Silent On the Page

Thursday, March 26, 2009
King's Front Yard (Worringham, Zimbabwe)
Late Morning

Exiting the gate of the Free Methodist Church in the high-density
suburbs (poorest section) of Magwege North is essentially walking into
the reality of the world. For the first time in Zimbabwe it feels as
we think it should, all the sun, all the heat, a sense of humidity
present. We walk like a gang exiting the church gates into the
community: Andrew, myself, Fibion, Horace, and four other regular
church assistants, Desire, Magabongwe, Brighton, and Shepherd.

The streets: filled with playing children rolling and chasing tires
with sticks, drunken men sitting behind store fronts listening to
music on the radio, women selling everything from candy to toilet
paper at make-shift lemonade like stands that nobody buys from. Small
crops of maize misalign the front yards of the local houses, already
harvested, already consumed.

We receive an innumerable amount of looks, and laughter, and we take
it graciously and jokingly as a bolder local mocks us and asks us to
do something ridiculous. We stand out like two white dots on a black
piece of appear. It seems, and we are also told, there are not many
white people who come into this area.

Horace leads us through some community maize fields, past the sidings
of decrepit storefronts, and into the home of Masegwo, a single mother
sick with HIV. (We learn that they essentially are all single mothers,
either the husbands have died, or they have left to find work in South
Africa, or Botswana and invariably found another mate and married over
there, leaving their original family behind.) She looks healthier then
most other HIV patients I have encountered, but her home is
nonetheless filled with sadness.

We walk around for five hours knocking on doors and visiting HIV and
TB patients. We just spend time with them, touch them, pray with them,
listen to Fibion and Horace preach to them and encourage them in
Ndeble. The homes are not the huts of Mtshabezi, but instead small
miniature one level houses. The rooms are smaller, the aesthetics are
minimal, the space is limited, and the homes are broken into sections
– living rooms, kitchen, bedroom, etc. Tiny yard with meager crops, no
backyard, we enter through the front door into the living room
complete with broken and dirty couches and chairs. Maybe there is a
small black and white TV with the picture vacillating in and out.
Everyone who lives in the home is there, all 12 people, and the sick
patient, a woman, sits on the ground, the Ndebele custom. Andrew and I
wait to sit and try to offer the seats to the family members but they
turn us down and insist that we sit comfortably.

After discussion with the patient, Magabongwe or Desire starts to
sing. Everyone in the house knows the song, and sings along. Most
songs are in Ndebele, so I just close my eyes and listen to the
harmonies, or say a prayer for the woman suffering on the floor. At
the home of the blind grandmother Madabongwe starts singing in
English.

There is joy peace and happiness in my soul. There is joy peace and
happiness in my soul. There is joy joy there is joy joy there is joy
peace and happiness in my soul.

It is undecorated and simple. Andrew, Horace, and I sing the
harmonies, repeating joy peace and happiness, joy peace and happiness.
Yet, somehow it is reverential. The impromptu accapela singing brings
poignancy to the proceeding. It is in the way that the local community
sings together. A moment of remembrance and reverence.

We walk between visits. I'm curious. I ask, "Fibion, for me, and I
know for Andrew also, this is pretty shocking stuff, pretty poignant
stuff, but you see this everyday and you live in this all the time, do
you find that you have become numb to it?"

He pauses for a moment. "I'm sorry, I don't understand the expression, numb."

"Oh, okay, sorry, well, do you think you are so used to it all now
that it doesn't affect you any more? Are you so familiar with all
these people and these families suffering that you don't care as
much?"

"Ah, I see, numb," he says. "Okay, yes…no, it still touches me each time."

I turn to my left as I walk and ask Desire the same questions. "No,"
he says, "you cannot become numb to this ever."

Our final stop is a wake procession. A local boy, who had recently
traveled to South Africa to find work, was recently killed. It is
tragic. The local custom is to hold wake service for a week –
sometimes more – until the body arrives and the proper burial can be
held. We walk into the yard of the wake a few minutes late. The yard
is filled to capacity with attendees. Many sit on the ground, the
interior of the house overflowing. (It reminds me of a favorite few
verses of mine in Mark and Luke about the overflow of attendees who
watch Jesus heal.) Andrew and I, already feeling uncomfortable
arriving at a wake for someone we have never met, in a land that we
don't know, with a people who have minimal relations with, try to sit
in the back by the fence. But as soon we arrive, we are waved towards
the front, we mime a protest, but an insistence is only returned. The
rest of the wake is somber and subdued. A local fiery pastor preaches
in Ndebele. He finishes and everyone starts singing mournful
harmonies.

Later, Andrew and I leave Magwegwe North heading towards the airport
to pick up Dad – he went to Harare for the day to visit with friends –
and we silently talk about our day. We try to make jokes to suppress
the suffusion of all that occurred. We are momentarily distracted
driving through the black-lit Bulawayo city streets on Robert Mugabe
Way, laughing as we unsuccessful avoid the potholes.

But that is the point. That is what I take away from the day, this
knowledge. I can drive away. 1. I have a car, 2. I have somewhere else
to go. The dying women have nowhere else to go. Their children have
nowhere to go. Fibion and his assistants have nowhere to go. This is
where they are. I am able to drive away, walk away, ride away, and
eventually fly away. I am able to be "away". They cannot drive, fly,
walk, swim, jump, nothing "away" from this place, this extremism, this
reality. When they retire for the night they retire here with the pain
and suffering of their neighbors and tomorrows food concerns on their
mind. When they wake up they wake up to the same issues. I go to bed
at night and I wake up in a new world, new possibilities, everything
can start over again. I can just turn the ignition on and drive away.

Two weeks earlier Dad and I travel around through the rural villages
in Mtshabezi with Obert. We come upon the home of Mtulesi. He is 33,
male, a local, who traveled to South Africa a few years earlier and
was infected with HIV. He now lives with his parents. He sits alone,
next to his bed, frail and wilting like a flower. His eyes, back deep
in his head, watch me, hardly moving. I sit next to him, Dad, near the
door. After 45 minutes of conversation Obert asks Dad to pray. Mtulesi
takes off his winter hat revealing a rapid recession of hair. He is so
obviously scared. His parents try to put on brave faces, they smile,
and laugh occasionally throughout the time we spend, but Mtulesi
virtually stays silent. Dad beings to pray, and I rub Mtulesi shoulder
and hands, trying to be encouraging. I don't close my eyes but instead
watch his. They are closed tightly, and then the first sight of
moisture. And then faster his tears start to come. I don't think I
have ever seen a more frightening sight. I haven't stopped thinking
about him, that moment, two weeks later. Maybe I never will. Maybe I
should. Maybe I shouldn't. Dad concludes, and he starts to cry more
openly. It is time for us to leave.

None of these words are sufficient. They can't tell the story, the
truth of the moment and the place. Watching him cry, watching him die,
is something Dad and I will never forget. I'm not a good enough writer
to explain what it means, the futility in my being at that moment.
Nobody is, I don't think. The words, ultimately, just fall silent on
the page.