"is this not what it means to know me?" -jeremiah 22.16

i have so much to say, but i don't know where to start. i've written down so many verses and quotes and thoughts over the past few days. and i wanted to sit down and make them into some organized idea that i could present to you, hoping to pull off for another week the illusion that the things in this world of africa don't eat away at my brain and my heart. here i am, exposing the growing reality that i don't know what to do with africa.
i just finished a book called "Out of America: A Black Man Confronts Africa." Keith B. Richburg was the US Bureau Chief for the Washington Post during some of Africa's most recently formative years: during the Rwandan genocide, various ongoing conflicts in Somalia, the Congo, Uganda, Liberia, and Zaire. This man, a african american from Detroit, came to Africa expecting to connect to some ancestorial bond awaiting him on this soil, only to find that Africa illuded him, rejected him, devalued his work and sacrifice, and left him feeling thankful for the results of slavery which landed him in America, rather than at the base of a waterfall with many other African bodies who had been thrown into the river. He continually says, "In Africa, you don't count the bodies."
Now I'm not living in Darfur where children are kidnapped by the LRA and mutated into savage killers at the age of 8 or 9. And I'm not in the horn of Africa starving. I'm not dying of cholera or flooding in Malawi. And I'm thankfully not in Somalia, where there isn't even an established ruling government or party of any sort. So i'm not encountering dead bodies or emaciated little kids or pot-bellied babies with crusty eyes and noses. I'm in South Africa, where "real africans" believe all the problems are solved thanks to Mandela and the African National Congress. But I'm here to tell you that, like Richburg says, "South Africa may have been "western", but it was, I decided, at its core more complex, more confusing--more African. No less than Somalia or Rwanda, South Africa defined all my preconceived notions and assumptions, mixing up my head by creating all these confusing paradoxes, and before I knew it, before I could stop it, I found myself thinking things that one shouldn't really be thinking, feeling waht I know must not be felt."

Death Cab has a lyric that goes, "Oh what a beautiful view if you were never aware of what was around you." Although I know I'd go crazy if I didn't consult BBCworld's webpage everyday or pick up my next historical or political African commentary or journal and pray for these amazing people of Cape Town, I must admit that I've found myself contemplating some sort of psedo-escape: maybe I'll buy an 8 dollar In Style magazine and try to read it. Or read one of those pink British novels about shopping or dating. It might be nice to avoid the reality of this place for one day. Find a place where my mind can turn off, shut down, or just rest.
But most of you know that I find it hard to justify doing this. And believe me, I'm not lauding this behavior; I actually find it to be quite unhealthy at this extreme. I don't think it's a good thing but I've yet to find the balance. I guess I'll just continue praying for that, and hoping you all don't check me into a facility in the meantime. Things will be fine, it's just a necessary phase of truly allowing a place to grab hold of you, to teach you something new, to mix around all you thought before...as Richburg said. It's not as self-defeating as it sounds.

In the midst of it, God is teaching me some serious lessons.
(1) What it feels like to be a mother. Which apparently is a rather thankless, unappreciated, abused profession--yet one that never stops because the mother never stops loving, and so the point of motherhood is not to love with condition but to love without expecting anything equal in return, to love because you can't NOT love. As I was recently reminded, Kahlil Gibran writes
"You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth."
(2) What it means to serve God, not man. The Lord is delighted in perseverance, love, forgiveness, mercy, justice, sacrifice on behalf of others, faith, patience, hope, trusting in his word and promise. It is easy to become discouraged when you are serving man. We should not become weary in doing good, because if we are serving God, our service is not based on results, but on the condition of our hearts towards God. Hebrews 11:6 says, "without faith it is impossible to please God." If our hearts are firmly fixed in his promises and his truth, then we are setting ourselves on things above and we find that our service, however unnoticed, is not in vain. God sees our deeds and our hearts--and if others see our good deeds too, God tells us some of them will glorify him because of them.
(3) Jeremiah 23:23-24, "Am I only a God nearby", declares the Lord, "and not a God far away? Can anyone hide in the secret places so that I cannot see him?" declares the Lord. "Do not I fill heaven and earth?" God sees them all, everyone I pray for and hope for.

In such a time and place as this, I don't really want anything but what God promises. I am able to see with more clarity what is important to me and what is not. I guess, at the end of the day, with all the weighted thoughts and images in my head, I can rest knowing it is not my place to understand the reasons behind the state of our world. I am only able to serve those who need it, to love those who don't have it. To seek to know God, the only one who can talk with me, for he sees it all too.