Don Miller puts life in perspective…again.

Travelogue #12

Dateline: Kafue, Zambia; October 27, 2009—The rains have not yet come so as I sit here under a rude shelter beside a dusty sward, my computer keyboard is slowly filling up with the fine red dirt that swirls in the refreshing breeze. A large group of boys are out kicking even more dust into the air on the soccer field. Most of them are in bare feet yet still they kick that hard ball with power. What feet the people have. But the beginning of this travelogue is not about soccer; it is about Lawrence.

Many people around the world know of Lawrence if they have attended my presentations. Even if they don’t remember his name, they can never forget the picture of that leg of his. It looked like raw meat from mid-thigh to mid-calf. Red, oozing and angry, it defied description but in the end had to submit to simple treatments. We would visit Lawrence day after day. At first he was insouciant, holding himself at arm’s length lest he find more disappointment in his life. The leg wound, whereas baffling, did not present to this young man his biggest challenge nor his biggest pain. It was his wife who soured his life.

After we became friends, and we did become friends, he would just make little expressions which I knew were coming from a broken heart. “Ah, my wife, she is at the bar,” he would say, not so much as to disparage her, but as an expression of his helplessness. I came to understand that she would trade her favors for a beer, and this is not the right part of the world to adopt such behavior, not that there is a right time or place ever to be unfaithful. AIDS is rampant here. Back in the USA, one out of four teenaged girls have at least one STD. No, no time, no place, no reason for immorality. I only saw his wife a few times, and each time she was a bit tipsy and carried about her that essence of alcohol I learned to hate so much as a child. I didn’t hate the person of course, but the habit killing them.

Lawrence responded well to treatment but he could no longer work. He had been employed building utility towers but his wound confined him to earth. We provided him with supplies with which to make a living and then I left Zambia. But I have always thought of Lawrence, looking forward to seeing him again. Well, today was the day. I have been in Kafue all day, visiting with a new crop of patients, pointing people to the great Physician. This is what I love the most. After dinner we went across the highway to find Lawrence.

The area where he lived is a confusion of mud huts, fetid ditches of water, and a thousand barefooted and raggedy dressed children. This is where the poorest of the poor live. It is literally “on the other side of the tracks,” a railroad track serving as a dividing line between the hopeful and the hopeless. Lining the road leading into this human morass were women peddling fruits and vegetables, fly-covered dried fish, and assorted bobbles selected to tempt a few kwacha from the want of those who had a moment of excess. And it is dirty. I was told today that a plastic bag in your yard is considered a status symbol. It means you have enough money to shop in a place that supplies plastic bags for your purchases. According to this way of thinking, I was entering an affluent community for plastic bags and other trash were scattered everywhere.

It had been seven years since I was last in this area but was sure I could find the home of Lawrence easily. I had been there so often. But now I was confused; things had changed, more homes had somehow been built between dwellings already crowded together like fleas on a stray dog. We stopped and asked a few people and finally found a young boy who knew of Lawrence. He and apparently an older brother climbed into our vehicle and took us back a Zambian block. We dismounted and entered the labyrinth. Nothing looked familiar but I knew somehow we were in the right area. Between a mud-block dwelling and a line of spindly shrubs lay a man on a reed mat, sleeping in the shade out of the hot Zambian sun. The boy spoke to him and he rolled over and answered gruffly, not too keen on being disturbed in his sleep. But when we spoke he sat up and turned from gruff to gracious. You see, he was completely blind and did not sense us being with the boy. When he knew we were there, he was most helpful. Just beyond the shrubs he directed us to the home of Lawrence.

Sand brown walls framed the doorway opening into the darkened bowels of broken dreams. The inside, devoid of any light but that which stole in from the outside, was as bare as the outside walls. The boy guide said something into the darkness and soon she came out. I had seen her before, and not much had changed. The familiar smell of alcohol enveloped Lawrence’s wife. But one thing was tragically different; she was now a widow.

It seemed Lawrence’s wound had indeed gotten better, at least the wound on his leg had. But the wound upon his heart festered over the next few years until, sometime in 2006, Lawrence took his own life. He drank poison. I sit here now missing this man, this intelligent man with the measured smile and patient endurance. There was just no one else who had the attachment I had, who had been as involved with him, to continue visiting him and ministering to him. And now he was gone.

Riverside Farm sponsors what they call “Pioneers” all over Zambia. They help the people physically and spiritually. They look over the broken, the lost, the seeking. It costs about 300,000 kwacha a month to sponsor a pioneer, which comes to right around $70. For Lawrence, or in memory of him, I will now sponsor a pioneer to be placed in Kafue. If anyone else would like to place a man in the field who will work for humanity at such low wages, let me know and I will tell you how you can go about it; and it is tax deductable if that is important to you.

There is an allied reason for this sponsorship. I spent today going from one home to another, visiting people whom the students have met along the way who have physical problems. This is Africa and one would expect the major causes of debility and death to be malaria and AIDS. True, they are rampant here, but I was alarmed at the condition of those I met with. High blood pressure, stroke, heart disease are the big three here. These have always been considered to be diseases of the West, lifestyle diseases brought on by a western diet and sedentary lifestyle. If I have a mantra, it is “Live like an American, expect to die like an American.”

With three students I set out this morning to visit some of their contacts in Kafue who need health counseling. Whereas people around the world have been duped into believing modern medicine offers a cure for every ill in the form of the ubiquitous pill, when it comes their turn to suffer, they realize there has to be a better way. It is adopting that way which proves the greatest challenge.

Martin, a retired headmaster, lives in a comfortable home on the side of a rocky and sparsely vegetated hill. Upon entering his house at about 9 AM, one’s attention was immediately drawn to a large television set and a bevy of women and children sprawled around, transfixed by a soap opera’s sordid melodrama. On the floor were scattered a couple dozen Fanta bottle caps. No one stirred at our intrusion, for the Rastafarian dialoging with the nurse, and the starlet with the swain held them in their thrall. One of the students went to the end of a darkened hall (and it seems as if the insides of all buildings here are dark) and spoke with a woman coming out of a room. Inside the room was Martin.

In a few minutes we were ushered back to his room. Two or three weeks before Martin had had a stroke. His left hand lay curled in his lap as he sat on the side of his bed. The stroke had apparently not seriously affected his face as he smiled from both sides of his mouth. He was also ambulatory which was also a good sign. The stoke had been mercifully mild so I took this as an occasion to be frankly forthright. A stroke is the end result of a cascade of choices and conditions. The choice to eat a heavy meat diet and his condition of abdominal obesity. The choice to retire before the television and his condition of high blood pressure. The choice of drinking Fanta over water and his condition of viscous blood. I knew without a doubt he had an appointment with another stroke for none of the choices had been improved and none of the conditions improved. He had surrendered to his new disability and placed his trust in the plighted claims of the pills by his bed.

It was easy to talk with Martin. He was educated, affable and had a good command of the English language although one of the students, an older woman who was also a nurse, would repeat certain things to him, not in Tonga, but in English with a heavy Tonga accent. It is hard to realize how great an accent I must have to these people. Step by step I told what he needed to do to miss his appointment with the stroke and also to regain use of his left hand and arm. Thankfully I had purchased some Theratubes while in the USA. He will not benefit from this simple means of exercise.

Martin’s wife, also a nurse, was listening intently and agreeably to all we had to tell her husband. She was the one to see it happen. The poor woman, in her labors in the past to treat her patients she had become HIV positive and the antiretrovirals have caused her body to swell painfully. We closed with prayer, the students promising to return to check on Martin. But what happens after the students leave? Who supplies the hope, the alterative, the prayer? That is why Kafue needs a Pioneer…or two.

The last patient of the day was an ancient woman. She was sitting outside an unfinished cement block home with the rubble of construction lying all about. Stones, globs of hardened mortar, dried weeds all made a challenging pathway to or from anywhere. Yet this old woman in her bare feet led us steadily to the shadowed side of the house. Finding anything we could to sit on, we asked her of her condition. Although she was rail thin, you could see her abdomen was distended and her ankles swollen. Upon pressing a finger into her ankle, the impression remained for some time. Congestive heart failure. She was also having a bout of diarrhea. Hot weather, diarrhea, an extreme distaste for water, gossamer thin skin (except for the bottoms of her feet) all added up to a very poor prognosis. I gave her a bottle of charcoal tablets which should adequately address the diarrhea. Large amounts of water are contraindicated for CHF. We did what we could.

As we were leaving this poor woman whom I know will not be living this time next year, I thought on the first thing I try to teach my students everywhere in the world. With clarity I finally understood why I was so adamant about this thought. After Lawrence, this old woman, and a host of other patients like Silas, Mr. Perry, Emily and Billy, it became clear to me just today. My students have heard me say it a thousand times; “The number one purpose of medical missionary is to prepare people to die.” Some people never understand this idea, but now I understand it even more clearly. It is not about the patient’s condition, which is almost always serious. It is about my conviction, which is often not serious enough. We stand between the living and the dead. How many of them will sink into hopeless, Christ-less graves? Do I have the mettle and temerity to deal with the dying body and the lost soul? If not, I need to find another purpose in life. That’s what I want my students to understand.

More later for the day was a long day.

God bless,

Don

"Give, and it shall be given unto you, good measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over shall men give unto your bosom."  HAVE GOD, WILL TRAVEL