My mate Miriam

There are plenty of possible candidates for ‘Best Thing About Being In Malawi’ – the friends I’ve made, the sheer beauty everywhere, the freedom of simplicity - but right now there is only one, clear winner; and she’s 2 foot tall and 1 and a half years old and called Miriam.

She’s Brian’s (who I must have mentioned in nearly every post) only daughter, so we’ve known each other now for 4 and a half months, but I must admit the relationship, like the proverbial rollercoaster, or a truck ride on the dirt road to Mtunthama, has had its ups and downs. The first 4 months, in fact, was a gradual and painstaking process of familiarisation. I say painstaking, because to start with, every time she set eyes on me or Michel she burst into tears of pure terror. After a while the safety of Brians’ lap was sufficient to allow some gentle interaction – the occasional low five or foot tickle – but time and again, as Brian would start to life her across to me, saying “Pita, Dad!” (“Leave Dad”) in his most comforting and encouraging Daddy voice, she would start wriggling violently and use her voicebox as a sort of human parking sensor – pitch, volume and intensity increasing in proportion to proximity to the dreaded AZUNGU (white person).

But then, just a couple of weeks ago, a glorious incident occurred. We were eating some groundnuts at Brians, and she was sitting on his lap, and I was playing with her – I have developed a tickling technique where I wiggle my finger up to her neck like a work so that she even starts to giggle and shrug away before it’s reached the ticklish spot behind her ear! So all was joyous and bright. And then, Brian had to go and teach, so he put her down, told her to go to Mama and started to leave. I put out my hand to hold, and she took it, and we walked together to the back step. She stood, atop the steep precipice of about a foot, paralysed. Brain saw an opportunity and said – “Try to pick her!” – so I stooped down, and picked her up.

And SHE DID NOT CRY!

I took her to her mother in the kitchen, and set her down, jubilant. And ever since we have been the best of friends. We play together, I carry her around, and I can even comfort her when she’s crying! And every time I leave she says, “Bi!” and waves to me. And I absolutely, desperately love this little girl. Just sitting and watching her play – picking upa  stick and trying to sweep the ground like her elder cousins do, or throwing a little plastic bag ball at me and running after it with bouncy, unsteady, determined toddler steps – is an unadulterated joy. I could, and sometimes do, just do it for hours on end. She is glorious. And it makes her happy that I am around, and this is even gloriouser.

And what makes it even more beautiful for me is what I’m discovering through it – the feelings, the love for a little child, that is a delightful picture of the love God has for us. I wrote, somewhere in my diary, “Once again I am living in a rich metaphor.” I love it when she talks to me – even if the words are not really words, and make no sense. I love it when she sits with me or lets me hold her, but in a different way I am delighted when she strikes out alone to play with the older kids, or explore some new corner of the dirt and tree roots, or invent some bizarre and slightly incomprehensible game. And then, when an older girl bumped into her mid run and tumbled over on top of her, I got the tiniest glimpse of what it is to love a child, and see that child hurt.

I just love it. I just love her. And I thought you would all like to know.

A Good Question

I was chatting to my friend Daisy the other day, and she said how her uncle always used to ask, “Why does God want us to worship him?” I didn’t really have anything useful or interesting to say at the time. But then as I was going to sleep, a thought came to me, and I wrote it down for her. And here it is:

                When I was sitting on the banks of Victoria Falls (before I dropped my passport in) I was looking at the bit in Mark’s gospel which describes Palm Sunday. And I saw the bit where all the people are laying down their cloaks on the road, and running to find palm leaves and lay them down. And it occurred to me that the road in question was probably much more like a Malawian dirt-road than I’d previously been imagining. And then I realised something I had never really noticed before: Jesus is riding a baby donkey, on a seriously bad road – it would have been a bumpy, uncomfortable ride. And then it struck me that the really beautiful thing about Jesus choosing to ride the colt, or whatever baby donkeys are called, was that it meant that the cloaks actually made a difference. The palm leaves were not pure symbol, not simply an expression of deference or duty, they made the road smoother. They made a difference to Jesus.

                And I realised that this is true, it’s a massive thing about Jesus. The God who created black holes and B minor humbled himself and became a child, and then a man, and then even a convict, a prisoner, and a corpse. In love, he gave us power over him. He put himself in a position of weakness, by loving us he made himself vulnerable to us. So that what we do – whether we return his love – is capable of truly inflicting upon him agony or delight. C.S. Lewis said something like this once: “to be loved, not merely pitied... to be a real ingredient in the divine happiness... it is a weight of glory almost too great to imagine, but so it is.” Love makes us vulnerable. There is no position more powerless than that of a man, down on one knee. That, in fact, of a God nailed to a cross.

So to ask God why he desires our worship, is to ask a lover why she desires kisses. It is to ask a father why, when he walks through the door, he longs for the sight of his child, running towards him, arms outstretched, wanting to be picked up. It is to ask God why he loves us so much.

And in that sense, I suppose, it’s a good question. I don’t know why he loves us this much. But he does.

Two Birthday Snapshots

Number One.

We went to Nkhata Bay for my birthday, so on Friday I was travelling with Mike and Sam. We left Mtunthama at 6, got a lift to Kasungu, a bus to Mzuzu, a minibus to Nkhata bay and then a lift up to the hostel. We had to change a tyre within the first 30 seconds of this 11 hour journey, which was quite Malawian, but nothing like as much as the minibus from Mzuzu. It was perfect timing – we got to the  bus depot just as it was full to bursting so that when we had squeezed ourselves in it actually set off straight away. We proceeded out of the depot and rolled down the main street – jerking violently every 5 seconds as the driver tried to kickstart the engine. This continues with no success. This continued to the bottom of the hill – we turn, and roll to a stop. The conductor and some others get out, gather passers-by and push. No success. They go round to the front and push us backwards again. No success. We are pushed, jerking, back and forward for 15 minutes. No success. They give up and take the battery out – after another 15 minutes they manage to find another battery from somewhere and someone clever wires it up. The driver turns the key. Chug-chug-chug-chiuum. Chug-chug-chug-chiuum. Chug-chug-chug-chug-chug-chug-chiuum. No success.

Thereafter followed 15 minutes of unexplained stillness and complete inactivity. Then a man appears with a jerry can of petrol and pours it into the tank. They push the bus once again, the driver turns the key. Success.

A glorious 45 minutes of Malawi.

Number Two.

On Saturday a few of us went out for lunch to a place called Aqua Africa, which had a beautiful view of the bay, a swing, and good cake. So obviously I loved it and was keen to go back – and I realised that it was straight across the bay from our place – apparently 800m.

So Sunday morning me, Sam, Naomi and Lara borrowed the two big canoes and paddled our way across for breakfast. Me and Lara reached the shore first, and she hopped out from the front and started to pull the canoe up the beach. Unfortunately, I had just stood up to follow her, and so this eminently sensible action had the unintended consequence of moving the boat under me, lurching me off balance and sending me, gracefully, bum-first over the side and into the lake.

You’ll be no doubt glad to learn that the joyful humiliation of this didn’t detract from a delicious breakfast and a delightful swing.

When it was time to head back, we wandered back down and climbed into the boats. As we picked up the oars Sam said – “It looks like it’s going to rain”. As he said it, the wall of falling water moved visibly across the lake towards us, and we paddled hard into an absolute deluge. There is something absolutely glorious about being on a tiny boat in the middle of a flat blue lake, being pummelled powerfully by rain on all sides. It was beautiful. Like everything awesome I’ve seen here, it made you feel small. It made me feel like I was in the bit of the of the bible when Jesus is asleep in the fishing boat, and then he gets up and calms the storm. And we sang, of course. Which reminds me – if anyone knows the second line of the song, “Raindrops keep falling on my head” – then please do share because both Lara and myself are blissfully ignorant on the subject. Anyway, we made it, all four of us just as soaked as I had been earlier on, and it was definitely the awesomest canoe-based breakfast outing of my life.