Time and Place

We were on the road from Doma to Harare (the equivalent of the drive from Ashland, KS to Oklahoma City, OK) when I saw a small, rusted Japanese truck transporting two longhorn steers.  There was no trailer; the cattle were somehow both balancing in bed of the truck.  My first reaction was that with a few isolated exceptions, that probably hasn’t happened in the United States in my lifetime.  Our poorest ranchers are able to own, borrow, or rent a stock trailer to move cattle.  We put four-wheelers and other “man-toys” in the back of our full-sized pick-ups.  We don’t find much use for small trucks in rural America.  They are just not efficient for the work being done. 

When I speak of Zimbabwe in this blog post, I will be referring primarily to the rural areas as we have spent our time there. 

The Zimbabwean farmers we have witnessed still walk behind plows pulled by mules or oxen.  Their horse power still comes from horses and their most common form of transportation is a pair of feet.  They use hand tools to plant seeds and rely on the heavens for irrigation.  They grow most or all of their own food and barter for other supplies, such as flower or sugar.  Almost nothing is wasted.  Landfills don’t exist as we know them.  What little they cannot reuse is burned.  Their water comes from bore holes (wells).  In six days, we have been through many villages across the northern part of the country and the only temperature controlled areas we have seen have been the operating room and the laboratory at Karanda Mission Hospital.  Karanda is blessed with a strong hospital by Zimbabwean standards, offering sound OB services and a plethora of surgeries (neurological and orthopedic to name a few).  The only access to healthcare in Doma is an herbal clinic that was born out of desperation.  There is no access to western pharmaceuticals.  People travel up to 30 miles by foot to get there. 

Throughout Zimbabwe, power can be out for weeks at a time because of poorly treated poles with termite damage.  If you find yourself in need of a restroom, you can plan to carry a torch or a flashlight (to look for poisonous snakes) several hundred feet to an outhouse (a covered hole in the ground).  Showers are the same, and happen occasionally.  Hygiene is viewed differently here.  There is often no power or running water.  If there are windows, they are single-paned and not energy efficient.  A missionary in Doma told me that most farm families survive on $75 USD per month, or $900 USD per year.  The median household income for a farm family has not been that low in America since the 1920s ($850).  90 years.

Does this sound familiar?  Manual farming practices?  Growing our own food?  Outhouses?  Bartering for goods?  My wife, Kaila is from a five-generation farm family in Sabetha, KS.  During the Great Depression, this was life for them.  They didn’t have much money, but they were able to raise crops to sustain themselves.   

Fast forward 80 years and America is a society full of gadgets and conveniences.  In lieu of walking, we drive our new vehicles four blocks to work (Ashland proper is about 1 square mile).  Oxen are replaced by air-conditioned tractors – everything is temperature-controlled, for that matter.  We have all the latest education and technology.  It is hard for us to imagine life with inconsistent access to power, water, or sewage.   Bathrooms are part of our bedroom suites and most of us shower not once, but twice each day.  We live with one of the most advanced healthcare systems in the world.  Instead of growing our food, we travel a few blocks to the grocery store.  A lot can happen in 80 years. 

And yet, in some ways, we are behind Zimbabwe.   Virtually the entire town of Doma eats organically, not because of some sort of fad, but because they have no choice.  If they do not grow their own food, they will starve.  Most of the town works for the orphanage.  No American town has the infrastructure to offer this quality of food to everyone.  Their herbal medicine clinic has proven to be highly effective in treating complicated wounds.  We saw the results with our own eyes.  They have used technology that is thousands of years old to heal cases that would require skin grafts in America. 

Because the houses are so small in these villages (16 orphans or 4 families in a 1,000 square foot home), people spend most of their days outside interacting with others and building relationships instead of being chained to PCs, iPods and video games with headphones which isolate us.  Isolation begets depression; depression begets medication; medication begets side effects and so on.  The physical nature of their work virtually eliminates obesity.  The workers in the orphanage age very well.  Some look 20 or 30 years younger than they are.

The scarcity of resources forces environmentally friendly practices.  Try as we may, we could not explain to these people our levels of waste in ways they could comprehend them.  They wear clothes until they are rags, and then local seamstresses in training cut them down and create clothing for smaller children.  Through doing this, they gain skills they use to sustain themselves outside the orphanage.  Paper is reused a half a dozen times until it becomes toilet paper. 

Finally, I think the missionaries have a better understanding of poverty than we do.  They’ve studied the culture here enough to understand “when helping hurts”.  They don’t give to beggars on the side of the road; experience tells them that it perpetuates poverty.  In Doma, they pay their workers partly in food, housing, and health care to ensure that they meet their families’ needs first.  Just like us, they are at risk of squandering resources on frivolous trinkets.  This has been amplified with the new presence of satellite television, giving people here access to American programs and commercials.  One native Zimbabwean missionary there, Dave Fortiscue, has made it his life goal to teach the Shona people how to sustain themselves farming, (the difference between feeding them and teaching them how to feed themselves).

They understand that teaching the values of work and entrepreneurship to children who have been raised by children (almost the entire working generation of people between ages 20 and 40 has died from AIDS) or fifth generation indentured servants is complicated and requires immense patience and love.  They have shown us the critical importance of understanding people in need before we make personal or collective decisions that help or hurt them.  In a polarized America, we have largely dismissed this idea, taking one of two sides: raising taxes and having the government do our dirty work – or eliminating all programs as “hunger is the greatest motivator.”

There is a third option in America and it is is small, but promising.  It is the idea that the church is the primary advocate for social justice.  If the church were taking The Great Commission (Gospel of Matthew, Chaper 25) seriously, there would be little need for government involvement.  This option is messy, but for those of us who claim to follow Jesus Christ, we must come to realize that it is not optional; it is a mandate. 

If our group is here to listen and learn, we will leave with this challenge.  If we are not, we will dismiss this experience with the attitude that we have simply stepped back in time.

“Religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world.” 

-James 1:27