The Fine Balance

This morning I am reflecting on comfort.  I am sitting on my porch listening to birds chirp and signs of my neighbors waking and going about their daily business.  Our yard looks lovely even if a little rough hewn.  I love the Bird of Paradise growing out of control and our unkempt gardenia bushes.  I have been praying about relationships and life, and thinking about how God has shown me so much and has really changed me in so many good ways.  How he is so faithful to work in us and work things out of us, and how there is still so much work for him to do in my character.

So, as a middle class American I have not had to really be very uncomfortable in many ways.  Of course there have been things that transcend socio-economic protections such as death and disease, but middle class Americans are insulated from many problems that other people deal with.  We enjoy a degree of control over circumstances that most people in the world cannot imagine.  When we encounter something that takes us out of our comfort zone we can often find a way to escape it, whether through “fixing” the situation, avoiding it, or finding something to numb us or distract us.  I’m pretty convinced that is a big reason why the entertainment industry is so successful.  I admit that feel very blessed by the degree of control I have been granted, and I especially feel the security of it emphasized because I live among people who are on the other end of that spectrum.

In Africa, people tend to be much more fatalistic.  Many feel that they have such little recourse and no control so when they encounter hardship they may give up very easily.  Discomfort does not necessarily indicate a need to reconcile the problem in some way, for many it automatically indicates defeat.  Extreme examples of this are seen in several instances where parents have given up on treating or even feeding sick children because they are so sure the child will die, and people who refuse to seek medical attention because it probably won’t help anyway.

Somewhere between trying to inoculate ourselves against discomfort and succumbing to fatalism, there is a discernment that helps us determine when that pressure is a healthy thing and when it isn’t.  I am currently experiencing a lot of uneasiness that doesn’t signify that anything is wrong or needs to be resolved, it’s simply an indicator that God is trying to awaken me to new possibilities and expand my vision of his kingdom and my place in it.  There’s nothing inherently wrong, and I am not defeated, just having growing pains.  It is ironic that I actually find some comfort in that discomfort, but I suppose it’s because that in that discomfort I feel the presence of God.

Our summer is definitely moving along fast and we are keeping up with it!  I am finally into a semi-regular routine, at least as much as can be expected at this point, and I thought I’d share what a typical week looks like for me.

Sunday: In the mornings we go to church in the village , then we go home for lunch and relaxation until late afternoon.  At 4:00 we meet with our teammates to take communion together and have Bible classes for the kids.  It is kind of cool to think that we are meeting here at about the same time you all are meeting in the U.S.  After church we go home for our Sunday night tradition of Mark’s pancakes.

Monday is our day off, but I usually get up and create a menu and shopping list.  We do things around the house and have a family day, many times going to the pool when it is hot.  Monday nights are movie night, and I make pizza and we watch a movie during dinner.

Tuesday mornings through Friday mornings the girls have French lessons with our language teacher, Essowe.  I go do home visits for the clinic from 8 or 9 until 12.  When I get home we have lunch and then Mark goes out to the village and I stay home with the girls.  Tuesday is market day so Abla (a friend of ours) goes to the market for us, and I spend my afternoon getting things done around the house, spending time with the girls, personal prayer and Bible study, and getting home aspects of our work done.  I usually start dinner around four and we eat at six.  After dinner we have family time until the girls go to bed.

Wednesday mornings I do Kabiye lessons and the girls do French lessons.  Afterwards I may spend time at home, or I might have some other things to do like attend a meeting, or get work done for the support of orphans by Christian Relief Fund.  We eat lunch together and then Mark leaves to go to the village.  In the afternoon I practice Kabiye, spend time with the girls, and at 4 the girls and I head up to the local orphanage where we teach a Bible lesson and play games with the kids.  We usually get home at about 5:30 and have time to shower before dinner (I have Beatrice, our houseworker, make dinner on Wednesday.)  After dinner we clean up and spend time with the girls, but at 7:30 our babysitter, Sitsope, comes and we head over to teammates’ homes for Adult Bible Study.  We don’t usually get home from that until around 10:30, so we are pretty worn out.

Thursday mornings Mark goes to guys’ prayer time and the girls have French, and I work around the house.  Mark usually gets back a little after 12 and we have lunch together, and soon thereafter I go to girls’ prayer time for the afternoon.  Girls prayer time usually lasts until about 5, and I come home to Mark cooking dinner!  We eat, do dishes, have family time, and then off to bed.

Fridays the girls and I both do our particular language studies, and then I have the day to work around the house, study Kabiye, have personal prayer and Bible study time, and do other things that need to be done.  Fridays are usually very nice days.

Saturday mornings the girls and I do not do language, though Mark does.  Two Saturdays a month I spend the morning at the clinic to help with their group meetings, once a month for the OVC (Orphans and other Vulnerable Children) Caregiver meeting and once a month for the PMTCT (Preventing Mother to Child Transmission) group.  Saturday afternoons are usually family time and we sometimes watch a movie with dinner.

That is a fairly typical week for me.  It’s a busy enough schedule, but very manageable.

I can hear my girls outside the window.  They have used the garden hose to wet the ground and are creating Barbie town out of mud, sticks, and leaves.  Watching them play as they do gives me much to contemplate in the realm of materialism and consumerism.

When we moved here last year we lived in an apartment above the school house and had only what we were able to bring on the airplane with us.  Needless to say, the girls didn’t have a lot of toys, just a small collection of Littlest Pet Shop mostly, yet they rarely said that they were bored or indicated that the lack of toys was troublesome to them.  Instead they creatively employed toilet paper tubes, cereal boxes, bottle caps, old fabric scraps, and various other items and tailored them to suit their recreational needs.

However, when we moved back here this year and into our home we sold some of their toys in a garage sale, but brought most of what they had with us and created a playroom for them.  It seemed logical considering we were sending a container anyway, but here we are with an overstocked playroom for my girls, who really prefer to make their Barbie beds out of washcloths and fabric scraps, and towns out of sticks and mud.

So, yesterday as I was shopping online for facial cleanser that would be appropriate for a girl of Maddie’s age, I almost got sucked in by Discovery Girls magazine (something that surely my 10 year old needs since it is custom written for girls her age!).  I realize that  there’s nothing wrong with getting my kids toys, but I am also grateful that my girls have unwittingly reminded me that cute packaging developed by marketing experts who have done demographic research is not really necessary to meet their needs (or ours for that matter!)