Africa is less a wilderness than a repository of primary and fundamental values, and less a barbaric land than an unfamiliar voice. (Beryl Markham, West with the Night, 1942)
Our friend David recommended Markham's memoir and loaned it to me. He and his wife Danielle have just left town. We were just getting to know them, and were sorry to see them go. They went up north, and are not planning on returning to Yaounde when they leave later this year, so we may not get to see them again. The transient nature of the SIL community is like our urban San Francisco church, where people come and go like this, sometimes (it seems) in almost no time at all.
Some of our friends back home are having a rough time right now, and one of them mailed something around that I really liked:
When we honestly ask which persons in our lives mean the most to us, we often find that it is those who, instead of giving much advice, solutions, or cures, have chosen rather to share our pain and touch our wounds with a gentle and tender hand. The friend who can be silent with us in a moment of despair or confusion, who can stay with us in an hour of grief and bereavement, who can tolerate not-knowing, not-curing, not-healing and face with us the reality of our powerlessness... makes it clear that whatever happens in the external world, being present to each other is what really matters. (Henri J.M. Nouwen)
Whatever else we're accomplishing here, or not, we're present, for a little while anyway.
2 comments:
It will be great to add some Cameroonian books to your reading list. Here are some that are available on amazon.com
http://www.africanbookscollective.com/publishers/langaa-rpcig
Good guy, Noewen. I keep meaning to ask where you found your copy of Blink here; I'd love to read it.
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