I love reading and I love books. As a kid, I’d read everything I could get my hands on, even cereal boxes in between books. So much so that I knew all the ingredients, nutrition facts, and that the cereal photos on the front were not actual sized. At one point, my Mom threatened to stop buying me books because I burned through them in less time than it took her to buy and wrap them. Thankfully the threat was empty and she just bought me thicker books.

The lack of books I want to read has been one of my bigger struggles since moving here to Zambia. I brought a bunch of books with me when I came, but those were all finished within my first three months. I bought a few books here and while good, they’re ones I bought mainly because I wanted to read rather than I wanted to read them. I’ve also tried the whole ebook thing and it just didn’t vibe with me. I got the content which was great, but I missed out on the experience of reading. There was no book feel. No dog earring pages with passages that I need to come back to and dwell on a little longer. No underlining ideas that resonate with me. No wearing down of the covers as I read, re-read, and struggled through the ideas within. I can’t seem to get as much out of a book while reading it on an electronic device.
But that probably speaks more to my shortcomings than those of the medium.

All this to say, I have a friend from the States visiting tomorrow and she’s bringing me a few books that I’ve been craving!
The books en route are:

Pedagogy of the Oppressed by Paulo Freire
New Monasticism by Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove
A Dance with Dragons by George R. R. Martin
When Helping Hurts by Brian Fikkert

Prepare for an onslaught of quotes in the coming weeks.

My friend Andrea Levendusky is easily one of my favourite writers. She’s insightful without be assuming. She’s intelligent without being pretentious. She teaches as friend sitting beside you on a couch rather than an instructor standing above you. Keep an eye out for this woman’s work! I’ve included an excerpt from her most recent blog post below, but you can read the whole thing here.

“Wasn’t it just last summer, when we sat around the fire pit and our voices disappeared into the dark blue sky, along with the orange sparks that splashed into the star-lit ocean? Wasn’t it the Adirondack pines that sheltered us as we listened to music and he laughed, and she sighed, and they drew closer, and we let the flames simmer down until sleep called us? Wasn’t it the heat of August when we circled around and asked big questions, knocked sticks against the stone and pulled out some pieces of ourselves there under the arc of earth? Hasn’t it always been the fire we surround, the fire within us that draws us to each other, that burns us, that reveals us, that rings within us the fragile bells of need, love, fear and doubt with one another?”

I highly recommend reading the whole thing: Kinship with the Fire by Andrea Levendusky.

Here’s a little 3D flickergraph from the OR today.

Praise is the patient going under anesthesia in the photo. He’s an extremely smiley 9 year old boy who’s come to us here at CURE Zambia all the way from Zimbabwe! He had surgery to treat his hydrocephalus and is recovering in the ward now. If you so like, you can follow his time with us here.

If you’re more interested in the flickergraph (or 3D photograph – I think I might be the only person that calls them flickergraphs). It is just an animated GIF made from two, slightly displaced photos to give the perception of depth. It’s similar to the way our eyes work. We see depth because our two eyes are slightly displaced, giving us two slightly different images. Our brain then combines these two images and can, rather accurately, perceive distances and depth.