Imagine

Imagine

It’s a Kirk Franklin Song (famous contemporary hip/hop/gospel/rap star in the christian music world and Pop world as well).

“Imagine me being free trusting you totally”
“I admit it was hard to see being in love with someone like me, being strong and not letting people break me down”,
“you wont get the joy this time of doing that.”

Just a few lyrics from an amazing song that I listen to over, and over, and over. Imagine it. I imagine this country of Mozambique, and all of Africa, without poverty. No, imagine this country without colonization, then without revolution for change to get their own country back, then with being the richest mineral enhanced country in the world:

1. Diamonds
2. Oil
3. Sugar
4. Tin(a small piece of tin is in every cell phone, why does Africa have to have most of it, the next Diamond issue to tear
apart this continent)
5. It’s people (my ancestors) and their expressive nature of complete and utter happiness in the midst of poverty…no matter
what is a major export (ask the United States)

But as I watched a sunset fall in the background behind the Indian Ocean in one of the biggest bays in the World, while mesmerized by kids playing in the foreground in red clay dirt that that you could pick up and make a clay model with I thought of me as a little boy who’s ancestors wouldn’t be exported across the middle passage and my feet hitting that red
clay dirt and oozing between my toes as I run after my village mates. That’s what I dreamed about as I gazed at “Orange Boy” playing.

“Orange Boy” is a kid with an Orange Shirt whom has connected with me and me with him. A worker here at Iris Ministries told me he wasn’t, well…”playing with a full deck” meaning he thought he was a little off in the head. I thought, because this is just how I think in an emotional state during my first visit to my ancestral continent, “Who is !@#$playing with a full deck in this #$%% continent or country.” Is it the crooked local politicians, the crooked local government, the desperate crooked crooks who would rob me out of desperation due to the crooked local government and local politicians? Anyway, back to “Orange Boy.” He’s not off, he needed a hug, he needed to lean on someone, he wants to learn how to work a computer. I swear, I could just open this Stupid Apple (Mac) up and there he would appear. He did not write in yesterdays blog Because he just doesn’t say much. His shirt is dirty but it’s so orange and red (from the Dirt) that it actually looks like it’s a part of the shirt. I am sure he attaches to a lot of people who might show him interest upon every visitation by some American team of missionaries coming to help, and thank God he does, and thank God they come. However, I am not just an average missionary. I am black, a standout among them( meaning that a lot of US aren’t on these teams A FACT). And I am not on a missionary assignment, but I really am, I am on a documentary crew. As a matter of fact, I am producing this documentary. It’s more than a mission for me, it’s a return to a certain part of my ancestry for the first time, which would be emotional
for anyone, a shocking investigation and self-examination of colonialism, revolution, forgiveness, redemption, and
acceptance that is just so fresh in this country that it’s frightening. Take Mozambique’s time line. Four hundred years of Portuguese…then

1975-revolution
1991-Civil War
1994-End of civil War
1995-Forgiveness for the Civil War (villages that were at war saying they did atrocities to each other, talking, healing, loving
each other)
Today-the fastest turn around of any country in Africa after a civil war.

Meaning, they could have gone right back to civil war after the cease fire if it weren’t for the forgiveness. Is that a direct cause of God in this country and missionaries coming. I think so and so does the gentleman I spoke to in Geneva who was part of that reconciliation (won’t mention his name) that he wants no credit for being a part of. And does Orange Boy care? It’s amazing how happy “Orange Boy” is. Except for one problem, Imagine him being beat right in front of you because you knew that his father was jealous of his attention to some black American coming in with his damn computer. Imagine me coming back to my room in tears wishing I could have did or said something but knowing that would have made it worse. That has nothing to do with any government local or otherwise. And what can I do about it? I don’t know, be careful to not interfere in his upbringing, meet him at different times when his fathers at work, I don’t know really. I will just have to use my imagination and pray. Another day in Pemba, Another Orange Sunset, another time of watching Orange Boy play in the red clay of an amazing country, and another lesson for me as I discover Mozambique and Africa in my ancestral land of rich red clay dirt between my toes as I walk around not as a kid, but as a grown man watching Orange Boy.