17.10.04

Its been windy here for about a week, especially at night. Everything that falls clatters on the tin roof, and it sounds like someone is trying to get in through the door and the cracks in the window. The kids have taken advantage of the wind for play. Lots of them have plastic bags attached by the handles to a six or seven foot string. Billowed up in the air like a kite, it flips and swings and tugs. It is the most hopeful thing I've seen here, for some reason.

On Saturday Andy and I walked up to the private hospital where the medical missionaries are working. There was a huge crowd of people, all waiting to be fitted with glasses. Those donation boxes you see in grocery stores? They really do something with them apparently. (Last evening when we talked to the MM's again, they said there were through giving out glasses even though they have a bunch left, because the most common Rx's are gone and its too sad--and some people get mad--to turn people away. They'll leave them here to be handed out later.)

They let us observe the cataract surgeries they were doing. I hyperventilated during the first one and started to see a dark room, but backed out and sat on the floor in the hall before I fell over. It is just so wrong to see an eyeball slit open and something shattered, and stuff moved around, and water irrigating it, and a blob of tissue pulled out, and a plastic lens put in, and air pumped in. So wrong, but amazing. I got over it, and watched three other surgeries. They're pretty quick (they do about 25 a day) and it felt like I was watching a miracle. Carlos, the surgeon, who is from the Dominican Republic, likes doing it because it's rewarding to see someone pull off the bandages the next day and be able to see.

The man who got the money for the hospital is "one of those old-time general surgeons, you know, the kind who can do everything," we are told by the MM?s. Dr. Harold Adolph, an American who was born in China to missionaries himself. He was there for some of the surgeries we observed; he's tall and fair--his hair is gray and yellow, like it used to be blond--and has arms that look like the skin used to be filled with muscle. He is in his seventies and has lived here doing this sort of thing for more than twenty years. They say he is quite a storyteller.

Which is why, when they said he was one of the fundraisers and organizers of a church here and was going to preach on Sunday, I decided to go listen. A very kind (kind of crazy) couple of MM?s, Bob and Pat from SoCal, picked me up and drove me down. Andy's had a cold, and needed to sleep. "Oh yeah," he said, "You haven't been to many evangelical churches, have you." No indeed.

The church is a huge long mud-and-stick building with eight windows on either side, that seats about 1000 people on lots of low wooden benches. It has a great big stone foundation, though, so it looks pretty permanent. Bob said it only took six to seven thousand dollars to build a church like that. "That much?" I said. Duh. "That's really cheap," he said. "Its because labour is so cheap here." After Pat took a few pictures and we'd met out back with the men who were running the meeting, they led us in through the back door--to the very front of the church, right behind the preacher. Everyone watched us come in and sit down, and some watched much longer than that. I know because I would look at them during prayers and make eye contact.

The meeting started at 7:30 am and, I found out when I got there, was supposed to end at ten. I had complete understanding of people who have told me, "You go to a long church." Try sitting for the full three hours STRAIT, being watched the whole time, and having all of it shouted at you in another language. There was a guest preacher from Addis there, very smart looking in a well-fitted suit, with a big thick body. But people don't speak Amharic much down here, so there had to be an interpreter. So the sermon was actually shouted twice; once in Amharic and once in Wolaytinga. Occasionally the guest preacher couldn?t wait until the translation was finished and would shout an overlapping shout. The guy at the mic, who also played the guitar when the choir sang, was kept busy guessing when to turn up the speaker to amplify the shouting as the Addis preacher paced away from podium so he could thrust his finger towards the people or towards the heavens, and when to turn it down because the translator repeated all the moves standing in place in front of the mic. This last was profiled against one of the bright windows, and I could see a glittering sprinkle baptize the nearest worshipers each time he hit a consonant. From where I was, it looked like he was grinning the whole time. After an hour and a half there was some great singing with ululations and hallelujiahs thrown in.

I thought maybe this would be when Dr. Adolph would come in. Instead, all but about 150 people got up and left. Everyone else moved forward. It was time for communion. Pat remembered excitedly that this was Worldwide Communion Day. Not knowing what was expected of me or how it operated, I declined communion. Then I found out it was little pieces of injera and cups of orange Fanta and wished I'd said yes.

Finally it was time to go. Still no Dr. Adolph.

But Pat and Bob's driver had invited them to his house. There, he put a big platter of scrambled egg and avocado in front of each of us, and a steaming mug of sugared tea. When he saw I wasn't drinking it, he insisted I have a bottle of soda instead, and opened me a Coke. The phone rang. The message: Dr. Adolph was speaking right now at a church not far from the hospital. But by then we were just beginning looking at an album of family photos, and there was no escape, so eventually I just got dropped off back with Andy.

So, no preaching from Dr. Adolph. However, we did get some Conference talks emailed to us this week, so I think next Sunday we'll hear a little preaching from the Wasatch Front. The MM's have been warm and nice, letting us observe surgery and introducing us to the enigma called Dr. Adolph (who is now my mission to befriend before we leave. I want to hear him tell a story.). Actually, the closest we came to a row was when Andy told Willy Hunter, the MM's broad and bearded executive director, after he'd declared that the ultimate help this place needs is genetically modified foods, that I am someone who doesn?t believe in genetically modified foods. Sometimes Andy gets pleasure out of throwing me in the water and watching me swim. Oooooh, I was ready to strangle him, and let him know with a quick look which he laughed at. I backpedaled and treaded water for a second, ("It all depends on what you call "genetically engineered," etc.) but then Willy took over and it was no longer an argument. Basically, golden rice, which has a complete protein and can be grown everywhere, is the solution. To Ethiopia. To Hunger. To Poverty.

For the record, I DO have problems with "genetically modified foods," though that is less my "beef" than the way farming is actually done, and I DON'T think it's a World Peace panacea but I don't feel like going into it right now. I'll bloody well jump in when I feel like swimming.

Saturday Nado kindly took us to the market. I don't think he's ever shopped with feringes before. It was crazy, but controlled and fun. A man kept thrusting gabis on me and trying to wrap them around my body and shouting things to the crowd that made them laugh. We were laughing too. "A jolly farmer," Nado said. We got some ?cassava? to try, and bought a plastic bag to carry it home in. Bags cost 25 cents, 50 cents for us. Andy said, "Why fifty cents for us?" "It is nothing," Nado said. "They are poor." So there. That should teach us. Out, out damned principle.