First CHE (Community Health Evangelism) on a Rainy Day

9/5/12

First CHE (Community Health Evangelism) on a Rainy Day

    Today was the first day of Community Health Evangelism Training.  It was raining.  The trainers had started an hour and a half away riding the bus at 8 am to get to a meeting at 11 am.

     The trainers arrived walking through the cane fields down a muddy road from the bus rank.  Section 19 was a giant puddle of red clay that made progressive layers until you were walking on platform shoes.  NCamsile had to locate a front porch where the wind was not blowing in the rain from the side, to put 15 people, and to train the CHE committee.  It took another 40 minutes to gather the ladies and committee members from their respective homes, clean off the porch, and lay down the grass mats. 

     The CHE training has happened through a series of God ordained coincidences.  The Wadleys, the folks who had trained me in Community Health Evangelism in Southern California had also trained a Swazi woman named Valencia, thousands of miles away in this tiny landlocked country of a million people.  She lives in Siteki which is about 90 minutes from section 19 but accessible by bus.  The community at Section 19 is more readily accepting assistance that doesn’t just come in the form of handouts.

     We Americans hung around long enough to advertise that something was happening.   Eventually, we decided to leave so that the community could solve its own problems without outside intervention.  This was a tough decision for me because I wanted to watch some of the CHE training, even though it would be all in Siswati.  Valencia and the other women are nationals who have worked for the past 4 years in a variety of communities doing health and biblical training.  I loved the idea of sitting on a grass mat in the middle of all the action with these ladies, with smoke drifting in from the cooking fires and rain drizzling in.   However, just our presence in that place changed whether these women would feel free to share their thoughts.     

    Sometimes my pride gets in the way of what God has planned.   After all, “I am a medical professional with a graduate degree in public health”.  I’ve got skills.  I have a couple degrees from good universities that taught about “sustainable community development and working cross culturally”.  I want to be the one to one to do the training, build the house, teach the VBS, and blow the bubbles with the kids.  But God does not need me.  As Corine has reminds me often, “God is less concerned with our qualifications than our obedience.”  Dang it! 

    It’s humbling, but sometimes my only role should be to resource the national folks.  They can talk to a group of monolingual Siswati speakers in culturally appropriate ways.  I can’t.  Meanwhile, God may call me to the less glamorous tasks of sitting for hours at the clinic with a patient or caring for a woman who has no family present.  Swazis should be the ones training and serving one another with the right heart.  I’m excited to see what happens from where-ever I’m sitting even if it’s not a grass mat on the front porch.