I like to walk in the mornings. We are in a very rural area of Africa, so I get to see all varieties of birds and animals, including monkeys and baboons. I have learned proper baboon etiquette, which I am sure will be useful the next time you run across one.
First of all, it is unusual to run across one baboon at a time. Baboons travel in families, or packs. When I am walking, I usually notice a...
Continue ReadingThis wasn’t an easy move this time. It is one thing to go to Africa for one year, and rent out your house to one of your best friends, and come back to the same neighborhood and same church and same friends.
It’s another thing to leave a house you love, a church you cherished, friends and neighbors who have been so part of your life, a great job, good income and stuff.
Some stuff you are anxious...
Continue ReadingThe last day of school started interestingly. Two little girls asked me to help them get a foot long lizard out of a tree because they wanted him for a pet. I couldn’t reach him, so I put one of the girls on my shoulders and she got him. As she was getting him, we had the following conversation:
Me: Do you have him yet?
Her: I’m so close.
Me: Do you have him yet?
Her: Oops.
...
I am doing a really bad thing this week, and I can’t quite get myself to stop.
This is alumni week, and grads of RVA are coming from all over the world to come back to campus for a week. There is really quite an attachment between the students and this place, and it is easy to tell who is an alum.
I can’t stop finding out names of alums, and then going over and saying `MIKE! How...
Continue ReadingHow do you sum up a year like this?
I don’t even know where to start! In some ways, I feel like a teenage boy who grew 8 inches in one year and nothing fits anymore. I’ve seen so much that I’ve never seen before. I’ve done so many things that I’ve never done before and some that I didn’t think I could do. I’ve changed some of my ideas about myself, my family, my country, the world and...
Continue ReadingMany of the children at the hospital have their mothers stay in the room with them. And African culture is much different than American culture in many ways, but perhaps in no way more different than breast-feeding.
My experience with many African women is that they think nothing of having a conversation with you, and in the midst of that conversation, drop their blouse and began feeding their child. And that is fine; I am grateful for the differences...
Continue ReadingDid you ever have a dream that you didn’t even know you had until it came true? When I was in high school, I had a gym teacher who began every class period with the phrase `Line up maggots!’
RVA is a kind of place where you might be asked to do different things at different times. As our time here draws to an end, I have come to a place where I have been asked to use my...
Continue ReadingIt has been a tough week at RVA.
The father of one of the seniors died on Friday. A death of a parent is always so brutal; to have it happen a few days before Father’s Day and a few weeks before graduation is almost too much to bear; there is a real sadness on the campus, and a real fear. If you are a boarding student, your greatest fear is something will happen to your parents. It came...
Continue Reading