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The Wilds of Africa (sort of)

It was finally time to leave Lovasoa. It was a wonderful place full of education and learning. So many fond memories to be had in a place that I will never go again. When I travel in the states I never think about being somewhere for the last time, although I know it will inevitably happen. The only reason for this is that I often have found myself places that I thought I would not visit twice, such as the top of Pike’s Peak or the Grand Canyon. But here, it is different. The chances are so much lower of ever returning to these places, and I know that in the rest of my time, Lovasoa is not on the list.

Kristian and I remained the only two left. Most the others went before on a Wednesday, and Bethany the day right before us. We loaded on a brusse about 8 in the morning. It was a 10 passenger van, a high-end trip for our first (partly) solo ride through Madagascar. Our stuff was thrown on top and we began the four hour trip to Antananarivo. Sleep wasn’t going to happen, but there was so much of the landscape to see that I had missed on the way down. Every feature is new and interesting, every rock a new work of art. The scenery had already greened slightly from our first trip through.

We were collected by one of Hasina’s drivers. Hasina is the organizer of a company of drivers. He is the man that every man wishes to be. Fixer of all things, Pastor Kirsten says. He drives us through the crowded streets and bustling alleys of the city of Tana and drops us on the doorstep of Pastor Kirsten. Honorina lets us in. She is the helper and housekeeper of Pastor Kirsten. She laughs everytime she sees Kristian because she thinks he is the funniest person she’s ever met. Granted, he is the funniest person I’ve ever met.

We settle and it does not take long for us to fall asleep. A few hours later, I wake up and begin doing some work on a well-behind-schedule newsletter. Another few hours later, Kristian wakes up and begins work on a well-behind-schedule newsletter. Pastor Kirsten arrives. We have dinner out in the town to wrap up the night.

Kristian left early in the morning. I mean, we go to drop him off, but that left me with Pastor Kirsten and about a hundred errands to run before we could start on our way to Port Berge. It was slow going, but almost everything is in Madagascar. I get told almost daily to walk slower. Mitsangatsangana = a leisurely stroll; Mandeha = a lot of things but in this case, “to walk”; and I’m sure there must be a Malagasy word for ‘run’, but I don’t know it and probably won’t ever need to.

The errands took us until about 2 and shook me to my very core in a way I haven’t yet. We visited a few places that looked like the US but not quite. It was as if viewing them through a very black mirror, only it was exactly like the US looked. I just saw it with different eyes. Eyes that had a new filter and way of looking at things already. It really was not pleasant and something I do not look forward to when I return.

We began the long drive to Port Berge. It was similar to the drive from Antsirabe to Tana only this time we could go faster, and I took a few pictures that you can look at instead of me having to describe it in extremely creative language. Long story short, it was incredible. It was similar to driving across the US only in that my eyes were plastered to the window of the car. I wanted to write some and planned on reading a bit to pass the time, but for 6 hours I looked out the window.

When it became dark, it was still interesting. It became easier to see the fires that dot the landscape. They glowed a soft orange, mostly off in the distance, but once right next to the car. We drove through the smoke and the flames whipped up a foot from the ground. Madagascar appears to be mainly covered in grassland similar to what you’d imagine in a savanna. A lion or two would not look out of place. It is unclear if the fires are man-made or not, but even in the day it was as if parts of the land hand been razed by some unhappy god who left nothing but blackened death behind.

We stayed the night in a small town. There was no room at the first inn, or the second, or the third, but the fourth one had three rooms, so we slept there instead of in the car. We got up in the morning to continue the trip.

Once, we stopped at the Land of a Thousand Lakes. At least, that’s what I call it since I can’t remember the Malagasy name. I know, very Imperialistic of me. I apologize.

We rolled to a stop right before a set of bridges. One led to a small rotunda waiting area for when there are too many cars trying to cross the bridge: 2. It was a single lane so one car could wait for the other to pass and keep going. Pastor Kirsten told me to get out and I thought I had finally crossed the line somehow. Really, she just wanted to look at what was going under the bridges. And existed on the sides of it. It wasn’t a valley or a canyon, but something in the middle. It looked like a giant river bed with a few creeks going through. It was about a hundred feet down, so not too far, but it was all rock. Lots and lots of rock. Sure, there were interesting patterns and separations, it wasn’t just one flat rock bed. Some rocks were higher than others, it was dynamic below the bridge. There was dimension and elevation change and a small island of dirt that had the first baobab tree I’ve seen in Madagascar wrapped in a red shawl in the middle of a prayer site.

We walked across the bridge. Every step was a new picture. There were ravines dug by the water through the rock and what looked like two or three streams from beside the bridge were really about a hundred. The river forked dozens of times as it flowed through some frankly massive cracks in the stone. It was all obscured by the rock around it and every step revealed a new channel through which water poured. It was the dry season. In the rainy season it is easy to imagine one of the biggest rivers ever completely covering the thousand-foot expanse across the bridge. It would probably be a bit terrifying to see that much water at the flow rate it would be.

We crossed slowly after our driver drove the car across. It was worth every extra minute to see the whole of the site and experience semis shaking the whole thing as they drove an inch from our noses. Pastor Kirsten didn’t like that part too much, but I affirmed that a shaking bridge isn’t necessarily a bad thing and that it is possibly still structurally sound.

We loaded again and drove the rest of the way. We made it to Port Berge and met my host family. That story continues another time.

Get Set

Orientation was a roller coaster. I spent the second week of August in Chicago for the Young Adults in Global Mission orientation. But how can one prepare for a year of service in a completely different cultural context? And how does one handle being the next generation of a practice that has changed {corrupted, enhanced, endangered, destroyed, demeaned, improved} the ways of living in so much of the world? I am a missionary, in name, deed, and service. But it is a title that carries great and grave connotation even within the United States. The week was intended to challenge our views and perspectives, reveal that our perceptions are shaped by the course of events in our lives, and begin the conversation on what that means as a Christian in the world.

LSTC welcome sign: the location of Orientation

Throughout all of orientation, we returned to ourselves. It didn’t make sense at first, but it is impossible to fully serve others without knowing yourself. Every action has an impact, although it is sometimes impossible to know what it will be. Knowing from where within oneself a response begins is pivotal to better gauging the actions we take. Mindfulness of one’s origins in the process of action becomes imperative to move forward on the path of acting the best possible way toward another person.

We listened to a lot of people talk about many different origins. They discussed origins of themselves, of others, and how those origins impact their life everyday from buying food at the supermarket to the discrimination they face. It is all in an effort to get us (the YAGM) to understand our lives are unique. Just as with anything, uniqueness comes double-edged. It is great to be original and special in our own way. However, we often fail to see that others are unique and completely original in their own way apart from us. The consequence of this is a failure to recognize the value in someone else; that they are just as important to the world as we are. The whole purpose of the YAGM program is to remind all those that go to other countries, all those who support them in their journey, all those in the host communities that accept them, all those who read the newsletters and blogs, all those who hear the story of the YAGM experience that we are all a part of God’s creation together, no worse or better than anyone or thing, and are loved fully and unconditionally.

That’s why the ELCA practices the accompaniment method.

Chicago, one of the train lines, I can never remember which.

Accompaniment

I graduated with a degree in Mechanical Engineering. It was a long and winding path that I could never really understand why it was the one God led me down. I always lover roller coasters and wanted to build them. I worked for this ideal of success in being an engineer partly because of the way society conditions youth, but also because I just wanted to build rides. And then, I didn't. After a roadtrip in between my sophomore and junior year, my perspective was changed and I saw how many more things I could do. I experienced a different way of living that I preferred to the one I thought I had wanted. 

I didn't know if I would ever find that way of living again. I was worried at the ripe age of 19 that I had already experienced the most amazing thing I would ever do. At least, that is the way everybody I talked to about the trip made it sound. But I found it again, unexpectedly at Lutheridge. Summer camp showed me what I had been looking for, if only for a moment, and it gave me the language to describe what had made the roadtrip so special. It is the community. It is a place apart. Both the roadtrip and camp took me away from my regularly scheduled life and put me in relationships with other people and places that can only happen when the nonsense and white noise of living is pushed aside. But, at the turn of summer, camp also ended.

When I went on to intern at Universal, I was somewhat disenchanted from the world of themed entertainment. I had fun throughout my time, but it could not stack up to the importance and meaningfulness of living that I had experienced elsewhere. I left on great terms having done well, but unsure of my desire to return. I joined a community at a church in Orlando called Salem Lutheran Church. I kept afloat, drifting through the engineering work like tubing down a river: enjoying it but not really feeling like I’m doing much.

Through the next year, I went back and forth on how I felt about a lot of things; life, faith, engineering, summer camp, travel. I wasn’t sure how it all fit together. There are many things I thought I could do and many more that I wanted to do than actually possible. It all looks like a hundred roads spread out in front of me no one better than the rest. It didn’t and still doesn’t make sense from a religious perspective why God would lead me down one path such a long way and then take me backwards nearly just as far.

The last year of my schooling held just as many twists and turns and many loops as well. I studied a lot, worked even more, and slept very little. Somewhere I found time for my friends, without which I probably would not have made it. The end came faster than I could anticipate, it raced by tackling me and throwing me to the ground. You’re in school for so long and then al of a sudden the door is wide open to a cloud of dense fog.

Luckily, I had applied to YAGM. A year of service somewhere very interesting, somewhere I could step away from everything I knew completely. I passed through the summer after graduation at Lutheridge once again. I prepared a few things, but mostly kept to the work in front of me, doing a job that I love and that doesn’t really feel like doing any work at all. I looked forward to some time to think. Some time to figure a few things out.

Orientation in Chicago. It still didn’t hit me that I would be leaving for Madagascar for a year. A thought like that is too big to get into a person’s head quickly. It takes a long time for it to wriggle in through the ear. It really wouldn’t be for much later that I had an inkling of understanding, and even now, ten months more abroad doesn’t make much sense. It certainly wasn’t in my mind the first day.

Dan got up to speak. (He is the YAGM program director.) In our first introduction to the next year of our lives he explained what we would do. At least, sort of. We are missionaries who accompany. We go where we are invited and do what we are asked. He told a story about the years of his youth. In them, I found something a bit similar to my own. He loved to play with Legos. He and his friends each had a set. They would build things on their own and take them to each other’s houses where they each would play with their own set. They would build really cool things with all the pieces they liked best and show them to each other. One day while playing, someone had the idea to put all the Legos together so they could build a roller coaster. However, it meant they had to take apart their best creations. They had to dismantle the things they like best and mix them in with everyone else’s pieces. But they did it, and in the end, they had a fully functional roller coaster. Dan told us that’s what we are doing with accompaniment in this next year. We are taking the best part of ourselves, our language and culture, and sharing them with someone else to create something even more incredible than what we can do with only our own lives. He said what we are doing as missionaries is building roller coasters.

The Chicago skyline from Promontory Point, where we had a campfire and s'mores Sunday night.

On Your Mark

It was an amazing summer at camp. Lutheridge has quickly become like a second home and close to my heart. It is amazing all that can be accomplished in a week, and how it has seemed like an age has passed in the three months since I graduated.

I was one of the Lutheroad Area Directors which means that for five of the eight weeks of camp, I took a team of counselors to various churches in North and South Carolina to put on a week-long camp similar to a vacation bible school. I went to Augsburg Lutheran Church in Winston-Salem, NC; Holy Trinity Lutheran Church in Anderson, SC; Redeemer Lutheran Church in Greer, SC; St. Stephen's Lutheran Church in Lexington, SC; and Holy Trinity Lutheran Church in Raleigh, NC.

The other three weeks I spent on-site as the Area Director for Crazy Cool Campout - the lite version of the Outdoor Adventure Program for fourth through sixth graders. Alongside being the most difficult weeks of the summer, they proved the be the most rewarding through the growth I saw within the campers as well as the counselors in my area. In general, the impact camp makes on people is incredible. It isn't just on kids, because they grow up to be counselors, and move on to be area directors. They end up in congregations around the country, Lutheran and otherwise, and use the songs, games, and skills the learned from camp to build small communities wherever they go.

Lutheridge has definitely been one of my inspirations for the YAGM program. I have seen the wonderful light that it creates, and I hope to try and carry that with me around the world. I have learned so much about people and how Jesus asks his followers to act. I hope to continue the sort of life I had at camp, helping others but also simply enjoying the time I have and where I am.

As I come closer to the time of my departure, I am asked more and more if I am excited or ready to be leaving. The truth is, I have no idea what is going to happen. I only just found out my site placement in Boriziny, but I don't know what I'll be doing or even the exact amount of time I will be there. Just that I will go to Madagascar on the 21st and return ambiguously sometime in July. So, excited? Maybe, but it is hard to be excited for the unknown. Ready? I'm not packed. Happy? Sad? Anxious? Afraid? No, none of those. Quite simply, I feel prepared. I lot in my life has lead me to now, and no matter what is coming I have a large set of tools at my disposal to take on any challenge thrown at me. 


Though the path is long and the journey is far, it is no longer wise to be afraid. I have my friends beside me and Christ leading on to guide me on my way.

"Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be frightened, and do not be dismayed, for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go." - Joshua 1:9

In the Beginning...

Hi! My name is Brad Giordano and I will be going to Madagascar with the Young Adult in Global Mission Program (YAGM) through the Evangelical Church in America (ELCA). I will be posting here at least once a month to share my journey with all those who support and follow me. If you have not yet, please visit my support page on the official ELCA donation website. Any amount you are willing to give is enough to fund my trip. Just $14 funds one day of my year abroad (the $5000 required fundraising divided by 365 for you math whizzes). $41 dollars is the actual cost of a day abroad (again, $15000 total cost divided by 365).

Thank you for all your support, and don't forget to share this trip with as many people as possible!