A few simple stories from someone else's life

I. Washing dishes in rural Africa

The process started before I met her. Half an hour before I first laid eyes on Lorraine she was already planning it. She got her 25L water jug and began the walk to the community pump. Upon arrival at the pump she would have waited in the queue behind the handful of women and young boys also waiting, some with wheelbarrows, for the day’s water supply. When it was finally her turn, she would have filled her jug and then stooped as the kokwanas (grandmothers) waiting behind her hoisted it onto her head. And then she walked.

She passed us on the road, but I hardly saw her. She moved with such swift elegance she was like a part of the scenery, a subtle smirk on her lips as she watched the umlungus (white people) struggle with their packages over the washed out road. Her long, lean legs strode confidently over the uneven and marshy terrain. The jug balanced on her head so expertly it appeared weightless. As quickly as she appeared, she was gone.

When we finally arrived, water logged and muddy to her 8x9 brick house, we found her smiling in her doorway surrounded by other children. She stood taller, somehow. The youth of her face dulled by the experience present in her dark eyes. The children smiled too and hid their faces, most too shy to say “Good mohning miss,” to the strange umlungu before them. White people don’t visit these parts much.

The crowd swelled to fill the entirety of her yard, at least 50 people coming and going: shaking hands, giggling, whispering English words to each other and daring each other to say them to me. “How ah you, I am fine!” “I am twel years old.” Every old woman and old man made his or her way over to greet the visitor. I stood in their midst feeling every bit the exhibit that I was; white, mute and out of place. It was finally a clapping game that broke the ice. I was welcomed into the community of dirty, snotty-nosed children through a song – originally in English and Zulu, which had mutated at some point into Shangon and/or gibberish. We sang and clapped until the clouds and a setting sun threatened to steal the last moments of precious daylight. It was only then that I entered the process of dishwashing in rural Africa.

Lorraine grabbed her jug and wandered to the side of the house where I discovered the pieces that seemed to comprise her kitchen: some soggy branches, 3 pots, 2 spoons, 2 plates and a bowl. She began scraping the moldy pap (cooked maize meal, like porridge) out of the pot from yesterday’s dinner. She’d left it there for her two younger brothers Remember, 9, and Clarence, 8, to eat for lunch and it had rotted quickly in the humid African sun. She poured a cup of water into the pot and then, to my astonishment, grabbed a handful of dirt and began to scrub out the remnants that had cooked to the side and bottom of the dish. “I’ll help,” I offered. She handed me the next dish and I too, in the absence of any rags, used the dirt under my feet to scrub the next moldy dish. At the mention of soap she went into the house and poured about a tablespoon of laundry detergent into her hands and then dumped it into her wash basin with the pots and the water and the dirt and the bits of moldy pap. She scrubbed them thoroughly and meticulously, every bit of black gone from the outside, every spec of pap scraped from the inside. The children around her sang and played, stopping periodically to watch the white girl scrubbing dishes, “So that’s how they do it!”

She rinsed the dishes and set them on the dirt ground beside her little house to dry. It is the same spot, I would later discover, where her brothers bathe (when they do bathe), a mere two steps from her compost pile where the boys are known to pee in the middle of the night. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t quietly ask the Lord to bless our food to our bodies’ use; perhaps the first time I ever actually meant those words.


II. Preparing a meal in rural Africa

“You teach me cook?” she asks with a reassuring nod, pushing the spoon and the pot in my direction. I look, bewildered, around her house: no fridge, no stove, no running water. The only food I see is a little cooking oil and some maize meal, save the few vegetables I brought with me. The dozens of eager black faces look up at me, waiting to see how umlungus cook.

“No,” I say. “I’ll help. You teach me.”

She shrugs, disappointed, and sets about starting a fire with her soggy logs outside. Already I am relieved. I can barely start a fire with dry wood and gasoline. I watch as she stacks her branches and smaller sticks in a perfect little pile and then uses a plastic bag to shield her match from the wind and drizzle. It looks for a few minutes like the fire will start, but, even in Africa, wet logs don’t burn.

She runs away before I know where she’s gone, and within a few minutes she returns to collect her pot and spoon. I follow her, as do the dozens of children, to the neighbor’s house where a fire is roaring in the little cooking hut. I hope quietly to God that her neighbor is always this generous with her cooking hut when it rains. I enter the dark room and am instantly blinded by the smoke hanging thick in the air. Choking, with eyes watering, Lorraine sets her pot on the coals and begins stirring the pap. After it’s boiling and the rest of the maize meal has been added, I watch her expertly beat the pap in a mixing motion to remove the clumps and prevent it from burning. A few minutes later I offer to help, eager to learn the proper way to cook this mysterious porridge. She laughs and hands me the spoon. Instinctively, as if they knew, the crowd which is now hanging out in the neighbor’s yard, gathers inside the hut and outside its door to watch an umlungu stir pap. The substance is thick and the fire hot. I am surprised how quickly my arm burns from the strain and my eyes from the smoke. The Africans smile uncomfortably to themselves, switching their weight from foot to foot. This is not right. They are eager to relieve the umlungu of her strain. They mutter to each other in their mysterious tongue, Lorraine takes over. They smile and nod approvingly, this is better.

As the sun sets with some finality, the crowd begins to dissipate. A dozen children remain, huddled in the smoky hut as we watch the coals burn down, waiting for the sauce to finishing cooking. A few brave boys call out, “Hello my frrrrriend!” to the roaring approval of their audience. We stare at each other, grinning, having nothing left to say. Our language barrier stands as a considerable wall between our worlds. Clarence curls up on the ground in front of me. He rests his scabby arms on my lap. He rests his chin on his hands and gazes with red eyes into my face, smiling. He just stares on and on until I feel compelled to say something. My heart does not know how to respond. So I sing. I sing the only song that will bring any sense to this scene, quietly, to my new friend Clarence.

“He’s got the whole world in his hands, he’s got the whole world in his hands.”

Before I know it, all the children are singing along. They know neither the words nor the language they are sung in, they don’t even know the melody but they sing along. All the while Clarence looks at me with his big, watery eyes.

It’s not long before I have nothing else to sing. Nothing left to brighten their beautiful faces. So I sit until finally Lorraine picks up the pot, “Let’s go home.” Immediately I am filled with relief. We leave the last of the crowd, “Goodbye my frrrrriend. See you tomorrrrow.” We enter the tiny room that is called their house. It’s dark. Lorraine lights a candle and the four of us sit down on their sole piece of furniture, a reed mat, to our meal. The boys share a bowl because there are only three. We eat the hot pap dipped in cabbage and sauce. It’s quiet, finally. No words are necessary. Thank you, Jesus for this food. Bless this food.

III Sleeping in a one room house in rural Africa

The dark is darker here. The night descends like a suffocating blanket that will not be lifted until day break. Nothing cuts it. No lights shine. It hangs with a heaviness and finality, concealing whatever dangers whatever unspeakable acts are reserved for these hours when secrets are kept and anonymity is assured.

The floor is cold and hard. I shift uncomfortably under my thin blanket, chilled by the night air drifting through the broken window and the cold concrete beneath me. I hear the distant sound of drumming and the barking of stray dogs. I hear movement in the yard outside the lockless door. I hear voices. I fear.

Three orphans sleep deeply on a reed mat under a single blanket, stacked together like potatoes in a sac. They snore. They sniffle. They dream.

Outside a world of dangers is lurking. Still they sleep. They have no lock to protect them. They have no father to guard them. They have no mother to waken when the footsteps get nearer the door.

In the deepest part of the night, the young one coughs so violently he chokes and wakes crying. He falls back to sleep, without having even stirred his sleeping siblings.

At four the cockadoodledoos can be heard above the rhythmic breathing of sleeping children. The darkness has not yet lifted, but the cocks have prophesied the coming day. There is light coming, finally, into this darkness.

IV An ordinary day as an orphan in rural Africa

As the sun rises it brings with it the friendly chatter of chickens and of ladies. The dawn is greeted with their early morning rituals. Children are woken, houses are swept, sleep is rubbed out of eyes. Uniforms are donned, breakfast is eaten, and the women begin the pilgrimage to the pump.

In a one room house three orphans wake themselves. They carefully fold their blanket and roll up their mat with sleep still on their faces and in their tiny hands. With no clothes to change into but the ones already on their backs, the two little boys go outside. They sit in the sun amid the chatting ladies and chickens. They wait.

Their sister changes into her only other skirt, her school uniform, and carefully cleans herself for school. The boys use their fingers to write the alphabet in the dirt. No one has cleaned their uniforms. No one has mended their uniforms. They will not be allowed into school with dirty, ripped uniforms. So they practice the alphabet in the dirt outside their house while their sister gets ready for school.

The boys will sit in the sun all day. At lunch time they will eat the few left over pieces of pap from last night’s meal before it rots. They will wait for their sister to come home. Hopefully she will come home. Hopefully she will cook them supper.

The boys invent a game with sticks and rocks. Clarence giggles, snot dripping down his face, as he scrambles to retrieve a stick. Remember folds a piece of wire into a pair of spectacles that he places on his nose. He sits like an old man, the spectacles accentuating the wisdom already present in his young face. The pair eventually settle down again to wait. They hold patience in their faces as they watch their friends walk down the road to school, as the ladies walk majestically with their water jugs balanced on their heads, babies tied to their backs. It will be several hours before there is someone back to play with them.

V Comforting an orphan in rural Africa

He is a brave man, this boy of 8.
He is a man of experience and responsibility.
He has seen pain.
He has felt the wrath of God.
He holds the whole of suffering in his wet, red eyes.
He can endure.
But this bath his sister makes him take, it breaks him.
He is humiliated before the dozens of villagers who have come to look at the umlungu.
He stands in the house naked after his bath.
There is nothing for him to change into.
There is nowhere for him to hide his nakedness.
The girls giggle, and return to their playing.
There is hardly any notice of this old man in a young boy’s body who stands ashamed and alone amid a sea of people.
He finally settles into a corner.
The brave man, this boy of 8, cries quietly into his elbow.
No one notices him.
No one hears him.
No one comforts him.
Save the umlungu who is overcome by his suffering.
But who is she?
She pats his back with a deep sadness in her heart.
She is but a breath in his lifetime of breathing in suffering.
She pats his back tonight but tomorrow she will be gone.
Like is mother.
Like his father.
And this brave man, this boy of 8, will be left to cry alone on the cold floor of his tiny home.
More than clean dishes, more than food, more than a safe sleep, this brave man needs a warm hand to pat his back when he cries.
A brave man, a boy of 8, cannot afford to cry, despite the suffering he carries on his narrow shoulders, despite the sickness in his chest and the hunger in his belly.
He cannot afford the tears for there is no one left to dry them.