little stories of hope

by Nancy

It has been such a joy for me coming back to the City of Hope!  When we arrived at COH (City of Hope) I couldn't stop smiling seeing all the familiar faces, but many of the kid's were new to me as well.  I have noticed, though, that two of those new faces were ones I actually knew well, but were not a part of this incredible family last year.   

The first little boy I saw most every day last winter as he was a student in the preschool class I was taking W. to, but lived in one of the local villages.  He was a rough little boy then, who was always a dirty torn mess in class.  He didn't seem to have many friends, and fought a lot with the other kids.   My heart really went out to him as I imagined his home life had to be pretty hard, and lacking the love and care a little heart needs.  I was so over joyed to see that he is now one of the kids here at COH. I can see such a huge change in him.  He has his little friends he hangs out with, and when I look into his eyes I see a little boy who has a home and family were he feels loved and accepted.   He has hope!

Last year I went on a hike with my roommate and we were followed by some children from the village.  The kids were hanging on us and begging for money which was about the only thing they could communicate in English.   One of the girls I don't think I will ever forget.  She was climbing all over Julie and I, kissing us and demanding we give her what we had. It was so evident this little girl was no stranger to sexual abuse.  It had even become a normal way for her to get what she wanted.  It broke my heart to see this. Now, though, she is a part of this safe family were she is loved for who she is, not what she does.  She still has the same out going spirit and big smile but its different.  There is a light in her eyes now that wasn't there before.  

These little stories speak to my heart and whisper that God is truly at work in this place changing one little life at a time.  His promise that he will be a Father to the fatherless is true and visible here in the lives of these two children.

snapshots of the past week

This has been a really hard week. It started out with grandaddy getting really sick really fast. We were very worried about him. Next Ty and little P felt ill, then Little T, W, Nancy, then me and today, Sarah. The only one spared so far is Grandma! The kids had it the worst but they are mostly better. We had to postpone a planned safari. It's not an option to be sick on safari! No bathrooms!!

After Ty's daily meeting with the clinic staff he reported that the sickness we all had has spared few in the village. Dr Ben (our clinic manager) said this virus has spread like wildfire and he has never seen anything like it before.

I'm sorry to say we didn't "accomplish" much this week. But so goes life, and we look forward to next week!

brief update

thank you all for your prayers to get us here safely! I'm sorry we
have not been able to update the blog until now. The internet
situation is far worse that it has ever been. There is no real
explanation for it so we just keep hoping it will randomly improve!

the jet lag has been pretty rough this time. the kids are still
staying up until 9 or 10 and then waking up around 930AM. much of this
week has been spent adjusting and getting our apartment organized.

Grandma and Grandaddy have been incredibly helpful with the children
and all the little projects. A roof leak caused some damage to our
stuff that was in storage (mostly mold, nothing serious) but as a
result we had to have a room emptied out and tiled. This is a huge
project since it's the room with most of our supplies in it, as well
as a bunch of furniture. So now everything is in the living room and
it's chaos. Grandpa and Nancy have been painting the room all day
today and it looks great. By tomorrow we'll be finished and hopefully
we can put the room back together! Maybe monday will be a "normal"
day.

I don't know why I don't get used to the reality that every time we
return, we have an immediate problem of some kind to deal with.
(Anyone remember the rats??).  It's never so simple as to just shake
off the jet lag and get to business.

There is a serious water shortage also and we need lots of rain to
solve it. We are using buckets for everything...and it gets old quick!

The kids here have all grown so much and there is much catching up to
do with all of them. Nancy and Sarah are enjoying spending time with
the City of Hope Kids-and they have also been helping out a lot in the
mission house with cooking and cleaning, for which we are grateful!

One really neat thing is that we got to celebrate the one year
birthday of baby Amy Joi yesterday. I was blessed to attend his birth
one year ago exactly!

Hopefully a more interesting update will come your way soon, at least
some pictures. Pray that the internet improves. It's kind of critical
to my sanity!!

love, joi

A new adventure begins

And we're off! We departed Dulles Sunday evening with no problems (only a minor glitch when Ty realized he left his wallet at jj's house-but she zipped back and got it in no time!)
This time we are excited to have grandma and granddaddy join us for the first three weeks. So far it's been easy traveling with a ratio of adults to children 5:3. This is a very good thing!!
For now we sit in Amsterdam watching the planes on the runway drinking overpriced coffee while we wait for our departing flight to Nairobi. Thank you for your prayers for our trip!

I want to comment on something I saw on the Huffington Post, by Larry Liske, the director of Prison Fellowship, founded by Chuck Colson.  Partly I do this to illustrate that my rantings have much-needed applicability in my own tribe--not just in the Tanzanian bush.  Below is what Mr. Liske postulates in an article entitled: "Restoring Dignity to Criminal Justice."  While I agree with him, I want to go deeper:

When he signed the 1994 Crime Bill, then-President Bill Clinton called it the "toughest and smartest crime bill in our history."

Since then, the violent crime rate has dropped, but it's not clear that the Crime Bill is responsible. A number of changes -- including improvements in policing, the waning of the crack epidemic, and the aging of America -- also play a part. What is clear is that the crime bill has helped put 2.3 million men and women behind bars, and with millions more on probation or parole, we are the world's leaders in locking people up.

Why should we care if more criminals are behind bars for longer sentences? As president of the nation's largest outreach to prisoners, ex-prisoners, and their families, I've seen the downsides of mass incarceration up close. People who could safely be returned to the community remain behind bars for years -- at a hefty cost to taxpayers. The 2.7 million children with an incarcerated parent are the most at-risk children in America, subject to depression, anxiety, poverty, home instability, substance abuse, and gang involvement. And the lack of rehabilitative programming leaves the 700,000 prisoners released every year prone to commit new crimes, which means more victims.

Like a football coach who fine-tunes his game plan at halftime, it's time to introduce a more pro-active crime prevention strategy. Without compromising the public-safety gains of the last 20 years, we can focus on bringing good people home -- not just keeping those who break the law locked up indefinitely.

Every day, former prisoners can and do come home completely renewed and restored, prepared to help build safer communities, and actually be part of the solution to crime. For examples, I need look no farther than my friend Edwin, who came out of prison to build a successful business in Michigan that employs other ex-prisoners, or Tish, a former addict who became a model mother and addiction recovery counselor, and Chuck Colson, who founded Prison Fellowship after serving time in a federal prison. There are countless others.

We can help create more success stories -- and safer communities -- through policies that respect the human dignity of each life, recognizing that "criminals" are not a monolithic group of monsters. They are people, capable of choosing to change and contribute. Some people who commit crimes will choose not to change, and in the interest of public safety, they need to be separated from society. But for those who can be restored, and have paid their debt to society, shouldn't a second chance be possible?

There are many ways to respect human dignity in the criminal justice system without putting the public at risk. Drug courts, mental health courts, and veterans' courts address the needs of populations best served outside the main criminal justice system, and they do it more cheaply and effectively. By dealing with the complex issues beneath many crimes, like addiction, mental illness, and post-combat trauma, alternative courts help keep new crimes from occurring. The nation's first veterans' court, in Buffalo, New York, had a zero percent recidivism rates in its first few years -- none of its participants committed a new crime. Alternative courts -- aiming for rehabilitation instead of incarceration -- are springing up in states across the country.

Within the corrections environment, let's bring prisons back to their morally rehabilitative purpose. Prison Fellowship and other volunteer-driven organizations provide proven programming behind bars, addressing criminal thinking and behavior at the root. Innovative corrections officials, like Louisiana's Warden Burl Cain, can also create environments that support life transformation without compromising safety.

And we need a reentry environment that allows those who have served their time to make a new start. At the federal level, the Second Chance Reauthorization Act, now making its way through Congress, would extend programs that help returning citizens re-integrate into the community through partnerships with state and local government as well as faith- and community-based organizations. Just a couple of initiatives receiving grants from the Second Chance Act include a Texas program for gang-affiliated teenagers, which is helping them stay out of jail (Kathleen A. Fox, Vincent J. Webb, Alejandro Ferrer, Charles M. Katz, and Eric Hedberg, Gang Intervention Treatment Re-Entry Development for Youth (GITREDY): A Report on the First Year of Implementation (Huntsville, TX: Sam Houston State University, 2012), and a mentoring program for mothers being released in Oklahoma, which had a 98-percent success rate at keeping women from returning to prison over a 12-month period (figures are as of September 2013. Recidivism is defined as a return to Oklahoma Department of Corrections custody).

There are many ways to keep us safe. Our representatives need to know that we support proven alternatives to mass incarceration that help restore individuals, families, and communities. When President Clinton signed the Crime Bill, he commented, "This is about freedom. Without responsibility, without order, without lawfulness, there is no freedom." I would add that there is no freedom without respect for the dignity of each human being. It's time for that respect to be enshrined in the criminal justice system, for all our sakes.

Below is my response, the old, "Beware the technological solution for the moral problem."

I agree with Mr. Liske by and large. His suggestions certainly seem to be steps in the right direction. However I still think they are superficial solutions to deeper problem. They might be called "technological solutions for a moral problem." That doesn't mean they are bad. I just means they are insufficient to accomplish the whole. They don't go deep enough.

For the last decade I've served as a physician to thousands of inmates in some of America's toughest prisons. I have deeper and more difficult questions: How did we as a culture arrive at our current posture towards prisoners? Why do we do what we do, and why isn't it working? I submit that the problem is an issue of identity. We don't know what it means to be a human person, or what human flourishing looks like. Or if we do know, we are afraid to say so in our relativistic culture. Mostly we think everyone should get to choose every facet of their identity and self-determine what flourishing looks like for themselves. Unless we can discover a consensus on, "Who is a human person?" we will fail to answer the question: "What ought we to do to help human persons flourish?" For inmates, the question essentially is, "How do we help this person walk in restoration?" 

Restoration in the lives of felony offenders IS possible. Like Mr. Liske, I've seen it too. I bow in respect and gratitude to Mr. Liske and the work of his organization. But I still want to see Americans engage with these deeper questions. We can and should do Mr. Liske's suggestions.  I'm an incrementalist; though his suggestions don't go strike at the heart of the problem, they are steps in the right direction and should be embraced.  But dare we dig deeper?

Series: Technology, Morality, Power, AIDS Part VI of VI: Morality

Morality

What does this have to do with AIDS and ARVs?  AIDS is a frightfully powerful phenomenon.  Perhaps the best response to it is not to play its game—to try to overwhelm it with natural power.  Perhaps the best response is not a technological response, but a moral one.

Though they are of course technological, ARV’s are a good thing—a gift. They are saving the lives of millions. They are reducing transmission rates of HIV.  They have their place and they most certainly should be used.

But there are many today that believe that through the power of ARV’s, Africa may possibly be free of AIDS in a generation.  Two years ago, the cover of The Economist, a widely read and respected periodical, read: “The End of AIDS?”  The writer went on to explain why he and many of his persuasion think that because of new ARV technology, AIDS is all but beaten.  I question this.

If ARVs are so powerful, why in America, where we have all we want of the newest and best, are we still diagnosing new cases of HIV? There are new infections all the time.  As described above, I diagnose new cases in prison, a setting where free ARVs of the highest quality are physically handed to AIDS patients by a nurse twice daily. Despite the pinnacle of development and delivery of this technology, AIDS is hanging on in America despite the fact that ARVs are readily available and generally “free” to the patient.  (Though they must exist, I have never met an AIDS patient who pays for his own drugs). Pharmaceutical companies are spending hundreds of millions developing new drugs.  Would they be doing that if they expected AIDS to disappear?  But these are superficial arguments.

Five percent of the children in a typical African village are malnourished, even during harvest time, when food is plentiful in the community.  At this very moment, there are malnourished children waking up in homes within a few miles of where I sit.  What is the solution for malnutrition?  It’s corn and beans.  That “technology” has been around for millennia, and is manufactured right here in the village in large amounts by local people.  Yet malnutrition remains a common cause of death.  If less than 100% of the people are getting food, which is cheap and grown in the village, how can we expect 100% of the people who need ARVs to get them?  Simply delivering technology to people is not as easy as it may seem.

We have pushed condoms as a solution for AIDS for over two decades. The approach has largely failed.  ARV’s do a good thing.  They often keep an infected person well.  That person may live a long life.  ARVs should in no case be withheld from an individual that could be helped by them.  But the person who claims that ARV’s will be the end of aids is hoping that ARV’s will dramatically reduce the rate of new HIV infections—because for it to be truly the end of AIDS, that would have to happen.  ARVs are, in a sense, chemical condoms. Except for a few major differences: they are much more expensive, they have more and worse side effects, they are more dangerous, they are rarely manufactured on this continent (they have to be shipped in from elsewhere), they are less well understood, are harder to store, and are harder to manufacture and distribute.  Is it safe to assume that ARVs will be more successful than condoms have been?

And there is another difference that is pointed out to me by Africans all the while.  It used to be that you could at least tell who had active AIDS because they looked very sick.  With the advent of readily available ARV’s, now many people who are HIV positive don’t look sick. People who are seeking sexual partners cannot easily tell whom to avoid.  Now people fear that new infections will rise, because the promiscuous are taking risks without knowing it.

Morality actually could eradicate AIDS in a generation.   Abstinence before marriage and faithfulness during marriage have done tremendous things to decrease HIV rates in places such as Uganda.  Morality is inexpensive, has good side effects, doesn’t have to be manufactured, stored, or imported, and most importantly, comes from within the people themselves.

Morality is the resignation of the power of the "kingdom of self".  It is submission to a supremely good higher power.  God’s power in peoples lives, His empowerment to behave the way he has instructed us, really could stop AIDS.  Think about it.  What if people were faithful?

Please don’t misunderstand me.  Widespread use of ARVs is not a bad idea.  They absolutely have their place in stemming the tide of AIDS. But they cannot stand alone.  One of my frustrations in the last ten years in Africa has been how hard it can be to get ARVs in the village.  I wish we could get them.  I would not wish that if I thought they were foolish.  But I do think that hoping in ARVs as the end of AIDS is totally naïve. Just as Man is much more than just a physical body, HIV is much more than just a virus.  Reality is more than it seems, not less.  The solution is going to have to go a whole lot deeper than just a bottle of pills.

Beware the technological solution for a moral problem.

Series: Technology, Morality, Power, AIDS Part V of VI: Beware the Technological Solution for a Moral Problem

Beware the Technological Solution for a Moral Problem

A hero of mine has said, “Beware the technological solution for a moral problem.”  I have come to understand that this is one of the deepest problems in Africa—and America.

What does this mean?  Technology is a way of exercising power over the natural world.  So is shamanism (witchcraft).  This is front and center in Africa.  For example, I was just informed this morning—in earnest—that if you wear a necktie to church, you will receive more blessing.  Stethoscopes and white coats impart the same magical power: your doctor is most powerful when he uses these charms.  The necktie, the stethoscope, the white coat: talismans?

How should morality be understood?  If technology and spells and amulets are about power, what is the relationship between morality and power?  I’m honestly trying to make sense out of this.

Intuitively, I know that morality is not about exercising power.  With technology, you discover power in something, appropriate it, and manipulate it for your own ends.

Is morality actually about resigning the right (read, demand of the flesh) to exert natural power?

I have taken a week to think about this.

Consider the motivation and actions of Judas Iscariot, the Jewish leaders, and the Roman rulers.  These are all about exerting power in the natural world.  As their machinations begin to unfold, Christ preempts their power play with a resignation of natural power. Assuming the position and posture of the lowest slave, He washes His disciples feet at the Passover.  This is anti-power.  Which is why it so shocks Peter and the others.  They expect Him to exert power, and they can’t help assuming it will be natural.  Peter reverts to this reflex when he amputates the servant’s ear in the garden.  But Jesus works in exactly the opposite way.  Instead of grasping at power, he surrenders it.  

The cross—perhaps the ultimate moral act in all history—is anti-power.  Jesus refuses worldly power.  Instead He submits to supernatural power.   On the cross, He imparts His righteousness—His moral rectitude—to all His children.  True moral rectitude is not natural.  It is not natural to man and it is not attained through natural means.  It is supernatural.  Man striving to be good and right by his own natural power is a failure called legalism. True morality is resignation of my own natural power, and the submissive acceptance of the Father’s supernatural power to do and be good.  Jesus is a picture of this during his passion: the Passover, Gethsemane, His trial, and the cross.