Keeping Beauty under Control.

Africa has a myriad of challenges. Goodness knows we’ve all heard the litany. Poverty, AIDs, social injustice, hunger, drought, too much aid, too little aid. . . and the beat goes one.

One of our biggest challenges, not often mentioned in the media is the challenge of keeping Africa’s beauty managed. Africa’s beauty spreads like wildfire until you can organize a back draft. I sometimes wonder whether God started with Africa, and just blew out all the stops, or whether he finished here and decided to end on a flourish. Sometimes it’s almost too much.

Tomorrow, the Kijiji Guest House here on the AIU Campus is hiring 5 gardeners to spend the day pulling up the “volunteer” vegetables (and some weeds) that have taken over our kitchen garden because the gardener was busy last week and couldn’t do it. My banana trees outside my bedroom window seem to have spontaneously regenerated and all of the sudden huge bunches of bananas are weighing the trees down. Just beyond the bananas a tall verdant avocado tree looks like it was over-decorated for Christmas in lime green bulbs. The guys who trim the hedges on campus regularly go through with their machetes and lop off feet of growth, and a few weeks later, the job needs doing again. Color is riotous and fruit abundant. And I have not even mentioned Africa’s minerals, gems, wildlife and resources untapped.

Above all, the continent teems with people ready to laugh, dance, sing worship and work. Age wise, Africa is the youngest continent; young people with hope and energy that is contagious. Ask a little girl in a tattered dress in the slums what she wants to be one day and she will say, “an astronaut,” or a “neurosurgeon.” I love it!

Am I the proverbial optimist? My pastor tells me I sometimes live in bubble land. I think not. I would rather think of Africa in light of the proverb, “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.” If that’s true – Africa is just getting stronger and stronger. And more beautiful too. Cut back her hedges, trim her down; Africa rebounds. This is a great place to be.

For the love of Africa,

Lois