On the Trinity

In the church calendar, today is Trinity Sunday.  After Easter, it's my next favorite Sunday of the year (followed by Pentecost, which was last Sunday, and then the last Sunday of the church year, the feast of Christ the King).  I really wish I could speak eloquently about the Trinity and how the contemplation of this Christian doctrine has profoundly impacted my life.  I am a philosopher, and I have found that the Trinity is the existentially satisfying truth of life and the universe.  Wow, that's great, Joel.  Really.  So what in the world does that mean?  Well, I'll do my best to explain one thing that it means, but it won't be as fantastic on paper as it is in my head.  It just won't be.  But, I'll try.

First, a brief side note, but related.  I have spent many years teaching children and being around children, and it seems to me that society in general systematically beats out of us, at an early age, the motivation to ask the question, "Why?"  I don't exactly blame society for this, because children often ask "why?" to things are kind of ridiculous, or they don't ask the question "why?" sincerely as much as just to get attention, etc.  If you've spent any amount of time around kids, you know what I mean.  However, for whatever reason or another, I never grew out my sometimes obsessive impulse to ask, "why?" about almost everything.  It's one of the things that makes me a good engineer.  It also makes me a very irritating philosopher, both to myself and to others.

However, at some point this line of questioning must stop.  The question "why?" cannot be asked into perpetuity.  Any good engineer knows this (even if not every good philosopher does).  If you are scientifically investigating any system in the natural world, at some point you will finally reach the answer, "because that's the way it works."  For example, we don't really understand why matter that contains mass generates an attractive force called gravity -- we just know that it does.  Why, when I throw an apple in the air, does it come down again?  The final answer, at least at this point in the science of physics, is, "because it does."  G.K. Chesterton masterfully discusses this in his book Orthodoxy, although he uses the question, "Why does a tree grow?"  The science of biology can explain how a tree grows, but no one can explain why it grows.  It grows because it does.

Now there are brilliant philosophers (much smarter than I) who would disagree with me on this, but I have learned that the same principle also holds true in the metaphysical aspects of the universe.  If you ask "why?" long enough about things like morality, or why you exist, or why you will die ... you must eventually come to say, "because of God," or "because God is..." or something like that.  To demonstrate, take a question like, "why do I exist?" and try to answer it without any mention or reference to God.  You can't answer it in a satisfactory way that is provable with any kind of intellectual honesty.  You can't do it, you'll keep going in a circle forever.  [Of course, only God can (or could) empirically prove that He exists, so I don't empirically know that God exists.  And actually, as the movie The Matrix seeks to convince you, there is very little that you can know empirically.  Yet, if it's demonstrably reasonable to conclude that God exists, even if not empirically provable, then we can satisfactorily believe in Him.]  When you toss these metaphysical questions up in the air, they must come down again and hit something solid.  They cannot fall on nothing.

But here's the thing.  These questions don't land on the simple concept of "God" either.  A simple concept of divinity, even a personal divine being, will not satisfy.  Because eventually you must ask this question "why?" of God Himself.  If God is good instead of evil, why?  And how?  If God existed before anything, how could He be good?  How could He be loving, or generous, or kind, or any of those other things that we connect with goodness?  How can God be gracious and just and merciful and angry and joyful all at the same time?  This last one especially will cook your noodle for a long time if you really think about it.

So here's the other thing.  Finally, these questions have to land on a God who you (or I, or any human) don't understand.  If we could understand Him, then He wouldn't be God at all.  And yet, the questions must land on something solid.  If they don't, we will go insane.  And I'm not speaking hyperbolically here, we will literally go insane.

To briefly summarize the doctrine of the Trinity:
Three Persons are God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
The Father is not the Son.
The Father is not the Holy Spirit.
The Son is not the Holy Spirit.
There is only One God.

Here is the beauty of the Trinity.  The doctrine of the Trinity does not really answer very many questions about God.  At all.  But it provides something solid for these "why?" questions about God to land on, while at the same time maintaining the immense mystery of God.  The Trinity does not reduce God to a being made in the image of a human.  But the Trinity offers an explanation of how God can be eternally good and not evil, on the basis of something substantive, and not mere speculation or fancy.  How God can be both just and gracious.  How God can be both loving and angry. All at the same time.

The Trinity is existentially satisfying.  Put that in your metaphysical pipe and smoke it.  Inhale deeply.  For He is your very life...

One for the price of two...well, not really, but close enough...

 Within a month of moving here to Swaziland, we purchased a used 2002 Honda Civic from an American woman who worked for the US Peace Corps, had completed her mission, and was leaving the country.  When we bought the car, the driver's side (right) headlamp was out.  This was in late November of last year.  This past week, on May 15, we finally have two working headlamps.  How does such a thing happen for a measly headlamp?  I'm so glad you asked...

When I bought the car, I figured the light bulb was burned out.  No problem.  [insert uproarious laughter here]  The week after we picked up the car, I went to the local auto parts store to get a new bulb.  Well, it turns out that this car has xenon headlamps, and one bulb costs E340 (about $40 US).  I gulped hard, bought the bulb, took it back to the house, and installed it that morning.  No dice.  Then I was a little mad because I was afraid I might not have been able to get my money back.

[OK, so I'll disgress here to explain an important difference between here and the US.  You can't return merchandise here, as a general rule.  If something doesn't work right and you return it, most stores will not refund your money to you.  Instead, you must either pick out a replacement item of what you returned, or pick out items that add up to the amount you spent.  This takes some getting used to, but it's not a major inconvenience, really.  You just really think twice before you spend major bucks on something.  Anyhow, in this instance it turned out not to be a problem, because I now knew I had a bigger problem on my hands than simply a headlamp and would need some tools to figure it out.  So I returned the headlight and bought a small set of hand tools and a very handy electronic device called a multimeter.  Actually, I was surprised that I was able to buy one of these in Mbabane.  I have since learned that most major specialty tools like this are available in Mbabane if you know which stores carry them.  At any rate, back to work I went.]

That day after lunch, once William had gone down for his afternoon nap, I and those tools totally owned that Honda Civic.  Off came the front bumper molding and both headlamps, and out came the multimeter.  Fuses? Check.  Relays? Check.  Wiring harnesses? Check.  Bulbs? Check.  Ballasts?  And bingo, we have a winner.  The right side ballast was burned out.  Now, here in Swaziland we drive on the left side, so it's better to have the right side headlamp working because closer to the oncoming traffic.  So I switched out the left ballast for the right one -- keeping the bad ballast out to show the guy at the parts place -- and put the car back together.  Less than two hours ... I even had time to clean up before William woke up.  Now to find a replacement ballast.  [insert more uproarious laughter]

The following week I took Allison to an all-day meeting in Manzini, and William and I set out for Matsapha (in siSwati, the "ph" is pronounced like a "p" in English, not an "f") to find a new ballast for the headlamp.  I will make short what could be a very long story by saying that there were no ballasts to be found anywhere in Swaziland.  Furthermore, no one could order me one because it was coming up on the end of the year (this is early December now), so no supply houses were ordering new stock until after the first of the year.  At around this time our car developed another much more major problem (see earlier posts -- sometime I'll post that entire story, too) which required going to Nelspruit anyway, so I discussed the issue with the mechanic there.  The ensuing conversation was extremely enlightening.

Martin (the mechanic) used to manage the service department for the Honda dealership in Nelspruit, a position he held for about 6 years before opening his own shop a couple years back.  When I showed him the ballast and told him I needed a new one, he said, "I'm going to have to order that, and I can guarantee that there isn't one of those in all of South Africa.  We'll have to order it from Japan."  [Many cars here are manufactured in South Africa, but ours was manufactured in Japan.]  As we kept talking, he explained why this is the case.  Most dealerships in southern Africa do not carry any stock, only about R120,000 -- this is South African Rand currency, about $15,000 US -- and most all of that is for routine maintenance, things like oil filters, air filters, belts, and stuff like that.  In all his years working on Hondas, he had never replaced a headlamp ballast.  He explained that the part would have to come from Japan or from the distribution center in Berlin, Germany.  Best case scenario, the ballast would arrive in 4-6 weeks. 

[OK, I have to interject again here.  As you can see, there is definitely a niche market here in Swaziland for spare parts for imported vehicles.   If someone had the determination and a good amount of capital to put toward the project, some entrepreneur would do this country a huge bit of good by starting a imported automotive parts business.  After this conversation, I began to wonder why someone hadn't done it already.  But as I thought about it more, I realized that there are some problems that would need to be addressed, and one major problem in particular.  First, someone would need a large amount of capital to start up an auto parts business, not an easy proposition in a developing country.  But still, it seems that someone would have had the money to do this at some point.  Second, you need to find suppliers.  Again: not an easy proposition in Africa, but not an insurmountable obstacle, either.  And then it hit me.  To keep a large stock of automotive parts requires that you have a method by which to secure that inventory against loss, especially theft.  My guess is that this is the reason why no one has yet tackled this business venture in Swaziland.  To ensure your stock against theft would require both surveillance and security, and trustworthy security.  This is much easier said than done in a developing country, where people are desperate.  There is probably enough demand for an imported auto parts business, but not enough demand required to offset the cost of securing inventory against loss to the point of staying profitable.  What I have just described here is an enlightening window into the complexities of the problems in the developing world.  The technology and civil infrastructure exists to solve a good many problems, except a relatively minor glitch must be worked out first, and there just isn't any practical way to do it.  Like the issue of securing a large building of stock automotive parts, which desperate people would be highly motivated to steal.]

Back to my story.  Now, as soon as he said that he had never replaced a ballast before, alarms should have been going off in my head.  But because we were in the middle of also trying to solve the major problem with the car, that was consuming almost all my thoughts.  R3,500 later (about US$400), I'd ordered the replacement ballast.  Then it was hurry up and wait.  In the meantime, I should have given some thought to the issue of what had burned out the ballast in the first place.  You see, in facilities engineering, ballasts for lights go bad all the time, and sometimes for unexplained reasons.  If you find a bad ballast, you simply replace it and get on with your life.  Not so in automotive engineering, apparently.  This is what I mean that alarms should have gone off in my head when Martin told me that replacing a ballast is a rare problem.  But given everything else that was going on in our lives at the time, I suppose I can't be too hard on myself.

A few weeks later, on a day that it was raining very hard, I took our house helper back to her neighborhood so that she didn't have to spend so long out in the rain trying to catch a kombi.  That evening we went out to dinner with some friends and watched the movie Les Miserables.  We had a fabulous time, but when we got in our car to go back home, I noticed that both headlamps had gone out.  I was dumbfounded.  My friend Matthew and I broke out our flashlights and checked the fuse.  It was blown.  Sigh of relief.  The next day I bought new fuses and put one in.  No dice.  My heart sank.  Later that afternoon, after the front end of the car had once again been disassembled, I got a sick feeling in my stomach as I removed the right side headlamp and a bunch of water poured out of it.  The one working ballast I'd had was now burned out as well.  Suddenly, sadly, the entire story made sense.

Here's what had happened.  Before I bought the car, the vehicle had been in a small fender-bender accident that had damaged the front right headlamp.  That headlamp had been repaired just fine, except that a plastic piece had broken off the top of the casing.  I had noticed this before but hadn't given it any thought.  Being under the hood of the car, it hadn't occurred to me that water could get in through that opening and burn out the ballast below.  But that's exactly what happened, both times.  Because of location of the hole, in the heavy rain the water had run down the groove between the hood and the fender and eventually run down onto the headlamp, dripping through the hole and onto the electronic ballast, frying both it and the fuse.  If I had thought about the question for any length of time -- why did the ballast burn out? -- I might have been able put this together, repair the hole and saved myself an additional US$400 to replace the second ballast.  I don't know that for sure, of course, and I'm not really being hard on myself.  I'm just sayin'.  Naturally, it's much easier to diagnose this kind of a problem when you see water streaming from a place it's not supposed to!

We returned to Nelspruit the following week to pick up the replacement ballast that we had ordered ... and then immediately proceeded to order another ballast.  Another 4 weeks of waiting.  While we were there, I priced a replacement headlamp assembly as well, R2,500 (US$300+).  I decided the repair the hole myself rather than spend the money.  Finally, last weekend we went back to Nelspruit again for Allison's pre-natal appointment, and I picked up that dastardly electronic ballast.  I didn't have time early in the week to complete the repair, but I got to it on Wednesday.

By now, I can disassemble the front end of that Honda Civic in less than ten minutes.  I removed the offending headlamp assembly, put four strips of electrical tape over the hole, and pasted that thing with enough silicone sealant to ward off a typhoon.  And we have two working headlamps ... for now.

Two Tales of a City

 To ex-pats around Swaziland, Mbabane is affectionately called "Africa Lite," and the moniker rings true.  It's a fairly Westernized city with two major shopping plazas, modern restaurants, fuel stations that look like anything you find in the US, well-painted street lines, working traffic lights, mechanic shops, real estate agencies, and most everything else you might expect to find in any US city with less than 100,000 people.  At the same time, Mbabane still feels like an African city to me.  [Many people who have been to Africa have been to Nairobi, Kenya; that city does NOT feel African.  If you've been there, you know what I'm talking about.]  While Mbabane is the capital city, Manzini (about 40km to the southeast) is larger than Mbabane and definitely feels much more African.  Still, Mbabane contains all the trademark "must-haves" of an African city: a large, central taxi park; street vendors lining every possible inch of sidewalk space in the middle of town; street performers, beggars, and drunks; street signs of varying quality pointing to anything and everything 'major' within a 50km radius; a mixture of twinkling new and dilapidated old buildings; and everywhere the bright and bold reds, greens, and yellows of Africa.

While stunningly beautiful, the geography of Mbabane is difficult to describe.  The city rests between two mountainous ridges running roughly parallel from northwest to southeast with peaks rising almost a thousand feet above the tallest buildings.  Situated on the Swazi highveld (i.e. high country), it's not technically accurate to say that the city sits in a valley, because it overlooks the Ezulwini valley which lies yet another thousand feet below.  Neither can you say that Mbabane is on a plain, because the area is very hilly, even in town.  From a neighboring peak, it looks as if the city just dropped out of the sky and fell down onto the swollen spaces between the mountain ridges.  To the west, the terrain continues upward for another 20 km, across the border and over the Drakensburg Escarpment that divides Swaziland from the South African province of Mpumalanga.  To the east, down the mountain and across the Ezulwini valley, lies the city of Manzini and, beyond that, the hot and flat lowveld of Swaziland.

Because of the topography and elevation (about 4200 ft.), Mbabane experiences drastic weather changes from day to night and from season to season.  Like all mountainous places, the wind blows fiercely at times, and some times the entire city is engulfed in cloud.  One afternoon I stood on our balcony and watched the entire vale fill with tumbling clouds from top to bottom.  It was magnificent.  In the space of less then ten minutes, the visibility went from several kilometers to a few hundred misty meters.  Now that we are coming into the dry season (i.e. winter), the temperature can rise higher than 80F in the day and drop lower than 60F at night.  For Africa, this is cold.  [As strange as this is to say for an American living in Africa, I didn't bring along enough warm clothes!]  We often start the day wearing socks and fleeces, change to t-shirts and sandals by noontime, and back to jeans and slippers by dinner.  And during the night, the cold sinks down into the concrete walls and tile floor as we pile our blankets on top of us to sleep.  I'm not complaining, though; this effect works to our tremendous advantage during the summer!

These extremes are also reflected in the economy of Mbabane, and of Swaziland as a whole.  We live in Sidwashini, a neighborhood toward the western edge of town.  On the hill just up the road are spacious houses with manicured lawns and gardens.  In the same neighborhood, less than a kilometer away from us below the highway, are mud huts shoe-horned between tiny two-room concrete houses.  Driving around town we have seen BMWs and brand new Mercedes-Benz's, ten-year-old Toyota Corolla's with a hubcap or headlight missing, and twenty-year-old jalopies limping along on long-broken shocks with smashed windows and doors that don't close properly.  I remember making similar observations when I first visited Swaziland in 2004 and being equally jarred by it.

Of all the countries in the world, Swaziland is 21st from the bottom in its 'GINI co-efficient', which represents the inequality of income of all the people of a particular country (the lower the rank, the greater the gap between the richest and the poorest).  Although I haven't been here long enough to have heard people talk about this first-hand, but I've heard that this disparity has caused a lot of underlying tension in Swazi society, especially against the royal family (which lives in opulent wealth).  The scuttlebutt in the international community is that the monarchy will fall soon, but I don't know how much truth there is to that rumor.  In general society, people still speak highly about the king -- but again, I don't know how much stock to put in that, either.  My guess is that I would have to live here a long time, and develop some fairly intimate Swazi friendships, in order to learn the real truth about this issue.

Everywhere, people are looking for employment.  From what Allison and I can tell, it seems common for Swazis from rural homesteads, when they come of age, to come to the cities in order to find work.  I have the feeling (but I don't know for sure) that Mbabane is less inundated with migrant workers than Manzini or Matsapha (Swaziland's industrial center, just outside Manzini), probably because housing is so expensive here, comparatively.  This dynamic has been happening for decades and seems to be part of the cause for non-traditional living arrangements (and subsequent sexual partnerships) that have been adopted in Swazi culture and have doubtlessly exacerbated the tragic AIDS pandemic that rages here.  I realize that a similar story could be written about every major city in the world.  The difference is that here, in Swaziland, all this is still happening even where the HIV prevalency rate hovers around 25%.  Desperation peeks through the glass and steel of Mbabane, and people die.  All the time.  [At some point I'll have a separate post just about this, the constancy of death here.]

Because of my job teaching with ZBC, I have a chance every week to pass through downtown Mbabane around the time the sun is rising.  It's a bit surreal, yet remarkably calming, to observe the busy city before the buzz awakens.  It's a phenomenon that is truly unexplainable, you really have to experience it: first the incredible fury of sound and clamor that typifies a major African urban center; then the serenity of the exact same location with most all the people  --  and goods, and trash, and vehicles, and...  --  removed.  In all of life there is rhythm, sometimes noticed and sometimes not, but Mbabane perfectly resonates with the daily rhythm of an African city.  It's a boisterous cacophony in the light, an eerie deadness in the dark.  That's the other thing about Mbabane, the city completely shuts down after sundown.  

One time, shortly after we arrived in country, Allison had left her cell phone in a kombi coming back from Manzini.  We thought the phone was long gone, but the gracious kombi driver found it and called us to return it.  I drove into town to meet him well after dark in order to recover the phone.  I'm not one to be afraid of the dark, but I was a little freaked out driving into the bus rank (or taxi park) that night.  Scarcely a soul was in sight.  Some cars drove on the road, but none were parked in any parking lot.  No businesses were open.  No one walked the streets.  Thankfully, the downtown area is well lit with streetlights and such, but not all areas of town are like that.  At any rate, we have learned that the general principle of Swazi society is that, after dark, people stay in their houses.

Well, enough morbidity.  Even with its imperfections, Mbabane is a beautiful African city.  I understand why so many ex-pats live here.  Most everything you need to live is readily accessible, and Mbabane quite possibly offers the best mix of political and economic stability, ethnic harmony, scenic beauty, hospitality of climate, cultural interest, and ease-of-living of any place in Africa.  When it comes time for us to leave, I will miss living here.  One could easily call this town, "Africa's Best-Kept Secret."