Gee Whizz

I have been living in a foreign country for a year and a half now, but I am far from assimilated. I still struggle with the mundane. Trying to get health insurance, car insurance, driver’s license, bank account, a Visa to remain here legally – you know, little things like that – only one of which I have successfully managed to obtain.

It definitely helps that most people speak English, but sometimes that just leads to more confusion. For example, when buying car insurance, you do not buy a policy with a deductible. You buy a “facility” with an “excess”. I can’t tell you how exasperating this conversation was, “What kind of a facility would you like to buy?” I don’t want to buy a facility, I want car insurance. They don’t understand why I don’t understand because we are both speaking English.

Here’s another example: whizz. It’s now summer on our side of the globe so the little backyard blow-up pools are now on display in the stores. The box is labeled “Whizz pool”. When I was a too-cool teenager, we called the kiddie splash pool in public places the “pee pool”, because we all knew what was inevitably going on in there. They can’t help it, they’re little kids. But would we buy something called a pee pool? I don’t think so - it must mean something else here, right?

Then I saw a big ole bin of Vanilla Whizz on sale. Now I was really baffled... so I had to buy one. Basically it’s a Twinkie. Whatever this whizz was, how are kiddie pools and twinkies both filled with them? It was a cultural enigma wrapped in a riddle.

My friend and neighbor Amanda, previously identified as my resident poop expert for identifying the gecko poop on my pillow, explained that whizz means anything that bubbles or fizzes or spins, or something like that. It is associated with fun, which kinda makes sense. So now Amanda has the dubious distinction of being both a poop and whizz expert. Can you believe how junior high I can be? Or perhaps the harder thing for you to believe would be that I actually used to handle murder cases in a court of law.

Back to whizz. Last week I was whizzed on (in the American sense) and was thoroughly touched by the experience. I was out in Soshanguve painting the bathroom at the orphan center (don’t get ahead of me here). Pastor Jack arrived and said that someone had broken into the crèche kitchen and stolen the frozen meats. The crèche is a paid day care run by the church and separate from the orphan program that AFnetAid operates in partnership with the church. Pastor Jack brought me into the crèche area to show me the window that had been broken and how he had since reinforced the burglar bars.

I rarely go into the crèche so I was very surprised when a little boy, maybe a year and a half old, reached up his arms to me as I was walking by. I don’t know this child but he was raising his arms and scrunching up his little hands and opening them again, his big brown eyes puppy-dog pleading. I may not be a mom but I know the international sign for “I want to be picked up” when I see it. Even though I had a bathroom to paint and this was not one of “our kids”, I couldn’t resist.

He snuggled in against my neck. I held him as Pastor Jack continued his saga of the break in. Pastor Jack went back to work and I walked around for a few minutes still holding Salvation, his name supplied by one of the teachers. When I realized Salvation’s pants were wet with whizz, I tried to hand him off to a teacher. He turned his little face to me and said “mama” and would not let go. I had never had someone call me mama before and I had NO idea how that turns your insides to mush.

So I held him for the next hour, fed him, played with him, not minding at all that my T-shirt and jeans were now whizz soaked too. Several times a teacher would reach for him, and he would scream and grab for me, crying mama.

I am still wondering why he made this attachment. Being makuwa, I am sure I look nothing like his mother, but for some reason he wanted me. He only speaks Sotho and I only speak English. I guess using the right words wasn't so important after all. But how are these bonds made? And within minutes?
My only guess is that he somehow knows that I love him even though I do not know him. It was such a glorious thing to be loved back.

We are called to be the hands and feet of a loving God to serve the poor, the oppressed, the abandoned.

And for that one hour, I got to be His heart too.