Corn Meal Jello...Gag!

Well the past week has been pretty crazy.

Last Sunday we went to the Father’s House with Harona, Emily’s guard. It was an African service. It was a lot of fun. They sang some songs we knew, but most were ones that we had never heard. The clapped and danced to almost every song. One on their songs was sung by four men, including Harona, and they all danced in a circle while they sang and clapped enthusiastically! It was quite wonderful. The message was delivered in many different languages. The leader spoke in two languages and then there were two different groups of people getting the message translated to them. It was all about the Son’s love. The leader made many good points. I thoroughly enjoyed it.

We had a “baby bush stay” on Tuesday and Wednesday. Lindsay and I stayed with the family of a Fulani man named Ibrahim. He works as one of the guards for the Samaritan’s Purse. They had a really nice house. Matter of fact they had to really nice houses. In his compound there were two big concrete houses. All of the day’s activities are done outside in the compound. The day began by fixing lunch. Fatima, Ibrahim’s wife, cooked over a small wood fire. She prepared rice and beans for us. We all ate out of a common dish; they used their hands but insisted we use spoons.

After lunch they washed the dishes and Fatima’s mother came over to get her hair braided. As it turns out Fatima’s daughter is amazing at putting in braids (or treces in Hausa). She was also really fast. Then Fatima noticed that the bottoms of our feet were white so she offered to put henna (or liela in Hausa) on the bottom of our feet. Lindsay and I agreed to this. Little did we know that the whole process of henna in Africa was a lot different from henna in the States. She put this green paste on our feet then wrapped our feet in plastic bags and socks. It was really hot outside anyways and then when you add the plastic bags and socks on top of it, it was almost unbearable. Sweat began to pour off of us. We were sitting on a twin sized bed out in the yard under some trees. Our new friends then instructed us just to take a nap until it was done. Sleeping in this condition proved to be a bit more challenging than we first expected. There were a zillion flies everywhere! We were extremely hot and every time a small spot of sun came through the leaves of the trees above us they would make us get up, move and then lay back down. After a few hours they finally let us take the bags off of our feet, only to find out there was another layer that had to go on that required us to put the bags on our feet again. Altogether we probably had bags and socks on our feet for about 6 hours.

While we were lying around with our feet in bags we were able to watch Ibrahim kill a chicken. I’ve never seen someone kill something and then have to eat it for dinner. Dinner was surprisingly good. The made Lindsay and I eat with Ibrahim by ourselves. We had plain noodles, a boiled egg, probably over half the chicken that was cooked in some really good sauce, and then this corn meal jelloy stuff. The noodles and chicken was delicious! The corn meal jello was a bit harder to swallow. Lindsay couldn’t swallow hers at all so I ate hers too and it was really hard not to gag. We ate some of the chicken but not all of it because we knew that often people give their guests the best they have and it leaves very little for the women and children. Lindsay and I had way more than half of the entire chicken, that couldn’t have left very much for anyone else. So we ate a little less than half of chicken. Fatima came to get our dishes and saw that we had not eaten all of our chicken and she was a bit upset. She left the chicken and noodles and took everything else. She washed our dishes and then brought them back to us and told us we were not allowed to go to bed until we had eaten all of the chicken. Lindsay and I tried to explain that we were full (and this was the truth we had eaten a good deal of noodles and sauce) but she would not hear it and held her ground that we must eat all of the chicken that was given to us. After a small argument Lindsay and I caved and ate the chicken and were allowed to go to bed.

Lindsay and I slept on the porch on a queen sized mattress with a mosquito net over us. The mosquito net blocked the wind which was basically nonexistent to begin with. It was really hot that night and we barely slept at all. Then around 3 or 4am the loudest rooster in the world woke up. I guess the rooster then woke up the obnoxious sheep that “baas” louder than anything I’ve ever heard! I’ve never wanted to kill anything so bad in my life. Finally morning came and we got out of bed. We took a quick bucket shower and prepare for breakfast. Lindsay and I were put inside to eat breakfast by ourselves. There were two covered dishes, two plates and two spoons on a small table facing the corner. Lindsay and I sat down and uncovered the dishes only to find that one of the dishes was the leftover corn meal jello from the night before! I’ve never been more thankful to eat alone. Lindsay and I decided that neither one of us could bare to eat anymore of the jello so we found a ziplock bag in one of our bags and filled it up with enough of the corn meal stuff to make it look like we at least ate a little bit of it. The other dish was full of these little pancake-like circles that were made out of beans. They were really oily and instead of having sugar like the farimasas, they had tonka which is this really spicy, salty seasoning. We haven’t quite adjusted to the idea of hot and spicy things in the morning so we ate a couple of those and put a few in the bag with the corn meal jello. When Fatima came in to see what we had eaten she was pleased and took our plates happily. Unfortunately when we put our little doggy bag in Lindsay’s backpack it attracted ants! So we had to wash it when we got back to Emily’s house.

We then hung out and played cards and watched the daughter braid more hair that afternoon. When we got back to Emily’s house I had a new appreciation for common languages and electricity. Our baby bush stay was a lot harder than I had ever anticipated. We only knew a handful of words in Fulfulde and Ibrahim was the only one that spoke Fulfulde. Fatima and her children all spoke French and Hausa and we spent most of our time with them because Ibrahim had to work. I really was questioning why in the world I felt the Father had called us out into the middle of nowhere. I cried a good deal when we got back. I decided I didn’t have what it takes to live here. Then the Father reminded me that in my weakness He is strong. And then I realize my conclusion was completely right. On my own I did not have what it takes to make it here, but the good news is I don’t have to do it on my own. In the States I could be independent. I had my own car, my own income, I was going to school, and everything was on my own strength. I have discovered that that is one of the reasons that the Father called me here, so that I would depend on His strength, not my own.

Ok! Well, enough about our baby bush stay. We graduated orientation yesterday and we got kicked out of Emily’s house and now we are staying at the guesthouse. We also got our phone for graduation! We can officially be connected with the rest of the country! It’s surprising how many people own cell phones around here. They may not have electricity or running water, but oh buddy they all have a working cell phone. It’s been quite an entertaining trip.

We also had our first day of language learning yesterday. It was a bit overwhelming. We learning how to greet, do introductions, and all of the numbers in Fulfulde and we also learned Hausa numbers too. That was all in a three hour session. They make a lot of sounds that we’ve never heard. It’s hard for us to make the different sounds because we don’t understand where the noises come from in your mouth. But we are working on it and the little bit of time we spent on how to learn language in class is actually paying off. We have the phonetic charts which help us to repeat the sounds over and over until we can mimic them. After our bush stay we realized how incredibly important language learning is!

Ok so another funny story! Lindsay and I went to take a taxi this morning to Emily’s house. We got in the taxi and told them that we wanted to go to the electric company near Emily’s house. Apparently there are many electric companies in Niamey, so we ended up at some other electric company on the opposite side of the town and our taxi driver didn’t understand English and we haven’t learned enough language to communicate very well yet. So, we paid the man and got out of the taxi. Then we had to find us a new taxi to take us to the other electric company. We found on pretty quickly. It seems that many of the taxi drivers enjoy taking the “anasaras” (white people). Many times they will kick someone else out of the taxi and take us instead. The taxi that picked us up already had two people in it and ended up giving us a wonderful tour of the backstreets of Niamay. So the trip that would have taken us about 20 minutes to walk ended up taking us about 45 minutes in a taxi, but Praise the Father we made it just in time.

Oh and to update everyone on my health…I’m doing much better. It turns out I had a bacterial infection in my stomach. I took some medicine for five days and everything in normal again. I am so thankful for that! Thank you for all of your pr*yers.

This may be our last update for awhile. We leave for our bush stay on July 3rd. Please continue to pr*y! If it’s anything like our baby bush stay…we are going to have a lot of stories when we get done!

Love ya!