Part 5: Standing still.Part 6: Finding the balance
In the final part
of this series, I'll explain that life in Nampula is not always about
going forward, it's about making sure your neighbor doesn't move
ahead of you. It's about making sure that if you can't get an
advantage you put him at a disadvantage. It's about seeing your
neighbor and wondering how you get the better of him.
Both the reason and
the solution for this enmity towards their fellow man are, I believe,
incredibly simple and impossibly difficult. It's all about
equilibrium and Jesus.
For those that saw
the movie A Beautiful Mind you know all about equilibrium
without actually knowing it. There is a scene in the the movie where
Russel Crowe's character gets a brilliant inspiration for his
career-defining idea when he is in a bar and all his buddies are
hitting on the same girl. They are going after the same prize, and
nobody is having any success and they are all in danger of going home
alone. In a brilliant masterstroke of genius, Russel Crowe invents
the concept of the wingman (and get's a Nobel Prize for it). He
states that only way that everybody get's a piece of the pie is if
they stop trying to prevent the others from eating the whole pie and
instead cut it into pieces. His buddies decide to take one for the
team and go after the girl's not-as-good-looking friends, leaving
Crowe hook up with the pretty one.
The scene in the
movie is ridiculous, but illustrates the problem that people face
here (not competition over the pretty girl in the bar). The problem
is that, in situations like the bar or living in Nampula, no one
single person is able to significantly improve their situation
because there will always be obstacles—corrupt teachers, cops,
doctors, politicians, neighbors, or disease, famine, drought,
sickness, death.
When this happens,
there are only two things you can do: Cooperate, or compete. The
first is working together so everybody is happy. The second is make
sure you win, most often by making the other person lose.
In the bar, these
solutions are pretty straight forward. You can work together, be the
wingman, so everybody gets a piece of the pie.* If you don't choose
to work together, your option is to make sure the other doesn't win.
This is when you walk up to your friend during the middle of his
conversation, and say something like, "Hey, buddy, Nancy has
been trying to reach you on your phone. She wants me to tell you to
remember that you need to take your herpes medication 30 minutes
before eating."**
*I do not approve
of doing this, but it is an incredibly ubiquitous example I know
you'll all understand.
** I definitely
approve of this.
My sabotaging your
buddy's hook-up you don't actually win anything. You don't even come
out ahead. But what you do is make sure he loses, which is basically
a win in your book since every loser needs a winner.
The problem is that
most everybody here in Nampula encountered the situation and has
achieved equilibrium in which they can no longer move forward my any
action of their own. They can't get a job, can't get healthier, can't
afford better clothes, can't be happier. The only solutions then is
working together (which I've already discussed ad naseum on
this blog as being culturally impossible) or you decide to take your
neighbor down a notch and thus feel better about your own plight.
When we go in to
the water utility to complain that our neighborhood has been without
water for over a year, most often the question asked is, "And
what would you like me to do about?" This is not polite customer
service, this is the attendant at the water utility saying that she
couldn't care less about our plight. We ask for a technician to come
out and figure out where the breach in the line is our why to explain
a reason why our neighborhood isn't getting water. Usually they'll
come back with, "I could send somebody out to look at it,
but that's very hard because we're all busy. Yes, I know you're an
orphanage with dozens of vulnerable children. It's just best to
forget about it, there's really nothing I can do."
Does she or any of
the countless other people that give us the cold shoulder on a daily
basis really benefit or even suffer from our neighborhood finally
getting water? Not in the slightest. But because it is seen as a
winning outcome for us, she will either want to participate (get a
bribe, or "a thanks", for helping) or will want to see us
lose, because that way she wins.
That is why we sit
at equilibrium, the point in which we are not able to improve our
situation (or our collective situations) without the help or
cooperation of others. The only thing you have the capability to do
is effect somebody else's situation, by either harming or helping
them. The difficulty is if you got everybody to work together then,
duh, this would be paradise. But people are fallen.
That is why I said
the second solution is Jesus. Not because then everybody would work
together and nobody would be in want and we'd all sit around the
campfire singing kumbaya. But the only way that people are going to
avoid loosing is if they properly define what is winning.
I'm am trying for
the life of me, we all are, to teach the kids that the people you
see, lives surrounded by poverty and injustice and sickness and sin
is not the way things were meant to be. But, unfortunately, things
are the way things are. If you play by the rules of the world to get
the rewards of the world then you must be prepared to also lose
according to the world.
That is why these
kids need to realize that despite their natural instincts, the rules
of the game are completely different. If someone hits you, you don't
hit them back to feel better. You turn the other cheek. In my book,
that's winning, but how do you explain to a 12 year with the black
eye that he is the real victor for not fighting back and puncher has
lost more than just an afternoon sitting in "time out".
In our potluck
examples, the kids all told me the game was wrong because they
thought I won. I won because I finished with the most money. I asked
why a certain person didn't win for having brought the most food to
share with everybody else. "Because everybody else ate their
food, what did they win?"
The idea of winning
ingrained as something contrary to what we should believe. When Jesus
said that blessed are they that hunger and thirst for righteousness
for they will be satisfied, it's because sometimes if you want to
live righteously you are going to be hungry and thirsty because you
refuse to pay bribes, you pay for your utilities, you don't give in
to your teachers demands for money or sex in exchange for passing a
class, you don't get a job because you apply honestly, you don't
steal when nobody is looking.
We have had kids
leave here that have been instructed to steal from the workplace on
behalf of their superiors. How do you explain to them that facing the
prospect of being fired because they wouldn't comply is nothing
compared to hearing, "Well done, good and faithful servant."
It is a perspective you can't ever force on a kid, or an adult for
that matter.
How do you get a
kid to do their homework and admit when they need help rather than
decided that the way through life is to cheat on exams and copy
homework from your buddies or perform favors for a teacher. How do
convince them that doing the right thing is better than doing the
profitable thing. How do you show them that being the good Samaritan
and loving your neighbor is the commandment when it feels much better
to slander your neighbor.
People like instant
rewards, even here. People don't like to see that they are better off
suffering and being denied water, good grades, building permits, a
job opportunity. When there are many people skirting the rules and
"winning" it's hard to see how that is not an immediate
advantage.
And so that's where
things stand here. Its a challenge, especially with the kids, to
convince them of living an existential lifestyle, being one where the
"rewards" are not necessarily the physical results of
getting more money, food, a bigger house, a job, a diploma, friends.
The challenge is convincing people it's worth it to put on the new
self, live a life walking uprightly and justly and obediently, to
love your neighbor instead of mistreating them or denying them the
same opportunity you enjoy.
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