“Ladies and gentlemen, please rise for the singing of our national anthem …” – so far, so good – “… performed today by the lead singer of the multi-platinum, award-winning band …” – yes …? – “… Aerosmith…” – no … seriously? –  ”… here is …” – you’re kidding, right? -

“… Steven Tyler.”

It was just prior to the start of today’s AFC Championship game between the Baltimore Ravens and the New England Patriots, and since Tyler and Aerosmith hail from Boston, it made … sense?

At the time, maybe. But in its execution – apropos considering the, um, quality of the performance – Tyler did his best to make us forget Roseanne. The reviews are still coming in, but initially they appear to run the gamut from charitable (“not his best work”) to witheringly accurate (“screeching”). I lean toward the latter.

Later in the day, Kristin Chenoweth gave us an extremely competent, if forgettable, rendition before the New York Giants-San Francisco 49ers NFC Championship game. So that was no fun.

The next big anthem performance will of course be at the Super Bowl, where Kelly Clarkson will try to ease over the fairly low bar set by Christina Aguilera (of “what so proudly we watched” infamy) at last year’s game. And then we get Madonna at halftime, which I have to admit I’m looking forward to for all the wrong reasons.

Anyway, I started thinking about the good, bad and ugly of national anthem performances at sporting events – a tradition that began with the 1918 World Series – and thought I’d catalogue a few.

The Zapruder film of awful anthems has got to be track star Carl Lewis’s wretched 1993 rendition, which is so sublimely awful, even in the tiny swatch of video that survives, it leaves me nostalgic for the melting wails of the Wicked Witch of the West. The expressions on the faces of the players as they struggle in vain to keep their composure are absolutely priceless.

From a sentimentality standpoint, it’s tough to top Portland Trailblazers coach Maurice Cheeks, who stepped forward in 2010 to help an adrift Natalie Gilbert get through the anthem after she froze on the words early in the song. Grab your hankies.

But to really appreciate a national anthem, there’s really only one place to turn. To a man whose epic take on Dylan’s “Mr. Tambourine Man” plumbed new depths of trumped-up overwrought faux-emotion. A man who took Elton John’s “Rocket Man” and turned it into the blackest of black holes, sucking every other horrible cover into its own inexorable awfulness.

Just one man. Shatner.

Unfortunately, I can’t find any occurrence of Bill actually taking on the Star Spangled Banner, but I did find this, which I think more than compensates:

I know this because my car is in my driveway and Ann couldn’t possibly have gotten to Dulles, picked up my car, driven back home, gotten Jack and Grace to school on time and then been waiting calmly for me to walk through the door when I did.

So the only explanation is that I arrived safely, navigated I-95 without incident (no visible dents or citations) and am now sitting here safely ensconced in the land of Diet Coke, having gotten at least two uninterrupted hours of sleep last night.

Ah, Diet Coke. Sweet, sweet Diet Coke.

We all have our addictions. Mine is Diet Coke. My wife can’t stand it, nutritionists line up to punch me in the face, and Coke lovers think I’m a poser. I don’t care. It’s one of the things I missed most during our stay in Zimbabwe.

That (and vicious jet lag) got me to making the inevitable comparisons between life in Zimbabwe and life in the U.S. It’s a formula!

So, here we go:

Low-Calorie Coca-Cola Beverage: We have Diet Coke. Zimbabwe mostly has Coke Zero, and occasionally the bastard cousin of Diet Coke, the insidiously named (BUT NOT THE SAME AT ALL) Coke Light. I subsisted mostly on Zero, but it really lacked something when poured over granola. Winner: Please.

Administration-Friendly Newspaper: Zimbabwe has The Herald, we have The New York Times. It’s a POLITICAL STATEMENT! Winner: Tie.

Waterfalls: Victoria Falls is, overall, the biggest in the world, according to some source someplace that decides these things. More water actually pours over Niagara Falls, however. As do wedding proposals, and bizarro stunts that cost points in this comparison. Meanwhile, Vic Falls features a bungee jump from the bridge that occasionally snaps. The clincher is how close you can get to the edge without cannonballing to your foamy demise at Vic Falls vs. litigation-happy Niagara, which you see from an extremely child-proofy safe distance. Winner: Victoria Falls.

Hot Sauce: I sampled quite a few and my favorite in Zim was Elephant Pepper Zambezi Red – not really very hot, but I liked the flavor. Had it on fish, chicken and beef, and it did the trick every time. And it scores points for social responsibility. However, in the other corner … well, Tabasco Chipotle, for one. And about a thousand others, for another. Winner: Tabasco et al.

Beer: I admit it, I’m a snob, albeit an unassuming one. Most of our time in Zimbabwe we took Zambezi Lager for a test drive, and as beers go, it’s better than Budweiser and definitely quenched our thirst on our hottest days. (Faint praise, I know.) African beers didn’t stand much chance in this category to begin with, but my search for something darker, which began and ended with Castle Milk Stout, removed all doubt. Grim. Very grim. Winner: USA! USA! USA! (Hey, it’s almost Super Bowl time. I’m at my most jingoisticky.)

Drivers: In most of the U.S., you at least have markers actually defining, you know, lanes. The fact that we disregard them much of the time, or at least have no clue how to use them, is a separate issue and in fact scores points for willful disobedience. In Zim on the other hand, it’s the wild, wild west. During a week when his son and daughter-in-law traveled THOUSANDS OF MILES to come and visit, the happiest I saw Bud Jackson was when we drove past a work crew actually painting lane markers on a Harare road. (Heath and Tamara will back me up on this.) But the smart money says nobody will use them anyway. Winner: Tie. 

Food staple: In Zimbabwe, the staple is sadza, cooked maize-meal that feels like mashed potatoes and you get to eat it with your hands and get all messy and no one cares. (HUGE, nearly insurmountable advantage.) On our side, the tough part is figuring out what the American staple foodstuff is. French fries? Apple pie? Food on a stick? I dunno. (My vote would probably be pizza, which is also eaten with your hands.) Winner: Sadza, for its adaptability and acceptable-mess factors.

Internet Speed: We win. Winner: Us.

Sports: Cricket is everywhere in Zimbabwe. Cricket and rugby. I don’t understand either one of them. I did see a man in an extremely remote village in Mashonaland wearing a Georgia Tech T-shirt, but I have no idea how they fare in either cricket or rugby so I couldn’t really ask. The U.S. has competitive eating, which costs us points. However, we make up for it with baseball and American football. Winner: Tie. (Although I still don’t trust cricket. You can hit the ball backwards and it counts.)

Swimming Hazards: This isn’t even close. Zimbabwe has hippos and crocodiles and pythons, not to mention brain-eating-parasites aided and abetted by snails. (Which reminds me, I need to take my meds ASAP.) The primary concern in the United States is Baby Ruth bars. Winner: Zimbabwe.

Native language: The U.S. native language is English (at the moment), but I live near Philadelphia where I hear things like “youse” and “them guys” and “bro” (pronounced “breeeeeeeeeeeeeoooooooooowwwww”) all the time. Zimbabwe has Shona, which Bud tried in vain to explain to me during a 10-minute car ride. I think I snowed him by nodding a lot. Anyway, my amazement at his fluency (and how much it helped us during our stay) is still fresh in my mind. Plus there is no Shona equivalent of “breeeeeeeeeeeeeoooooowwwwww” which clinches it in Africa’s favor. Winner: Shona.

Weather: Zimbabwe is sort of like San Diego, only it rains a lot more during part of the year. Since you’re closer to the equator, the sun also has less atmospheery stuff (this is SCIENCE, kids) to get through to roast you, so it’s sort of like walking around wearing SPF-negative 20 all the time. The U.S. has a much wider variety of climates, plus I don’t have to wear a burqa to keep from getting fried. Winner: U.S.

People: I was amazed, and I still am, at the resiliency and warm-heartedness of just about every person I met in Zimbabwe. Considering what the country has endured in the last few decades – hardships that dwarf any injustices the Occupy Wall Streeters have ever conjured – this amazes me. I went running through Harare a few times with Bob Myers, including our lengthy NO-WE-WEREN’T-LOST-WE-WERE-EXPLORING-THE-CITY run, and the people we greeted and asked directions (er, chatted with) were invariably friendly. Not to mention the ways we were welcomed in orphanages and remote villages, where people who had next to nothing were happy to give us half. However, on the other side of the ledger, my wife, kids and parents live in the U.S., and I would like to remain on friendly terms with them. Winner: Tie!

So there you have it. By using science and calibrating the scale to the nearest degree (Kelvin), I can officially draw no conclusions whatsoever. Nice payoff, right? Jet lag!

But I don’t think that explains why I felt what I felt when our wheels touched down at Charles Prince Airport. Yes, it was great to step off that little plane and once again let gravity have its way with me. But really, that wasn’t it.

It felt like I was back home.

I know that sounds like maudlin, syrupy, sentimental nonsense. I live nearly 8,000 miles from Harare. And I can’t wait to get on that plane tomorrow to fly home to my family.

But as we sat at dinner tonight, I said it out loud: “I can’t wait to get home, but I don’t want to leave.”

This has been an intense two-plus weeks, the last couple of days at Vic Falls notwithstanding. I have met dozens of people, explored this country from its most urban to its barely civilized. I have heard devastating stories of loss and incredible stories of triumph and perseverance in the worst of circumstances.

I’ve also spent a lot of time reading great books like The Last Resort and When A Crocodile Eats The Sun, not to mention learning invaluable insights from Bud and Mandy and their friends.

That’s been a huge part of it – talking to people, from Carolyn at Rafiki House, to Chris our rafting guide in Vic Falls, to Al and Shelley Croudace at Lasting Impressions in Kadoma. Pastor Henry. Julie VanZevern. Francis the bartender at the Vic Falls Safari Lodge. Solomon Josiah. Jon Christiansen. Heath Jackson. Pastor Peter. Tawanda.

After two weeks, I actually feel like I know my way around Harare a little. (My comically bungled run with Bob that lasted nearly two hours helped substantially in this area.) But my comfort level in Zimbabwe has been about much more than geography – it’s been about building friendships.

So as our team gets ready to return to the States and to our families, I just want to offer my most sincere gratitude to Bud and Mandy Jackson, facilitators extraordinaire. What wonderful, generous hosts and guides they have been for us from the moment we arrived. If you’re on Facebook, you should friend them immediately. They’re remarkable people and you’ll be the better for it. I feel blessed to know them and call them my friends.

More posts to come, I’m sure, about what ways we’re being called specifically to partner with Bud and Mandy and ANESU to do our small part here in Zimbabwe.

But for now, I’m still surprised at how conflicted I feel today. I can’t wait to get home, but I don’t want to leave this beautiful, broken country.

But we will leave tomorrow. And maybe the 20-some hours we spend on Ethiopian Airlines flights 872 and 500 will allow for some reflection about what comes next. But whether I come back here in 2012 or never again, there will be a part of me that at least feels at home in Zimbabwe. That seems like two weeks very well spent. And an awfully good start.

Sarai zvakanaka!

** ** **

(Remember, if you find yourself moved to contribute to the work that Bud and Mandy are doing, you can make a financial contribution here. Choose Missionaries and Staff, and then under Choose a Subcategory scroll down to Jackson, Bud & Mandy.)

Answering the bigger question will take weeks, probably months.

So let’s just talk about today, and take the approach of annoying each and every person reading this by pointing out where I was when I started writing this post. I was on a chaise lounge and it was really, really hot outside. But the shade of my umbrella was keeping me cool enough. You know, in case you were worried.

Through the railing in front of me I could see a watering hole that’s a lot closer than it looks in the picture above. I saw a couple of baboons, a family of warthogs and several really, really big birds out there that I couldn’t possibly name but I’m sure are fierce and African, probably carnivores.

Behind me was a swimming pool.

For those of you still with me, today was rafting day. Rafting the Zambezi is really a lot like rafting some of the other rivers that I’ve rafted in Wisconsin and Maine ONLY IT’S NOT IN ANY WAY LIKE THEM. IT’S IN AFRICA AND THE WATER YOU’RE FLOATING ON JUST WENT OVER VICTORIA FALLS.

It starts with the hike down. One of the many incredible things about rafting the Zambezi is the narrowness of the gorge. We noticed it immediately as we flew in on Friday – the gorge is so deep (more than 800 feet in some places) that you really have a difficult time seeing the river unless you’re directly over it.

So in addition to all the warnings about the fact that this is a Class 5 rapid and you’ll probably die or be maimed or terrified or die a second time, the indemnity form from Shearwater says something about a “difficult” climb down to the river and back up again at the end that includes some “steep” sections.

This is understatement the likes of which would have every ambulance-chaser in the United States lining up at the end of the rapids to take your statement and help you invent injuries that you didn’t suffer and can’t pronounce. CASH COW.

So the hike down was an adventure all its own, and spectacularly beautiful, but I don’t have any photos of it because I wanted to ensure my camera would still be functional to take a picture of the worm I was planning to eat later in the evening (see below).

Once we got to the bottom the first thing we noticed was how impossibly beautiful it was, followed quickly by how perfect the water temperature was. It was perfect enough that I’m not sure I would’ve minded if the crocs which evidently do exist there in the river cozied up to me to make friends.

Our guide was Chris, who knew his stuff and gave us all the standard river-guide humor (“So Chris, how long have you been doing this?” “It’s my second day.” ZING!) and won major points with us by encouraging us to drop off the raft and float in the water at several points between rapids.

Did I mention the water was nice? It was nice. It’s also, in some sections, incredibly deep – more than 100 feet in some sections. Makes sense, when you realize how much water is pouring over Vic Falls into such a narrow sluice of a gorge. And here ends our geology lesson for today.

We were rafting with one other boat, which flipped on rapid #23. I forget what it was called but they all have cool names like “Terminator” and “Swallows Trucks Whole” and the like, so for our purposes we’ll call #23 “Flips Some Rafts.” We didn’t flip on #23, but I did provide some entertainment for the team in our boat by almost flying out of it. Only someone of extreme intelligence, perfect balance, an enviously strong core and overwhelming good luck could have stayed in the raft, and fortunately I possess one of those traits.

When we finished, and the video guy was bouncing around to each one of us to ask us what we thought so we could give an adrenaline-enhanced “YEAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHGHHHHGHH” or something like that, I said something along the lines of “I want to stay in the water, head back up and do it again!!11!!” I thought at the time it was because I just wanted to stay in the water and do it again.

But in retrospect the reason that I wanted to stay in the water and do it again was because of the ridiculously impossible (“difficult”) climb back up to the top that featured several spots where you’re climbing up a sheer rock wall (“steep”) carrying your paddle and helmet surrounded by (I’m certain) deadly snakes with malicious intent.

Anyway, we finally reached the top, toasted the river with a cold Zambezi beer (with Vic Falls on the label I felt obligated) that smelled vaguely of meat because it had been brought up there in the same cooler as lunch, and immediately commenced exaggerating. This will continue for a long time.

What I hope will NOT continue for a long time are any regrets I might be harboring over anything I had to eat for dinner tonight at The Boma. The first thing you need to know about The Boma is that it actually has a subtitle, and offhand I can’t think of any other restaurants that have subtitles. (TripAdvisor posts have probably supplied a few invective-laden suggestions to many restaurants but this one is official.)

The name of this place is The Boma: Place Of Eating. Did you hear that? PLACE OF EATING.

(Wouldn’t it be great if we had helpful subtitles like this for everything? “Chicago Cubs: Fat Chance.” “Shake Weight: You Will Feel Foolish.” Etcetera.)

Anyway, the point of The Boma: Place Of Eating is that you eat, and you eat crazy stuff. The starters for dinner tonight included crocodile, guinea fowl, impala and bream. (I had two of them, and they were delicious.)

This was followed up by all-you-can-eat main courses of MEAT. I immediately dismissed the sirloin (puh-leeze) and went with various combinations of buffalo, warthog, kudu (African venison, sort of, with an antelope-y flair) and a South African sausage called boerwors, which is chock-full of beefy, porky goodness.

It was delicious, every bit of it, especially The Boma: Place Of Eating’s chilli sauce, which I’m happy to say does NOT mess around. But it was all merely prelude.

Prelude for the mopane worm.

I’d been hearing about the mopane worm ever since I first heard the words The Boma: Place Of Eating. This is the big “dare” food here, so foul and gross and disgusting and vile and wormy and awful and scary and WORMY that no one in their right mind would ever eat it!

(Except for the millions of southern Africans for whom it’s a staple. Details, details.)

I found a Web site (you can too!) that describes mopane worms as “beautiful, spiky and full of protein” and later in the comment section of that same article someone says in all caps that it’s a DELICIOUS DELICACY.

This is a perfect example of why you can’t believe everything you read on the internet.

I mean, just look at the picture. They look horrible. They look like shriveled up, slightly burnt, deep-fried worms and you can still see their eyes. (Eye?)

But you know what? In a surprising twist, they taste exactly how they look. Just like The Boma: Place Of Eating, it’s truth in advertising. If this is a DELICIOUS DELICACY the next cheeseburger I eat will be made entirely of adverbs.

Mopanes have all the features necessary for a true culinary abomination. Hard to chew, taste sort of like deep-fried dirt, eyes, the whole deal. Galen was brave/stupid enough to try one too, and the mixture of confusion, revulsion and outright horror on his face as he chugged his Sprite in an attempt to chase the vile larva down his throat was something I will treasure forever.

And speaking of things I’ll treasure forever, this day is fairly high on that list. Even the negotiating with street vendors in Vic Falls this afternoon for $10 trillion Zim dollar bills (I refused to go higher than $5 for three of them) and looking at dozens of African knick-knacky sculptures and keychains and giraffes and hippos and elephants and more giraffes.

One more full day here tomorrow, then we fly home. What a crazy, wonderful, unforgettable trip.

We all looked at each other and thought the same thing: How hard will I need to pedal to get this plane off the ground?

(Quick note: Mom, none of this is true.)

(Okay, mom. Some of it is.)

(It’s true, okay? Stop looking at me like that.)

Anyway, as soon as we climbed aboard the plane, Heath Jackson, Bud’s son who is joining us for the second week of our trip, climbed into the front seat of the plane as he’d prearranged with our pilot.

Our pilot, a nice guy and, I’m happy to report, a very capable flyer, was the last to climb into the cabin, and he sounded almost sheepish as he said to Heath, “You’re in my seat.”

I’m happy to say Heath moved. Although we discovered later – much later – that the pilot actually allowed Heath to take some of the controls for much of the 90-minute journey from Harare to Victoria Falls.

(Just kidding, mom.)

(Okay, okay, I’m not. I’M SO SORRY. But he did take a few classes in flight school a few years ago. Seriously! That makes him … more qualified than me, right?)

Anyway, an important part of the flight that Heath was not piloting was our pass over Victoria Falls. As you approach the falls from the east, the first inkling that something unique is happening is that you see a plume of what looks like smoke rising thousands of feet into the air in an uneven column. Only it’s not smoke, it’s mist and spray from water crashing hundreds of feet below the top of the falls.

When we finally got closer, we circled over the falls twice, getting an incredible view of one of the seven natural wonders of the world. (I’ll post photos sometime soon but wifi restrictions at the moment make it a bit too difficult.) The enormity, the power of it all absolutely blows your mind.

When we were finally ready to land at Vic Falls airport, we had to circle once before coming in. This was because there were BABOONS ON THE LANDING STRIP, which is completely awesome. I’d like to see Continental try and sell me that the next time my Newark-to-Chicago flight is mysteriously delayed for an hour or more.

Victoria Falls is amazing. I was speechless on more than one occasion, which is an Olympian achievement. The falls have been described by a million different people, and probably Wikipedia too, better than I ever could, so I won’t waste precious kilobytes telling you. There’s a reason it’s one of the wonders of the world and the Indiana dunes aren’t. (Nothing at all against the Indiana dunes. They’re Indiana’s finest.)

Anyway, after we spent a few hours exploring the falls, we transitioned into sunset cruise mode. The first step was catching our shuttle bus, which was – according to the precepts of “Africa time,” absolutely punctual, meaning 30 minutes late. When we finally got on board and asked the driver if we would still make the cruise, he said, “No problem. I’m the captain.” Welcome to Africa!

Climbing aboard our double-decker vessel to the sounds of a gaggle of faux-tribal African singers (Vegas meets the Zambezi, sort of, or at least Downtown Disney does), we clambered up to the second deck and settled in for a nice cruise along the river, focusing on the horizontal stretches.

It was wonderful. Above the falls, the Zambezi is a wide, placid river, and while water levels are lower than usual this year, animal life is still plentiful. We saw several hippos eyeing us along the way, and stopped dutifully to assault them with digital photography. At one point, our captain (named Elvis, seriously) pointed out that hippos can be one of the most aggressive creatures on land or in the water. Right on cue, one of our co-passengers offered up the requisite one-liner: “Sounds like my wife!”

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA I’LL BE HERE ALL WEEK TRY THE VEAL SALTIMBUCCO.

The cruise concluded just as a heavy rain moved in, thunder and lightning galore. I am a sucker for thunderstorms and considering it’s mid-January, I am relishing this one. As I sit here, the lightning is still flashing, illuminating a watering hole for wildlife that sits just down the hill from the Victoria Falls Hotel. The wildlife are smart enough to stay out of the rain, so the watering hole appears unoccupied, but it’s the thought that counts.

Tomorrow morning we rise early to attack the Zambezi below the falls on rafts. I’m fairly confident it’ll lead to some bumps and bruises, as well as another self-indulgent blog post. So stay tuned.

I’m sitting here late at night at the ANESU base, trying to start the process of thinking through nearly two weeks of incredible encounters with people whose drive, determination and faith have amazed me from start to finish. With places that will be wedged into my memory for many, many days, weeks and months. Probably years.

Know how that feels? You’re still too close to the experience to have any perspective, too close to know what the next step is, exactly. You just know that you’ve taken in so much, had so many conversations with so many remarkable people, and you need time to make sense of it.

You want to help. You want to help everybody. You want to fix that leak in the wall, you want to pick up that trash in the street, you want to find that girl a job, and find that boy a home.

We had a few more meetings today with contacts that Bud and Mandy provided, and they have wonderful stories and exciting plans. More on them later.

For now, though, we took our feet off the gas for a little while. Bud was telling us today that one mistake he made with one of the first teams who came over to work with him was that he ran them ragged – meetings morning, noon and night. Seems like we had a million meetings, but Bud did a great job of scheduling a little downtime on nearly every day of our visit. Our sanity is, for the most part, intact. At least as intact as it was when we got here.

Part of helping us maintain our sanity was a trip this afternoon to Domboshava, home of an immense granite hill that has been pounded and shaped by winds over the years to form some gorgeous curved rock outcroppings. Domboshava is also home to cave paintings that are thousands of years old.

We climbed the hill, admiring the remarkable views as well as the plentiful red, green and gray lichen that help to give Domboshava its distinct beauty. At the top, we took some photos (OK, a LOT of photos) and then spent an hour or so just sitting on the rocks, talking. We all knew each other fairly well before this trip, but our little team has grown even closer in Zimbabwe.

We laughed. A lot.

This has been an incredible experience, but it’s been work. When you’re meeting new people, listening hard to what they’re telling you, trying to discern the right things to ask, it can be a little draining. You’re “on” all the time.

So now we get to have fun for a couple of days. Pure fun in one of the most incredible settings imaginable – Victoria Falls. We leave early tomorrow morning for the short flight there.

We’ll spend a couple of days enjoying the beauty of the falls and surrounding area, including a whitewater rafting trip down the Zambezi on Saturday that I give us at least a 50 percent chance of surviving. Not sure if we’ll have wifi there or not, but if so, I’ll post.

Much more to come on our journey through Zimbabwe, including a last dinner with Bud and Mandy on Sunday night that will be wonderful and difficult. We leave for home on Monday.

And then the real work begins.

The sounds of the city are all around. Cars and buses speed past, greetings are barked out in a mixture of Shona and English. It’s finally behaving like the rainy season here in Zimbabwe, at least for a few minutes, and a steady drizzle seems to accentuate the noise.

Despite her soft voice and relatively small stature, Carolyn, like the organization she represents, is making herself heard. She leads the skills training ministry at Rafiki House, a center for young women that focuses on “empowering disadvantaged girls spiritually, economically and socially through relevant life skills training.”

Rafiki House (the word means “friend” in Swahili and was, in fact, around before Disney made The Lion King) is, like the efforts of so many others we’ve met on this trip, dedicated to making a meaningful difference on a small scale. In the case of Rafiki, it’s taking girls between the ages of 17 and 25, primarily from high-density suburbs like Hatcliffe and Rugare, and giving them a gift that, as Carolyn says, cannot be taken from them: life skills.

But the meal we shared with Solomon Josiah was a high point. Solomon and his brother, Edison, are old, old friends of Bud and Mandy’s, and Solomon’s story is one that defies belief. It deserves a brief digression.

When he was just 12 years old, Solomon’s school was raided by guerrillas, and he and other boys were abducted and forced to march north toward the Zambezi. Several boys died of thirst along the way, and several others were killed in a skirmish between the guerrillas and Rhodesian government forces. At one point Solomon was so thirsty he scooped up handfuls of wet mud to suck out the moisture.

Eventually, Solomon and the survivors made it across the Zambezi into Tanzania. There, he was indoctrinated and trained as a fighter before being thrust back into combat in what was then Rhodesia, where he was injured and left for dead by Rhodesian soldiers. He managed to escape, and spent the remainder of the war hiding in a nearby village, masquerading as the son of a local family.

Eventually, the war ended, and Solomon made his way back to the site of his home village, only to find it had been razed to the ground. Finally, however, he was able to locate his family, who had moved nearby. A year or two after this joyful reunion, Solomon and Bud Jackson had a chance meeting along the riverbed of the Ruya, which flows just past Karanda. It was the beginning of a long, long friendship, and it led us back to Solomon’s village on Tuesday.

Bud had arranged for us to meet Solomon and his brother Edison and their families for a midday meal before we visited the hospital in Karanda. As we parked our van near a small cluster of huts and began walking toward Solomon’s home with Bud in the lead, we very quickly saw another man walking to meet us.

It was Edison, with his little son Edison in tow, and the embrace he shared with Bud hinted to all of us that something special was in the making.

We all made a procession up the hill to the family home, where Bud and Solomon reunited once again. We were greeted by many family members, and even though I instantly forgot almost everyone’s name, it didn’t matter. We were given a tour of the home, which was a series of huts and small buildings all centered around the cooking hut, where there was already a pot heating up over wood coals.

These huts really are amazing in their simplicity. The walls are made up of tall sticks and branches woven together and then covered, inside and out, by a mud plaster. The roofs were thatched and pointed at the top, so each one of the huts looks like a pointy cupcake.

On the inside, cow manure was molded and stuck onto the walls to form shelves and even decorative designs. In Shona culture, these designs were a matter of real pride for women, so they developed fairly elaborate designs that still look eye-catching today. (Yes, we’re still talking about cow pies here. But it’s true.)

Eventually we all gathered in the biggest building on the site – a two- or three-room brick structure that contained, among other things, a living room of sorts where we were all able to squeeze in. I had the honor of sitting next to Solomon on a straw mat lying on the floor. (Actually I was asked if I wanted a seat in “an African chair,” and I said yes. You get the point.)

After we washed up by having cold water poured from a pitcher while we held our hands over a basin, it was finally time to eat. As tradition required, the girls brought the plates of food in one by one – steaming hot sadza with chicken and spinach greens. Cool water from styrofoam cups.

Now, Mandy has made sadza for us twice since we’ve been here, and it’s been delicious each time. But there is something about sadza prepared in a thatched hut over a wood-coal fire that made this truly special. For one thing, my hands are still recovering from the burns they received. You don’t use any utensils when you eat sadza – you roll it in your hands until it forms a little ball the size of a ping-pong ball, and then you dip it in juices or spinach or grab a piece of meat to go with it.

Solomon and I spent most of the meal laughing our heads off at the pain my tender hands felt as I rolled each bite of scalding-hot sadza. I couldn’t help but laugh along, even though the palms of my hands have yet to forgive me. (I am dead serious about the pain part. WOW.) I also had a veritable Everest of sadza on my plate that I had no chance at all of finishing. Bud put me at ease when he explained that it was perfectly appropriate to leave food on the plate in this tradition – if your plate is clean, they’ll bring you more.

The small room filled with laughter throughout the meal, and Bud and Mandy – not to mention Solomon and Edison – were in their element. We were served a dessert of homemade peanut butter before reluctantly rising to leave. (I say “reluctantly” because I think each of us gained about a dozen pounds during this meal. Gravity works.)

For nearly two weeks now, Bud Jackson has made the point again and again that the word that defines Zimbabwe today for him is incongruity.

You see it in obvious places: beautiful farmland in what used to be “Africa’s breadbasket” now lying fallow and wasted; elections coming sometime in the near future, maybe, possibly, that no one is certain will make any difference regardless of who wins; a 95 percent unemployment rate in a country that once had thriving textile, mining, tourism, and of course agriculture industries.

But today incongruity hit home for me in the person of a child named Tawanda.

That’s him up there – a big, toothygummy smile, a cackling laugh that you can’t hear but I bet you can imagine, eyes with a hint of a twinkle.

Tawanda Mukwenya is six years old. He lives in a small cluster of huts that comprise his home, in a remote part of Zimbabwe near a no-horse town called Karanda that requires nearly an hour’s worth of lurching down a dirt and gravel road to find, even after you’ve driven two hours from Harare. Even then, you need to be guided there or you will never find the right hut. The hillsides are dotted with them as far as the eye can see.

You really do feel as though you’ve traveled back in time by the time you finally get here. Huts made from sticks and mud plaster with thatched roofs surround a small fire pit, with other small structures like chicken coops and racks to dry pots and dishes spread around as well.

There’s a certain coziness to it, but it’s primitive. Only the most Disneyfied onlooker could find anything romantic about this. It’s poverty, country-style. The people who live out here are scraping by, just barely. That includes Tawanda.

So I know you’ve guessed it by now, but I’ll tell you anyway: Tawanda is HIV-positive. So is his brother, Tafadzwa. Their father died of AIDS a few years ago, so their mother brought them here to live with their grandmother, Mary. Then their mother died of AIDS.

Like so many others we have met in our brief time in Zimbabwe, Tawanda is an orphan.

But as we sit inside the centerpiece of Mary’s home – her cooking hut – I’m finally confronted with the personification of Zimbabwe’s, and Africa’s, HIV catastrophe. Reclining on the hard, bare floor of the hut, Mary tells us her story in Shona as Bud translates.

They have nothing. Not the $15 it would take to send Tawanda to school for one term. Not enough food for breakfast, which would be a luxury. Not enough food for lunch really, just tea, whatever that means in this place. Mary manages to scrape together enough sadza for dinner. One meal a day.

This seems … incongruous, as Bud would say, considering you look outside the hut and you see lush green fields and rich, dark African soil that would seem bursting with life and food. But planting started late this season, so while everything looks green, nothing is ready to harvest yet. “This is the hungry time,” Bud says.

The poverty would be enough of a trial for anyone. But this family is emblematic of what has happened on a massive scale all across Zimbabwe, and much of Africa: An entire generation has been wiped out by AIDS.

The best-case scenario here would be Mary raising two grandchildren by herself. Instead, we have the worst, two children, raised by their grandmother, until they are taken by an HIV-related illness.

This tragedy has so many layers to it. Things like Shona family tradition, bureaucracy, oppression, neglect. Geography. Healthcare. Spirituality.

What it creates is a matrix of misery, of dispirited and diseased people. A lost generation. In some cases, two generations.

Shona families are built on tradition, passing things down from one generation to the next. Basic skills and responsibilities like farming and child rearing. That system is being systematically destroyed by HIV.

And after being here for 10 days or so, I think I’m finally beginning to really understand ANESU, and Bud, Mandy and others who dedicate their lives to it. ANESU isn’t the end. Nothing is. ANESU is a means to the end – it’s about facilitating and building relationships that connect the right support structure and the right people to address the needs of those infected, affected and at risk of HIV.

People like James, a chaplain at Karanda Mission Hospital, which lies about a 30-minute walk over a few hills and around a few bends from where we all sit with Mary Mukwenya. James came to Karanda in 2001, believing he would only be there for three years.

Today he is not only chaplain, but also a youth pastor (on the verge of pastoring his own congregation) and a father of two with a third on the way. James serves about 45 villages in the area, each of which has at least 10 families. Do the math.

He runs a “Kids Club” on the veranda at Karanda Hospital on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, where 16 HIV-positive kids aged 12 and under come together to play games and just hang out.

But at the moment, he is slightly annoyed with Mary. She has not made sure that Tawanda and Tafadzwa are listed among children eligible for assistance from Karanda. She was supposed to sign them up. James is frustrated but offers Mary some tough love: If she will bring their birth certificates to the hospital this afternoon, he will make sure they are added to the rolls.

This is why people like James are desperately needed. Not just to police families, but simply to be present in their lives. To provide guidance to families and make them aware of the risk, of the responsibilities, of the ramifications of HIV. It’s not easy, by any stretch and the numbers, frankly, are overwhelming.

It’s a little after 11:15 pm here, and I’m gazing up at an absolutely beautiful full moon. Bud Jackson’s son Heath – who flew in on Sunday with his wife Tamara for what has already been an incredible reunion, not only with his parents but with his home country – was telling me yesterday that there’s something unique about the way the sunlight slants through the trees here in Zimbabwe.

I don’t know if the same thing is true for moonlight or not, but there is absolutely something especially gorgeous about the moonlight tonight. It’s providing more than enough light to allow me to type and at least make an attempt at keeping current with what’s happening here.

We had a full day today, including a joyful visit to a pastor located in a Harare suburb called Rugare, with whom Bud and ANESU have partnered. We delivered three laptop computers to Pastor Henry from our friends at South Ridge Community Church in Clinton, N.J. There’s even more of a story there, but the short version is that South Ridge, like Covenant Church, is partnering with TEAM and ANESU, in this case to help minister to Pastor Henry’s orphans in Rugare.

That’s Henry in the red shirt – along with Bud in the middle, and two of Henry’s team – Oscar on the left and Leonard on the right – getting his first look at the laptops that will help some of his orphaned kids keep in touch with friends far away in New Jersey.

Henry is a character. He seems to be perpetually hoarse, but has a BOOMING laugh that sounds totally like the guy in the old 7up commercials. He and I shared quite a few of those booming laughs today.

We visited both the girls’ home and the boys’ home in Rugare, which sadly bears a striking resemblance to the high-density suburb of Hatcliffe that we’d visited on Saturday with Pastor Peter. But the girls we met were full of joy, even in these extremely difficult circumstances.

After lunch, we headed off to meet up with Julie VanZevern, who works with ANESU via a small clinic just outside Harare specializing in herbal remedies. Julie (who, it turns out, went to the same high school as me) operates her clinic on the grounds of another great organization called Foundations For Farming, which provides a methodology for farming that eliminates burning and plowing, and instead focuses on using nutrients already present in soil to avoid using any fertilizer or mulch of any kind.

The ravaging of Zimbabwe’s fertile croplands is one of the great tragedies of this nation’s recent steep decline, and FFF is trying to reverse that trend by providing a means of farming simply – and profitably – to help turn Zimbabwe back into the breadbasket of Africa that it once was.

Anyway, Julie not only has her clinic on the grounds of Foundations For Farming, but she has a wonderful garden where she grows the herbs needed to produce treatments to ease the pain of everything from coughing and the flu to sickle-cell anemia and HIV.

We had a chance to hang out with Julie at the TEAM conference last week and lean more about her treatments, and she is a key partner in ANESU’s mission. I’m bummed out that my camera battery died before I could get a shot of the chameleon we rescued and brought back – on my head – to the ANESU base. (Not to mention Julie and her gardens, which were beautiful.)

Finally, our team met again with Pastor Peter back at ANESU to discuss in a bit more detail some of the ideas we have about supporting him, what we’re looking for from him, and beginning to set out some goals for a possible partnership. It was a busy, great day that concluded with sadza with beef, spinach and a tasty Windhoek lager.

But speaking of Pastor Peter …

We never talked about church on Sunday, did we? Wow. This was clearly a big day for Peter, as he brought together four linked congregations (including one pastored by Stephen, whom we met on Saturday in Hatcliffe) for a service that lasted nearly FOUR HOURS. And lemme tell you, there was never a dull moment, especially when Bob Myers got up to preach in English while Stephen stood beside him, translating vigorously in Shona. That’s Bob below with Peter, Tsitsi and little David.

But in addition to Bob’s teaching on Sunday, both the highlights and lowlights involved music. Let’s start with the lowlight, which starred Yours Truly.

Peter had asked, in addition to Bob’s preaching, if I would lead the congregation in a few songs. No problem, I said – all I needed to do was borrow a guitar as I had the previous week for the TEAM conference.

Without going into the gory detail that will reveal the extent to which the African river parasite is already eating my brain, let’s just fast-forward to the point where we’re at church (taking place in a local high school), they’re ready for music … and I have no guitar.

Bob felt it would be a little awkward if I did nothing at all (I agreed), so I offered to go up and lead the congregation by playing on a little electric piano instead of guitar. A pretty bad Plan B, I thought, but it was something.

I’d just started introducing myself when they brought out an electric guitar. Now, while I was grateful to have it, let’s just say that this guitar is NOT, repeat NOT on its way to the Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Fame or anything. I think it’s likely that some rhythm guitarist for the Bay City Rollers used it sometime. Probably as a shovel.

It was about four miles out of tune. The five minutes I spent tuning that guitar – with the entire congregation waiting for me – were the longest seven hours of my life.

Once I got it tuned to the electric piano, our four-piece band – the keyboardist, the 13-year-old drummer (he could PLAY) and the bass player who, for some reason, really didn’t want to play bass with me and chose to be a backup singer instead – finally started making something resembling music.

The real low point – and I mean this literally – was our second of three songs: “Amazing Grace.” Apparently the piano was a bit out of tune itself, especially on the low end, so when I tuned the guitar, the guitar was low as well. The result? Well … picture Barry White with a chest cold singing “Amazing Grace” with a 13-year-old drummer and a congregation that knew a smattering of the first verse and nothing more. After a game but tepid third verse, I called it quits. Even the crickets were bored.

Anyway, there was a high point, right? Yes. THIS was the high point. The guy in the pink suit was leading the music at the beginning of the service and let me tell you, there aren’t many people in this world who can pull off a suit like that. But he did. He rocked the house and while his infectious energy was a major contributor, I give the nod to the suit.

Bob promised me – you are all witnesses – that he will buy me a replica of that suit, right down to the white patent-leather shoes, if I promise to wear it. You are ON, Pastor Bob. You. Are. ON.

Big day tomorrow – up early and out the door at 6:30 am to head into the distant farmlands. More soon …