Giving Thanks with Our Crazy Family

I have two crazy families. One is back in Seattle and I was thrilled and overjoyed to wake up in the middle of the night and Skype with them for a little bit as they were all together to celebrate Thanksgiving.

The other family is crazy too, and they number as almost fifty of the best kids you can find in Mozambique. I mean that very sincerely and tell them that quite often. We also, like any family, have a healthy amount of, hmmm, how should I put this...

...friction?

Even the best of families get under one another's skin every once in a while. Its just a part of being human. And no matter how well the wheels are spinning, there's just something magical about the holidays and everybody getting together that just seems to suck all the grease right out of those bearings. In truth, there's no such thing as Thanksgiving here because there is no commemoration of the Pilgrims fleeing England and arriving on the shores of Mozambique and giving thanks to God while sharing a meal with the Indians. That never happened. Because we're in Africa. Not Massachusetts. Still, I thought it'd be fun to do a little something for thanksgiving by having the kids thank each other.

After breakfast I gave each of the kids a note card and asked them to write the name of somebody they wanted to thank and the reason why they wanted to thank or recognize them. They stressed that they didn't have to recognize or acknowledge only something that a person did for you directly, but it could be things that people do that benefited another person or even everybody in general. I also stressed that we were not voting for anybody, we just wanted to take some time to thank people.

After everybody sat around for about five minutes thinking of things (during which I encouraged people to be more aware when folks are helping and being selfless if it takes five minutes to find just one example) they actually wrote some really nice things about one another. Most of the things were actions not benefiting the writer directly. They were things like helping in the kitchen during the weeks that I was sick and the rest of the staff were in Zimbabwe, or how certain kids had taken an extra effort to help with construction, or kids that have been helping the younger students learn to read and prepare for exams at the end of the year, or people showing up early at church to help clean and prepare it for Sunday services. I'd say close to 75% were incidences of people doing things to help in general around the orphanage and with the day-to-day of life. I told the kids I was really happy hearing all the things they had to say.

Then, because the kids should know the nice thing others see in them, I gave all the cards to their respective kids so they could have them and know that the things they do are known and appreciated. The kids that got cards were really happy to receive them and read them.

The kids that didn't get cards? Not so happy.

While all of the kids filled out a card, the ones that got noticed were only about ten kids or so, with each receiving multiple thanks. Those kids all rightly deserved the nice things said about them. The problem is, there are also a lot more kids that do nice things and deserved to get a card and just plain didn't. I made a point of going to the six or eight kids I though really deserved a card but didn't get one to tell them how thankful I was for specific things they do, even if they didn't get a card. The problem is there are only about five kids who are completely selfish and don't deserve cards. That means about twenty kids got left out in the cold.

This was the scene I noticed at lunch. A kid finishes his food, stands up to walk his plate up to the counter and put it in the pan to be washed. The kid passes another who has also finished eating and motions to the one walking to take the plate with him the way. The one walking says to the one sitting, “Why should I bother taking your plate if you're not going to vote for me? Take it yourself.”

Ummm...

Later, a kid asking to borrow the cup of another to go get a glass of water. The one with the cup says, “And when was the last time you lent me your cup? Only if you promise to write a card to me next time.”

We might...

A kid carrying a bucket of water to go use in the construction of the girls dormitory asks another to help him carry it. The other responds, “No way! I work in the construction too and nobody ever thanked ME for it.”

...have...

A kid is pulling clothes in from the line and the wind picks up and blows a shirt off the line. As the shirt rolls like a tumbleweed it passes a kid playing in the shade. The one taking down clothes shouts, “Hey, quick. Grab my shirt fast.” The child in the shade doesn't even look up and drolls, “I helped you clean the bathroom yesterday when it wasn't my turn and you can't even vote for me with your card.”

...a problem.

Little did I know that a fun activity meant to thank and encourage folks was going to turn into a day of envy and folks that were not thanked were taking it out on their fellow kids here by flat-out refusing to help so they could spite people. Thankfully by dinner, most of the angst had worked itself out and people were back to their normal, helpful self. I made sure to explain that night at Bible study that the activity was not meant for “voting” the winner or most helpful, nor to discourage people from helping, only to thank and recognize people well deserving of it. I also tried to bandage the wound a little bit and tell them they all help a lot and, if it wouldn't take two days, I'd write a card thanking each of them.

But still, I kind of liked the activity, and the kids that got cards sure loved it, so maybe we'll try this again in a month or so and let kids write an unlimited number of cards and hope that nobody's feelings get hurt at the end of the day.

As for us, our dysfunctional family here is back to its old, normal, non-spiteful, crazy self. For that, I am very thankful.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone.

Math Camp III - Girls

Before we get back going on math camp, lets do a little review of where we've been, since it's been about a month since we started. In math camp part one we talked about the logistics of our times table competition and ended with the shocker that, with over 40 kids in the competition, only 8 of them managed to memorize their multiplication table.

In math camp part two we talked about a few reasons why nobody bothered, revolving around the main idea that people here tend to give up at everything when things turn difficult, they also think that getting 50% done is grounds for achieving a reward. I mentioned how Celso came up to me cursing because he came up one set of numbers short and that was grounds for earning the reward. The problem is also having people that a trained to seek rewards in the short term. We tell kids everyday the two things that will change their lives are Jesus, number one, and education second. I wrote that many of the kids “are looking to see if the reward is going to be worth all the effort. If they don't see it as some huge gain for them they're not going to do it. I know all these kids very, very well. For some reason there are several kids that have managed to get all the way to eighth grade being illiterate. And I don't mean functionally illiterate, I mean really illiterate. They've never seen or considered how reading will benefit them and they just learned to read until it got too difficult and quit there.”

However, those are only about half of the reasons. Actually, they're exactly 50% of the reasons. The other reasons are the girls.

Yes, the girls...

They are so complicated (understatement of a lifetime) that they get a whole post dedicated just to them. I'm constantly having to remember that we're taking a long term outlook and (barring God's grace) change in a person doesn't happen overnight all the time. Even in a matter of months, it can be hard to see somebody's change of perspective on education (or friends, or drugs, or God, or anything). People that have kids already know this. You don't just say, “You need to do better in school.” and the next day it starts happening.

Where the story of math camp continues is that after Celso left my house complaining about not getting his shorts, I encountered a cadre of girls to complain on behalf of Tercia. They were saying that Tercia (16 years old) should receive the reward also because she was the best girl to finish, having recited up until her sevens. The competition was up to 12, remember. After finally getting the girls to admit that Tercia failed and quit, they tried to reason with me (read: shout) by saying that girls just aren't as good as boys. Before I let them set a dangerous precedent I quelled their anti-feminist crusade and sent them on their way.

Oh, the girls...

While you could say they are a product of their environment and mostly have not seen great examples of education or success in their families, the thing you cannot say is that they have been given low standard. Our expectations and hopes for what the girls (and boys)can accomplish are very high. What's even more remarkable is how much of the girls here get higher grades than our boys (although that will make great sense once I explain why). Much of that though is rooted in how the system works. The girls will readily admit that they don't understand much of anything that they're learning and therefore give up more easily. In reality, often times after just one bad test or a confusing lecture they refuse to keep fighting with the subject and give up first, causing them to backslide even more.

What the girls have learned to do is skip class, avoid doing homework or required reading. All they need to do is ask to see the work of a boy or two that had done the assignment, clean it up a bit, cross their t's and dot their i's with hearts, and get a better grade. They've become so good at this that there is only one boy in the orphanage that consistently gets better grades than the girls. That would be Manuel, who finished the multiplication tables on the first day, and he gets straight A's. Manuel has decided to not give the girls his work to copy because it is unjust. It a problem that pervades the culture of much of the city, not just girls that happen to wind up here.

The girls are earning a counterfeit education.

“Wow, TJ. Don't you think you're being a little hard on the girls? They're just doing what they need to to get by.” No, I don't think I'm being too hard on them. I don't stand for any of this. The people that are doing the work for themselves don't stand for any of this. The problem is that cheating is not part of the culture here. Cheating is the culture. A few month back Victor was preaching in church and there was this exchange. It was a sermon about living as a new creation and getting rid of the old sinful things in our life.

Victor: And Jesus doesn't want us to do things that will destroy our lives.

Congregation: Amen.

Victor: Jesus doesn't want us to drink until we pass out.

Congregation: Amen!

Victor: Jesus doesn't want us to steal from our neighbors.

Congregation: Amen!

Victor: Jesus doesn't want us to fall into temptation and cheat on our husbands when they our in the field working.

Men: AMEN!

Victor: Jesus doesn't want us out until the sun comes up looking for prostitutes and abandoning our wives.

Women: AMEN!

Victor: Jesus doesn't want us to cheat in school.

Congregation: huh?

Victor: I said Jesus doesn't want us to cheat in school. Its a sin and its wrong.

Congregation: Umm...no its not.

Victor: Yes it is. You're stealing knowledge that is not your own and lying to you teacher saying it is yours.

The sermon ended pretty abruptly after that as THE CONGREGATION SHOUTED DOWN VICTOR UNTIL HE STOPPED! It was remarkable. I've never seen anything like it. The only way you could have made a group of people angrier is by showing up and your home-school co-op meeting and reading your book report on Harry Potter. It was that outrageous. People did NOT want to hear that cheating in school is a sin.

I'm not going to say the girls are the only people that cheat. There's a fair amount of cheating among the boys too, the difference is the boys will usually put in a good amount of effort exhausting themselves first before taking somebody else's answer. They at least try to get from point A to point B before copying the answers. The girls? They aren't aware that point A exists, they just want to get right to the end.

Yep, the girls...

We do study hall every night after dinner. Its mandatory. The girls (particularly anybody in 8^th grade or higher) have an extreme fear that I will see them flat out copying somebody else's work or assignment and then tear it up. One day I had a particularly tense fight with of the oldest girls here that revolved around the fact I had no right to tear up her work something-something-something and cheating is not wrong blah-blah-blah. She loudly announced to everybody that I was wrong and she was going to have the last word and copy the assignment again and was going to turn it in. Unfortunately for her, my pride, getting the better of me, wouldn't allow her to have the last word. I found her backpack before she went to school and wrote in pen across her assignment, “Dear Teacher, I want you to know that I am lying to you. This is not my work and I stole it from somebody to else. You may give me the grade I deserve. Thanks.” She didn't discover it till she got to school and returned to tell Marta, another staff member, what I had done. Once Marta stopped laughing she told the girl cheating was wrong.

Some of you are no doubt complaining that I'm really hurting the kids by not letting them turn if plagiarized work or that I'm making mountains out of molehills by making so much out of a multiplication table competition. The math camp itself, like many of my other social experiments around here, wasn't the point I was making to them. There are lots people that don't know how to multiply. Multiplying is probably not the most important skill they learn in school. My mom doesn't know how to multiply. The difference is she's a librarian and it doesn't come into play that often. She has yet to tell me a story that involves somebody walking in with a book saying, “I really like this one, but I think I'd like it twice as much if the Dewey Decimal was twice as big. Can you help me with that.” I'm sure at some point in history somebody has said that, but because my mom does not work in the same neighborhood as Jeff Foxworthy I'm sure she'll NEVER hear that.

The point is that folk here, especially the girls, have found a system that works not because it is a shortcut. It allows them to both give up when things get hard and still come close to actually succeeded by copying the work, which in their minds is the same thing as if they had actually done if for themselves. It is an uphill battle. It is an uphill battle on an icy slope with a giant cliff at the bottom that has major consequences.

What is worse is the absolute honest shock when anyone (girls or boys) fail a test or course or grade. And for the kids here that have failed, almost all the time they chalk it up to bad luck and the next year exhibit no extra effort or overwhelming desire to succeed at all costs, they just think that this year they DESERVE a passing grade after having failed the previous year. Its a big change, and some of the kids here really try hard and do an amazing job, even kids that are not as gifted at schooling or learning. But for many, when the going gets tough, they just find someone else to go in their place.

Of the girls, Tercia made it up through their sevens, and another girl made it up to here sixes. The two youngest girls in the competion, Mena and Ofeita, had a lot of fun practicing with each other and finished on their twos only after spending over a week trying to memorize their threes. The rest of them? Didn't even try. Not one of them. Didn't even approach me with a question. There was even a rumor for most of the competition that the winners would go to the coastal resort town of Pemba with me for a week. That didn't even motivate them.

At this point, at the end of our story, I usually coin some well thought out, elegant reason as to why the girls continue to display total apathy towards the system, but I don't have one. I should at least include some smart, well-crafted plan of action for how we're going to motivate the girls to get a work ethic and take the reins of their own future, but there isn't one.

Cause, you know, girls...

Math camp 2-and-a-half?

Editor's note: Just me, TJ here. I have no editor. That's partly why things here get so long. For example, the math camp posts keep expanding. It was originally one part but because I'm so stubbornly long-winded (thanks, Parishes) I can't and don't want to trim it down. That's probably why I'll never write a book. When I go to turn in my transcript to my editor he's going to quit and change professions after he sees that of the first five volumes (not chapters) three are about Ken Griffey Jr., one is about Darkwing Duck, and the fifth is pretty much a giant rant about McDonalds discontinuing 29-cent hamburger night back in the '90s.

I know that you, the reader, don't have an unlimited attention span. I know, the internet is a big place. Why spend 10 minutes reading about what Jesus is doing in Mozambique when you could be looking at last nights box score or browsing funny pictures of cats or posting on your posting on your favorite Taylor Swift message boards? (Oh hey! What's up 14-year-old girl demographic!) Heck, even my own mother will sometimes say, “I read something about that on your site and then gave up when it got too long.”

I normally try to keep the content maxed at two or three pages when I draft here on my typewriter, or about 1500 words. This second part of math camp clocked in at over 1800 words. Heck, this little side note here is an additional 331 words. That's a lot! Now it's gonna be three parts long. If it keeps growing exponentially, next time it's gonna be 7 and then after that be the running dialog into 2013 at which point the website will change from “TJ goes to Africa” to “That one time TJ did math camp and won't shut up about it”-dot-com.

Thanks for reading about us. Thanks for praying for us. Thanks for supporting us.

A very Scooby Doo health update

Well, its been a rough-and-tumble couple of weeks. I think the best way to describe it would be by comparing it to a typical episode of Scooby Doo. “Really, TJ? That's how your gonna describe it?” Oh yes. Yes I am.

If you're unfamiliar with the general plot progression of a typical episode of Scooby Doo I'm sure you can zip on to youtube and find a million of them right now. Here's how it works. Every episode starts out with the gang going somewhere when the Mystery Machine breaks down and they get stranded at [an abandoned mill]. At first the gang is distressed, but relieved to be somewhere that has other people. That is usually when the locals come and and say something like, “It's be best to get as far away from here as possible. Don't you know about [the swamp thing]? Its been terrorizing the town for weeks.

Fred eventually says something like, “Hey gang, lets get to the bottom of this.” And Shaggy and Scooby make some remark about going to regret that decision. Eventually the gang has a run in with whatever spooky thing is in question and they catch [old man Smithers, the ex-foreman]?! Velma explains why it was obviously this person, Shag and Scoob high five that they can go back to eating cheeseburgers, and Daphne... come to think of it, what did Daphne ever bring to the table? Fred at least drove (and wore ascots).

Its right about then that you start saying to yourself, “There's no way [old man Smithers] really did it. I can't prove it, but if the case is really shut what are we going to do for the next 25 minutes that this episode is on? It can't be 5 minutes of crime fighting and 25 minutes of Shaggy and Scooby eating cheeseburgers, can it? They haven't even had their signature chase down a halfway of doors yet. They obviously didn't catch the right guy and had better get back to work.”

Before you know it, the gang goes back to enjoying their time at [the abandoned mill] only to discover that [the swamp thing] still exists and they had better catch it for sure. Hilarity ensues, Velma loses here glasses and Scooby's [swamp thing trap] ends up catching the thing that they find out that it wasn't really [old man Smithers] after all. It was really [the real estate mogul that wanted to turn the mill into a haunted house].

As an adult watching the show with your kids (or by yourself, that's cool too) three things are probably running through your head. The first is utter disbelief that Casey Kasem is really the voice of Shaggy. And the second thing is that how could your kid think for one second the first guy they caught was really the one that did it because, hey, 25 minutes of eating cheeseburgers. The third is why do they always think they'll have gotten away if not for these meddling kids. What is it these kids do that real police are not capable of?

I'm guessing that you are nowhere close to putting the dots together and mainly just wondering why I spent the last 500+ words shoddily describing every Scooby Doo episode ever. Well, it helps describe the progression of my health the last several weeks. At least in my mind it makes great sense, but that could be a result of the toll the last two weeks (or 25 years) have taken on me.

It was great that Christina got sick first. Not for her obviously, but for me. I thought. Maybe. Sure, she spent three days in the hospital recuperating, but I got into the clinic and out in less than three hours with the same diagnosis knowing what I was expecting. I caught [the swamp thing] in the first five minutes of the episode and was ready to get out of dodge and eat cheeseburgers for 25 minutes. Figuratively. Very figuratively.

Getting diagnosed and put on antibiotics in the wee hours of Sunday/Monday kept me fine till maybe Thursday. Thats when I started feeling markedly worse. By late Saturday I was in a bit of pain and having massive diarrhea again and a bit of a fever so I had friend take me down to the clinic to get more blood work down. (Medical services here are just kind of ala cart. You walk in and ask, “Give a blood test” and then they do it. You also sometimes have to interpret the results yourself.)

Having determined that the infection was way down and my white blood cell count was normal, I though it would be just a phase of the recover. One of my friends that took me to the hospital, his wife had the same thing last month and it took her over 3 weeks to beat this thing. Christina on the other hand was looking much better after only a week and seemed normal, so I was wondering where I, a healthy, manly young man, would fit in.

Where I would fit in was, after spending an hour or two on Skype Sunday night telling people how well I was doing, abruptly left those conversations and than collapsed with severe dehydration brought on by four days of intense diarrhea. I am not joking when I say it was the most intense pain I've ever felt in my life as my entire body cramped and spasmed uncontrollably until making it to the hospital (what felt like) hours later until they gave me an I.V. and a couple injections in my butt and tried to control my fever of 103deg.

This would be [the swamp thing] roaring back to life after thinking I had captured [old man Smithers] or whatever his name is. After a week of antibiotics and medicine and thinking it was just a gnarly case of paratyphoid, it turned into a GNARLY case of paratyphoid. To know how bad paratyphoid is, just think A) typhoid! That doesn't sound very good, does it. And the only word that shows up more than typhoid on it's own wikipedia page is salmonella, so B) salmonella! The only time I ever hear about salmonella in the States is when somebody gets like a $1M settlement from Taco Bell for getting sick, overlooking the fundamental flaw that the “victim” was willing to eat at Taco Bell in the first place.

(Editors note: Too bad there was no way to get the typhoid and salmonella to work against each other. I was reading a couple of months back about an experimental trial in which the “doctor” used HIV to attack and cure a patient's leukemia. Too bad that sounds REDICULOUS. Imagine hearing this from your doctor: “Yeah, so it appears you have breast cancer, but we're gonna give you some Ebola and that's gonna clear it right up by morning. Maybe...”)

So how is TJ now? Worlds better. I spent three days in the hospital getting constant I.V. bags and antibiotics directly pumped into me. Because, you know, severe diarrhea and dehydration for four days! And three days in a Mozambican clinic was quite enough for me, I'll tell you that. I came home a week ago Tuesday and have been resting up and getting my strength and weight back little by little each day. To give you an idea what the dehydration had suddenly done to me, I checked into the hospital the same weight I entered high school in. Granted, I entered high school 5'9” and fat, but now I'm 6'3” and handsome (take my word for it). That just ain't right.

The takeaway from the story is that, aside from being at the sickest point of my life, I was well taken care of. When people get sick here we always buddy them up because things can turn really bad in a heartbeat, so the whole week before (and after) my hospital visit there were people around helping me and checking in on my and minding me., and its great how when people are really down the kids all pitch in to help. The second takeaway from the story is that I've got some great friends here that several times dropped everything in the middle of the night to drive me to the hospital, (because Victor was in Zimbabwe). The third takeaway is that there is really a great community here that we've built up. Both weeks I was in bed sick there was at least a daily visit from a neighbor, a pastor, friends from the barrio, the kids' friends from school, that were all coming by to visit and pray with me and for me and offer to help out around the house. God's grace was very evident these last couple weeks and its very plain to see there there's lots of people here that really care about me.

So whats next? Barring any relapse, I need to be getting my strength back. I'm eating well and just being patient as my body is recuperating. I've been back home for 8 days now and Monday I managed to walk out the the market for the first time. Today, I went around the city doing some grocery shopping. It left me pretty tired though and I've just spent the rest of the day lying around (and thinking about Scooby Doo). I could still use prayers that I can get back to full speed, because I still feel only around 50% energy wise.

Service With A Smile - Health Update

In the first several centuries of Christiany (and even in modern times, though often not publicized) some Christian communites had the hallmark of always being sick. They weren't identified as people who always wore WWJD bracelets or attended every single conference to come through town or be annoying by responding, “I think you meant to say Merry Christmas.” when people use “happy holidays”. The reasons for this was that, as you can imagine, people were diseased a lot (there's a reason life expectancy for much of human history was only 40 years until the last century or so) and the folks that stepped in to care for and minister to the sick were the Christians. They'd not only say, “Let me tell you about Jesus,” they'd also say, “I'll take care of you.” Because of this, it was often these same Christians that would themselves get sick by taking care sick people they were ministering and evangelizing to.

I'm not saying this to try to make myself sound super awesome or martyr-ey in any way, I'm just saying that service (aka worship) can and should involve sacrifice. Even if it's unintended.

OK. Enough prose, cause I'm pretty exhausted. Last week a boy here had a really bad case of diarrhea and was in the hospital. One night he pretty much exploded all over his sheets and clothes. Not a pretty site. While Marta took him to the hospital I spent the morning washing his sheets and clothes and helping clean up his bed. Celso got better, and I got worse.

Based on what we can figure out, I am Patient Zero. However, I was not the first to show symptoms. Christina started feeling sick and spent all day Sunday with diarrhea and vomiting and went to the clinic with Victor on Sunday night when it was clear this was not a normal case of diarrhea. So when I started experiencing all same symptons at about midnight I wasted no time in calling for Victor to come get me to join the party at the clinic.

We figure that Christina had contact with me and only started showing symptoms first because she already was fighting another infection. Because of my contact from helping Celso I was probably the first carrier. What we've got is typhoid-salmonella. Its technical name in English is paratyphoid, which is borne of a strain of salmonella bacteria, but that doesn't mean we're only para-sick or para-miserable. I got discharged only few hours after getting diagnosed and was back home by 5am on Monday with medication, at which point we filled all the kids on to what was happening and started an orphanage-wide cleaning of absolutely everything except the dirt. So far nobody else has gotten sick, so we're very thankful for that.

As for now, I've got just a huge feeling of malaise. I'm exhausted constantly and have a small but nagging stomach discomfort and no appetite, which is bad because I really need to eat a lot. Christina is doing much worse than I and as of now (Tuesday afternoon) they still have her at the clinic under observation. We both could use prayer but especially her as (unless I turn for the worse) she has a longer road to recovery.

What is mildly amusing about the situation is that Sunday night I was talking with friends on skype saying how awesome it has been health-wise because not since my infection in April and the wedding debacle in July have I even had a runny nose. Not two hours later I feel like that dude in Alien as the alien is exploding out of his stomach. Yah, on second thought, not mildly amusing at all.

Thanks for keeping us in prayer and for all the notes of encouragment and especially all my Nampula friends that have been calling/stopping by to check up on me.

I'll try to keep folks updated, but expect content to really slow here till I get better. Caio.