Missionary Teacher

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I am a missionary. I am a teacher. I am a missionary teacher.

Whether I am on an inner-city street, or a remote village, or in a Title I public school classroom, I try to live out my life as Gustavo Gutierrez describes life among the poor in his book A Theology of Liberation.

·      Real poverty is an evil – something God does not want. I struggle against it and attempt to end it in the world around me. As I live among people who are seeking food, shelter, clothing, work, healthcare and education but who are not finding these basic needs, I see they are wounded in a way that breaks their hearts and breaks the heart of God, too. I see they don’t want to be poor, but that poverty is a part of certain broken systems that can be repaired if we put our hearts and minds, our commitments, to fixing them. I see I can work side by side with my neighbors around me, especially with my poor neighbors around me, to make the world a better, more human place for everybody.

·      Spiritual poverty is a good – something God does want. It is the sense of having a readiness to do God’s will. When I live among my neighbors, we listen together to life around us and work and play and hear God’s voice in the quiet places among the quiet people where we are. “You have two ears and only one mouth,” my Grandpa used to say to me, “So you better listen twice as much as you speak.” I do ‘lots of listening. I do ‘lots of doing. That is my mantra every day.

·      Solidarity with the poor, and protesting against the conditions under which they suffer, is the way to live. I am not where I am to treat people like objects, like things. No, I am where I am to treat people as they are –human beings with infinite worth.

Here is a small story of how I tried to live out a theology of liberation when I was in Mali.

On that morning, Madu walked the mile from his village to our house at the mission station just outside of the town of Kenieba. He is married to Sirima and they have two children – four-year-old Sira, who they call Bonnie, and two-year-old Musa, who they call Papa. Madu is a farmer, a teacher, and more than anything else, a friend.

“Papa burned his hand this morning,” he said with a worried look in his eyes and a soft tremble in his voice. “The pot of sauce spilled on him when we were taking it off of the fire. Do you have any medicine we could use to put on the burn?”

I turned to the section on the treatment of burns in our trusty book Where There Is No Doctor.

“Did the burn cause blisters?” I asked with a combination of broken Malinke and hand gestures.

“Yes,” Madu answered in his broken English and a nod of his head. “It’s really bad.”

“Let’s take some soap, sterile gauze, scissors and antibiotic ointment and see if we can help him,” I said.

“I man to tu,” he responded, which is the Malinke way to say, “You have done enough,” the way to say, “Thank you.”

When we arrived at his village, the people greeted us and we greeted them. The Malinke people have a long list of greetings and blessings they give to each other when they pass each other along the road and in the village. They know the person who is standing before them is more important than anywhere they have to go or anything they have to do in the day. I was learning the greetings and the blessings, learning this very human way of living life.

“Hera sita?” I asked. In English, this means, “Is there peace here today?”

“Hera dorong,” they answered. “Peace only.”

This is kind of like the way we greet each other all across the United States.

“How are you doing?” someone will ask.

“Fine,” we will answer, even when things are not fine.

Of course, there was no peace in the village that morning. Everything was not fine. I could hear it in the strained voices of the people, and I could see it in the tired looks on their faces.

Sirima was working, preparing the food for lunch. She had Papa tied around her back in the traditional way of African baby carrying.

With large, sad eyes Papa pressed his cheek against Sirima’s back and hung his injured hand loosely at his side. I greeted Sirima and looked at Papa’s hand. Most of the skin had been burned off of his wrist and lower arm. Some skin was hanging from the wound. I could see raw, charred flesh on his little arm, wrist and hand.

Sirima held Papa tight and tenderly as we cleaned the wound. I washed his hand and wrist with soap and water. Madu cut away the dangling skin with the scissors. I coated the gauze with the antibiotic ointment. Madu gently placed it over the burn and wrapped an Ace bandage around the gauze.

Together, we helped Papa through his pain and tears.

We were afraid but we worked together.

As we worked, I prayed this prayer silently to myself:

Thank you for being here with us.

Thank you for caring for us.

We trust Papa into your hands through our hands.

He is hurting.

Please bring healing.

He is afraid.

Please bring comfort.

We trust ourselves into your hands, too.

We trust you.

Amen.

As we were washing, cutting, coating and bandaging Papa’s wound, as he was screaming and crying out in pain, I was acutely aware that I am not a doctor. I am only a person who wants to help the world. I was acutely aware that I was planted in a field of suffering where many people were hurting every day and the only thing I could offer to alleviate that suffering and help that hurting were my frail hands and my humble heart.

Five days later, two beautifully dressed elderly women came to my door at the mission. Madu’s mother, Sira, and his “Na n’ding,” his father’s second wife and so-called “little mother” in Malinke culture, Fenda, were standing before me.

Sira is the matriarch of the family. She still plants, works and harvests a field of peanuts every year. She is in the advanced stage of Parkinson’s disease so her hands tremble and her work is hard.

One time, I passed by Fenda’s peanut field. Sweat was glistening off the muscles of her arms and back and a humble kindness was in her smile and her eyes. She is strong and kind.

“Good morning, Bakary,” they said to me. “We brought you a gift for helping Papa.”

They held out a large bowl of peanuts, peanuts that Sira had grown in her field, peanuts that Fenda had harvested, peanuts that they prepared for me with their own kind and calloused hands.

“Wow!” I said. “Thank you so much. How is Papa today? Is he better?”

“Oh yes,” they answered, “He’s much better. No infection came. He’s going to be okay.”

“That’s good,” I marveled. “That’s very good.”

The peanuts were a symbol of my Malinke friends. When you plant a peanut in the rocky soil, it grows out of the ground as a deep green plant with bright yellow flowers on top to tell the farmer that the fruit is in the earth and is ready to be pulled out.

There stood Sira and Fenda, two deep, bright African women who nurture their family and friends with love and endurance in the depths of the third world.

There was Papa, a deep, bright African child, alive and growing in his village, a beautiful person with a chance to do something beautiful in the world.

As I shared my peanuts with everyone around me, I realized that I was there, offering myself in the midst of the suffering and joy, and that maybe God was using me to help the world. I knew God was using my Malinke friends to help the world in me.

This is one of the ways of being a missionary teacher.