A brief glimpse into my history, Chapter #47

I don't know how to write this.
I don't know how to open it, where to begin or even how come up with some sort of pithy or clever opening paragraph.
After mulling it over for more than a year, I have decided to just write it.
It will be ugly. It will be purgative. It starts out like this :

"Once upon a time, I had a dad."
(actually I still do, often to my frustration.)
My dad bugs me.
He just does. I suppose all parents bug their kids to some degree. I remember as a teen, I LIVED in my bedroom. When I came downstairs I didn't want them(tm) to even see me, if possible. I desired to be invisible to them(tm). I realise now, it was more avoidance of my dad. This has been a strange revelation to me. I first made a clear connection not long after he arrived here and began living in MacKenzies bedroom while waiting for his addition to be constructed. I observed a strange phenomenon :
When my dad came out into the house from his room, the girls immediately left the area and went straight to their rooms.
MacKenzie quit jumping on the trampoline soon after he moved in with us. When I asked her, "Why don't you jump on the trampoline anymore?"
She responded, "because it bugs me when Grampa sits there and watches me."
Scout also, made a comment when I asked her, " she didn't like being in the same room with him because he weirded her out."
I visited a counselor friend of mine, describing my own, inner thoughts and my experience as a teen and now I was witnessing this in my own girls, and I had NEVER SAID anything to them about my inner thoughts,or growing up years( at least as far as this kind of stuff went. I do not recall much of my childhoodand have only a few memories.)

The counselor said that it was a common reaction for people who are living with a person who is an extremely controlling personality. Now this surprised me, because my dad is controlling in the EXTREME but I had not mentioned it to the counselor.

Growing up, we were not allowed to have emotions. Only happy appearing ones. We were not allowed to cry. We were not allowed to be angry or upset, visibly in anyway. We were not allowed to ask questions in public. I think my dad thought that the phrase "Children are to be seen and not heard" was one of the original 10 commandments that someone just miss translated and left out. The typical answer when we did have the gall to ask a question was "mind your own business!" and " Do as I say, not as I do." Seriously. That is how we were raised.
There are MANY people who were raised like this. I fought long and hard to not do any of these things as a parent, to my own kids. Anyway, I find myself now, after 1.5 years of him living here, I too have an inner compunction bordering on instinct, to flee the room, or the yard or the garage when ever he comes near. When he is home, I stay indoors with the curtains pulled, and the doors locked. Why? Becuase he walks around the house looking in the windows. And he walks in the house without knocking. Maybe I am some freaky Westerner, but I believe in common courtesy. I know it is an eastern thing - for people to just walk in the house of close friends and family. Usually using the back door. I am sorry. We don't usually DO THAT out here on the west coast. Even after I moved out of my parents house, I still knocked on the door and waited for it to be opened or for someone to yell "come in!" before I entered.
I have spoken of this difference in culture to my dad, but he merely grunts, as if it is my problem for living here and he continues to not recognise boundaries.
So, I am sort of an emotional prisoner in my own home.
A prisoner of whom?
My dad?
Myself and my inability to cope with whatever strange heebie-jeebies come over me causing me to want to run from his presences on a gut reaction?
(Even my next door neighbor confessed to me that she doesn't like to go outside when he is out, because he stares at her.)

Now the fact that my dad is a lech is no secret.
His thoughts on women are culturally Latin. Women are only good for a very few things, and are certainly not worthy of respect. Only lip-service verbal respect is hinted at in public but there is no shoe-leather to it. That is why my dad sent my brother to college over and over and over again, even after he dropped out all those times, and he never sent me once.
I was the girl.
Why waste college money on me?
So, women have babies, they cook food, they put out, they wash clothes and be happy all the time when you arrive at the door after your day of work.
That is your job as a woman. If you are anything else, then you don't know your place.

Small wonder why my brother is the way he is.
He blames his disfunctions on Viet Nam, but I see ALL of the original blue print in my dad.
I NEVER saw that before, until I had to live with this old coot as an adult.
My brother is my dad in too many ways:

-Completely self absorbed - this is heightened in my brother

-Believe that he is NOT a man unless he has a woman on his arm - they both share this trait in equal measure.

-Greed with regard to posessions. They are both packrats and worship their belongings.
(While having a conversation with my dad last year, I mentioned that we don't really worry about losing private property, since we had already been through the house fire and learned that stuff isn't what matters in life, and so we don't worship it. He literally said, "Well you guys better learn to worhip Grampa's stuff!"
I was stunned inside, but I laffed aloud and said, "don't count on it." This is because of his impoverished upbringing and going through the depression and all. Still, its wrong thinking.

-Gluttony. This is more prevalent in my brother, but it exists in my dad too in the form of covetousness. He wants to own everything he sees. When he was a younger man, he was better at controlling himself, but now that he is old, he is not so good at that control.

-Pride and boastfulness. If you have don'e something, or know something, my dad and brother have done it already, bigger and better than you did or if they haven't then they know all about it anyway.

So there it is in its ugliness.
My first purging.
I don't wish to whine.
I don't wish to bring anybody down.
As I know it, there are only two people who read this blog, and I have nothing to hide from either of them.
But I need to purge.
I need an outlet.

If I had any worry, it would be most for Kimberly, girl I don't want to bum you out. You are such a light hearted and young person.
I just gotta do this. But I trust you to pray when you feel compelled. :o)

And Lehsa, you know me from waaaaay back! There is nothing I could share with you that would surprise you.

But I must leave off now - it is time for me to suck-it-up and call Gramps over to eat dinner with me and share a glass of wine, because that is the neighborly thing to do. The daughterly thing.

Maybe this discourse has proved nothing more than to show my own ignorance and self centeredness in processing my dad's behaviours. Perhaps it is I who is the small person. Conversely the thought pops into my head just now, that no body ELSE volunteered to take care of my dad. My Portuguese step family said, "You gatta doo this! Yoh the dahta!" My brohter the alcoholic, gambling and other addiciton -laden sot can't function enough to do it. Ofcourse he couldn't pull imself together 20 years ago to help take care of my mom when she was dying of altzheimers either. I moved onto my dads property in a single wide mobile home so I could help him take care of her.

Maybe I sound like I am patting myself on the back or having myown pity party - but dang it - I am frikkin tired. I am gonna vent here. So anyway, being the "good dahta" I am doing my duty right now. And I try not to complain, but sometimes it leaks. I leak.

The flash backs I have had, since he has come to live with us have been unsettling to say the least. Things that I neer thought about , that happened in my childhood. I would be driving in the car, listening to usic and all of a sudden a flood of images, and voices and emotions would take off in a really bad video short inside my minds eye. When it passes I find myself saying, "how did I dream that up?" and then the realization hits me, "That actually happened. You rememberthat now, don't you." I remember hiding under the bed, when my mom and dad - mostly my dad screamed and yelled into the late night, at my brother and each other. I don't remember the things they shouted. I just know that they were horrible and I was afraid for my brother, whom I loved. I now remember the smell of dust bunnies under the bed, and hugging the "PAcky The Elephant" that my Grandma had made for me and crying. (Packy was the first elephant born in the USA in a zoo. He was born the same year as I and he was born at the Washington Park Zoo in Portland, where I grew up.Grandma made a "Packy" for me and one for my cousin. Other kids had a teddy bear. I had Packy.)
I also suddenly and rather rudely recalled a time when we were going camping. I wanted to hold Packy on the front seat with me, in the cab of the truck. My dad said no, my mom said to me it would be ok, he didn't take up much room. I began to climb into the truck and my dad started yelling and cussing at me (I was 5) and he yanked me out of the truck, grabbed Packy and slammed him against the tire and Packy exploded. He cussed some more at me and told me to get into the truck before he "got out the strap." When we came home from the camping trip, I think my mom jumped out of the truck and cleaned up the remnants before I had to look at them.
This was one of those childhood memories I never remembered until the old man came to live with me.

And here I am, whining about how my stuffed animal got smashed when I was 5 years old.
Boo-hoo. Woe is me. I am now a 40-some-odd year old woman, I should ust get over it. So I did put that particular memory in its place. I don't dwell on it. I merely share it now as a means of purging and fleshing out the picture for myself and the poor reader of this tome.

Again, perhaps this missive merely points out myown shortcomings and self absorbed perspectives.

If so, then may it be so. The truth, while sharp as a two edged sword, is good to prune away bad growth and bring things to light.

Where Stu will be Going

Next month, around November 16th, Stu will leave for Chad, Africa for a very important video shoot.
The Chadian Christians, through TEAM Ministries, have asked him to come over and shoot what amounts to a short feature film. 45 Chadian actors have been conducting acting workshops and rehearsing the script for almost two years now. The subject of the film is very heavy, and exposing the vile custom of, initiation.

Many tribal cultures have a rite of passage for their young people, some rather benign and some unimaginably cruel. The initiation that young Chadians “participate” in (they have no choice in it) is done at the urging of the chief and tribal elders. In some tribes the initiation is done yearly, in other smaller tribes, initiation is performed or perpetrated about every three years.

Although it varies slightly from tribe to tribe in its execution, this is basically how it works.

I’ll warn you the thought of it is graphic in the extreme.

The chief will approach the family of kids who are in the 12-17 age range. He’ll declare to the father it is time for the initiation, and to pay up for the privilege to have his children initiated into the tribe as adults. It can cost a family dearly, up to half of their family’s yearly income, doled out to the chief in chickens or goats, cattle or grain and flour.

The initiates (boys and girls are initiated separately) are led into the woods for what amounts to a week of abuse. The boys are beaten and intimidated by the elders, forced to sleep on the ground and are often deprived food, water and sleep. Some of the abuse is very sexual in nature, some of it is simply horrifying. At night, elders scream from the woods as incarnate long dead ancestors, yelling curses on the initiates to obey the chief and elders. If they do not, they will come back to repeatedly haunt them. The goal is to break the spirits of these young men and to make them absolutely subservient to the chief and elders. Torture, trauma and brain-washing is a better word for this process. Once the young men are initiated (broken really) they are beholden to the elders for direction and their place in the tribe.

For the young woman, the process is the most profane thing imaginable. They are exposed to the same rituals as the young men, but on usually separate nights, the father of one of the girls will join the elders around the fire away from the girls and get drunk. Then his daughter is pulled away from the other girls and the father goes and has sex with her. If that isn’t bad enough, then the rest of the elders have sex with her that same night sometimes beating and choking the girl. In a small tribe that could be as few as 8 elders or in the larger tribes that could be as many as 40 or more men in one night. The message is, you are no more than property, a thing to be used, and to do the bidding of the men in the tribe. These young women will have no real will of their own their entire lives.

The sad part of this is that way too many Christian families are caught up in forcing their kids into initiation, as unbelievable as this sounds. The reason: to resist initiation is to be ostracized from the tribe, friends and extended family.

The video we produce will follow a Christian and non-Christian family as they wrestle with sending their kids to initiation. It will depict the initiation process (inferring rather than showing the more graphic elements) and the voices of the dead ancestors (elders), and uncover the lies, deceit, greed and evil that is initiation. Having once been initiated, you are forbidden to ever mention the process to anyone, even other initiates, or risk the wrath of the ancestor’s spirits and the wrath of the chief.

This is such a huge and sensitive cultural issue in Chad, that the script had to be approved by all of the major evangelical organizations in Chad. Some were even reluctant at first to be involved (the Catholic Church decided not to sign onto the script). Biblically though, these evangelicals realized they had to take a stand against this great sin that was keeping both Christians and non-Christians in darkness and bondage.

Mary Stone is a dear friend and missionary to Chad, and she recruited me to produce this project. Along with Richard Hunt, a friend and director from Houston, and Rob Barrett, a soundman from Minneapolis, we will spend about 10 days in actual production of the project. The national language of this exceedingly arid and poor country with 9 million people, and 3 times the size of California, is French. The script is in French (with English in sidebars), and no, I don’t speak a lick of French. Richard speaks a little, but we will rely on translators and the script to keep us from getting lost.

I have not produced a project where I have felt so much darkness and oppression in the air. Obviously we are stepping on ‘someone’s’ turf in this undertaking. In the past two years many obstacles have come up to end this project before it begins. One of the main actors, a Christian, took on a 2nd wife several months ago. I am being told of other issues regarding some “temptations” among the actors that would keep this project from being produced. I sense some of those temptations as well on the crew end, especially with fear. We need to be covered in prayer for direction, health, safety, unity, gear that will not break down and Christ’s heart for our Chadian brothers and sisters.

When this project is completed, it will be used by the Chadian Christians only (this is their project) with portable battery powered DVD players and even small gas-powered video projectors they will take into the villages. I know the opposition they will face when they do this has all the potential to be met with a very violent response.

Although the budget for this project has come in at $32,000, (and which all has been raised) covers a huge variety of expenses including transporting, feeding and housing 45 actors for over a week, and our plane fare and transportation, the cost of mastering and duplicating DVDs; Yet still, it is still a shoe string budget.

A few productions costs have come up though that I didn’t anticipate, that leave us about $1800 short, with less than a month till we depart for Chad. Most of these costs are for very specialized pieces of video gear, some unforeseen travel expenses and a few expendables (props and objects that will be used or destroyed in the process of production) and that we will need, to shoot a realistic story in this very hostile environment. (I was told how to spot a poisonous snake in Chad. “They’re all poisonous, so get away quickly.”)

Any funds you feel led to give can be mailed to or dropped off at Sisters Community Church (the address is below). Please note, “Chad Video Project” on the memo line if it is a check.

I have never felt this more than with this project, but we will need your ongoing prayer for this project. This last spring one of the TEAM missionaries was kidnapped in Northern Chad (far from where we will be), and after 6 months, thankfully released. In July, 3 TEAM missionaries were killed on the highway where we will be traveling, in a horrific bus-car accident. So the dangers are real, both in a physical and spiritual way. I would really like to be assured that people here in the USA are praying for us. Mary Stone’s house which is where we will be staying in, in Mondou (pronounced Moon-do), has some sort of a dial-up internet connection, that at 12k transmission speeds (think 1985) won’t break any records, but will get the email in and out.

I’m looking forward to having you be a part of the team and praying for us. You are integral to the success of this project. Thank you for your prayers.


Stuart Ehr