Not exactly Harleys

The name: Zimmijahn
They way they're driven: recklessly
Who travels: everyone! even infants.
What travels: goats, doors, chickens, water jugs...anything.
They seem to be the first mode of travel, thankfully, I'm a ship driver.

Just say no

So, we've arrived here in Cotonou, Benin, and the work has begun. It is good to be here, and I am excited for the work I am doing. I am working as the eye field team coordinator, which means that I drive to different areas of town and help to organize mobile eye clinics that are held each week. Surgeries started today. We had 600 patients waiting for us yesterday, and 400 today. My crowd control skills are weak, at best, and my French is about 10 levels below that, not to mention my Fon speaking (the most common local dialect). Today we had to go to a window one floor above where the hundreds of patients were waiting, just in order to speak to them and try to gain some order (Shakespeare comes to mind...).
Despite all the stress and pressure of seeing so many people, I have a joy in the work we are doing. I have often worried that I was suffering compassion fatigue, and could easily "just say no" to people, when I would watch the hearts of other staff around me be wrenched and tortured. Today my heart was moved deeply, for one young man who had an infection that the ship simply could not treat, and I felt forced to turn him away, toward what I saw as inevitable, impending death. My heart ached, and I broke down and shed tears for him, as Pastor Florent and I prayed for him, and we sent him away. They simply couldn't pay for x-rays and treatment. It's hard for me even to conceive of. Lack of money causing someone's death. Obviously, it happens every day, and yet it's shocking. It does not often happen in the world I know. The realities we know in life can differ so greatly. I could only pray that God would intervene on this man's behalf, and show him mercy. Then I had to go see the next patient.

Uncle Tom

So, I just read the book "Uncle Tom's Cabin", and if you haven't done so, I recommend it. For those who aren't familiar, this is an anti-slavery fictional novel written in the early 1850's, depicting the life experiences of several slaves living and working in varying conditions in the American South. What does this have to do with your work in Africa? Seems kind of random or unrelated, but it actually is unbelievably tied to the work here. The people in the book are the people we're serving in West Africa. They are from the same place, and many of them (particularly in Liberia) also returned there.
As good as the book was, my purpose is not to sell you on picking it up for yourself, but to reflect. "Uncle Tom" has become a derogitory term used to describe a black man who "is perceived by others as behaving in a subservient manner to white American authority figures". Despite this common current day reference, the real Uncle Tom encountered in the novel is the epitome of a follower of Jesus Christ. What an unjust distortion. Ms. Stowe reviews the viewpoints of many individuals involved in the slave trade in different capacities, blacks and whites, Christians and pagans, kind and cruel, men and women. She is not afraid to make generalizations about her own, African race, and whether or not I can say I agree with them or understand them, they're interesting to read and consider in light of my experiences with the people of West Africa.
Most surprising to me, though, was the reference to the new slave state being formed, called "Liberia". She says, "I grant that this Liberia may have subserved all sorts of purposes, by being played off, in the hands of our oppressors, against us." and she goes on to say that forming Liberia may have actually been a means of "retarding our emancipation", yet she is assured that God's plans are greater, and He may have "overruled their designs, and founded for us a nation by them?" She is hopeful for the future of Liberia. What would be her reflections to see it now and how it has progressed? What wrongs are still being felt through the consequences of America's choice? I wish I could hear her commentary and reflections.
At the end of it all, though, the question is how could a "Christian" nation allow and endorse such injustice and cruelty? The appeal to her brothers and sisters in Christ is strong and convicting. What injustice do we endorse, allow by our silence or ignorance, or condemn from a distance while failing to be moved into action? Those giants in history who have dared to stand against injustice in their own time should inspire us to look around a little more, pray a little longer and more sincerely, and to stand and fight in the ways that we can. God forgive and help us.