Running Life’s Race With A Limp – Page 12 – Jerry Lout ⚬ Writer ⚬ Speaker ⚬ Mobilizer

October 10, 2017

Urgent Care

Klak. Klak. Klak. Klak.

The sound of an archery bow thumping a bedroom window deep into the night is one not easily forgotten.

Our watchman’s smokey voice joined the klacking sound outside, pronouncing my surname as best he could, “Bwana Lauti, Bwana Lauti.”

At Nyamahanga’s second or third call I stirred. The bedside clock read 1:30 a.m.

“Bwana Lauti. . . Mama karibu kuzaa.”

The cement-plaster floor of our room felt cool to my bare feet. Flashlight in hand, I was soon exiting the room, “Honey, another ambulance run. A Mama has gone into labor.”

“Ok,” a sleepy voice murmured back. “Be careful.” it was a role-reversal of sorts – Ann, normally the late-night riser when a baby needed changing or fed.

A few minutes passed. I whispered a prayer as the father-to-be who had raised the alert, took his place in the passenger seat. We were off to fetch the missus, then get her to Kehancha.

Such “ambulance runs” had evolved as part of a naturally-assumed job description for any bush missionary. The assumption, we agreed, made sense, as mission personnel were among the scant number of people owning a motorized vehicle.

The race against time came pantingly close some nights over my three-plus years of free, on-call ambulance service. But I somehow outpaced the labor contractions with every midnight jaunt. The same was mostly true for Canadian friend Phil Harman of Suna Mission some distance away. Except one night. A good part of the next morning found him vigorously doing a scrub-down of floorboard and rear seat in his newly-christened VW Bug Delivery Room. Mother and newborn had fared just fine.

Over time we grew to wonder what next medical crisis could visit the compound. It was during such a period a young man appeared at our back entrance. Night had fallen. He stood bleeding profusely, leaning into the support of another man. The machete attack had found its mark.

Jesus help us.

October 13, 2017October 13, 2017

In The Name Of A Friend

The young pastor strained under the weight of the bleeding man he supported. “He is my brother.”

He labored to keep the wounded man upright. The machete blade had gone deep.

“How did it happen?”, I asked, as my nurse-wife entered from a side room and approached to lend aid.

“My brother has a friend. The friend sent my brother to collect money owed him by another man.”

I took in the unfolding story as we all helped the wounded brother out of his coat, it’s back soaked through in red.

“The man owing money was drinking beer and got angry when my brother told him why he came. My brother decided to leave and come back another time. But the man had taken up a panga (machete). When my brother turned to go out, it was then he was slashed, before he could reach to the outside.”

Ann had brought out a sizable roll of gauze. By now his shirt had been removed and, with strips of old sheets and tape, she bound his bare torso. The panga had opened a V-trench some eight inches long – vertically, between spine and shoulder blade. She wrapped the material about his torso several times, in hopes it might slow the blood, buying us time to get him to the clinic where they could sew him up.

The government-sponsored clinic, a thinly-equipped medical outpost established to serve the Wakuria clans, sat at the edge of the village nearest us, five miles to the north.

Life was hard for the tribal people, often heartbreaking. It was a rare home that had not lost at least one child to malaria.

And there were the skirmishes.

With cultures of the region given to decades-old feuds – mostly to do with livestock – violence could erupt in a heartbeat. Kuria country lay bordering other cattle-tending families – the Maasai, the Luo, the Kipsigis. Bands of spear-wielding parties of either tribe, trekking by foot in their stated quest to take back rustled livestock, had become a common image.

I grew to slow the bug down on our dusty road and roll gently past the occasional vigilante parties. We couldn’t guess when a band might come into view on the twenty mile drive to our mail box (we checked for letters once, sometimes twice, weekly). Though as a missionary family we did not feel directly threatened, our verbal charge to the back seat passengers came with regularity, “Roll your windows up, kids.”

The task at hand just now was to get a terribly wounded young Kuria to a place for treatment.

I hope the doctor is in.

October 17, 2017

Survival

“Sir. . Sir, Hello. . . Hello! Can you come sir? Hello. . .”

Waking a doctor from a drink-induced sleep called for persistence.

We had transported the machete-attack victim the five miles to the government clinic, only to learn an aged, slow-moving male nurse was the only person on duty.

“The doctor for this work”, he said, eyeing the wide blood mark streaking our patient’s back, “is away. You might find him at his house.”

Leaving our patient, I drove another five miles of bad road, where I came to the darkened home of the physician. “Hello. . .Hello. . .”

Thirty minutes later, the groggy doc held a kerosene lantern (electricity had not reached the village) examining the naked wound. Thankfully, Ann’s gauze-and-sheet wrap had held and not too much blood had seeped through.

The wounded man went by Mwita. He sat upright on the cot’s edge as three pair of eyes, beside the doctor’s – Mwita’s brother’s, the male nurse’s and my own – gazed at the deep slash. I had never seen such a wound.

No surgical mask was donned by any of us. There were none in supply. And, I assumed, maybe never had been.

A brief exchange between the bush-surgeon and myself left me surprised. And troubled. The nurse had stepped to another room and was now rolling in a metal cart into view. A steel pan sat and, in it were utensils. Suturing material, I guessed.

My tone was respectful, sincere.

“Sir,” (it seemed doubtful by now the man I had wakened for the upcoming procedure was a doctor in a full, professional sense) “could I ask. . . how are the instruments sterilized?”

Lifting a sizable curved needle offered by the old nurse, the gentleman held it before the lantern for a better look. With a wave of an elbow he declared knowingly, “Oh, you understand, off there in the big cities where many people live, there are, many more germs. Many more.

“But out here in the rural places, we have fewer people. And so – less problems with infection”. The man’s silence as he squinted one-eyed, finding the needle’s opening and beginning the thread, suggested my question had been sensibly answered. This is the way it is. No discussion.

I cringed at my next discovery.

“He will be given anesthetic, right?”, I ventured.

“No, we are out of it.”

Perhaps – looking back – my biggest surprise of the evening was my lack of queasiness.

Witnessing a needle in the firm grip of someone, the needle piercing the muscular surface, tugging a string of black thread in its trail – again and again – left me at the edge of nausea.

Next morning I readied myself to visit the clinic when word of the wounded man reached me via Africa’s reliable grapevine.

“You’re sure?”, I asked a second time.

“Yes, Bwana, he walked home this morning.”

My thoughts retraced the sequence.

Treks to our place last night (who knows what distance?) – losing blood the whole way. Endures several bumpy miles of ‘ambulance ride’. Without meds to blunt the pain, the flesh of his back takes into itself a suturing needle of questionable hygiene time and again, drawing the parted muscle and sinew close. . .

I’m now feeling queasy.

And, early the following morning, walks home – more than five miles – unaided.

While missionaries are probably not widely known for referencing Charles Darwin, I found myself at different times suddenly recalling a phrase, “survival of the fittest”.

This was such a time.

October 22, 2017

TEE Time

“Now, Jerry”, My friend’s voice hinted at mischief as we started across the church parking lot, “tell me about tee-hee-hee.”

To know Van Gill was to treasure the sound of a rolling chuckle. And take in a pair of grinning eyes, coaxing response to his merriment.

Everything about the Texan pastor was large. Large frame, large mind (among the keenest), large humor. All of these reflecting a thing largest of all – his overflowing, over-spacious heart.

Van was a man of the Book. Indeed, it was his love of Scripture that, in part at least, stirred him to offer the teasing invitation. . . tee-hee-hee.

By the time of this our family’s visit from Africa, I was co-authoring a study book on the Gospel of John, a curriculum piece for Theological Education by Extension, widely labeled T – E – E.

Writer’s workshops, led by Fred and Grace Holland of the Association of Evangelicals of Africa and Madagascar, trained missionaries and nationals in Bible school text development.

After my training I had partnered with Evangelist Josephat Rungu of Western Kenya. Together, we teamed with South Africa counterparts and, Teachings in John was born. Published in Nairobi, the T.E.E. training series – featuring topics from Old Testament Survey to Bringing People to Jesus – spanned denominations and cultures across the continent.

From Latin America to Africa and beyond, T.E.E. had begun empowering the church, equipping spiritual shepherds in the care of their flocks. Especially the many pastors and elders who were unsuited, for various reasons, to traditional schooling in far-away, culturally-detached settings.

When our extension Bible school met weekly under a big tree at mid-day, we engaged a means to dodge the harsh rays. “That’s it, bring your chair again this direction, keep moving ahead of the sun.”

Week after week, month after month, young and old apprentices to Jesus engaged each other in such settings, some indoors, some out. They would sip hot tea, an open hand would fervently wave to emphasize a point. Laughter erupted now and then. The minds of these servants of God were those waking more and more to fresh discovery of truth. They grappled with ancient scripture and sought ways to apply it well. In their own lives, their households, and to the broader community of faith. Transformed lives by Jesus and the Holy Spirit, their aim.

Through our beloved Africa years, perhaps nothing – apart from watching my three children grow – brought me greater pleasure, more sheer joy.

Tee-hee-hee. Not bad.

October 25, 2017

Removing Stones

“See this stone in the path? Now this one too, here in the picture on the same trail. . .”

I sat with half a dozen men, some a decade or more older than me. The hut we gathered in each week was roofed with long grass. The floor consisted of smooth, hardened dirt. A semicircle of dark benches carried our weight and were worn smooth, long sense having yielded up their last dangling splinter. It was Thursday and one of this week’s T.E.E. lessons focused on a visit Jesus had with a woman at a water well.

Mature, practical, sincere, the upcountry pastors and elders took in the illustration on the workbook’s open page. The image struck a chord. Two stumbling-stones, one representing male pride, the other, tribalism. The students had read the lesson’s introduction:

Here a woman of a different tribe met Jesus. Sometimes we let the division of tribes hinder God’s work. Male pride also hinders. These things are like big rocks in the pathway that make people stumble. In order to give the good news to the woman, Jesus overcame these two problems.

I reviewed the scene with the men.

“See the person Jesus found at the well. She not only was a woman. She also spoke with an accent. We know this because she was of a different tribe, another people.”

I look in the face of each man in our semi-circle.

“Can one of you describe this picture for us. Can you help the rest of us see what good thing Jesus wanted bring to the woman and what Jesus did to overcome two big problems so she could be helped.”

A pastor nodded. He launched in, reviewing the narrative, raising the matter of how women are often looked down upon, mistreated. The room was quiet. The pastor then spoke of hard issues related to tribalism, the challenges to go beyond it, as Jesus did.

“Can we trust the Lord is among us today? To help us to change?”

Heads nod. Confession is voiced by two or three. We pray.

Then go our ways, trusting him, friend of sinners, to lead.

October 27, 2017August 17, 2022

Just Do It

As a foreigner in a region where locals had rarely sighted a light-skinned person , I was learning the feeling of different.

During one season of discouragement, when my best efforts to connect with the Kuria seemed frail, I knelt on the concrete floor of a back room in our house. The prayer was brief, sincere, and seems as clear today as that morning I voiced it.

“God, please help these people know that I love them.”

In the silence an inner voice interrupted my pleadings. While it was kind, it was also direct, firm.

“Love them. You just love them.”

Just that. Simple and sparse, like a mail-order kit arriving without instructions.

How do I do this?

Years afterward a definition of Love crossed my path.

To will the good of another. I have yet to hear a phrase that, for me, better reflects the term.

I found myself in subsequent times revisiting the Bukuria scene. Going to my knees in blue jeans and t-shirt back then at that location fifteen hours’ drive from where Stanley met Livingstone under a Mango tree. I ponder again the response to my prayer on that day. Just love them

Gauging love, measuring its impact, seems not always easy.

***

“Mwalimu”.

Pastor Mwangi calling to me (‘Teacher’) lifted his textbook as in a gesture of devotion.

“Before you came with the teachings – before bringing us these Bible courses. . .” The pastor’s voice went low.

“. . back then, when on Saturdays I would prepare a sermon for my people on Sunday, I only knew to follow a certain way. I did not know another way.

“I would pray, close my eyes and open my Bible – letting it fall open where it would. Then, feeling the page, I let my finger go to a place there. Opening my eyes I looked at the place. The words there became my sermon scripture for Sunday.”

“It was all I knew”, he repeated. “I did not know another way.”

Pastor Mwangi concluded as if offering up a sacrament as well as a confession.

“Now I know the good way. Thank you for bringing this Bible School, this T.E.E. I feed my people now and they are helped.”

Mounting my motorcycle that afternoon, I turned toward home, warmed by a gratifying thought.

Thank you, Lord for your word, and for this means of sharing it here.

He (God) was willing the good of a tribal people hungry for truth and for him. And was letting me have a part – growing me in a small measure to care as he cares.

Just loving them. Together.

November 1, 2017November 1, 2017

Mr. Buckley and Baby Scott

“And, Mommy, that’s Bohkeh and her sister, Rozi. There’s my friend Mwita with his uncle Chacha. . .HI Mwita, Hi Mzee Chacha!” Julie was leaning out the car window, waving.

It seemed our three-year-old social butterfly knew every name in the tribe. Was more than eager alerting them to her presence.

“Honey, we should get ready to leave for Nairobi. I’ve confirmed our room is still reserved at the Mennonite.” Ever the attentive planner, Ann was ready to get to the capital. Baby number two would be soon on its way and we needed a buffer period in the city to spare us a potentially hasty, six-hour delivery drive.

Of the city’s handful of guest houses, the Mennonite had become our favorite. We rolled up in our dingy-white Bug. The matron – Mrs. Hostetter, donning her small, white, circular head-piece – welcomed us. After a brief exchange, she excused herself with a smile, “Dinner is at 6:00. Enjoy your stay.”

***

“Jerry, we’d better get going.” Ann’s voice betrayed a familiar tone of two years earlier, signaling me to grab her small, shiny-red suitcase.

“OK, babe. Here we go!”

Late in the evening a nurse moved to my wife’s bedside.

“Mr. Buckley will be by to see you and your fine little boy, Mrs. Lout.”

This was a practice we still puzzle over. That it is only a fully-certified specialist who has his professional title elevated from ‘Doctor Buckley’ up to ‘Mr Buckley’. We were learning the British world of medicine, its language and meaning.

Mr. Buckley’s visits to Ann’s bedside were always gracious, informative, professional. In short, “spot on”.

In the Africa of the 1970’s and 80’s, post-delivery care for new mothers meant extended stays of bedrest. Several days after Scott Timothy came screaming from the womb, he and his mom left Nairobi Hospital. By then every nurse and several of the new moms had drawn him close.

We checked out and the four of us made the long drive back to our remote Kenya home. Only to return to Nairobi in three months, to the same hospital.

Ann must go under the surgeon’s knife. It was crucial.

November 3, 2017

Nairobi Heartbreak

I had shut the kerosene flow to the lanterns and, as typical on a Bukuria Mission night, we had fallen asleep by 11:00 p.m. and for an hour all was quiet. That changed.

Ann’s bursting cry of pain shocked me awake.

“Honey, what’s wrong, what is it?”

My dear wife, young and lovely – missionary mom to our toddler and our three-month infant – had bolted upright, seizing her midsection. The pain was searing. A few frightening moments and the surge of torture eased.

In a previous week Ann had already had a flare-up – similar to this, but not nearly so severe.

Soon as arrangements were made, our little foursome found our way out of Kuria-land, bound once more for Nairobi. Ann’s doctor in the capital had determined an inflamed gall bladder had likely been the culprit shooting torment through her abdomen.

Wearied by the trip of trailing behind smoke-belching buses and lorries at varying intervals along the two-lane road of the Great Rift Valley, we thankfully arrived at Mennonite Guest House. Ann would be admitted for surgery next morning. A day we would never forget.

November 20, 1974. As the hour-hand of the Nairobi hospital clock struck eight a.m. a Lufthansa 747 Jumbo Jet just 16 kilometers away, sped along a takeoff runway. The flight was to be the final segment of its Frankfurt – Nairobi – Johannesburg route. Seconds later, barely airborne, the aircraft dropped to earth. It’s tail broke apart. Fire spread to the fuselage when the left wing exploded.

A tragic day in aviation history for the East Africa nation. No airplane mishap in Kenya has brought more fatalities. Fifty-nine of the 157 passengers and crew died, many others suffering injuries, some with severe burns. It was the first-ever 747 crash resulting in lives lost. The cause, insufficient air lift due to mechanical issues.

“We will reschedule you, Mrs. Lout, once we learn more. At present, our staff are on alert for arriving casualties.”

Remarkably, my wife was called in for her surgery the following morning. After the gall-bladder removal she was granted permission to have her nursing son join her in the private room.

Our prayers these days carried a range of emotion. Heaviness for the bereaved and the injured of Flt 540, relief and thankfulness our family could journey again soon. Back to our upcountry home.

November 7, 2017November 7, 2017

Sandbox Showdown

Before, this afternoon I had never laid eyes on a spitting cobra. Not up close, not uncaged out in the wild. And clearly, not mere steps from my children’s sand box where they often played.

The serpent measured seven feet.

“Mpiga, Mpiga (stone it, stone it)!” Twenty children’s excited voices shattered the mission station’s quiet. They had come upon the snake as they were heading home, taking a short cut across our unfenced property.

Swinging the back screen door open, I took in the spectacle from our veranda.

“Looks like the school kids got an enemy in their sights, hon.”

At this point the serpent hadn’t moved into my view. On the other hand, the eyes of the clamorous nine-to-twelve-year olds, had stayed fixed, tracing the cobra’s every fleeting move before them. The snake raced slithering through foot-high grass, barely ahead of the children’s hail of ammo – sticks and stones – raining down.

The moment the cobra enter our grounds, I shouted, “Rafel!” The muscular young day-laborer rushed toward my voice. Seeing the danger – to the children, to all of us – he raced with his panga to a nearby tree. In seconds a limb plopped to the ground. Rafel alighted. Slashing swiftly again and again, he soon displayed an impressive club – long enough to go after the snake while, hopefully, staying short of its notorious venom shower.

Although our own children were safely indoors with their mother, a chill went over me as I witnessed one of Africa’s most feared slithering creatures swing about to face Rafel and me. I shivered at the knowledge that Julie and Scott’s sandbox lay two meters away in the shade of our backyard Flame Tree.

The forebody of the snake rose thirty inches from the ground’s surface, spread wide its menacing hood and shot a toxic stream of spray, thankfully short of its targets – the workman and me. It then turned and, spotting a fractured entrance-way into an abandoned chicken coop, slithered inside.

With more anxiety than either Rafael or I cared to claim, we heaved the door aside. The cobra’s head once again swung our direction. The snake moved from the far end of the little coop directly toward us, its speed fueled by the panic that drives any creature feeling trapped. We dare not block its exit. . . that would be nuts, for sure.

On our back lawn once again – and once again by the sand box – the cobra struck a motionless pose. It was the split second Rafel needed to take aim. The thicker end of the African’s club crashed to the reptile’s head. The aim was exact and the snake lay still but for its long body writhing some seconds.

The cheering primary school kids quieted, gradually dispersed, moving the direction of their thatched and tin-roofed homes.

I took little interest in Cobras or their skins for now. My lengthy, salt-crusted curing plank would lie undisturbed this day. It was enough for me that our two-year-old and four-year-old were each well. That the four of us would dine together tonight. Safe and undisturbed.

November 11, 2017

On A Hot Tin Roof

Clueless as to its structural soundness, we crouched low and crawled on – upward, higher – atop the old church roof. Then came the loud crack of splintering wood.

Bukuria Mission Station rested near the top of a long sloping hill. Well before my wife and daughter and I moved there a student dormitory fashioned of sun-baked earth had got converted into a house of worship. After years of use and aging, the church roof’s mabati (corrugated iron sheets original to the structure) needed replacing.

Phil Harmon, my Canadian friend from Suna Mission 25 miles away, offered help. Phil was a gifted craftsman on many fronts. We donned our carpentry aprons and I followed his lead.

“How about we start here at this end and work our way to the front, eh?”

Armed with a claw hammer, I fell in behind him. Up the ladder we went. We began wresting old nails from the rafters, taking care then to pass the rusting metal sheets to workers waiting below.

“I guess this wood under us is OK – you know, sturdy enough, not too termite-eaten.”

Now and then throughout the morning we felt movement, first my friend, then myself – a slight tremble along the old trusses – our only support preventing us plummeting downwards. The roof would creak. We would freeze in place, sometimes with a hammer just-poised to extract the next nail. Then cautiously proceed with our task.

Finally, the roof’s surface was uncovered, it’s purlins denuded, leaving no trace of tin sheets anywhere.

Phil and I maneuvered to the building’s wall-plate at its west end. Standing on it, he reached down. With a gloved hand my friend casually flipped free a stubby piece of loosely-braced two-by-four. I will never forget what followed.

The whole network of roofing, hundreds and hundreds feet of rafter and truss, instantly gave way. At the frightful splintering sound of lumber suddenly breaking apart, our two African helpers below lurched to the side for safety. The crash unleashed a rumbling boom. Dust came billowing all around. My Canadian bud and I breathed relief seeing the workers yet standing – their bodies hugged to the walls – clearly shaken, but intact.

Powderpost beetles, we later discovered, had been dining on the church’s canopy a good while, devouring the lumber, riddling it throughout with tiny pinholes.

In the crash’s aftermath, standing poised atop the wall, we silently took in the splintered crisscross of rubbish scattered before us ten feet below. Essentially a pile of sawdust lay there, material upon which we had entrusted our weight most all morning. At last Phil turned my way, releasing a low chuckle.

“Looks like we’re spared taking apart the frame.”

“Yeah, and seems a guardian angel or two got in some overtime today.”