"A Prayer for Those Who Have Too Much"

To my brothers and sisters in developing countries:

While I was deciding which oat bran cereal to eat this morning, you were searching the ground for leftover grains from the passing wheat truck.

While I was jogging at the health center, you were working in the wealthy landowner's fields under a scorching sun.

While I was choosing between diet and regular soda, your parched lips were yearing for a touch of water.

While I complained about the poor service in the gourment restaurant, you were gratefully receiving a bowl of rice.

While I poured my "fresh and better" detergent in the washing machine, you stood in the river with your bundle of clothes.

While I watched the evening news on my wide screen television set, you were being terrorized and taunted by a dictatorship government.

While I read the newspaper and drank my cup of steaming coffee, you walked the dusty, hot miles to the tiny, crowded schoolroom to try to learn how to read.

While I scanned the ads for a bargain on an extra piece of clothing, you woke up and put on the same shirt and pants that you have worn for many months.

While I build a fourteen-room house for the three of us, your family of ten found shelter in a one-room hut.

While I went to church last Sunday and felt more than slightly bored, you looked out upon the earth and those around you and felt gratitude to God for being alive for one more day.

My brothers and sisters, forgive me for my arrogance and my indifference. Forgive me for the greed of always wanting newer, bigger and better things. Forgive me for not doing my part to change the unjust systems that keep you suffering and impoverished.

I offer you my promise to become more aware of your situation and to change my lifestyles as I work for transformation of our world.

By Servite Sr. Joyce Rupp, after visits to Guatemala and Liberia.
[ ? Published in the Cleveland Plain Dealer, summer 1997. ]

Change and Transition

Change is the exterior events that are readily visible. Diane and I are going through a lot of those: packing up and leaving our home in Tanzania; riding a ship across the Atlantic; setting up a new home in New Jersey; becoming caregivers; and looking for paid work. Change is easy to describe and to talk about.

Transition  is the interior process of meeting and adjusting to change and to what it means. Some transitions are more or less universally understood: grieving for friends and colleagues whom we will not see again; saying goodbyes to places such as our town and the surrounding East African savannah; facing the anxiety of how to make a living; and taking on the responsibility of care for a family member. Those are difficult enough in themselves.

But how do I explain being in a restaurant in Oakland and having to suppress the urge to speak Swahili to the Chinese waitress ... or moments of sadness at the casual ease with which my compatriots accumulate so many things in their homes, in their lives?

How do I tell you about standing in front of a picnic table in L.A. with tears at the sight of all the wonderful abundance and variety of food ... or wondering why everyone is in such a hurry?

The most important thing I got from the re-entry program of our organization was the reminder that transition takes time and often continues long after the corresponding changes have taken place. -Earl

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I beg assistance, God of my journey.

To accept that all of life is only on loan to me.
To believe beyond this moment.
To accept your courage when mine fails.
To recognize the pilgrim part of my heart.
To hold all of life in open hands.

From Litany for Times of Journey and Transition, by Joyce Rupp.

Coming Home

A paradox that has much exercised mathematicians is that of the Einsteinian space traveller. Having journeyed at great speed for several months around the universe, he returns to earth to find that whole decades have passed. The anthropological traveller is in the reverse position. He goes away for what seems an inordinately long period to other worlds, ponders cosmic problems, ages greatly. When he returns, only a few months have elapsed ... only his closest friends have noticed he has been away at all.
    ....
It is positively insulting how well the world functions without one. While the traveller has been away questioning his most basic assumptions life has continued sweetly unruffled. Friends continue to collect matching French saucepans.

From The Innocent Anthropologist: Notes from a Mud Hut by Nigel Barley

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I'm feeling so liminal. After leaving our town of Mtwara, there was a week of being in transit; then a week on the Queen Mary 2 passenger ship; then a week in a small town in New Jersey; and as of this writing the start of a week in Los Angeles.

There was something about arriving in this sprawling metropolis that finally set in a feeling of being overwhelmed by the differences in coming home. Driving along Century Boulevard felt like landing on another planet. It was like being a space traveler looking out the windows of a spaceship on to a strange landscape.

Earlier today I walked into a Ralph's supermarket. It's nothing particularly unusual for the U.S. But it's a massively large store. I tried to imagine what it would be like for a Tanzanian to see this. The incredible material abundance, aisle after aisle of foodstuffs, housewares, dog food (!). The shock of how expensive things are as he mentally calculates from dollars into shillings.

Of course, it's all terribly familiar to me too. It's a relief to be back in the English-speaking world, to be able to understand what people are saying to me and to each other. It's a joy not having to struggle to express the simplest things. How easy it is to take language for granted when it is one that is native to you.

Life has indeed continued as usual. The people I know have, for the most part, kept on much as they did when we left. I, on the other hand, am in the midst of passing from one world back to another. I've been through this before. But this time I've been away for three years. -Earl

On Board the Queen Mary 2

I loved crossing the Atlantic Ocean on this beautifully built passenger ship, coming home using a means of travel that feels timeless. Luckily, the seas were calm all the way across. It was wonderful to be on the water and to be outside on deck even though the North Atlantic chill made it hard to stay out for long.

I had expected to experience some serious reverse culture shock on board. But it didn't happen. I had not left Tanzania for more than three years but there was a part of me that never lost connection with the U.S. thanks mostly to the Internet. The shipboard environment had an immediate familiarity to it.

Like most passengers I right off got into overeating at the endless endless endless buffet of food. Besides stuffing my face (after five days of which my gut started to rebel), I spent time studying software materials and Swahili, reading a novel, attending a few talks and performances, and napping a lot.

I spent time gazing at the ocean, physically and emotionally leaving behind the places, the people, and the home that my life had encompassed.


A couple of weeks ago I was enjoying chipsi mayai at a totally dumpy eatery on a side street in Dar es Salaam. Our last night on the ship I had a club sandwich in our stateroom, compliments of room service on the Queen Mary 2 luxury liner. -Earl


[ Diane looking at the Statue of Liberty as we arrive home ]

Staff at Aquinas Secondary School

I got photos of almost all the teaching staff and quite a few of the non-teaching staff as of the end of the first term, June 2012.

I labelled each photo with how I normally address the person, "mister" for male teachers, "madam" for female teachers, sometimes with their first name, sometimes with their family name. The term "mama" is a respectful title often used with women who are a little older and more senior.

It was hard to leave our school and to leave Mtwara. This set of photos is to help Diane and me to remember. -Earl

Maria and Yesu

At the Scholastica convent in the Shangani neighborhood of Mtwara, where I have been staying at their guest house until I leave town.

Bajaji

Pictured is a bajaji as it's called here in Tanzania. Imported from India and mostly used as a taxi, it runs on a gasoline engine, seats three adults comfortably, and holds a good amount of luggage on the shelf behind the passengers. The controls are similar to those on a motorcycle.

The driver is Joslin, one of the first bajaji drivers we got to know a bit. He leases the vehicle from the owner for about $10 a day, pays for the gas he uses and for minor repairs, and pockets whatever is left over as profit. Joslin has done pretty well for himself, having saved enough to buy a motorcycle, which he himself rents out to some one else for use as yet another kind of taxi.

I love riding this little open-air vehicle in this warm climate of ours. It's fun to be in. Rebekka, the bursar at our school, owns one of these for personal use. She can toodle around town with her husband and two young children without having to haul around a car. I am so envious! -Earl