Meat Pies with a Swimming Pool Chaser

Thursday, Part 1

So there were a number of reasons to take a break today…  Among other things, the guys are getting worried that our supply is running low (our supply of Aleve, that is)…  And among other other things, it’s my birthday! 

Okay, we didn’t really take a break from working for those reasons, but we did take a work break…  Today was a day that was focused on relationships…  We got to see a glimpse into the world of the families who live here…  Jason and John took us to see ‘Building Materials’ which is like Home Depot minus the roof and the aisles and the floor and the price tags and pretty much everything else except the building “materials”…  Jason and John have spent a great deal of energy building relationships with the ‘customers’ there (they say it backwards – the Nigerian merchants call themselves Jason’s and John’s customers)…

It’s really interesting because you can ask someone what their price is for, say, a sink…  If they tell you a price and you say anything that is close to resembling, “Oh, okay.  Thank you,” you have pretty much given your word that you will buy that item…  You have to be very clear that you are just looking, that you are not ready to buy today or you will find yourself in a world of trouble…  

After we went to ‘Building Materials’, Jason and John took us to the Hillcrest School…  It’s a private school that was started by missionaries in the 1940’s…  It’s still an international school, but there are a large percentage of Nigerian students there as well…  It’s a beautiful campus, and the quality of education the kids receive there is extremely high…

After we visited the school, Jason drove us to see the finest hospital in Jos…  It was nice, but nothing compared to what we are used to in the United States…  There were buildings, but there were also hospital beds outside some of the buildings…  Buildings were divided into specialties…  We didn’t take pictures at the hospital because, even though it’s a third-world hospital, it’s still a hospital…

We then ran back to the B2B House to get something to drink, to unload anything we needed to get rid of, and to change our clothes for the afternoon – because the afternoon wasn’t going to be anything like the morning…

Thursday, Part 2

In the afternoon we took lunch (meat pies) to a place called CLAPAI, Child’s Love and Protection Advocacy Initiative…  It’s a home and school mostly for children who have been impacted and affected by HIV/AIDS…  That’s not to say that the children have been infected with HIV, but it does mean that the AIDS virus has stolen some element of their childhood and forced them into this place…  Many of the children have lost parents and relatives…  Regardless of the circumstances that brought the children to CLAPAI, it’s painful to realize that these children must now carry the weight and live in the wake of a disease that’s crippling a continent… 

There’s really nothing you can do to fix the broken circumstances of their lives, but you can allow give them a break and a breath of fresh air…  In short, you can provide an opportunity for kids to be kids…  You can give them the gift of fun and freedom and laughter…  What better way than to take them to swimming!  We went to a hotel in town that lets you pay to go swimming in their pool…  Water isn’t the most plentiful resource here, and clean water is even harder to come by…  So when we got to the hotel, we weren’t all that surprised to see that the pool was only filled halfway :)  But it was perfect – just the right depth for us and for the kids to play…

We played for a long time in the hot sun…  You can’t imagine how beautiful the shrieks of joy were when those kids hit the water!  No symphony or song can match the sound of those children…  To see and hear them act like kids for a few hours was the most delightful thing you can imagine…  Go ahead – imagine it right now…  

And when you’re done imagining, pray for those kids who got to be kids today…  Pray that the stigma and the suffering of dealing with an unseen deadly virus would be lifted…  Pray that they would know love, real and true and appropriate love…  Pray that their hearts would be healed and that they would live the lives that God has created for them…