Psalm 55

Psalm 55
"Give ear to my prayer, O God,
and hide yourself not from my plea of mercy!
Attend to me, and answer me;
I am restless in my complaint and I moan,
because of the noise of the enemy,
because of the oppression of the wicked.
For they drop trouble upon me;
the terrors of death have fallen on me
Fear and trembling come over me,
and horror overwhelms me.
And I say "Oh that I had wings like a dove!"
I would fly away and be at rest;
yes, I would wander far away;
I would lodge myself in the wilderness."

Who is our enemy? Who is the one we are saying this psalm to? Right now, sitting in my house in Freetown, and as I look out across the edge of the windowsills, I see that the enemy is ourselves, humanity. The streets of Freetown are trash-strewn and deteriorating underneath the feet of people who long for more, yet don't have time or energy to distract themselves on it, especially when simply living is so demanding. I wonder what this place looked like before the West came, equating shiny stones in the earth to billions of dollars to be used for the already rich, the already engorged. And I wonder what this place was like before the automobile came, demanding the paved roads that suffocate everything, as they spew their lungs of sulfur and smoke. The natural world here is vibrant, magnificent. There is a tree perched on a hill where we walk regularly to and from Krio lessons and meetings. It must be centuries old. The magnitude and vibrancy of that tree looks down on and laughs at the mad schemes for money, power, control, effeciency and even strife of the civilization that has grown up around it. When I think about America, with its form-cut paved roads and strip malls (may as well be strip-mining) I see the enemy humanity has become there also.

"Because of the noise of my enemies, because of the oppression of the wicked." We so often look so sharply for our enemies outside of our own selves that we fail to detect our growing affluence and despondancy to the natural world. I feel the noise and evil of our wicked selfishness on both sides of the ocean, East and West, and I long to fly away and I say "Oh that I had wings of a dove, I would fly away and be at rest, yes I would wander far way, I would lodge myself in the wilderness."

As I write this, bearing the burden of these thoughts, I prepare to go out amidst the slums, the trash-strewn streets and murky, coal waters, filled with the plastic scum of a people who have forgotten the place of God's earth in their lives. I go not with a sense of fatality or defeatism, but with the sense that however hard it may be, the gates of hell will not prevail against God's mercy and his beautiful creations. Amen to God.

3-1 + Cynicism

First day of March. Rain and wind wakes me up at 5 o'clock and precedes to rain like I have seen few times before. It is significantly cooler as I sit with the open wondow at my back with cool breeze entering in. The breeze is always welcome but this one comes without the humid air which often surrounds it, and with much less heat.

Reading the morning paper:
"AFRC Loses Appeal"
Alex Brima, Brima Kamara, Santigie Kanu, all convicted of mass murder, gang rape, child sioldiering, difigurement, and raiding villages. "The victims were babies, young children and mena and women of all ages." Sentence? 50, 45, and 50 years consecutively between them. Kidding me? Not even life sentences for some of the worst crimes in human history.

"Saving the Gongkoma forest from AK-47 Rifles"
At a village so isolated that it has seen its first automobile as the conservationists arrived has had problems with a specific tree being cut dowen for the production of AK-47 rifles. The forest had been untouched for a century and now good-for-nothing 20th and 21st century weapons are decimating it. War and the land can never co-exist, one is there at the cost of the other. People who have never seen a car before have regularly seen the most mass-made and brutal weapons. Yes, the world is growing smaller, but sometimes I am sorry that it is.

And then, the midst of a small West African newspaper are recorded the progress reports of the U.S. primaries in OH and TX. I feel so exasperated when the bias leans toward one egocentric nation. How can we stop thinking about our own small North American world if the rest of the world is so hell-bent on talking about us? Record holding events such as one of the first democratic elections in Sierra Leone ever are covered up with reports about a single car bomb in Iraq or new, daily, incessant reports about which Democratic candidate will the Democratic candidate. I feel like America is sleepwalking off a cliff of narcissism.

Forgive my negativity, it really was a good morning, one that I spent relaxing and writing. It just seems that some things always cut through anything good.

The City of Rest

The amount of new informationa and experiences that have come and gone here for me would be impossible to write about. Aside from an entirely new culture and language I have also had other sorts of responsibilities laid on my head, which are the basis for the rest of my time here until June. My interest specifically? My eyes have laid rest on a small community amoungst the bustling, trash-strewn streets of Freetown, known as the "City of Rest." It is a place for the mentally disabled and recovering drug addicts. When one thinks about these categories in the states one might think about spotless, white-washed anemic rooms, nurses coming to and fro, patients going through the program of rehibilitation. The "City of Rest" is something else entirely. It was started by one woman sent from Germany into the town after the Civil War. She was initially sent in order to do traditional mission work but found a special calling for herself in a building that had been set aside for another purpose but ultimately ended up in her hands. From her small amount of resources she engaged the community in the most loving way possible: by taking those stricken with mental diease off of the streets where they had been thrown, where they would remain in debilitating poverty, without friends or family. But the woman brought them in, one by one, using the rooms there to shelter them and her own friends from Freetown to watch over them and serve them. The staff is paid less than $30 a week in return for their full-time service and dedication to the "guests."

It is a small two-storied building with an enclosed compound area no bigger than a basketball court. In the rooms both d0wnstairs and up there are men and women (separately) in bunkbeds, cramming each room without reserve. The trick about the whole facility is that it has no medical staff. There is a severe lack of health professionals in Freetown and even if one could be acquired would be far too expensive to pay. A doctor does come when a new guest arrives and puts them on a non-specific cocktail of drugs to put the patient to sleep to wear off any drug-affects. After this there are no psychiatrists, no nurses, no therapists. The staff is composed of two pastors, the woman Helaina, and some other minimally paid workers.

The basic program for drug addicts is to let them go to personal counciling sessions for a certain prescribed periods of time, usually months. These recovering addicts cannot leave the building or the compound their entire time of rehabilitation. For patients with serious mental problems it is even worse. Some have been living inside the facility for years, with few or none opportunites to be outside. Programs? Not enough money or resources. Relationships? These people are outcasts from their families and friends because of their special needs. Counceling? The woman Helaina and the two other pastors are overworked and have responsibilites also outside the compound. Psychiatric medicine? Those specific kinds of meds are not available in-country and cannot be shipped in with current international trade laws. It is all that can be done to simply take these people in and feed them, provide them a space to live in off of the lonely streets.

As I entered into the compound with my teammates in order to be briefed on the needs there there was a flock of people, ready and desperate for new friends, new relationships. They need someone simply to talk to, simply to tell their story to. They need music, laughter, love and a listening ear. In the States I have these things and more, comfort with my family and wealth, complete with dependable air conditioning and ice cream (it is reported that with all the money that Americans spend on ice cream each year, you could cure world poverty). But here there is no reprieve for those born in the streets of Sierra Leone. Within that compound Jesus lives there, forgotten and passed by, the poor suffering man who knows brokenness and true humility.

Do I have the arrogance to pass Christ by, as he sits in his overpopulated room craving some semblance of friendship and connection with the outside world? Surely it can't be so. I have spent my time thinking and praying, and here is where I will attempt to act and be Christ for someone else. These people have weighed heavily on my heart and mind, a weight that will only get heavier as I go amidst them and experience brokenness and rejection, even maybe their rejection of me.

I think my music may have a place here among those who have the least cause to sing. We'll see if a guitar can help, I am not sure. What else can I do but invest my meager talents where there is the least to go round? Please be praying for me as you read this, and understand that people are suffering in ways that we have walked passed in disdain and ignorance. I feel that the service I offer here will only cause me to be broken as well, humble before God as I find that I may not be so different than the "poor" that I serve.