by Delilah
Our international director of Point Hope, Jan Haynes, visits the Buruli clinic far more often than I do. Jan is a knitter, and during one of her visits she was knitting a shawl. A few of the patients were curious as to what she was doing, so she demonstrated her skills with the needles and yarn. Interest turned to excitement, and before long, she had created a knitters’ group within the clinic. Little did she know her favorite pastime would end up transforming lives! The patients spent long days, weeks, and months shut inside a small clinic made of cinder bricks. There were few family visits, no entertainment, and little to distract them from the physical and emotional pain they were experiencing. Knitting became a fun distraction, but when they realized they could sell the goods they created, it took on an entirely new meaning!
In America and Europe, knitting is considered a woman’s hobby, but because there is no such framework in Africa, the male patients were intrigued as much as the women. Hats, scarves, purses, and lap blankets began to take form. Jan couldn’t keep up with the demand for needles and yarn, so we started scouting thrift stores for these simple tools. We packed bags with donated or thrift store yarn and then vacuum packed them, getting dozens of skeins in a suitcase. A surprising gift came with the Buruli patients’ love of knitting—the doctor in charge of the clinic reported that the men who were knitting had lower blood pressure, and as a result their wounds were able to heal much faster. Not only that, many patients had lost flesh and muscle from their hands and arms due to the virus, but the knitting forced them to use their limbs, which turned out to be an amazing form of physical therapy.
With knitting came possibilities to create things of beauty as well as generate income. With that came hope, and when hope replaced despair, the pain of the disease became much more manageable. In teaching a few people to knit, Jan impacted lives for eternity. She gave them a simple skill, which returned their dignity and gave them hope.
I live between two worlds, and it is difficult for me not to judge when I see rail-thin young women shopping at impeccably decorated upscale stores that carry designer handbags as costly as a monthly mortgage payment. My initial reaction to stories of hundred-dollar hot yoga sessions and manicures is irritation. When I see rich young music artists with diamonds in their teeth or gold grills gleaming when they flash their million-dollar smiles, or celebrities lazing around the deck of a yacht that costs more than the annual budget of an orphanage that could house five hundred homeless, hopeless refugee children, I feel frustration and despair.
I want to take them all to Africa, to see and experience the things I have. I’m just sure that if I could, their priorities would get straightened out. I must remind myself, however, as I learned from Tina, you can lead a horse to water, but you cannot make him drink. People must experience life on their own terms, but oh, if I can find a way to tell them my story, I will take advantage of it!
My mind now works like this: if every decision impacts a thousand different decisions, then if I decide to go into debt to buy a new car, I am deciding to spend $500 a month on an auto payment and insurance that I could be spending on food for orphaned children. If I decide to spend $360 on a purse from Nordstrom, I am deciding not to buy $360 worth of bandage materials for Buruli ulcer patients. If I decide to go out to dinner with my husband and we ring up an eighty-dollar tab for food I could have easily prepared at home for fifteen dollars, then I am saying that sixty-five-dollar difference, which would feed two refugees for an entire month, was worth the experience.
And yet, I am no saint. I do make these decisions every day. I do not live in poverty. My older children have cell phones, an American necessity. We eat dinners out when the day or week has been overwhelmingly busy or there is a birthday or occasion to celebrate. I splurge on experiences and items I know will make my loved ones smile. But my frugality is famous, and my heart with those in need.
My producer and best friend Janey has a beautiful daughter named Jesse. Because Janey was established in her career when she adopted Jess and because Jess is an only child, Janey spoiled her rotten from the day her curly head came into this world. If Jesse ordered a plate of pasta and then decided she didn’t like it after one or two bites, Janey would toss it in the garbage and order a burger for her instead.
When Jess was about nine years old, Janey came to Africa with me. She walked through the Buduburam refugee camp. She went to the orphanages with me. She held sick babies and watched the mothers with hollow cheeks and vacant eyes try to comfort their daughters, weak with malnutrition as their distended bellies begged for nutrition. Janey cried like I have never seen her cry before. I believe her heart was broken as deeply as it had been when her amazing father, the pillar and rock of their family, died from complications from diabetes. She returned to America a changed woman.
Before Africa, Janey had always thought my love for gardening was a somewhat silly pastime. Once she saw the gardens in Africa that we created to grow healthy food for starving children and families, she began to change. Janey has never been a materialistic or selfish person, but once she saw what real poverty looked like, and once she realized that she could make a difference in the lives of others, her entire perspective shifted. No, she didn’t sell all her possessions and join the Peace Corps, but a diametric shift occurred. Now she spends hours in her gardens; her once grass-only yard is a lush oasis of fruits, berries, and vegetables. She gives away as much as she uses for herself and Jesse. She packs up boxes of the clothes Jesse has outgrown and brings them to my farm for me to take to Africa to give to kids in the camp. She spends hours on the phone, talking to record reps and the managers of Céline Dion or Josh Groban, trying to get concert tickets to auction off for Point Hope. She wakes up determined to help feed one more child, to empower one more single mom.
Instead of spoiling Jesse, she is helping her beautiful daughter to view the world through a different lens. As a result, Jesse has become passionate about a number of issues and has gone with me to Africa, where she fell in love with the children and worked in the feeding program. She wants to go back—she cries over wounded animals and orphaned babies, and she has motivated other students in her school to get involved in service projects and to care about people outside of themselves.
Janey’s trip not only changed her life, but her daughter’s and untold others’ as well. She had always been conservative with her finances and generous with her resources, but her focus to change the world for good has taken flight. She is living more simply so that others may simply live. Most every person on my staff embraces and embodies that theory. Many are gardeners and share the harvest with family, friends, and food banks. We rarely go to red carpet events together, but we do go thrift shopping! We are bound by a common goal of producing an amazing radio show seven nights a week, and a common belief that we can change the world.
We often live such busy lives that we’re hard-pressed to find face time together with friends and family. We are conditioned to gain wealth and tangible items at the expense of quality time with people we love. Seems backward, doesn’t it?
I believe it goes back to our relatively new culture of isolation. We work so hard to build up our respective kingdoms—for what? To be trapped inside with everything to ourselves, sitting behind a computer or phone screen, snapping photos of our worldly possessions for all of our virtual friends to see and like.
Do you want to experience true peace in your life? Live simply. I’m not telling you to sell all of your possessions or give them away, or move to a remote village in Africa. I’m saying be like Janey—open your eyes to the impact you can have on others by making small adjustments in your lifestyle. Get involved in your community and learn about homelessness, foster children, orphans, disabled veterans. Find a cause you care about so you too will begin to think about how your decisions impact a thousand more decisions.
The only fact we know about life is that we all die. It’s also a fact that we take nothing with us when we meet our maker. I hope and pray that when we sta
nd before Him, we can demonstrate ways we lived simply so others may simply live.
CHAPTER 8:
A WOUNDED HEART
During a third visit to the group children’s home to see our potential son, Manny, his younger siblings were visiting. Manny was twelve, Tangi was eleven, and TJ was nine; Alonzo and Estina, the two youngest, were there as well. They were living with their father at the time. He had spent time in prison but fought for his kids when he was released. Manny’s father was out of the picture, as was the father of Tangi and TJ. Their mother was drug addicted and led a high-risk life. They were a close-knit group of kids despite the fact they had all been in the foster care system for years. Only the two youngest had been placed together; the other three were split up over and over again. When we were sitting at the dining table about to enjoy cake, Manny looked at me and smiled his famous smile, then he looked at Tangi and TJ and said, “You take one, you take us all,” and I knew he meant it in his tender heart. He was letting me know the bond they shared was not to be broken even if we adopted him.
A few weeks after our first visit, we were able to take Manny home on the weekends but had to return him to the group home each Sunday evening so he could finish out the school year. It was a lot of driving for no reason, as he did not have a passing grade in any of his classes. My new son had been placed in eleven different foster homes during his time in the system.
Each time a foster child is placed with a new family and then removed, their ability to form healthy bonds with other humans is damaged. After two or three removals and reassignments, their hearts shut down and stop trying. Consistency is not a factor in the life of a child taken by the state. The only thing that remains consistent is their daily fear of everything in their lives. Fear that they will not see their biological parent again, fear that they will be moved to an abusive home, fear that they won’t be removed when they are abused. Fear that they won’t fit in at school, fear that they will come home from school and be expected to interact at a dinner with a family they know nothing about. They fear coming home to discover a case worker’s car in the driveway and their few possessions crammed in garbage bags as they get dragged to another placement.
If you want to have your heart broken into a million pieces, spend a few hours at your local library learning about the state of foster care in our country. In a country obsessed with safety concerns for children, wonderful car-seat technology, product warnings and recalls on toys, it amazes me that so many children are routinely physically, emotionally, and sexually abused in our foster care system, and no one says a word. Most children in foster care are born and raised in poverty. Most have a mother or father that has a history of addiction and/or mental illness. Most enter the system already scarred and scared…
Manny and Sonny moved upstairs into a room under the eaves that ran the length of the house. Our roommate and my producer, Janey, had a stuffy front room upstairs. Baby Shaylah was on the main floor with my husband and I. Manny’s younger siblings, Tangi and TJ, often visited on the weekends and school breaks. Six people, sometimes eight, now lived in a three-bedroom house with only one bathroom. It was getting cozy.
Sonny and Manny quickly discovered their mutual love for soccer. They laughed, joked, and played as if they had known each other their entire lives, and I only saw them fight one time. Sonny was tall and thin as a rail; he was prone to shyness and very even tempered. Manny was short and chubby, had an outgoing personality, and was prone to fly into fits of anger with little provocation. Sonny had long legs and ran like a gazelle; Manny was a powerhouse. They made a great team on and off the soccer field.
In August of 1998 I decided to take the kids camping. I invited Tangi and TJ to come along, and their case worker approved the trip. We planned the trip and packed tents, blankets, ice coolers, and swimsuits. I packed Shay’s nebulizer and extra batteries in case it failed. We were armed with EpiPens and Benadryl, bug spray and citronella candles to keep the mosquitoes away from her. We joined my sister DeAnna’s family in a national park for the Labor Day weekend.
Shay’s health was good, and she didn’t have any asthma flare-ups. Manny and Sonny got lost hiking for a bit but soon found their way back to camp. Tangi and TJ had the time of their lives climbing on trees and jumping in the river. Just one thing interrupted the serenity of the camping trip for me—a secret I was carrying. Literally.
A few days before we left on the camping trip, I was feeling queasy and had a headache. I was a few days late… On my way to a soccer tournament with the boys and Shay in the back of my mom’s old van, I stopped at a store for Gatorade, snacks, cheese sticks, bottled water, and a pregnancy test.
During halftime I had the boys watch their little sister, and I went into the ladies’ room. Standing in the stall I stared in disbelief as the little plus sign formed in the window. I was pregnant.
I stuck the test back in the foil pouch, back in the cardboard box and into my purse. I was pregnant. I was pregnant with a husband I had been separated from twice and felt little connection to; pregnant despite the fact doctors told me it was not possible; pregnant despite the fact I was using birth control after we decided to adopt Manny. I was pregnant and expecting a baby at almost forty.
I was lost in thought during the camping trip; the drive to the mountain park was long and I kept getting carsick. By the time we arrived and started to unpack, I was exhausted and dehydrated. But the kids were excited and kept climbing on logs and trees and wanted to jump in the stream. We got the huge family-size tent set up, the sleeping bags rolled out, the coolers unpacked, and the hot dogs roasted. I had not told anyone except my husband, my best friend, Janey, and my sister, DeAnna, and I still was not sure how I felt about my condition. I was happy—I loved being a mom above all else—but this unexpected surprise threw me for a total loop.
That night, after the kids settled into their sleeping bags and the lanterns were turned off, I started to tell stories and sing silly songs to the children sleeping in the tent. It was our tradition, and no amount of exhaustion on my part would satisfy their enthusiasm. Finally they began to nod off, one by one.
Sometime after midnight when the entire campground had settled down and the sounds of the mountain forest at night began to lull me to sleep, I heard a voice in the dark and felt a small hand reach for mine. It was Manny’s younger brother, TJ. He grabbed my hand and asked if I was asleep. When I said no, I was just about to doze off, he said, “Can I call you Mom, like Manny does?” Then I heard sobbing and a final statement: “’Cause I don’t have a mom anymore and I want to call you my mom.”
I couldn’t stop the tears from choking my voice, whether it was my pregnancy hormones or just pure love, I reached out to cradle his head in my arms and soothe him and replied, “Of course. You can call me Mom or Mama. I answer to both.”
There was one defining event in my life that changed the course of my life forever… it was more of a project than an event, but it was one of those things that probably rearranged the DNA chain in my being, and has remained guiding me to this day.
I was in Mrs. Lyons’s fourth-grade class, my first year in Reedsport after moving from the farm up Coos River. I wasn’t exactly excited to start at the new school, and I wasn’t exactly popular. The school I left behind had a total of thirteen kids in my grade; this new school had four classes of fourth graders, almost one hundred students. As God would have it, I was put in Mrs. Lyons’s class, which was an amazing miracle. Not just because she loved reading and allowed us to read at our own rate and move ahead several class levels, and not just because she was an educated, strong woman who encouraged all her students, boys as well as girls, to exceed our own expectations and to always do our best. No. The best part of being is Mrs. Lyons’s fourth grade class was the fact that her son, Bill, had served in Vietnam.
I spoke with Mrs. Lyons recently about the project we did in her class, and even though she’s in her eighties now, her memories of the Vietnam project were as clear as they w
ere over forty years ago when she introduced us to the concept of giving to those in desperate need. Her son eventually retired after spending twenty-two years in the US Army, and today he’s a groundskeeper for the golf course in our hometown.
When Bill’s mission in Vietnam was complete, he stayed behind. There were villages that had been decimated by the Viet Cong farther north of his station; the men were conscripted into serving in the military, and the adult women had been taken and used in the sex trade. All that was left of some of the villages were the elderly and children. Bill Lyons’s heart broke for these children, and along with some Catholic nuns, he did all that he could to ensure they would live and be cared for.
The year was 1970 when Bill, in his late twenties, wrote to his mother about one particular village and the utter despair he witnessed in the orphanage. She brought her son’s letters to school and read them to our class. We sat in awed silence, twenty-two usually noisy, fidgety nine- and ten-year-olds. When she finished reading his neat handwriting, tears were in her eyes and streaming down our faces. Even Billy Town, the biggest kid in our school, was visibly touched.
The conditions Bill described were heartbreaking: orphans with no clothes, no shoes, no blankets, lying on their mats when they went to sleep at night.
With Mrs. Lyons’s direction, we wrote dozens of ideas on the chalkboard about ways we could help. Because reading and education was so important to her, she encouraged us to collect storybooks in good shape and bring them in. She invited us to bring in used clothes, and when we did, she inspected each garment. If there was a tear, she taught us how to mend it. If there was a button missing, she searched through her own button can and taught us how to sew one back on that matched as closely as possible. We paired socks, mended hems, sewed patches on jeans.