11

Bubba Sings

The presence of international military forces provided adequate security for us to get more relief supplies outside of the major cities to other Somali people who so desperately needed them. The benefit gained by the presence of the forces, however, came with a price. In fact, the increasing role of the United Nations made our work more and more difficult.

As the world became increasingly aware of the humanitarian crisis in Somalia, aid poured in. The hope of the Somali people soared. At the same time, this dramatic infusion of resources led to profound economic changes. The cost of doing business and providing services skyrocketed almost overnight. Early on, we had rented our compound for five hundred dollars a month. Suddenly, our rent was five thousand dollars a month—and rising even further. At the beginning, we had rented vehicles for $150 a month. Now, the cost was $1,500 a month. While our organizational resources remained stable, our costs had grown by as much as one thousand percent.

The sudden visible presence of American military personnel as an integral part of the relief effort led to increasing hostility among many of the Somali people. This hostility was something that we had not encountered before. Evidently, the arrival of the troops had been seen as “a crusade.” The continuing presence of the troops was seen as “an occupation.” Suddenly, every Westerner was seen as suspect. Earlier, our efforts had been met with both gratitude and curiosity. Now, the reaction was often skepticism and resentment. Before, I was recognized and known well enough to walk safely around in the city alone or with some Somali staff. Now, I was seen as an invader and occupier. My western staff and I discovered that we couldn’t go anywhere without armed guards. It felt as if we were wearing targets on our backs. And our humanitarian efforts began requiring significant military protection.

I was frustrated. The people we cared deeply about—the people we were working to keep alive at our feeding centers—could become belligerent in an instant. The situation was so tense that our standing security orders from the military leadership required that we arrive at our distribution points at 6:00 each morning. If, however, our military support was not already waiting for us at that time, we were instructed to leave immediately. Even the presence of the soldiers did not always guarantee a peaceful and controlled environment. And the situation could change in an instant.

Typically, the military would string razor wire to keep the pressing crowd in line as thousands cycled through our feeding centers. Our own staff assisted in keeping things orderly as well. In particular, one of our American workers was instrumental in this. He was a huge man with a soft and gentle heart. We called him Bubba. His size alone would have intimidated most potential trouble-makers. But it was his obvious and open love, and his friendly enjoyment of people, that probably had the greatest impact.

One day started like so many others. We arrived at the feeding center before daybreak. At the site was a well-armed squad of American soldiers, five tons of grain that had arrived earlier with its own guards, and a long line of hungry Somalis already waiting. It was a typical day at the feeding center—or so it seemed.

As the temperature soared, our wheat supply dwindled. It was over one hundred degrees well before noon. Hundreds of Somalis remained in line, each waiting for our workers to carefully measure out two kilograms of grain per person, the required allotment to feed up to four people for the day.

We did not notice any significant shift in tension or a lessening of patience. Looking back, it was unbearably hot and the hungry crowd had grown restless. Sometimes, a small thing can transform a crowd into an angry mob.

On this day, the trigger was an older woman with deep wrinkles. To this day, I cannot be certain about what caused her to react so strongly. Perhaps she had used up her patience simmering in the sun for hours at the back of the line. Perhaps she had some desperately hungry grandchildren who she needed to get back to. It is impossible to know exactly what happened. But after she received her allocation of wheat, she broke the established rules of the feeding site and moved toward Bubba. She looked up at him and unleashed a verbal attack. Bubba, as gentle as ever, simply smiled at her. The more he smiled, the angrier she got.

I noticed the commotion when our Somali guards suddenly tensed and turned toward the disturbance. All I could see was Bubba, head and shoulders above a gathering crowd, seemingly unperturbed, and smiling down at someone. His patient response only fueled the woman’s rage. I heard her sound of fury long before I spotted the source when she launched a long stream of vile curses at Bubba. Thankfully, he didn’t understand a word that she was saying.

It was now possible to understand her complaint. She was upset about the quality of the “animal feed” that was being distributed for human consumption. She was probably right in her assessment of the food. These were surplus agricultural products that United Nations contributing members didn’t want, couldn’t sell, and had no other use for.

As this hulking American continued to smile, the woman realized that she was not communicating. Now, furious and frustrated, she bent down, set her plastic bag on the ground, grabbed two fistfuls of dirty, broken wheat, grain dust, dirt and chaff. She straightened to her full height and flung the filthy mixture as hard as she could into Bubba’s face.

The crowd was deathly silent as I heard a series of loud metallic clicks that indicated that an entire squad of American soldiers had instinctively locked and loaded all weapons in readiness for whatever might happen next.

Everything felt frozen in time as everyone waited and watched for Bubba’s reaction. A Somali man might have beaten the woman for such a public insult—and he would have considered his action and his anger entirely justified.

I knew that Bubba had traveled half-way around the world at his own expense to spend three months of personal vacation time to help hurting people. And this was the thanks that he received? He was hot, sweaty, and drained beyond exhaustion—and he had just been publicly embarrassed. He had every reason to be absolutely livid. Instead, he raised one hand to rub the grit out of his eyes, and then he gave the woman one more big smile.

At that point, he began to sing. And what he sang wasn’t just any song.

She didn’t understand the words, of course. But she, and the entire crowd, stood in silent amazement as Bubba belted out the words to the 1950’s Elvis Presley rock-n-roll classic:

You ain’t nothin’ but a hound dog

Cryin’ all the time

You ain’t nothin’ but a hound dog

Cryin’ all the time

Well, you ain’t never caught a rabbit

And you ain’t no friend of mine.

By the time he started singing the next verse, the old woman had turned and stomped off in frustration, angrily plowing a path through the now-smiling crowd of Somalis to make her escape. Watching her go, Bubba raised his voice to send her off with rousing rendition of the final verse:

Well they said you was high-classed

Well, that was just a lie

Ya know they said you was high-classed

Well, that was just a lie

Well, you ain’t never caught a rabbit

And you ain’t no friend of mine.

Obviously, the tension was broken. Some of our own Somali guards walked over to Bubba and patted him on the back in obvious relief and gratitude as they told him, “We didn’t know that you were a singer!”

“Oh, yeah,” he grinned back at them. “I’m a famous singer. Back home in America, they call me ‘Elvis’!” (When he finally got back to the States, Bubba actually picked up a “Best of Elvis” CD, stuck a picture of himself on the cover of the case and sent it as a gift to our Somali staff in Mogadishu. Somewhere, even today, there are a few Somalis who still believe that Elvis was a singing relief worker, very much alive and well during the early 1990’s in Mogadishu.)

When I finally had time to consider what had happened in those few moments, I concluded that I had observed one of the most impressive demonstrations of Jesus’ love that I had ever seen. A kind, gentle, godly example of humility and humanity had instantly defused a situation so volatile that it could have turned deadly within seconds. Bubba had done that simply by following the seemingly insane teaching of Jesus who had instructed His followers to “love your enemies.” Bubba had met angry hostility with a simple smile, and a very unlikely hymn, which God then used to change an impending crisis into a sacred moment of Christ-like testimony. In that moment, I learned some good lessons about cross-cultural relationships. What I had mistaken at first for naiveté, I came to see as nothing less than the love of Jesus.

For twenty years, that event was my most vivid memory of Bubba. I think I was captivated by the humor and the positive outcome. When I thought of Bubba, that is the day I remembered. While working on this manuscript, however, another memory surfaced. I wonder now if I had repressed it. Suddenly, another memory came to mind.

It was another day at the same feeding center. Several thousand starving Somalis stood in line under the searing tropical sun. Another squad of American military men provided security.

A Somali boy who was about twelve years old walked up the far side of the feeding line toward our distribution point. Some people in the waiting crowd seemed to stir and stare as he moved past them. As he neared the front of the waiting line, I realized that he was carrying some kind of a weapon at his side.

An American soldier spotted the danger about the same time I did and shouted out an order: “Drop your weapon, son!”

The boy ignored the command and kept walking. Three or four times the soldier repeated his order. I heard several soldiers cock their rifles. The boy kept coming, a finger inside the trigger guard of what looked like an old, beat-up AK-47. He held the gun tightly, but it was still pointed toward the ground.

Everyone else stood frozen in time. As the young boy neared us and began to raise his weapon, several soldiers shouted, “Drop it!” When the boy failed to do so, one of them shot him in the chest, killing him instantly.

The child fell at Bubba’s feet.

The security force, as trained, stood in place and visually scanned the area for additional gunmen. None of the Somalis in line made a move to go to the boy. The whole confrontation, from beginning to end, had lasted less than thirty seconds.

As Bubba looked down at that crumpled, lifeless twelve-year-old body, he began to weep.

Suddenly, a cluster of Somali men gathered around Bubba. Instead of looking at the boy or mourning his death, they began to chastise Bubba for his tears. This is what they said to him:

“Stop your crying!”

“This boy was a fool! If he had wanted to kill these soldiers, he should have shot at them from a distance!”

“The boy died because he did a stupid thing.”

“He deserved to die.”

“Don’t embarrass yourself, or us, by crying like a woman. Men don’t weep over things like this!”

Within moments, they demanded that Bubba return to helping distribute grain. They made it clear that they were “tired of waiting and wasting time over this foolish dead boy.”

For two decades, I had blocked out the violent horror of that memory. Somehow, I had chosen instead to remember the story of Bubba serenading the old Somali woman with a classic Elvis tune as “one of the most impressive demonstrations of Jesus’ love and grace that I had ever seen.”

Upon reflection, however, I see another example that I couldn’t quite grasp or face for many, many years. Like the biblical account of Christ’s anguish over Jerusalem, I now see in my mind’s eye two mourners in Mogadishu that day.

I realize that both Bubba—and Jesus—wept over the death of that young boy.

The rapid expansion of our relief work in those first months of Operation Restore Hope could not have happened without the steady stream of excellent short-term volunteers who augmented our full-time staff.

I continued making trips in and out of Somalia, Northeast Kenya, Djibouti, Somaliland and Ethiopia to manage the work among Somalis. At the same time, Ruth was in Kenya recruiting and coordinating travel for scores of volunteers, managing the finances for a rapidly expanding relief agency, raising three boys while simultaneously learning how to grow and administer an international relief agency out of our family home. She spent her time calming American families who had loaned us their loved ones for relief work in a war zone. All the time, she was wondering where in the world her husband was, if he was safe, and when he might come home to Nairobi.

Supervising five feeding sites, distributing food and medical relief to numerous villages, providing fresh-water wells, seeds, and farming tools to outlying communities, and traveling through different regions of Somalia exposed me to countless suffering people. We felt proud of what our organization had been able to do, but there was so much more that needed to be done. There was so much hurt that we could not heal.

In the spring of 1993, Ruth and I returned to the States for a conference. We met with some of the people who had prayed for us and we spent time with supporters to report on our work and to seek additional advice.

During that same stateside visit, we made a quick trip to Kentucky to see family and friends. The day I visited home, Dad treated me to lunch at the little downtown restaurant. I hadn’t been there for years. As I followed my father through the door, a number of his retired friends slowly rose to their feet and began applauding. I was confused. I didn’t understand what was happening. Several of the men slapped me on the back and shook my hand. As Dad and I made our way to an empty table, I heard some of the men say, “Well done” or “Good job.”

As we settled into our seats I asked: “Dad, what in the world was that all about?”

My father wasn’t the most demonstrative or communicative parent in the world. In all the years that we had been in Africa, I had received one piece of correspondence from him. When I pulled the envelope out of the mail box and recognized his handwriting, I immediately suspected that something terrible had happened. Without opening the letter, I walked home from the post office; I figured that I would need Ruth’s strength and help in dealing with whatever bad news the letter contained.

Ruth knew that something had to be wrong the moment I walked in the door of our house. I showed her the letter and I told her that I had been afraid to open it. Together, we ripped open the envelope. There was a single piece of paper that read in its entirety: “Dear Son, I thought I’d write—Dad.”

This was the same man who had verbally expressed his love for me only one time in my life—as far back as I could remember. One time, we had placed a trans-Atlantic phone call home from Africa for some reason. We made the connections and held a very brief conversation with Dad before I signed off by telling him, “I love you, Dad.” He responded to that by replying, “I love you too, son.” I was so shocked that I quickly hung up before he could take it back!

This was the man I was looking at across the table in the restaurant. I asked him again, “What is going on with these people? Why did they react like that when we walked in?”

He smiled at me with a look of unmistakable pride in his eyes. He said, “Well, Nik, I guess it’s because I told them what you’ve done.”

“What did I do, Dad?” I said slowly. I wasn’t sure that I wanted to hear his answer.

“Why . . . I told everyone how you brought all those troops from all over the world to save Somalia.”

“DAD!” I exclaimed. I then lowered my voice to a whisper: “I did no such thing!”

He looked at me and said, “Didn’t you go into that country before anybody else?” I was one of the first to go back in, yeah. “Did you stay there when everybody else was leaving?” Well, I stayed and tried to help when I saw how bad things were, that was true. “Did you write articles and tell people how terrible conditions were in there—how the Somalis were starving and how the bad guys were keeping the food from reaching the people who needed it most?” Well . . . I tried to do some of that . . . sure.

In his mind, it was perfectly clear: “So you helped Americans and people in other countries learn what was going on there, and they responded, first with relief aid and then with troops to help that country.”

I could see that there was no point in trying to dissuade him. In Dad’s eyes, and what he had evidently convinced a bunch of his friends to believe, was that I had been the primary person responsible for convincing President Bush, then President Clinton, and finally other international leaders (none of whom I had ever spoken to) to send thirty-two thousand troops to Somalia in a massive, multi-national relief effort. My father wanted to place the credit for all of that on my shoulders. Now the folks of my hometown thought they had reason to be proud of me.

I couldn’t blame my father for not wanting his son to be yet another “prophet without honor in his own country.”

However, I couldn’t escape the irony either.

My dad and his friends in rural Kentucky wanted to credit me with doing so much to “save Somalia.” But the honest truth was that sometimes, more often than I wanted to admit, when I was on the ground in the Horn of Africa, horrified by the overwhelming needs that I saw all around me, I couldn’t help wondering if my efforts, and those of all the wonderful people working with our organization, were actually making any difference at all. Or if we ever could.