DIY Home Projects: Opposable Thumbs Optional

I have no fear of tackling light do-it-yourself projects around my home. My fearlessness is completely inexplicable, considering that each time I try one of these projects, it turns into a cross between episodes of I Love Lucy and Home Improvement. The stories I could tell are legion, but I will focus on today's DIY project.

More than a year ago, I bought the materials to install a simple shelf on the wall behind my couch. They have sat there, collecting dust, right next to the couch all that time because there were always more pressing things to do. But finally, the time came to do it. That means that I had another project to do (a work project) that I didn't want to do even more than I didn't want to try hanging that shelf. So, faced with a truly odious task, it was now time to take a “few minutes” to install that long-overdue sofa shelf.

I moved the couch, which is way heavier than it looks, by the way, away from the wall, creating a space slightly smaller than what I could comfortably wedge my cetacean form into. But, with some effort, I was able to get back there, I just couldn't move after I was there. I had thought ahead to get out my cordless screwdriver (my Aunt Jo always says, “All of my screwdrivers are cordless.”), but it is also a drill, and I needed both. I took a pencil and measuring tape with me as well. I usually also bring all sorts of rulers, levels, and my fancy electronic stud finder along for jobs like this, too, but I decided to try a different approach today. I have found that, after employing all of these devices, I end up getting things crooked and drilling about six holes more than are needed. What I mean is, I drill six holes that have to be redrilled because I got them in the wrong place after all of my careful measuring and leveling. I couldn't even find the stud finder today. It's okay, since it didn't work anyway. I used it several times, but I never did find a good-looking guy to do these DIY projects for me. Ha ha. The truth is, in my entire home, there appear to be about a total of 13 studs. There will be two in a space of eight inches, and then not another for the next six feet. It's completely random and incomprehensible. And I really never did figure out how the electronic stud finder with an echolocation system worked. I never once successfully located a stud with it. And I mean, the kind that are inside the walls.

So, my new approach was this: Just eyeball where the metal shelf support strips should go, mark the screw holes with the pencil, drill, and screw them in. I really couldn't imagine that I could come out any worse with this guesstimation method than I've done in the past with all of the proper tools. So, half-crouching between the wall and the couch, barely able to reach down far enough to drill the hole closest to the floor, I hit the trigger on the drill. Nothing happened. It had lost its charge. I plugged it in and tried again. ErrrErrrErrrrrrr...and then it stopped. I had to leave the whole job for awhile to give the drill time to recharge. This is the problem with these “cordless” tools. Mine get used so infrequently that they have to be charged every single time I need them. I moved to get out from behind the couch, barely touched the container of carefully sorted screws that I had set precariously on the back of the couch, and they plummeted to the floor, leaving not even one screw in the container. I huffed about that but didn't even feel moved to swear at the screws (whose fault this obviously was).

After picking up the screws and dumping them, unsorted, back into the container, I went about my other business while giving the drill time to recharge. Now, during this time, my two cats were in distress. You see, the back of the couch is their favorite place to hang out and take long naps. Especially if I'm on the couch, which I usually am. But here was their favorite piece of furniture, pulled away from the wall, with a shelf running the length of the cushions, and tools strewn all along their usual resting place. They kept jumping up to check things out, and left in disappointment over the upheaval they found there. Arthur finally just lay on top of the drill and settled in for his nap. Arthur could sleep on broken glass and concertina wire.

Finally, the drill was suitably charged, and I got back to my project. I hung the first metal strip (the kind with holes in it that a bracket fits into that holds the shelf). I had three strips to hang, and each one had three holes for screws. Nine total, so this would take no time at all. I went back to my pencil marks, drilled the holes, and starting screwing the first strip onto the wall, starting with the bottom hole first. However, I had somehow mismarked the top hole. I then realized that I should have just marked the top hole, screwed it on, and then the strip would hang straight and I could put the rest of the screws in with no trouble at all. Except for the part where my rather considerable girth barely allowed me to reach the bottom hole. So, with only one out of three holes having to be redrilled, I moved onto the second strip. I did better this time, by starting at the top. It turned out that I didn't even need the drill because there were no studs to be found behind the soft surface of the drywall, so that even I was able to just run the screws in with a screwdriver with almost too much ease. I got the second strip in also with only one misplaced hole. It looked like I was going to come in well under par on unnecessary holes in the wall.

Now, if I could have stepped back to review my work, I would have immediately seen the problem. But, what with being tightly wedged into my workspace, stepping back was not an option. On I went to installing the third and final strip. I got it hung with great ease and not a single extra hole! By this time, I was at the end of the couch, so I was able to look down the wall at the other strips. The one I'd just done and the middle one were fine. But the first one! Good lord! Imagine a clock face. The top of the strip should have been at twelve o'clock, with the bottom at six o'clock. But the top of the strip was at about 1:45! With it lining up straight with the floor at the bottom, how could I have possibly gotten so far off by the time I got to the top? So, I had to redrill the middle and top holes yet again.

The cats had continued to patrol around the couch, like so many sharks circling a surfing championship. As I redrilled the final holes, I said out loud to Arthur and Molly, “You all have no idea what I'm doing, do you?” It then occurred to me that I had no idea what I was doing either. In fact, the cats might have been able to think this job out just as well as I had. This made me laugh out loud, which only added to their perception that I'd gone off my rocker, I'm sure.

You may think that I should have placed the shelf below the back of the couch,
but that part was not by accident. I had several reasons for placing it where I did.
So, it turned out exactly as I had hoped it would.

So, having taken just five times longer (or so) than I'd anticipated, the job was done. And, as my DIY projects go, it came in well under par not only in unnecessary holes in the wall, but also in temper tantrums. And the shelf looks pretty darned good, I must say.

The Aftermath

[This is the final installment in a six-part series. If you haven't read the previous parts, I suggest that you go back to November 9 and start at the beginning, as each part builds on the next.]

Help arrived immediately. Out of the darkness, a beam of light shone toward our struggle and a rough voice shouted, “What’s going on?” as a person ran through the darkness toward us. My screams had somewhat arrested my attackers, and this voice and light and physical presence in immediate answer stopped them entirely. I was able to break away from the grip of the two who were holding me. By this time, others were arriving from the prayer hut with more yells. In my eagerness to escape my attackers, I’m afraid I left my rescuers on their own. I jumped past them and ran down a path toward the gazebo. As soon as I saw that I was safe, I started crying. My niece, Kaye's daughter Bethany, was the first person coming toward me on the path. It was such a relief to see someone familiar and to realize that I was safe and unharmed, and then I had adrenaline coursing through my body and became so shaky I could barely walk. By this time, there were several people around me (all strangers but Bethany), and everyone was asking me questions and wanting me to get checked by a doctor, but all I wanted was to sit down and be left alone, or with just Kaye and Bethany. I kept telling them I was okay. They finally stopped insisting that I see a doctor. I had so many feelings – thankful for God’s deliverance, glad to be alive, embarrassed about causing a scene, and just trying to calm down from defense mode. I was completely overwhelmed by it all. I looked at my left leg, and though I had known that the kid wasn’t cutting me, I almost couldn’t believe that there was no blood. I was alive. And well.

My “guardian angel,” was Karen (from Texas). Hers was an amazing story of listening to the still, small voice of the Spirit and obeying, even when it seemed ridiculous.

Karen was pretty close by–-about 20 feet, maybe–-and as soon as she heard me scream, she knew that that was it, that’s what she was there for. She sprinted to the bench, flashlight shining. I think that the excitement–and yelling while running–made her voice sound rough, deep, male, all of which was enough to startle my attackers long enough for me to get away. Anyway, by the time that she had startled them, men were pouring out of the gazebo and running our way, and the banditos could see that they were finished.

After the attack, as I sat and calmed down, Karen and others prayed over me, which was very comforting. Some prayed in tongues, which I was beginning to get used to, but I still found a little discomfitting. Still, I really appreciated their prayers, and I was keenly aware of God’s presence, protection, and provision in that moment.

Afterward I learned that the men who had come running up from the gazebo chased after the three banditos, who ran for the wall. The banditos just barely made it over the wall before our guys could catch them, so they got away. I was glad for them.

That might sound strange, given the circumstances, but I really was glad that they got away. I had seen what even the little children of Pomba did to adults many times their size and strength who were even suspected of a crime, such as stealing. They pelted them with the heaviest rocks they could pick up and launch. They especially went for the head (and they had good aim). Once the culprit was down, everyone would descend on him, kicking, scratching, biting. It did not matter whether he had been proved guilty of his “crime.” He was guilty by accusation and by his reputation. If either seemed a credible proof of his guilt, he received his punishment publicly, by the people who knew him best.

These young men who attacked me: they are the hopeless ones. The ones in the generations skipped over during the hard years, who received no education, no parenting, nothing but hardness and bitterness and hopelessness. I could not hate them. I prayed for them then, and I pray for them still. I will never know what became of them—whether they're alive or dead now. But I do believe that prayer offered in love is better for a person than a rock upside the head, so I still pray for these young men; that they will see some love, some gentleness, some understanding in the world around them. I believe that God changes people. I believe that no one is beyond God's reach.

Epilogue: Our Last Day at Pomba

Kaye and I were in the visitors’ compound when someone came in saying that there was a fire in the prayer garden, and we all needed to bring as much water as we could carry. I grabbed a box of two-liter bottles and ran out. The brush field behind the garden had been set on fire by a resident kid, who apparently did it on purpose. By the time I got out there, this fire had covered a large area and was ready to really take off in the tall, dry grass of the field. It wasn’t immediately dangerous to life and limb, since it went out as soon as the grass burned up, but it was spreading fast, burning in an ever-widening circle, as it searched for more grass to consume. The one thing that was in harm’s way was a little prayer chapel at the back of the garden. I don’t know whether there was anything else important that it might have burned if allowed to go. Of course, as it grew, and its outer edges grew wider, it took more people to try to patrol its borders to put it out. There were dozens of us, running around the edges, throwing water on it from anything we could carry. I then saw that the Africans were beating it with green branches from bushes and trees. I knew that theirs was a better way to do it. I didn’t have my knife on me, but I was finally able to wrest some little green, leafy branches from a nearby bush. My beater was far more effective than my water bottles had been, though eventually even the green leaves burned up. By the time the fire was out, my little branches were leafless. We did get it put out, but it had burned an area of maybe three-quarters of an acre. It stopped short of the prayer chapel.

While we were putting the fire out, dozens of villagers, hearing all of the commotion from the Pomba side of the wall, had hoisted themselves up and were sitting, lined up along the top of the wall, laughing, shouting, jeering, looking like they were having a good time watching us scorch our sandaled little feet while trying to put this fire out. As far as I know, none of the villagers jumped down and came over to help, but I can’t say for sure. It just seemed like they were enjoying themselves, and the laughter and shouting felt a lot like they were cheering for the fire. I felt discouraged by their apparent glee over their neighbor’s misfortune.

On the other hand, I myself was glad that the grass had burned. To me it felt like the hand of God, sending his refining fire to burn up a wicked and dark place. No one would be able to use that grass as a cover for their evil purposes for a while.   

Part V: What Came Next

[This is part five in a six-part series. If you haven't read the previous parts, I suggest that you go back to November 9 and start at the beginning, as each part builds on the next.]

After I had sat awhile in the garden, three young men, ranging in age from maybe 16 to 24, came up the walkway from the direction of the prayer gazebo. They came up to my bench and hung around, speaking in their tribal language, with just a smattering of Portuguese thrown in. I tried to ignore them at first, but they were really being annoying. They also made me feel uncomfortable. We have been warned over and over about the banditos–on the beach, on roadways, in town. One of our roommates–a long-term Pomba student–had been mugged in town on Tuesday, and had had her backpack stolen. They have warned us to carry as little as possible, not carry a purse or pack if we could help it, but we have been told that the Pomba compound, especially the part farthest from the front gate, is safe, so I had felt completely unconcerned about going off alone into the dark to pray. But I didn’t feel comfortable with these guys there, so I decided to leave.

I got up and walked about five feet away –- and then the Celt rose up, and he said, “NO. I am not going to run out of a quiet, prayerful place by people who are clearly not here to pray.” These guys were too old to be Pomba kids-–at least two of them were. But there are all of these young guys who hang out in Pomba and no one seems to mind. They are deemed safe by the staff. Maybe they’re members of the congregation. They could have been workers or visiting pastors (there for the conference), so I didn’t want to be rude to them, but I really didn’t feel like they were there for legitimate reasons. I suddenly wanted to stay and see if I could make them feel ashamed for disturbing a place of God. I also wanted to be able to describe them to Mark (the staff guy in charge of visitors) the next day since I suspected that they weren’t supposed to be there. So, I stopped, turned around and looked long and hard at each one individually. When I got to the third one (the leader), he said, “What is it ‘mana?” (They call all women ‘mana, short for hermana, sister, but they also call women older than themselves “mama” or “mommy,” so I wasn’t sure which one he was saying.)

I said, “Did you come here to pray?”

There was no answer, but a general befuddlement on their part. Finally, one of them said, “what?”

I said, “This is a prayer garden. A place of prayer. I came here to pray. What did you come here for?”

The leader said, “We live here.”

I didn’t know whether that was true, though I doubted it. “Did you come here to pray?” I repeated.

They didn’t answer but shifted uncomfortably. Finally, the smallest one (possibly a kid in his mid-teens) mumbled something like “yeah,” and even seemed to try to take on a prayerful attitude, somewhat bowing his head. The other two continued to just seem confused by my questions. It was quite dark by now, with the only light coming from the prayer gazebo, about 50 feet away. I was standing with my back to the light at the time, with the light on their faces, so I could see them relatively well.

And now is when I did something inexplicably stupid, something that went against my intuition and reason and better judgment. The only explanation I can offer is that the Celt rose up at this moment, saying, “It’s not right. You shouldn’t have to leave. They should leave. They don’t belong here. You do. You were talking to God in this place, and you shouldn’t have to leave.” (One of the more pious Celts on the planet, apparently.)

And so – it pains me to even put this in writing – I marched back to the bench and sat back down, on the end opposite them. My thought was to shame them for disturbing a place of God and to make them either pray (or pretend to) or leave. Two of them were already sitting, and then the other one sat down. So now I had these three fidgeting young men sitting next to me on this bench in the dark. I was uncomfortable, but the Celt was still there enough that I wasn’t really afraid. I had said I was there to pray, so I began to pray, silently–-but with my eyes open!-–for these three young men. I prayed that God would turn hearts of stone to hearts of flesh and that God’s Holy Spirit would pour down on them and fill their empty places, leaving room for nothing else. They sat in silence, with the leader closest to me on my right. They were probably trying to decide whether I was crazy. I think that in most cultures, even violent ones, a lot of latitude is given to crazy people and they are often left alone by thugs who prefer easier and more rational prey.

After about a minute and a half of silence, the leader says, “Hey, mommy.”

“Yes?”

“Give me the bag.” It sounded conversational, not demanding or threatening. It was almost like a suggestion.

“The bag?” I didn’t know what he meant.

“Yes. Give me the bag,” he said quietly, tossing his head back, pointing his chin in my direction, and that’s when I realized that he meant the small pack I had fastened around my waist.

I’ve had a lot of training in practicing sensitivity toward the cultures I’ve visited. We are usually taught about the accepted practices, friendly gestures, and taboos among the people we are going to meet. We’d been told that most Mozanians feel no shame in casually asking Westerners for anything–from our watches to our money to the clothes on our backs–and they’ll do this even upon first meeting us. You just have to get used to it and learn to turn them down in a kind, cheerful way. However, in this case, though the leader was using a calm conversational tone, I was definitely aware of my situation: alone on a bench in the dark with three young men, two of whom were my size or larger. The threat was there, though unspoken.

I turned my head toward him, looked him straight in the eye, and said very firmly and clearly, “No.” I suspected he would not like this answer, so I got up to leave. My plan was to walk confidently away, toward the light and activity of the prayer hut, but I stumbled on an uneven place in the big flat rock that had been used as a platform for the bench.

All three of them were up in an instant, grabbing for me. One grabbed my bag, which I think they didn’t realize was attached securely to my waist. Had it been on my shoulder, they would have had it and been gone. I reached out to try to defend myself, push them away, and get away when another one grabbed the upper part of my right arm and started pulling on me.

The one with my arm and the one with my pack were the leader and the other big guy, though I don’t know which one was where. The smaller guy was on my left and I didn’t consider him a serious threat. That was, until he pulled a machete out and swung it high over our heads, and then it came down towards me, toward my left thigh.

I cannot really capture what was going through my head. There was this calm, rational part of me observing the situation and thinking, “You can handle this. Just stop the kid with the machete.” Yet another part of my brain was thinking, “This is bad. You might not get out of this. This kid could chop your leg off. You could bleed to death!” And yet I didn’t feel panicky. I felt a completely irrational sense that I was still somewhat in control of the situation and might be able to get away, as long as I could stop the kid with the machete.

The machete would go up in the air, and I would see it silhouetted against the moonlit night sky, hanging above my head, just before he would swing it down and, with a loud “thwap,” it would make contact with my leg. I kept trying to grab his machete arm. Even with the one guy tugging on my right arm and the other one pulling on my pack, I felt like I could take on the kid with the machete and get it away from him if I could just catch his arm. I kept seeing the machete go up into the air, then swing back down toward my leg. The Celt was with me, and I felt strangely calm, rational, like a Celt calculating how best to defend himself against each enemy he meets in battle. The kid hit my leg, hard, at least four times, and each time, I thought, “This could be the one that severs an artery, and you will die.” But each time, as he struck, I realized that he had hit with the broad side of the blade, not the sharp edge, and I was unharmed (mostly). This is what made me feel like I could take him on. As long as I wasn’t cut and bleeding, it wasn’t too late, and I could grab his arm, twist it, and make him drop the machete. But after the first four blows, and while grappling with the other two guys – whom I wasn’t even looking at or really even thinking about now because my full attention was fixed on the machete and the arm that wielded it – I began to think, “This is a very serious situation. I think I need help. But how can I get help, when I can’t get away?”

And then my earlier thought came to me. It takes a lot more conscious thought to scream in a situation like this than I had ever imagined. I had always thought that screaming was a natural and instinctive reaction to a scary situation, but it is not; at least, it’s not for me. But in a completely calm and unfearful way, I screamed at the top of my lungs three times.  

Part IV: The Listener

[This is part four in a six-part series. If you haven't read the previous parts, I suggest that you go back to November 9 and start at the beginning, as each part builds on the next.]

The young woman from the States had been in the prayer service in the gazebo when she heard a still, small voice–-a voice that was both outside of her yet inside her head-–tell her to get up and go outside, which she did. The Spirit then directed her to a park bench near the one that I would choose a little later. Unknown to me, she was the person who was sitting on the first bench that I had come to when I was trying to find a place to be alone. The Spirit’s voice also directed her very clearly to put the hood of her jacket up, over her head, and to hold her headlamp in her hand, with her finger on the switch, hidden inside her folded arms. So, she sat there on her bench, the shadow created by the hood obscuring her face, flashlight in hand, praying, “Now what, Lord?” The answer: “Wait.”

While she waited, three young men approached her bench, surrounded her, speaking in a language she didn’t know. They came to her bench three times. And three times they went away, leaving her alone. She thought that they were casing her, but the hood protecting her face left them unsure whether she was male or female. What sealed it was that she had no bag or pack–nothing that looked like it might hold valuables–so they left her alone. The final time that they came to her bench, she prayed, “Lord, if they are not of you, send them away,” and they left. Sitting there in the dark, praying, listening for the voice of the Spirit and open to whatever it spoke to her, she was placed and ready for whatever was to come next.

Part III: The Celt

[This is part three in a six-part series. If you haven't read the previous parts, I suggest that you go back to November 9 and start at the beginning, as each part builds on the next.]

Does everyone have this thing that lives inside of them, this thing that gets riled up when they are pushed too far, a thing that finally rears up and says, “No. I will not take this.” I’m assuming that everyone does. We probably explain it away as adrenaline or the instinct to flee or fight when faced with danger. 

However, I feel like, for me, this thing is not a mere instinct. It has a personality. It lies dormant most of the time and has often let me deal with risk on my own, when I would very much like for it to be present. It decides on its own when to come and help me and when to sleep.

I call it The Celt. As a matter of fact, I should admit that I call him The Celt, because there has never been any doubt in my mind that he is male. He is an ancient Irish Celt that courses through my blood, an echo of a long-forgotten ancestor. He is wild, he is almost nonverbal, he doesn’t have any use for the niceties of modern life. If he walked on his own through my usual day, he would leave a swath of destroyed electronics, twisted machinery, and injured people behind him. He is really a fairly unpleasant fellow: squinting suspiciously at everyone, dark hair hanging in near dreadlocks across his broad forehead. He carries a number of large weapons whose purpose is clearly to kill, not to just stop, his attackers, and I can tell from long acquaintance with him that he uses these weapons offensively as often as he does defensively. He smells bad. I doubt he’s ever immersed himself in water for any purpose other than ambush. He is generally in a foul humor, and it’s best to just leave him alone. Which I do.

But I have this one great advantage with him. He lives inside me, so my survival is of prime importance to him. In that sense, he is quite solicitous toward me. He is kind of like the big dogs that live around me on the farm. As far as I can tell, they are unaware of or apathetic toward my presence. But if a visitor–-it wouldn’t even have to be a stranger-–seemed to be poised to harm me, those dogs would go for that person’s jugular. The dogs don’t love me; they are simply bound to me by some sense of family that I do not understand. The farm dogs would even defend me to their deaths. I have no doubt about this. The Celt is one of those dogs; our bond is blood, even if we are separated by centuries. He may not love me in the way that we think about love. But he would die for me.

There are two kinds of people that The Celt hates more than any others: bullies and bureaucrats. And when I get pushed around by either one, The Celt boils to the surface with a speed that frightens me. His eyes turn to slits, his nostrils flare, he hefts his axe with his right hand, bouncing its haft in his left hand, feeling its weight, rubbing the sharp edge with his thumb in delicious anticipation of the mayhem he is about to loose upon these weak, puling moderns who had the gall to offend his family, his blood. He stands between me and my enemy, ready to do whatever it takes to protect me.

Whatever happens next usually becomes one in a long list in the book titled, Not Some of My Prouder Moments. Don’t get me wrong. I appreciate The Celt’s efforts on my behalf. I really do. But there aren’t many ancient Celts left. They don’t understand guns and Tasers. They really don’t “get” lawyers and courts and the American judicial system. They know only their own narrowly defined limits of right and wrong. They know Justice, but the nuances embodied in the realm of Law escape them. One cannot pound a lawyer right at the crown of his skull with the rather considerable end of the haft of one’s rough iron sword, rendering the man dead or comatose, without immediate consequences.

Bureaucrats are just bullies in white collars or slightly rumpled uniforms who wield rules and procedure instead of guns or maces. Merciless longtime “civil servants” at the DMV are not swayed by my plight, even if this is my 18th visit and I took a number three hours ago. They have nothing invested in serving me. If they skip me, there will still be plenty of other cattle to call. And when it’s break time or quitting time, they will clack down their “Closed: see next bureaucrat” sign and leave, with absolutely no mercy for the despondent faces of the beleaguered masses huddled at their counters. I can tell that they take a certain kind of glee in this—schadenfreude, I guess, knowing that we may have many advantages over them, but this, this one thing, they have over us. The DMV is their world and they rule it with iron fists. They are bullies. But they have the law on their side, and if The Celt shows his temper in their domain, you will spend what seems like an eternity in DMV purgatory. Worse, if The Celt goes berserk when dealing with bureaucrats, you–the physical body that houses him–will pay dire consequences. So, I must keep The Celt at bay, even if it takes sedatives, when I am in the presence of bureaucrats. 

But, now, the other sort of bullies: common thugs, mean kids, what have you. Bullies understand The Celt. Bullies know the world from which The Celt comes. They understand the forces that made him. Bullies–-who are really just armed cowards--quake in the presence of The Celt, leaving a pool of urine around the Air Jordans that they stole off their last victim. I have found that The Celt is a quite useful presence when faced with bullies, because bullies fear and respect living, breathing, barely-contained violence that is informed by conscience rather than greed or power. They believe and live by the maxim that might makes right, but what they don’t understand is that when Right has might, less-pure motives such as their own fall away, and they had better head for the hills.

Part II: The Garden

[This is part two in a six-part series. If you haven't read the previous parts, I suggest that you go back to November 9 and start at the beginning, as each part builds on the next.]

The prayer garden at Pomba is beautiful; it occupies a small hill, with terraced gardens and lots of meandering walkways, dotted with solitary benches. One can always find a quiet place to sit and meditate, read, or pray in the garden. The garden and visitors’ compound are the only two places on the base where Pomba kids are not allowed to go. Ever. Under any circumstance. Pemba villagers are also not allowed in these areas, althought–unlike the Pomba residents–they are also barred from the children’s compounds and some other areas of the larger compound.

Don’t get me wrong. The children at Pomba can be a delight, and we visitors love to spend hours a day with them, talking (though we might not share a language), laughing, coloring, crafting, playing, and eating. The favorite of the littlest ones, though, is to just be held. Many have never known a mother’s touch, and the need for it flows out of them almost visibly. Any visitor who sits still for even a moment will end up with a small child in his or her lap.

But for Westerners who are used to “down time,” to self-imposed solitude, to shutting the doors of their homes at the end of the workday, closing out all but the most intimate members of their families, the constant crowds, the constant “being with,” the constant noise, and, frankly, the constant need of everyone around them becomes overwhelming. We must have someplace to retreat to, and that is why the visitors’ compound and the prayer garden are enforced by compound security as for Visitors Only.

One evening, toward the end of our stay at La Pomba, our group was on its way back to the visitors’ compound when we saw that there was something going on at the prayer hut, which is a very large gazebo in the prayer garden. Our group leader, Kaye, was in the lead, and she wandered over to see what all of the music, voices, light, and movement were about. The girls followed, and one by one, they went in. It was a large–and loud–prayer service, which is common in this particular branch of Christianity.

I wanted to pray but I felt like I really needed some quiet time with God. I wanted to pray in solitude, not in the circus. I guess I needed that door that I could close to shut out the crowds. I stood on the walkway outside the prayer hut, watching the rest of our group go into the service, and considered going back to our room in the visitors’ compound, but I knew that even there, it would be crowded and noisy. I set out in search of a bench I could have to myself. I liked the idea of being near enough to the prayer service to absorb some of its energy but far enough away from it to not be distracted by it.

On my way to a bench, I saw some strange activity in the garden, but I didn’t dwell on it. It seemed like there were people in the prayer garden who shouldn’t be there. I went to the bench closest to the hut, but someone was already there, in an attitude of prayer, so I went on. The next bench, at about the highest point in the garden, was free, so I took it. I often pray with my eyes open, so I still found the light and noise from the gazebo a little distracting. I turned away from it and continued praying.

I also continued to be aware of odd activity in the garden, though I was trying to stay focused on praying. I had seen a number of shadowy figures walking around in the back of the garden, which is just a big field that they aren’t using yet and haven’t cleared. It has high grass, small bushes, and a few trees. It’s an excellent hiding place if you want to go sneaking around. It appeared to me that several of the older children who lived at Pomba were doing exactly that. The wall that separates the ministry from the village was about 20 feet away, with a big baobab tree in front of it. At that point, the wall is low enough that just about any person in reasonably good shape could get themselves over it. I got the idea that Pomba kids and village kids were meeting up in the bushes, and I couldn’t imagine that it was for any good purpose. As I was aware of all of this shady activity going on behind me, I had the odd thought, “What if something bad happened? What should I do?” And the thought came to me, “You should scream.” But this was a fleeting thought, and I didn’t dwell on it. Instead, I tried to make myself focus on praying. I had seen four people walk along the farthest back edge of the garden, one at a time, and carefully spaced out so that it didn’t look as if they were together, but they all headed toward the wall. Once they disappeared behind the baobab tree, I didn’t see them again. Later, three people emerged from the same spot, again, carefully separating themselves in time and space, so that they looked like they were alone. If they were some of the same ones who had gone behind the tree originally, the fourth one never emerged. I just had the sense that something very dark was going on back there. I prayed.

Part I: The Dove

What better way to start the all-new content to my Long, Involved Stories blog than with a story so long that it has to be told in a series? And, to make sense of the end of this series, you really do need to read all of the installments (there will be six, I think).

Disclosure: Much of this story will talk about spiritual matters. And I look at spiritual matters through the lens of Christian faith. I’m just telling you that now in case you are really put off by that kind of thinking and/or belief and/or delusion (depending on how you view it).

But, before you quit reading, let me quote one of my favorite movies of all time, The Princess Bride. This is at the very beginning, as the grandfather is about to read the book to his grandson.

Grandson: Has it got any sports in it?

Grandpa: Are you kidding? Fencing, fighting, torture, revenge, giants, monsters, chases, escapes, true love, miracles...

Grandson: Doesn't sound too bad. I'll try to stay awake.

Grandpa: Oh, well, thank you very much, very nice of you. Your vote of confidence is overwhelming.

So, I will tell you this. There are no sports in this story, but there is “fencing (sort of; okay, kind of a stretch, but you shall see), fighting, a murderous ancient Celt, bandits, prayer, chases, escapes, true love, and definitely miracles.”

You have been informed.

The Dove

I was with a group of women from my church (most of them young-–high school or college age–-with two older “chaperones”–-our group leader and me), visiting a large, well-organized ministry in an African nation, which I will call Mozwandania here, so as not to bring undeserved judgment on the people of the country, who have already felt the judgment of colonialism, followed by a long civil war that led to the destruction of what little infrastructure they’d once enjoyed. The war was accompanied by a decade-long drought that had destroyed not only their crops but by now had turned their fields, their livelihoods, and their dreams into dust. And then came “that awful disease” whose name they do not speak because of the way it has ravaged their population.

The people who started this ministry had been in ministry in Asia but had begun praying for God to lead them to the poorest, most hopeless place on earth. They landed in Mozwandania, which not only met their request but was also, at the time, deemed to be the most violent country in the world. (Tragically, it has now been superceded not once, but a number of times, by other countries-–most of them on the same continent.) Currently, the median age of Mozwandanian males is 16.2, which belies the male life-expectancy age, at birth, of 51 years. This discrepancy is due to the high rate of violence-related deaths among young men between the ages of about 16 to 30.

In Pemba, a large city near the country’s eastern border, the ministry’s leaders found all that they had prayed for. As they’d done in Asia, they went out to the streets and to the garbage dumps, seeking the most vulnerable of the population: the poorest of the poor, the sick, the street children, the very old (40-plus in Mozwandania would make one a candidate for AARP). They found what they were looking for. They also found land upon which to start building an orphanage and other service buildings. They located it right at the edge of the city’s worst slum. They took in orphans who picked through the garbage for food scraps, old women widowed and left childless by violence and disease. They would feed anyone who came to their gates, with no demands, expectations, or obligations. To protect the identity of the ministry, I will refer to them as La Pomba en la Pemba–Portuguese for “The Dove in Pemba”–because they prayed for it to be a place of peace, overflowing with the presence of the Spirit of God.

At the time of my visit, La Pomba had been in Pemba for about 20 years. They now had a large compound that housed about 58 orphans (who lived in age- and gender-specific compounds as regulated by the government), 32 widows who typically lived in the village on the other side of Pomba’s compound walls but who spent their days in job training or working inside the compound. A number of other ministries are taking place daily inside Pomba’s walls, and the place bustles with people and activity. On any given day, there are probably about 150 or more people—residents, staff, and visitors—inside the gates. At 6:00 p.m., anyone who does not live within the compound or is an official guest of the ministry, goes home and the gates are closed for the night.

The children who live at Pomba are free to come and go to the lake and “beach” across the street from their compound or to wander through the villages that cling to three of the compound’s walls. That is, they are free to do so when they are not in school or doing their assigned chores. Most of them have friends or family members (aunties, uncles, cousins, and such) whom they visit in the villages. Pomba children can be easily distinguished from village children, they are clean (they bathe every morning), they are in clothes that are not in rags, and they are well fed. Also, unlike about 95 percent of the country’s children, they attend school regularly.

At the risk of this sounding like a marketing piece meant to tug at your heartstrings (and open your purse strings), I will point out yet another difference between Pomba children and Pemba children. It is a subtle thing, and it doesn’t develop overnight. Make no mistake, these children have experienced every sort of privation, abuse, and pain. They do not give in quickly to daily meals, clean clothes, and baths. Last to develop–to believe that these things might last–is trust. But after they’ve been in Pomba’s care–usually for a long time–something new comes to live in their eyes. It is called hope.

Why I Eat Out

The hunger pangs were getting worse, and I had come to realize the horrible truth: I’m going to have to prepare a meal at home. Again. So, I cast about in my refrigerator, and found some macaroni and cheese left over from the last time that this had happened. It was fresh (meaning it was not fuzzy and didn’t smell funny), so I decided to warm it up.

Okay, I know that all of the women in my family--being good Southern cooks--make great macaroni and cheese, and I have been raised to know better, but I have to admit that I really like Kraft Macaroni and Cheese. Not the store brands, not any other kind; it really does have to be Kraft. And it’s really good; at least, it's good the night that you make it. Creamy and cheesy; just delicious. Then you go to warm it up and it turns into these greasy little vinyl flooring samples (only vinyl flooring is probably a little tastier). It’s not so good warmed up; it's chewy, greasy, dried out, and not even very cheesy-tasting. At least not unless you doctor it up a bit by adding more cheese. Most of the time, I don’t bother, because it’s work and I don’t like work. So, usually, I eat the vinyl flooring and don’t think too much about it. But, sometimes, I go that extra mile and add some cheese to it. This takes time because you have to do a lot of stuff first. You have to figure out whether you have any cheese, you have to find it in the fridge, you have to get it out, unwrap it, cut off the mold or the part that has turned into a very hard, clearish kind of plastic, and then you have to cut it up. All of this before you even put it into a pan and melt it and stir the leftover macaroni and cheese in with it.

The best thing is if you have some Velveeta and you melt that. That’s perfect. Cheddar cheese, while tasty for many other purposes, is not so good for this, for reasons that you’re about to discover, if you don’t already know.

I didn’t have any Velveeta. I had some cheddar, though. So, even though I knew that I had tried this in the past and that there was some reason that alarms were going off in my brain, saying, “Don’t do it! It’s a Bad Idea!” I couldn’t remember precisely what the problem was, so I persevered. I knew that melted cheddar is not very creamy, so I thought, “That’s okay, I’ll add some milk to it. That will make it a nice, creamy, cheesy sauce.”

I poured milk into the pan. About this much (not a whole lot). Then, I cut up the cheddar cheese (also not a whole lot) into little cubes and plunked them into the milk. I turned the burner on about medium. Often, these things don’t go well because, in my impatience to get on with it, I use too high a heat setting. But this time, I was willing to be patient. The cheese began to melt nicely. The grease was released from the cheese, turning the milk yellow. Well, that was okay, it was all going to end up a nice, orangey-yellow, creamy cheese sauce eventually, anyway. Besides, the milk absorbed the grease, so that the cheese wasn’t greasy and globby-looking like that commercial they used to have on TV. Do you know the commercial I mean? It was really disgusting. The advertiser, which was, in fact, Velveeta was trying to show consumers how much nicer processed cheese was than cheddar cheese. They compared how the two products looked when melted, and then they demonstrated how each melted product poured over something. The melted Velveeta poured smoothly and creamily and evenly over whatever you wanted to pour it on. It looked delicious. The cheddar fell in greasy, sickening globs onto the poor, hapless food victim that you had chosen for it to fall on. It looked disgusting. Because of that commercial, I became the only NASA bedrest test subject ever to throw up while immersed in the vacuum chamber and with electrodes hooked up to every inch of her body. It was quite interesting. But I digress.

Melted cheddar cheese is a yucky thing, unless, of course, you are clever, and you are melting it into milk to make a lovely, creamy sauce. Good thing I’m so clever. As the cheese began to melt, I began stirring it gently with a wooden spoon. Things were going along pretty well. I had melted cheese, I had yellow milk, I could see that at just any moment now the two were going to discover one another and blend as one into a creamy sauce.

I stirred. I stirred and stirred. The cheese was definitely melted now. There was no denying that. But why wasn’t it blending into the milk? In fact, the two were managing to remain as two quite discrete and disparate groups within the pan. There were little colonies of melted cheese, surrounded by a pool of yellow milk. I stirred for all I was worth. I tried beating the cheese into the milk. The cheese began to come out of its individual colonies and coalesce. This looked like a very good sign. Now I had a large lump of melted cheese in the middle of a pan full of hot yellow milk. I was stirring like a madwoman. I stopped. I had a lump of what looked for all the world like a huge wad of chewed-up cheddar cheese bubble gum.

You might think that this is when I gave up and went out for tacos. But it’s not. In fact, I wasn’t even discouraged. In fact, what I was thinking was, “This is good. I bet that the cheddar cheese balls up like this just before it blends with the milk to form a creamy sauce.” I took a deep breath, and then I really applied myself to that wad of cheese gum.

After some time, I began to see that this was hopeless. Nothing at all was happening. I had a wad of cheese gum swimming in a pool of yellow milk. I could stir all night, and that’s what I’d still have. This is the point at which I pitched it and went out, right? Well, I went through my options: I can throw this in the trash, and the liquid part–the milk–will seep through little holes in the trash bag and will make my trash can smell like sour milk for the rest of my life, or I can throw it down the sink, which will take care of the liquid part, but this cheese will gum up my pipes like tar. Besides, I’ve already worked so hard. Not to mention the wasted materials (the milk and cheese).

I looked at it. I pondered. “You know,” I thought, “the cheese, though disgusting-looking, is still an edible product. You like cheese. Just don’t think about that commercial.” So, without thinking about it any further, I picked up the container of cold, lumplike macaroni and cheese, and dumped it into the pan. I hacked at the cheese gum with the wooden spoon to try to break it up a little. I then stirred and stirred, trying to get the milk to absorb into the cold macaroni and trying to sort of slather the cheese gum evenly over the macaroni rather than having big lumps of it distributed throughout the macaroni.

I’m trying to decide if I should tell you now whether I ended up going out to eat or whether I stayed home and ate this stuff. What do you think?

Okay, I’ll finish the story.

It really didn’t look too bad. I knew that that cheese was going to be pretty stringy if I allowed it to set up at all, so I knew that if I was going to eat it, I would have to eat it fast, while it was still hot. I did just that, and it really wasn’t awful. But it’s not anything that I would want to feed to guests.

The Leo Tolstoy of Bloggers

That's me.

[Writer's note to readers of my other blog: This is a repost from PWAW. I thought it would be an appropriate way to start off a blog called "Long, Involved Stories." New material to come. Soon. --KB]

I have made every effort to write shorter blog posts in the hopes of giving my readers a quick laugh, a brief respite, and then allow them to go. But I'm giving up on that.

You know how in some card games—like Bridge, Spades, Hearts—one must, at the outset of each hand, bid either high or low, depending on how many tricks they think they'll take? Well, some bloggers can bid low in the word-count game. I'm going to have to bid high.

I worked up some statistics this morning.

What novel do Americans most often use as the measuring stick for length? Yes, that's right: Leo Tolstoy's War and Peace. It's the bellwether of word count, as far as we are concerned. However, weighing in at just 560,000 words, it comes in at a distant 15th compared to other novels. (This is purely word count, not page count. It's possible, if you use really long words—as Tolstoy usually does—to have a higher page count than an author who trumps you on word count.)

I apparently should've been born French. French novels come in as the top three word-count books, with Artamene (a whopping 2,100,000 words), Les Hommes de Bonne Volonte (a close also-ran at 2,070,000. Goof grief, Jules Romains! Another 35,000 words and you'd have had the record!). But after the top three spots, the English definitely have it, claiming seven of the top 10 slots. So I guess I'm onto something. By the way, for those of you who have slogged through Hugo's Les Miserables, it comes in at a very lightweight 513,000 words. So if you want to read a really long novel in English, go find Samuel Richardson's Clarissa (number four, with 969,000 words in the first edition, but upgraded to over one million words in its third edition). But if you really want to be considered a heavyweight reader, learn French.

Compared to the above stats, I'm definitely a lightweight writer. But compared to most bloggers, I definitely measure up at least to Tolstoy. As I said before, I've really tried to shorten my posts. I've also read other people's blogs and admired their concise, pithy posts that fit easily on one page on my tiny 13-inch laptop screen, without scrolling. I've tried, but I just can't do it. I'm many things, but concise isn't one of them. And for those who might say that I am pithy, I'd argue that though I sometimes might act “pithed off,” I'm hardly terse and to-the-point.

At any rate, I think that at this point, I'm just going to give in to my wordiness, bid high, and hang the consequences (the consequences being that no one but the stalwart will want to read my posts). I've tried to bid low, but even my “short” posts are long by others' standards.

My longest post, I think, was the “two kinds of people” one, which I split into two posts, to try to trick people into thinking it was shorter. Total word count: 1,729.

So, then, I decided to try some shorter posts. One of these was my post about Larry Niven's extremely short story, called “Unfinished Story.” Niven's short story was a total of 10 words long. It took me 288 words to tell you about it.

Next, I thought that I could quickly write about my favorite quotation in “The Human Condition.” It was a short little quotation that required some set-up. Word count: 658.

Then, yesterday, while eating lunch, I was thinking about this problem of my posts being so long. I looked at the salad I was eating and thought, “I should write about lettuce; that couldn't possibly be very long.” I was thinking that I would just literally write about my lunch and keep it really short. I haven't posted that story yet, but it came in at 1,105 words!

So there you have it. I may not be in the same category as the old French novelists, but I do seem to weigh in around the Tolstoy level. For blogs, that is. (Word count of this post: about 699.)

Sit back and set a spell...

I write the way I talk. Long, winding sentences that go on forever, interrupted by parenthetical comments, by clauses that describe--not necessarily in a charitable way--a person's character or traits, punctuated with pieces of backstory, and lots of meandering (more than likely unnecessary) details.

When we were teenagers, my brother K used to say of me, "Kathy is the only person I know who can summarize the plot of a 30-minute TV show in an hour." Yep. That's me.

Some people absolutely hate my stories. These are busy people, usually mathematically or scientifically inclined people (accountants, engineers, and the like). They are bottom-line people who want me to just cut to the chase, leave out all of the details, and just tell the end of the story. They want results, not history. They probably get more done in a day than I do in two weeks. They are not very much fun to be around. I avoid them. And they will want to avoid this blog.

Some people absolutely love my stories. These are people who have a little time on their hands, who like to sit on the porch with Mason jars of freshly made iced tea, people who majored in the humanities and liberal arts--or just as likely, didn't go to college at all, which is fine by me. They tend to be mechanics, social workers, teachers, government workers, and, occasionally, homeless. They have the time to listen to follow me down rabbit trails, to savor suspense, to listen closely, to begin to speculate about how it will all end. They would never cut me short and say, "So, are you saying that the car is totaled?" or, "Did you call the plumber about this?" No, they are people who know how to wait patiently to hear how a story unfolds, maximizing their delight at the end.  These people are detail-oriented, relational, people-focused. They just enjoy the company of others. They love animals. They are not very productive, maybe, but they're having a much better time during their visit to Planet Earth than the pinch-faced misers described previously. You know the kind I'm talking about: nice people. I am attracted to them like a magnet. Some of them have encouraged me to write my stories just the way I tell them in person. Perhaps a few people like that will like this blog.

This introductory post is the shortest post that will ever appear in this blog, I assure you. From now on, all posts will be long and involved. I guarantee it.