Facing Reality

I’m glad to be back in Ethiopia.  My heart has settled, knowing that for now my place is here.  It’s been a joy to see familiar faces and to hear friends and beneficiaries exclaim, “Sahryay!”  I’ve been hugged and kissed repeatedly, and have been welcomed back enthusiastically—what a humbling reception.  Yesterday the adherence group at the main project had a traditional coffee ceremony for Mom and I—we broke bread and ate popcorn and drank sweet, dark coffee and laughed much.  For all the inconveniences and irritations spoiled me finds in the developing world, I’ve still been glad to get back in my groove of minibus riding and super (read small) market trekking.  As I mentioned before, I (like most of my fellow humans, probably) crave routine and stability.  On the surface, being in Africa may not seem like the place to offer those things, but it has become the place where I can feel most rooted at this point in life.  So for these reasons and many more, I am glad to be back.
But it’s not easy.  All over again I deal with facing reality—the reality that is here, the poverty and mud and disease and death.  It was easier to not be here, to not have to process through my convictions about begging and giving in those 10 seconds the old man missing an arm and a leg is standing outside the vehicle window, arm extended.  The first day back in the project office, I had greeted 25 beneficiaries who were all there for adherence group.  They were leaving, and I decided to go see what was going on in the pharmacy.  I got to the open door and peered around the line of beneficiaries waiting there, and I saw her.  I whispered loudly, “Tsehay!”  She started, turned, and saw me.  With a pained cry, she dropped the bag that was in her hands and suddenly was in my arms, clinging to me and weeping.  Her sobs shook our bodies even as my tears began to mingle with hers.  It was weeping that was two months overdue.  We had never been able to grieve together for her son, Henok.  I was in America, and she was here.  The loss was fresh for me, and the wound was still raw for her.  Again my heart wondered why, why it had to be this way.  We cried and when we finished, it was with the knowledge that the sorrow wasn’t gone, but you can’t cry forever.  Not here, especially, when life in all its grueling labor demands that you get back to living so you won’t die.
Already I feel the familiar urge to shrink back from facing all this reality, to ignore its presence and not ask the questions that don’t have comfortable answers.  I pray again for grace to keep on living, even when it means dying a little more inside every time I hear the familiar beggar-knock on the car window.