hy·per·in·fla·tion

hy·per·in·fla·tion (hī'pər-ĭn-flā'shən)
rapid rise in prices as currency loses it's value

Don't abandon me. I'm not going to write about economic principles. Imagine if you will, going into Trader Joe's to buy a loaf of Milton's bread for $3.59. Now imagine just one year later that bread, in that same store, made with those same ingredients costing $179.50. Your salary has not increased and so buying this bread is impossible for you and considering that 4 people in 5 are without work where you live chances are, you are part of that unemployment statistic. Twenty hours out of most of your days are spent without electricity. And one candle, on most days, costs twice the daily official government wage for a farm worker. It's a dark time for Zimbabwe.

It's hard to believe that the African country with the highest literacy rate (85%) could be in such a bad situation. President Mugabe decided that 20 years after Zimbabwe gained independence and most of the farm land was still in the hands of white farm owners he would unveil a plan for seizure of land without compensation. This looked like a government official forcing a white farmer and his family off their land and giving it to a black family. As you can imagine, a person without training in methods of farming would be doomed to failure. Picture Lesley trying to start my dad's tractor and plow through the orchards. Or Anna directing field laborers when and how to prune the the trees... You get the picture. The farming economy that was doing very well went down hill and so now the country faces the annual 5,000% inflation rate. Or rather, hyperinflation.

There is a teacher at the Bridges Academy who has moved to South Africa with one million other Zimbabweans looking for a way to get their lives back. His name is Owen and he still has four siblings that are in Zimbabwe. He told Chase yesterday that he doesn't believe he will ever see them again. It's scary how fast a bad political situation can take over and negatively affect civilians who were previously doing so fine. It's like this weird thing where a good thing, like justice, gets hijacked and the wrong people try and make something happen that they believe is fair for them but ends up going so bad. We can cross our fingers that Robert Mugabe doesn't get re-elected in March despite all his efforts to take control of the election process. If he is re-elected he could be in office until he is 90, unless he dies first. It's ironic to have a dictator in a country that is supposed to have a democratically elected leader.

Night of the Living Mosquitoe

There was a retreat, a rental house near the beach, a hard bed with only a comforter to cover ourselves with, and 2 windows offering relief from the heat but, in true South African form, having bars to keep out the crime, but missing screens to keep out the bugs. We woke up in a sweat a few after hours after falling asleep because of not opening the jailhouse windows and creating an oh so stuffy atmosphere. We decided to take the “bug” risk and opened the windows. What ensued was what might be referred to as one of the worst nights of our lives….dun, dun, duh!

Cue noises of lights switching on and off and clapping hands and banging against walls. When the light turns on, see white washed walls with blood spatters from a, not nearly high enough, death toll of South African mosquitoes. This sleepless war goes on for 3 hours, we are loosing the battle, we’re low on the supplies we need to win, we’ve lost our vision and…no, George W is not our Commander in Chief. We are fighting on God’s side, the side that never loses (supposedly).

CarsfromGod

We went to church in Franschhoek for the first time. It is a church called Shofar and all the students from Bridges Academy ride a bus there, so there were quite a few familiar faces. This church is considered “charismatic” which includes members of the church being invited to share any “words” from the Lord they had. Open mic experiences have historically been very bad for me. Think no time limits, uncomfortable seats, emotional external processing in front of large groups that are captive audiences…you get the idea. I am not a fan. So if you have this “open mic” mentality and add to it the “God told me this” line it could be a very questionable mixture.
The first woman to go told a very touching story about forgiveness and I thoroughly enjoyed myself, even shed a few. Then a young woman went who (for the sake of annonimity) we will call Shera. Shera ditched class the day her public speaking professor taught on audience analysis. Shera also lacked the use of an alternative word for “blessed”. Shera also, in my humble opinion, told the audience something about God that would make many people question what God must think of them.
To make an uninteresting story shorter and more to the point, Shera went car shopping with her dad and picked out the car she wanted and got it. You might be thinking that I have left out some important detail that would make this more interesting or more touching, but I assure you I have not. She took 4 to 6 minutes to tell this story and talked about things like financing and timelines, she smiled a lot and also said that God just blesses her and blesses her. There was a lot of spewing and now that I am trying to recall, I’m not exactly sure what her point was at the end. The interesting part of Shera’s story was that she was telling it to an audience that was made up of one quarter people around her own age but that had probably very little in common.
The students of Bridges Academy are either a. orphans or b. nearly orphans. They are all considered to be “at risk” and have grown up in the township of Philippi in, by nearly all standards, poverty. I think it’s nice that Shera has a new car that only has x amount of kilometers on it (she did include that detail). I had a car when I was young also. What made me really question what she was saying is that if God really wanted her to have a new car, just the one she wanted, and it is because he loves her so much and wants to bless her so much, well then what the hell about all the kids he doesn’t give brand new cars to, let alone parents or clean water or access to education? Does he not like them as much as Shera or I? Did he forget about them? Are they being punished?
What is the currency of blessing that God deals in? Is he operating in our realm by dealing out material wealth, and by directing all of our physical circumstances? Or is the world coming and going with light and dark, evil and good and our hearts are what God is looking at? Is it a mixture of both? I’m not sure, but I personally feel very skeptical when I hear someone say that God gave them a good parking spot. I know he does give good gifts, but are they gifts in the same way we think of gifts? I would pay good money to know how those Philippi kids felt when Shera went on and on about God giving her a car?

In the spirit of being progressive

Direct your attention to the left of the screen and you will see just how much energy I now put into the Armour blog. I'm surprised you didn't know that polling was a possibility. Please vote. There are only 4 or 5 of you after all!

Note: you are able to vote for more than one option.

Melting...shweating

We are here. We have reached the farm, unpacked our bags, shopped for our first groceries and lay down on our new bed for our first nap, only to realize we can't sleep because of our racing minds and also because of the weighty heat...and no air conditioning and no working fan.

Our accidental inauguration into life on the farm/boarding school was to come upon group presentations of the students who were assigned to preform a cultural dance. I love to watch people dance and to watch these Xhosa kids dance and make their own beats with empty washing buckets and by slapping their thighs and stomping their feet and being responded to with whooping from their audience is about the best kind of dance I can imagine watching. Imagine the feeling of being somewhere where good dance is happening, like people are circling around a particular person and there is good energy and people are happy because that person they are watching is impressive. Well this is like that except way, way better. Like chills and possible welling up better.

Shine

I wonder why we are the way we are

and why we only love each other from afar.

This is how we are fading

   time.

You spend your days watching the door

You spend your whole life waiting, but you don't know what for.

You have everything you need right here

    still you want more.

This is how we are fading

   time.

I didn't come here looking for a soul

I'm a spirit trying to be human

but I'm thinking, this is how we are fading

   time.

Hold onto yourself, you're afraid that you might get left behind.

And so you hide your eyes, you're afraid that the lies will make you blind.

But it's time to shine

It's time to believe in what you know

And you don't need stranth to be strong.

Time to believe in what you know

Time to believe before you go.

-Alexi Murdoch

auntie & uncy

There's is a new baby in my family and I've never had a baby as family so naturally it's all I can be excited about in this long lasting moment of leaving Portland. I'm sitting on my floor that is empty of anything that would make our place comfortable, and cluttered with all things that make it look like we still have a long way to go until we are done packing.
Things are going so well with leaving. Why am I always so surprised and relatively ungrateful for when all things seem to go together so well? I guess if I had a profound answer to that question than this would be a blog worth reading.

The other night I was hanging out with Beall and Joy. I had borrowed a kitten for the night who belongs to my student Becky. If we weren't moving I would go to great lengths to keep him. He is orange and striped and I would even cut a hole in our garage door for him to go in and out if that was necessary. Becky let me name him and so I decided on something South African so she would remember what I had taught her about injustice. I named him Nelson Mandela. Mandela was falling asleep standing up. It was so funny that we were laughing very hard and there was a general happiness about having the heater on and the record player going that we were surprised when we noticed Beall's laughter had turned into crying. It struck me that there is quite a fine line between laughing very hard and crying. The emotional release of both is significant. For Beall, she was caught in a moment of realizing the immense beauty of our friendships and could see that soon they would be changing for a long time.
Consider the last time you cried hard. I know mine and I was alone so I didn't have to worry about the redness, puffyness, gaspingness, etc. and it was an important time for me of mourning the fact that I was leaving students who had come to depend on me. I supposed I had come to depend on them as well, why else would I be so sad?
I love hard laughter. Consider the last time you laughed so hard you had your specific hard laughing side effects (watery eyes, pain in your side, snorting, etc.) The collective value of moments like that with people you are close to is one of the good gifts coming down from our Father of heavenly lights.