphan issues in Swaziland generally. Let me say that I think any orphan care expert in the world would applaud Robyn and Gerry for how they are doing things. I love how Robyn says that they are “preparing children for adoption” (in spite of the fact that they haven’t been able to adopt any out in years), always with a view towards what is best for the child (which is to not stay in the baby home forever).

But the road that led to ABC Ministry all started over 20 years ago, when Robyn was a housewife with three teenage children, and she and a friend started to notice the plight of children in Swaziland, and they started to pray about what they could do. They lived in a sugar-producing region of the country, in which women with children were working very long days in the sugarcane fields, leaving for work as early as 3 in the morning. These women were far away from their home regions and extended families and didn’t have anyone to watch their children. So children, even babies and very young children, would be left to fend for themselves in locked-up houses for many hours at a time.

So Robyn and her friend decided to start a center that would care for the children and be open 24 hours a day. The sugar company told them that it would never work, that the company had tried it before and it didn’t work. These two women told the company that they hadn’t tried with Jesus. The center became such a success that eventually the sugar company built them a building, and its work continues, long after Robyn moved away.

The next place Robyn lived she seems to have been trying to mind her own business, but there was a squalid squatter’s camp not far away. The kind of place where adults were perpetually drunk, where fathers pimped their daughters, where rape was commonplace, where children lived in filth and were severely neglected. God had told Robyn to employ in her home a young woman who was partially crippled. This woman had actually been completely paralyzed from the neck down for 7 months, during which time she lay in a hospital bed and her mother came to pray at the foot of her bed every night. One day, to the doctor’s shock, this young woman had some feeling in one of her feet. A week or two later she walked out of the hospital, but still did not have the full use of all her limbs. When Robyn hired her, this woman was overcome with gratitude because she had expected that no one would ever want to hire her, as a partial cripple, and that she would always be dependent on her family. Some years later, God healed this woman totally, and today she is fully able bodied and is in a key position at another orphan ministry in Swaziland. I’m telling you, Robyn’s stories were chock-full of these kind of miracles.

Robyn never would have known about the squatter’s camp, except that her young employee told her about it and that there were hungry children there. Robyn really didn’t want to get involved, but God reminded her that she had a bunch of mealies (corn) in her garden, so Robyn and her employee cooked them and took them to the children. A few days later Robyn was still painfully aware that the children in the camp didn’t have food, and God reminded her that she had a jar of peanut butter in the cupboard. So they made peanut butter sandwiches and took them to the children. Before long, they were visiting the camp three times a week to give the children a meal. Robyn says she had never seen such filth, misery, and spiritual darkness. Many people in the camp opposed her work there, although she was not preaching, but only offering practical assistance like food and clothing. (She’d seen too many “revivals” come to the camp, get everyone “saved”, and then never again set foot there, much less do anything practical to help.)

They kept running afoul of an old gogo (grandma) who had been kicked out of her home region and extended family for putting curses on people, and who lived in the squatter camp with nine grandchildren, whom she badly mistreated. One day the gogo exploded in rage, cursing Robyn for giving one of her grandchildren “torn” clothing. Robyn hadn’t noticed that there had been a small rip in a seam of a shirt she had given one of the children. At this point Robyn had been going to the squatter camp three times a week, without a break of any kind, for several years. After being cursed and insulted by this gogo, she told God she was finished and would not go back. God instead told her to put together a packet of food for the gogo, and to go to her and apologize for giving her grandchild a torn garment. Robyn chafed, but did it. The gogo broke down, and told Robyn that no one had ever shown her love like that. After that this gogo was a changed woman, and was a great help to them in the camp.

For eight years, Robyn and other women went to the camp three times a week. They even started a basic school under a tree, after realizing that the kids were not in school and many had never learned basic things, like a 13-year old girl who had never learned her colors. They didn’t really have any kind of a fund-raising strategy, besides emptying their pockets and personal bank accounts. But help came from unexpected places, including Muslims, Hindus, and Freemasons. One day Robyn was completely out of food for the camp, and had no money to buy any. She confesses that she was secretly excited that she would get a day off. (I don’t think she managed to keep the secret from God.) Then there was a knock at her door. When she opened the door, there stood a Hindu couple, bearing 10 kilograms (22 pounds) of peanut butter. They were not from the area, and were just passing through visiting a relative, who had told them about Robyn’s work. They told her they “felt” in their hearts that they should bring her peanut butter. She never even knew their names. But her impression of them saying, in thick Indian accents, “We have brought you peanut butter,” is pretty funny.

Robyn says she learned from this Hindu couple that when you feel in your heart that you should do something, that is God speaking. While this Hindu couple was hearing and responding to the voice of God, Robyn’s church was spending three years “praying” about helping her. (My impression is that they never did much of anything to help.)

During those years, Gerry and Robyn adopted their first child, a baby who had been born to a mentally retarded, crippled, epileptic woman who had been raped. When Robyn first met the baby, he was 4 months old and weighed a little more than 7 pounds. He had been cared for by his desperately poor grandmother, who had many other children to look after and was ill-equipped to care for any of them. She said that this little baby just refused to die. Doctors predicted that he would have severe long-term health effects, but today he is a tall, talented, perfectly healthy young adult.

Robyn and Gerry have always worked very hard to keep children with the extended family if at all possible, to work with mothers and families that were struggling. At times they take in a child for a period of time, and return him or her to the family when the family is again able to provide care. But sometimes a child truly has nowhere to go, especially in cases where a baby has been abandoned (often in a pit latrine or bush) and the family cannot be traced. So through the years she and Gerry have added five more Swazi children to their family, as well as taken many dozens of children into their home.

Robyn had so many stories. I’ll share just one more. At the end of the visit, I asked her what the home most needed. I was thinking along the lines of money or used children’s clothing. She said, “What we most need is for you to pray. Because if you pray, God will put it in your heart to do things that we may not even know we need.” Then she told a story. A number of years ago they got a donation of clothes from Canada. In the donation was a pair of strange tiny leather boots with what looked like braces on them. Robyn and Gerry had no idea what they were for or what to do with them, so they threw them into a cupboard and forgot about them. Over a year later a little girl came to them. She had been severely abused by her mother, to the extent that her back had been broken (and the police had arrested the mother for abuse). In the baby home, she started to heal and recover, and through physical therapy regained some use of her legs. But at the age of almost three, she still couldn’t walk; her feet and ankles seemed to be unable to support her weight. Then Robyn and Jerry remembered the funny boots. They put them on, and immediately this little girl was able to take her first steps. She was eventually adopted by a childless Swazi couple, who had come to the baby home with their minds made up to adopt a boy, but eventually ended up adopting this little girl. Years later, through a “chance” meeting, this family met a South African orthopedic surgeon who was able to operate (free of charge) to fully repair the damage caused to her as an infant. Today this not-so-little girl is running, swimming, and fully healed.

I’ve cried a lot lately over the situation of children in this country. Some weeks ago a baby was born in some of the most tragic circumstances I can imagine, circumstances which mean that he will never be able to live with his biological relatives. He was taken in by an orphanage, a place where he will have clean clothes and plenty of food and good care and people who love him and are hopefully even in his life for a long time. But he will never, ever have a family. We were close enough to this situation to know about it, and I grieved, and I wept. I wanted that child. It’s not that I have an abundance of time, or energy, or patience at this stage in my life. We have quite enough on our plates parenting our own two small kids. I’m not saying that adding another small child would have been a good idea. But none of those rational considerations meant squat when I thought about the prospect of a child spending his entire life in an orphanage, and never ever having a family. I desperately wanted to bring that child to our house, and to give him a family. But there was no way. Even if he hadn’t been taken to an orphanage that doesn’t adopt out, we couldn’t have adopted him. Swaziland completely shut down international adoptions several years ago, and it’s anyone’s guess when the government will finish its review of adoption policies and re-open international adoptions.

When I think about orphan issues and orphans in this country, I have so many strong and mixed emotions. I hate orphanages. Not the people who run orphanages, who are obviously doing wonderful and heroic work to take care of kids who would otherwise be abused or neglected or even die. I hate orphanages as institutions. I hate the fact that an orphanage is a very poor substitution for a family, and that a child who grows up in an orphanage will never have a family. I would beg you, if you have or are considering supporting an orphanage, to make very very sure that the orphanage you support is ONLY taking in children who have no hope of ever living with their birth families, and most of all that it is not creating demand for orphans. By which I mean, desperately poor families who feel that they have very few options may feel that their best option is to send their child to an orphanage, where they will have clothes and shelter and enough to eat. Orphanages all over the world are full of non-orphans, whose families have sent them there for a “better life”. In my mind, this is an unmitigated tragedy. (Google E.J. Graff’s work if you want to know more about the supply and demand dynamics of orphanages and international adoptions.) 

I can’t fault any mother or family for making this choice, but I do absolutely fault, I feel absolutely infuriated by, any orphanage that takes a child away from a family that could care for the child, no matter how meager that family’s resources. I can only imagine (never having done this kind of work myself) how hard it must be to help a struggling mother or family, especially if there are issues of alcohol abuse or mental illness or lack of attachment to the child or whatnot. It’s much easier to clean a child up and put him or her into the controlled environment of an orphanage, and then take cute pictures for a fund-raising brochure, than to engage in the messy work of keeping children in families and communities, which donors are much less excited about and willing to support. But decades of experience in Africa and the West (where we long ago stopped running orphanages, for good reason) has shown that even the best orphanages cannot provide the nurture and attachment and sense of identity that a child needs to receive from a family. In my view, orphanages are no place for children.

Here in Swaziland, families have become so over-extended by the double whammy of the loss of healthy young adults (largely to HIV) and the surge in the number of orphans, that many children have ended up living in child-headed households. Which is also no way for children to grow up. But once children are taken off a family’s land and into an orphanage, they lose the land. I’m not sure I can adequately communicate what this loss of land/heritage/family means in an African context. I just grieve for any African child who at 18 will be cut loose from an orphanage, with no family or home, and essentially without an identity in his or her society.

So. Orphanages are a bad option. But until the government of Swaziland changes policy (they are actually not even currently allowing adoption by Swazis), they are the only option for kids who cannot stay in biological families.

Please pray for the kids of this country. Pray for families that are struggling, that they would be able to find help and make changes so that they could provide loving environments in which children would thrive. Pray that laws would change, so that kids who truly can’t stay with their families would be able to find new families. (I don’t fault the government of Swaziland for being very careful about their adoption policy, as I think international adoptions are a very tricky issue. I do really wish they would hurry up and finish their review.)

If you want to know more about ABC Ministry, visit

https://www.facebook.com/pages/ABC-Ministry/124500517666500. I’m sure they’d love your financial support. I’m even more sure they would love for you to follow their updates and pray for their work and the precious children they are providing safe haven for.

Six Weeks Later

Well, it turns out this Lenten season has been awful, just awful. I am normally a fairly disciplined guy; but of the 35 days of Lent thus far, I’ve completed my Lenten discipline on exactly 7 of them. I have felt “out of sync” – out of sync with God, with myself, with my surroundings. I have no doubt that these feelings are simply a function of where I am in the process of cross-cultural adjustment, and therefore nothing more than a storm to be weathered. But storms are just no fun, when they are happening inside you! It has been helpful to me to express my theological reflections, though. I’ve been pondering “The Cosmic Riddle” in the Scriptures for many years, and it’s encouraging to me to be able to see myself living it out in a small way. And for me, I often haven’t really thought about things until I’ve either spoken or written them … comes with the territory of being an extrovert, I guess.

I wish I could lose my American cultural identity completely, honestly, for mixed reasons – some of which are healthy, some of which are not. I often feel like I’m a critical person, and I struggle with feeling critical of American culture. Part of this is just because of how the way things are, kind of like how Jesus said that a prophet isn’t without honor except in his own country. We are often most critical of things (and people) that are the most familiar. Part of this is from ways that I have felt hurt or misunderstood by American culture, which I think is common for Americans who are highly creative and artistic. On the grand scale of things, I don’t think that creativity and artistry are high American values.

At the same time, there is much about American culture that draws just criticism. American culture values highly things like individualism, independence, efficiency, merit-based rewards, and, frankly, money. None of these things are exactly wrong, but I think they have all become too important within the culture. In my opinion, these values have gone amok and have made American culture arrogant and self-absorbed. People around the world tend to dislike Americans as a group, although people I’ve met who have made friendships with Americans generally don’t feel quite so strongly. I’m really not trying to pick on America, every culture has deeply-embedded problems. I’m only trying to be as honest as I can be about the problems in American culture.

But strange as it may seem, this process of adjusting to cross-cultural living has been slowly changing my perspective toward American culture. I think I am healing, actually. There are some truly, truly wonderful things about American culture, and by being gone, I appreciate those things more and more. Thanksgiving is a thoroughly good and beautiful American tradition. I usually feel rather disgusted with politics in America, but the American political system is a sound one. I am profoundly thankful for the American judicial process of trial by jury. Living in Baltimore, I worked two jobs where I was one of the only light-skinned people around, and I was (and continue to feel) amazed at how genuinely welcomed I was into those communities despite my obvious differences, differences that went deeper than just skin color. I have worked several jobs in America where I got to know people vastly different than myself, and this is largely due to the American application of capitalist economic principles. There’s lots to like about America, and I’m learning to better appreciate the good things in addition to criticizing the bad things.

The fact of the matter is, that regardless of how much I would like to shed my American cultural identity and assume an African identity, I can’t do either in totality. I will always have my light skin. American English will always be my mother tongue. My childhood memories will always be American memories. There are some American patterns of thinking that are so deeply ingrained in my synapses that I will never be able to change them. I will always be different than Africans. This is the plain truth, and I think I am learning to accept that.

Lenten Meditations on the Cosmic Riddle, Part 5

Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down, 
That the mountains would tremble before you! …

For when you did awesome things that we did not expect, 
You came down, and the mountains trembled before you. …

Yet you, LORD, are our Father. 
We are the clay, you are the potter; 
We are all the work of your hand. …

Oh, look upon us we pray, 
For we are all your people. …

Will you, O LORD, hold yourself back? 
Will you keep silent and punish us beyond measure?
-Isa. 64:1-12


My servant David will be king over them, and they will all have one shepherd. They will follow my laws and be careful to keep my decrees. They will live in the land I gave to my servant Jacob, the land where your ancestors lived. They and their children and their children’s children will live there for oever, and David my servant will be their prince for ever. I will make a covenant of peace with them; it will be an everlasting covenant. I will establish them and increase their numbers, and I will put my sanctuary among them; I will be their God, and they will be my people. Then the nations will know that I the LORD make Israel holy, when my sanctuary is among them for ever.
-Ezek. 37:24-28


Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and there was no longer any sea. I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Look! God’s dwelling-place is now with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.”
-Rev. 21:1-4


God’s dwelling-place is in heaven, and our dwelling-place is on earth; and in between lies a great vault that divides us (Gen. 1:6-8). We are trapped here in on earth, prisoners of our own wickedness, and there is no escape. For who could cross from earth to heaven? Our only hope is that God might, somehow, come down and rescue us. But who would cross from heaven to earth? This is “The Cosmic Riddle.”


And of course, Jesus is The Cosmic Answer.


But our problem has not yet been solved! Before, we were in our proper dwelling-place (the earth) but separated from God. Now we have fellowship with God, but we are aliens in our own dwelling-place. We have been re-nationalized, and like Jesus, our citizenship is now in heaven. But Jesus, our Savior, came only for a short visit before returning to the heavenly realm from whence He came. We are still parted from Him and from our Father, although we are NOT (thanks be to God!) parted from the Holy Spirit.

Like the prophet of ages ago, we still yearn for God, our Father, to rend the heavens, and come down, and be with us, His people. Attend to this word carefully, because I find it deeply satisfying. I don’t think that the strongest groanings of our human heart are to leave the earth behind and be with God. God has created the earth for us, and us for the earth. Despite being citizens of heaven, the earth is still our proper dwelling-place. We belong on the earth, and our heart knows it. You see, the problem is not that we aren’t in our home. We are IN our home. But we’re not AT home, because God is our home, yet He is not here.

No, what we really long for is for God to come down to us, to be with us in our dwelling place. Wouldn’t that be “the best”?!? We don’t contemplate this very much, and I think the reason is because we have so thoroughly taken for granted how thoroughly ruined by sin this earth has become. We have wrecked it so much that it seems beyond repair. And let us be clear; without God, this is exactly the state of affairs here on earth. But what if it could be repaired?


What if there was a specific city where you could go with any offense done against you, stand before a perfectly righteous King who always dispensed justice with perfect grace and perfect fairness, and plead your case … being assured that perfect justice would be done?

What if every seed anyone planted grew and produced more than enough food to eat … for everyone on the planet?

What if you could live with your family, and your spouse’s family, and your entire extended families, and Republicans, and Democrats, and Mexicans, and Russians, and Iraqis … in perfect harmony, with no fear of ever feeling hurt?

What if you could create any piece of art, build any kind of structure, study any subject, prepare and eat any food, accomplish any feat, play any game, talk to any person, see anything you ever wanted to see, and do anything you ever wanted to do?


This is exactly what Scripture promises will happen at the end of time. We will not “go to heaven.” Rather, heaven will come to us. Just as God the Son came down in the person of Jesus, and God the Holy Spirit came down at Pentecost to remain within His people, so at the final resurrection God the Father will come down and make His eternal dwelling on earth.  God With Us.  And He will wipe every tear from our eyes. He will be our God, and we will be His people. And there will be no more mourning, no more death, no more crying, no more pain.


Finally, at long last, we will be at home, in our home.



[The End]