People ask us what typical day is like in Chageen. Well, nothing is typical, except this one thing - you never know what another day will bring your way. In this letter, Diane reflects on just such a "typical" day.
The
sun rose with the warm intensity of any other day, but the day ahead could never
be scripted. Rachel,
our house-help could not come to work, so I began washing dishes and kneading
bread myself. Why not make a batch of cookies while I’m at it? Mark settles
down at his desk to review the previous month’s accounts from the medical
clinic. Tooda,
our deaf neighbor, announces her presence at the kitchen window with some
grunts, so with dish water dripping from my hands I roll out a mat where she and
I can sit and “talk.” Lacking any mutual sign language, communication
degenerates to head nodding and smiles. All the same, it feels like a profitable
visit. I push open the woven grass gate which marks the entrance to our yard and
send her on her way. As I do this, I notice our neighbor, pastor Pierre, sitting
under the shade tree about 50 yards away just outside his
grass gate. Another
pastor, David, sits beside Pierre under the shade tree. After greeting them,
Pierre informs me that they will be over shortly to talk with Mark about “a
small problem.” My stomach sinks:
Oh no, a small problem usually translates into several big problems. Today would
prove no exception. An
hour or so later Pierre and David join Mark on the same mat that Tooda had
earlier vacated. “The first problem,” David intones, “is…” and so
begins a litany of 4
or 5 woes of the church, each, alas, having something to do with their chronic
shortage of money. Only one of their problems had, in our eyes, a kernel of
eternal value in it. Although this meeting ends quite pleasantly, we long for
the same pastors to come to us with honest concerns for the lost sheep of
Kwongland. As
another test of his patience draws to a close, Mark walks the pastors out the
front gate, only to see David coming back
– this time with Pastor Old Moses and Luke, a former employee of the clinic.
It seems that Luke was promised over $500 of retirement pay from the
clinic when he left 2 years ago. Of course at that time the clinic was more
bankrupt than Lehman Bros, and even now, Mark explains, Lambert, the head nurse,
went home with only $25 of clinic salary for the month of January (we made up the other $75). Nevertheless, Luke
is a good, guileless friend, and we give him a personal gift to help him get
medical treatment for his eyes. Between
visits, Mark finishes reviewing the clinic accounts, and then meets with the
clinic staff to report that while the handling of the cash box is much improved,
the management of the pharmacy stock still leaves much to be desired.
He encourages them to be more vigilant in the month of February. With
these tasks out of the way, it is already late morning and Mark finally sits
down to exegete Luke chapter 10 to prepare for translation. I
praise you Lord of heaven and earth because you have hidden these things from
the wise and learned and have revealed them to little children... I,
too, sit at my computer completing an easy-reader version of the birth of Moses.
Today the young boys should come for their reading club, and expectation
of their arrival in early afternoon motivates me to complete the episode
quickly. With
a good draft of the story in hand, including pictures, I find pastors Pierre and
David still under their shade tree, with an elder of the church weaving a grass
mat on the ground beside them. Pierre begins reading the Moses story aloud and
the three become an impromptu committee for readability. With minor changes, the
text passes muster. I need not have hurried, though - the boys all skipped club
today in favor of millet harvest. A
few hours later at 5:50 p.m. as the Voice of Chageen prepares to go on the air,
we pray with David and François who will be DJ’ing. Tonight, there will be
the usual Kwong broadcast as well as a program for the Fulani nomads. As they go
on the air at 6:00, we retire to the outer room of the studio where it is our
custom to be the “prayer brigade” during the broadcast. Oh
Lord, may this broadcast not be so much electromagnetic noise. May it bear
life-giving, healing words to lost people across the length of Kwongland. Hear
us oh Lord!” Dinner,
a TV show on DVD, and the world news on the BBC bring the day to a close.
Although almost nothing could be scripted, it really was a day just like any
other.
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