WHEN A CROCODILE EATS THE SUN

perhaps no picture for this one.  this is from the book WHEN A CROCODILE EATS THE SUN.. by PETER GODWIN.

background of the author:  Peter Godwin was raised in Zimbabwe, studied at the Cambridge and Oxford, and became a foreign correspondent for the Sunday Times, London...BBC TV, reporting from more than sixty five countries.  Since moving to New York, he has written for many publications including the NY Times Magazine, National Geographic, Time and Newsweek.

This passage is one in which he was talking about his 73 year old mother who still goes into the hospital everyday in Zimbabwe to work...

He writes:

"I sit at the back of the room behind the rows of patients: nurses and orderlies, maintenance men and cooks and cleaners.  All of them are black.  Two-thirds of them have contracted HIV.  In Shona they now call it mukondombera, which means "a plague".  It has become so common that my mother can usually diagnose someone at the foorway of her examining room.  As a patient politely knocks on the metal door frame, she already knows what is wrong.

There are no more consulting physicians and psychiatrists now.  And antiretroviral drugs are not yet available, so there is no treatment at all, there is only shame.  Shame and its offspring, secrecy.  The death notices and the obituaries only mention the opportunistic diseases that actually felled the victims.  They never mention that these diseases galloped in through the open gate of a collapsed immune system--- collapsed because of AIDS.

And sometimes, especially when it is a man who is infected, my mother says, he has a terrifying hunger for revenge.  If he is going to die anyway, then he will infect as many women as he can before he goes, because it is a woman who has done this to him, a woman who has given him this sickness.

There are orphans, so many orphans.  In an African society where there has necer been much of a need for orphanages or nursing homes because the extended families have always looked after their own, there is suddenly a great need for both.  The people in the middle die, leaving the very young and the very old behind.  Deep in the bush, whole villages are being found, alone.  And these children walk miles to fetch the water and collect the firewood and plant the crops and cook their meager food, and sometimes they even try to keep on going to school, all by themselves.

When Robert Mugabe (the president), resentful at his overshadowing on the African stage by Nelson Mandela, sent thousands of soldiers to fight the rebels in the jungles of the Congo in return for diamonds for himself and his cronies, many of the soldiers came back on leave infected.  it was said that whole units came back with the virus, shared among them by the bar girls in the noisy village shebeens; and the camp followers who became their "temporary wives" and even bore their children; and by the timid tribal girls deep in the forest clearings, who the soldiers found on patril, girls who had never had any money or owned anything like radios or bicycles or flashlights or even shoes, girls who were afriad of men with guns and would sleep with the Zimbabweans soldiers for a pair of plastic shoes molded in China--- even if they were the wrong size and hurt their broad, path worn feet.  they could not talk to the soldiers -- they had no common tongue.  They would just see the gun and the plastic shoes, and they would have to make a choice and then later they would die in their villages in the clearings deep in the forest.  And the soldiers came back home to Zimbabwe, and they passed this disease on to their wives and to their girlfriends.

Week after week, there are funerals, so many funerals now.

The population projections have to be revised.  In 1980, at independence, a man might expect to live to sixty and to see his children grow up strong and have children of their own, and if he was fortunate, a man might even live to see his great- grandchildren bring him gourds of beer before he died.  But life expectancy dropped to fifty, and now it has collapsed, all the way down to thirty-three. it is hard to comprehend. At thirty-three, just as people should be in their prime, they suddenly sicken and die.  And the training the managers of the mines and the factories and the farms have begun training three people to fill every job, because they know two will not live to do the work.

I can see that my mother is weighed down by the burden of it all.  Every day she has t tell dozens of people they have an incurable disease.  She sits in her office surrounded by the badges of her profession, her white coat and her stethoscope and they serve only to mock her in ability to heal.

***

BY PETER GODWIN

for many this is home

When I look out from where I am, on the 33rd floor of a skyscraper, in the lounge of my condo...I can see the skyline and hints of Manila Bay.  Sometimes I can even see little billows of smoke way off in the horizon's distance and I can't help but imagine the heaps of garbage being burned and sifted through by men who call themselves scavengers, many who live in the midst of it with their families in tin and plywood homes that they made with their hands.  I probably wonder everyday about the children I met there, the man who has lived their his entire 40 years, and his daughter who is now 20.  I wonder about the children and I still have hopes of being friends to the older girls... one texted me the other day, asking me to help her find a job.  I texted back, but I haven't heard a reply.

When I was there the last time, I went in my normal footwear of flip flops.  To cross through the garbage and mud was to cross through something deeper than I had realized.  I sunk into the soot like mud and could barely barely pull my foot out of the mud to make each step.  I could feel the torque on my flip flops threatening to rip them in the stretch.  I did make it through with many looking on for a moment here and there.  We walked towards the homes at the side of the garbage hills and found that a little new playground had been built.  We entered the playground and more children came...eventually the older girls came too...one carrying a little bag of cold, clear, and clean water and she bent with an enthusiastic smile and began to wash my feet as I just stood there, somewhat trapped in the language barrier, somewhat trapped in the need of what she was doing, and trapped in a good way to humbly accept what she did with happy vibrance and notable efficiency.  I would actually try much later to give her twenty pesos-- although I normally do not give money--I thought that perhaps the water did cost her something...she would actually walk back across the mud with me when I left, giving me more water to go home with and when I tried to give her the twenty pesos in return (fifty cents) ...she sincerely said no, still with happiness.  

I am left with a question--- what can I really do?  For those who pray, pray with me...really.  For many this is home.

      I had a chance last year to stay during winter months changing into Spring in a cozy place in NYC.  I felt the warmth of the place, sheltering me at times from the snowy outside-- when it did snow, I would safely watch from within---and yet the intense cold outside was a stunning exhilaration as well.  I became better friends with all that were staying together, and when the time to leave came, we joked and said that it was as if we were now leaving the nest.  Katchi birds. Katchi being the Korean word for together (and I had been with one of our hosts in Korea, though she is fluent in Korean, that was about the only word I learned.  Katchi.  Together. And I loved it.)  It was time for the birds to fly.  We had to leave the warmth, the rest, the security and do the proverbial flying away.  What was at stake?  Not flying.  Not knowing the feeling of the next new experience.  What is it about us, that believes somewhat deeply that we were created to fly-- why is that a common thread in our subconsciousness that seeps into some of our dreams when we sleep?  Perhaps there was a time when man and woman could fly.

      As, I start this blog-- on home, the nest is a part of something Christ is recorded as saying and when I first heard someone repeat it, it spoke of how my life would be for a time.  "Foxes have holes and birds have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to sleep."  No home, house--- white picket fence to point to.  I was in college when I heard it, and I thought intuitively that will be me as well.  Christ was displaced, perhaps from Heaven, perhaps from eternity, but also quite literally traversing on foot under a middle eastern sun, catching the fish to eat, hoping to share bread and wine with friends.  Yet, there seems to be a three year period of his life when he had no where to rest, to call home.  Perhaps, he was prophetically experiencing solidarity with the world we live in.  A world where its quite normal to be in exile, a refugee, an orphan.  Displaced.  What does it mean to have 34 million refugees?  80 percent of whom are women and children.  Refugee is one seeking asylum or a sanctuary, perhaps a sacred space to be an eco-system to nurture survival, and beautiful life.  What does it mean for sub-saharan Africa by 2010 have 42 million orphans?

     Perhaps, home and hospitality are meant to be more than cooking.  Perhaps hospitality is simply bringing the stranger in.  Perhaps hospitality is helping the person outside of a home, come inside...outside of a conversation, be a part of the conversation, outside of friendship be a part of community, outside of nations--- have a place to call home.  Jesus tells a parable about a shepherd who sees a lamb that it his and that was lost; and he goes and leaves everything else to get the one--- the one person... but in this case, it is a lamb and he says, he takes the lamb and carries it on his shoulders and brings the lamb home.  I think we have a change to create home in small ways---in small transitions through out our days... welcoming the world around us.

       As for myself, I know of a woman who felt that Jesus told her that she would always have enough--- enough bread to feed children with, enough clothes for orphans, that she would have enough--- as she started with one, and another one, and another.  She now takes care of 7000 orphans in Mozambique.  But perhaps it started by creating a little nest in the world for children to call home.