T minus one day before my tray table has to be stowed and my seat needs to be in the full upright and locked position as the passengers, crew, and I hurdle through space and time. And after a night, I will step off the plane onto another planet.

And they are two different planets. For any of you who have lived or traveled to a culture as disparate from the U.S. as Zambia is, you know what I mean.

So what am I leaving behind here?
I’m leaving most of my books, clothes, and art supplies, carefully allocated to the friends who I know will treasure them most.
I’m leaving a way of life based on tilling the ground, on simplicity, and on community.
I’m leaving my snail mail address, since, for some reason, Facebook hasn’t gotten big here yet.
And I’m leaving my name. A tiny girl who was born during my time here to one of the community school teachers is now my namesake, Emmie--the Zambian version of Amy. The name means beloved, which is exactly what she will be--beloved from near and far.

And what am I taking with me to the planet of the U.S. of A.?
I’m taking a couple of memory cards full of photos to complement all the memories.
I’m taking a few wall hangings and wood-bead necklaces.
I’m taking a little sadness at the knowledge that no matter where I live, no matter which planet I call “home,” there will always be people to miss.
And I’m taking a new name, given to me by my host family here:
Taonga Ndhlovu.
Ndhlovu means I’m from Eastern Province, the Elephant Clan.
And my first name, Taonga, means grateful.

Which is fitting, because that’s exactly what I am.

Please pray for safe travels for all of us SALTers returning to the U.S. on July 19 and 20. I’ll write again once you and I are sharing the same landmass.

"And what you thought you came for
Is only a shell, a husk of meaning"

I thought it was a silly assignment, courtesy of MCC: “Write what you’ve learned in your service year. Limit your answer to a paragraph or two.”

I wanted to limit my response to one sentence: “Please refer to my personal journal entries (all 300 pages of them).”

I have learned something every day I’ve been here--Africa has been an overly didactic teacher and I have constantly been playing the role of student, sometimes willingly, sometimes grudgingly. So now, as my year supply of malaria pills dwindle in the container and my Zambian friends have dolefully begun repeating and re-repeating the “How many days left now?” query, I will attempt to inscribe some of the year’s learnings. Not as a summation, but as an exercise, maybe even a spiritual exercise--for your, my, and MCC’s sakes.

I’ve learned to stop killing the spiders in my bedroom and the cockroaches in the kitchen, and eventually, to stop even counting them.
I’ve learned to squat-pee without toilet paper at a moment’s notice, unphased by the inevitable splashes (It’s sterile, Amy. Your lower extremities will get over it.)
I’ve learned how to wash my clothes by hand every Saturday without a) making my knuckles bleed b) making the clothes dirtier than when I started or c) complaining that the three hours were a complete waste of a perfectly good Saturday morning.
I’ve learned to make a Play Doh-type ball of the staple cornmeal paste and then proceed to eat that same thing every day for a year.
I’ve learned say my “Thank you for this daily food” prayer and mean it, even though I’m praying over the same food I’ve been praying over (almost) every day for (almost) a year.

I’ve learned to laugh at myself for not learning the local language as well as I’d like and forgive myself for not loving the people here as well as I’d like.

I’ve learned to detest a word like “poor” that describes Africans—-my friends and coworkers—-by what they lack.

I’ve learned how to find my own features in the face of the child with the smile on his lips and the bald patches in his hair . . . and in the countenance of the rich man, disfigured with stress as he attempts to clutch tighter to his own wealth.

I’ve learned to forget which of the people in the community have told me they’re HIV positive, because it wouldn’t affect how I’d treat them anyway.

I’ve learned how to think small, how to stop trying to change/save the world and start bearing with, or maybe even forgiving, the drunkards, the control freaks, the child abusers who come to my office or live in my home.

I’ve learned to pray as though Jesus is all I have, because that’s oftentimes felt like the case.

And what you thought you came for
Is only a shell, a husk of meaning

T.S. Eliot writes in Little Gidding, a poem about traveling to new places and home again. He continues:

You are not here to verify,
Instruct yourself, or inform curiosity,
Or carry report. You are here to kneel
Where prayer has been valid . . .

Perhaps I came to Zambia out of a desire to do good, out of curiosity, out of a need to report on what I would find.

But this year has transformed—-it has become much more of a pilgrimage and much less of an adventure or even a mission. I have walked with myself, learning all of my faults and a few strengths mixed in. I have walked with others, learning that despite our differences, which run deep, we can live and laugh under the same roof. I have walked with God, and encountered new aspects of him.

I have not arrived anywhere, in fact I am more convinced every day that I will never arrive. But the journey of the pilgrimage traveler is a beautiful one, isn’t it?
And now more than ever I have my goal in mind.

My prayer here, at this place in my journey, as I prepare to board a plane taking me far from this culture and these friends, is that each of my learnings would come with me. That each of the little drops of truth that God’s rained on me this year would trickle down from my head and saturate my heart. And hopefully even make it to my feet, influencing my future paths.

That is my prayer.

And I am here, in Africa, to kneel. Where prayer has been valid.

Amen.

Yoder, John H. Herald Press: Scottsdale, 1983.

I have a lot of free reading time here in Africa, so I thought I’d try my keyboard at a book review of one of my faves. I didn’t get around to reviewing it when I was negative two years old, but now, 25 years after its publication, I still feel this little puppy is worthy of discussion.

Okay, now on to the review:

When I first picked up its slim 111-pages, I was temped to negatively judge What Would You Do? by its hokey 80’s cover—that is, until I saw the words JOHN H. YODER emblazoned on the front. For those of you who aren’t familiar with Yoder, he is a pacifist theologian extraordinaire, a name that should strike fear into the heart of even the staunchest military supporter. To put it another way, he is one of those spiritual Ivory Tower men like C.S. Lewis and N.T. Wright—sometimes dead, sometimes alive (in this case dead)—upon whom I have an intellectual crush. To put it just one more way, he is the fourth member of the Trinity, at least for all of us who take Biblical Pacifism seriously (but not for those who take Trinitarian Theology seriously I suppose). And the argumentation of his pacifist stance in What Would You Do? is as legit as his Mennonite-style facial hair, which the picture on the back cover informs me is pretty darn legit.

Okay, enough author-extolling, now onto what the book actually says. Divided into three sections, the first is Yoder addressing the stock question: “What would you do if a violent person threatened to harm a loved one?” He delves into the options available—giving no less than seven outcomes of a violent attack rather than the usual two of murder or be murdered. What are those seven? I’m not telling. I will say that they don’t all end in the death of the victim, even though Yoder asserts that “death is not the greatest evil one can suffer” (27), but I’ll leave the remaining argumentation to my main man. So go read him.

In the process of giving the seven options, Yoder also questions the legitimacy of the “What would you do?” approach to start with—its emotional baggage, its assumptions, its nuances. Nuance example: did you know that Gandhi was ready “without embarrassment” to violently defend his immediate family or self, without seeing this as any compromise to the rejection of all organized violence in national causes (24)? Yeah, I didn’t know that either. But Yoder did. And that’s why I love him. (Sorry, the author-extolling isn’t stopping anytime soon.)

And then, like the good humble pacifist that he is, Yoder steps aside for the last two sections, allowing others to speak now so they don’t have to forever hold their peace. The middle section consists of short essays from pacifists like Leo Tolstoy and my favorite, folk singer Joan Baez, who sees the world not as 130-some nation-states but as “One tribe. Four billion members.” And like me (a person who moves to the other side of the world for a year because she believes we all have a responsibility to each other regardless of birthplace), Baez would agree that “killing any members of the family is a dumb idea. We think there are more decent and intelligent ways of settling differences. And man had better start investigating these other possibilities because if he doesn’t, then by mistake or by design he will probably kill off the whole damn race” (66).

Simplistic reasoning, you say? She goes on to address that complaint too.

The third section, entitled: “But Does It Really Work?” recounts true stories of pacifism in action. They’re all pretty good, but the last one is the clincher—a story of a missionary team in South America loving/hugging the soldiers who had just abducted the men in their group. It’s tear-jerkingly powerful, making you weep partly out of guilt that you could never be that good of a person/Christian and partly because your soul has just been deeply and profoundly touched when the soldier says, “I have fought many battles and killed many people . . . but this is the first time I even knew my enemy face to face, and I believe that if we knew each other, our guns would not be necessary” (111).

So when it comes down to it, you should read this book for three reasons: 1) You’ll get to hear from the man of my dreams and a few other interesting people too. 2) You probably won’t become a pacifist but you’ll understand better why Amy is. 3) It’ll be fun, in a nerdy theological sort of way. 4) Oh, and I forgot to mention this one earlier: it’s written in manageable, even colloquial language (unlike Yoder’s Politics of Jesus which is notoriously dense, possibly even denser than Yoder’s own facial hair).

There you have it. I’ve written my review, I’ve made my case, and I’ll leave you with one final all-important question—to read or not to read: what will you do?

The week after my 23rd birthday a group of us traveled to Zanzibar, an island you’ll find both off the coast of Tanzania as well as on your Windows wallpaper—-you know, the stock photo of the idyllic white sand beach with the single palm tree that you envision yourself in when you’re having a bad day. Or an average day. Or even a ridiculously good day, because you’d be able to fully observe your quality day if you were on that idyllic island. Yeah, well, I was just there in the flesh, along with four others: Tyler, Karen, Carolyn, and Courtney--a science teacher, two nurses, and a pilot. All single, all thirty and younger. We went to the island to bond with the Indian Ocean, our snorkel masks, succulent ethnic cuisine, and of course, each other.

I would tell you about the island itself, but it was just so perfect it gets boring/braggy after the first few sentences, so instead, I’ll tell you about interesting young Americans and Canadians and what aspects of life they discuss when they find themselves together on vacation in Africa.

Our conversations started with the past. First, the recent past: the 72-hour jolting train ride here we did yoga sessions on until it stopped dead for 10 hours (tracks broken ahead, rumor had it) and we were forced to give up and catch a bus for the remaining day of travel. But we could’t complain--the green Tanzanian hills we careened through on the bus are absolutely stunning.

Then the not-so-recent past, especially college, where people like me played normal things like flute and people like Courtney played full-contact rugby-style pool games with his “Mod.”
“Dude, some of us, as we were tackling each other for the ball underwater, got so we could hold our breath for like four minutes. Yeah, it’s possible.”

Then our conversations would move to the future, often switching to a serious tone as abruptly as the jolts on the train ride to Zanzibar.
“So what would you rather have: a tail that wags when you’re happy . . . or hair all over your face, even your eyelids? And no surgery or laser hair removal.”
Which switched to:
“Would you rather be with someone who talks too much or not enough?”
Which became:
“If you had two lives to live, would you want to be married in both?”

And in the dim 2 AM light, we searched each others’ hand gestures and eye movements for the answers to life questions.
“Should I go on now to become a doctor?”
“What if the editing job I applied for in the States falls through and I have nothing when I leave here? What do I do then?”

And, where we could, we made plans.
“MY kids will definitely have to play a sport.”
“Well, MINE will just have to find an activity they like.”
As if our future childrens’ outlines will solidify beside us as soon as we solidify our plans for them.

But for all the looking back and planning ahead, our toasts at dinner were to the now: to the sun, the waves, to Africa. We sat sunburned and jellyfish-stung under the crocodile constellation we named Mamba (Swahili for “crocodile”) that had gone previously unnoticed by all the ancient people groups. And we laughed the week away because we are each others’ community, each others’ jobs—-not until something like “marriage” or “stable employment” comes along, but now, because life is about nows, not about untils.

And one Zanzibari afternoon, a week into 23, when I walked on the beach alone locating crustaceans, and Karen called to me,
“Hey Amy, we’re watching the sunset from the ocean today. JUMP IN!”

I didn’t have to think twice about what I’d do.

And let me tell you, life sure does wup up on stock photos.

“When we listen carefully we begin to hear other sounds above the racket and roar of poverty. Poverty screeches and screams, but something behind it is singing.”
-Raymond Downing, medical missionary

It’s been strange and wonderful to have four sets of American eyes viewing my Zambia with me the past two weeks (a.k.a. Mom, Dad, bro Eric, friend Stacey). We of course got the touristy Vic Falls out of the way, but the most wonderful-—and psychologically challenging—-part of their trip for me was introducing them to Mumbwa, my home. In the course of two days they met so many people that my mom’s hand muscles became sore from all the handshakes.

And as expected, the social ills pushed their way into our conversations. Like a selfish child, Poverty and AIDS and Alcoholism demanded that my family address them, discuss them, and deal with them, as they’ve demanded of so many before who both live in and visit this place.

As we conversed both with each other and with thoughtful Zambians over these issues, I found myself in a mind-splitting “Yeah . . . BUT” dichotomy. Let me explain:

“So the life expectancy is 36, right? The second shortest in the world?”
“Yeah, BUT did you meet my Home Based Caregivers? They volunteer hours and hours each week caring for their neighbors with HIV/AIDS and TB.”

“So most of these kids are AIDS orphans, right?”
“Yeah, BUT did you notice Violet’s smile as she keeps peeking back at us in class? And with a mind like hers, she has so much potential.”

To be fair, my family members are all considerate and well-educated, perhaps able to perceive both the nuances and the big picture with more depth than I was in the first few months here. But as they gave me a refresher course on the American perspective on Africa, I realized how much I used to view this place through the lens of Numbers (36 years) and Labels (AIDS orphan) and Sad Stories and how little I do that now. Zambia is no longer statistics to me but instead friends and coworkers and role models.

So when I had my fam sit down to hear the Grace’s story, I hesitated to even disclose to them the sad parts.

“Ooo! Let me cook for them!” Grace said as soon as she learned my family was visiting. So over her delicious peanut vegetable dish, Grace told us who she is. She is the chairperson of CHD’s women entrepreneurship program, in charge of giving micro-enterprise loans to women to start businesses. Grace is also a businesswoman herself, owning both a food store and selling jewelry she makes from materials she buys in Lusaka. She loves her husband, visits hospitalized people every week, and, like most Zambians, raises orphans. She also sings louder than I do and tries to teach me Zambian dances.

“What doesn’t Grace do?!” Stacey asked me. Like me, Stace fell in love with Grace. Perhaps it’s her loud laugh that exposes her teeth like stars twinkling against her night-skin as she holds your hand, pulling you into the laugh with her. Perhaps it’s the passion and dedication she has for the community work she does, most of it volunteer. Whatever it is, it’s hard to not fall in love with this woman.

So it wasn’t until later that I told Stacey Grace’s status. She’s positive (she’s open about it and doesn’t mind that I’m writing this). But as everyone who knows Grace knows, that’s a side note in her life story, barely worth mentioning. To define her using a label like HIV would be like defining Handel’s Messiah by the breath marks or a sleek Ferrari by the exhaust it emits. It’s there, it’s a reality, but it has nothing to do with the essence of Grace. It has nothing to do with her love of life and others.

And so it is with other Zambians, especially those Mumbwa-ites who fill their community with agencies and organizations and hospitals and schools they then use to serve each other. As I’ve spent this year observing them and being loved by them, I always learn much more from them than I expect. I cringe now when I think of how I was so determined to “help” them, as if I knew how they should live their lives. I call it my latent maternalism. I wasn’t racist, but I condescendingly used to think (usually subconsciously) that my American methods were more efficient, and therefore more valuable and better. An “I’ll come and show you how it’s done around here” attitude.

Now, however, I’ve learned to listen more, and I think we must come here with an attitude of symbiotic exchange. For every workshop an American gives in Africa explaining how to run a business more efficiently or how to prevent the spread of AIDS, there should be a workshop run by Zambians for Americans on how to live in community or how to care for the environment or how to deal with death or how to build a culture where ideas like “anorexia” and “stress” are unknown concepts. Would that be so strange to take seriously the life lessons of the “least of these”?

Zambians are a patient people, a welcoming people, and above all, a strong people. And as for us in the States, Zambians like Grace could use our compassion, but not our pity. To define these people by their problems not only steals their humanity from them—-it also deafens us to the secrets they hold about life and love and death. Powerful secrets that at times put me and my American arrogance to shame.

Perhaps I’m idealizing this culture, and there are still days when I dislike living here, but perhaps some praise is overdue after all the time I’ve spent viewing Zambians as embodied social ills rather than equals and beautiful children of the same Father.

“We Africans are living in hard times,” a few Zambians told my family last week. They may be hard times, but these people have a lot to teach us about how to sing and laugh through the difficulties. There’s a lot we have to learn about how to live out tragedy with grace.