Two Years of Wonder

by Ted Neill

  Two Years of Wonder

  By

  Ted Neill

  Praise for Two Years of Wonder:

  “As the author, even Neill asks if the world needs another book about a white man ‘losing and finding himself’ in Africa. In the case of Two Years of Wonder, the answer is an emphatic ‘Yes.’ With unflinching honesty, Ted shows us the inner workings of a mind in the grips of severe depression. It is a harrowing read and a must-read if you know someone grappling with mental illness much less the complexities and contradictions of aid work.”

  — Rasheed Newson, author of The Singletons of Ashmount and Bring a Shovel and a Gun.

  “There are two urgent reasons to read Ted Neill's book, Two Years of Wonder. First, it informs us of the grave plight of children infected and affected by HIV/AIDS in Africa. It would take so little for us to help, and it starts with awareness. Read Ted's book if you believe that all life is sacred and to be respected and protected. Second, this book is especially important for change agents who sometimes feel frustration with how difficult it is to do lasting good in the world. Ted has been there. His successes, and also his failures, are instructive, and ultimately inspiring.”

  — Jack Hoban, USMC and author of The Ethical Warrior.

  “Blending incisive self-reflection and autobiography, Ted Neill’s Two Years of Wonder deconstructs our comfortable preconceptions about Africa, AIDS orphans, volunteerism, and the world of international aid. Told through a shifting kaleidoscope of stories, Neill’s book constantly tumbles truth to provide his readers with a new view of the world as a complex, ambiguous, and interconnected whole.”

  — Tara Sullivan, author of Golden Boy and The Bitter Side of Sweet.

  “What is most evident in Two Years of Wonder, is the transforming power of caring human presence. No great fixes are offered in the stories of vulnerable Kenyan children, no conclusive plan for solving enormous social problems. But this book offers hope. Through story-telling about the lives he encounters, Ted Neill provides an honest view of what it means to respectfully bear witness to the suffering of others and our own. The writing is candid, clear and provides encouragement that coming along side another person to live daily life together, even for a short season, can make a profound difference.”

  — Ruby Takushi, Director of Programs, Recovery Cafe Seattle.

  “In Two Years of Wonder, Ted Neill takes his readers halfway around the world to laugh with, cry for, and be deeply moved by children in a Kenyan school and orphanage. Through engaging prose, Neill tells compelling stories that come full circle. For most of us, Two Years of Wonder is an inspiring read. It is a must read for anyone post-college or post-retirement considering volunteer work in an African orphanage or school.”

  — Dean Owen, author of November 22, 1963: Reflections on the Life, Assassination, and Legacy of John F. Kennedy.

  Dedicated to Binyavanga Wainaina, my big brother of the word who opened my eyes. I hope I have not let you down.

  Without your wound where would your power be? . . . The very angels themselves cannot persuade the wretched and blundering children on earth as can one human being broken in the wheels of living. In Love’s service, only the wounded soldiers can serve.

  —Thornton Wilder, The Angel That Troubled the Waters

  Table of Contents

  Foreword by Dr. Helene D. Gayle

  Author’s Note

  Chapter 1 - What would Sebastian Junger Do?

  Chapter 2 - Fish and Chips

  Chapter 3 - Pre-School

  Chapter 4 - On Being a Fraud

  Chapter 5 - Belts

  Chapter 6 - Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, Missionaries, Jesus, and other objects of my Disenchantment

  Chapter 7 - Dambisa Moyo Tells It to Me Straight

  Chapter 8 - School

  Chapter 9 - Aliases

  Chapter 10 - “It’s not like the movies.”

  Chapter 11 - Fire

  Chapter 12 - Night Commuters

  Chapter 13 - Cottage Green

  Chapter 14 - Forgetting

  Chapter 15 - Adoption

  Chapter 16 - Psychic Injury

  Chapter 17 - Family

  Chapter 18 - Thieves

  Chapter 19 - My Name is Ted and I’m in Recovery

  Chapter 20 - Drowning

  Chapter 21 - More Shenanigans, Chess, and Pictures I Should Have Taken

  Chapter 22 - The Things We Carry

  Chapter 23 - Kiserian

  Chapter 24 - Displacement

  Chapter 25 - Something

  Chapter 26 - Pigs and People

  Chapter 27 - Cottage Blue

  Chapter 28 - Kursk

  Chapter 29 - Ukimwi

  Chapter 30 - Ms. Pricilla

  Chapter 31 - Superman

  Chapter 32 - Time

  Chapter 33 - Home

  Afterword

  ~ A Debt of Gratitude ~

  ~ Thank You for Reading ~

  Notes

  Foreword

  by

  Dr. Helene D. Gayle

  When I began my career at the CDC in 1984, few appreciated that AIDS was going to become a major public health threat. In 1981 when AIDS was first described by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) in its Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR), I had just finished medical school and was just about to start my residency training in pediatrics. Two years later, in 1983, AIDS was recognized as a disease affecting children. So, although I probably treated children with HIV, I was never aware of it during my 3-year pediatric training.

  For my first three years at CDC, I sat on the sidelines of the epidemic focused on other seemingly more important public health issues affecting children both domestically and globally. I watched with interest and concern as the HIV/AIDS epidemic continued to evolve. By 1987, it was clear that HIV/AIDS was deeply interwoven with issues of social justice and equity, the same issues that had led me to the field of public health in the first place. It was inescapable that HIV/AIDS was likely to be one of the defining public health issues of my lifetime. That is when I began my own journey tackling HIV/AIDS and the effort has lasted throughout the multiple decades of my career.

  In the 1980s, and even through to the present day, HIV/AIDS is a disease that carries an unjust social and even moral stigma. HIV has disproportionally impacted populations that were historically marginalized in society, including gay men, IV drug users, sex workers, people of color, and poor women. Moral blame and stigma were attached to the disease to a degree not seen in most other epidemics. Even into the 1990s the unfortunate appellation “innocent victim” was applied to children born with HIV through mother-to-child transmission or hemophiliacs who were infected through blood transfusions. The clear implication being that others with HIV infection had done something to deserve it or intentionally bring it upon themselves. This moral blame not only released many parts of society from an evidence-based, public health approach to solutions, but also unduly burdened people at risk of HIV/AIDS or living with the infection with a sense of shame and denial—this often kept them from the very services that could make a crucial difference between life or death.

  We have come a long way. To see the progress we have made brings me a mix of relief, accomplishment, and inspiration. We know more about the infection and how to prevent its spread and how to treat it. Effective treatment has allowed many people to live long, meaningful lives with HIV/AIDS as a chronic disease. And HIV/AIDS has advanced our understanding of the root causes or the social determinants of health—things such education, access to nutritious foods, safe neighborhoods and environments, economic stability. This understanding has led to broader solutions for decreasing health inequity. There is also less stigma attached to the diagnosis HIV/AIDS, although that
still varies based on societal and cultural factors.

  I give this bit of context because HIV/AIDS is an important backdrop for this story. But what Ted’s work with his own story and the children’s stories makes plain, is that this narrative is not just about HIV/AIDS, but about the larger story of the inequity and marginalization we see in the world and how one individual tried to come to terms with that.

  The stories of Oliver, Miriam, Ivy, Harmony, Tabitha, Sofie, Nea and others, are still happening today. In some cases, HIV/AIDS is the culprit. In others it is Ebola, or it is the vulnerabilities that come from poverty, migration or dislocation due to climate change, war, or ethnic-based conflicts. Common to all of these is the contributing factor of the vast inequalities of wealth that currently characterize our globe. Inequality manifests as unequal freedom to resources, information, education, expression, and safety. It appears as unequal freedom from discrimination and oppression. We, as a global community, have made great progress in the fight against HIV/AIDS, but the challenges posed by an increasingly unequal and inequitable society remain. As long as they do, people, children, families will still be vulnerable.

  Even in the face of this, I see hope. Hope is apparent to me in the children portrayed in these pages. In those who were able to survive due to their own grit and resilience—not to mention the generosity and love from those who answered the call to compassion when they heard it. I see reason to hope in the fierce determination of young women like Miriam, Sophie, and Alexis whose stories unfold in the chapters to follow. I see hope in the network of social workers, caregivers, medical workers, community health advocates, and educators, striving on both local and global levels, contributing not just to the ideal of health for all, but also for justice.

  And I see it in Ted Neill—even as he wrestles with his own sense of vulnerability, brought on by his own struggles and his own “white-savior-complex,” and his journey to reconcile his privilege with the lives he encountered. He details this journey here with refreshing honesty and humor.

  I’ve known Ted since 2006. I was the President and CEO of the international development organization, CARE. I started in my role at CARE, the same month he began working as a graduate school intern. I had just transitioned from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation where I had directed the HIV, TB, and Reproductive Health Programs. Before then I had led the HIV/AID programs at the CDC and the US Agency for Development (USAID).

  Over time, I got to know Ted as someone with a penchant for bad puns, cheesy jokes, a keen intellect and a huge heart. I’ve been able to witness Ted’s career evolution as well as the peaks and valleys of his personal struggle with clinical depression and anxiety. I know his transparency regarding his mental health issues in this memoir emerges from an effort to expose himself to the same level of vulnerability and personal scrutiny that the children, through their stories, have opened themselves to. Ted’s candor is also a valuable exercise in dispelling the stigma that still attaches to mental illness. As with HIV/AIDS, stigma itself becomes a barrier to support and treatment. It results in needless suffering, shame, discrimination, and isolation. In this way, Ted’s experiences as a result of depression and anxiety has given him a shared solidarity with many of the children and young adults of Rainbow Children’s home. Many of them suffer from depression and anxiety as a result of the trauma of personal loss, social isolation/discrimination, and the stress of chronic disease. This is something that has brought them closer together with Ted.

  Ted’s approach to telling their stories is warm and intimate. This is especially true considering the difficulties in asking children to relive their trauma without the help of professional counsellors.

  Although many differences in language, ethnicity, and privilege, exist among us, Two Years of Wonder shows us that humans can connect through this sharing of stories with their joys and their pains.

  These are messages we need today more than ever.

  Although most of the stories are of children thousands of miles away on another continent, we don’t need to hop on a plane and fly across oceans, or half of a dozen time zones, to find people who are different from ourselves. We don’t need to be a frequent flyer to see others who have less privilege and access to opportunity than we do. Sometimes it only requires a car or bus ride. Sometimes all we have to do is get off at a different subway stop. Sometimes it just means opening our eyes.

  We don’t all have the opportunity to make a transcontinental journey. But we all can benefit from experiencing difference and seeing beyond our own circumstances. Ted did both, in his trip to Kenya, but also through his experience with those living with addiction and/or mental health issues in his home city. Ted’s retelling of this journey is valuable for the deep, enduring connections among us all that it reveals. These are the connections that make siblings in the human family. I know the children who will benefit from the telling of this story and the friends Ted made in the recovery community are glad he made the journey.

  I am too.

  Helene D. Gayle

  October 2018

  Dr. Helene Gayle is currently CEO of The Chicago Community Trust. She was president and CEO of McKinsey Social Initiative (now McKinsey.org) and the humanitarian organization CARE from 2006 to 2015. She was director of the HIV, TB, and Reproductive Health Program at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. She also served at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) for over 20 years. Dr. Gayle has been named a “Top 100 Global Thinkers," by Foreign Policy, "Top 10 Women in Leadership," by Newsweek, and "50 Women to Watch," by the Wall Street Journal. Forbes has recognized her among its "100 Most Powerful Women." Dr. Gayle has published numerous scientific articles and has been featured by media outlets like The New York Times, The Washington Post, Forbes Woman, Harvard Business Review, Glamour, O magazine, National Public Radio, CNN, and more. She serves on the board of Coca Cola, Colgate Palmolive, the ONE Campaign, the Rockefeller Foundation, the Brookings Institution, the New America Foundation, and others. She has received over three dozen honorary degrees, awards, and distinctions.

  Author’s Note

  In my recovery from depression and my near suicide, I read The Things They Carried, by Tim O’Brien. His collection of interconnected short stories, based on his experiences and the experience of men he served with during the Vietnam War, became my model for crafting a narrative—however fractured—of my story and the children’s. I identified with the torn nature of the soldier in O’Brien’s work: hating the front line and yet craving it as an opportunity to feel awake, alive, relevant, and significant. I know that feeling. I feel it every day when I look up at trees that are just trees and not acacia; birds that are not the brightly colored jewels that flitter about East Africa; gray sky that is not the spectacular blue shade of the tropics; stars that are dimmer; cars that do not move you to pray for your own safety; a society where suffering is not around every corner. For a long time after returning from Kenya, I yearned for the same level of stimulation, the same challenge to push against. Yet I know I am not of there, Kenya is not my home. I was a visitor, a storyteller. As I sorted through my longing and loss, somehow the process of writing soothed me.

  So I kept trying to write about it. This memoir, a mix of fact and fiction, is the result.

  My story here in first person is the best as I remember it with a few caveats: I have changed the sequence of some events and borrowed from the experience of other volunteers in a few instances, for the purpose of story pacing and flow. I wrote much of this in the years after Kenya, drawing mostly on tape recorded conversations with the children and old journals. Sofie and Judith’s story as well as Maina and Hezekiah’s were based on interviews with Judith and Maina that I conducted for the Rainbow Children’s newsletter. The sections written in third person, from the point of view of Miriam, Oliver, Harmony, Ivy, and Tabitha, are inventions. They are my best attempts at recounting the stories I heard from the children, from their point of view, in a cohesive narrative. The sections are re
constructions of what these children I knew experienced, although some characters are composites and some scenes are reimagined, built around the few details I could garner. I have approached the children’s narrative as a storyteller, not as a journalist, which is why I consider these sections a type of fiction or metafiction.

  The stories are crafted around the major turning points of the children’s lives they shared with me—the details, the internal monologues, the dialogues, and some of the characters, are mine. I have tried to stay true to their recollections and their personalities (as I knew them) and I feel these imaginings add something to the narrative, but I have taken literary license and owe the reader that admission. Strict constructions might object, yet I felt this was a more effective and compelling way to convey their experiences and surroundings than straight exposition. It was also an opportunity to take the spotlight off myself and put it onto them.

  Finally, any and all royalties I earn from this story will go to these children and children like them. That is no fiction.

  For some of the most traumatic scenes, such as those involving sexual abuse of children or violence, I did not feel qualified or justified in interviewing the children for details of their personal traumas. I know even the recollection of trauma can be additionally painful and damaging. My guiding principle was always to do no harm. I used secondary sources, published accounts, articles, and informal conversations to illuminate those scenes and create characters. Harmony’s story is a composite built from the experience of many. The tragedy being that such stories of repeated violence and sexual abuse at the hands of men who betrayed their roles as protectors are all too common and easy to find. Their victims are many and the stories of those survivors are out there, if we are willing to listen—willing to witness. It is the least we can do to acknowledge and honor their suffering and begin the process of healing and taking account.