The Second Time Around

Sometimes you turn around a corner in the dark and there are a couple giant elephants standing in the road.  Framed in your headlights, even when you’re not looking for them, even when you’re tired at the end of the day and it’s later than you’re supposed to be out driving.  Those are BIG surprises, but they’re also what you’re looking for.

            This is the first day off in a couple weeks’ work, the second time around in Kenya.  The first few minutes to sit and think, with (Psalm 18) open in front of me and the warm January African sun on my back.  “I love you, Oh Lord my strength…The cords of the grave coiled around me; the snares of death confronted me…He reached down from on high and took hold of me; he drew me out of deep waters…”  Very real here.

            What’s the same?  Desperate joy around us here.  In the open medical ward at Tenwek, so many very sick folks receive your morning greeting, “Habari za asubuhi” (what is the news this morning?) and no matter what they’re experiencing: pain, fear, etc.  Their answer “Mzuri” (good news).

            What else is the same?  This is a place of stunning natural beauty.  I just saw it today after 2 weeks.  Everything at work seems deeply infused with meaning.  The kids are outside playing at least 10 hours per day.  K has spent a couple Sabbaths in the village.

            What is different?  We come here as short term visitors for a month.  The missionaries are almost all different.  The teaching program for internship has changed a great deal.  There is a doctor’s strike ongoing; all public health services are closed.  The volume of patients, already high, gets higher still.  We are leading a global health rotation from UT with first time visitors to Kenya.  Trying to see it through their eyes, explain some things, but not too much.

 

            What was a highlight?  Renewing relationships, and being remembered.  Experiencing this place with different eyes, no longer fully shaded by materialism.  Our lives are built on the story of a Man who was raised from the dead; how can I assume that medical knowledge/biochemistry has a solution to all these problems.  There have been some good deaths.  And some good lives saved.  And even more lives and souls will be saved by the ones who are trained here.  This photo is from graduation of some surgeons at Tenwek.

            What was a lowlight?  In medicine here, everyone comes to the hospital as a last resort.  They come for help, and many times that is not found in medicine (a lesson I need to learn every day).  I forget this, and the weight of these tragedies feels too much again.  20% mortality rate on the medical ward.  These words quoted during the graduation yesterday: “For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me and for the gospel will save it.” (Mark 8:35)

            This is the good life.