We're here for a short visit

"Strange is our situation here upon earth.  Each of us comes for a short visit, not knowing why, yet sometimes  seeming to a divine purpose. From the standpoint of daily life, however, there is one thing we do know.  That we are here for the sake of others... for the countless unknown souls with whose fate we are connected... by a bond of sympathy."

Einstein's oft quoted declaration points to what so many of us fear about ourselves; that perhaps we're selfish and deliberately blind to the condition of our fellow man.

Could it be that we that we complain about our "rich man's problems" such as our supermarket's lack of good avocados or the rising cost of a good education? Then we neither feel nor say anything about our brother in Pakistan who lost everything in the flood last week. He lost his home, his livelyhood, his wife and children. Or how about the African father who weeps because his children are undernourished and he has no power to feed them better? 

Kids in Africa; their community has adopted us and made us part of their

family.  They've taught us so much over the years.

"We are not in control.  We can't change things," one sweet friend said to me yesterday. Actually, she does change things. Although confined to a wheelchair, she travels with a group to Africa every year accompanying a shipment of things that help communities there. They work all year, collecting goods, then they go to the most difficult places and live in the communities, teaching and helping and dispensing love unconditionally. :) She and her friends are on my short list of heroes.

"Estranha é nossa situação aqui na Terra. Cada um de nós vem para uma curta visita, sem saber porquê, mas às vezes parecendo um propósito divino. Do ponto de vista da vida cotidiana, porém, há uma coisa nós sabemos: que estamos aqui para o bem dos outros ... pelas incontáveis almas desconhecidas com cujo destino estamos ligados ... por um vínculo de simpatia."  Homemade World

AUG '10 - Back in Africa

In country for a couple of weeks work, I made time at the end of the day to visit friends.  Just a few minutes from my work site, this is the first family I met here back in '07.  Poppa shows me the site for his daughter and son-in-law's new house.  My Portuguese remains inadequate, but I think he said they were just married this year.

It will be a simple home, perhaps 300 sq ft.  Water is available less than 10 minutes away.  Having family nearby is a big deal, of course.   In the collage left, the young couple carries wood from the sawmill for the project.

Click on the picture to go to a more detailed narrative.
On the right, below, Poppa's youngest and my first friend in Africa (and our fourth grade scholar) enjoys summer vacation.  School starts in October here.  She's been making good grades all along and actually enjoys school.

We're tied to five families here now with twelve or so of their children in school.  This last school year went well and all of our kids passed on to the next grade.  Our oldest boy passed the critical sixth grade standard achievement test, which is quite a big deal.  It means he gets to go on the the 7th grade.  The test has about a 70% failure rate marking the end of education for most.  The next big hurdle is at the end of the 9th grade.  Only a few children go on to finish high school.

Brian Dickerson photos Aug 26, 2010 From various places on various days, here are some photos of Sao Tome; a little scenery to go with the pictures of kids and friends. Click on the thumbnail above to see the large format photos.

With photos from our time together a few months ago (photo, right) and some books from Lisbon, my friends here are part of a large family of fine folks.  Grandma adopted me awhile back and the rest of the family has made a place for me.  Books in Portuguese are an appreciated gift; there's no outlet in the country where they can buy new books and the libraries are minimally helpful.  Most manufactured goods come by plane or ship to this isolated country.

APR '10 Marilyn in Africa

A week with my wife in Africa

Sao Tome & Principe

After 3 years working in Africa and a dozen trips to Sao Tome, my wife finally gets to come along.  We took a week together to vacation a bit and to give her a chance to meet all the friends we'd made over the years.  In Pantufo (photo, left), I'd told them she would be coming.  They received her like family and escorted (dragged) her around like they do me.  Her comment, "Now I know how Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie feel!"  The folks made a big deal of her visiting their neighborhood, treating her like a special guest.  

At the elementary school,  she's swamped in the mob of kids (photo, left).  Both teachers and kids were expecting her and welcomed her warmly.   Beside her in dark blue, our third grade scholar, doing great in school!  

At Ribeira Afonso (photo, left), I surprised my friend Nino and myself too. We ran into each other after mass on Sunday morning.  He joined me for the day with a family and nine children on a trip to the capital.

Among the better pictures this trip, these two friends (photo, right) make a pretty pair against the tropical background.  They are in dozens of pictures from earlier trips.

The trip was understandably hard for my wife.  The impact of seeing these dear friends face to face caught her a bit off guard as it did me early on.  Knowing these folks well enough to be friends, to begin to love them, changes the way you see the world.

Oh, and there was the one scary incident downtown.  Driving to the city center to exchange currency, I'd not thought of what it might look like to my wife riding with me in the truck.  As I pulled into the square, half a dozen fellows (really big guys) recognized me and ran to the truck, each one insisting loudly in Portuguese that I make my deal with them.  I know them all by name and it didn't occur to me that my wife's view was... well, here we are in an African town a million miles from normal, and a bunch of big guys I don't know are rushing my vehicle, hollering and waving, and forcing their way in through the window, grabbing at us.  Scared her a bit; I had to apologize for not warning her.  Funny afterward, though.

JAN '10 - A stranger ...

I was a stranger, and you took me in.

Back in Africa for perhaps the 15th time in the last three years, work continues to be extraordinarily difficult both technically and politically.  Friends, on the other hand, are always a joy.  At Sebastiana's house, they welcome me and a fellow I picked up along the way (he's from the Treasury Department).  Without a moment's hesitation, they invite the two of us to lunch the following weekend.

Photo left: "Levante me, levante me!" she says, which means 'pick me up', I think.  I have almost identical photos from two earlier trips.  She's affectionate, but this is just to be in another picture, I'm pretty sure.

Lunch the following weekend includes fish and rice, breadfruit (which tastes like a foam rubber pillow) and salad.  I made the salad, much to the delight of the ladies who I don't think had ever had a guy in the kitchen before.  They stood around and watched me slice cucumber and tomatoes like maybe they weren't sure I could do it without hurting myself.  


Sebastiana, the family matriarch and our hostess, is shown here with her oldest son Walter.  He's a sweet spirited fellow and an enjoyable lunch companion.   He along with his wife and daughter are here from Cape Verde for the last few months.


Some of Sebastiana's children and grandchildren (left).  There are a lot more of them.  The kids took over the cameras and took several dozen photos.   The dinner table shown here seated all the adults; there were a mob of kids, too.
Having come to Africa so many times without really understanding my place in their world, this time I'm finally beginning to get it.  I was a stranger, and they took me in.  Funny, early on I figured I was the one who had something to give.

The granddaughters (right) hold the youngest member of the family, Vandelay.  He doesn't suffer for attention; the family is large and close knit with plenty of arms to go around.  He's my favorite, of course.

The men here cut their hair super-short, so I'm a bit of an anomaly.  The little girls try to braid my hair like theirs, and the boys want to touch it because it's so different from their own.  I'm a minority!  An oddity, anyway.  Not a lot of old white guys around.

The kids took the crazy video (left) with my camera along with dozens of pictures.  After lunch, Maria sang and the kids danced, sort of.  This is the dance from Cape Verde, they explain.  Many Sao Tomeans emigrated to Cape Verde when independence came 30 years ago.

At the end of the visit, (photo, right) exhausted from playing with kids and from the labor of conversation in a language neither of us understand or speak well, we make our way back up the hill in the rain.  The trail is muddy and slick.  Friends at the window and door watch to bid us goodbye once again.   

Like most folks here in Sao Tome, my friends must struggle  just to survive economically, to give their children a chance at a better life, to make it from one day to the next.  In all of that though, this particular family is wonderfully gracious and hospitable.  They've changed things I thought I understood about culture, nations, and God's grace.  

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Afternoon tea...
At the end of my time in country for this trip, half-way through the very last day, I get a call from a teenager I know  insisting I come to their house.  It turns out that the phone call was mom and dad's idea; they wanted me to come over for the African equivalent of afternoon tea before I flew out the following day. 

So, across the city at the home of friends, the family receives me warmly.  Here (left), the kids play and pose for pictures perhaps in hope of another day when I'll come back with prints for them.   On the table in the background, photos from October's visit.   In the center of this picture, one of our scholarship kids.  She's doing well in school, we're told.  Her mom and dad have graciously let us participate in her education.  As is the case across Africa, from tradition and sometimes from economic necessity, girls are often left out when it comes to school.  That will change, we hope, but the process takes decades.  

Here, public education carries them through the 6th grade.  Schools are crowded; all have double schedules with half their students in the morning and half in the afternoon.  Children are busy with household labor during the time they're not in school.  Chores often include gathering food from the jungle or helping with firewood collection.  Cooking is done over a small metal box with a charcoal fire inside, or (more often) outside in the yard.  School beyond the 6th grade is available but seats are limited and expensive.  Many are left behind.

 The women prepared and served jacque fruit and safou while the men sat around and talked.  Jacque fruit is pretty good; safou, not so much, although it's an important staple in this part of the world.  The men sat and talked comfortably about the economy, relations between African nations and the West, and the important elements of fatherhood.  Always looking for business opportunity, they're surprised that I'm not rich enough to buy them a car, a taxi they can operate as a business.  I'd love to, of course.  Inquiring about how much it costs for me to travel, they discover that my plane ticket costs as much as their house; they catch on to how things work when I explain that the government pays for my travel.  
I hope to return in a few months.

So what are we going to do with what we know?

Tell the rich folks to quit being so full of themselves and so impressed with their own possessions, which are here today and gone tomorrow.  It's not their merit that made them wealthy and others less so. Tell them to go after God who is generous to us all - and tell them to do good, to be rich in helping others, to be extravagantly generous. If they do that, they'll build a treasure that will last, gaining life that is truly life.

          1 Timothy 6:17-19