KINGSVIEW

WELILE AND MORE FLY INTO THE NEST

Michael A. King

Just as our daughters were for long stretches gone from the family nest, a whole new family flew in. The first new member was Welile. She was once our middle daughter. That version of her left in summer 2006. Inspired by the "Serving and Learning Together" vision of the Mennonite Central Committee SALT program, she had moved to Africa for a year. We hear from her every now and then, more often now as her time to return to our nest grows nearer.

But once she arrived in Africa we learned she had also become Welile, which means "one who crosses over." We met Welile this year. When the doors to the South African Airways Airbus A-340 slated to deposit us 15 hours later in Johannesburg closed, my wife Joan and I felt shivers in our souls. We were at the beginning of a holy journey, we suspected.

We were right. Through the occasionally swinging door of the customs area in that tiny airport, we for the first time glimpsed our new daughter, Welile. That was awe-inspiring enough. Then we saw, grinning ear to ear beside her, African faces, eager to glimpse us oddities from America. They were Welile’s family. Two vehicle-loads of them had come to greet us.

Others who have experienced it will recognize what had happened: In Welile’s culture, her family was our family, and our family theirs. Our own family was driving us through this so-far-from-home mix of mango trees, the ubiquitous VW mini-buses, paved highways leading to dirt roads, people who understandably see white skin as such an oddity that one girl once asked why Welile was all covered in bandages.

So when we arrived at the homestead, a compound of four homes and interrelated families, how dizzying yet miraculous it was to greet no strangers. Just Welile’s make (mother) plus her and our grandparents, brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles, nephews, nieces, cousins, cousins of cousins, and more.

Stop the story there, and our intimations of holiness upon departure would have been correct. But two days later the circle of family grew yet larger. Welile works with a Christian organization caring for those infected by HIV/AIDS, which is devastating Africa. Friday morning we set out, with Welile plus supervisors Make Mary and Make Shongwe, on visits.

Just minutes of climbing up rutted roads from a city mixing traditional African culture and markets with a Western-style mall (and Kentucky Fried Chicken) took us to a different planet. The photo on the mantel of one AIDS-ravaged woman showed she had once been a breathtakingly lovely professional woman. Even now, as she mourned the flattening of her face-lines due to weight loss, she remained austerely beautiful.

And chastised Welile: "Welile! You are my daughter! A daughter visits her mother. Where have you been, Welile!"

A sheepish Welile replied, "Oh, Make, I’ve been a bad daughter. I promise I will visit more often." I hope she has.

The most searing visit was to a house of corrugated tin, no utilities, surrounded by trash and worse. Inside a woman was fading into nothing. Her siblings lay listlessly on another bed. Amid the misery, they were addicted to drugs and alcohol. Parents were gone, AIDS victims.

In the local dialect, Make Mary questioned the dying woman in business-like tones. How was she feeling? What had she had to eat? Out of food. So out to the truck for food.

Then more chatting. We waited for interpretation. Make Mary motioned Joan forward. "Take her picture." Joan was uneasy. Violate her privacy as she lay there dying?

"She wants you to," Make Mary confirmed.

So Joan took her picture. We could only guess that she wanted to be memorialized, to be known, to have counted in the world even as she faced leaving it.

We walked back to the truck. Make Mary said, "We visit because Jesus told us to care for the poor, the sick, the dying. They are all his children. They are our brothers and sisters." We got in the truck. Make Shongwe put in a gospel music tape. We sat there.

Soon our visiting was done. We had run out of food. There would be no more until more funds arrived.

We flew back to Dulles and lives overflowing with food, money, health resources. We ponder ways to tell of Welile, her homestead family, Make Mary, and Make Shongwe, her mother who scolds her for not visiting, our sister in the shack. They are in our nest now. And families take care of their own.

—Michael A. King, Telford, Pennsylvania, is pastor, Spring Mount (Pa.) Mennonite Church; president, Cascadia Publishing House, LLC; and editor, DreamSeeker Magazine. This column was first published in The Mennonite (June 5, 2007, p. 30), as a "Real Families" column.