Silence

Quote of the week: “You are from South Carolina? That is where all American bishops are from.” [Well, lots of ‘em, and some sons of bishops too….]

I’m writing this not because I am your responsible, adult, thoughtful Voice-out-of-Africa but because I am upset. Please read with thoughts of charity towards the writer. That is:

RANT MODE ON.

Some days ago, in a white Dodge minivan traveling from York County to Spartanburg, a very young girl asked her mother to explain about death. The mother, of course, could not immediately formulate a perfect response and said something about the dead being with God. To this the daughter replied, “I don’t want them to be with God; I want them to be with me.” Give the mother points for trying & the kid points for honesty.

Within Shona culture, questions about death may be even more difficult to address because the very word is seldom spoken. During a wedding that I attended here, the ceremony was delayed for almost half an hour because the minister was committed to the U.Meth liturgy and the bride-to-be was a decent Shona girl.

Preacher: “But my Sister, you must say ‘Til death do us part.’”

Miss X: “That I will not do; to say it is to bring it.”

The impasse was finally by-passed by mumbling, and the couple are currently living—dare I say it?—happily ever after. Anyhow, I think I might have some Shona blood in me; death is a topic about which I prefer not to speak. Nevertheless….

Some days ago, in a rusty Nissan pickup traveling from Mutare City to A.U., the unspeakable occurred. The antecedents of this event are complex, but let me begin with the basic story. Daniel Nzengy’a, my wildlife colleague, sent three students into town to buy equipment for upcoming fieldwork. (It was equipment that I should have brought to Africa with me, but I didn’t think I had the room in my luggage.) I have hinted at the difficulties we’re having in transport, but you should inflate my modest descriptions by an order of magnitude. Anyhow, the three wildlife students grabbed a friend, and the four kids somehow got a ride to Mutare. That went fine. After diligent search, they found some of the equipment; so that was good too. Then they caught a ride back toward campus—as I had done the previous day, in the back of a pickup. On a curve about 3km south of A.U., the pickup met a log-truck transporting salvage saw-timber from Nyanga. The log truck was cheating the curve, fast, and when it swerved to adjust, it threw a log against the pickup. Two of the wildlife students were uninjured. The friend was killed, his head smashed sort of like an overripe pumpkin. The other wildlife student took a glancing blow against the side of his head. He was rushed to Mutare General. He didn’t hurt so very much at first, but he was confused and had trouble focusing his eyes. The radiologist couldn’t get good shots, and, under the usual triage pressures, he decided to dismiss the boy (named Elvis; I should at least call his Christian name). Monday morning Elvis was unable to stay awake, even when people were talking to him. So he was taken to Harare; more I do not currently know. Those are the facts, on the surface.

Now it is Tuesday, and I’m currently blessed with two rare luxuries: (1) I have time for contemplation, and (2) I am able to run my laptop on AC-power. In this state of, uh, bliss, I am wondering about truths that might underlie the surface facts of the weekend’s tragedy. Eventually I’ll be sad about all this, but for now, I’m mad, and I’d like to blame somebody! My first inclination is to blame God: I usually do, and thus far He or She has shown remarkable patience at the abuse I’ve hurled so often in Her/His direction. My Wofford colleague, A.K. Anderson, can lecture learnedly about the problem of evil. But my own feelings are best expressed by a close paraphrase of Saint Dan Maultsby’s theodicy: “I know that if I were God, I’d screw up a lot, but I tell you one thing: instead of making more and more people, I’d try to take better care of the ones I already had.” But, alas, Dan Maultsby is not God, so the best we U.Meths and South Carolinians can do is to recommit ourselves to hope. Therefore I declare it. I hope there is a God, and I hope God is not exactly with us (a God-with-us should have saved those boys; you can bet your soul that Dan Maultsby would have) but is way in front of us, hastening us toward some kingdom where African kids do not get killed in the backs of Nagasaki nut-bucket pickup trucks. Anyhow, a decent God would be sadder than all the rest of us, and so, on this spring day of perfect beauty, let’s graciously let Him/Her off the hook.

But if I can’t blame God, where, then, should I focus my anger? Well, let me review some data. There’s too much saw-timber in Nyanga; there’s too little transport from Mutare; there’s one very wrong place on the road between them. Two vehicles leave the two distant towns and meet in exactly that wrong place. Therefore, maybe I could blame coincidence. And so, was the tragedy coincidence? You bet! It was coincidence in the exact, literal sense, like one of those co-incidence word-problems in high school math.

My father was a serious student of coincidence. “Big Ab” (Class of 1936) was steeped in the Old Wofford tradition of excessive modesty: he usually presented himself as not quite smart enough, not quite brave enough, not quite good enough…. However, my father was not overly modest about his skill at his vocation, and he would privately admit to being one of the best airplane pilots who ever lived. “Good flying,” he said, “is about the management of coincidence, because coincidence is what kills people—and because coincidence is usually just another word for bad flying. So if you’re going to fly responsibly, you minimize coincidence by P⁷: proper prior preparation prevents piss-poor performance.” Thus I ask: in the case at hand, who performed poorly.

First of all, I did. I could have prioritized my packing differently and brought the needed field equipment with me. More important, I trusted marginally interested third parties to determine whether VIM teams would be coming my way. (Thus far I’ve met with two, and either could have toted some of my equipment.) Making the proper enquiries was my job, and I should have done it for myself. And if students were to be tasked with an extra Mutare-journey during a time of “transport blues,” then I could have lectured them about safety, and I could have set a better example myself. Or I could have traveled to town and used my own money to buy the equipment. I forgot P⁷; I promise to try harder, but I think I’m going to feel pretty bad for a while.

Second, an isolated town the size of Charleston (Mutare only appears to be the size of Cowpens) should have modern medical-imaging equipment and radiologists available to run it. I have no idea how this problem could be addressed. But I tell you this: if such equipment and personnel were needed in Iraq, a C-17 would be wheels-up out of Charleston within a dozen hours. That is as it should be, and I do not regret the taxes rendered so that Caesar can work such miracles for his people at war. But I do wonder what we might render unto UMCOR to support God’s people at peace.

Third, the U.Meths have decided (wisely, I think) to support a university located > 20km from Mutare. And Mutare is a city to which, for a thousand reasons, the university must be closely linked. Perhaps, then, the church should think creatively about how that link is to be maintained. Because of “transport blues,” students miss labs, teachers miss classes, food-service personnel are stranded off-campus, numerous folks have to hitchhike, and one person was killed. And that’s in just the past week. Look here: several big NGO’s and many individual U.Meth congregations (some of them by no means wealthy) have generously donated cars and trucks to Africa University. But little thought was given to the maintenance of these vehicles, so time and constant use have taken their toll. The University has recently employed a highly competent mechanic, but he has almost no spare parts, and my daddy would not have deigned to change a sparkplug with the tools at his disposal. So, how about this wild-hair solution? A technically skilled diagnostic mechanic comes from the USA for one month. He or she evaluates the A.U. motor-fleet, its usage, and its maintenance requirements. Upon return to the States, this scout-mechanic organizes the ultimate VIM team. A pit crew of a dozen rednecks, preferably from South Carolina, descends upon Old Mutare. They arrive wearing NASCAR windbreakers and “Jacks for Jesus” ball-caps; in their luggage each VIM-er brings a toothbrush and a change of underwear—plus the tools, parts, and manuals suggested by the scout-mechanic. Are you worried about the response of Customs in Harare? I have ideas about how to address this issue; they may even be legal. Are you worried about the money for this project? I’d pay cheapest-airfare for the scout-mechanic, and, if Dale Jr. won’t put an A.U. sponsor-sticker on his race-car (Lord, how the money would roll in), the VIM team could be self-financing. Are you worried about project-sustainability over the years? Start with South Carolina. Let other NASCAR-Rebel States send teams, at six-month intervals, and after five years South Carolina will be ready again. Are you worried about insulting the local auto-fixers? I have discussed this VIM-project with A.U.’s new chief mechanic, and he said it would be the answer to his prayers. Yes, I admit that my idea is a bit silly, and I’d like to hear a better one.

OK, friends back home, I’ve ranted long enough. I don’t understand things here as well as I pretend to. I’m probably misinterpreting the facts and overstating the problems in this neck of the woods. And I realize that my “solutions” are mostly pipe-dreams (speaking of which, A.U.’s irrigation-infrastructure could use some donations too…). I don’t intend to criticize others; everybody else is working & trying much harder & smarter than I am. Attribute this essay to sadness—and to the fact that I’m as irritable as a black racer that spent a long winter under wet plywood. (Perhaps you would be irritable too if you belatedly discovered that hundreds of tiny ants had invaded your last stock of clean underwear.) If conditions permit, next time I’ll write about my house: that’s not a serious subject, and I think you may find it entertaining.

RANT MODE OFF.