The following is a travelogue from a former Marine and now missionary, Donald Miller.

I haven’t seen Don (always Lt Miller to this old Corporal) for more than 30 years. Fortunately, one of the Marines I was stationed with  reconnected us.

Don is a warrior of a different sort now and takes his marching orders from someone with a little more rank than the Commandant. But as the old saying goes, once a Marine…

I’m always fascinated and enjoy his logs and am certain you will too.

Travelogue

By Don Miller

Dateline: Harare, Zimbabwe, December 27, 2008

Monday morning early we are to leave for Namibia via Victoria Falls. It is with mixed emotions that we go. It has been good here, very good. But then there are the parts that are not so good; like my room for instance.

Don’t get me wrong, I am thankful to have a place that locks to protect my belongings. It locks quite well and resembles a prison cell in many ways. Four very high concrete walls, one well-barred small window, and a double door, one of wooden door on the inside with one of steel bars on the outside. There is a bed and the old frame of a treadle sewing machine upon which I set my things. At the end of the day, my room is a mix of good news and bad news. The bad news is I have rats, big rats. They run up and down the walls and scamper all over at night, knocking things over, waking me up and peering down at me from their perches in the rafters. Good news is we also have snakes and snakes like ratatouille. Bad news is the main snakes, as I have been told, are black mambas and cobras, both of which have been seen on the premises. Good news is it gets a bit cool in the evenings here so the snakes would be sluggish, perhaps. This would be especially true sometimes in my room because the roof leaks and the rain is cold which might be enough to slow down the venomous rat-eaters. Bad news is the leaks were right over my bed when I first discovered them one night after coming back from a meeting on a day in which we had had a monsoon downpour. Good news is someone took the blanket to dry the next day and I hung my sheets over a makeshift clothesline I strung in my room between the bars. Bad news is the blanket never found its way home. Good news is I am warm-blooded. So you see, there is always some good news and some bad news.

We have been staying at a place called an orphanage. That it has orphans is self-evident. That it is a properly licensed, government regulated, standard-following facility I doubt greatly.  It is a place where people dump children. How many orphans there are I was not able to ascertain. My guess would be somewhere between 20 and 25. And every one is special and some are HIV-positive. Oh yes, this is Africa where AIDS is king. It is not a political issue like in the USA, not a cause célèbre, not a misfortune of misguided pride; it is an ugly fact of little lives. Meet Shongedzai.

When I first saw him I thought he was a she, sitting there in a utility trailer the children used as a playground. “She” looked like a thin six-month old, void of baby fat and more alert in many ways than a six-month old would be. Sitting still, he would slowly turn his head until I was in range, and then would turn his eyes, make contact for only a second, and then turn away. Coming back from time to time to check me out. It was all slow motion. This orphan is two years old, does not speak, does not walk, both parents died of AIDS, he is HIV-positive and has TB. Because of the tempo in this place, Shongedzai is often placed in a chair to watch the world go by without him, slowing sweeping right and left, flies walking with abandon the smooth insouciance of his beautiful face. Seems like no child here is bothered by the flies. They drink from the pool above the nasal-lachrymal apparatus, explore the unflinching nostrils, look for leftovers at the corners of the mouth.

The last day I was at the center (it is now January 12, 2009) I heard him crying pitifully. Another orphan was carrying him around but he would not be consoled. Taking him from the child, I walked and talked with him till he was settled down. And then we sat as the day slowly slipped away, me keeping the flies at bay and hoping I was not loving fluids to the many mosquitoes. Shongedzai would lay still on my chest, then would slowly sit up at the sound of another child, give his cursory inspection, then lay his head back down. It seemed so methodical, so unnatural. Then he would sit up and turn to look at me, seeing who it was or assuring himself it was who he thought it was. I sat there and prayed for Shongedzai. In a country totally destroyed by Robert Mugabe, the president since 1980, where inflation even makes the US economy look good, what chance does he have? I am just so thankful we serve a good …no, a great God. Someday there will come a recompense, one for such as Mugabe, and one for the Shongedzai’s of this world. God keeps a careful balance.

Our meetings in Harare were very well received. I would teach from 9-12, 3-5 and 6-8 and sometimes, most time, the hours were longer. Christmas was just another day for the team. We were invited to a aunt’s home of one of the men coming to the meetings. What a gross contrast. In a walled and gated yard were gather the family. It was like entering another world and indeed it was. Outside people deal with 50,000,000,000 Zim dollar bills (if you want one, I can send you one). Inside, inside the elite, privileged class buy whatever means they arrived there, they deal in US dollars, or South African rands, or any other stable currency.

On December 30 we left early in the morning (before 5 AM) for Victoria Falls, not for a vacation, but to meet people from the next mission. Our host in Harare wanted to drive us which turned out to be a mixed blessing. It took about 20 hours to drive the 800+ kilometers (500 miles). There were 11 of us crammed into a rover-type vehicle. It was diesel and getting fuel, as mentioned before, is almost impossible. That and the fact the vehicle was running terrible. Up hills I could have run beside us. South from Harare to Bulawayo and then north to Vic Falls. You see, there are no direct roads to too many places in Zimbabwe. It was a long, very long trip. Late in the night we had to slow down as an elephant crossed the road before us.

Arriving at last in Victoria Falls, which is also a town, our hose chose a campground in which to sleep. He and the children with us had blankets, we the clothes on our backs. My team settled down for a rest but as the swarm of mosquitoes descended, I had had enough. At 1:30 in the morning I went looking to a decent place to stay. The Kingdom, a casino looking for better days, wanted to charge me $254 for the night. So I was back out on the streets. Finally I found Shoestring, a place right up my alley. For $9 per person a night we had a comfortable bed, clean bathrooms, and even a shower. Collecting my team, we were soon asleep in mosquito-free luxury.

Victoria Falls is great if you haven’t been there. We spent a few hours there before crossing the border and meeting up with our Namibian contacts, which what another providential adventure.

This email is long enough and I am running out of time. I am mentioning only a fraction of the things we are experiencing here. It is a good trip and we look forward to the next leg. As I mentioned above, it is now January 12, 2009, and we are getting ready to leave for Zambia tomorrow. Next email I will tell you about our work with the Romanians and the Namibians in Kongola.

God bless,

Don