November 19, 2009
I can’t find the link online at Time.com, but the end essay of the most recent print mag contains a fascinating article entitled ‘China’s Africa Gambit.’ It speaks of Asia’s largest consumer economy’s calculated risk that Africa is the ‘next great’ untapped consumer market, and in fact statistics show that African economies have been growing at 6-7% GDP the past decade, which is a figure that mirrors India’s impressive GDP growth at the same time.
Here’s the money (HA!) quote:
“Our common impression of Africa owes more to Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness than we would like to let on: Africa is inscrutable, wild, primitive and decades away from genuine modernization. Like the European businessmen in Conrad’s 1902 novel, we assume Africa’s only assets come from the land or beneath it. In the Heart of Darkness it was ivory. Now it is oil and minerals.
But China has caught onto something that eludes most governments and companies in the West. Chinese state-owned and private enterprises believe African consumers could be the great untapped gold mine. Beijing’s engagement with African leaders and governments is increasingly about ensuring that Chinese firms are best placed to sell their products when Africans start buying.”
I am still working out my thoughts regarding capitalistic consumerism, and I know Beijing is simply looking at its bottom line, but I wonder if Chinese engagement with African leaders could actually empower African nations towards healthy growth and competition? Hmm…
November 17, 2009
I bust out laughing every week at Bill Simmons, the best sportswriter alive. I don’t agree with all his content, but he’s both side-splittingly hilarious, a genius sports analyst and master theorist, and surprisingly transparent about how much he loves his friends. I hate how much he loves Boston sports, but hey, everyone’s got a gimmick.
The following paragraphs on his oldest friends are especially dear to me in these days as I prepare to re-connect with those whom I have loved the deepest and longest in my life. I can’t wait to see you family and friends!
That’s what happens when you get old. People move, people have kids, and it’s not uncommon to go 18 months without seeing one of your best friends. If somebody told you this would happen when you were 25 or younger, you would punch them in the face. You would refuse to believe it. But it happens to everyone. It just does…We made it. It’s been 13 years since our first monster Vegas trip together. Nothing has changed. We are the same guys. The truth is, you have your oldest friends in life, and then you have everyone else. Nothing will trump your oldest friends. Any amount of time can pass without your feeling as if you’ve grown apart because, really, you can’t. It’s like a plant. You just have to water it every so often and you’re good.
November 16, 2009
- I’m emotionally drained from saying goodbye so frequently, so sincerely, and so deeply these past few weeks. I have done this better than ever before in my life, and still feel that a huge hole is coming quickly in my life (quickly would be in less than seven days!).
- There is so much going on in my heart right now that I don’t even begin to know how to name what is in it. Excitement about coming home, anxiousness about the long journey ahead of preparing to come back here in March, fear about the previous two things, and a general exhaustion with any end of the year.
- It is so weird that next week is Thanksgiving and I am sweating in the humidity of the approaching summer thunderstorm season.
- I can’t fathom that I am spending two days in London next week praying about ‘down-the-line’ opportunities there, be it several years from now or whatever.
- I can’t wait for Mexican food, bodyboarding NW winter swells, family, and friends.
- I will deeply miss my growing community of friends here, my ministry partners,driving a stick-shift on the left side of the road, and of course Sarah Maxie!
This unbelievable shot by Tom Cozad (newportsurfshots.com) of Newport Elementary really made me miss California.
- I really feel like I am becoming a different sort of man this year. In many ways I am Chris Kamalski more than ever before, yet integrating this ‘new’ (in some ways) self will be challenging upon coming home. In some ways, I feel like my re-entry home may be harder than I first anticipated. South Africa has become home to me in some ways.
- Please pray for me this week as I say goodbyes–that I would be present!
November 10, 2009
Three years later and this pictured could have been snapped today (Although the Starbucks writing would probably not be in Thai).
Mom, I love you so much, and have missed you so much this year while in South Africa. I pray that your birthday is filled with laughter, hot chocolate, a good dinner, and the anticipation of spending good quality time together in 2 short weeks…I am proud to be your son!
November 9, 2009
I find myself yearning these days for a return to a more regimented program of growth, yet with the freedom that accompanies a growing acceptance of all of my iniquity, brokenness, and quirks. I desire to change, yet have returned to a place where I am unsure how. I want to live as a saint, a holy one set apart for God, participating in the restoration of all things in God’s world. I just don’t know how to any more. Anyone with me?
November 7, 2009
I’ve had a hard couple of weeks wrapping up the Apprenticeship year here in Pretoria. Max’s injury, overall tiredness/exhaustion from the year, transition, thinking about future stuff, plus all the wrap-up stuff that comes with ending something and beginning new things. As I’ve written before, my God-complex comes out much more deeply during this time, and I struggle deeply with thinking that everything needs to be tied up in neat bows of great Chris Kamalski effort and sweat. Things have come to a head this week in realizing that I simply cannot do it all, and must lay down many things.
But the combination of celebrating the engagement of good friends, cliff jumping into natural rock water pools this afternoon, watching TV, finally starting my heart project in a deep way (editing photos is fun, if tedious!), quality time hanging out with Tony Cermak just a few days before he leaves, and a silly free Matt Wertz cd that I downloaded this week are picking up my mood. I took no medicine, haven’t ‘prayed,’ or really done anything other than found myself (grudgingly at first) enjoying the past several hours.
Could the mind actually have a much deeper hold on our collective well-being than we give it credit as having? I feel like someone just slipped me a placebo pill…and I’ve woken up again to laughter, joy, and simple things. Breathing a huge sigh of relief, I’m convinced again that Christ holds all things in his hand (Col 1:17), and that…
…everything might actually work out in some sort of fashion I will call good at some point in my future.
November 6, 2009
PSALM 131 (NLT)
1 Lord, my heart is not proud; my eyes are not haughty. I don’t concern myself with matters too great or too awesome for me to grasp. 2 Instead, I have calmed and quieted myself, like a weaned child who no longer cries for its mother’s milk. Yes, like a weaned child is my soul within me. 3 O Israel, put your hope in the Lord— now and always.
The Scriptures cut to the core if you let them….sheesh!
November 1, 2009
A clip from my latest (last?) post on our Pangani community blog:
HARROWING [by Parker Palmer]
‘The plow has savaged this sweet field
Misshapen clods of earth kicked up
Rocks and twisted roots exposed to view
Last year’s growth demolished by the blade.
I have plowed my life this way
Turned over a whole history
Looking for the roots of what went wrong
Until my face is ravaged, furrowed, scarred.
Enough. The job is done.
Whatever’s been uprooted, let it be
Seedbed for the growing that’s to come.
I plowed to unearth last year’s reasons–
The farmer plants to plant a greening season.”
So much has changed in the past 9 months of growth. I am uprooted in ways beyond my intellectual, emotional, even guttural ability to understand. I am becoming a different sort of person: richer, fuller, clarified. Paradoxically however, the seeds of this growth have happened through confusion, isolation as I am confronted with my cultural perspectives, and a gentle uncovering of my hypocrisy as I live within the mirror that is intentional community.
October 30, 2009
Two crazy notes about Sunday (November 1st) before a brief realization that is developing in my heart as we live our last few weeks together as a community during this Apprenticeship year:
- This Sunday will mark 9 months to the day that I have lived in South Africa.
- This Sunday will also mark 3 weeks that I have left in South Africa this year.
As you can likely imagine, life has cranked up a few levels on the crazy-meter these past few weeks, and upon listening to everyone describing what is in front of them in this short window of time that we have left, there is a collective sense that we are all barely treading water, as well as attempting the impossible in terms of the momentous ‘To-Do Lists’ staring back at us. This has led to a series of breakdowns, desiring to withdraw, and fighting against the inevitable grieving process that comes with any sort of transition. The major ‘A-Ha!’ that I’ve awakened to this week is the simple realization that
I AM NOT GOD.
Oh how I seek to be God-like whenever I am faced with a transitionary moment, whether it is finally seeking to catch up on emails or clean my room prior to vacation, or to finish every project that I’ve had in the back of my mind that will allow me to say goodbye to everyone well, or to set up these next few months at home in California in a way in which I can meet the needs of every friend and family member whom I’ve been apart from this past year.
This desire to be God-like is actually not like God, I have to admit. I cannot be all things to all people, particularly as I am faced with the emotional turmoil of leaving! To quote the Simon & Garfunkel song ‘The Only Living Boy In New York,’ “Half of the time we’re gone but we don’t know where, we don’t know where.”
May we be present to what we can–what we cannot–what we should–what we should not be about, particularly in seasons of grief and leaving.
October 27, 2009
Colletta Cole rambled off these words as an aside yesterday during our morning conversation, and they have settled themselves in my heart in the past 24 hours, to the point that they are becoming prayer-like in their meaning to me at this point. Don’t you, like me and most other normal people, stumble through most of our days, trying our best to be awake and alive to the demands set before us each day, generally seeking to do good (albeit, some days, more pure evil!), to love people, to build and enlarge goodness as our world is slowly restored? And yet distractions, honest questions, To-Do Lists, normal life responsibilities, let alone the good/better/best things that we fill our days with, often overwhelm any sense of being truly alive, living in freedom, centering ourselves to “will the one thing” (Thanks, Soren Kiekagaard for that brilliant thought) more than any other.
In fact, doesn’t the thick nature of my run-on paragraph above reflect the overcrowded nature of your heart, the same as it does mine?
May we live open, alive, centered, slow, responsive, loving lives today. May your heart be enlarged to respond to the wooing call of the Spirit who dwells in you–nay, in all things!–and may you heed those whispers. I am praying for you to join me in living alive this day…
