Category: Other Page 15 of 184

Be All There.

On May 20, 2018

Last summer at my parents’ house–handprints in cement.

Last night at bath time Johnny said, Mommy, I have an owie on my knee. He stood there with his big mournful eyes, and I noticed how tall he is now. He is almost to the end of kindergarten. And I thought about how it’s not going to be much longer that a child of mine shows me his owie.

Today was the annual garage sale at HOPAC, so yesterday we went through the house to find what we could get rid of. We loaded the car up with the booster seat and the foam blocks and the Ikea train set. You are taking away all of my memories! I whined to Gil. And he just rolled his eyes.

When you’re in the midst of it, every season of life feels like it will last forever. You can’t imagine yourself ever being old enough to get married and then suddenly you are; it feels like the babies will never be out of diapers and then one day you realize that everyone’s pee has made it into the toilet (mostly) for quite some time now. The years at home with toddlers feel like eternity and then one night you think you could be looking at your last owie.

The passage of time here in Tanzania has surprised me. Living as overseas as a foreigner feels like it should be temporary. But days have a way of blending into years, which have eventually become Grace’s entire childhood. And me? I was 23 when we moved to Tanzania. I’m 41 now. Enough time has gone by that we have replaced our wedding towels and watched trees grow from seedlings to towers and seen first teeth grow in and later get covered by braces.

So much of life is sullied by longing for the next thing. But then you get to 41 years old and realize that the next thing always comes, no matter how far away it seems.

I like Now. I want to live in Now. As Jim Elliot exhorted, I want to be All there. Until that Day, the Day when all will be made new, all I have is Now.

I’m listening to Grace and her best friend in the backyard while I write this. They are supposed to be working on a science project, but judging from the hysterical laughter, I’m not sure how much is being accomplished.

I sit here, and I listen to them laugh.

When Your Mom is the Principal

By Amy Medina

On May 13, 2018

In Other

1. School becomes your second home. You help yourself to office supplies, you leave your shoes under the secretary’s desk, and you have free reign of the staff lounge.

2. Your friends start to get a little nervous around you, because if they are naughty, it always gets back to the principal.

3. But this isn’t such a big deal because you yourself keep your mom humble by managing to be naughty in almost the exact same ways as the other naughty kids who get sent to her office.

4. Which means you can’t get away with anything. Which kind of stinks.

5. Your parents don’t get surprised or depressed or anything when you bring home your report cards. Because your mom has already seen them and signed them and told your dad about them, so the report card just gets tossed on the table.

6. Speaking of which, your mom sees your teachers every day and visits your class all the time. Which means that she knows everything.

7. This also means there’s nothing exciting to tell your mom. At dinner, you could say, “Hey Mom, next week is Book Week!” and she will say, “Yes, Darling, I organized it.” On the other hand, you also get inside information about upcoming events. This comes in very useful with your social status.

8. Your mom is always around, so you get to hug her multiple times a day. This is great, unless you are a 10-year-old boy. Then you just give your mom glances that say, “Please don’t embarrass me.” But she inevitably still does.

Josiah helping Johnny during “Buddy Time.”

We Went to Slovenia

By Amy Medina

On May 8, 2018

In Other

I decided I needed new shoes.

All but one pair of my shoes are sandals. I was going to be traveling to Slovenia, so I figured I definitely needed another pair of closed-toed shoes.

That was a week ago Friday, and Gil and I were scheduled to leave for the ACSI administrator’s conference in Slovenia that night. But I didn’t think about my shoe deficit until a few days earlier, and market day is only on Fridays. Which meant I had to go to the market to find shoes just a few hours before I got on a plane.

The Friday market is just down the road from our house. So after school last Friday, I dropped off Gil and the kids at home and rushed over to the market.

As usual, hundreds of vendors were out. Some had set up tables, but most used large pieces of plastic on the ground. Some were selling vegetables, kitchen supplies, toiletries, or school supplies, but most were selling piles of clothes and shoes, second-hand cast-offs from American thrift stores.

I pushed my way through the crowds, my eye out for black shoes. Luckily, about half of the shoes for sale in the market are black. Not because they originated that color, but because the vendors dye as many shoes black as possible. It’s the color required for school uniforms.

You look beautiful, the vendors would tell me every time I tried on a pair of shoes. I shook my head. These are too small, I would complain. Like Cinderella’s step-sisters, they would insist, No, they’re not! See? They will stretch!

Finally I settled on Aerosole flats (dyed black) that would have to do. I wove my way back through the crowds, finished packing, and left for the airport at midnight.

Fourteen hours later, I was standing on the canal-lined streets of Venice, Italy.

The conference took up a good portion of our time, which meant we had just four afternoons to cram in as much European sight-seeing as possible. So we spent an evening in Venice and visited the famous Postojna caves. We toured the Slovenian town of Piran with its medieval architecture and stepped into the postcard that is Lake Bled, complete with castle and lake island church.

We stuffed ourselves with grapes and pasta and salami, and ate dessert way too many times. We walked along cobblestone streets with flowers poking through wooden fences. We delighted in the glass trinkets in Venice, the gelato shops on every corner, the pristine beauty of the Adriatic Sea.

And it all seemed like a universe away from the market down the street from my house in Tanzania.

I loved this trip. The conference was energizing, the weather was incredible (I could have worn my sandals after all!), and we were with best friends. The beauty filled our souls and we joked repeatedly that maybe God was calling us to be missionaries in Slovenia.

Venice

Piran, Slovenia

Postojna caves, Slovenia

Lake Bled, Slovenia

It was amazing.

But you know what?

I love the market down the street in Dar es Salaam. I love treasure-hunting there; I love the friendliness of the people; I love the unpredictability. I would much rather buy one dollar second-hand shoes at that market than the designer high-heels that are standard for European women.

Europe is extraordinarily beautiful, but so is Tanzania. Dar es Salaam can be dusty and humid, but Venice was covered in graffiti. Beauty and brokenness always live side by side. On any continent.

Venice

Home–Dar es Salaam.

We Went to South Africa

By Amy Medina

On April 26, 2018

In Other

Our mission organization has an all-Africa conference every couple of years. In the past, it’s always been held in either Kenya or Tanzania, so this year, it was a very special treat to be held in South Africa.

Since we figured this might be our only chance to visit South Africa as a family, we arrived a couple of days before the conference and stayed a day longer.

This was how we spent a good portion of the conference, which was wonderful and soul-filling.

But we weren’t always super spiritual, like when we put Oreos on our foreheads.

The kids got their own program with their own helpers. They had to do homework every day, since this trip happened during school time, but they still had a blast.

Many, many hours were spent right here. The kids also got to go on their own safari.

The hotel where we stayed had its own petting zoo, which included tiger cubs. Which, FYI, are Indian, not African. But hey, who’s asking? Still super cool.

The kids insisted we go to McDonalds. Still blech, even in South Africa.

The grown-ups, however, went out for amazing steak. South Africans know their meat. (And wearing sweaters was almost as equally exciting.)

We went to the Lion Park, which is kind of like a zoo and kind of like a safari park. The animals are in large enclosures you can drive through. Yes, we were this close.

Mostly they all looked like this.

Until feeding time, when they became like this.

This was all very thrilling until later we found out that the lions in this park have actually killed a number of visitors who dared to do things like roll down their windows. Yikes.

Look, Mom! No Fences!

We went to an adventure course where my children proved that they are much braver than their mother.

While Gil had fun taking pictures of my misery.

We also visited an amusement park….

….and a gold mine.

But perhaps most meaningful was taking our children to historical sites in South Africa. We had talked about South African history before the trip, and watched some documentaries as well as (edited versions) of “Sarafina” and “Invictus.”

We visited Soweto, the site of the youth riots of 1976 (and basis of “Sarafina”).

The memorial of Hector Pieterson, a 13-year-old killed by police who became a symbol of the apartheid resistance.

The Mandela home in Soweto

Hoping for a better future for our children in Africa.

Everything is Moldy

By Amy Medina

On April 21, 2018

In Other

While the northern hemisphere is battling through the end of winter, we down in the south are battling through the end of summer.

And that means we have entered the Season of Mold.

Kindergarten students in America and Europe dutifully cut and paste snowflakes in January, flowers in May, and orange leaves in October. But down here in the tropics, we never see snowflakes or orange leaves, and we get flowers year-round.

But every April, when the rain barrels in to wage war against the heat, we get the Season of Mold. Fortunately, we don’t require kindergarteners to cut and paste little green spores. Unfortunately, the mold decides on its own to paste itself to their pictures.

In April, everything molds. My kitchen table can grow a nice white layer overnight. The wooden arms of the couch. The couch cushions. The floor. Leather shoes. Belts. Vinyl lunchboxes. Pretty much anything that is capable of holding moisture manages to grow mold. Outside, the ground shoots up massive mushrooms.

Of course, that’s because there’s water everywhere these days. Overflowing the gutters, creating swimming pools in every yard, flooding the city. We even had two government-prescribed “rain days” last week when school was closed.

The bugs, which had been happily content in their trees and rocks, come out of nowhere. The flying termites and dragonflies swarm the air, seemingly popping out of the ground. Cockroaches scurry up flooded drainpipes. Giant African snails slime around on the walls. And the ants go marching two by two, hurrah hurrah….into my house….to get out of the rain (boom, boom, boom).

The air temperature plunges down into the high 80’s (with 85% humidity), which means that most HOPAC kids come to school wearing sweaters. And my kids just don’t understand why I won’t let them wear theirs. I am such a mean mom to allow my children to freeze to death in this frigid weather.

The other night, as the kids were getting ready for bed, the smoke detector in the girls’ bedroom went off. Gil had to yank it apart to get it to shut up. The next day, a smoke detector randomly went off in a HOPAC classroom. Coincidence? Nope. Extremely high humidity will do that. There’s no fire, but even the smoke detector is protesting the condition of the air.

But like the snow melting away into spring, the rain eventually melts away the heat. The mold doesn’t stick around, but everything is green and lush and growing–just like spring. It’s beautiful and renewing and soul-refreshing, just like the changing of the seasons should be.