(author's side note: I feel like a piece of American crap. I am attributing it to my period and all of the fruit that I have been eating, but it makes me so thankful for good old american drugs. Ahhh pharmacopaea.)
I am a cynic. I think the depth of my cynicism was fully revealed to me as we lurched along a series of ravines that someone thought to call a road, listening to optimistic christian banter about the inevitable success of god centeredness. It's not that I am anti-god. To the contrary, I am pro god and pro religion as long as it is getting something done, which in this case I guess it is, so I won't raise an issue. But I am still cynical. And I believe that there must be more than one way to skin the proverbial cat, or in this case, make a difference in war ravaged and parched villages. It really has nothing to do with believing in god. I believe just fine. I don't think this amazing world could have made itself on an accidental whim. But I am not convinced he is really all that interested in what we do to screw things up . He wound the top and set it spinning, and he's got a lot of crazy stuff to entertain him. Sure, he can raise people from the dead, flood the earth, part the seas, or he can (and usually does) not. Not to worry though, I am sure that he knows we can handle issues like overpopulation with our penchant for violence and filthy diseases. I am sure he figures he can sit back and wait for us to destroy the planet, melt the polar ice caps, annihilate civilization with nuclear holocaust, and then heave a big sigh and watch earth regenerate itself as it was so brilliantly designed to do. All the while future Noahs and their descendants will be writing down a bunch of superstitious rituals that they will be able to sell as absolutes, since, being survivors, obviously they have an "in" with the big man.
All of that religious falderal aside Felix took Carolyn and I out to the projects that MTI has been working on since April. Three clinic/maternity wards, all funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and a youth center, which, in Africa, is actually an HIV/AIDS clinic. Felix is a mover and a shaker. He has accomplished all of this after returning from a fundraising trip in March. This is where I see god - specific people who will take action for their own land and people.
This morning we had lunch with Felix and David, the clinical officer, David told us that while most of the IDP camps have been disbanded, there are still armed land mines and hand grenades floating randomly throughout the war torn north country. He told us the story of a person in a village who found a mine, claimed it as scrap metal and attempted to pound it into a compressed and sell able form. He detonated it, killing himself and 8 others. David also told a story of two children playing catch with a grenade. It went off and incinerated both children and injured several others. These are daily realities that we cannot imagine in the US.
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