the idolatry of minimalism

Spawned by a 1970’s art history movement, minimalism became the choice descriptor for simple art and design. It kept a low profile for several decades until something (the mystical powers of the mommy bloggers) in America caused the term to broaden its meaning beyond art and into every day life. Suddenly, the internet was giving us all the directions on how to downsize our wardrobes and discard nick-nacks and shrink paper piles and everything in between. Minimalism spawned whole new species a la minimalist parenting and minimalist cooking and minimalist hairstyling – and bit by bit, the fad became wisdom and we all realized that fat and cluttered and complicated were not actually recipes for happiness.

I bought into the minimalist philosophy long before I knew it was cool, long before Becoming Minimalist started telling me to do all the things I was already doing. My first house after college was a tried and true minimalist hut. The entire structure was made of earth. Good, clean dirt and grass and water and clay. I especially loved my dirt floor – I could drain my pasta water right next to the fire which was also dropping embers onto the floor of my kitchen-living-dining room. It was infested with rats and bats, and I loved everything about it. (The Peace Corps tends to attract not-high-maintenance people.) I had no furniture save a bed, a table with no chairs (because the village carpenter was clearly not looking for money) and a rough hewn shelf. And it was all I needed.

Not what most Americans think of when they hear "starter home," but I loved it.
Also, unrelated side note: baby face Aggie on my left there is graduating from high school this year. *tear*

Marriage and children pushed my minimalism boundaries a bit. Jeremy insisted on a not-dirt floor. I'm a good wife, so I conceded. When Bronwyn came along and started sleeping with us and none of the spaces in the house was big enough to fit our new bed, change was necessary. Bit by bit, we've pushed walls around and added a few amenities, taking a “step up” every year or so… and every time, I’ve felt super guilty about it. It’s like my inner minimalist is being asked to commit perennial felonies and I hate it.

I still find the simplicity of it stunning

the bungalow/rondoval/yert we custom made to fit our co-sleeping bed 

this is how we reno: Jeremy with power tools on top of a chair on top of a chair on top of
a table being stabilized by three boys pretending they are Jet Li. Call us for bookings, HGTV.

Principled is my middle name, and my minimalist principles are chiseled on stone tablets. One of the principles of our work is that we live with and like those around us. We believe strongly in the power of integration for effective communication and we’ve seen the fruit born of such an ideology. Rich people living amongst the poor must acknowledge the baggage they carry unless they want their dialogue to sound like this:

 “Hello! My name is $$$. I’m so happy to be here for the sake of $$$. Would you like to partner with us on $$$? Maybe we can get together and talk about $$$? Ok, well sounds like $$$ would be a good idea? Let’s chat more about $$$. Thanks! Bye… $$$$!”

True story: I have actually had people greet me (outside of Fimpulu, thankfully,) with the words, “Hello, Dollars!” Its crazy unsettling and it totally confirms the need to establish a different name lest we adopt $$$ as the super-inappropriate default.

Hard work pays off, and I’ll be purple duck if living in the bush doesn’t qualify as hard work. After several years, people commented on it – a lot – to us and to others. “Hey, there are these white people in our village and they live in just a house like ours!”

I’ve heard that no less than a dozen times, and I always pat myself on the back a little for it.

happy little homesteaders

Equally strong as our convictions around simple integration are our convictions around the science and theology of minimalism. Studies have proven that less clutter correlates with greater happiness and verily verily, we can attest that throwing junk away feels good. Furthermore, Jeremy and I are both proper Sunday School graduates and we know this to be true: Don’t store up your treasures on earth where moth and rust destroy. Have less crap, says the Teacher. And all God’s people shouted Amen.

But life is a forceful tutor. My baby got malaria. And then she got it again, just as Jeremy and I had too, and this happened over and over until our family malaria count is somewhere around 20 and we stopped counting because that’s silly. Our roof started to slowly dust away to nothing and we unloaded 10 cans of insecticide to assassinate the beetles eating it, and I don’t even want to think about the brain cells we killed with that choice. We’ve all had weird skin ailments and are far too comfortable with conversations about diarrhea. We had a season of hairy spider infestation too. Our newest thing is that we now have an indoor “water feature,” a tranquil waterfall flowing down the side of our kitchen wall collecting in a small pond that touches every square inch of our living room. So vogue.

One afternoon, I watched Bronwyn skype with Grandma, naked and fevered, lying on the floor and looking painfully pitiful. To say that I felt like a bad mom would be an understatement. That same day, Jeremy read me an article from a study in Uganda claiming that tin roofs, when compared with grass, saw a 50% reduction in the incidence of malaria. The wise husband started asking me if we should make some changes and I said “NOOOOOo!” faster than he could say “MALARIA.” My heels are dug in pretty deep in this Zam-mud. I dogmatically recited our mantra. "We live simply. As do our neighbors. If they can do this, so can we. We do not need more comforts than what we have. We. Do. Not.”

But I slept on Jeremy’s question all the same. For many nights... and mornings, mopping up the lake in the livingroom and dumping the mosquitos out of our little night-light-bug-sucker thingy and swabbing anti-fungal goo onto Leonie’s face and killing all the spiders of the world for Bronwyn.

The staunch conviction that we must live JUST like our neighbors started to waver a bit as I was rattled by my lack of hospitality towards my own children.

Hey Guilt Hey! Our minimalist principles are hard and fast, and so by conceding to change, it felt like we were wimping out, throwing in the towel, and embracing that which we’re most adamantly against. In our case, however, “go big or go home” is more than a tagline. It’s a mandate linked to real possibilities and real consequences. We understand that if we don’t take care of our family, we’ll have to opt out of this gig all together and it would behoove us to make sure that doesn’t happen. Alas, the hubby is right.

We’ve emphasized how simply we live to everyone who has tracked with our work. It’s kind of been a thing we may have bragged shared about more than once. (oh hey extra layer of guilt). But we’re going to have to change our story. Because we done gone ripped our roof off. We sure did. We tore some walls down and we we have begun operation hospitality: the effort to turn our house into a home. Dear everyone, the goals have changed.

Once upon a time, the goal was to live as simply as possible, idolizing minimalism and embracing an almost-ascetic brand of discomfort. I judged hard-core anyone who commented that they couldn't live like we do because truth is, yes you can - we are not special. But. Just because one can doesn't mean that one has to or that one should, and I've spent near on a decade parsing this distinction out. There’s a difference between seeking comforts because of a materialistic spirit and/or an immature avoidance of hard things... and seeking to not be so sickly and tired all the time. 

The goal now, therefore, is not to live comfortably, but to live comfortably enough. To have enough space that we can think and breathe without thinking and breathing on top of one another. To have enough of the household amenities that we aren’t stressing our bodies or our time to complete basic tasks. To have enough distance from the outside that we don’t feel like we are at constant war with the environs. To have enough aesthetic beauty to lift our spirits when needed. To have enough rooms and bed space so that the parents don't have to sleep with all of the kids forever and ever amen!

Enough.

Not all the comforts, not more comfort for more comfort’s sake, but enough.

Enough is defined by a matrix of culture and age and personality and gumption and grace and when it comes to "how much is enough," one size fits all is inadequate and lame. We have had to draw the lines in our own (literal) sand, and we've done so prayerfully and with great forethought. 

There have been seasons when we've embraced less for less’ sake, and we’ve hurt ourselves. We stand actions of starting off in the village sans fanfare. We acknowledge that it is because of our early choices that today we are not dollar signs, but rather friends, neighbors, helpers, and co-workers. By the same token, it is because of our history and friendship that at this stage in the game no one gives a rat’s rear whether we change our roof or add some square footage. Truly, they don’t care. Because after nine plus years, surprise, surprise, the intrigue is gone, and people are genuinely happy that we are doing something nice for our family. (Confession: because guilt is a twisted friend, I compulsively polled people on this to make sure we weren’t making a huge mistake and that our friends would not covetously despise us forever. Weirdo.) But when we received the equivalent of the Papal blessing from the neighbor folk and the grass came flying off the roof, we knew it was ok.

When we were fresh and pink and smelled like we had just stepped out of Wegmans, the people of the village were watching to see what we were all about. Now years later, we have children, and THEY are the ones watching to see what we are all about. As a principled mother, I want them to see frugality not futility. I want them to see moderation, not masochism. There’s a way to not bow to the god of mammon and still care for your body, mind and soul… and there’s a way to responsibly spend the money to do so.

Today I stood in the original house, the one the size of my parent’s bathroom, stroking the walls and tearing up, saying to Jeremy how I would miss that precious structure; the one in which he carried me over the threshold, to which we brought home our first child, where we made a name for ourselves in more ways than one.

"We’ve come far," he said. "And we’ll go farther still," and back to demo he went. 

how well do you know your malaria?

If you’ve been following us on facebook, you know that the buzz word of the season for us is 

M A L A R I A.

I’m pretty fed up announcing that yet another member of our household has malaria, so I can only imagine that our friendly followers are also waiting for the day when we finally add some variety to our news feed.

When we were at the hospital in Lusaka, some of the nurses were sharing their malaria experiences with us. One of them was saying that, never really having left Lusaka, she has only had malaria a few times in her life. “It was horrible, though,” she recounted. Another shared with us that, also having grown up in Lusaka, she never really had malaria until she was posted to a mission hospital in Mbereshi which is just north of us. “Luapula Province, let me tell you, that place is nothing BUT malaria. I was sick every month the whole time I was there.” We know that, sister. We felt her pain and she likewise.

It was impressed upon us that even amongst Zambians, those who live in the capital have little understanding of the struggle against malaria that exists in the rural areas. Many are ignorant of the signs and symptoms or of the course of treatment. This got us wondering how much our American friends know about the disease. To find out, I’ve put together a handy little quiz. Test yourself by answering the questions below and discover your own Malaria IQ.

HOW WELL DO YOU KNOW YOUR MALARIA?

Answer the following questions:

1. All mosquitoes carry malaria. (T/F)

2. Similar to the flu, most malaria will clear itself up over over time. (T/F)

3. Symptoms of malaria are more dramatic in pregnant women. (T/F)

4. Malaria is the second largest killer of children in Africa, after HIV/AIDS. (T/F)

5. The best way to prevent malaria is to sleep under a mosquito net. (T/F)

6. Symptoms of malaria appear almost immediately after being bitten by an infected mosquito. (T/F)

7. Malaria is a bacterial infection. (T/F)

8. Malaria is highly contagious amongst infected people. (T/F)

9. List three telltale signs of Malaria.

10. Once treated for malaria, a person can be confident that the disease will not recur. (T/F)

HOW’D YOU DO? CHECK YOUR ANSWERS BELOW!

1. All mosquitoes carry malaria. (T/F) – false.

Only the female Anopheles mosquitos carry malaria. This particular kind of mosquito is only active in the evening, and does not make the familiar buzzing sound.

2. Similar to the flu, most malaria will clear itself up over time. (T/F) – false.

If left untreated, the parasites in the body will continue to reproduce, leading kidney failure, seizures, mental confusion coma and death.  

3. Symptoms of malaria are more dramatic in pregnant women. (T/F) – false.

Malaria in pregnancy is often asymptomatic due to the fact that the parasites concentrate in the placenta instead of the mother’s blood stream. Malaria can increase risk for serious pregnancy problems including prematurity, miscarriage and stillbirth.

4. Malaria is the second largest killer of children in Africa, after HIV/AIDS. (T/F) – false.

Malaria is THE SINGLE LARGEST KILLER of children in Africa.

5. The best way to prevent malaria is to sleep under a mosquito net. (T/F) ­– false.

The best way to prevent malaria is to not get bit. Period. (We’ve woken up with mosquitoes inside our net, and that always sucks.)

6. Symptoms of malaria appear almost immediately after being bitten by an infected mosquito. – false.

Malaria symptoms begin to present usually 10 days to 4 weeks after infection though a person may feel ill as early as 7 days or as late as 1 year later.

7. Malaria is a bacterial infection. (T/F) – false.

Malaria is a parasitic disease.

8. Malaria is highly contagious amongst infected people. (T/F) – false.

Malaria does not pass from person to person, only from mosquito to person. However, mosquitoes acquire the malaria parasites after having a blood meal from an infected person. During the infected mosquito’s next meal, the parasites acquired from the infected person will be deposited into the healthy person, causing him or her to fall ill.

9. List three telltale signs of Malaria.

Fever, sweats, chills, headache, malaise, muscle aches, nausea and vomiting. Any three of these combined (if the person is in a malaria endemic area) are good indicators of malaria.

10. Once treated for malaria, a person can be confident that the disease will not recur. – false.

Two kinds of malaria (P. vivax and P. ovale) can occur again (relapsing malaria). Some parasites can remain dormant in the liver for several months up to 4 years after a person is bitten by an infected mosquito, eventually coming out of hibernation and invading red blood cells again.

So??? Are you a malaria expert now? We know that many of the people who read this blog and follow us on facebook care about us and want to pray for the things that concern us the most. I hope that knowing a little bit more about malaria will help you pray more specifically the next time we announce that someone is sick. (which hopefully won’t be any time soon…) 

The life cycle of the malaria parasite is such that the illness advances very rapidly. We were recently talking with a friend who is a missionary pilot who commented that he’s seen many missionaries feel ill one day, get really, really sick the next day, and then the day after, they are dead. This is why when someone in our house tests positive for malaria, we immediately seek treatment and send out the SOS signal to garner prayer support. Malaria does not mess around, and neither do we. Some of you may remember that when we were first married, Jeremy was severely ill with malaria to the extent that it had spread to his brain. Some months later, we were recounting the episode to a research associate from the CDC and her assessment was, “I have no idea why he didn’t die. Given what you are telling me, he absolutely should not be here right now.” THAT, friends, is the power of prayer.

Thank you again to everyone who has stood by us in this particularly trying season of illness. We remain committed to praising God in the storm, and thank him for his sustaining grace.

What you might be missing if you are having a white Christmas

I’ve been tracking with all of the Christmas preparations back in America via facebook and various websites and blogs. I don’t know if it’s just the people I’m following or if the country as a whole is really as high-strung as it seems. If I had to choose one word to describe the general vibe I’m getting about the holidays right now, it would be “survival.” Ten tips for surviving Christmas this year. How to save money these holidays and (maybe) save your mind. Christmas for those who are just making it through. Brimming not with joy and cheer so much as armor and strategy and steel wool.

I do understand. I’ve shed a few tears in the last week myself. Not because of “holiday stress” or anything remotely related to the self-induced frenzie that so many people endure for the sake of cookies and presents and what have you. Instead, I’ve been crying over being sick, over the fever and the barf bucket and the incessant buzzing of mosquitoes threatening again and again. I’ve been pining for an escape – a warm bath, clean toes and carpet and a mommy to tuck me in and bring me sprite. I’ve been mourning the forced end of my nursing relationship with Bronwyn and this new identity crisis as our mother-daughter relationship has suddenly changed.

Sitting, typing, slowly eating a pear and sipping tart juice, devising a strategy against this bush that’s trying to kill me, trying to decide if we can still pull off our Christmas programs with truncated preparation… I too feel like I’m more or less just surviving.  

If I take my cues from the internet, my life-strategy would be to fake my way through, perform my way to perceived perfection, fix my eyes on the deadlines and make it happen, dag nabbit. But something about that just doesn’t feel right. In New York, we always used to comment that Christmas day needed just enough snow to cover the mucky mud and make things look pretty. A blanket of white to give the appearance of pristine and flawless, helping us forget that the ground underneath is an unsightly mess. Given the status updates about pulling Christmas off, it would almost seem that the desire for a winter-wonderland is little more than a projection of many a heart’s desire to appear perfect; the dreaming of a white Christmas is a way of longing for the muck in our own lives to be covered over.

Considering that Jesus will not likely get a birthday cake in our house this year, and I will be coming out of my mosquito net only in between showings of The Nativity at the LRC, and I’m blinking tears every time I look at my baby, I’d have to confess that yes, I wish it would just snow and cover over my own muck. But as I look outside, the lush green grass whispers to me, “it aint gonna happen.”

Trying to put some strength back in my legs the other day, I hauled myself up to the upper field to see the maize. Having just been planted, it’s yet tiny and vulnerable and only the beginning of something productive. I looked at my feet, mud slicked as is inevitable this time of year. My life is a metaphorical mud pit, I whispered, not complaining so much as stating the obvious. And in one of those grace moments where the Spirit prays for us, looking out across the maize, I uttered again. Out of that mud comes new life. A persistent theme for me of late, trying to remember that it’s the yucky, the uncomfortable, the unpleasant, the down and dirty hard stuff of life that provides the hearty soil for life transformation. Frozen and white are beautiful really only to gaze upon, a romantic sham that is actually infertile, waiting for the melting and mud and yuck to return so fruit can sprout once more.  

There is no better time than at Christmas to remember to remember that Jesus came to join us in the muck, not covering over it with a temporary blanket of white, but by burying himself as seed in the dirt, only to push out again and display for us newness of life.

For the maize growers of Zambia, Christmas time is teeming with the promise Christ. Emmanuel, God with us is written on every stalk, every rain drop – every heap of mud. Here we can see it, and smell it, and somehow? Somehow it makes the malaria and the slapped together programs and the forced weaning… hopeful. It’s not pretty, and I drop tears even as I type and remember. But the maize flutters gently and the still small voice whispers Merry Christmas once more.

Merry Christmas from Choshen Farm.

in case you were wondering: sickness

I haven’t written in a while mostly because I’ve been either too busy or too sick to put time into my beloved bush baby blog. For whatever reason, I seem to have been stuck on this recurring sickness cycle for the last two months. Sick for two weeks, healthy for one, sick for two weeks, healthy for one. Finally, one of my sick periods coincided with a trip to Lusaka and Jeremy agreed to I should get some blood work done to try and figure out what was going on with me.

Well, I can officially tell you that I do not have the following ailments:

Malaria

Meningitis

Typhoid

Schistosomiasis

HIV

Toxoplasmosis

Tick bite fever

Morning sickness

Actually, I’m only assuming that I do not have tick bit fever, mostly because I’m feeling fine now, even though the lab never delivered the results for that test. I still am not sure what has caused the various bouts of illness, but I’ve basically been told to go forward and hope for the best, which I will certainly do. I was thinking though that this might be a good opportunity to share a bit about how we deal with sickness, just in case anyone was wondering. Here are some of the main features of our available health care facilities and what we do in terms of sickness management.

(note: these are details of the upcountry facilities; there are better facilities in Lusaka, if you can get there. also, photo credit to Denise, a super stealth photographer in an otherwise not-to-be-photographed place.)

* There is no such thing as an emergency here. If you are dying, the Doctor will still be in at 9 o’clock.

* The hospital may shut down completely for things like cocroach fumigation.

* Medical professionals are referred to as doctors even if they are not actually doctors. They “doctor” diagnosing you may an MD, or a nurse, or, in worst case scenarios, the janitor.

* Many medical professionals would rather be wrong than admit they do not know.

* It is culturally frowned upon to ask too many questions or question the doctor’s authority.

* Diagnostic services are severely limited to the extent that the lab can tell you your iron count, HIV status or Malaria parasite levels. And that’s it.

* But it doesn’t matter that the labs can’t tell you more, because if you have a headache, a fever, body aches, nausea or vomiting, you obviously have malaria. Even if you just tested negative for malaria.

* It is most common for doctors to diagnose only things for which they have medicine… which is another reason why you obviously have malaria.

* There are no appointments. All doctors visits are established through a first come, first serve, stand in line for hours sort of basis.

* If the doctor decides you need to be admitted for observation (Jeremy, bless his heart, has been admitted three times) you have to source your own mosquito net, wash your own blankets if you puke on them, and bring your own clean drinking water because whatever comes out of the taps in the hospital is likely to make you sicker.

* Most of the time, we just try not to get sick, self diagnose when we feel crummy, and try to “hold off till Lusaka” when something just isn’t right.

I know that a fair number of Americans are frustrated with the health care system in the US right now. I’ve been reading the facebook rants. I'm sorry if you are paying out the nose for doctors visits. I’ll try and say this as gently as possible and with an abundance of sympathy…

“Consider just how much you choose to complain, because it could be a whole lot worse.”

(Aren’t you glad you asked about what its like to be sick in Zambia?!?!?!)

Please know that I’m not trying to start a game of comparisons. Missionaries and Peace Corps volunteers and expats LOVE to play the "my life is harder than your life" game. It's obnoxious (at best) and toxic (at worst), and we would all do well to stay far, far away from that mentality.

Furthermore, the fact of the matter is that Jeremy and I know all too well that we have it way better than many other people in this country, who have it way better than many other people in this region who have it way better than many other people in this world. The fact that I can google my symptoms and purchase fuel to drive myself to Lusaka or even buy a ticket to fly home to America puts me in a soberingly privileged category and I don’t take that lightly. I don’t throw around words like schistosomiasis to sound all hard-core or to elicit sympathy. I’m just sharing for sharing sake – answering questions that we certainly do get asked, because after all, the title of this post is in case you were wondering… And now you know!

I’d actually like to do a whole series of ‘in case you were wondering’ posts to answer readers' questions about what life is like in our little corner of the world called Fimpulu. If you have a question, something you might have been wondering, leave a comment or send me an e-mail or fb message and I’ll dedicate a post to answering it!