Those Peculiar Johnsons

Sensible Suffering

I met with my counselors today. Two of them meet me for about one and one half hour. They are more than just pleasant, they are genuinely friendly, concerned and really allow me to probe my own mind to find out what makes me ‘tick’ or ‘get ticked’ as it were.

It is actually good for me. The one thing they both observed is that I don’t allow myself to just feel. I always have a rationale, a Biblical reason, or some spiritual point of view to the things that trouble my mind. I must admit, they are right. I have a hard time just letting go and crying about situations, or allowing myself to just ‘break-down’ and relax. I am just uptight and wound that way, 27 hours of the 24 hour day.

I had two counselors, for one and one half hour to help me unravel. Reality awaits me after I leave the comfortable confines and soft chairs of their offices.

I will return to my clinic on Friday where I will spend five to ten minutes with 40-50 patients, translating between Swahili and often a third language, trying to help them unravel why it is they are dying. I will talk to a woman whose breast I removed for cancer, only to tell her that after three months, I found it has spread to her liver. The disfiguring and painful operation was for nothing.

I need to get this out in the first five minutes, and then find the next two minutes to re-explain it to her family, one minute for it to settle in and then a minute for questions and one minute for prayer. I never get much of a chance to help them make any sense of this whole scenario. They want me to answer the deeper questions, such as ‘why me?’

I don’t have the time for the ‘why me’ questions. It always leads to deeper discussions of ‘why not you?’

‘Would you prefer someone else have this illness? Do you think you are more deserving than someone else?’

Or I could try this; “God can use this illness to show Himself strong in your life, to strengthen your faith, and draw your family closer.”

These are hard questions because the other 49 people are wondering what is taking me so long in there with these weeping people. I finally get rid of them and the ‘why me’ questions, only to have a young girl of 3-4 years who has been raped and the penis of the man, her father, has torn through her vagina and into her rectum, so that they are now just one hole together. I start to ask myself ‘why her?’

What kind of God allows this to happen? Is He asleep when this kind of thing goes on? Isn’t this senseless suffering? What is the purpose of this pain and grief the girl is feeling and the shame of the mother who has married and still lives with this ‘beast’ of a man?

How do I console the mother and counsel her that God understands it all? What is the sense of this suffering? I need to figure it out in the next ten minutes because the 48th patient is already impatient! Do I tell the mom that God cares, will make a way for the girl to forget, is calling for her to make decisions about the man she calls her husband, is wanting them to repent of some sin…., what sense do I make of this suffering?

I don’t have much time. I certainly don’t have time to cry. There is only one of me and not two to discuss the challenges of this and the next 47 patients who are coming my way.

I give up and do the necessary paper work to admit the girl on my account, as the mother has no money. I check to see if the girl is HIV positive, but only time will tell. I reserve that information for later.

I admit that my counselors are right. I do need time and room to cry. That is why I am in their office. I can hope to make this sensible suffering.

If I cannot find a Biblical way of dealing with these issues, I will go mad. I hide my fear, my pain, my grief within my faith. I try to make Jesus the one to bear the burden I am feeling. After all, the Father got sense out of His Son’s suffering. Why can’t He make sense out of mine, and the people I serve?

Job asked the same questions and came up with this one answer:

Job 1:21-22

And said, Naked came I out of my mother's womb, and naked shall I return thither:
the LORD gave, and the LORD hath taken away; blessed be the name of the LORD.
In all this Job sinned not, nor charged God foolishly
Job 2:9-10

Then said his wife unto him, Dost thou still retain thine integrity? curse God, and die. But he said unto her, Thou speakest as one of the foolish women speaketh. What? shall we receive good at the hand of God, and shall we not receive evil?

Can it not be that God is trying to work something in their lives that neither they nor I can understand or appreciate? I sure hope so! That would be sensible suffering.

Next please.

Common African Recipes or How to Prepare For Famine in Three Easy Steps

How do you prepare for famine if you have never even known hunger? Here is the trick. Try these 3 easy steps.

Before starting, prepare yourself by fasting for three days. Because you are unfamiliar with starvation, you must drink at least a cup of water daily while fasting. Body/mind preparation is essential for you to withstand the rigorous demands of food deprivation.

Now you are ready to begin. Don’t get nervous. It is as easy as 1,2,3 to achieve a fat free, low cholesterol, low salt, low carbohydrate, low nutrient, minimum caloric diet that is pathetically normal to people enduring famine.

I promised you three steps. Here they are; 1) Gather; 2) Prepare; 3) Eat.

Step 1) Gather; Climb up high in a banana tree, or any tree that has some remaining leaves, and throw down some of the largest leaves. Watch out for the thorns on some of the other trees. They will pierce your skin, just like they pierced the tires of the four wheel drive Land Rover. Save the younger, smaller, and tender leaves for tomorrow. Now walk to the nearest puddle of water or stream and fill any container you can find with water. A clean bucket, or old oil can without holes works better. The two hour walk would be wasted if more than half of your water is spilled on the way home.

Be very careful not to stir the water up too much or you will get mud and silt. Avoid any place where animals may have deposited bodily waste. It adds an undesirable color, taste, fragrance, and texture to the water. It also leads to death by diarrhea.

Watch out for hungry crocodiles (your kids are easy for them to swallow) and other thirsty wild animals (they will literally kill to be first in line for water). Now gather some dried grass or dung and place it on the charcoals that remain from yesterday’s fire.

Step 2) Prepare; Place your banana leaves and water in a pan (recycled from discarded oil drums) on your fire of charcoals, dry grass and dung. Don’t let your kids get too close to the fire, as if they get burned, there is no place for them to get care and they will probably die. Also, the inhaled smoke predisposes them to pneumonia, and asthma and is bad for their eyes. These are just some precautions you should take, like not putting foil in your microwave. Don’t be in a hurry for the dung to get warm. After all, this is not fast food. Bring to a boil or at least heat well.

Step 3) Eat; It’s just that simple. You are now dieting in the style that is a staple for millions of Africans every day, if they can find leaves and water. Well, to be true, I made up the recipe based upon the stark ingredients I have seen as we tour the villages and homesteads of people here in Kenya. These are the ‘must have’ elements of a diet for people struggling to survive.

As an American physician with over 15 years of experience working in Africa it is still hard for me to believe there is such famine some where in the world. As I clean my overcrowded refrigerator, discard cartons of egg-foo-yong, stale pizza and overripe strawberries I think, “how can people be hungry when I am so full?”

As I worry about my widening waistline I feel uncomfortable and guilty about my excesses as I come from a land of plenty. I have trouble understanding famine when I haven’t even known hunger. Let’s get back to the recipes. If you don’t find banana leaves, you can always try sawdust. I have read of this in other sub-Saharran African nations. Sawdust does not require any special sauces, so my thinking is you can eat it raw by the handful. People in those nations have tried more readily available things as well. Rocks and soil do fill the belly and since they are very slow to pass through the digestive system, they give a prolonged sense of fullness. You have to give them credit for their creativity.

Then there is always tree bark and roots. Season these with the natural silt that comes from the water. As you pound the roots, some of the sap exudes adding a pliable consistency to the roots making it easier to swallow. Taste is not a consideration when you are eating to live. After all, remember, you are starving.

One of the best things about this modern day African recipe is that it never spoils. You can eat it again and again, especially when it is the only food you have. The alternative to this recipe is death.

All over the continent weakening mothers hold emaciated children, sucking at their dry breasts, as they slip from soft weeping to silent coma and final stillness. They must bury the bodies deep, deep..., deep in the sand, as the hyenas and vultures are hungry too.

Are you ready to handle this recipe? Do you think you have the right stuff to survive this diet? If not, you may be ready to do something to help those who alleviate this specter of starvation and death. You may want to ask your Father in heaven to give you a real hunger and desire to help fill the real hunger and desires of those who have so little when we have so much.

The most recent health statistics reveal that Americans are dying earlier than in previous decades. The cause of early death is now obesity and the related diseases. Imagine that! Our access to excess which we deem as success causes early death, while so much of the world goes hungry. It is obvious that we use different recipe books. I read a report that says we as Americans spent $14 billion dollars on exotic chocolates in 2005. Imagine the condiments you could add to this recipe with that much money. Talk about a Happy Valentine!

Today and, tonight you will gather, prepare and eat. Most likely, the steps you follow will be much simpler than outlined for the common African recipe I have described above. Your meal may give you heartburn. If it does, before you take your antacid allow your heart to ache for the people who will fill their bellies with dirty roots, cold sawdust and warm leaves. Ask the Lord to make you make you aware of these very common African recipes.

Mt 25:35…. 45 “For I was an hungred, and ye gave me meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave
me drink….,Inasmuch as ye did it not to one of the least of these, ye did it not to me.”

Just This Once Jesus

The little boy slowly lifted his head from the stone, and licked the surface collecting what he could on his tongue. At three years of age, he had known nothing but chronic hunger. His face was covered with the fine residue of corn meal dust which was left behind by the nearby chickens. This stone is used to hand grind the corn or maize, into a powder which can be cooked into a mush, one staple of the Kenyan diet. Since the boy was bigger than the chickens, they dared not fight him for this remaining food, however, they did hover nearby, just in case the boy would decide he was full. After a half minute of licking, the boy laid his face back on the stone and knelt, resting to get enough energy, to watch the chickens and try licking up more corn meal dust.

I have been hungry before, but never desperately hungry to the point of licking a brick.

I thought to myself, ‘why not just this once Jesus? Why not turn this stone into bread?’

During our most recent trip to Ukambani region of Kenya, we saw people who were desperately hungry. With our work team from Philadelphia, we visited homes and compounds of families who had less food in their store rooms for one month supply than I feed my dogs for a week. They did not complain, neither did they try to super-spiritualize their condition. They quietly just did what was necessary to get by, as always.

The chickens and livestock are their last hedge against complete hunger, and are used as a last step measure to ward off death. When times are hard, such as a medical emergency, people first sell their crops, then their animals and last of all their land. Since this land is so arid and of little value, these chickens are all that is left of the family’s wealth.

After another year of failed crops due to lack of rain, the people cut the remaining trees to make charcoal to sell for cash. A full bag of 60 pounds or 28 kilograms gets a price of about $2.25 or 180 Kenya Shillings. This takes over one week to produce with cutting of the trees, collecting the compost and stoking the slow burn phase to make charcoal. A lot of trees are felled to ward off hunger. This boy licking the stone is a usual part of the landscape, like the surrounding deforested hills and heavy soil erosion. The landscapes mirror the deeper story of the ravages of hunger on families.

We delivered and helped plant over 1,000 trees this trip, placed four water pumps on wells, and provided irrigation equipment and seeds for acre sized community gardens. We held Bible study and group activities for children and helped complete another two classrooms of the community school we have been building. With all of this work completed, the little boy was still licking a stone for corn meal dust.

Why can’t we just turn these stones to bread? Is it such a bad thing? Why not just deliver the necessary food, water, and medicines to the people who have known hunger for generations? Why not just this once Jesus?

As I ponder these questions with the Holy Spirit, He encourages me that the changes we are making are not just to provide food for the day, but food security for the future. We are not only changing the landscape of the earth, but also softening the stony ground of spiritual erosion to make it fertile soil for the gospel. We are already seeing changes in some communities which were at one time totally dependent upon donated food from the UN, and are now able to sell their surplus to buy livestock to replenish their herds (this is their savings account). Our work is making a difference and families that were starving are now eating on a regular basis.

The boy lifts his face again and sticks out his tongue to lick the stone. The chickens resort to eating some bugs and avoid the boy as he has not yet had his fill of the corn meal dust. The Holy Spirit speaks softly to remind me that the Father does hear my prayer and that He is not interested in ‘just this once’, but desirous of making a long term impact on the lives of the people we serve here. Just this once is not enough for this boy. He needs bread for today, for tomorrow and for eternity. Help us to provide the Eternal Bread of Life and the necessities of this present life to those whom we serve in Kenya.