I love coffee

I'm back at my favorite spot in the house I'm staying at in Rwanda. The upstairs veranda. I'm drinking coffee (confession: my 3rd cup this morning) and soaking up the cool, fresh morning air and the noises of birds and voices of small children yelling in the distance and dogs barking and cars forcing their way over unpaved back-roads. This is my first day of rest in quite a while, and I'm so terribly thankful for it. The last two weeks have been busy with the partners' conference, endless conversations with partners and staff, finishing off a couple of proposals with quickly approaching deadlines...Yesterday, I drove back from Goma (in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, or DRC), having spent a day and a half there meeting with staff. Then I went straight into two more hours of meetings in Kigali. I was exhausted, but had made plans to go to a Good Friday service and then out to dinner at a Greek restaurant. It was a nice evening -- we were entertained by a large gray cat with a very imposing meow who was convinced he ought to be allowed to help himself to the good-smelling food on our table. The waiters asked if the cat was ours or if we wanted the cat to stay with us -- we did not, so they tried shooing him away with firm voices and stomping feet. This cat was unmoved. Finally they threw bread so the cat would move away from the table. A short-term solution that will no doubt cause them anguish in the near future...

Why am I writing of stray cats and Greek food and meetings? Why are these the things my brain is processing right now, instead of the punch-you-in-the-gut-reality of the lives of the people who live in utter deprivation every day here? A week ago I took a walk down a well-populated hill and on the way back up, out of breath from the steepness and the altitude, I was passed by men and women and children who were carrying loads (of branches, bananas, water, whatever) on their heads. They climbed this hill every day. Not for exercise or enjoyment, but because they had to. I am struck once again at how profoundly different my life, my reality is from that of so many other people. Is it better? Is it worse? Am I blessed? Are they? My brain cannot know the answers to such questions, can hardly even process them. My brain convinces me to just drink my coffee and listen to the noises around me and thank God for all He has made.

The journey so far...

The flight from Amsterdam into Nairobi was lovely -- the plane was surprisingly empty. I had a whole row of seats to myself and got to stretch out and sleep for several hours. What a blessing! Especially since the overnight in Nairobi was not terribly smooth...We landed at 8:15pm and waited for the luggage to be unloaded. And we waited. And we waited. And two hours later it was announced that there was a problem with the door to the luggage compartment of the plane and they were working on it. I decided to find my driver and head to the guesthouse rather than wait around -- my flight for Rwanda would leave the next morning anyway and I could collect luggage then. When I returned that morning, I found out they never succeeded in opening the jammed door and all the luggage on the Amsterdam flight had been sent back to Amsterdam. A reasonable solution, I thought.

Luggage arrived in Rwanda one day after I did -- not bad at all.

So I've been in Kigali the past two days. It's beautiful here; such a contrast to the clogged and chaotic streets of Haiti. Here, all the lawns are well manicured (it's against the law to walk on the grass!), the traffic is light, the streets are clean, the air is cool, the hills crowded with homes and crops seem organized and orderly. It's almost eerie. I heard yesterday about a few men who'd been caught carjacking -- they were taken back to the scene of the crime to "reenact" what happened; they tried to escape and were all shot and killed. Carjacking is apparently not a big problem anymore. Reminds me of Singapore.

Now I'm back at the airport to take a quick 2-day trip to Burundi. Can't think too much, just keep moving...

Musings from Amsterdam

Just flew into Amsterdam. On the airplane, I watched the movie Juno. Very cute. I was sitting next to four loud women who were traveling together. One was Italian. And drunk. In the middle of the flight, after one too many individual bottles of chardonnay, she started yelling at her co-travelers and cursing at them. It was awkward.

I’m reading a book by Miroslav Volf, it’s called Free of Charge: Giving and Forgiving in a Culture Stripped of Grace. What a great title. I’m only about 50 pages into it but already I am encountering some truths my soul desperately needs to understand. Volf emphasizes the fact that we are dependent on God and that He is the ultimate Giver. He quotes Martin Luther who said, “We are beggars – that is true.” It’s ironic that only in our utter reliance on God are we able to somehow find freedom. He created us, He gives us our every breath, and all that we have is from Him. That’s such a foreign concept. In this world, in our human relationships, dependency is a bad thing except for infants; being dependent on another strips us of dignity, it obligates us, it ties our hands. How is it that accepting our position as receiver to the divine Giver can set us free? How is it that we can present our open hands to Him in fearless expectation that He has given, is giving, will always give?

Next stop: Nairobi.

On the move

Just off the phone with my mother and she reminded me it had been a while since I've posted...It's good to have a mom.

Since the last post, I've watched the lunar eclipse from a rooftop in Haiti and am now back at the Baltimore airport waiting to get on a plane that will take me to (Detroit, another plane to Amsterdam, another plane to Nairobi, an overnight in Nairobi, and finally a plane to) Kigali, Rwanda. Perhaps on one of the flights I will write something more insightful than that statement of fact. For the moment, I can't process much that's going on except to say I'm prepared to be in Africa for the next month.

My flight is boarding now...