Facing Your Prejudice

- Written in Sept 2013 -

I never wrote about what happened to me in May on my last thwarted attempt to visit DRC; I never considered it right to. It seemed irresponsible and dangerous to offer a story to public readership that holds every chance of solidifying the tragic prejudiced assumptions many people already hold about the place. Besides, I had put that horrible event behind me, moved on; forgiven, forgotten, hadn't I? Truly, I believed I had. And yet these past three weeks, re-entering Congo for the first time since all that took place in May, I discovered something in my heart, something deep and disturbing that had its roots way back in that day. Now, it has always been a point of great pride for me that no matter how much time I spend in Congo and no matter how often I am exposed or made subject to the corruption at the heart of the culture, I have never lost the love or passion that I had for these beautiful and wounded people. From the moment I stepped foot in Africa, and every moment since, Congo has been etched on my heart. It lingers, a love and a grief over a place at once so beautiful and so broken. Yet this time, something was different. I couldn't explain it; I didn't even recognise it right away. I was frustrated, irritable, unyieldingly so. The blackmail and bribery I have to deal with, once a mild inconvenience, had become a source of overwhelming aggravation. I found myself searching always for the hidden agenda behind people's niceties, friends or strangers. Police officers and men in uniforms would wish me good morning with a civil tip of the hat and I would walk on without regarding them. Something was different, some deep wrongness in my heart, and it took time to recognise it for what it was.

It is not necessary to put to words all that happened that day in May. Suffice it to say that travelling through one of the Congo's major cities a friend and I had an extremely intense encounter with a group of corrupt police officials in which we found ourselves very vulnerable and at great risk. We came out of it unscathed, the physical threat assuaged, and travelled safely home to Zambia the following day, albeit with lighter wallets and fewer belongings. Little more detail than that is needed, what is more important is all that followed. Though the physical threat was assuaged, the threat to my heart remained. Today, recognising the effect that this had on me as I returned to Congo these past three weeks, I am so aware that what I discovered in my heart is something that takes a hold of many of us, maybe all of us, who live outside of our own culture and people, a thorn that takes the foot of many a man and woman walking the rough and often trying road of a missionary life. It is a thing that we cannot afford to keep hidden or unchecked, for the threat it holds for our work, no less than for our hearts. I want to talk about prejudice.

Arriving home in Zambia after what our eventful encounter in May, my friend and I discussed all that had passed. We prayed much, and much was healed. We encouraged and challenged one another. I told my friend and told myself that these kinds of things can stay like a wound in your heart. They can make you sick, turn rotten and gangrenous, infecting your perspective on the place and the people that have caused you this trouble. Though you think of it afterwards as little more than an anecdote to pull out over the dinner table back home, one of an arsenal of stories to regale your friends about a missionary's life in Africa, it actually stays with you, buried in your heart. Over time what you put to the recesses of memory comes out of you afresh, very much alive, taking you unawares in the moment you discover that all this time you were oblivious to a little wound festering quietly into something much more fierce, dangerous, and disgusting. That is the moment you discover your prejudice.

Prejudice is a constant threat to the missionary walking every day in a culture and a people not his own. Like many others who come to volunteer in Africa I considered myself immune to such things simply by virtue of choosing to leave home and give my life to the work here. And yet it starts so naturally, so innocently as to be almost imperceptible. It is in the comparisons you make between your own culture and the one to which you're exposed. Such comparisons are fun and make for good conversation, but they can reveal prejudice like little else. It happens most keenly when you use the values of your own culture as the line against which you measure other cultures. You see the slow pace and rhythm of life in Africa. When you measure that against a Western ethic, you risk prejudice, thinking Africans lazy and slow. And of course, if the task-oriented Western ethic was a given, you would call anyone lazy who doesn't match up to it. But then Africans are not task-oriented, they are relationship-oriented. In that regard, Africans must think Westerners tremendously lazy.

Prejudice also darkens your vision. The thing you dislike in the few, you see in the many. Like having a thorn stuck in your foot yet believing that the reason you feel sharp pain at every step is because the ground is covered in bramble; the problem is not out there but in yourself. Prejudice is often born of fear, such as mine. More often and posing a far greater threat to the missionary or the volunteer is prejudice born simply of over-exposure. Walking daily in a culture and amidst a people not your own, having little respite or 'tastes of home' can harden your receptivity to the experiences around you. I suppose it is a kind of defence, a guard ensuring that no matter what, you remain inalterably you. I am learning that we must be so alert. We must never trust in the resilience of our hearts, never sit secure in the illusion that this "could never happen to me." I am also learning that it does not become easier the longer you are here; it actually becomes more and more a risk. We must hold one another accountable, point out when and where we see it as soon as we see it. We must be ruthless where we find it, both with ourselves and with others. Better to offend than indulge, better to tear it violently out of our hearts than to massage the wound.

It is a devastating thing to discover prejudice in your own heart, like finding a lump on your body where before there was none. As followers of Christ especially, we must understand that this hurts God's heart like little else. I think it was Dorothy Day who said you only love God as much as you love the person you love the least. My mind goes to Jesus' story about the sheep and the goats. I see myself on the last day, chin up and chest puffed out, ready to receive the verdict as I anticipate which orphaned kids God will parade before me, which street children and homeless alcoholics that I have loved and cared for in my better moments. I watch my face drop, my heart jolt, as in their place God leads out a large Congolese policeman in a blue uniform. I've seen him before. He has a cigarette perched between his snarling up-turned lips; a thick wad of my cash sticks out over the top of his pocket. Behind him walks a host of Congolese friends and strangers, innocents that I failed to love because where in their faces I should have seen Christ, I saw the round, red, arrogant face of a Congo police officer, stealing my money. Because truly, it is not only the poor and the wounded and the dying who will give testimony of our lives to God, but the many difficult ones that are hard to love, the trying ones on the other side of our prejudice that ought to pity us for drawing a line that, but for Christ, we would never have crossed.

But the good news is of course that that line can be crossed. That black stain of the heart can be healed; healed of the wounds left open to fester in the darker and deeper recesses of our hearts. For me, the moment that the veil lifted and I discovered that black spot of prejudice on my heart led me to my knees, drained me dry of tears and for one of those rare and precious moments, taught me the blessed depth of what God in Christ has done for me.

Because your heart was responsive

 and you humbled yourself before God when you heard

what He spoke against you,

and because you humbled yourself before Me

and tore your robes and wept in My presence,

I have heard you.

- 2 Chronicles 34 -

Annie

I was tired when we arrived, hot, ill-tempered and now all the more irritated at our tardiness in getting back to the car. "Just one more home visit," said one of the ladies I was walking with, a local volunteer serving the children in this village. I resigned my irritation to a sigh and said, "It'll have to be a quick one." I knew I wasn't at my best, walking between the mud walled straw roofed huts that characterise all these Malawian villages. I pictured the team of Americans I was hosting waiting by the car in the sweltering heat, checking their wristwatches as they ate through the crumbs of their packed lunches. Still, I pulled myself together as best I could and we reached our destination, a hut that had all but collapsed, the roof in tatters and the door off its hinges. I had to step over a young man stretched out drunk on the ground outside, some filthy rag steeped across his face to protect him in his stupor. One of the ladies uttered a sad but kindly 'tut' that seemed more maternal than judgmental. At the entrance to the home there was a brief exchange I didn't understand with a very aged woman who appeared to live there. She cast me confused and not overly welcoming glances as she spoke, after which the care worker turned to tell me that the girl we came to visit was not around. I took that as signal to leave, but I was wrong. The care workers indicated that I sit down whilst they bounded off to fetch the absentee girl. Thirty minutes passed in awkward tedium as children appeared tentatively to view the out of place 'mzungu' (white man), a spectacle I always think must be as bizarre as finding a baboon in an English garden. With each minute I grew more anxious and irritable until, at last, the care workers appeared. I saw at once the cause of their delay, and with it my agitation turned to shame. In their arms they supported a girl no more than fifteen, crippled in both legs and unable to bear the weight of her body as she slumped herself beside me. Her name was Annie.

As we spoke her expression seemed etched in pain, her inner wounds lined like scars on her face. Perhaps she had cried so long and so hard that in time she had simply adopted a countenance of agony. It didn't take long to understand why. Annie had no one. The inhospitable old lady that had eyed me upon our arrival was Annie's grandmother, with whom she shared a mat and a thin blanket, and the young man in the drunken stupor outside was her brother. I was told that regularly he would beat Annie (I wondered if her invalidity was his work), and the grandmother does little to stop him, other than forcing him to sleep outside. "Tell me about your life," I brought myself to ask. With that pained expression not permitted to lift for an instant, Annie told me her story. At sunrise every morning Annie gets up and drags herself on crippled legs to a mango tree three kilometres from her home. There in the shade of the mango tree she sits until the sun sets, eating the fruit that falls to the ground, weeping and praying. That is Annie's day; day after day. This day, when I met Annie, mango season was all but over, and I asked her what she would eat when the fruit stopped falling. She wept.

I glimpsed something that day that I hope to never forget. At some point I said something I don't recall and, for the briefest moment, a smile swept her face. It was the most beautiful smile I'd ever seen, beautiful for its rarity. And then she smiled again, and again, every one lasting only a second before it was stolen away, as if she was ashamed of it as her face returned again to pain. That day I told Annie that we were going to make a deal. I would promise to pray for her every day, and she had to promise to smile, once at least, every day. I told her that to rob the world of her smile would be a great injustice. I told her that now she had a brother, albeit a white one. She laughed. And I told her that I would see her again.

3 months passed before I returned to Malawi and, as soon as the opportunity arose, made my way to Annie's village. Something was different. The customary attention I received walking amidst a village white feet rarely tread was not the same as usual. I never heard the word 'mzungu'. In fact, people were calling to me by name, children whispering 'Adam' as they peered tentatively at me from their doorways. I exchanged puzzled pleasantries with the market sellers as they greeted me by name, like I was only another villager making the daily hike home. Others repeated some indistinct ChiChewa phrase I didn't recognise. Asking the care workers I walked with what they were saying, they laughed; "Here everyone knows who you are. They are calling you 'the brother of Annie'." With a growing crowd in our wake we arrived at Annie's home, and once again she wasn't there. But this time she appeared instantly, as did her smile. As we spoke she told me through tears that she had since tried to throw herself in the river, but her care worker had rescued her before she had the chance to jump. I asked her what would ever push her to do such a thing. She told me that people had come to her home to encourage her to kill herself, telling her that she had nobody and nobody would miss her, that she was more a burden than a blessing. As we prayed together a grin once again swept her face and she told me through that gorgeous smile, "I have prayed for a brother for so long, and God gave me you." I spent hours at Annie's home that day. I asked her if she had kept her side of the deal, as I had kept mine. She only smiled. We laughed and prayed and blessed one another and then, for the second time, with an aching heart, I left.

The brother of Annie. It dawns on me as I rattle down the dirt track out of Annie's village that this is at once the highest honour, and the greatest responsibility, I have ever received. The highest honour, because beneath Annie's mango tree a crippled and lonely young girl prayed through tears for a family, or a brother at least, and God in his wild and incalculable ways sent her me. A responsibility, because all that is demanded of family, all the love and care and commitment that makes it the most prized and precious gift, God demanded of an ill-tempered and irritated mzungu when walking around a corner he discovered Annie. The most catastrophic story, the bearer of the most beautiful smile, my friend and by God's design, my sister.

You are God's answer to the prayer of a broken world.

Searching for Grace

Grace, in April 2010 and April 2013

April 2010. 5 very white people step off a steamy bus and into the blazing African sun. The place - Mulenga, a brawling slum of tin roofs and taverns housing 30,000 of Zambia's poorest; the people - 5 intrepid travellers, church goers from East England looking to partner with an African charity which they at this point know little about. And amongst them, me. That was the day I first walked in Africa.

Then a 20 year old theology student, I was the youngest of the group. Africa had presented itself as a happy opportunity - two weeks in the sun and an experience to take back to the halls in which I studied and the homeless shelters in which I worked. I had never intended nor imagined, then or after, that I would come to call the place home. And yet, a year later, I would find myself on this red soil again. What happened that first day, and what followed after, is the story of why I came back. Looking over it I can see that it all began in that moment, stepping off a bus for the first time into the African sun, when a small hand wrapped itself in mine and turning around I laid eyes on a beautiful little creature in a blue dress.

Her name was Grace.

She was lost in the crowd, nothing particular to set her apart from the sea of smiling faces. Yet hers was the face that left the deepest imprint upon my heart. It was funny really, I knew nothing about her. Over 3 or 4 days I heard her say little more than her name, yet for the time I spent in Mulenga slum, I spent every moment I could with her. Frantic to know more than only this little creature's name, I asked anyone and everyone I could if they knew anything about her, but none did. It was for her that God had brought me to Africa those 2 weeks, of that I was sure. Or I can say, it was for me to meet her that God had brought me. I didn't ask myself why, I understood well enough. God will not expect you to weep for the world. But he will bring you the world; one story, one face at a time. And I never knew compassion until I met Grace. That was why he brought me to her, and her to me.

So that two weeks passed, and with it, my precious time with Grace. Leaving her behind, in just the same state in which I'd found her, I left for home.

April 2011 and I was absorbed in my studies, my final year of University drawing to a close. The future lay before me; continuing to work with the UK's homeless and dispossessed was all I could think or dream about. And then something began to stir inside me. A restless doubt, was the path set before me the one God would have me walk? I longed that God would have me in London, working with the homeless there as I had done the past couple of years. Yet in my secret and sincerest prayers, I knew that God was bidding me elsewhere. I didn't understand it; after all, I'd never had a heart for Africa. Africa, and all that I had known of it, had faded to me. And yet I was restless, and in the depth of myself I wrestled and fought with the disarming truth of it - that the face of a 7 year old girl in the crowd had never left me. Grace followed me, and with her a call to come back.

'You may not have a heart for Africa, but you do have a heart for Grace. There are many more Graces I want to show you, many more stories and faces; but you will never know or hear, unless you go back.'

And so I lost the fight. In September 2011 I arrived for the second time in Africa, set to discover what God wanted to do in and through me in this wild place, with one great goal in the thread of it all: to find her again. It was her that brought me back, and so her story was every bit entwined in mine. I told many people both in Africa and at home that I'd try to find her. And so, when I was sent to Zambia in late 2011, my first stop was the tin roofs of Mulenga compound. I met many of the people I'd known before, and throughout regular visits built a great relationship with the care workers (local volunteers) that live in Mulenga, providing parental care and support to the slum's most vulnerable children. I walked with them from home to home amidst the vast bustle of 30,000 people, the one photo I had of Grace in hand, searching for her. I never found her.

Months later, a good friend of mine was volunteering in the area with Hands at Work. She knew my deep desire to find Grace, and so took to searching herself, walking around the homes asking after her. She didn't find her either, but she was able to track down her mother's phone number and a family that knew of 'Mwaka' - Grace's Bemba name (the local language of northern Zambia). They had bad news. Grace had moved with her mother to Makululu slum, 160km south of Mulenga and the largest single community in Zambia, boasting a population of over 80,000 people. But there was hope yet. Makululu, whilst enormous, was a community in which Hands at Work operates, supporting local care workers to care for children just like in Mulenga. They are served by one of Hands' local offices, operating out of the nearest town - Kabwe.

I met with the opportunity to spend some time with our team in Kabwe. Jumping on a bus and heading down, I came equipped with a photograph of Grace, asking tentatively, if they had the time or chance, to ask the care workers if they knew the little girl. They did more than I asked. 30 care workers in Zambia's largest slum began to walk from home to home, asking after Grace.

160km north, I had since made my home at Kachele Farm, the base of operations for Hands at Work in the region and happily just down the road from Mulenga itself. Night after night I would call Grace's mother on the number my friend had tracked down for me. No one ever picked up. After a few months, the phone was answered by a seemingly intoxicated man who spoke little English and had no idea who or what I wanted. As it turned out, it was, it had always been, the wrong number. It was shortly after that that I got an update from the head of our work in Kabwe. The care workers had been unable to track down Grace. I don't know if I ever expected they would.

More months passed and while the search seemed futile, my hope didn't fade for an instant. It was 3 years since the day I first met her. I wondered if I'd even recognise her if I saw her. After all, I had only ever possessed one photo of her. I wondered if she'd recognise or remember me too. That didn't worry me too much though. I knew that I wanted to see her not in the vague hope that she would remember me, but because she had changed my life in the most real and resonant way that anyone ever could. And then, this week happened. I'd been hosting a team from my church in the UK, 'coincidentally' the same church that I'd come with in April 2010. It was their 4th visit since that time we first came to Africa, and one of them, Ken, was on the original team itself. He had been there the moment Grace first grabbed my hand and every day following. Few people knew as he did how deeply she had impacted my life, though just about everyone I know has heard her name since. And so this week I found myself sitting in the passenger seat of a 4 x 4, this time one of 6 very white people, inching our way down the ludicrous dirt tracks that map Mulenga community. Stopping to wave at a group of children I looked out my window and saw a familiar face. For an instant, my heart literally stopped. Turning to Ken in the driver's seat I said, "I think that's Grace." I dove out the car so quickly I startled the girl. Looking into her face and exchanging a smile, I brought her by the hand to one of the Zambian women we were working with. I told her the story, 5 words a second tumbling out one over the other, and having taken it all in she bent down and asked the little girl in their local language, translating for me as she did so,

"What is your name?"

"Mwaka," she replied.

"Do you know this man?"

"It's my friend Adam," she said.

"And how long have you been friends?"

"A long time."

I was lost for words, lost for thoughts. I didn't laugh or cry as I would have expected to.  I just hugged her, set her down again, took her hand, and we walked together. That morning I was scheduled to visit some of the homes of the children and patients we care for. But before I did, my first visit was to Grace's house. We met her aunty and her father, who had recently returned to Mulenga with Grace from Makululu. They sat silent and dumbfounded as I told them how and why I had searched for her. I wondered what Grace thought. She didn't respond much, only rested on me as we sat together, listening to the whole story. When we eventually had to leave, I asked Grace if I could come back to visit her again soon. She said she was free Wednesday. Laughing, I told her I'd try, and we left. But a few minutes later we found that she was following us, so putting my arm around her, we walked together. 3 hours we walked in and out of the homes of patients, orphans and grandmothers, listening to their stories. Every time I looked at Grace sitting silently beside me I could think of nothing but how impossible a thing it was that she was there, that we were there, together. She threw me shy smiles across the room whilst we sat in people's homes. Eventually the day drew to a close. We walked back to the car and for the second time I said goodbye to Grace. Her confused face was lost in the crowd of smiles as we drove away. But this time everything is different. This weekend I will go back and see her again. I don't know if there is anything more God would ask of me. I will not take it for granted. I know why Grace was such a gift to me then, and what compelled me to find her now. Because it was through her that I discovered not only the truth that, in His own time and in His own way, God will give you the desires of your heart, but more beautiful still - that God will lead you a long way until the one great desire of your heart becomes to follow the desires of His.