"What are you going over there for?" was a question I got a lot before we left for Africa. As you can tell by my last post, there's a really complex answer. Most folks were just curious about what we would be doing while we were in West Africa. The short answer: Painting.
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| Sanding the patchwork cement out of the cracks made for dusty prep-work. Add that to the straight gasoline with which the West Africans mixed their paint, and the whole place becomes one big fuming cloud. |
This was the cause of a little bit of a cultural misstep between our team and the village. I remember throughout my youth taking side-jobs or doing favors painting either the inside or outside of a house. It wasn't complicated work: you go get some paint, a brush, and a roller, and, bada-bing bada-boom, you're a painter. In West Africa, the painting is left to, well, painters. You might learn the trade from your father, who is also a painter. But you don't just saunter in and start slinging paint. So when we revealed that we were a funeral director, a heavy equipment contractor, a few students, and an internet sales guy, it was as good as a disqualification. Luckily, a professional painter was brought in to do most of the painting.
That left us working through the medical clinic sanding old (and sometimes sloppy) patch jobs, applying fresh concrete to the new cracks. The brown parts you see in the picture above are huge cracks and structural infirmities that arise from the building having no (or an insufficient) foundation. Because the clinic is built essentially on packed sand, it shifts often and strains the walls, which eventually crack. We did a lot of sanding, but not a whole lot of painting. Sometimes, it was downright comical how many times the Africans would send us back to sand or re-patch or re-sand the re-patch probably just to keep us out of the way of all that painting.
So why did we go? If our purpose was to make repairs and paint but we didn't do a whole lot of either, we've kind of defeated the purpose, right?
God used us above and beyond the presumed purpose of our trip.
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| Our "soccer team" showed the kids love and attention daily. Also, that we are fierce (see: Pettigrew, Benjamin). |
Every day when we went to and came from work, little kids would run after us, shouting (in their heart-language) "White man! White man!" They were SO excited just to see us. They would surround the clinic as we worked, and the braver ones would venture in. Between soccer matches and teaching the kids to dance the Macarena, it's a wonder we got any work done at all! Without getting too specific, we had several other miraculous opportunities to share the Gospel with adults, but it's the love that we showed the children (it is illegal to witness directly to them) that I think was a major purpose for this trip.
The fact is, the cracks we repaired and the paint we slung will be totally irrelevant in less than two years' time. The sand will move, the building will shift, and the walls will crack again. The wind will come and fine granules of West African sand will wear on the paint. But the evidence of our mission will live on in the hearts of hundreds of little kids. Later in life, they may encounter a negative view of Christianity from people who have never met followers of Esa (the Arabic name for Jesus), but their memories will be from a makeshift soccer pitch in the heat of the day. Of white men who played and danced with them. Of Esa-followers who paid attention to them in a culture that largely disregards its children.
The sands will shift. The walls will crack. The paint will fade. But the good work of Christ, the love we shared with those kids, will endure forever.
