Friday, November 27, 2009

Thanksgiving in Zimbabwe

Seldom do I use the word ‘life-transforming” because very few things in life are. Change is something that requires diligence, effort, and often monotonous repetition. It doesn’t come cheaply.

But certainly what I did this past Thanksgiving changed my perception of the world forever. As a volunteer with my good friend Glen Megill’s organization, Rock of Africa, a Christian relief effort, I travelled to Zimbabwe, one of the poorest country’s on earth to one of it’s poorest villages. Joining me was my daughter Chana, my friend, the writer and radio host Dennis Prager, his son Aaron, Glen, and about seven Christian volunteers. We staged an outreach program preparing a Thanksgiving feast for 500 villagers to whom we then distributed mosquito nets and Bibles. Most importantly, we gave them seed that can produce shima, the corn-flower mixture that is the staple diet for most of Africa and which, for $25 a year, can literally keep a family alive. The feast consisted of ten slaughtered goats and giant pots of cooked cabbage and shima.

It would be difficult to convey the appreciation of the villagers for one good, hot, meaty meal. The people we met were gentle, beautiful, and utterly poor. The village consisted of nothing but mud huts, the Chief’s homestead included. These people have next to nothing. They live in tiny pen-sized huts, and one which we visited housed a hospitable with an infirm man in his late eighties that reeked of urine. His twelve year old-grandson lives with him and takes care of him, his parents dead of AIDS. The only luxury in the tiny mud dwelling was one mosquito net for the grandfather.  Indeed, of the hundreds who came to our feast only a few were young mothers and fathers. The vast majority had already been lost to AIDS. We saw scores of young children strapped to their grandmother’s back in the African way. An entire generation wiped out by a killer disease which still lives in denial in Africa. Most of the people we spoke to who lost relatives to AIDS told us that ‘they got sicker and thinner.’ They knew exactly what caused the ailment but would never pronounce it. Strict moral codes govern life in Southern Africa so a sexually-transmitted disease is rarely acknowledged.

 

But amid these serious challenges the people smile and exhibit unbelievable warmth. Are they happier than we in the West? I cannot say. I have never believed in the ennobling quality of poverty and I will not glamorize a life with so little. But what is undeniable is that they seemed far more satisfied, more grateful, and more content. We in the West who are fortunate to be able to translate so much of our potential into something professionally and personally fulfilling are more often then not plagued by insatiable material hunger, making it challenging for us to ever find inner peace which they seemed to possess.

 

When we Rock of Africa volunteers cooked much of the food and physically served it, I noticed that among the villagers there was not a single finicky eater. They ate every part of the goat served them – the stomach, the intestines, the vertebrae. Food here was not a luxury. It was survival itself. Indeed, the villagers rarely looked down at their food, which they ate with their hands which were washed just before the meal. There is no piping in the village and water is fetched from a well a kilometer away. Before and after the meal the women serenaded us with joyous song and dance. The Chief was a man of extraordinary humility and took great pride in showing us his village.

 

The men and women sat apart. When the women, my daughter included, served them they curtsied, as women do by tradition before men. If a woman does not curtsy the man will not accept the food. The men seemed more self-conscious than the women. I hugged every man I met, something usually not done in Africa but a pity because men need tactility as much as women. They all responded warmly to the overture.

 

Most memorable were the children who were wondrous in every way. Gorgeous, extremely polite, and exceptionally well-behaved. They exhibited none of the wildness that is becoming common among Western kids. Hundreds of them sat in perfect rows on the floor, grateful to have a warm, hot meal. They too sang and danced for us and we danced with them.

The most moving part of the day was when we distributed the corn seed for the families. The Chief called out the names and as they came forward for the seed they were glowing. Many of them kissed the bags as they collected them. A few bags opened and their recipients searched for, and found, every last seed as if each were a diamond.

 

It should be mandatory to take Western kids to Africa for at least one humanitarian mission. It would help wean them from the corrosive materialism that is suffocating us all and it would lead them to appreciate their blessings and share more of it with others.

All this was made possible because of two angels. The first is Glen, an American businessman who created Rock of Africa and is one of the most righteous men I know.  The second is a young woman whose courage and heroism left me incredulous. Her name is Regina Jones. She’s thirty years old and from Detroit. She moved to Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe, four years ago after a teen life where she owned more than two hundred pairs of shoes. She now lives on her own and runs the organization. She saves orphaned street children from dying from AIDS. She teaches villagers how to become self-sustaining. For our feast she went at midnight to a neighboring village, negotiated the price of the goats and rented a trailer in the morning and picked them up so the villagers could eat meat. I personally watched her lovingly lecture a man with a white beard to help out his wife more with their tiny farm.

No she is not a household name and she will never be as famous as Brittney Spears. But to me she was a small reminder that the suffocating selfishness of Western material culture can indeed be transcended.

 

 

Rabbi Shmuley Boteach is the founder of This World: The Values Network and the author most recently of ‘The Blessing of Enough.” Donations to Rock of Africa can be made on their website http://www.rockofafrica.org.