A sad day

Monday, June 30, 2008
My heart is filled with sadness today. Peter received word today that Jemimah, one of the API women that I connected with, was murdered in her home shortly after she returned home from API. Jemimah was an amazing woman, so full of life and love and vitality. She was a natural leader, an articulate woman, who loved to preach, pray, sing and worship God. If there is one person that all the API participants and facilitators knew and loved, it was Jemimah. Gunmen entered her home in Nigeria and proceeded to beat her husband. We don’t know if they were armed burglars or if they were trying to intimidate her politically-active husband. Jemimah was on her knees interceding for him and then got up to see if they would leave if she gave them money. Then they shot her. Her husband and a neighbor friend who is a doctor rushed her to the hospital after the gunmen left but they couldn’t save her. I can’t believe she is dead. She promised to email me when she returned home because we wanted to stay in touch with each other. She too had lost a baby, like our Nathaniel, and we had bonded over our shared loss. It seems so senseless, so wrong. Unfathomable that she is dead. And our paths crossed for just a short time with little time to really get to know each other. How much more so for those close to Jemimah who loved her dearly.

I think the traumatic nature of her death is so shocking to me. Yet, to many here, they mourn her loss but don’t seem so traumatized or shocked. And maybe rightly so since violence is not so hidden here, or Zimbabwe, or Rwanda, or Kenya, or Sri Lanka, where the some of the other participants are from. A few weeks ago, Brendan’s teacher for the first few months of school, Ms. Lubamba, was shot in the leg during a carjacking. I was horrified by this news but the friend who was telling me, a Zimbabwean, said that Ms. Lubamba wasn’t really traumatized by the event, just in pain from the gunshot wound. These things happen around here and people just know that and live with it, she said. I want to say this violence doesn’t happen in the West, but of course, it does. It just hasn’t been part of my world. I wish it could stay that way. (Don’t worry, I highly doubt anyone will try to carjack our vehicle, a white Toyota Corolla that matches half the cars in Zambia.)

Sweet Jemimah. She is rejoicing in the presence of her loving God. She is probably rounding up everyone to learn the worship songs from different countries and drumming and clapping and helping to make heaven even more joyful, just like she did here. She will be greatly missed.