Exercise the Hell out of me

And we're back! I was out of town for a week for my sister's wedding, then I just didn't feel like writing for a couple days. That's what happened. But in my sleep last night, I had a dream about a crazy incident that happened to me in Africa that I had completely forgotten about. My mind has worked hard to block most of what happened in Africa so that I won't have to relive the madness that beset me. But this little golden nugget slipped past my memory guards last night and woke me up this morning laughing and confused as to how I could have forgotten such a good story.

So two years ago I was on an internship in Geneva, Switzerland, standing straight up for women's rights and filling my American belly full of Swiss chocolate. As part of the internship, the organization I was with wanted me to actually get out into the world and get some real experience. Through an extremely shady and flaky contact, I ended up going to Botswana in Africa to work with this psychotic woman at a little summer camp for orphan kids. To sum it up, the camp was not at all organized, meaning that there was no food, meaning we literally did not eat for 3 or 4 days until I discovered that there actually was food, just nobody knew how to cook it; nowhere to sleep, meaning that we just sprawled out on the dirt and the cement floors of the school where the camp of goodness was being hosted; and no purpose, meaning that half the time the kids aimlessly wandered around, complaining that their bellies hurt from not eating and that they wanted to go home. Several of the kids even resorted to eating books they found in the classroom, claiming it numbed the pain in their stomachs. So the summer camp pretty much just turned into "Survivor: Botswana" for two weeks. It sucked, and I wanted to leave the entire time. I lost a bunch of weight while I was there, and I really don't have much weight to lose, so it was bad. I didn't get a decent nights' sleep the entire time because it was still around 100 degrees out at night, I was sleeping on straight cement and using my pants as a pillow, the bugs seem to take a fancy to white man's skin and attacked me the entire night, and the orphan kids usually broke out into a brawl at night, hitting each other with their shoes and books they could find. It was pretty much like an orphan prison for a couple days because we were all being held there against our will. So I was exhausted and beat the entire time I was there, and I was completely beat by the end of it.

So the last day of the camp, this reverend guy and his posse showed up to the school to give all the kids words of encouragement. His words mostly centered on how God had made him rich for being good. At the end of his sermon, he was about to take off when he zeroed in on the whitest, easiest target he'd ever come across in his congregation: me. Just before he was about to leave, he announced to everyone, "Wait! I feel there is someone in this congregation that is suffering!" Good call genius, you're preaching to a crowd of orphaned children, about half of them had HIV, and they have been held against their will at an orphan concentration camp, starving and sleep deprived for the past two weeks. That wasn't a very hard or prophetic call to make on his part: someone is suffering. We were all suffering. But I knew he had it out for me when he announced that, so I tried to disappear before he could get his wanting to make an impression on the white man-hands on me, but I was too slow. He called out, "There is one suffering in this crowd, and he needs my help!" His back up choir yelled out, "he needs his help!" Then he yelled out, "He needs the Lord's help!!!" That for some reason was received with loud cheering among not only his posse but the crowd of starving orphans as well. "Brother, will you come forward?" 

I didn't have enough time to escape when he said that, and two of his minions came up and grabbed me. They must have extensive experience dealing with people that want nothing to do with them, because they didn't even give me a chance to come on my own, they just came out and grabbed me. So I came before the audience and stood before the preacher. Then, in his best American preacher voice, he started yelling out, "I feel you are suffering!" Two weeks of trying to survive in the Kalahari desert on limited food and water rations were definitely taking their toll on me, so I can't blame the guy for singling me out. Plus, it was his chance to show a white man how they get holy down south. "Brother, you are suffering!" That was followed by an "Amen!" from members of his traveling circus. They followed up everything he said by either repeating it even more dramatically or with a hearty "Amen!" or "Praise the Lord!" They got paid pretty good for their services... So the preacher continued on, "You are suffering because you are sick, and you need to be healed! You have a demon in you!!!" He was referring to the white devil. American's are inherently born with it, and Europeans usually develop it by age 3. Then, without even giving me a chance to object, question, or consent what in the world was going on, he gave me a curled-finger palm punch straight to the forehead as though he were battling the demon itself. Then a few members of his posse came and grabbed me by the shoulders so that I couldn't run or fight back, and the dude imposed his hands upon me, putting almost all his weight on his hands in a futile attempt to crush my skull. Then he proceeded to pronounce a blessing upon me and cast out all the many demons that were possessing my body. Apparently there were several of them inside of me, living off my body like a parasite. They apparently like a steady diet of raw broccoli, brown rice, and spinach, because, according to Reverend Botswana, I had a host of demons living inside of me. That's why kids don't like their veggies, they don't want to get possessed by demons. 

Well, had their been demons inside me, they were definitely tired of his shinanagins, and they high-tailed it out of there. They were sick of Botswana and starving, so they left, rendering me demonless, demonless, like the Jon-child was. After mister miracle's magic blessing, I almost died several times in the next couple days in Botswana, including getting chased by a hippo in a little boat on a river and spinning off the road in a car into the jungle going 100 mph. I think the dude wanted me dead... But I think that my survival showed the resilience of the American people and that no, we won't go quietly, and no, we won't go willingly. The End.