Today marks the last week that I’m here in Chit. The kind of emotions I have are better than they were and happiness has come to me that has been much needed. I wake up and am at the garage on time and work with Keith on varying tasks of the garage that I can find and don’t feel a nuisance. At first, I think, it was hard to figure out small jobs for me because Keith didn’t know me very well. As he has gotten to know me he gives me a larger variety of jobs to do during the day.

This week also, however, marks the coming of another ‘team’ of experts. Often here at Chit people from the rest of the world come for a week or two to share their experience. For the three months that I have been here that has entailed an electrician named Tyler and a computer expert named Courtney. Courtney and Tyler originally came out to set up the wireless network out here but ended up having a lot of electrician jobs to do.

There also are always different specialty doctors dropping in and going from month to month. The most recent of which had plane problems and didn’t make it. This meant that all the patients that had come in from far away for specialty doctors needed to get home and the hospital provided those provisions.

This week at chit, and next week as well, an electrician and a mechanic and a friend are here to work on the problems of Chit. Keith made up a big list of things that were of this man’s expertise and now he has two weeks to finish them. If this means there are less jobs for me then perhaps this last week will be a lot less fun, but as for packing it is a lot easier for me leaving then it was coming.

As for gifts of Africa that people always come home with like baskets and drums and other things I haven’t felt the real pull to grab them. There is a lot in Zambia that you really can’t get elsewhere and perhaps in our two days in Lusaka before we head home I’ll crack as we visit the markets and get some, but as for now I’m not as motivated to get them. This trip wasn’t a ‘vacation’ for me and I never really saw it as a sight seeing type thing.

At the same time I am rather sad I won’t see the falls. I have a feeling this isn’t my last time to Zambia, or even to Chit, so perhaps on another occasion I’ll see the falls, but for now I wish I could see them, if not do all the things around them like the white-water rafting, the bungee jumping, and the repelling and other fun activities they have set up, but to see what so many writers have called the kind of beauty that affirms God’s existence on their own.

So I take this last week with a cautious and open approach to watch and learn all that I can in the week before I return to the materialism and split politics of America. I try to take all the peace and quiet and beauty into my head before I return to soaring gas prices and a concrete jungle and most of all I will try to enjoy the wonderful people here as much as I can and place them in my heart and memories as the kind of people who have shaped my thinking in a lot of ways because of the sacrifices they make to live out here so that they can help a people who don’t seem to want to help themselves.

It is tiring to help someone who just takes the help and doesn’t use it in a way that enables them to get better on their own but they continue to do it out here without tire. They try to educate these people into self-reliance and always have. Those that want to be able to stand on their own have in many cases and do and the mission instead of giving them the same kind of aid instead gave them independence and the occasional aid to continue to allow them to stand.

That is what I love about chit. It doesn’t act like a lordship over the people of Africa but instead like a friend. They embrace the people as brothers and sisters and provide for them jobs they wouldn’t have been able to have otherwise. They give them trust and responsibility to run things on their own. Instead of treating the people of Africa like goodwill they treat them like neighbors and that is what they do right out here.

That is what I’ve learned about service out here. You are not doing something for people less fortunate but instead you are doing things for your neighbor because you love them. The work you do is not to make you a better person, or improve your well being by helping others but doing exactly what you’d like your neighbors to do for you if you were in trouble. Most importantly you do the things you do not for rewards down here, because if you pay attention to the success rate down here you’d get very depressed very quickly, but instead for the rewards after it’s all over and that is hopefully giving those you work with the opportunity to serve with you in eternity.

And THAT is a wonderful thought.
Carl.

This entry was posted on Thursday, September 29th, 2005 at 9:25 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.