4 April 2006

Thoughts of Guinea: from my home coast

Hello my friends,

So here is the much anticipated second half of a short trip's long summary.
This one is a bit choppy and heavy, I wrote it shortly after returning and I
have chosen not to re-edit it... it is a lot of just my raw heart. More and
more I am realizing that I am not a normal person, I do not deal with things
normally and this is OK because I am not called to a normal life. Whatever
normal means.

--Prison--
I have seen extreme poverty, held dying children and have witnessed lives
that have changed my perspective forever. However, last Saturday was the
first time I have ever witnessed the pure oppression and inhumanity that
crushed souls beneath it's heal. We were invited to a prison with
International Prison Ministries. I was concerned it would be more of a field
trip, but with the assurance that the prisoners loved to see new faces and
enjoyed even short visits we agreed to go, led by Jean Baptist who does this
every week at the same prison.

Picture a 12x12 room, a large dungeon status wooden door, damp cement floor
and walls, one small window, no plumbing and several dozen men with little
more than a mat on the floor to their name. Really, try to get your mind to
wrap around the smell and heat and darkness and then see each one of those
men, many innocent simply waiting to be seen by the judge… some have been
waiting for five years.

Jean Baptist ushered me in and I was so overwhelmed I almost lost it, but
then I would just look into the eyes of one man and ask how he was doing.
Just one at a time I could take their hands and talk to them, when I looked
at the room as a whole I couldn't handle it. The gratefulness and fading
humanity I saw in their eyes made me want to stay so badly and talk with
them longer, but there were about a dozen of chambers just like this one so
each visit was always cut short. Some of these men go months without seeing
a new face. And in order to stay for longer than a few minutes you must be
locked in with them... so I left that to the men who do just that every
Saturday.

I cried my self to sleep thinking about these men the other night. It is
just so much. I see their hands reaching, their eyes flickering with hope
and their voices solemn with the burdens of the hell that is their world.
Then there were the Christian brothers who had more hope and faith and love
than I see in the cozy pews of America. This is something that will take me
a long time to process, right now I think I am actually rather shut down to
it all… I don't have the emotional capacity for it. The reality that there
are still humans locked in there even though I am in my sunny seaside
apartment makes me sort of freak out.

--Conclusion--
This trip really brought me full circle from my last time in Africa. Though
they were fully different countries, I was always reminded of experiences
last summer. In one week I have seen absolute joy and absolute misery and
the love of God leaking into all of it. Where so much of what I have seen
before is cold religion and legalism, I was able to just see love. That is
what its all about, a Love strong enough to penetrate the souls of condemned
men and bring hope into the eyes of a widow. I haven't been alive for that
long, but the only love I have ever seen accomplish those things is the love
of Jesus. Sounds clichéish, but that is the only truth I have ever seen. The
only constant in a world that overwhelms me with despair is God's love.

With as much love as I can muster,
courtney