The Greatest Life

This summer is about as predictable as weather in the Kalahari desert. More than a long stone’s throw from the Kalahari but much closer in mind than body, I am living/working in Eastern Pennsylvania as a Teaching Assistant for a couple of science courses. This is my second summer working at this camp and every day I find myself amazed at what students only eight or nine years younger than me seem to think are good ideas. Junior high dance moves are the first thing to come to mind. The oh-so-suave ‘sidle-up-next-to-the cute-girl-on-the-quad’ move is next. The endless giggling and gossip among girls about who is cute. And of course, little matchmaker students who seem to think they’ve found my husband-to-be. I have to admit, though, that in spite of some of the absurdity of it all there is something charming in the vivacious ardor with which they attack life. Or perhaps I should say, with how they choose to live it.

This contrast between vitality and apathy is something that has been on my mind for several days, and not just because of the ever-making and breaking of Bermuda love triangles out on the quad. It has been on my mind because of a story I read about in a book called “Life Lessons,” a deep examination of the realities of life and things that are worth valuing as we journey through our days. The story is about someone who never made it as far as any of my students here. He is someone who never made it as far as you or I. And yet, I’m here to say that something about this story I am about to give is bound to tell you and this boy with his bike have possibly changed more lives and hearts than I have in all my 23 years. The story is told by his doctor who treated him for cancer for six years:

“Some years ago, I knew a young boy who was eager to spread love and find life, even though he was at the end of his. He had had cancer for six of his nine years. In the hospital, I took one look at him and knew he was finished fighting. He had just had it. He had accepted the reality of his death. I stopped by to say good-bye the day he was going home. To my surprise, he asked me to go home with him. When I tried to sneak a peak at my watch, he assured me that it would not take long. And so we drove into his driveway and parked. He told his father to take down his bicycle, which had been hanging in the garage, unused, for three years. His biggest dream was to ride around the block once--he had never been able to do that. He asked his father to put the training wheels on his bicycle. That takes a lot of courage for a little boy to do: it’s humiliating to be seen with training wheels when your peers are popping wheelies and performing tricks with their bikes. With tears in his eyes, the father did so.
Then the boy looked at me and said, “Your job is to hold my mom back.”
You know how moms are, they want to protect you all the time. She wanted to hold him up all the way around the block but that would cheat him out of his great victory. His mother understood. She knew that one of the last things she could do for her son was to refrain, out of love, from hovering over him as he undertook his last, greatest challenge.
We waited as he rode off. It seemed like an eternity. Then he came around the corner, barely able to balance. He was terribly drawn and pale. Nobody thought he could ride a bike. But he rode up to us beaming. Then he had his father take off the training wheels and we carried the bike, and him, upstairs. “When my brother comes home from school, would you send him in?” he asked.
Two weeks later the little brother, a first-grader, told us that his brother had given him the bicycle as a birthday present, since he knew he would not be around for the birthday. With not much time or energy left, this brave boy had lived out his final dream, riding his bike around the corner and passing it on to his younger sibling."

The thing I love about this story is that There is unquenched life in all of us, and this anonymous, nine-year-old boy had a big bit of life to live in a ride around a block. A conquering moment, an epic moment, and for him, a victorious one.

In some ways, my recent trip to Africa was my ride around the block. It was humbling and scary to have to wait and get the ducks in a row for visas and funds, etc. It was tempting to fear that I was doing the wrong thing, or that doing something for myself was selfish or wrong. But there was also a fiber of my soul that felt just like this boy, that I couldn’t go on in my life without having triumphed over that great, big block no matter how hard it would be to pedal all the way around it and keep your balance at the same time. Except, my block in life came just a few years later than his, and his life has already moved on to what lies beyond this world.

Here’s to Africa, riding bikes, and passing on the giants of our life to younger ones who look up to us, hoping to be something like us and conquering the same hills we have ridden over in great and glorious triumph.

Israeli's Wish

I began this post over a month ago, on the winds of a 747 jet carrying me homeward bound. It was a long flight, totaling nearly 24 hours of flying/layovers from Kilimanjaro to Dar es Salaam to Amsterdam, then home. At the time I was planning to spend the night and day aboard the silver sleigh describing every last detail about Africa. Unfortunately exhaustion and more exhaustion hit, and the annals of Africa stayed lodged somewhere deep inside until now. But that is okay—maybe it just means that Israeli’s story was not meant to be told just then. Maybe the time was now.

There were nine kids at Nyumba ya Furaha, and Israeli was one of two boys that I was a little scared of at the start. Tall and rough looking from the bones that pressed unabashedly at his skin, Israeli seemed maybe the least friendly of all the boys. Or at least the least affectionate. I have never been so wrong about anyone in my life.

Israeli may have come off crude and rough, but not one of his escapades with hammers and machetes and stoning some poor lizard gave any real reflection of his soft heart and unusual thoughtfulness. Israeli, in a line, was akin to the Rambo edition of Rodin’s Il Penseur, the famous statue of a man resting his head upon a closed fist, lost in deep reverie. Il Penseur was probably the last thing you’d think of when you happened to catch Israeli in his natural habitat--wildly chasing after donkeys with a stick or scaling trunks of wispy saplings and swaying back and forth, singing at the top of his lungs. But then again, moments where Israeli walked me back to the base and taught me the song “I see the Moon” in the fading rays of an equatorial sun were hardly reminiscent of Rambo, either. The real revelation of Israeli’s life all unfolded in one amazing afternoon at Nyumba ya Furaha.

It was a day when three other volunteers had come to Nyumba ya Furaha and suddenly you could focus all your attention on one kid at a time instead of listening to six kids stumbling through English words at all once. I made a bold move and singled Israeli out to read to me, then read several books to him. Later that night Israeli chased after me when I got up to go back to my home at the base. Catching my arm beneath the ethereal glow of the moon, he planted dozens of loud kisses from the hand all the way up to the elbow and back down again. It was impossible not to laugh, and simultaneously impossible not to cry. Israeli was more than lovestruck--he was showing that he had felt loved that day. Loved beyond the average. Could it be that what we do—even the simplest of things like pulling a little kid up next to you and reading him a crazy book—show kids that they are loved? That night it showed me that it was, and from then on, Israeli was my friend.

I’m not going to pretend that Israeli was a sappy romantic every moment after that. There were still plenty of shenanigans ending many a spider or scorpion’s life at the threshold of Nyumba ya Furaha. On one memorable occasion I caught him rubbing dirt into a fresh, open wound won in a flailing race around the house. The dirt, he thought, would stop the bleeding, and when it didn't he put leaves over it to try and cover the cut. He was amazed when I cleaned out the cut on his foot and placed a band-aid over the small, red gash. And I, in turn, was amazed that he felt this was unusual care for a cut or bruise. I don't think that it was unusual care, but I do wonder that perhaps Israeli never took the time to show anyone his scrapes and bruises.

Israeli asked me a lot of questions about myself, about America, about my home. On one occasion he accused me of lying when I told him about a box that washes your dishes for you (how do you explain a dishwasher appliance to someone who’s never seen even a washing machine?). It’s hard to say how long or how much of all our talks Israeli will remember, but there is one thing I hope he will never forget. He will never forget his wish. And neither will I.

One afternoon, Israeli and I were reading a book about a small little bear who wished for all sorts of things. I nonchalantly inflected my tone up and down according to the voices and the ridiculousness of all the little bears wishes, until Israeli stopped me and asked me what the word “wish” meant. I was half amazed. How do you explain a wish? How does a nine-year-old not know what it was? I didn’t know the word in Swahili but I explained it as best as I could in English and he moved on, leaving me no indication that it would be a significant word later on. Two and a half hours later, after homework and showers and eating ugali with our hands, Israeli and I found ourselves facing a pile of plastic bowls in sudsy water. As we talked and sang, we began to laugh until someone talked about home. Israeli grew more serious and turned to me, wet rag dripping water on the floor, and asked, “What was that word you taught me earlier?” My mind began racing back through the day to all the words we could have talked about. “Wishii?” Israeli’s accent added an extra syllable to “wish” as it rolled off his tongue with a long vowel sound.

“Oh yeah, 'wish.' It means something you want very much. The thing you want more than anything in the world. It doesn't have to be a thing--it could be being with a person, or going to a place, or having something you dream about happen...”

“Yes, that is the word,” Israeli nodded. “I know what my wishii is. My wish is to go home.” Israeli’s eyes glazed over a little bit and he continued, “I was supposed to go home last Christmas, but then couldn’t. I don’t know why. Maybe this year, for Christmas, then I can go. I have a friend at home…I like my friend. I want to see my friend again. Next time I see Nasari, I tell him I want to go home.” Israeli turned and went back to wiping the next cheap plastic dish in his hand and thinking about his wish. I stood there, taking in the deepest wish of his young heart, and learning something from this little boy. In all my years of living and breathing and thinking, I wished many a wish, too. But never was my wish like his, never were any of them so profound. Israeli wished for a long-lost reunion; he held on to the edges of a love frayed by time and distance and the life in African villages. Yet the time and distance did nothing to diminish the love that Israeli had connecting him to his nameless friend. Of all the things Israeli wanted in the universe, it was to be with someone he loved being with.

I’ll let his wish affect you the way it will—I know that his wish affected me in a way I never expected to find as I continued on this journey of life. Simultaneously humbling and emboldening, I’ve never forgotten that sweet, unexpected wish that day, enlivened by his own burgeoning hope that this could be the year that he could go home for Christmas. It didn’t matter what he had lost in the year before when he couldn’t go home to see his friend. Disappointment swallowed none of his hopeful zeal. He knew what he wanted, and he was ready to make a wish.

I see the moon

And the moon sees me

Lord love the moon

And the Lord love me...

-Israeli's Song