Down But Not Out

Punches since I last blogged eighteen months ago: a short-lived marriage now annulled (after lots of paperwork and several trips to a California courthouse), my son Owen hospitalized for severe sinusitis, and unfruitful months of effort trying to move away from the agricultural dust and chemicals we thought contributory to his malady.  Too busy to attend to my worsening plantar fasciitis, which screamed this past week: “Do something!”

Per recommendation of a new orthopedic specialist in town, Owen and I drove to our closest "big city" of Ensenada to obtain orthotics from a charming man who is an expert on foot health and healing.  Touched and encouraged, we celebrated at a favorite seafood spot on Bahia Todos Santos (All Saints’ Bay) offering fresh fish, shrimp, octopus, oysters, and clams...near a popular surfing and skateboarding area.

Next we hit the segunda (second hand) shops, finding parking at the place where I bought a patio table and chairs three years ago.  Proprietress Gisela now offered solar lights for stringing across our back yard, a comfy yard chair with footstool…and an openhearted exchange about personal struggles.  “There is such peace in your eyes,” she said.

Peace…yes, thanks be to God!  A month ago He gave us deep peace about not moving, enabling us to enthusiastically embrace anew the beautiful gifts of place and people right where we are.  Owen created a new red gate, put up Malla Sombra dust-catching cloth, spread lava rock, and planted palms to improve our environment.  His sinus problem has not returned.

Ten months ago came peace about pursuing annulment of marriage to a man who should have shared critical history before rather than after the wedding, when a pattern of physical and emotional boundary issues with young women appeared.  I'm grateful he then disclosed the truth about prior struggles.  And I don't regret taking a risk for love.  The revelations and lessons learned may help him, his family, his pastor...and may protect others in the future.

The Kavanaugh (US Supreme Court nominee) hearings highlighted the struggles many men have with admitting weakness or misdeeds, opting instead to anger (it gives one a sense of power) and the pain of thousands of women drawn to the Me Too movement.  We have so much work to do to!  I'm grateful for the leadership/resources available at The Center for Partnership Studies (https://centerforpartnership.org).  On the heels of the Kavanaugh saga, new warnings about the human and economic costs of our failure to address a global mental health crisis "from epidemics of anxiety and depression to conditions caused by violence and trauma."  Inspired by a BBC report on an initiative in Zimbabwe at http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20181015-how-one-bench-and-a-team-of-grandmothers-can-beat-depression?ocid=ww.social.link.email, I'm considering whether that approach might work here, and possibly accepting an invitation to join Grupo Madrugadores (early risers), civic-minded folks who meet regularly to address community concerns.

Meanwhile I'm spending more time with my feet up, enjoying tea or lunch in the garden.  The image on a teacup found next-door to Gisela’s shop made me smile.  Note that the teacup lady is down—relishing the closeness and nurture of nature—but she is kicking up her right foot (happens to be my bad one).  No doubt she has plans for when she gets up again, rested and renewed, but I don't think she's in a big hurry...

Back on Baja Roads

View of our homes from Cactus Corner; croquet, anyone?

We've been housebound, or at least town bound, for awhile…my son Owen and I, along with Aunt Lois (89), who came to live with us in Baja California, Mexico, in late 2015.  Lois broke her hip three months ago, and adjusting to new limitations while orienting caregivers has kept us close to home.  

This month marks two years since our move to Vicente Guerrero, 185 miles south of San Diego, and a book recently loaned by a friend prompted an anniversary adventure!

Land's End, Cabo San Lucas, March 2016

God and Mr. Gomez by Jack Smith--popular columnist with the Los Angeles Times--was first published in 1974, sparking interest in Baja California among North American readers.  Just a year earlier "the forgotten peninsula" had become more accessible with completion of the Carretera Transpeninsular--the 1000-mile highway linking Tijuana on the U.S. border to Cabo San Lucas at the peninsula's southern tip.  Owen and I drove the Carretera to Cabo last year, enjoying the beauties of deserts, mountains, and coastlines.

When Jack Smith began visiting Baja, however, the road south was paved just 30 miles beyond the up-and-coming city of Ensenada to the village of Santo Tomas, founded in 1791 as a Jesuit mission.  Among other interesting things, Smith described the delights and dangers of the 18-mile drive on a dirt road from Santo Tomas to the Pacific coast where, at La Bocana (Spanish for estuary or mouth of the river), he and his wife Denny had a vacation home built in the late 1960s by Romulo Gomez, a man whose charm, trustworthiness, and colorful history gradually emerge from the book.

"Let's do it!" said Owen, when I suggested a trip to La Bocana.  Reptile-phile from an early age, he anticipated encounters with rattlesnakes, and I wanted to explore the shoreline's volcanic coves, both a la Smith's adventures.  We were drawn too by a sense of kinship with the Smiths, empathizing with risks they took and challenges they faced as per our own experience of building in Mexico…in our case, a house for Aunt Lois, raised on the circular foundation of an old palapa.  

A 90-minute drive north on the Carretera--through olive groves, vineyards, and mountainsides clad with nopale cactus and yellow daisies--brought us to the La Bocana turnoff, just opposite the entrance to one of Mexico's oldest and finest wineries.  Santo Tomas wines have medalled in international competitions and we rarely pass the bodegas without stopping to buy some of our budget-wise favorites.  The Smiths too enjoyed the local wines, although cerveza (beer) and tequila--liquid icons of Mexican culture--were the social lubricants between Smith and Gomez, especially when mini-muddles, which were fairly frequent, arose.

Santo Tomas winery

A lush valley flanked by high green hills beckoned as we headed west.  Owen drove (unusually!) slowly, no doubt remembering that the Smiths suffered several blown tires, two cracked transmission cases, and a ruptured gas tank on this route.  Plus he was looking for snakes and other wildlife.  His hopes were soon realized as we came upon a rattler (dead, minus rattles) and then a roadrunner, it's black and white feathers vivid for a fleeting moment as it sped across our path. The roadrunner's prowess as a rattlesnake fighter has apparently been exaggerated, but they can leap straight up from the ground to catch birds!

Road to La Bocana

The Smiths' early travels to La Bocana took them via the Santo Tomas River which runs through the valley toward the Pacific.  Heavy flooding over several years, however, sent road builders up along the mountainsides, leaving the lower road to farmers who grow chard, squash, onions, and melons on the valley floor, their homesteads nestled among Pirul and Eucalyptus trees.  The mountain road seemed well maintained, with newer cement drainage ditches flanking the steepest, narrowest stretch.  

We encountered more cattle guards (five) than vehicles...or cattle.  Owen got out to check a couple iffy-looking guards as Smith's car had gotten stuck in one.  He also sighted and stopped twice for snakes (non-rattlers) but both slithered into the bush before he could make positive identification.  

Nearing the Pacific a gentle mist floated into the valley and we arrived at La Bocana with a sense of wonder, as though passing through a thin veil into another world.  There was the store (a rebuilt version) where Señora  Gomez fed Denny and Jack fresh fish and tortillas in the back kitchen.  And behind the store lay the lagoon from which water was trucked up the hill to fill a reservoir that supplied the Smith's home, though not consistently.  How did water get into the lagoon, Jack wondered.  "From the well," replied Romulo.  And the water in the well? asked Jack.  "The water," said Gomez, "it comes from God."  

No-one in sight, we drove past the closed store and up a steep, narrow cobblestone-cement road to the cliffs overlooking the sea, muted grey-blue under a cloudy sky.   A series of red brick homes stretched out along the seafront as we headed to the north, but, disappointingly, none looked like the photos of the Smith home, and most were shuttered.  A few small house trailers were parked among the homes, along with several cars and pickups.

La Bocana lagoon and store, from the cliffside parking lot

"I think their house is further along the cliff," said Owen, "but let's eat!"  We backtracked and parked in a dirt lot overlooking the small bay.  The bay is separated from the lagoon by a wide sandbar; there a man and woman strolled, holding hands.  They ventured down toward the water and then--having second thoughts--ran from the waves.  The sound of their laughter drifted upward as we enjoyed a packed lunch with car doors open, watching the rhythmic roll of the sea, absorbing the peace.

Sated, with God and Mr. Gomez for reference and iPad in hand for photos, we walked back along the cliff road to where it declined slightly toward the north.  And there it was, with distinguishing chimney and arches, just as on the book cover.  A simple gate, padlocked, blocked the lane to the house, but an attached barbed wire fence running down to the cliffs was partially flattened, having yielded, perhaps, to the boots of previous trespassers.

"I'm not sure we should go beyond the fence line," I said, though the place was boarded up and obviously unoccupied.

"No one's here; let's go look," said Owen eagerly.  

We scrambled down a slight incline covered with ice flowers--a hearty succulent that has spread rapidly on our own land--and stepped over a low brick wall onto a tile patio that wrapped round to the front of the house.  The sweeping view from the front veranda took in the Bahia Santo Tomas to the north and the string of neighboring homes to the south--silent sentinels to an earlier era.  Or perhaps the owners just happened to be away during our visit the day before Palm Sunday.  

"Look at these solid old beams," said Owen, reaching for the wood supporting the veranda roof.   Tile and brick had stood up well to almost five decades of sea air, sun, and wind, but rusted iron bars securing the boarded windows and doors betrayed the age of the place.  We circled the house and looked for the oleanders Denny Smith planted as a privacy hedge.  They were gone, and the somber sky seemed to echo: "They're gone, they're all gone."

"There's something forlorn about it all," I said, as we returned to the front veranda.

"I know," said Owen, "they put so much into it, and now they're gone."  

Jack wrote in 1990 that he and Denny had sold the house "…to two young couples who, we hope, will enjoy it as much as we did.  It had been a great experience for us; it was something we shared; perhaps it helped hold us together."   Four years later he wrote of the death of Romulo Gomez, from cancer, at age 83.  Jack died in 1996 of heart failure; Denny survived him by eight years.

Owen working on his first guitar 

I thought about the energy Owen and I have expended renovating our place.  And the weeding and pruning and planting.  And building his guitar-making workshop.  The investment has been worth it, in my eyes, given my six-year lease, and then, God only knows.  Meanwhile we're delighting in the creation of a little Eden to share with friends and family.  

Jack, while walking the beach in front of his Baja home one day, had the intuition that "God's name is Random Chance."  But I embrace Saint Paul's assertion that "in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose."

Looking to Bahia Santo Tomas from below the Smith house

The wind dislodged my hat as we made our way from the house down toward the ocean, enjoying the spring flora and peering over the volcanic cliffs at a pebbled beach below.  An old boot, a shoe, and a sock had been abandoned by previous explorers, and someone had tied a rope round a large boulder as a means of easing down the cliff face.  Owen and I found a safer way, though he cautioned me on the rugged descent which had, as Jack wrote: "that agonized look of rock thrown up from volcanoes when the earth was new; a memento of God's wrath, or perhaps His ecstasy."

The surf swirled and frothed just feet away as we stepped over encrusted barnacles to inspect a couple tide pools.  I was glad to have worn my hiking boots; Denny Smith broke her leg on these rocks!  Owen dislodged a small mussel and dropped it carefully on top of a sea anemone at the bottom of one of the pools.  We were on the lookout for larger creatures too.  The Smiths had sighted sea lions here.

As we climbed back up the rock "…so hard that even the sea would make little progress against it in a thousand years," I remembered Jack's concern about the erosion of the "soft and chalky" earth just below his house, above the volcanic rock. 

"Someday, Romulo," I (Jack) said, "our mansion is going to slide right into the Pacific Ocean."

"Oh yes," he said.  "Of course.  Someday.  But not too soon.  Five hundred years from now, Jack, you will still be living in that house."

"Maybe so," I said. "But isn't there something we can do about it now?"

"Well," said Gomez, "would you like to try a little tequila?"

The Man Who Collapsed and The Meaning of Christmas

I'm attuned to physical or emotional distress in those around me...built-in antennae from decades as a nurse.  So when I heard scuffling behind me in church some Sundays ago, I turned and quickly made my way to support a elderly man who'd collapsed on the floor.  His pulse and respirations were okay, so several of us helped him to a chair where I ruled out stroke and a possible diabetic reaction.  

"He says he has these spells sometimes, where his leg gives out," offered a helper.  I stayed nearby, moving our chairs to the narrow balcony just outside the sanctuary where we could hear the sermon while having some privacy in case of further distress.  After awhile my "patient" seemed okay, but I was unable to concentrate on the sermon.  My thoughts returned to the topic on which they'd been riveted for weeks:  the state of post-election U.S.A.

I'd been following online, via the Southern Poverty Law Center, the rising number of hate incidents since the election.  Reports of harassment and intimidation of Muslims, Jews, immigrants, and people of color had made me heart sick.  Along with that, divisiveness and meanness of spirit were rampant, even among so-called people of faith...something I was witnessing daily on social networking sites and elsewhere.  Further, I was reading of families and friendships broken apart by post-election rancor.

The man with the weak leg suddenly symbolized the condition of a United States disabled by a polarization that might well bring about a collapse--a collapse of the core values on which the country was founded: liberty and justice for all.  I thought: "I've lost my marriage (my husband notified me of a divorce earlier in the year) and now I've lost my country."  Overcome with sorrow as the church service concluded with a song of praise, I walked to a private area at the end of the balcony and wept.

Many are longing for peace, and it's what Christmas is about.  Angels heralded the birth of Jesus with these words: "Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace among men of good will."  Shepherds who heard the angels were awed, but this was just the beginning of amazing events they and others would witness as the baby grew to manhood, explained both the love and the holiness of God, and eventually made his way to a Roman cross where he laid down his life "for the sins of the world" so that we, in embracing his great work on our behalf, might have abiding peace with God and with one another.

When Jesus began preaching, he said this about peace:  "Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God."   He also said:  "Do not think that I have come to bring peace on earth; I have not come to bring peace, but a sword.  For I have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law…he who loves father or mother…son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me; and he who does not take his cross and follow me is not worthy of me." (Matthew 10:34-38)

The scripture in Matthew came to mind as I read about family relationships being broken post election.  I can't shake my sense that something significant is happening in America and elsewhere around the world where political decisions based on fear and exclusion are growing, nor my conviction that we who are followers of Jesus are being called to recognize and fight more intentionally against racism and oppression…beginning in our own neighborhoods.  I will therefore watch developments closely and continue to take action by joining/supporting work against hate and oppression.  

I'm also called to be where Jesus would be found today.  Perhaps in poor communities or countries, comforting women who sadly chose abortion because they lacked access to education/support to prevent an unwanted pregnancy, and who bear, in addition to that pain, the condemnation of those who refer to them as murderers.  Maybe Jesus would be found in detention centers, where thousands of immigrants are held for long periods, often without legal support, and then typically deported, separated from their families.  Or in refugee camps where millions languish awaiting welcome somewhere.  No doubt he would be found in jails where we in the U.S. have incarcerated more of our minority populations than any other country in the world.  

This Christmas, remembering the loving and righteous Prince of Peace, I ask him to help me follow more closely in his footsteps...by his grace, and for his glory.

Help, we're in a national crisis!

Students walking out of classes, protesters in the streets of our major cities, a renewed movement in California to secede from the union, petitions to the Electoral College, and continued angry exchanges in all forms of media.  Yikes!  I took a break from it all today to walk by the ocean here in Baja California and to reflect. These thoughts came…

From years of teaching crisis theory as part of Psychiatric/Mental Health Nursing, I know this:  Crisis is an OPPORTUNITY…to learn, to grow, to be strengthened.  We as a nation can come through this to a better place..  But three things are needed to help this happen:

1.  An accurate perception of what is happening.  It takes some reflection to figure this out, and you may not agree with me.  I don't want to oversimplify, as the issues at hand are complex.  But my perspective is that we are getting a needed look at the ugly underbelly of racism in America, and at the deep fear of many of us white folks that things have been/are going to be taken away from us.  Donald Trump "played" to those fears in various ways, and those who voted for him were predominantly white people 45 and older.   I'm skipping the issue of abortion for now, though it played a big role in the vote among some Christian voters.  We have this opportunity to take a deeper look at ourselves and at the ways racism manifests itself among us, hard and uncomfortable though this may be.  

2.  Support from others.  We need to be with others who care about us during a crisis.  I learned about Pantsuit Nation from some FaceBook friends.  It's a coalition of mostly women who supported Clinton and the values she has espoused throughout her decades of public service…namely the protection of civil rights and support for children, women and families.  These women (I'm linked with the Colorado Chapter, since most of my working career was spent there) are networking and reaching out to each other and to vulnerable people in their communities.  Find support with someone(s) you trust.

3.  Good coping skills.  We've got to take care of ourselves, keeping a balance between work and rest, engagement and disengagement.  Some of us feel called to be advocates for something or other.  It's not a time to put our heads in the sand (at least I can't do this), as many people are hurting and afraid, and need support.  And many feel their most cherished values are at stake and are now determined to fight in every way possible for them.  But we can't do everything.  Media can become all consuming, and we should take breaks from that too.  We need comic relief, but not at the expense of others. 

My three cents…these three points.  We'll get through this.  Let's keep talking to and helping each other!

Sa Bondye Sere Pou Ou

Sharing this draft of another book in progress...

Introduction

Sa Bondye sere pou ou lavalas pa janm pote-l ale.  What God has laid up for you, even the flood cannot carry it away.  

     Haitian Kreyol saying

Floods have carried away so much from those you will meet in this book:  women of Gonaives, Haiti.  They and their compatriots live in the pathway of hurricanes, near mountains too denuded to absorb heavy rains.  Their government, chronically disabled by complex forces, struggles to rebuild following disasters.  After the earthquake of 2010, these women welcomed and assisted refugees from Port-au-Prince, depleting their own meager resources even further.  And yet they have carried on, drawing strength from their faith and from each other.

The 2013 book, In the Company of the Poor: Conversations with Dr. Paul Farmer and Fr. Gustavo Gutierrez, shares words on faith and fortitude written during the 1500s by Teresa of Avila.  It happened to be a time when Teresa's countrymen were extracting riches from the island they’d named Hispaniola and importing diseases that nearly extinguished the indigenous Taino population, who called their home Ayiti, meaning "land of high mountains."  

No stranger to suffering, Teresa aptly describes the women of Gonaives when she writes of a “...determined resolve not to halt...whatever may come, whatever may happen to them, however hard they may have to labor, whoever may complain of them, whether they reach their goal or die on the road...whether the very world dissolves before them.”  

The women of Gonaives watched their world dissolve twice in the past decade.  I began to know them just months following the first "dissolving"…the devastation caused by Hurricane Jeanne in 2004.  I'd made earlier trips to Haiti, felt overwhelmed, and then--for awhile--resistant to having anything to do with the country.  But the women of Gonaives drew me into their fellowship in a way that eventually changed the course of my own life.  

Friends, Haiti, from L: Elisabeth, Sally, Miguelita,
Joselia, Elmide, me, Examene

Over the past 10 years I've watched these remarkable, resilient women build an ever stronger sisterhood of faith, take advantage of generously offered outside help to start their own cottage industry, and support efforts to improve the health of their community.  In January 2014, artist Sally Lincoln went with me to Haiti to try to capture the spirit of the women of Gonaives on canvas.  Her portraits are the centerpiece of this book.  All proceeds from book sales will aid cervical cancer screening and treatment for Haitian women, who have the highest rates of this preventable cancer in the world.

Chapter One:  June 1999:  Can We Cope? 

The sounds of lapping water upon a shore slap gently on my ear…an unfamiliar arousal.  Rolling from side to back, I sink into a sagging mattress, squeaking the springs of my metal bed.  Pale light filters through folds of mosquito netting while I puzzle--blinking, barely awake--at the presence of two women slumbering in nearby beds.  
     My eyes close again, but crowing cocks mock my desire for further sleep, and I remember with vague irritation that the lead rooster started up at 3:30 a.m.  And then, soon afterwards…the screeching of an animal…a goat, perhaps, being slaughtered?  Shuddering, I'd pulled the thin white sheet over my bare legs and shoulders, and dozed on.  
     Now, with sunlight warming the room, I sense the stickiness of sheets against my skin.  Accustomed to the pleasant dryness of Colorado's heat, I kick off the cloying cover and remember…I'm in Haiti, within yards of the Caribbean Sea.
     Last evening, sitting with friends under almond trees on a small terrace by the sea, watching an orange sun sink beyond the water's deep blue horizon and then later--in the darkening sky--a lightening display over distant Port-au-Prince, I began to understand the meaning of the moniker Magic Haiti.  But now experiences of the past 24 hours crowd my mind, and I wonder if we can cope with this place.  

  If last night is a predictor, we'll not be sleeping well.  Prior to the animal noises, I and my roommates wakened at midnight to the sounds of sobbing on the other side of the cement block duplex where the women of our service team are staying.  
     "I'd better investigate," I said, embracing my role as resident nurse.  

     Unlocking a solid wooden door, I pushed open a flimsy outer screen door--screen detached--and with flashlight, followed a narrow path around the building.  Gravel and small seashells crunched noisily under my flip-flops, sending several hermit crabs scurrying sideways into the darkness.
     The next-door room was just as airless as our own.  Beneath a heavy, army-issued mosquito net on a lower bunk, one of the women had become claustrophobic.   

     “She said she couldn’t breathe,” reported a helper supporting her whimpering friend under a cooling shower.  “We’ll move her to an upper bunk closer to a window.”

The Episcopal Church retreat center in Montrouis, a small, palm-fringed coastal town an hour's drive north of Port-au-Prince, revealed its challenges soon after our arrival.  Electricity and water supply will be intermittent.  But these seem like trifles compared to what we saw driving around the capital yesterday.  
     Not far from the airport, along the waterfront, hundreds of shacks made of flattened tin cans and cardboard stood cheek to jowl in one of few open spaces remaining in a city of (then) 2 million, originally built to accommodate 500,000.  During storms, as the water rises, inhabitants of those "shelters" stand, holding their few possessions--and small children--on their shoulders until the water subsides.

     Through the half open windows of our van wafted the acrid smell of burning refuse…gathered in pot-holed streets along which women crouched in the dirt selling vegetables and used clothing.  Clusters of barefoot children with stick legs picked at piles of garbage.  

     Families have flocked to Port-au-Prince from the countryside and the mountains in recent decades…seeking sustenance, hoping their leaders--or other sources--will deliver what they need: jobs, food, and access to healthcare.  Even following the 2010 earthquake that took 300,000 lives and injured another 300,000, many Haitians apparently still believe it best to be close to the places of power and delivery points for foreign aid.

     Of all we saw in the capital, the cart men seemed most symbolic of the struggles of Haiti…sinewy, barefoot, straining and sweating under the weight of concrete block-laden carts, climbing impossibly steep hills, step by steady step. Their life expectancy is about 40 years.  

A few days after arrival, we take a break from painting and carpentry work and travel to the northern port city of Gonaives to visit another Episcopal church and school.  Just beyond Montrouis, thick groves of banana trees press so close to the road that an outstretched passenger's hand could brush a huge leaf.  And then a yielding to wide landscape of rice planting and harvesting, dotted with muscled black bodies bending to their work, and white egrets winging through azure sky or resting on a far-flung patchwork blanket of green. 

These fertile fields of the Plaine de L’Arbonite supported the small-scale agricultural efforts of 50,000 Haitians up until the beginning of the U.S. occupation of Haiti in 1915, when the land was expropriated and handed over to American businesses. Displaced Haitians were forced to make a living elsewhere.   Some farmers of the plains moved into Haiti’s northern mountains while others migrated to the Dominican Republic to earn a pittance on sugarcane plantations…brutal work that for many would eventually turn deadly. Just two decades later, in 1937, an estimated 15,000 to 20,000 Haitian migrants—men, women, and children—were systematically slaughtered by direct order of President Rafael Trujillo of the Dominican Republic.  Haitian writer Edwidge Danticat’s award-winning novel, The Farming of Bones, offers a haunting vision of a massacre fueled by ethnic hatred.                                                 

The vibrant colors of the rice fields fade away as we approach what must be one of the most desolate parts of Haiti, aptly named Savane Desolee (desolate savanna).  It's like a moonscape…bare, rocky hills, speckled here and there with the remains of dead trees and bushes.  Only the occasional wiry cactus plant relieves the brown monotony.  

     "How can a tropical island look like this?" I implore our Haitian guide.  

     "The French colonizers felled and shipped tons of mahogany to Europe," he says, "so the mountainsides were exposed, and over many decades the heavy rains we get here have washed away the topsoil." 

     Continued degradation of the land, he explains, is largely due to non-stop cultivation by Haiti’s subsistence farmers (70% of the population), and to the use of trees for making charcoal—Haiti’s primary energy source.  

     Our van bounces and shakes over a tortured ribbon of dirt and rocks, and we see--through a haze of dust--the rusted, mangled remains of vehicles whose usefulness ended here, along with, no doubt, the lives of passengers.  Did anyone mark their passing in this no-man's-land?

     Our drivers, and others--some behind the wheels of new Toyota vans sporting spiffy non-governmental organization logos--careen from one side of the road to the other, seeking uncommon stretches of level ground.  Choking on billowing clouds of pale dust raised by the heavy traffic, we roll up windows, but the dust seeps in through the floorboards.  

     We barely miss a run-in with a large, lumbering truck carrying men, women and children---sitting atop crates and over-stuffed bags of food and charcoal.  With shirts and blouses pulled up around their mouths and noses against the dust, they appear as ghosts, in a lifeless landscape.  I struggle with a rising anger that anyone should have to travel under under such conditions...as though they were a commodity.

A little history:  The road to Gonaives was once a good road (and will be again following the 2010 earthquake when money will come to Haiti for a variety of projects).  Haiti had 1200 miles of well-constructed, all-weather highways by the end of the U.S. occupation (1915-1934).  Railways also connected north to south, and serviced other areas, but were dismantled and sold by "Papa Doc" Duvalier, the iron-fisted physician/voodou priest who ruled from 1957 to 1971, aided by his secret "police," the Ton-Ton Macoutes, whose deeds were as dark as their signature sunglasses.

     During a spurt of international aid following Papa Doc’s death, roads were repaired, improved.  But not so the road to Gonaives.  Some Haitians expressed the belief --during the early 2000s--that their leaders had purposely allowed the road to deteriorate, as a deterrent to political dissidents traveling from the north to Port-au-Prince.  Gonaives—Haiti’s second largest city by 1999 estimates (population then around 200,000)—was the seat of the slave revolt that spawned independent Haiti in 1804, and continues to be a place of political foment where demonstrations are common.  

The streets of Gonaives are shared by pedestrians, cart men, motorcycle taxis bearing women with shopping bags, a few donkeys, and Haiti's famous tap-taps…canopied trucks colorfully embellished with painted mottos, flowers, and religious symbols.  The tap-taps are crammed with passengers…some of whom literally hang out the open backs--secured by the hands of fellow riders.  

     Honking horns, the whine of traffic, and hundreds of street voices shouting greetings or curses--we know not which--rumble around us.

     “Keep your doors locked and windows at least halfway closed,” warns our Haitian driver.  

     Near the city center, we pull into a walled compound housing the Episcopal church and school.  Stepping out onto a large, rubbled courtyard, we dust off our cloths and stretch legs and arms stiffened by the journey.  A older man with a gap-toothed smile closes the tall metal gate.  This place feels like sanctuary. 

     A middle-aged, balding man wearing a black clerical collar with a short-sleeved grey shirt, approaches with a smile.

     "Welcome to Gonaives.  I am Pere (Father) Simpson."  

     The local priest and administrator of the school seems reserved, perhaps a little sad, but he shakes our hands with firm grasp and then introduces us to the school principal--a tall young man impeccably garbed in suit and tie.

     "I'll show you the bathroom," offers Pere Simpson, "and then we can take a tour of the school."

Located just off Independence Square, the school--formerly a jail—is a dark, depressing, two-story structure with uneven cement floors and bare walls.  Some 200 students  (pre-school through 8^th grade) brighten the place with their blue uniforms and ready smiles. As we peek inside their classrooms, adorned only with old blackboards, they stand--some shyly, some smartly--behind rickety wooden desks, at the behest of their teachers, to say good morning.

     "Churches and other humanitarian groups run most schools in Haiti," says Pere Simpson, " but only about half of Haiti’s children attend school.  Many families can’t afford fees and uniforms."    

     Most of the teachers are men, but I notice a few women around the school.  One sits at a desk just off the principal's office, busy with paperwork.  She looks up and smiles as we pass the office.  Five years down the road, this woman will become my friend and invite me to collaborative work in Haiti.   

     A couple other women prepare food in the school's kitchen, a 3-sided cinder block shelter adjacent to the school.  Charcoal fires add to the heat in the airless enclosure where they sit on low stools between two huge aluminum pots, stirring rice and beans--midday sustenance for students, and likely the only meal of the day for many.   These women will become members of a group that will work to improve the future in tangible ways for themselves and their children.

Strong Women and Gentle Men

Banana grove romance: Lewis Steckley and Elizabeth G. Engle
Macha Mission, Northern Rhodesia, c. 1914

Years ago I outlined a book--Mom’s Adventures in Africa--for my young sons.  I scribbled off a dozen chapters with titles like Python on the Road, Giant Rat Invades the Hospital, Crossing a Crocodile-infested River, etc.  My writing goals soon changed, however, as something else took hold of me: interest in the lives and times of relatives who had also lived and worked abroad.  

Perhaps the deaths of family elders, or my own aging, urged me on.  I interviewed my parents, aunts, uncles and others, studied family genealogies, took notes on books/articles written by or about my relatives, and read histories of Africa, India, Japan, and Mexico.  Deeply inspired, I wrote and rewrote, at one point scrapping detail such that son Owen, then a young teen, said: “You might be taking things out that people would find interesting, Mom.”

I also did some math, and found myself numbered among 40 individuals (including spouses) who spent more than 900 combined years in missionary work—mostly in southern Africa—during the past century.  Represented were 6 of the 8 branches of my family tree of recent generations: Engle, Raser, Frey, Lady, Lehman, and Nissly.  Most worked under the auspices of the Brethren in Christ (BIC) church, a small denomination with Anabaptist roots.

The stories of my relatives emerged upon the colorful backdrop of the upheavals of the British colonial and post-colonial eras.  Those arriving in Africa in the late 1800s took up the vision of David Livingstone.  One received a land grant directly from the hands of fanatical empire builder Cecil Rhodes (a sore point for the Africans, whose lands were taken!).  A relative in India visited with Gandhi.

Some of my missionary relatives, Southern Rhodesia, 1924:  Steckleys center back, with (from left) grand aunt Naomi Lady and son David, great grand uncle Harvey Frey, wife Emma and daughters Mabel and Lois.
Non-related, at far right Emma and John Climenhaga with Arthur, David, and Joel, and Mary Elizabeth Heisey

Life was not easy, and some died abroad. In Africa and India—where malaria and smallpox were rampant—several lost their lives to disease.  One died after being mauled by a lion (see previous post), another from a gun accident.  But from the mire of loss, pain and deprivation, bubbled up joy...joy found in service, relationship, and meeting the challenges of dangerous, but beautiful frontiers. 

With housemates Mettie Hutten (L) and Shirley Heisey (R),
Silisi Cottage, Macha Mission, Zambia, 1976

Strong Women and Gentle Men is a book in progress. It needs more African perspectives. Meanwhile...this second blog in honor of the recent 100-year anniversary of Sikalongo Mission, Zambia (formerly Northern Rhodesia). Numerous relatives worked at Sikalongo, and at nearby Macha--my own home from 1976 to 1978--where this story begins.

Nursing students, Macha Mission, where I served as Sister Tutor 1976-1978

The banana grove, Macha Mission, c. 1914: my great-grand aunt Elizabeth Engle, right, with Lewis Steckley, her husband-to-be, and widow Sallie Krieder Doner, whose personal history was a reminder of the perils of Africa.  Sallie’s husband succumbed to malaria in 1911; he had lost his first wife to the infection in 1904.

Faith and a “call” to serve may have mitigated fears of disease and death, but saying farewells to loved ones who might not be seen again this side of heaven?  Wrenching.  “The partings were like funerals,” said a former missionary.  Aunt Elizabeth parted from parents and three siblings in Kansas in 1907, arriving in Southern Rhodesia at age 31.  She would not see her family again for 9 years.  

But love awaited her.  A canopied path beckons in the photo.  Did Elizabeth and Lewis ever walk that leaf-strewn carpet hand in hand, pondering the future, wondering how many years they would have together?  If only trees could talk!  The same grove shaded me 6 decades later when I came to Macha to teach nursing at age 24--full of purpose and dreaming of romance.

Photo from Frances Davidson's 1915 book, South and South Central Africa

Elizabeth was the first trained nurse at Macha.  She’d done basic practical nursing at home, but soon learned much more.  She delivered babies, set broken bones, and stitched up gashes caused by the slip of an ax or the goring of an ox.  Frances Davidson, who co-founded Macha in 1906 with Elizabeth’s cousin Adda Engle (previous post), wrote of a chief’s son “badly mauled by a leopard,” noting that Elizabeth “very successfully treated his wounds.”

And Lewis?  His grandniece Rhoda Marr wrote recently: “My mom was only a little girl when Lewis left home [in Ontario, Canada, at 28] to be a missionary. He was oldest in the family of 14 and she was next to the youngest. She...remembered him as being the quiet, studious one of her many brothers and her parents had mixed feelings about him going to the other side of the world and yet were pleased that he was following God's call.”

Elizabeth's parents Jeremiah and Susan Gish Engle;
Jeremiah died 6 weeks after Elizabeth's Nov. 1916 wedding

What drew the couple together?  Both came from farm families who were committed members of the BIC fold.  Lewis was the son of a bishop and Elizabeth the younger sister of one--my great-grandpa Millard Gish “M.G.” Engle.  Lewis arrived in Africa several years after Elizabeth.  He was 30 and she 36 when, in 1913, they traveled from Southern Rhodesia to Macha, working there together for 3 years.  They wed November 9, 1916, at Elizabeth's parental home in Abilene.

1925 finds the couple at Sikalongo Mission, where they served alone until 1928.  African Jesse Cikaile was their faithful helper.  Church, school, and medical work continued, and the Steckleys also did landscaping and got out and about.  In a letter to the BIC church magazine (Evangelical Visitor, June 21, 1926) Elizabeth wrote of a ~ 40-mile round trip visit to a student’s village.  Leaving just after midnight, they traveled “as far as my husband’s road repairing camp where we were given a fresh yoke of oxen and a new driver [and] after a cup of hot tea all around, we continued our trek.”

 Trekking near Macha Mission, c. 1913, as Aunt Elizabeth prepares to take on supervision of village schools,
photo from Davidson's South and South Central Africa

It seems Elizabeth loved to trek.  She wrote in 1920, from Southern Rhodesia, of a week-long visit “among the village people about 5 miles north of Mtshbezi Mission.”  She and Lewis stayed in a grass hut “which was quite comfortable,” and held services around campfires in the evenings. “Some expressed their regret that we had to leave so soon,” she shared, and: “Let us pray that God may raise up some good native workers, or someone to do evangelistic work in other villages, which are so much neglected.”

"They were very reserved," was the common response from numerous relatives I interviewed about the Steckleys. Yet letters penned to the Evangelical Visitor by the couple reveal lively spirits.  Farming blood in their veins, they often mentioned planting and harvest…and gratitude in the midst of hardship.  From Matopo Mission in 1923, Lewis wrote of drought and famine and sharing what they had with African staff and villagers.  “Our hearts swell up in praise to our heavenly Father for his loving care over us, and for all he has done for us we will never cease to love Him.” 

A mission historian wrote this of Lewis in 1950:  “Although a man of few words, no missionary has lived a more consistent life than he, and none excelled him as an industrialist.  He was a careful worker and a good financier...uncomplainingly he went wherever he was most needed.  And with him, just as uncomplainingly, went his noble-minded wife...”

Visiting cousin Mary Newlin in Abilene, Kansas, 2012

Noble-minded Elizabeth read literature and poetry aloud to the single missionaries when the Steckleys occupied the main house at Matopo Mission in the 1930s.  “She read while they ate so they wouldn’t gossip about their African students,” said Elizabeth’s missionary niece Mary Engle Newlin.  And during those early years there were other boundaries: “The only Africans to enter missionary homes were servants,” said Mary, “but Aunt Elizabeth served tea on the back stoop and did mending; she had a very soft place in her heart.” 

The Steckleys retired in 1941, and settled in Kansas amid a passel of Engle relatives.  “Uncle Lewis was one of my favorites,” said Mary Newlin.  And he was still living in Abilene, aged 93, twice a widower, when I passed through in the summer of 1976, the year prior to his death.  Having just completed a master’s in nursing in Ohio, I was headed home to Colorado to pack for Africa.  Grandma Minnie Lady Engle gave me a rug she’d made for me to take to Zambia, saying “the [cement] floors are cold.”  But she did not introduce me to Uncle Lewis, and I did not know of him to ask.  I'm so grateful for cousin Mary's memories, and the inspiration of her own life as a missionary in Southern Rhodesia and Sierra Leone, and later as a pastor in Kansas.  She was married and widowed twice.

Grandma Minnie Engle's 1976 gift,
for the cold cement floors in Africa

Grandma’s gift graces my living room floor here in Mexico.  And I have another treasure--Elizabeth’s steamer rug, a woolen blanket that warmed her on Atlantic crossings over 4 decades.  It came to me from cousin Mary, gifted to her by Aunt Elizabeth as Mary prepared for Africa in 1952.  “She saw that the local church had given me an amateurishly-made afghan that would not be adequate for the cold,” said Mary.

For a short while, a couple years before Elizabeth’s death in 1956, the Steckleys took Elizabeth’s brother M.G. Engle into their Abilene home.  He had just lost his second wife, was almost 90, and had led an illustrious life as bishop, evangelist, and long-time chair of the BIC Home Mission Board.  What did they speak of during those days?  Joys, regrets, the nearness of heaven?  Oh to have listened in…

Although I missed the chance to talk with Uncle Lewis, I spent some time in 1981 with Anna R. Engle (Elizabeth's second cousin), whose missionary efforts overlapped with those of the Steckleys. Then 85, Anna had spent half a century in Africa as accomplished teacher, translator, and author. “Looking back, would you have done anything differently?” I asked.  She paused for a few moments, and then said quietly, “I would have loved more.”

Aunt Elizabeth's steamer rug; perhaps she read Frances Davidson's recently (1915) published book
on the voyage back to Africa in 1918.  It contained stories and photos of Elizabeth…
something to share with her new  husband!

Quote about Lewis Steckley from Anna R. Engle, J.A. Climenhaga, and Leoda A. Buckwalter, There Is No Difference:  God Works in Africa and India (Nappanee, IN: E.V. Publishing House, 1950), p. 73.