August 14, 2003

Letter 14

Just a month ago we were incredibly sick of rain. That must be why they call this kind of place a rainforest, huh? All four of us were still adding to our collection of abscesses, and the laundry hung on the clothesline on permanent rinse cycle, day after day. Now, however, the lawns are turning brown and every day I have to water the two new banana trees I transplanted. Only Lora is still practicing the art of abscess maintenance; the rest of us are healed and hoping to stay that way. It's the cool season here, and sometimes it's been down to 64 degrees Fahrenheit. We enjoy the renewed feeling of liveliness; Lora dances with her kindergarten, and I scribble trigonometry functions all over the board. For the Ni-Vanuatu, though, this is the time of cold. On the way to breakfast in the mornings, the students walk with their arms inside their T-shirts. Those who have sweaters and shoes wear them. Those who don't, shiver.

July had many magical moments, and many small scenes that I would like to share with you. At midterm break, we left Onesua for four days and stayed at the tourist resort at Hideaway Island, one of our favorite places to snorkel. The girls had a lot of fun taking pictures of reef fish with small, one-time use underwater cameras that Bridget and Nickie left for them to use. We're beginning to become familiar with the most common species. Comments such as "That was a big wrasse!" or "Look at that triggerfish!" are becoming part of our conversation, even though two weeks can easily pass without us swimming. We're busy, and it's a little cool for swimming, even for Montanans.

Murray and Katrina Gardiner, two volunteer teachers from New Zealand, invited us aboard their 36-foot yacht several times. They sailed it the fifteen hundred miles to Vanuatu when they came here, and now share it with friends during vacations. We each took turns steering, and we eagerly and clumsily took orders to pull on whatever rope was needed at the time. Lora and Emily appeared a little thoughtful and withdrawn at times, but none of us got seasick. Kinsey, enchanted by the experience, actually got to pilot the yacht into Vila Harbor, and I will never forget her standing at the helm, intensely eyeing the sail, the wind vane, the waves, and the buoys that mark the channel, all at the same time. We are grateful for the Gardiner's generosity.

Toara, our guide, was careful to choose the most gentle option when it came to paths, but it's a thousand foot climb no matter which way you go. We went gently, eating fresh grapefruit, admiring the view, and marveling that Emau has no wheeled vehicles and no beasts of burden. Everything in the higher villages was carried on the backs of people. We admired the nearly completed Presbyterian Church at Mangarongo, which is built of concrete so that it can double as a cyclone shelter. That's a lot of weight to carry up the hill! Toara led us up through the low spot in the crest, between two volcanic peaks. The higher peak is the pointy, leftover remnant of a crater rim. The other peak is a classic bowl-shaped crater, now filled with coconut trees and used as a natural corral for cattle. There is a well in the center and a strong fence across the low spot in the rim, where we ate lunch looking down at this tiny, protected paradise. Emau is officially dormant, but still has enough heat for incubator birds, which are a little bit bigger than chickens. They lay eggs in warm areas and then abandon them, letting the heat of the ground hatch the eggs. I have always been amazed at chicks hatching out of eggs anyway; it must be even stranger to peck your way out of an egg and then struggle up through some sand!

We continued walking around the island, past the long stone wall that encloses the pigs, and past the blackened remnants of a "blackbirder" ship. These were slavers, who operated out of Australia back in the 1800s. They would anchor off-shore, lure men on board with the promise of trade goodies or jobs in the sugar cane and cotton fields of Queensland, and take them away. At Emau, however, the islanders lured the blackbirders ashore and then paddled out in their canoes and burned the ship to the waterline. It's a strange irony of history that the U.S. Civil War, which freed our slaves, increased slavery in the South Pacific when American cotton supplies to Britain were disrupted. Australia took up the slack, and took up slavery also. Britain, which had already outlawed slavery, was content to keep its economy humming along, first benefiting from U.S. slavery, then from Australian. We ate a second, surprise lunch prepared by Toara's mother, and were happy to take some family photos. Our camera, like Gardiner's yacht, became a community resource among folks who cannot afford such things for themselves.

There was a fire in the Blue House boys' dorm about nine o'clock one night. Darrell, a year nine student, climbed up into the rafters and curled up to read with a candle. Why? I don't know. It was just a kid sort of thing to do, finding a cozy little place. Unfortunately, this cozy little place is like an open-floored attic; it's where the boys store cardboard boxes of clothes and old school papers. Somehow the whole thing caught fire. It was a scary time, with flames shooting up into the sky when the fire burned through the corrugated metal roof, and kids running around in the dark. The staff and older boys helped fight the fire, and they succeeded in saving the dorm, but some of the rafters are nearly burned through, and a ten-foot long area of the roof was destroyed. Four boys lost everything they owned, and several others lost some of their gear. Jonathan, our principal, held an assembly, reminded the students that no one was hurt, aside from a few tiny spark burns, and said that we were not worried about placing blame for the fire. "We have all used candles before, and any one of us could have had this problem. This was just an accident, and now we have more work to do than we had planned. Let's begin." The Blue House boys moved into other dorms (though I'm not sure where they all fit!), and classes were held on time the next morning. Staff and students have started a fund to help the boys' families replace the destroyed belongings.

Lora sat on the concrete bench one morning last week, waiting for the bus to take her to Vila. She watched the sun rise and sparkle on the sea. She waited for over an hour, but transportation here is unpredictable, so she simply sat there, watching the sea. There was nothing else to do. Suddenly, a pod of about twenty dolphins appeared, jumping out of the water as they swam along the reef, just outside the breakers in front of her. Wow! It was the first time any of us have seen dolphins in the wild, and we were all very excited about it.

Emily found several lines of chrysalises hanging from twigs in a tree by our garden, and she broke off one twig and brought it home. We kept it in a bowl on the refrigerator. The chrysalises were broken yesterday morning as the butterflies pushed their way out. Emily remembered the rest of the chrysalises out in the garden, and went outside to check them. They were all breaking! There were large, dark brown butterflies all over the place! Some of them were already fluttering among Lora's bright orange flowers. Some were patiently hanging upside down, trying to straighten their wings. Others were still crawling around with their wings furled limply over their backs. It was amazing to watch them and to share Emily's excitement.

We are now on our second major break, this one between terms two and three, and everyone is preparing like mad for hosting the General Assembly, the annual meeting of the Presbyterian Church of Vanuatu, as well as the annual conference of the Presbyterian Women's Missionary Union. There could be over a thousand people on campus, and the Onesua community will house and feed and entertain them for about ten days.

The reactions to letter 13 were interesting. Some people were uncomfortable with my comments about the increasing concentration of wealth in the United States. A couple of writers suggested that I would be better off staying in my field, education, and leaving the political and economic speculation to other, more qualified people. One reply took on a "Love it or leave it!" tone.

I love conversation, and I like to play with ideas, so I encourage you to write, especially if you disagree with something that I say. I assure you that it is not my intent to insult any who see things differently, and I also assure you that I, in turn, tend to take no offense when others disagree with me.

Please allow me to respond to the comments that I summarized above, and to throw some more ingredients into the mix.

I believe in democracy, where each of us must take responsibility for the issues of the day. That's why the military has civilian commanders, for example; some things are just too important to be left to experts. It's in exchanges (or even debates and arguments!) like this one, that our truth is developed in community. I really distrust folks who do not trust that give and take, who say, with our current president, that you are with “us” or against us. No, Americans have a long history of disagreeing and still being one big us. That's why they call it the US.

That, by the way, is one difficulty with our present economic system. The multinational corporations no longer come under “civilian” review; they make decisions that are beyond the reach of the democratic process. They are, in the truest sense, outlaws. You don't like the workplace safety or environmental regulations here? Go outside this set of laws then, go elsewhere, and export pollution, danger, and exploitation as well as jobs. The community works to decide together what kind of life they want, and then is undercut by corporations with no loyalty to the community.

I love the United States and consider myself a patriot. But let's be honest about the country and the choices we have made as a society. I love it, but that doesn't mean I have to pretend it's perfect. How do we rank, compared with other countries? Well, we're number one economically and militarily, that's for sure. But where do we stand in average life span? Take a guess, before you read on. Do you think we're number one? In the top ten? In the top twenty? Where do you think we ought to be? Remembering that we have the greatest wealth of any nation in history, just how low a rank would it take to make you question our choice-making? According to the latest almanac in our library here, we're tied for twenty-third place. Can you imagine a parade down Main Street next Fourth of July, with floats saying, "Three cheers for the U.S.! We're twenty-third!" We're behind Greece. We're behind Israel. We're behind Spain and Singapore and France and a whole bunch of others. We're tied with Taiwan, Kuwait, Cyprus, Germany, and Ireland. Wow. I am ashamed. These figures are from the World Almanac and Book of Facts, published in the United States, and they are from the 1997 edition. Maybe we have improved in the last six years. Maybe we have gotten even worse. This almanac does not list life expectancy figures for the very small European countries; if they did, we would probably rank closer to thirtieth. I encourage you to use your own resources, to do your own research. Join the conversation!

What does it look like if I stick to my own field? How do we rank in literacy? Again, take a guess, before you read on. How low a rank would you find offensive? We're tied for forty-seventh, with countries such as Cuba and Tuvalu and Moldova. There are a lot of countries ahead of us that the average American can't even find on a map, like Estonia, Nauru, and Kyrgystan. I can't find St. Vincent and the Grenadines, and we're tied with them.

I'm ashamed, not of being an American, but of how we have squandered our resources on entertainment and frivolities and bombs instead of health and education, and I speak as someone who has personally benefited from the excellent health care and educational institutions that the United States provides some of its citizens. I am grateful to be in that group, that “some of the citizens,” but I'm embarrassed that we seem content not to extend the “some” to include more of the rest of us.

This is not a partisan tirade. I am not blaming the current administration for this situation, which has taken a long time to create. I would just like these figures to be part of the debate about the future. Ideally, they would be the focal point of the election campaign over the next year. Let's all wear buttons that say, "U.S.A.: #23!" Let's write letters to our friends and our congressmen and the president and everybody we can think of in both parties and try to get some serious discussion going instead of the standard sound bites.

As fall begins to come to the Northern Hemisphere, I wish you new vitality and color in your life. I wish you moments of unexpected, leaping grace. Ponder the examples of fluttering liberation in your own backyard, and marvel at the struggle for freedom from that which encloses us. Break shells. Share the wealth and help carry the burdens to where they can be set down. Remember to sing when you want to move obstacles. Pray for those who unwittingly destroy, for those who are impoverished through no fault of their own, and for those who try to lead us with vision. Don't worry about blame. We have more work to do than we had planned. Let's begin.

Love and peace,

Bruce

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