One Month Later: Thoughts on Cameroon

Below is an excerpt from the letter I sent to those who sponsored my mission to Cameroon. I realized that I'm partially missing the point of the trip if I only share my experiences with those who gave money. Processing the thoughts and feelings after such an experience is tricky, especially when it was your first time out of the country. The itself provides perspective on one's daily life, but getting perspective on the trip itself takes time and a lot of quiet thought. You kind of have to let your mind marinate in the memories and, although they're all important, some will reverberate and become an easy pathway to the illustrating gained insight. Photos can help me tell a story and give my audience a reference point, but the truth--and the truth is everything--is going to be captured by only a few moments from my experience, perhaps fairly ordinary moments.

I know, though, that I'm not done with Cameroon yet, nor is it done with me.

"Before I ever left, I had prepared a defense for my departure. I assumed I would be asked, “Why go to Africa when people need help right here?” I knew my response. “In America,” I would say, “we don’t understand what real poverty is like. Being poor in America and being poor in a third-world country are two very different things.” It was presumptuous—I hadn’t, in fact, actually been to a third-world country yet—but I believed in the sentiment. But now that I’ve been to Cameroon and back, I realize I knew very little about poverty, an idea that’s so complicated I’m not sure I could define it anymore.

It doesn’t take two weeks in Africa to know that Americans are blessed with an abundance of riches. A trip down any aisle in nearly any American grocery store makes it staggeringly clear. Our pets receive more nutritionally balanced meals than millions of children in Asia and Africa. What struck me, however, over and over again, was that the “poverty” in Yagoua, Cameroon, wasn’t linked to any sense of desperation or fear. Although many families were self-sufficient—most villagers grow and live on millet and maybe a few other root vegetables—few had access to clean water or modern medicine. They live day to day, but not one family described life as a “struggle.” On the contrary, we found families expressing nothing but gratitude for the simplest of blessings.

One day, Pastor Chris and I were out in the field with our translator—a literal field by the way—and we came upon a family burning a log. “God has blessed us!” the father said. The family was burning the wood to make pieces of charcoal, which they could then sell at the market. “Every day, He provides.” No sense of fear, no sense of worry, no sense of desperation; just a deeply-rooted faith that God loves them enough to provide for them every day. As we add more panicked exclamation points to our headlines here in the States, it was nearly a shock to meet a family that praised the Lord because they found a log in a field. It’s staggering to see how much joy we’re capable of when we let go of our fear. We can get go so used to our fear that sometimes we forget just how comfortable life can be without that fear.

Such perspective-altering interactions were a daily event in Cameroon. My experience was tremendously powerful—as an outsider who didn’t know the language, I had no choice but to give up all my control (or the illusion thereof) to God; as a result, I have never felt like God used me more. It was freeing and truly humbling. The people of Yagoua, as well, were beside themselves with excitement at the opening of the free clinic. Even though we weren’t able to meet with every individual—lines circled the building before we even showed up the first morning—we know that every pair of glasses, every cured fever, and every treated parasite was accepted as a miracle in the first degree.

Jesus healed the sick while leading his disciples and so we too tried to providing healing both physical and spiritual. Because I’m most certainly not a doctor, I was on the team that helped plant new churches on either side of the village. The local pastors were thrilled to see so much interest from the communities and by the end of our stay, new church plans had been put into motion with the local Lutheran Brethren. Soon, families that don’t have a home church—or have to walk several miles to get to one—will have a place to worship near their home.

The genuine smiles of the people of Yagoua flash through my mind every day and their songs (in Masana) echo in my ears. I feel like I’ve seen, for the first time, the kind of joyful, full-bodied praise that David writes of throughout Psalms. It’s the kind of praise I want to direct toward God and it’s with that same enthusiasm I want to extend my deepest gratitude to you."