28 April 2003

Letter 11

Leisei is dead

Leisei was the 4-year-old daughter of Moline and Ben “Grasscutter,” the man who is in charge of mowing the lawns here at Onesua. Leisei was never very strong, or very active. She came to Lora's kindergarten for "A for airplane" and "B for bat" day, and then didn't feel well the next day, or the next, or the next. Her folks took her to the nurse here on campus, and then to the hospital in Vila, where the doctor took a tissue sample to send to New Zealand. She died on "J for Jesus" day, before the lab report came back.

It's frustrating to us that there was a long delay before the parents sought medical help. It's often that way here, since there are three belief systems. When someone is sick, people here typically pray. After a few days, if the patient does not get better, then they try the traditional medicines, usually leaves from a specific plant prepared and applied in some special way. If the patient still does not recover, then they resort to Western medicine, often too late to have any effect. This results in a loss of respect for modern medicine, since it doesn't work any better than the first two belief systems.

One of the elders read the life story. There wasn't much to say. Leisei was born in 1999. She went to kindergarten at Onesua. She died on April 11, 2003. Then he sat down. Kinsey and Emily sang in the college choir. The coffin was carried to the village graveyard, and we all followed it. The choir sang again, this time under bright umbrellas to hold away the sun. The coffin was placed on a woven mat, which served to lower it down into the hole in the ground. The mat was then folded around the coffin, and each of us tossed a handful of dirt into the grave. Lilly, one of Leisei's classmates, stood close to the grave and watched carefully as the grave was filled in. She had a somber, puzzled look on her face. We went back to the village to eat. Gifts of food were distributed to the visitors, and we filed past and shook the family's hands. Just before we walked home, I was told that on the morning she died, Leisei said that she wanted to go back to kindergarten.

Classes started up again on Monday, same as usual, and life went on. After a week or so, Ben was back pushing the mower around the campus. The kindergarten is as noisy as ever. This morning they were clear up to "T for turtle" and went over to Pastor Tom's house to look at some small sea turtles that his brother rescued from the bush. The hatchlings evidently went the wrong way from the beach, and got lost before they ever found the ocean. They are only about three inches long, and Pastor Tom is raising them for a while until their chances of survival improve. They swim around in a small cooler on his porch, and the kindergarteners love looking at the flippers and the ridged shells. Lora, fluent in Bislama now, asks the children questions in order to focus their attention.

"How many shells do they have?"

"One."

"How many eyes do they have?"

"Two."

"How many fingers do they have?"

"Fingers? One, two, three. No! Those aren't fingers! Flippers!"

"What do they use the flippers for?"

"Swimming! Pushing water behind!"

"Can they climb trees?"

"No! They go in water. They belong in the ocean."

I'm drawing geometry constructions on the blackboard for year ten, and the conversation is stangely parallel to Lora's.

"What do you notice about those three lines?"

"They meet inside the triangle."

"What happens if I make a circle with that point as the center?"

"Wow! Look at that! It touches every angle. All three of them!"

"I think that's very beautiful."

"Yes!"

Maybe they say "yes" just because they know that I want them to, or maybe because they see that this will help them solve an exam problem at the end of the year. But maybe, just for a moment, they catch a glimpse of the power behind the problem, the totally unreasonable fact that profound order and beauty hide at the center of the way reality is constructed, just as clearly as turtles belong in the sea.

Our life here is very real. We know that someday, even though there will still be things we want to do, we will die. We will follow that little white coffin, each of us, and there's not really all that much to say. The folks who talk will sit down and the singers will walk away in silence.

But maybe it's enough for now to remember the taste of shared food, the warmth of hands shaken in friendship and compassion, the wonder of a tiny, lost turtle that will someday find its way across thousands of miles of ocean, the purity of truth glimpsed in a pattern that spans the universe. We are called to respond to community and to creation. "Yes," and "Yes!" again.

We woke on Easter morning at first light, caroled into wakefulness by small groups of students. The campus was filled with wandering songs and later, in a chapel filled with sunlight and wind, I spoke of an open grave and the surprise of the women who found it, empty of everything but wonder.

Christ is risen.

Love and peace,

Bruce

The 2003 Mission Yearbook for Prayer & Study, p. 191