Mourning From Africa . . .

Bon soir,

A cool east wind has chilled me to the bone. I've just finished praying with Sarah and for the first time in a long time settle down to sleep without earplugs. As I snuggle next to the warmth of my wife I drift off to the chirping of the myriad Béré night insects. All things slowly fade off into dreamland. But, just before starting the night visions, I am reluctantly tugged back to reality by a soft tap, tap, tap on the door.

"Médecin?"

I groggily reply "Oui?"

"C'est David, one of the patients just died. The family traded a bicycle in to get their ox cart out of hawk so they can take the body back to their village but I can't get the combination lock on the gate to open. I called Boniface and he can't get it open either."

As I zoom back out of the tunnel of the subconscious I hear fading in the wails, groans and shrieks of a Nangjere mourning ritual. I pull up the mosquito net and grab my flashlight.

"J'arrive," I mumble as I search for some pants and a ragged t-shirt. I pull my clothes on, punch open the metal door, slip on some flip flops by the slim light of my torch and pad reluctantly after David towards the hospital.

Aaaaaaaahhhhhh! Ohhh, ohhhh, ohhhhhhh! Aye yi yi yi yi yi yi! The ghoulish sounds of the dead man's family waft across the campus as if straight out of nightmare. Am I really awake? I follow David to the gate where the eerie, flickering glow of a kerosene lamp dimly lights up the shadows of peoples arms waving and dim forms moving back and forth and rocking up and down.

I shine the flashlight on the lock. Three turns to the right, stop at 30. Turn back left past 30 and stop at 20. Back to the right till 02 and tug! The padlock falls open. I remove the chain as David and Boniface both click their approval in the background followed by a few "ça, ça, ça's" and "kai, kai, kai's". David opens the gate and two shadowy forms silently slip in past us.

I look outside to where the dancing orange flame lights up a series of rolled up mats, three bicycles tightly in a row, a couple of bundles wrapped up in cloth and tied at the top, and a group of what appears to by women as judged by the shadows from their head and body wraps. One woman with a bundle, probably a baby, strapped to her back is waving back and forth with arms flailing the air as she marches five steps forward, turns and five steps back in a never ending dance of death.

The others are kneeling or sitting in a tight bunch with various head bobs and arm movements rhythmically accompanying the chants, wails, moans and groans in a macabre symphony of fear.

A man walks up with an agonizing yell tearing from his throat as he beats his breast. Dogs bark in chorus in the background as a cat yelps in a discordant cacophony straight from hell.

I find anger and pity and sorrow welling within me. It's so unnecessary and disheartening. The sorrow is not real. These same people left their relative sick for a week without treatment followed by three days in a coma before coming to the hospital. To pay $20 for his treatment is all but impossible. Yet, now, they will spend hundreds of dollars on entertaining and feeding the relatives and friends who will come to pay their condolences. Everyone will gather and make a lot of noise to "prove" how sorrowful they are and to make sure that his spirit doesn't come back to haunt them because they weren't sad enough at his passing.

It makes me sick to sense all the fear of death and spirits and hauntings that I hear in their crys. To see and know the ignorance that keeps them captive breaks my heart. I know the one who has promised to "free those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death" (Heb 2:15). But it seems so overwhelming to fight against so much superstition and tradition and fear.

I show Boniface and David how to work the lock as the two men who'd entered re-emerge out of the darkness pulling the ox cart past us and out the gate. We put the chain back around as the two watchmen click and mutter their excitement at learning how the combination works. I walk back through the tall grass towards my bed as the chilling sounds of the Nangjere fade again into the background soon to be lost to the darkness of the African bush as it swallows up it's children once again in its bottomless pit of despair.

James

Tears

Salut!

I can't sleep. It's still dark and a cool wind is rustling the leaves
outside my window with a hollow wail. I lie under the mosquito net with a heaviness in my eyes that screams for slumber to come, but my mind is racing and my stomach is churning. I want to just roll over and fight to sleep but something deep inside is pulling me elsewhere.

I roll out under the net trying not to wake Sarah. I slip on some shorts and bang the front door open (there's no other way to do it). I feel for my flip flops with my feet and stumble through the dark across the porch and down the steps.

A faint tinge of slightly less blackness touches the eastern horizon. The stars are brilliant. There is no moon and not a single light, lamp or fire anywhere. I've learned to find my way around the compound even in the dark. I brush against some low lying mango branches and steal cautiously towards the back gate. It's locked and I don't have the key.

I scramble over the chain link fence to the side of the cement post holding the door. As I slither over the top I scrape my leg against the cold, rough concrete. I land with a thud on the other side jarring my spine. I dust off my hands and stand up.

With my eyes now adjusted to the dark and the continued advancement of the dawn I can barely make out the trail through the millet field out back. I walk to the middle and gaze up.

I start to cry.

As tears stream down my face my body is wracked with sobs. It's been too long and too much. The national strike. The closing of all the other hospitals. The countless surgeries. The red tape in N'Djamena. The poverty. The needs. The kids in tattered clothes. The dirt. Equipment breaking down. The government project shutting down. The fear. The ignorance. The witchcraft. The weird traditional practices. The drums all night. The grasping. The begging. The manipulating. The young guys hungry for something better. The almost palpable longing for hope. The AIDS patient on the way to recovery stolen away from the hospital by her sister so she can die at home. The Arab boy with complications post-op who despite 2 surgeries lasting over 8 hours ends up dying anyway. The immensity of the task. Being in over my head all the time. Never-ending needs. But most of all...sorrow, a deep unexplainable sorrow for the people of Béré. A longing to somehow be a part of bringing them out of darkness, fear and ignorance into who they were made to be. A cry from my heart that God will help me to love when I don't feel like it...

Through the haze of my watery eyes I spot shooting stars. To the west, far across the plain, lightning flashes. Some clouds steal up over the eastern stars. Insects are chirping. Roosters are crowing. Bats are fluttering past my ears. Guinea fowl are squawking in their night time perches. Various coos, warbles, trills and hoots waft around me in a symphony that sucks the tightness out of my chest and abdomen and relaxes things I didn't know were tense. I slowly become still, filled with an extraordinary Presence. I turn slowly towards the house as dawn breaks across the town of Béré, Tchad...

James