Baggas' Blog

Haven’t been blogging a lot of late, mostly because I’ve been very busy with other things.

A big part of my time has been occupied with organizing a trip for our family to Africa in October and November. Basically the plan is that I will be going over for two weeks leaving 26th October to work as part of a medical team on a mission to Watoto childcare in Uganda – this is a ministry that takes orphans and give them a home as part of a new family, education, and health care. After that I will meet Jen and the kids in Johannesburg and take them back to Uganda where they will also spend some time visiting and helping in Watoto. After that we will all fly back to South Africa where we will spend a relaxing holiday in Sun City, and a few days in Zambia visiting Victoria Falls. The total time I will be away is an exact month.

I’ll try and give more details of the trip over the coming weeks as I’m too busy at work at the moment to type much more, but it’s been amazing seeing how all of this is just falling into place in terms of the organization, finances and more. It promises to be a very exciting time…

You Might Be Emerging If… – purgatorio

Purgatorio’s pictorial satire of the emerging church is good for a laugh. Rate yourself according to his pictures and see how “emerging” you are. I did fairly well on some of the categories such as books (I have them all but one), countries, iPod, U2, and knowing who most of the “first names” are. But I’m not single, don’t drive a Combi, don’t have a tattoo, and I definitely don’t enjoy Guiness so I guess my emergent cred is in doubt… see how you compare…

Just finished reading this fascinating book by Giles Foden the other day. The Last King of Scotland is a novel which blurs the line between history and fiction. It tells the tale of Dr Nicholas Garrigan, a Scottish doctor who is sent to work in rural Uganda immediately before the rise to power of the infamous dictator Idi Amin. A freak accident involving Amin’s Maserati and a cow results in Dr Garrigan being called to treat Amin’s injuries, which results in him being given the dubious honour of being appointed as Idi Amin’s personal physician.

The novel intertwines Garrigan’s story with the historical events taking place in Uganda at the time, and the doctor is thrust into the thick of the historical action, playing a role in events including the 1976 PLO hijacking of an Air France Airbus and the subsequent Israeli commando raid on Entebbe airport to free the hostages. He also becomes involved in the action as the Tanzanian army invades Uganda in 1979 and liberates the capital Kampala from Amin’s rule.

Most fascinating though, are the plentiful scenes in which Garrigan gets up close and personal with Idi Amin. The enigmatic character of Amin is painted in detail by Foden, with a quasi-comic mix of sympathy and revulsion. Like Dr Garrigan, it is difficult for the reader to see Amin in simple black and white terms. At times Amin is quite beguilung and amusing, and at other times down right horrific. We are drawn into the struggle of Dr Garrigan to process and deal with the situation in which he finds himself immersed – his conflicted and ambivalent feelings provide a gripping demonstration of the mixed response of an ordinary man to evil.

This was Foden’s first book, but it is masterfully written. Certainly the best novel set in “recent history” that I can remember reading, and all the more fascinating to me given my current interest in Africa in general, and Uganda more specifically.

Paper blanks page to expose ‘whitewash’ – Breaking News – National – Breaking News

This is a story from Melbourne’s Age newspaper discussing the front page of The West Australian today, which was completely blank aside from a small paragraph. The idea is that it was supposed to illustrate the “whitewash” of the WA state government in an alleged cover-up of an investigation into the failure of government agencies to prevent the death of an abused baby.

It’s a sad story, and legitimate news, however seeing the newspaper cover this morning just made me angry at the paper itself. The West has never exactly been a bastion of journalistic integrity and quality, but in recent months the paper has been getting more and more sensationalistic and the quality of reporting and particularly the blatant editorializing puts it squarely in the tabloid category. I think for me the decline began to accelerate when they ran a vigorous front page campaign a few months back to get better labelling of fruit, complete with little cut-out forms you could fill in and send to the paper to add your voice to the outcry on this crucial issue! Fruit labelling – front page news? I think not. Every week I find myself cringing at at least 2 or 3 of the front page stories and headlines. Most days I find myself ignoring three quarters of the news reports anyway. The paper has a good detailed sports news section at the back (which is fine) but they also often have sport on the front page, and another detailed lift-out sport section in the middle several days a week. Sport is fine but do we really need that much of it, when most days we get 2-3 pages of federal politics, and maybe 3 or 4 pages of international news (of which well over 50% is usually advertising anyway)?

I’m afraid this white front page is the last straw for me. I’m no longer going to waste my money on a tabloid paper with barely any readable articles. Today my West Australian subscription is being cancelled. Unfortunately our state only has one daily paper so there is nothing to replace it with – I think it will have to be The Australian even though that doesn’t have much WA news. At least the journalistic quality is somewhat better.

Don’t ask me what any of the words in the title mean. Actually you can ask one – AOTW. This means Album Of The Week and is an acronym I’ve lifted from Ben’s blog, Hello Internet. He actually usually does review one album every week and also has a very cool blog so check it out.. (Also congrats on the big engagement!) Despite my use of the acronym I have no intention of doing an album each week so don’t get your expectation too high.

The other words in the title are the artist (Ayub Ogada) and title (En Mana Kuoyo) of the aforementioned album. I have no idea what the album title means or any of the lyrics on the album, since it’s almost all in Swahili (I think). But the sound is awesome – the perfect album to chill out to. Imagine an African Nick Drake [*], and you’ll get an idea of the sweet sound of this guy’s voice, especially on the first track, Obiero. Most of the tracks have a backing of simple percussion and the traditional African stringed instrument, the nyatiti (which Ogada is a master of) as well as a variety of pipes and other subtle backing instruments. The general tone of the album is fairly uplifting, yet still in a relaxing chilled fashion. The most significant departure from this is the more sombre song Kothbiro, which is my favourite. In fact this is the song that inspired me to check out Ogada’s music, after hearing it featured prominently in the movie, The Constant Gardener [**], and more recently in a National Geographic documentary we watched on Africa. Overall this is a fantastic album and worth checking out if you want to listen to something a little different. I’m also listening to some similarly styled music from Samite of Uganda, which fuses African music with a bit of jazz and is slightly more Western influenced, but still good.

 * – for those unfamiliar with Nick Drake, he was an excellent English singer-songwriter who made some albums in the early seventies before his suicide due to mental illness in 1974. Sad story, but excellent music. If you haven’t listened to Nick Drake then you are missing out.

** – The Constant Gardener is a very good movie from 2005 starring Ralph Fiennes and Rachel Weisz. An international thriller set mostly in Britain and Kenya – well worth getting the DVD and watching. Listen for the track Kothbiro throughout the movie and over the end credits.

I’m not normally given to criticising our public health system too much. The reality is, with all it’s shortcomings, the health system in Australia is still among the best in the world. Australians have access to advanced health care at little or no cost, when the vast majority of people in the world cannot even get the basics.

Having said that, I do have a constant feeling of frustration as I continually have to battle the beaurocracy on behalf of my patients, who are often let down. Sometimes the things that come out of our great public hospitals are so crazy you just have to laugh.

This morning I received a fax from one of the major hospitals saying “Dear doctor, we regret to inform you that your patient has died…” however they neglected one important piece of information – the name of the patient! So now I’m sitting here stressing, wondering which of my patients it is that has died. The flip side of it is that at least it makes me extra pleased to see people, that they are still alive! Crazy.

internetmonk.com » Blog Archive » Purchasing Books With Wisdom

Michael, the Internet Monk, has written a useful post detailing his issues with buying books. Now this is a post that I can totally relate to. He mentions the perils of the Amazon “one-click” system and how he has ended up with a bunch of books that he may never read, but which felt “good to buy” and which look good on his shelves. Part of the reason for this change has been a an alteration in his financial circumstances.

It’s funny, but I actually wrote a long post about my book addiction last week, sympathising (a little) with Mel Gibson’s current dramas, and expressing the need to set up an Amazonaholics Anonymous group… but then the stupid computer here at work crashed and I lost the whole thing.

In my case my shelves are already full, and I have about a year’s worth of unread books backed up. My financial circumstances haven’t changed, but I’m currently going through a bit of a shift in thinking and priorities, and the couple of hundred dollars or so a month I average on books could be better redirected to other areas. Michael’s suggestions to manage this problem are a good place to start – shame he’s only got 8 steps instead of 12 though – perhaps we should add in belief in a Higher Power or something along those lines. In my case, part of the cure will be the same as for any addiction – don’t put yourself in a position where you might be tempted. And in this case, that means staying away from Amazon.com, which is easier said than done when you sit in front of a computer all day and read blogs like Scot McKnight’s, who spends half his time discussing cool books. Maybe I need to install one of those internet filter programs and put Amazon at the top of the blocked list? Anyway, wish me luck in my recovery.

This week I have been reading a pair of books that complemented each other perfectly, both providing an enhanced picture of the current state of our planet, in contrast to our sheltered Western (or ‘Northern’) perspective. One is Ronald Sider’s Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger, a book which was first published in the 1970s and is now in it’s 5th edition. Sider gives a pointed challenge to Christians in rich nations – he details the incredible inequalities in our world in terms of wealth, food, education, health care and exposes the sin of Western Christians in not taking the biblical imperatives to redress this imbalance seriously. We could provide basic health care, education, and clean water to the developing world for less than the amount the rich of this world spend on golf each year! (p17) This powerful book is full of detailed statistics and scripture quotations, adding up to a shameful indictment of the rich churches and Christians in the developed world. We need to do much more – this needs to be the highest priority!

One thing that Sider’s book mentions is that a large proportion of those starving and dying are our fellow Christians. We are failing dismally at the Biblical command to care for our brothers and sisters in Christ. This principle is further illustrated by the other, and perhaps even more shocking, book I’ve just read – Philip Jenkin’s The Next Christendom : The Coming of Global Christanity. This book discusses the trends that are shaping the future of the church across the globe. To put it briefly, as our churches in the Western, EuroAmerican (or “northern”), world are in many ways dwindling and becoming stagnant, there is a massive upsurge in Christian belief in the “global south” of Africa, Latin America, and Asia. In fact on average today,

“the typical Christian is not a White fat cat in the United States or Western Europe, but rather a poor person, often unimaginably poor by Western standards…. The great majority of Southern Christians (and increasingly, of all Christians) really are the poor, the hungry, the persecuted, even the dehumanized.” (p216)

According to Jenkins (and once again he is backed up by an impressive array of statistics) Christians in the developing world already are beginning to outnumber those in the traditonally “Christian” countries of the West, and in the future African, Latin American, and Asian christians will far outnumber their European and American counterparts. In the future it may be the third world that is sending missionaries to Europe and America – indeed this is already beginning to happen. Jenkins details the unique characteristics of the Christian movements in these countries, which are often more biblically literal, morally conservative, and supernaturally oriented. This is what the true “emerging church” looks like worldwide, rather than the very different way the term is usually used. He explores potential conflicts with Islam, which is similarly expanding, often in the same places as Christianity. He also looks at the relationship between poverty and urbanization and church growth, remarking on the remarkable opportunities for Christians to not only spread the gospel, but also to lay the groundwork for vital social services in the megalopolises of the future, such as Lagos and Kampala :

 “The faith or denomination that builds there today is very likely to be profiting richly in a decade or two. Generally though, they are not doing this building, or not to anything like the degree we might expect. Why would anyone fail to respond to such obvious future trends” (p212)

This is one of the most fascinating and illuminating books I’ve read in a while. Jenkins presents a very convincing and detailed case, yet one which would be foreign to the majority of western Christians.

Reading the two books together is an eye opening experience. Exactly how we as rich Western Christians should respond to these things is not always clear, but we cannot afford to continue to ignore what is happening in the wider world. Christians should be at the forefront of global efforts to fight poverty, hunger, disease, injustice, and environmental degradation. And we in the Western church should be making an effort to connect with and help our brethren in the emerging “Southern churches,” lest we find ourselves to be a in minority, marginalized position in the future of world Christianity. On an individual level, we need to sit down and think and pray seriously about these issues, and the way in which God wants each one of us to respond….

and the next book I’m reading… Jesus Says Go! by missionary Robin Wells….

Photo posting

Originally uploaded by baggas.

Just realised I never got around to setting up the facility to post photos from my mobile direct to my blog since I moved to wordpress. So if you can see this little picture of Luke that means it worked

Very funny picture over at CraigS’ blog. I won’t post it up here so you can go to his site and check it out, but let’s just say if you’re a fundamentalist who also happens to enjoy some of John Travolta’s classic work from the 70s, then this might be right up your alley…
These Infinite Spaces: ROFL!

EDIT : since posting that I’ve been browsing a well written yet scathing Blog series on the Left Behind novels by slacktivist. His is an excellent blog that I will be watching from here on. I’ve only read a few of his posts thus far but here’s one line that made me laugh out loud (the tone kinda reminds me a little of Donald Miller) :

(My buddy Dwight wants to get end zone tickets to a Monday Night game some day and wave a sign that reads, “Ezek. 23:20.”)

Think of those clowns who hold up “John 3:16″ signs at sporting events, then go look up Ezekiel 23:20 (NIV), and you’ll get the joke. I can remember being seriously shocked when reading that passage as a good Baptist teenager.

Hello Internet: AOTW – Thom Yorke – The Eraser

In this post Ben discusses the new solo album from Thom Yorke (of Radiohead). His conclusion : “it does grab me and I really like it, but it’s hardly musical genius” I would generally concur with that after getting the album myself a couple of weeks back. For me the test of an album is whether I can see myself getting it out (or finding it on my iPod) on a regular basis and having a listen. And in this case the answer is probably no – there’s just nothing that stands out about this CD. It’s fairly simple, laid back “electronic rock” along the lines of Radiohead’s more recent albums, but it’s not a classic. Like many Radiohead fans I guess I’m still waiting for them to release an album that lives up to the promise shown on The Bends and OK computer, and although their recent work has occaisional flashes of that  brilliance, in general they are not at that level. The Eraser goes into the same basket.

Another solo album I got a week or so ago (after unsuccessfully keeping an eye for it for a month or two) is Exile and The Kingdom, from Canadian Tea Party frontman and ex-Perth resident Jeff Martin. The Tea Party are one of my favourite bands to come out of the 90s producing heavy alternative rock with eastern music influences (think Led Zeppelin’s Kashmir). Over time they have continued to pump out first quality albums but still trying new things, so even though I still prefer their early stuff I have never been majorly disappointed with a Tea Party album. This solo album could have easily been just another addition to The Tea Party catalog – Martin’s powerful vocals and guitar work, strong eastern influence with a dash of blues, and moments of heaviness and tenderness. Perhaps the main difference is that it feels a little more relaxed and fun than some of The Tea Party’s work, esepcially the recent stuff. Overall this is a great album, that I will listen to on a regular basis, and is probably the best from Martin since The Tea Party’s “Edges of Twilight” and “Tryptych“. If you like The Tea Party, then you must buy this album.

There’s only so many times you can hear the words “well i’ve had this cough for a few days” (or variations thereof) in a row without going insane! The reign of coughs, colds, and chest infections is upon us. People are dying by the second in other parts of the world for lack of medical care and I spend my days doing this, whilst people whinge about the “doctor shortage” in Australia. Well this doctor still has appointments available for Thursday and Friday so there’s plenty of spaces for more coughs and colds to be checked and told they don’t need any treatment. Crazy!