It's Good to Be Back, But...

As I step off the plane and make my way down the steps, the heat and humidity wash over me, it finally hits… I’m back in Mozambique. I continue to walk from the plane to the entrance marked “International Arrivals,” I look up. Standing in the second floor window, I see Nunu. I smile, wave and feel the tears creep up behind my eyes. I have to look down. The last thing I need to do is go through customs with tears running down my face.

I make it though customs and bag checks without much incident. The bag checker was curious about a few of my items; the main concern is people brining things in the country to sell without paying the import tax. Of all things, she asks about a pile of pencils. There are maybe 40 of them, Nunu tells her they are for kids. I stand there thinking to myself, “Does she think I’ve come to make millions off of selling these pencils, I’d be lucky to sell them all for $10!”

It’s good to be back, but it’s more overwhelming than I had imagined. I’m having to take more time to adjust emotionally and to the pace of life. The biggest adjustment is that the last month or so in the states has been non-stop and the speed of my life didn’t gradually slow down… it came to a screeching halt!

Arriving here I feel helpless in so many ways. For five months I’ve been in the states, sharing stories and vision of what we plan to do. Now I’m here and I just want to hit the ground running, but that’s not how things work. I have to get back into the Mozambique mindset.

I have to rely on Nunu for just about everything; he is the one who will contact the electrical company; he will run to the store to buy food for dinner; he will… he will… he will…  You get the point. I don’t have a problem relying on Nunu but it’s just a form of culture shock; rather than me running around like crazy, he is – and I’m sitting at our house basically doing nothing.

My first morning here, I thought I might explode waiting for Nunu to wake up. When he did wake up, the explosion happened. As we started talking, I found myself crying and not really sure why. Being the great husband he is, he reassured me and let the tears fall.

Each day we come up with a to do list for Nunu and I make myself as useful as possible. But let’s be real: I’ve mostly sat around pondering how hot it is and eating mangos. Or at least that is how it feels.

My first full day here some of Binti’s kids showed up bringing us water. I was sitting in a chair looking for the motivation to unpack my bags when I glanced over at the kids, one of them waved and with a huge smile on her face said “Hi friend.” It was exactly what I needed.

I couldn’t believe that she remembered that from 5 months ago. It was just the encouragement I needed in the moment; God is so good.

So I do what I can each day but really spend most of my time just taking it all in. Enjoying time with Nunu and being able to be excited together about the next steps for The Widow’s Might.

A Glimpse... Malaria

Malaria is very common in our area and for that reason I’m very careful about mosquitos. I’ve never had it and so all I know is what I’ve been told, which is basically that it’s sort of a flu & head cold combination that effects everyone differently. But it’s easily treatable through over the counter medication that costs about $5. I thought as long as you caught it fast and took the medication it was not that big of a deal.

For the life of me I couldn’t figure out why so many people die from malaria in our area. I have noticed that if you feel a headache coming on people often say that is malaria… so any sign of sickness is thought of as malaria. Because of this thinking I wondered if people were dying from other undiagnosed issues and without proper medical evaluation they were just self-diagnosing with malaria.

Then about a month ago Nunu, my husband, was feeling ill. He went to the doctor, who confirmed it was malaria and Nunu began taking the medication. Little by little that week he was feeling better. We spoke on Sunday and he said he was doing well.

On Monday morning, I awoke to a Facebook message from one of our friends saying that he had taken Nunu to the hospital that morning. I found out that Nunu hadn’t slept well because he felt like someone was punching his stomach and he had the chills/sweats. Our friend went on to say that after 3 hours on IV and shots that Nunu was looking and feeling a lot better.

Nunu getting an IV at the clinic.

When I talked to Nunu I found out that his type of malaria was much more severe than typical. Don’t quote me on this, but I think the typical case of malaria is classified as level 1 and Nunu had level 3. The parasite (malaria) had spread to his liver and was therefore in his bloodstream. He spent one full day in the hospital, returned the following day for another IV and round of shots and then a nurse came out to the house for 5 days to administer shots.

Nunu had tried to go to the public hospital where he had been originally diagnosed, but the wait was so long and he didn’t feel confident in the care he would receive. At the clinic he received great care and was surprised at how nice the doctor was to him. In the end his medical bills were about $700, which he had to pay in full before leaving the office.

It might seem to you like this story is about Nunu but it’s not. By the time I even knew he was in the hospital, he had already been there for 7 hours and was very much on the mend. Sure it was scary, but as soon as I talked to him I was at peace. That is until I started thinking about our neighbors.

Minimum wage is about $150 a month, but many make less. So imagine not having health insurance and not being able to receive medical care until you could prove that you can pay a medical bill equivalent to 5 months of your salary.

It’s heart breaking.

But once again my compassion has been stretched, I have been given a glimpse into the lives of so many in our village.

From the beginning I’ve said that water and electricity will come in God’s perfect time. Honestly I wondered just how God would use this season to teach me and stretch me. Whether we get running water and electricity tomorrow or in a couple years, I will always be able to look back on this time when my compassion was stretched and my faith grew in ways I didn’t know possible.

I believe this is a bold and powerful prayer. I challenge you to say it until you see results. When God answers this prayer, you will know it. If I had to guess when I first prayed this prayer, I would say that I was probably living in the states working in an architecture firm not even knowing where Mozambique was on the map. Boy have my eyes been opened!! 

Open up my eyes to the things unseen.

Show me how to love like You have loved me.

Break my heart for what breaks Yours.

I Can Relate...

“Heal my heart and make it clean.

Open up my eyes to the things unseen.

Show me how to love like You have loved me.

Break my heart for what breaks Yours.

Everything I am for Your kingdom's cause,

as I walk from earth into eternity.” 

– Hosanna by Hillsong

I’m not sure when I first heard those lyrics, I’m not sure when they first struck a chord with me, I’m not even sure the first time I sang them as a prayer for my life.

I’m sure this song has grown my faith and stretched me to love more like Jesus did and often to realize when I didn’t. It has challenged me to wrestle with just what it looks like to love like Jesus and I’ll tell you I still don’t have the answer.

This last year with starting The Widow’s Might, my eyes have been opened, I’ve done my best to love and my heart has been broken in brand new ways. To me these three lines of this song can be summed up with one word… compassion.

I left for Moz in April, knowing that I would be living in an unfinished house with half the floors being dirt and the other half cement, no running water, no electricity and no bathroom… well there was a bathroom but it looked more like a walk-in closet with a rock floor. I remember thinking to myself that I would really like a toilet, but cement floor, electricity and running water I could live without for months if not years. No big deal.

Wrong.

Within days of arriving at our house, I had some of the most intensely itching bug bites and they would blister if scratched. I noticed one blister popped and turned a quarter-sized patch of my skin into something that looked like leather. So I began to dress my bites with toothpaste and Band-Aids 24 hours a day; at times would wear knee high socks and boots.

 Bug bites day 2, 3 and 4.

 Without electricity, we had no fans, so Nunu and I would spend the hottest hours of the day outside under a shade tree. It worked great until one day, I got burned… badly. So bad in fact that I couldn’t stand up much for the next two days because the burn would turn purple and my skin would throb.

And I thought no one would ever see me in all my bandaids. 

I still have the lines 4 months later.

Wearing these, I felt like I was trying to
make weight for the wrestling team,
because my feet were so HOTTT!

While we have a generator, the cost of gas prevented us from using it much. On average we used it about an hour a day and there were weeks when it didn’t work at all. We relied on a solar light and portable solar panel to charge our phones and anything else that was USB.

I would have to shower each day by 4:30 in the afternoon, because if I didn’t, it meant taking a shower by cellphone light. Cooking was much the same; I would rush to get it done before dark, cooking outside on a charcoal stove. Cooking in the dark not only meant relying on my cellphone flashlight, but also getting bug bites, even though I was using bug spray.

Cooking spaghetti on a charcoal stove.

We had a large blue barrel for water. About twice a week we would pay Binti to fill this bucket which we then used for showers, washing clothes, dishes and cooking, but not for drinking. I always tried to keep 3 water bottles full and out in the sun, as 6 hours in the sun will kill 99.9% of bacteria in the water.

Water bucket in our Kitchen/Living area.

One morning the sun was hitting the water barrel just right and I saw movement: mosquito larvae, lots of them. I spent the next 30 minutes scooping them out. It’s hard to say if they were brought in with the water or if mosquitos were entering our house and doing this. Anyway, we began covering the water barrel and from then on only found the occasional swimmer.

I don’t share all this with you for pity or to complain. If these are the conditions I have to live in to bring The Widow’s Might to fruition, then so be it. I still have it better than most and that is the point: I know the conditions I was living in are just a small portion of the life my neighbors live… my eyes have been opened.

A few weeks ago a video popped up on Facebook and it said “Akon Lighting Africa.” I decided to watch. To be honest when I started watching I was conflicted. Was this a hand-out (giving away things) or a hand-up (giving knowledge, helping)? It felt like a hand-out, but then it hit me. There is no way these people could pay to bring electricity to their village (we are faced with a $12,000 bill to bring our electricity 1,500 feet) and odds are that their towns are too small for the government to do so. I had to realize that sometimes a hand-up comes in different forms. And this electricity is bringing so much good to these villages, allowing safer streets, giving people the ability to work past dark (and not cooking dinner by cell phone).

While I’ve never dropped my cell phone into a pot, I’ve cooked dinner more nights than I can count by cellphone light. When I heard that woman tell her story about dropping her phone into a pot of sauce (about the 4:00 minute mark), I lost it. I continued to cry. Scratch that; I bawled through the rest of the video and beyond. Why? Because I can relate.

While I can relate, I know that it shouldn’t be like this. I know how the other half lives. I’ve been given more compassion for my village than I know what to do with. I don’t just want to see my neighbors and friends scrape by; I want to help them be better. I want to see all their children go to school, not just the boys, and be able to come home at night to do homework at a table while mom cooks dinner with the lights on… and that is just the beginning of my dream.