Whew.

I've been struggling with the concept of government evil lately. Just a few minutes ago, shallow in the throes of pre-slumber, I witnessed a half-dream. Perhaps a vision from God, perhaps a machination of my own imagination. Seems a bit out of my league, wisdom wise, but I'm not going to claim to speak for God.

I was talking to Jesus, and we were standing.

I explained how I was feeling about the taxes I was being charged on my income for this job. 15%. It gets me absolutely livid that they are taking one of every six dollars I earn to waste on nonsense. Not only nonsense either- evil. I'll avoid the political specifics.

"They're taking advantage of me!" I protested

"So?" He said.

I was stymied by this reply. In my head, within my head, I pondered out every avenue by which I could prove that I was rendered helpless by the government's meddling. They all landed in Rome- the only thing that the government is stealing from me is money.

Even if they were stealing more- "So?" I shouldn't own anything. I gave that up becoming a Christian. My possessions are no more mine then the body I am being loaned. Frightening.

Everything that I have, that I am, rests on the edge of a knife. It is by God's grace that I was born in the U.S.A., it is by God's grace that I have the capability to work.

The only thing that this money buys me is another couple of semesters at Roberts. That's all I want. I believe that God has called me to nursing. If I fail because of something as outside the realm of my influence as financial trouble, when I've sacrificed a summer of freedom for an ministry internship, the fault is not with me. It's my responsibility to respond to an issue like that, but it's not my problem, per se.

But despite all those quick thoughts, through whom prose is a sluggish navigator, I still had one last comeback. Frustrated by being blocked so easily before, I stepped forward with my final attempt, my voice raised.

"You're supposed to be a God of Justice! Where is justice?!"

And He said, "Where, indeed." And my vision of us standing was replaced by a vision of a small African child, starving. And I saw all the wealth I'm couched in.

And I dropped my head and said "Take me there."

I've had my share of luxury in this life. I don't want to become another cog in this machine. God forbid I profit off anything done by the people I loathe so deeply. I only hope I'll have the strength when the day comes to do the right thing and leave.

I think I have to leave.

The Continued Adventures of Africaboy in Virginia, and the Chronologically and Spatially Juxtaposed Adventures in Washington, D.C., OR, Check It Out, This Is My Longest Title Ever But At This Point I'm Kinda Cheating

This trip is off to an interesting start.
It's far more of an evangelism opportunity than I was prepared for in my mind. I wasn't ready for this. But I feel like I'm growing exponentially. In some ways I think God kinda tricked me into this, but at the same time, I knew that I was crossing over into new territory here.

The people are fantastic. Everywhere I go, I'm met by people who are really genuine, who are quick to cut to the quick, jump in and get real with each other. Abbey is the other intern serving this summer. She and I talked on the way to our first stop, which was in Pennsylvania, just north of Delaware. We bonded over our shared love of Sufjan Stevens, and our mutual anxiety. She was anxious because this was the culmanation of her four years of bible studies education. This is the final exam for the last four years of her life.

I am anxious because I forgot to study for the test.

That's probably overstating the case. I think I'll be able to handle this competently. But I've never practiced leading people to Christ. I know the Romans Road, but just barely. I don't really play any instruments, bla bla bla.

I keep on thinking about the fact that when I was boarding a plane by myself, shipping off to a developing 3rd world country, without knowing the language and without any skills, I didn't have a care in the world. Just excitement. Somehow, that was such a large thing that I could just shrug it off. "Hey," I said to myself, "I'm powerless; either God shows up, or I die."

Apparently having to talk to people about the reason I have hope is a more grave matter than that.

The conference that was our first stop really convicted me of not only the importance of, but my responsibility to lead people to Christ. I have a beautiful thing glowing in my soul. It is the reason I am alive. Why haven't I been sharing it?

It is too much- I will sum up.

My time here has taught me many, many things. Bad French, for one. I don't have the strength in my feeble typing fingers to go through the full five months. But this is a condensed "Sparknotes" of sorts, for what I've learned here.

I have learned, first and foremost, of the hopelessness of humanity (in a worldly sense). This wisdom was given to me after many nights lying awake, furious with the world and it's brokeness. Finally I realized that my hope was lying in the wrong place. This has made all the difference in the world to me.

If your faith doesn't lie in a person, what is it to you if they make a mistake? What is it to you if they don't listen to reason? We have not been put on this earth to fight the world into begrudginly accepting Jesus as their/our savior. We are here to live a life of active worship to Jesus, and those who see how we carry ourselves and desire to be like us, will.

It is difficult to express the amount of joy this gives me.

I have learned more recently that God will take care of me financially. I never liked the concept of college debt. It seems contraindicated to go into thousands of dollars of debt so that you can maybe get a job. But through this trip, God has taken care of me especially well in the area of finance.

The first story about that I've already written, in the post "Why I Believe God Exists."

The second story is much longer, time wise, and shorter, story wise. Over all these five months, I've been rationing my food supply to about four dollars a day. Actually, that's not exactly right. I've been rationing my everything supply to four dollars a day. So when I went out and bought a souvenir for someone, that cut into my week's spending.

So the first of God's provisions for me is that I didn't starve. To the contrary, I actually gained weight while I was here.

The second provision was that at the end of my time, I had about 1500 dollars left over. That's after souvenirs, guest house stays, and the trip back up (which was expensive).

I'm not actually sure if he's aware of it, but my plan is to give the excess to a local pastor, who is trying to build a church to house his growing congregation.

So those of you who donated to get me here, not only did you succeed at that, but you built a solid percentage of a church. On his behalf and of course my own, thank you.

Those are the big spiritual lessons.

I also learned about giving over to God the problems I have with people. This revelation is owed to my co-worker Igor, and my inability to speak French at the time.

I learned how to be an adult among adults, and not just a teenager, because there were no teenagers to be teenagerish with. That was difficult at first, but I think overall, it made me a better person.

I learned not to drink the water.

I learned some fairly decent French. I can only talk to people who realize they're talking to someone for whom French is a second language, but I'd say that's solid progress.

And finally, I learned how to abruptly end a blog post.

Wrapping Up, Part II

I could not have asked for a better last week here.

My African Friends Havel and Joela have hung out with me several times, and we'd talk about computers and ipods and bla bla bla. For my going away, they decided to throw a party. Joela said that there would be six people. There ended up being ten, but you'll hear no complaining from me.

We pumped some music, sat, and tried to overcome language barriers. They all spoke a small amount of english- I think I spoke better French than they spoke English, with the exception of Joela.

They also brought over some traditional African food- Taro leaves, chicken, rice, and some manioc root. Remember how I didn't like manioc when I first came here? It grows on you, especially if you season it correctly (little bit of soy sauce, little bit of mayo). I made Sloppy Joes, which were a hit.

I also had a going away dessert time with all the missionaries. It was very sweet (ha- get it?), but also sad to say goodbye to the people who have become my family in these five months. They had me say a few words, and then they all said how much they're going to miss me. Mr Paul specifically mentioned how he was skeptical of a kid my age and the length of time spent here, and that I had very much exceeded his expectations. Miss Deb (the pediatric doctor) said that my mother should be very proud of me. The Thelander kids made it very clear that I would be missed. I will miss them too- who now will kick my butt weekly in Super Smash Brothers?

It was nice.

Now I'm at the guesthouse again, nothing to do but ponder on my time here. That, and get in fights with tortises. (Josh Curry for King of Quality Segues 2012)

So the guest house has a tortise in the backyard- I think it either keeps the grass down or eats the clippings of grass. Anyways, I saw it out there, and figured I would go take a look at it. I meandered over, and he saw me. He surveyed me for a bit, and then started breaking land speed records over the two meters that seperated us.

Many seconds later, I started getting uncomfortable. This turtle was pretty clearly charging me, despite the looseness of the definition of "charge" in this particular instance. I have no idea if tortises are friendly. He could be eager to cuddle, or lusting to once again be familarized with the taste of flesh.

I had plenty of time to formulate a plan- I decided to take off my flip-flop, and offer it to him, to see if he was attacking. After a little more waiting, he arrived.

When he hit the flip flop with his face (yes, literally) his neck jerked back into his body. Then he slowly extended his neck to smell the shoe. His breathing was labored from his recent sprinting session, and it was an odd thing to hear- made him very alive in my mind.

Once he had smelled it, and deemed it unsatisfactory in some unknown aspect, he started pushing against it in an attempt to get to me.

He was impressively strong, for an animal about the size of my head. So strong in his legs, in fact, that his head was forced back into his shell, pushing against my flip flop.

Not knowing the personality of this tortise, I decided I had had enough. I stepped back, and he kept charging. I went inside, and he kept charging.

Then I imagine he forgot what he had been charging, paused for a moment, and started eating grass again.

He has a good life, that tortise.

Wrapping Up- My last days with new friends.

I could not have asked for a better last week here.

I have been truly blessed. In the last three days alone, my ability to comprehend and speak French quickly and correctly has skyrocketed. I'm a ways from fluency, but I can communicate comfortably. Today I accidentally answered an English question in French, as a reflex. I give all the glory to God for that- I think He has seen fit to allow me to grow especially close to the guys that I work with these last few days, and I've had a fantastic time with it.

For example, today we were working on patching up the road into the hospital. Brutal work, but very satisfying, since you can see clear progress, and since it's the sort of work you feel personal need for (driving up the hill to the hospital was literally painful).

With my impending departure looming over our last few days of work, Olivier and Jaures decided that I needed to find a wife, toute de suite, here in Gabon.

So while we were breaking our backs lugging sand, cement, and gravel here and there and everywhere, they were stopping any potentially elegible female walking along the road, and asking her if she would like to marry me, and what a good worker and father I would be- saying that she could leave with me to go to the states, and wouldn't that just be great.

All of this through fits of laughter- I literally had to sit down. It was hilarious watching them shamelessly hawk me off to these completely baffled women, some of whom had little kids with them.

Then they sit down with me to explain to me what a good life married life is, and too be honest I couldn't understand most of it, because they were laughing too hard to speak clearly. Nonetheless, the sight of two grown men so overcome with giggling was hilarious, and I understood enough of their subject matter to get a good laugh and a red face.

Then I took all the guys out to eat at lunch, which was a hilarious disaster.

For a long time, it was tough for me to talk and interact with Gabonese (or Malian- we have a lot of Malian shop owners around here) when I'm trying to buy a product or service, because they do not feel the need to make the sale like an American does. Furthermore, if there's a problem with the sale, they feel no pressure to fix it in order to make the sale. What sells, sells.

This puts the unassertive American consumer in an awkward position.

I learned how to deal with this one time when I was getting cokes for Olivier and Mr. Paul. I had just come to get cokes for the other guys and myself, so I knew for a fact that there were 3 or 4 cold cokes in the fridge.

When I arrived the second time, the kid who works there was stocking the fridge. I asked him for a cold coke, and he said that there were none.

Normally, I wouldn't fight that, but I was buying the cokes for someone else, first of all, and second of all, I knew the dude was lying right to my face.

So I argued with him, and he, knowing he had been caught, gave me the cold ones.

You must, as the consumer, push to get what you want.

Anyways, I told you that story to tell you this one.

I'm in a similar situation with this "taking the guys out to lunch" thing. I'm paying good money for food for someone else, so I feel that I have the right to demand decent service for my friends.

I warned the guy in charge of the restaurant ahead of time that a lot of people would be coming at lunch, so that he would have time to get plenty of food.

Then, when we showed up, he didn't have two thirds of the things his menu claims he has. (fish, chicken, and meat, he only had fish, which no one ever orders).

Furthermore the restaurant owner knows this stuff- he knows this group individually by name, we've been there several times.

So everyone of our group was rolling on the floor laughing, as we had this incredibly one-sided argument about whether or not it was acceptable for him to be unprepared.

In the end though, it worked out. The guy went and bought porcupine in town, and we all had that.

Porcupine is like a cross between squid and beef. Think beef, with the texture of crumbly rubber. Not super tasty, but a fascinating experience.

While we were at the restaurant, Jaures discovered that I would be leaving Lebamba not next Wednesday (my flight date), but this Friday. When he heard that, he grabbed my hand in a handshake, and dejectedly tilted his head down. It communicated a lot, in a manly no words kinda way.

This blog post is already too long- I will continue it another time.

What I've Learned

I've been losing sleep over the last few nights, because I have 18 days left in this continent. When I come back people are going to want me to say things. I don't exactly know what things I am going to want to say.

I am vexxed by the complexity of the issues here in Africa. They're not fixable. This removes the possiblility of an honest rallying cry. I've heard rally cries about Africa. They're nonsense- Humanistic visions of a future filled with peace and harmony, saturated in guilt- as if it's every rich person's fault that people are starving. The only thing humanity can do to Africa is make it more western or more eastern. Trust me, both the west and the east are doing their best out here in Gabon, and both are making strides.

The problem is the corruption. The corruption birthed of human evil. The weed in the field, which if pulled up, will destroy the good plants around it.

The problem is actually just evil. I think Africa has a way of pulling back the curtains on life, and exposing the skeleton bones of what's going on. Evil in the United States is cloaked, or made beautiful, or joked about. But in Africa, the evil is raw.

In movies and television, evil is a thing. It is the bad guy. It is an entity seperate from the good guys. But in reality, evil is the filth we cover ourselves with, that we consume ourselves with, that we plant in our own hearts, where it grows outward through our veins and vanities to become a part of us.

No matter how many Konys you kill, there will be more. No matter how many dictators you overthrow, there will be more. Because at the end of the day, dictators are no more than people whose evils are centered around thirst for power.

So what I'm saying is, although a lot of unsavory things happen here, Africa is nothing but a gritty version of what is happening all over the world. People are evil.

This by no means implies that we should therefore not do anything- quite the opposite. But I think a new attitude is in order.

We need to shed the humanistic worldview that has formed a sedimentary crust over the Body of the Church. Humanity is hopeless. We the Church cannot, and will not, fix the world. We need to stop focusing on physical problems.

"For our struggle is not against flesh and blood..." Ephesians 6:12

One of my major challenges here was watching people disrespect the work we do. They have nigh upon zero respect for the money and work put into the hospital- they throw garbage around when garbage cans are but a few steps away. They horse on the preposterously expensive water fittings (that the hospital provides for free) They throw plastic bags full of waste into toilets, and then when the toilets inevitably clog, they just continue to use them until they are literally piled high with filth, caking the walls and floors.

But what I've come to realize as of recent is that the desperate frustration, and occasionally, the hatred, that I feel in the face of that is nothing more than my tendancy for humanism collapsing on itself.

The true Christian faith has no hope for humanity. The Christian faith hopes that humanity, as it falls, will choose to fall at the foot of the cross.

The Clunk Heard 'Round the Cave

There is currently a team of college age kids (hurray, people my age!) at Bongolo. They are here on behalf of Envision (a missions group) to help clean out a bunch of buildings.

Today, however, we decided it would be fun to check out a place called the Leopard's Lair. This was supposedly where the leopards hung out, back when there were in fact leopards here. It's a tiny little cave, formed in the side of a very steep hill (you can't stand on it without holding onto something.)

We traversed down, swinging from tree to tree like observant Georges of the jungle, and finally arrived at a giant rock formation, which was about 35 feet high, and almost unnaturally square and flat sided, jutting out from the face of the hill. Joanna Thelander mentioned that this is most likely the place where locals performed human sacrifice many years ago.

We came to a large split in the rock, wide enough to walk through, but not comfortably. We followed that to a sort of porch like room- open to the sunlight on your left, and leading up into a cave on your right.

I went ahead with another guy into the cave, just to make sure nothing had decided to inhabit the little cave recently (that same guy had been there an hour or so before to clear a path and make sure we could find the cave) Luke and Sarah, who I believe are 9 and 8, also went with us, trailing a bit behind, and then a girl named Keisha came behind them.

When we were going in, Luke was initially in front of me, but I put him behind me. He asked me why, and I said, "If anything happens in there I want it to happen to me and not you."

Foreshadowing, much?

Bret, (the aformentioned "guy") climbed up onto the higher level, to give people a hand up so they could see. The room is maybe 15 feet tall, and 10 feet in diameter. I was still on the lower level. Sarah and Luke were nearish to me, and Keisha was maybe 3 feet to my left.

To be honest, I'm not exactly sure what happened. Bret stepped some way somewhere, and a big ol' rock fell down.

It was about two feet by one foot by 3 and a half inches.

I think I blinked- then I saw a little flash of white, then my head started hurting, and my neck felt squished, like someone was playing accordian with it. My only thought was "is this really happening?"

At this point, it gets a little blurry for me. The way Keisha and Bret tell the story, it went like this:

The rock broke over my head. Straight in half. My karate instructors would be proud.

The rock missed hitting Sarah by about 6 inches.

I bent over and took a step to my right, to try and avoid getting hit more.

Then apparently I straightened up, saw a flashlight, and started walking toward it. (cuz that was the brigtest source of light.)

Keisha saw that I was in a state of shock and headed me towards the exit.

I remember feeling a trickle of thick warmth coming down my face, and thinking "there's no way that I am ok right now"

It was at this point that I started saying (over and over and over again) "I have to go, I have to go..."

I made my way out of the cave, and gained the ability to think. We didn't have any bandages, and so thinking about the fact that headwounds can lose a lot of blood, I whipped my shirt off and pushed it onto my face.

Several things happened then that were really remarkably convienient.

First of all, Keisha is a nursing student. She knew the basics for head trauma. She checked me for concussion and all that jazz.

Second, Joanna's phone got reception, at the mouth of a cave, deep in the jungle, in a valley. She was able to call for someone to bring bandages.

Third, Bret is actually Superman. That whole Clark Kent thing was a falsified diversion, to hide his identity. He ran up the hill (the one you can't stand on)
to get the stuff from the person Joanna called, and then essentially fell down the hill to bring it to us. He had to do the falling with a bunch of stuff, so he only had one hand to catch himself on various trees as he tumbled.

And Fourth, the rock didn't hit little kids! Remember that foreshadowing I was talking about?

God really protected me. Dr. Thompson said the whole thing could have very well killed me, and here I am writing a blog post.