Pastor Jesse Part 10

Saturday, January 7, 2012

Heat and the Siren's Song

It cannot be January. It is just too hot! My brain still has trouble with the idea that this is the hot season. What happened to Walking in a Winter Wonderland? Two weeks ago I heard the song. I could almost feel the chill on my face. But not now. The grass is dying and the plants are shriveling. Even the clear sunny days are getting hazy from the smoke produced by the dead fields being burnt off.

You'd think Bev and I would get used to this but no. We are as stricken by the heat as when we first arrived from the cold of Leadville in '98. And I still approach the heat like a mzungu. Today at youth group I took the kids next door to do a game and I turned around and no one was behind me. Why? Because as a mzungu I still race from one place to another as if there was air conditioning. You limit your outdoor exposure time. But to the kids here, when it is hot you move as slowly as possible so as not to break a sweat. No point in getting hotter! These kids can and are teaching me a lot. But do we have to do it standing in the sun?

Of course the kids are in the shade, only the pastor stands in the sun. Why is that? My personal theory is that those of us who come from cooler climates don't deal with the bugs of Africa as well as those from the tropics. The shade is where the bugs (who are more intelligent than I) hang out. They know that if they fly out in the afternoon sun they will likely explode in a fireball when the intense sun magnifies as it passes through their wings and ignites their bodies. (Some heat stricken scientists claim these self-igniting insects are the cause of all the fires and haze.) So these clever little insects of Africa congregate under the shade trees to annoy and attack people who seek the cool. But I have outwitted them. I stand in the sun. Even the insects are teaching me. I am beginning to suspect that the sound I hear is not the hum of their wings but the roar of their laughter.

But now in the cool of the evening as the power has been cut again and fans don't work I hear their laughter again. "Come out into the cool. We won't bite" they seem to say. My mind responds "Do I look stupid to you?" And the laughter increases. It is the Siren's song of Africa.