Saturday, December 30, 2006
Home Sweet Home
This is Mark, Kim’s language helper. He’s awesome. He called me over today and proudly showed me his shirt sleeve. That’s right, folks, Illinois Department of Natural Resources. Woot, woot. I know a couple of my supporters who will be especially thrilled with this. You can tell I’m equally excited. As is Mark. Anything from home is super exciting.
Christmas Play
My teammates Toriana (which means “flower” in Lopit—her real name is Catherine, from South Africa ) and Martin took on putting on a play for the communities between Christmas and New Years. They did a really wonderful job, organizing local church folks and kids. And they wove together the culture and Biblical history really well. They put it on in the fuera of the village Sohot today and will do it in another village tomorrow. The fuera is the village center where they host all their dances. It’s also the place of the mangott (shown in the picture) where the men sit and do nothing all day. I guess they also discuss things and make important decisions there. But all I see is the sitting. :)
Anyway, in the center of every fuera is a clump of thick sticks (more like small tree trunks) stuck in the ground. Each stick signifies a generation of the people of the village. That is, they add them as each generation comes and goes. It’s a very special thing for them, and the fellas have told me the men can point out their stick and tell you the stories of the generations of all the other sticks.
For the play, they built upon that idea. They surrounded the sticks with more sticks and, as the play began, pulled one out and told its story—creation. We changed the generational sticks of the village to the generational sticks of the whole world. So, the first stick was creation. As they pulled out sticks, they told the story of its generation—stories of Noah, Abraham, Moses, etc. Finally, they talked about how in Jesus all generations are redeemed, all people are welcome at the cross.
They did a really great job. People came and went. I’m not sure they had the concept of a “play;” people would walk right through the middle of it! But it certainly started some talking. In fact, these fellas came out afterward and started dancing. My heart fell. But, someone explained to me that they were dancing as a thank you, in appreciation of the story and what we’d done. If nothing else, it was awesome to see the local church folk active in the play. They were so excited about it.
Anyway, here’s some pictures from it. I somehow didn’t take any of the actual play. Sorry gang. The first is just a view of some of the crowd. That’s the fellas up on the mangott. Women and children can’t sit on it. You’ll notice those two guys with funny looking skin. Those are my teammates Heinrich and Daniel. I look at scenes like this and wonder how I can actually live here.
And here’s a guy, dancing away. I really dig his huge… head… thing… And those are ace bandages wrapped around his arms and legs. And some kind of pom-poms on his upperarms. And a skirt. And sweet boots. I love dancers.
Anyway, in the center of every fuera is a clump of thick sticks (more like small tree trunks) stuck in the ground. Each stick signifies a generation of the people of the village. That is, they add them as each generation comes and goes. It’s a very special thing for them, and the fellas have told me the men can point out their stick and tell you the stories of the generations of all the other sticks.
For the play, they built upon that idea. They surrounded the sticks with more sticks and, as the play began, pulled one out and told its story—creation. We changed the generational sticks of the village to the generational sticks of the whole world. So, the first stick was creation. As they pulled out sticks, they told the story of its generation—stories of Noah, Abraham, Moses, etc. Finally, they talked about how in Jesus all generations are redeemed, all people are welcome at the cross.
They did a really great job. People came and went. I’m not sure they had the concept of a “play;” people would walk right through the middle of it! But it certainly started some talking. In fact, these fellas came out afterward and started dancing. My heart fell. But, someone explained to me that they were dancing as a thank you, in appreciation of the story and what we’d done. If nothing else, it was awesome to see the local church folk active in the play. They were so excited about it.
Anyway, here’s some pictures from it. I somehow didn’t take any of the actual play. Sorry gang. The first is just a view of some of the crowd. That’s the fellas up on the mangott. Women and children can’t sit on it. You’ll notice those two guys with funny looking skin. Those are my teammates Heinrich and Daniel. I look at scenes like this and wonder how I can actually live here.
And here’s a guy, dancing away. I really dig his huge… head… thing… And those are ace bandages wrapped around his arms and legs. And some kind of pom-poms on his upperarms. And a skirt. And sweet boots. I love dancers.
Thursday, December 28, 2006
Christmas in Lopit
We had a lovely Christmas here in Lopit. Unfortunately, I didn’t get many pictures from the church service—I was doing video instead. I think the most beautiful part was when they sang “Silent Night” in one of the languages close to their own. (There are some songs translated into a trade language, which is in some ways close to the dialect from here.) The service was supposed to start at 10—in fact, the day before the pastors urged everyone to be there at 9 so we could start on time—but it didn’t begin until after noon sometime. The pastors weren’t there until really late, either. Hilarious. Toward the end of the service, people from the village came down. They really just came for the free food—the church slaughters a cow every year. Sad. Really sad.
This is Steve, cooking some goat leg at our team Christmas party. I told him he looked really American, sitting in his lawn chair with the spatula (before he struck this lovely pose). I think I might give him a “Kiss the Cook” apron for Christmas next year.
This is Steve, cooking some goat leg at our team Christmas party. I told him he looked really American, sitting in his lawn chair with the spatula (before he struck this lovely pose). I think I might give him a “Kiss the Cook” apron for Christmas next year.
The boys had a lovely set up for our Christmas dinner with them. They even painted a Christmas tree on their wall with mud and had candles for decorations. It was actually really pretty once it got dark.
Prayer Request
Hey gang… a prayer request for you.
I’m still feeling rather weak from being sick two weeks ago. Please pray that I’d get my strength back and would be able to get back on track with language learning, relationships and my studies. I’m beginning to feel rather defeated, since I have no energy! Also, pray for my eyes. I’ve had a lot of trouble with them lately and sometimes can hardly open them.
Thanks so much for your prayers!
I’m still feeling rather weak from being sick two weeks ago. Please pray that I’d get my strength back and would be able to get back on track with language learning, relationships and my studies. I’m beginning to feel rather defeated, since I have no energy! Also, pray for my eyes. I’ve had a lot of trouble with them lately and sometimes can hardly open them.
Thanks so much for your prayers!
Sunday, December 24, 2006
Cow-tipping: Moo-sic to our ears
Our village put up a new compound next to ours.
Our new neighbors are rowdy and loud.
And they even smell a little.
It’s a cow pin they’ve built next door, and those cows are downright annoying.
So please pray for our sanity as the cows moo day and night, and when they’re not mooing, they’re filling the air with noise from their cowbells. And I fear the smell as the weather grows hotter!
But there is one thing we’ve found—the one advantage of this cow pin within such a close proximity.
The joy of cow-tipping is so close at hand.
(Kidding.)
Our new neighbors are rowdy and loud.
And they even smell a little.
It’s a cow pin they’ve built next door, and those cows are downright annoying.
So please pray for our sanity as the cows moo day and night, and when they’re not mooing, they’re filling the air with noise from their cowbells. And I fear the smell as the weather grows hotter!
But there is one thing we’ve found—the one advantage of this cow pin within such a close proximity.
The joy of cow-tipping is so close at hand.
(Kidding.)
Merry Christmas Eve’s Eve!
We had our single girls’ Christmas party last night. It was so much fun. Kimpie’s mom sent napkins, napkin holders and a nice tablecloth for us to use. And we even broke out our (red!) emergency candles in empty tuna cans. It looked so beautiful, I nearly forgot I was in the bush of Africa .
We dressed up cute and laughed and danced and played Christmas music over the radio to the fellas in longija. We took requests. :) Steve called in from a “traffic jam” in his village. Somehow, that was hilarious to us. I’m so glad we have a good time together.
Then there was this obnoxiously loud knock at the door and a “HO HO HO!” Daniel came dressed up as the Weihnachtsmann (Christmas man) with a red blanket and cotton ball beard and gave us all cards and (melted—whoops!) chocolate bars. What a special surprise!
So, don’t worry, Mom, I’m going to have a fine Christmas here in the bush, even if I will be missing home. We have dinner tonight with the fellas, church and a cow slaughter tomorrow with the community and a team lunch on the 26th. There will be no shortage of Christmas joy. :)
This is KimmiePie, Jen, Annika, Cath and me. (Pattie is behind the camera!) Check out that beautiful table!
We dressed up cute and laughed and danced and played Christmas music over the radio to the fellas in longija. We took requests. :) Steve called in from a “traffic jam” in his village. Somehow, that was hilarious to us. I’m so glad we have a good time together.
Then there was this obnoxiously loud knock at the door and a “HO HO HO!” Daniel came dressed up as the Weihnachtsmann (Christmas man) with a red blanket and cotton ball beard and gave us all cards and (melted—whoops!) chocolate bars. What a special surprise!
So, don’t worry, Mom, I’m going to have a fine Christmas here in the bush, even if I will be missing home. We have dinner tonight with the fellas, church and a cow slaughter tomorrow with the community and a team lunch on the 26th. There will be no shortage of Christmas joy. :)
This is KimmiePie, Jen, Annika, Cath and me. (Pattie is behind the camera!) Check out that beautiful table!
Sometimes living in the bush affects your manners.
We had a bit of a dance party. That was good times. Maybe even better was cranking up the Christmas music on the speakers and putting it on the walkie-talkies for the fellas.
Here’s the Weihnachtsmann, in all his glory. Anyone who brings chocolate is tops with us.
Cooking up a Storm
The women always laugh when we get in on their cooking and cleaning. We’re so inadequate.
But at least we try, right?
But at least we try, right?
Sound the Alarm
Don’t worry, this has a funny ending.
Two days ago I was walking back from my teammates’, Heinrich and Doris , house when all of a sudden, a trickle of Munu Miji (the warrior ruling class) started to tear by. They were running full-force out into the Guum (“valley”), carrying their AK-47s and knifes and spears, looking all serious and hardcore. They wouldn’t even stop to greet me, even when I demanded it.
I asked the women what was going on, and they just said the Munu Miji were having a meeting. And they were going to shoot people with guns. Super! As I pried more about it and the men kept flying by, the women began to shut me out. I’d ask the men, “What are you doing?” And they’d say to the men, “Say, ‘Nothing.’ “
Tricky, tricky.
Last December, our group of villages go into a little spat with a neighboring village. The Governor ended up sending in some soldiers, taking away all the guns and threatening prison to anyone who was stirring up fighting. They also were made aware of the threat—if you fight, the missionary people leave. And they somehow don’t want that. So, yeah, we haven’t had any problems since then, but I this was on the back of my mind as I saw all these guys running like mad.
But, don’t worry, like I said, this has a funny ending.
They had sounded an alarm for a meeting, and none of the men knew what it was about, so they just went nuts and ran to the meeting place with their guns, sometimes shooting them off.
The actual purpose for the meeting, however, was because of a decree they’d received from the Governor—there was to be no shooting of guns.
The irony of that makes me laugh, certainly when I think of the stern faces tearing by, looking excited about getting into a fight.
Seriously, sometimes I think the Munu Miji are at their best lounging around the villages demanding their women to serve them and beating them if they don’t.
That looks a little like this.
Two days ago I was walking back from my teammates’, Heinrich and Doris , house when all of a sudden, a trickle of Munu Miji (the warrior ruling class) started to tear by. They were running full-force out into the Guum (“valley”), carrying their AK-47s and knifes and spears, looking all serious and hardcore. They wouldn’t even stop to greet me, even when I demanded it.
I asked the women what was going on, and they just said the Munu Miji were having a meeting. And they were going to shoot people with guns. Super! As I pried more about it and the men kept flying by, the women began to shut me out. I’d ask the men, “What are you doing?” And they’d say to the men, “Say, ‘Nothing.’ “
Tricky, tricky.
Last December, our group of villages go into a little spat with a neighboring village. The Governor ended up sending in some soldiers, taking away all the guns and threatening prison to anyone who was stirring up fighting. They also were made aware of the threat—if you fight, the missionary people leave. And they somehow don’t want that. So, yeah, we haven’t had any problems since then, but I this was on the back of my mind as I saw all these guys running like mad.
But, don’t worry, like I said, this has a funny ending.
They had sounded an alarm for a meeting, and none of the men knew what it was about, so they just went nuts and ran to the meeting place with their guns, sometimes shooting them off.
The actual purpose for the meeting, however, was because of a decree they’d received from the Governor—there was to be no shooting of guns.
The irony of that makes me laugh, certainly when I think of the stern faces tearing by, looking excited about getting into a fight.
Seriously, sometimes I think the Munu Miji are at their best lounging around the villages demanding their women to serve them and beating them if they don’t.
That looks a little like this.
Little KimmiePie…
For weeks, we’d been reminding our neighbor, Ebiong, to call us when she had her baby. And she didn’t. We had to find out 12 hours later when they stopped us on the way to church.
So, when it came time for the little one’s naming ceremony yesterday, she made sure we’d been called.
They named her Kim, after my roommate, which is always special. I found out yesterday about another kid named after me in the neighboring village. Hilarious how that works.
Anyway, this is little Kim and her mom Ebiong. In the naming ceremony, they smear mom with oil, then the baby with oil, then do all sorts of weird animism things to shoo away evil spirits and ask for the ancestors blessings.
Like any local custom, it also involves the local brew of “white beer.” This is little Monica, the new Kim’s older sister, tipping back with the help of her grandmother. Nothing quite like seeing a two-year-old totter around after drinking beer. I can’t wait until the power of the Gospel pushes the beer out of here.
So, when it came time for the little one’s naming ceremony yesterday, she made sure we’d been called.
They named her Kim, after my roommate, which is always special. I found out yesterday about another kid named after me in the neighboring village. Hilarious how that works.
Anyway, this is little Kim and her mom Ebiong. In the naming ceremony, they smear mom with oil, then the baby with oil, then do all sorts of weird animism things to shoo away evil spirits and ask for the ancestors blessings.
Like any local custom, it also involves the local brew of “white beer.” This is little Monica, the new Kim’s older sister, tipping back with the help of her grandmother. Nothing quite like seeing a two-year-old totter around after drinking beer. I can’t wait until the power of the Gospel pushes the beer out of here.
Tuesday, December 19, 2006
Prayer Request
A little prayer request for you.
We’re starting to think now about what our formal ministry will be in February. Please pray that God will show me what I should be doing, as I’ve got some ideas but nothing definite. I’ve talked with Steve about putting together some kind of Lopit newspaper—he says they’re wonderful ministry tools. Imagine, a Christian newspaper! The problem is, I’d have to be paired with someone else’s ministry. Kimmie might be working on translation stuff and nailing down how to spell things in Lopit and use a Lopit alphabet. And then not many people know how to read the Lopit that there already is. So someone will have to be teaching—maybe Pattie! We’ve also thought about putting a transmitter up on the mountain and doing a radio ministry. Someone came in at some point and gave out hand-crank radios, so the people listen to them in the villages. Unfortunately, they’re getting bad Islamic influence on them from the North. So a Christian replacement would be nice!
Anyway, please be praying! I would love to work with the children as well. I feel like I’m going in a million different directions!
We’re starting to think now about what our formal ministry will be in February. Please pray that God will show me what I should be doing, as I’ve got some ideas but nothing definite. I’ve talked with Steve about putting together some kind of Lopit newspaper—he says they’re wonderful ministry tools. Imagine, a Christian newspaper! The problem is, I’d have to be paired with someone else’s ministry. Kimmie might be working on translation stuff and nailing down how to spell things in Lopit and use a Lopit alphabet. And then not many people know how to read the Lopit that there already is. So someone will have to be teaching—maybe Pattie! We’ve also thought about putting a transmitter up on the mountain and doing a radio ministry. Someone came in at some point and gave out hand-crank radios, so the people listen to them in the villages. Unfortunately, they’re getting bad Islamic influence on them from the North. So a Christian replacement would be nice!
Anyway, please be praying! I would love to work with the children as well. I feel like I’m going in a million different directions!
You haven’t got mail.
We haven’t gotten post in a while, which is depressing. It being Christmas and all, it’s nearly unbearable. The pilot who was stationed in Loki and who took a special interest in getting our mail tucked into underloaded planes first from Nairobi to Loki, then from Loki to here has gone home on furlough. And with him, it seems, have gone the days of mail dropped by parachute when he was flying by or a special delivery of fresh vegetables from his wife. Oh, Jon and Ginny, we miss you.
Whatever the case, my mom has become a champ at sending packages. She’s amazing. The last one I got was quite impressive—a decorated shoebox that even had a typed-out inventory list inside. Eat that, corrupt Kenyan customs officers! Mwauhaha. Mom’s still working on the whole sending some kind of note or letter inside thing, but I know she’ll come around. I’ve got enough cute pictures and notes from the Canales to decorate my walls. (Lara is also mastering the postal system.) Mark has me stocked with blank camcorder tapes. And Joy blessed the Husa house with two very precious DVDs—my only two—which will be watched time and again on our trips out of the bush.
Oh, I love mail. It’s so painful, knowing my love-filled packages from the states are either stuck with customs or in the AIM AIR hangar in Nairobi , with no one to get excited about them. There are three planes flying somewhere in the area now (or so the kids tell me), which is torture for my heart! The kids run and tell us when they hear a plane—this is always well before we do. Then they just point emphatically at some tiny spec in the sky and yell, “The plane, the plane!” which always threatens to throw me into fits of laughter because of a certain, small television character. It’s too bad they don’t get that one—they’d realize how hilarious they are.
Nope, the planes aren’t coming here. *sigh* Another day!
Whatever the case, my mom has become a champ at sending packages. She’s amazing. The last one I got was quite impressive—a decorated shoebox that even had a typed-out inventory list inside. Eat that, corrupt Kenyan customs officers! Mwauhaha. Mom’s still working on the whole sending some kind of note or letter inside thing, but I know she’ll come around. I’ve got enough cute pictures and notes from the Canales to decorate my walls. (Lara is also mastering the postal system.) Mark has me stocked with blank camcorder tapes. And Joy blessed the Husa house with two very precious DVDs—my only two—which will be watched time and again on our trips out of the bush.
Oh, I love mail. It’s so painful, knowing my love-filled packages from the states are either stuck with customs or in the AIM AIR hangar in Nairobi , with no one to get excited about them. There are three planes flying somewhere in the area now (or so the kids tell me), which is torture for my heart! The kids run and tell us when they hear a plane—this is always well before we do. Then they just point emphatically at some tiny spec in the sky and yell, “The plane, the plane!” which always threatens to throw me into fits of laughter because of a certain, small television character. It’s too bad they don’t get that one—they’d realize how hilarious they are.
Nope, the planes aren’t coming here. *sigh* Another day!
Friday, December 15, 2006
Meet Little Big Pattie
This is the newest addition to our little circle of friends—baby Pattie, named after my teammate and housemate in Husa. Her Lopit name is “Big” (except, um, in Lopit), so we’ve taken to calling her Little Big Pattie, so we’re not constantly confused about who’s talking about whom. I’m slightly worried that the longer we live here and the more children that are named after us, communication is going to get that much harder! :)
This is Momma Davitica and Little Big Pattie. Then that’s me and the wee ‘un. She was only about 12 hours old here. Amazing.. We couldn’t believe how she was looking at me like this!
This is Momma Davitica and Little Big Pattie. Then that’s me and the wee ‘un. She was only about 12 hours old here. Amazing.. We couldn’t believe how she was looking at me like this!
Mean case of malaria (or something)
Well, after four days of headache, body ache and stomachache—including a 11-hour drive in a hot truck with a 103 or 104 fever—I’m finally feeling a bit better and starting to eat again. Wow. I don’t like getting sick in the bush.
Something is going around our team, something a little like malaria but a lot like misery. So please pray for us, as the weather gets hotter, the water runs out and our bodies run down!
I’m glad to be feeling better. Since I was gone in Loki for a few days (we got stuck there on a supply trip because no trucks could get into town to stock the shack stores) and then half-dead in bed for a couple days after that, the kids went nuts yesterday when I dragged myself to the door to greet them. Talk about funny. Little Francis’ eyes got all wide and his grin got wider, then they all stampeded toward me, greeting me and asking me how I was. I guess some of them thought I’d stayed in Loki because I was sick. The village rumor mill is out of control sometimes. ;)
Something is going around our team, something a little like malaria but a lot like misery. So please pray for us, as the weather gets hotter, the water runs out and our bodies run down!
I’m glad to be feeling better. Since I was gone in Loki for a few days (we got stuck there on a supply trip because no trucks could get into town to stock the shack stores) and then half-dead in bed for a couple days after that, the kids went nuts yesterday when I dragged myself to the door to greet them. Talk about funny. Little Francis’ eyes got all wide and his grin got wider, then they all stampeded toward me, greeting me and asking me how I was. I guess some of them thought I’d stayed in Loki because I was sick. The village rumor mill is out of control sometimes. ;)
Friday, December 08, 2006
PICTURES
Steve found a turtle on the road. It quickly became the newest family pet. (I assure you, the dik-dik was furious.) Christian and the turtle have a love-hate relationship. As you can see, he was definitely at a “hate” point here. Hilarious. I love this kid.
This is little Ellen, our neighbor Abooba’s kid. I think she actually made it in my last prayer letter, as well. She’s too adorable. But she has a terrible habit of peeing on Kim. (I think that’s funny. Kim probably doesn’t.)
Here’s the kids, washing away at the river. We have so much fun there.
Here’s our sweet new coal stove. Have I talked about this before? We get excited about things like this year. I can now make perfect bread. YUM. The kids love it, too.
The kids kept pulling apart the sticks of our fence and coming in early in the morning to stare in our windows. In a moment of brilliance, Kim had this ingenious idea to tie the sticks together. The kids didn’t know what to do with themselves. This is Franco, Francis and Paula (Ellen’s older siblings), looking through the fence in dismay. Hehehe.
Babiano (01 dec 06)
… is out of the hospital and doing well. He’s the one who came to us basically bleeding to death a while back. He actually came to our place first when he got home, which was nice. Then we walked up to his place and sat looking over everything for a while in silence. It was a nice moment. J It’s good to know he’s better and we’ve made a good friend.
Language!
My language learning is going well, though I still make dumb mistakes. I keep wanting to tell kids, “banga oyo!” (don’t cry!) but I mess up and say “banga oye!” (don’t die). While the latter is definitely something I desire (that is, that they wouldn’t die), it’s not exactly all that better.
We’re learning Bible verses in Lopit. “Nyo amuno Hollum hiyo dang ta fau bino,…” (For God so loved the world…)
Once my language teacher was drunk (not unusual) during our lesson and demanded that I say the “dang” part with a lot of umph. (That’s “dang,” like “DONG!” almost, but sort of swallow the “n.”) He says we English speakers have ways we annunciate certain words and he is doing that in Lopit now. (Everyone is out to revolutionize the language, it seems.) So we were going through the verse (I know John 3:16 and 1:12), yelling DANG! Whenever we got to it. My roommates in side the house couldn’t help but laugh, which made me laugh, which made Willie walk up to the window and reprimand them, shaking his finger.
Really, it might have been the best language lesson ever—bi DANG (in ALL)!
We’re learning Bible verses in Lopit. “Nyo amuno Hollum hiyo dang ta fau bino,…” (For God so loved the world…)
Once my language teacher was drunk (not unusual) during our lesson and demanded that I say the “dang” part with a lot of umph. (That’s “dang,” like “DONG!” almost, but sort of swallow the “n.”) He says we English speakers have ways we annunciate certain words and he is doing that in Lopit now. (Everyone is out to revolutionize the language, it seems.) So we were going through the verse (I know John 3:16 and 1:12), yelling DANG! Whenever we got to it. My roommates in side the house couldn’t help but laugh, which made me laugh, which made Willie walk up to the window and reprimand them, shaking his finger.
Really, it might have been the best language lesson ever—bi DANG (in ALL)!
Let there be light! (04 dec 06)
We ate dinner in the light last night.
It was so amazing.
Steve finally got up here and installed the solar panel we bought in Nairobi six weeks ago. (This man is busy.) Steve is like a celebrity in the villages, so his mere presence created quite the stir, let alone this weird thing he was fastening to our roof. Then the homemade Kenyan ladder he was using to climb up on the room collapsed and he took a hard fall, so I’m sure that was even more fodder for the village rumor mill. (I won’t lie—my heart stopped when I saw him go. But he was fine. He’s tough. Iris told me today that the way he told her he’d ran over a landmine in Western Equatoria a while back began with, “Guess what I did today?” just as casually as if it was as much of a nonevent as stepping on bubble gum. Weird.) Somehow, though, no one mentioned it yet. I don’t know how it would be possible though for them not to have seen—the men on the mangott (the manly meeting place where they do nothing all day) are constantly surveying our every move.
Anyway, after much such to-do, he got a light hooked up in our kitchen. We all sort of stared at it for a while, amazed. You wouldn’t believe how incredible the idea of flipping a switch and having light has become to us. I mean, WOW. It’s just THERE. We didn’t know what to think of being able to see our food well of the shadows dancing on the wall. The village was similarly impressed. We could hear them stand outside our window and talk about it. The kids would just say, “light” in this really strange, E.T.-phone-home way. That caught us off guard, too, because it was the straight English word. I think the school kids taught them. I can’t imagine there being a word for “light” (of the electric variety) in Lopit.
We had a stream of people come to visit just to see this single lightbulb. I can’t believe it—we might be even more popular than before!
Kim really wanted her parents to see this picture. She’s so hardcore—a bush electrician.
It was so amazing.
Steve finally got up here and installed the solar panel we bought in Nairobi six weeks ago. (This man is busy.) Steve is like a celebrity in the villages, so his mere presence created quite the stir, let alone this weird thing he was fastening to our roof. Then the homemade Kenyan ladder he was using to climb up on the room collapsed and he took a hard fall, so I’m sure that was even more fodder for the village rumor mill. (I won’t lie—my heart stopped when I saw him go. But he was fine. He’s tough. Iris told me today that the way he told her he’d ran over a landmine in Western Equatoria a while back began with, “Guess what I did today?” just as casually as if it was as much of a nonevent as stepping on bubble gum. Weird.) Somehow, though, no one mentioned it yet. I don’t know how it would be possible though for them not to have seen—the men on the mangott (the manly meeting place where they do nothing all day) are constantly surveying our every move.
Anyway, after much such to-do, he got a light hooked up in our kitchen. We all sort of stared at it for a while, amazed. You wouldn’t believe how incredible the idea of flipping a switch and having light has become to us. I mean, WOW. It’s just THERE. We didn’t know what to think of being able to see our food well of the shadows dancing on the wall. The village was similarly impressed. We could hear them stand outside our window and talk about it. The kids would just say, “light” in this really strange, E.T.-phone-home way. That caught us off guard, too, because it was the straight English word. I think the school kids taught them. I can’t imagine there being a word for “light” (of the electric variety) in Lopit.
We had a stream of people come to visit just to see this single lightbulb. I can’t believe it—we might be even more popular than before!
Kim really wanted her parents to see this picture. She’s so hardcore—a bush electrician.
Likewise, Steve is also hardcore. This is him, up in our bamboo rafters. Good times.
Hello, hello! (02 dec 06)
Well, it’s been a while, hasn’t it?
My deepest apologies—I’ve been really busy. I know what you’re thinking. “Andi? Busy? In the bush? What could you possibly be doing that keeps you so terribly busy?”
Well, I’ll tell you, though I find myself just as amazed as you are. I’ll give you a rundown of a day last week.
4:07 a.m.: I struggle out of bed before even the rosters (my ingenious plan to avoid being waken up by them), make my bed, start the tea pot so my roomies will have hot water when they wake up later and then light my lamp and settle into my desk for Bible study and prayer.
5:47 a.m.: Our neighbors wake up and the men start their morning ritual of blowing their noses. It’s really sick and… involved. I hear laughter from the other side of my wall—it’s Kim, no longer able to focus on prayer with all the racket outside. We being to field the ‘Good mornings!” and “Give me tea!” requests from the trail, another morning formality. At some point, I take a break to sweep the yard. Yes, the DIRT YARD. Yet another morning formality. So weird. I do it so everyone in the village can see—I assure you they’re all watching—and we don’t get complaints that day about it.
7:30 ish: My roommates are up and around and our first visitors are yelling at the gate. I hold out as long as I can, clinging to my guarded time in the Word, but finally let myself out and begin serving and entertaining our guests. Pattie, Kimmie and I are chai-making machines.
8:30ish: I’m out the door and down the mountain to my team leader’s house, where I snatch the bike he so graciously lets me use. I spend an hour tearing down the dirt road, peppering the field-goers with hellos and answering the shotgun Lopit questions—“Ibeja, how are you? Where have you come from? Where are you going? Pick me up.” (I guess that last one isn’t so much a question, but that’s just how the language is. Give me this. Bring this. Take that.) I normally give them a fright when I come up behind them. Yesterday I nearly was clothes-lined three times by men carrying long tree trunks on one shoulder. They’d realize I was coming, freak out and wheel around, leaving that deadly trunk swinging across the path like a gate. Hilarious. Anymore, I’m ready for stuff like that—I’m used to dodging cows, goats and people. Though, I did manage to hit a cow the other day. But that’s a whole other story.
10ish: Up the mountain and showered, I start the long process of making bread. The children who invited themselves inside to help me stare in awe as I dust the sugar over my version of my mom’s amazing cinnamon rolls. They lick everything they can get their hands on. Sugar is gold around here. All the while, curious neighbors and friends stop by. You can’t do much without attracting a crowd around here.
11ish: Off to the river with a big bag of the clothes I’ve put of washing. Children see me leaving and run to their houses to grab their water jugs. Soon, I have a line of them in front and behind me. Everyday is a party. And I guess there is always a party-pooper—often, some loud angry woman at the river who demands my clothes and my soap. It’s never fun going ‘round with them (they can be holding a bar of their own soap, yet demand you give them yours), but I suppose it sharpens my patience. Sometimes humor wins the wars; sometimes our friends come and stand up for us; sometimes you go home frustrated. The kids are always great helps for me—for some reason, helping the silly white Ibeja with her clothes gives them great joy. And they teach me language while we’re washing.
1ish: We quell the flow of visitors long enough to eat lunch. I begin with the battle with the coal stove and, having eventually lowered myself to defeat by use of kerosene, put in the aforementioned bread. Between loaves, I read my books for the TIMO curriculum and talk with the kids on the rocks outside.
2:30 p.m.: Back down the mountain, this time to the school, where I meet ol’ William for my language lesson. This is tedious stuff. We finally finish a Lopit language version of the creation story to the tune of the other teachers beating the stray dogs that wander in and the high-pitched singing of the children, who are working on some English song for an assembly. I can recognize maybe three words of said song—“I love education!”—yet Kim (also at the school at that time) and I can’t shake it from our heads for days. We’re singing it even now.
4 p.m.: It’s time to start dinner at home, so I enlist the help of the children to sort and clean our 10kg bag of beans. They happily accept the challenge… especially with the hope of candy for payment. We sing and pick through beans. At one point, I watch in terror as a baby—under the care of her 6-year-old sister—leaves a pile of green poop in my yard, not far from the pack of children tending to my beans. Said older sister cleans it up with a leaf and quickly goes back to sorting beans. I make a mental note to wash the beans with extra care and vigor.
5 p.m.: Sweet Pattie lights up the giko (coal cooker). She, too, resorts to kerosene. My pride is restored and the beans are left to boil for two hours. Beans take a long time. Inside, I mix up some chapatti dough. It’s my night to cook and I’m making white chicken chili, thanks to some wonderful woman back in the States who sent the seasoning packet to me. (THANK YOU!) Not having any chicken or the proper beans didn’t matter. We have this strange soy stuff you can make taste like meat with a broth cube. The wonders of modern cooking. (I wonder if there are chocolate-flavored cubes?) between the spurts of cooking, I study language and talk to the children again.
7 p.m.: Dinner is finally served. We all eat too much. That’s what seasoning will do to a person. Supper time with my roommates is always the best. We laugh. A lot. Add to that “Singles’ Hour”—the endearing name we’ve given to the time we use the radios to tell Steve we’re all Oskee Kilo—and the nights can be a blast. We call it Singles Hour because it normally turns into hilarious exchanges between the two single women’s houses and the fellas up high on the mountain. The families have far better things to do with their time. Eventually we turn off the radios and do our nightly prayer time—for our villages, for our team, our families and our language learning.
8 or 9ish: We each take to our rooms for the night. Depending on how exhausted I am, I’ll try to read more or white letters. Sometimes the teens will come by and rouse us out of our beds to go “play” with them—that is, going from house to house to get a little food and tell stories. Kim is much better at going than I am. I’m always pretty wiped by then. Sometimes women will stop by to visit. Sometimes I simply prepare my to-do list for the next day and crash, often to the sounds of drums, dancing and yelling.
So, there you have it—my life here. Every day brings something new, some kind of kink in your “plans.” It’s best not to have plans in Africa , I’ve learned! Some days aren’t as full. Sometimes all you “get done” is managing the flood of people who come—boiling water, making chai and doing dishes. Other times you’ll find yourself at a friend’s house, simply sitting and enjoying the ridiculous view over the valley. And some times, quite honestly, you have to sit in your room and recuperate!
My deepest apologies—I’ve been really busy. I know what you’re thinking. “Andi? Busy? In the bush? What could you possibly be doing that keeps you so terribly busy?”
Well, I’ll tell you, though I find myself just as amazed as you are. I’ll give you a rundown of a day last week.
4:07 a.m.: I struggle out of bed before even the rosters (my ingenious plan to avoid being waken up by them), make my bed, start the tea pot so my roomies will have hot water when they wake up later and then light my lamp and settle into my desk for Bible study and prayer.
5:47 a.m.: Our neighbors wake up and the men start their morning ritual of blowing their noses. It’s really sick and… involved. I hear laughter from the other side of my wall—it’s Kim, no longer able to focus on prayer with all the racket outside. We being to field the ‘Good mornings!” and “Give me tea!” requests from the trail, another morning formality. At some point, I take a break to sweep the yard. Yes, the DIRT YARD. Yet another morning formality. So weird. I do it so everyone in the village can see—I assure you they’re all watching—and we don’t get complaints that day about it.
7:30 ish: My roommates are up and around and our first visitors are yelling at the gate. I hold out as long as I can, clinging to my guarded time in the Word, but finally let myself out and begin serving and entertaining our guests. Pattie, Kimmie and I are chai-making machines.
8:30ish: I’m out the door and down the mountain to my team leader’s house, where I snatch the bike he so graciously lets me use. I spend an hour tearing down the dirt road, peppering the field-goers with hellos and answering the shotgun Lopit questions—“Ibeja, how are you? Where have you come from? Where are you going? Pick me up.” (I guess that last one isn’t so much a question, but that’s just how the language is. Give me this. Bring this. Take that.) I normally give them a fright when I come up behind them. Yesterday I nearly was clothes-lined three times by men carrying long tree trunks on one shoulder. They’d realize I was coming, freak out and wheel around, leaving that deadly trunk swinging across the path like a gate. Hilarious. Anymore, I’m ready for stuff like that—I’m used to dodging cows, goats and people. Though, I did manage to hit a cow the other day. But that’s a whole other story.
10ish: Up the mountain and showered, I start the long process of making bread. The children who invited themselves inside to help me stare in awe as I dust the sugar over my version of my mom’s amazing cinnamon rolls. They lick everything they can get their hands on. Sugar is gold around here. All the while, curious neighbors and friends stop by. You can’t do much without attracting a crowd around here.
11ish: Off to the river with a big bag of the clothes I’ve put of washing. Children see me leaving and run to their houses to grab their water jugs. Soon, I have a line of them in front and behind me. Everyday is a party. And I guess there is always a party-pooper—often, some loud angry woman at the river who demands my clothes and my soap. It’s never fun going ‘round with them (they can be holding a bar of their own soap, yet demand you give them yours), but I suppose it sharpens my patience. Sometimes humor wins the wars; sometimes our friends come and stand up for us; sometimes you go home frustrated. The kids are always great helps for me—for some reason, helping the silly white Ibeja with her clothes gives them great joy. And they teach me language while we’re washing.
1ish: We quell the flow of visitors long enough to eat lunch. I begin with the battle with the coal stove and, having eventually lowered myself to defeat by use of kerosene, put in the aforementioned bread. Between loaves, I read my books for the TIMO curriculum and talk with the kids on the rocks outside.
2:30 p.m.: Back down the mountain, this time to the school, where I meet ol’ William for my language lesson. This is tedious stuff. We finally finish a Lopit language version of the creation story to the tune of the other teachers beating the stray dogs that wander in and the high-pitched singing of the children, who are working on some English song for an assembly. I can recognize maybe three words of said song—“I love education!”—yet Kim (also at the school at that time) and I can’t shake it from our heads for days. We’re singing it even now.
4 p.m.: It’s time to start dinner at home, so I enlist the help of the children to sort and clean our 10kg bag of beans. They happily accept the challenge… especially with the hope of candy for payment. We sing and pick through beans. At one point, I watch in terror as a baby—under the care of her 6-year-old sister—leaves a pile of green poop in my yard, not far from the pack of children tending to my beans. Said older sister cleans it up with a leaf and quickly goes back to sorting beans. I make a mental note to wash the beans with extra care and vigor.
5 p.m.: Sweet Pattie lights up the giko (coal cooker). She, too, resorts to kerosene. My pride is restored and the beans are left to boil for two hours. Beans take a long time. Inside, I mix up some chapatti dough. It’s my night to cook and I’m making white chicken chili, thanks to some wonderful woman back in the States who sent the seasoning packet to me. (THANK YOU!) Not having any chicken or the proper beans didn’t matter. We have this strange soy stuff you can make taste like meat with a broth cube. The wonders of modern cooking. (I wonder if there are chocolate-flavored cubes?) between the spurts of cooking, I study language and talk to the children again.
7 p.m.: Dinner is finally served. We all eat too much. That’s what seasoning will do to a person. Supper time with my roommates is always the best. We laugh. A lot. Add to that “Singles’ Hour”—the endearing name we’ve given to the time we use the radios to tell Steve we’re all Oskee Kilo—and the nights can be a blast. We call it Singles Hour because it normally turns into hilarious exchanges between the two single women’s houses and the fellas up high on the mountain. The families have far better things to do with their time. Eventually we turn off the radios and do our nightly prayer time—for our villages, for our team, our families and our language learning.
8 or 9ish: We each take to our rooms for the night. Depending on how exhausted I am, I’ll try to read more or white letters. Sometimes the teens will come by and rouse us out of our beds to go “play” with them—that is, going from house to house to get a little food and tell stories. Kim is much better at going than I am. I’m always pretty wiped by then. Sometimes women will stop by to visit. Sometimes I simply prepare my to-do list for the next day and crash, often to the sounds of drums, dancing and yelling.
So, there you have it—my life here. Every day brings something new, some kind of kink in your “plans.” It’s best not to have plans in Africa , I’ve learned! Some days aren’t as full. Sometimes all you “get done” is managing the flood of people who come—boiling water, making chai and doing dishes. Other times you’ll find yourself at a friend’s house, simply sitting and enjoying the ridiculous view over the valley. And some times, quite honestly, you have to sit in your room and recuperate!
Friday, November 24, 2006
Happy Thanksgiving!
I celebrated my first major holiday in the bush today! Happy Thanksgiving!
Since there are only four of us Americans, I was a little worried we’d forget Thanksgiving and it’d pass by without notice, sort of like July 4th did. But Jen wouldn’t let that happen. She’s been planning a HUGE Thanksgiving meal for months now. It was wonderful! Hopefully, I’ll get a picture up here of the spread she laid out. It was so amazing.
The funny part was trying to explain to the other teammates just what Thanksgiving was. Jen said it was about food. I said it was about football. But they think to Jen, everything is about food, and to me, everything is about football or some other sport. So that got them absolutely no where.
Don’t worry—we explained the whole thing. And, in the end, we were all thanking God for the blessings he’d given us—here in Lopit and back home. J
I hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving. I’m so thankful for you!
Since there are only four of us Americans, I was a little worried we’d forget Thanksgiving and it’d pass by without notice, sort of like July 4th did. But Jen wouldn’t let that happen. She’s been planning a HUGE Thanksgiving meal for months now. It was wonderful! Hopefully, I’ll get a picture up here of the spread she laid out. It was so amazing.
The funny part was trying to explain to the other teammates just what Thanksgiving was. Jen said it was about food. I said it was about football. But they think to Jen, everything is about food, and to me, everything is about football or some other sport. So that got them absolutely no where.
Don’t worry—we explained the whole thing. And, in the end, we were all thanking God for the blessings he’d given us—here in Lopit and back home. J
I hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving. I’m so thankful for you!
Peanut Butter
Not too long ago, I wrote Lara about how great and wonderful peanut butter was and how I got a jar in the mail and was ecstatic and was finding all sorts of fun uses for it.
That’s been kind of ruined lately, as the people are harvesting their peanut fields and we suddenly have two HUGE bags of them on our kitchen floor. There are peanuts, peanuts everywhere. It’s worse than a major league baseball game.
But, here’s a cool thing. I now know how to make peanut butter—from the very beginning to the very end. When we first got here, they were tending their ground nut fields. We helped. Then they had to pick the stuff. We helped. I spent a couple afternoons under a shade tree in the fields, plucking the nuts off the plants. Then I helped shell them at home. Then you roast them. Then you “atusa” them. (I’m not sure of the English equivalent there.) Then you grind them. My arms were really sore! And then, WHAMO, you’ve got peanut butter. And it’s darn good.
Anyway, it’s become part of life here, these peanuts. And I’ve seen it open doors for relationships. After I spent those days in the fields, everyone in the villages was talking about it. And everyone felt the need to bring us MORE peanuts. (Good… times…)
Funny how peanuts are part of my ministry.
That’s been kind of ruined lately, as the people are harvesting their peanut fields and we suddenly have two HUGE bags of them on our kitchen floor. There are peanuts, peanuts everywhere. It’s worse than a major league baseball game.
But, here’s a cool thing. I now know how to make peanut butter—from the very beginning to the very end. When we first got here, they were tending their ground nut fields. We helped. Then they had to pick the stuff. We helped. I spent a couple afternoons under a shade tree in the fields, plucking the nuts off the plants. Then I helped shell them at home. Then you roast them. Then you “atusa” them. (I’m not sure of the English equivalent there.) Then you grind them. My arms were really sore! And then, WHAMO, you’ve got peanut butter. And it’s darn good.
Anyway, it’s become part of life here, these peanuts. And I’ve seen it open doors for relationships. After I spent those days in the fields, everyone in the villages was talking about it. And everyone felt the need to bring us MORE peanuts. (Good… times…)
Funny how peanuts are part of my ministry.
Babiano
A prayer request for you.
About two weeks ago, a kid came to our fence, calling for us and saying he wanted water. When we went out to see him, he was sitting on a rock, his head in his hands, gushing blood. He had been beaten with a stick by drunk men in the neighboring village and his head was a complete mess. There was so much blood. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen so much. Kim and I tried to stop the bleeding, took him the mile or so down to the clinic. Steve met us there and we put him on a drip—he’d lost a lot of blood—and tried to control things while we searched for the volunteer nurse guy. I ended up helping put stitches in this guys head—with utensils I’m not certain were sterile and in a bed we’d moved by the window for light, since there is no electricity. At first, the nurse said he didn’t have local anesthetic, so we tried to go in without it, at which the boy nearly flew off the table in pain and was screaming. Michael (the nurse) soon decided maybe he did have anesthetic after all. It took him forever to get everything ready. He seemed so unsure of what he was doing. At times, Steve was softly suggesting, “Do you really want to do that exactly?” Steve’s no doctor. I’m no nurse. But there we were. I definitely was forced to reckon with the reality of the situation here, the reality of AIDS, the reality of poor medical care, the reality of… these people’s lives and the effect balu (beer) has on their society. It’s safe to say I was furious. But I should say: They do good work with what they have; the guy is a volunteer with limited resources and limited education, but Iris is impressed by what he can do. So, yeah, don’t want to slander the guy.
A few days ago, we got word that the kid (a teen) was still having troubles and they weren’t controlling the bleeding very well. They thought he was going to die. His situation keeps changing, so please pray for him. His family is one that we’re close with in Husa and would love to see come to the Lord.
About two weeks ago, a kid came to our fence, calling for us and saying he wanted water. When we went out to see him, he was sitting on a rock, his head in his hands, gushing blood. He had been beaten with a stick by drunk men in the neighboring village and his head was a complete mess. There was so much blood. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen so much. Kim and I tried to stop the bleeding, took him the mile or so down to the clinic. Steve met us there and we put him on a drip—he’d lost a lot of blood—and tried to control things while we searched for the volunteer nurse guy. I ended up helping put stitches in this guys head—with utensils I’m not certain were sterile and in a bed we’d moved by the window for light, since there is no electricity. At first, the nurse said he didn’t have local anesthetic, so we tried to go in without it, at which the boy nearly flew off the table in pain and was screaming. Michael (the nurse) soon decided maybe he did have anesthetic after all. It took him forever to get everything ready. He seemed so unsure of what he was doing. At times, Steve was softly suggesting, “Do you really want to do that exactly?” Steve’s no doctor. I’m no nurse. But there we were. I definitely was forced to reckon with the reality of the situation here, the reality of AIDS, the reality of poor medical care, the reality of… these people’s lives and the effect balu (beer) has on their society. It’s safe to say I was furious. But I should say: They do good work with what they have; the guy is a volunteer with limited resources and limited education, but Iris is impressed by what he can do. So, yeah, don’t want to slander the guy.
A few days ago, we got word that the kid (a teen) was still having troubles and they weren’t controlling the bleeding very well. They thought he was going to die. His situation keeps changing, so please pray for him. His family is one that we’re close with in Husa and would love to see come to the Lord.
Tuesday, November 14, 2006
Pray for Rain
Well, the dry season seems to be upon us, as the days between rains are getting more and more and the weather is getting hotter and hotter.
Please pray for us as we try to conserve our water, yet stay healthy!
Also, a point of praise—I finally have a language helper! It’s been, what, four months? But finally, I’m sitting down with a Lopit three times a week. Praise God, I’ve been able to learn from Kimmie—our team language guru J--so I’m not too far behind.
Working with William, the schoolmaster and said language helper, has been good, but it’s brought even more things to the forefront that I never would have thought about. I’ve only had one lesson (I have another in a few minutes), but we started to translate some of the story of creation. How do you translate the idea for God creating the whole Earth, when most adults don’t have any concept of it? And when he created the oceans, what do you say? There isn’t a word for oceans; there are no oceans around here. “Big water” was the best we could do. What about Noah and his boat? What’s a boat, anyway?
And these are just word translations—what about translating ideas? I listened to a John Piper sermon the other day in which the whole message hinged on one word in the verse. Are we going to be able to be so true to the original message, even with a language as… basic… as Lopit?
You see, what we have in learning this language is a bit of a moving target. That’s what happens when a language isn’t written down. As Steve so aptly put it, you get one guy with three wives and a bunch of kids, who speaks with a lisp, and the whole language changes. That’s hardly an exaggeration. We learn words from older guys and the younger people don’t have a clue what we’re talking about. Don’t have a word? Don’t know how to spell it? Just make it up. There’s no standard, no fixed point around which things revolve.
It’s evidenced, too, in that when we pulled out the work of Martha and Barbara from the 50s and looked at their translation of John and read it with the people, they hardly understood it. The language has evolved that much, in just a couple generations. Now I know what the old guys are talking about when they grumble about the younger generation making a new language, messing up the old one.
And so I’m left impressed with the idea that maybe schooling the children here—getting them to read and write and establishing a set language—deserves more thought than I first gave it. I mean, I didn’t consider just how valuable it is. Then at least when we translate things, we’ll know they’ll be good 20 years from now. This is no novelty—Martin Luther, in translating the Bible into German, ended up basically setting the standard for the German language, giving it rules and spellings and such.
Just another great product of the reformation. J
Please pray for us as we try to conserve our water, yet stay healthy!
Also, a point of praise—I finally have a language helper! It’s been, what, four months? But finally, I’m sitting down with a Lopit three times a week. Praise God, I’ve been able to learn from Kimmie—our team language guru J--so I’m not too far behind.
Working with William, the schoolmaster and said language helper, has been good, but it’s brought even more things to the forefront that I never would have thought about. I’ve only had one lesson (I have another in a few minutes), but we started to translate some of the story of creation. How do you translate the idea for God creating the whole Earth, when most adults don’t have any concept of it? And when he created the oceans, what do you say? There isn’t a word for oceans; there are no oceans around here. “Big water” was the best we could do. What about Noah and his boat? What’s a boat, anyway?
And these are just word translations—what about translating ideas? I listened to a John Piper sermon the other day in which the whole message hinged on one word in the verse. Are we going to be able to be so true to the original message, even with a language as… basic… as Lopit?
You see, what we have in learning this language is a bit of a moving target. That’s what happens when a language isn’t written down. As Steve so aptly put it, you get one guy with three wives and a bunch of kids, who speaks with a lisp, and the whole language changes. That’s hardly an exaggeration. We learn words from older guys and the younger people don’t have a clue what we’re talking about. Don’t have a word? Don’t know how to spell it? Just make it up. There’s no standard, no fixed point around which things revolve.
It’s evidenced, too, in that when we pulled out the work of Martha and Barbara from the 50s and looked at their translation of John and read it with the people, they hardly understood it. The language has evolved that much, in just a couple generations. Now I know what the old guys are talking about when they grumble about the younger generation making a new language, messing up the old one.
And so I’m left impressed with the idea that maybe schooling the children here—getting them to read and write and establishing a set language—deserves more thought than I first gave it. I mean, I didn’t consider just how valuable it is. Then at least when we translate things, we’ll know they’ll be good 20 years from now. This is no novelty—Martin Luther, in translating the Bible into German, ended up basically setting the standard for the German language, giving it rules and spellings and such.
Just another great product of the reformation. J
Tuesday, November 07, 2006
Go Illini
I finally saw my first Illini sweatshirt here in Lopit. Check out that 80s-style boatneck. Woot, woot! (I look terrible in this picture—I just finished carrying my third load of stuff up the mountain. Gross.)
Theology Matters
Part of our TIMO curriculum is that we read a missionary biography every unit—a practice I really enjoy, since I didn’t grow up in an evangelical church and had no idea what a missionary was until I realized I wanted to be one. And, yes, I really like to read and learn, I’m finding.
In the last two days, I polished off two books about William Carey, “The Father of Modern Missions.” We were assigned a short article about him last unit and watched a video while we were in Nairobi , so my interest about this guy was really peaked. I can’t believe what he did in India , a place completely in the grip of Hinduism and Buddism. He went there in the name of the Lord, to preach the Gospel, but he didn’t just trust God to use the Gospel to save souls; he trusted God to use the Gospel to change society. And, wow, did it.
I would go on and on about all this guy did—he was a common shoemaker in England, but ignited modern missions, convincing Christians that the Great Commission was still valid today; he was a botanist who made huge inroads in the field in India; a self-made linguist, translating the Bible into 40 or so languages, while also translating the Indians own literary works; he was hugely responsible for the outlawing of infanticide and, later, widow burning… etc., etc., etc.—but I couldn’t do it justice.
Two things have really hit me in my study about Carey.
First, this guy really poured himself out for the Gospel, for the cause of Christ. He went hard. He was compelled by Scripture, compelled by Christ. The sacrifices he made were intense. The persecution he endured, amazing. God used him in huge ways. And I want to trust God to use me in huge ways, too.
The second thing ties into what I said before, about him not just doing the modern missions thing of thinking the Gospel stops at evangelism, at sharing the good news and welcoming new believers and separating ourselves from the world. He really believed in the social, political and economical effects of the Gospel. And his ministry affected that. And I can see—and the last book I read helped me to see even more clearly—that this guy’s theology had a HUGE affect on how he went about doing God’s work.
This has been a huge lesson for me while I’ve been here—that the theology we hold (consciously or unconsciously) really dictates how we live our lives, how we worship and think of our God, how we share that God with other people and how we expect that God to work. I’ve been learning about, in a word, presupposition. It’s HUGE. I can’t believe it. I don’t read books the same way; I don’t look at my days the same way; I don’t look at my God the same way. I’ve been forced to dig deeper, to examine why I do the things I do, think the things I think; why missionary organizations function the way they do; why writers write the way they write. There’s so much unsaid, so much underneath that governs how we respond to God. And it’s not always good.
Our team is going through a Francis Schaeffer series—How Shall We Then Live? It starts in the Roman Empire and explains how Christianity affected society and culture and how culture and society affected Christianity. It’s helped me to look at things and ask, “Where did this belief come from? Is it biblical or cultural? What influenced it? What does it influence?” It’s terribly interesting. If you can get your hands on it, watch it. It’ll change the way you think.
I guess this probably doesn’t make much sense to anyone—I haven’t done a very good job of explaining it and I’ve learned a lot of people run from even the mere mention of theology—but it’s what I’m learning on the academic side of this trip, so I thought I’d share. I’m growing so much in my walk.
In the last two days, I polished off two books about William Carey, “The Father of Modern Missions.” We were assigned a short article about him last unit and watched a video while we were in Nairobi , so my interest about this guy was really peaked. I can’t believe what he did in India , a place completely in the grip of Hinduism and Buddism. He went there in the name of the Lord, to preach the Gospel, but he didn’t just trust God to use the Gospel to save souls; he trusted God to use the Gospel to change society. And, wow, did it.
I would go on and on about all this guy did—he was a common shoemaker in England, but ignited modern missions, convincing Christians that the Great Commission was still valid today; he was a botanist who made huge inroads in the field in India; a self-made linguist, translating the Bible into 40 or so languages, while also translating the Indians own literary works; he was hugely responsible for the outlawing of infanticide and, later, widow burning… etc., etc., etc.—but I couldn’t do it justice.
Two things have really hit me in my study about Carey.
First, this guy really poured himself out for the Gospel, for the cause of Christ. He went hard. He was compelled by Scripture, compelled by Christ. The sacrifices he made were intense. The persecution he endured, amazing. God used him in huge ways. And I want to trust God to use me in huge ways, too.
The second thing ties into what I said before, about him not just doing the modern missions thing of thinking the Gospel stops at evangelism, at sharing the good news and welcoming new believers and separating ourselves from the world. He really believed in the social, political and economical effects of the Gospel. And his ministry affected that. And I can see—and the last book I read helped me to see even more clearly—that this guy’s theology had a HUGE affect on how he went about doing God’s work.
This has been a huge lesson for me while I’ve been here—that the theology we hold (consciously or unconsciously) really dictates how we live our lives, how we worship and think of our God, how we share that God with other people and how we expect that God to work. I’ve been learning about, in a word, presupposition. It’s HUGE. I can’t believe it. I don’t read books the same way; I don’t look at my days the same way; I don’t look at my God the same way. I’ve been forced to dig deeper, to examine why I do the things I do, think the things I think; why missionary organizations function the way they do; why writers write the way they write. There’s so much unsaid, so much underneath that governs how we respond to God. And it’s not always good.
Our team is going through a Francis Schaeffer series—How Shall We Then Live? It starts in the Roman Empire and explains how Christianity affected society and culture and how culture and society affected Christianity. It’s helped me to look at things and ask, “Where did this belief come from? Is it biblical or cultural? What influenced it? What does it influence?” It’s terribly interesting. If you can get your hands on it, watch it. It’ll change the way you think.
I guess this probably doesn’t make much sense to anyone—I haven’t done a very good job of explaining it and I’ve learned a lot of people run from even the mere mention of theology—but it’s what I’m learning on the academic side of this trip, so I thought I’d share. I’m growing so much in my walk.
Well Dung, Good and Faithful Servants!
Today Kimmie and I re-poohed one of the outside walls of our house.
And, yes, I do mean with a mixture of mud and cow dung.
(Sorry, Grandma.)
It was probably one of the most fun mornings I’ve had here in Husa. I actually wish Kimmie could tell you the story of how they got the cow dung, because it’s way funnier when she tells it. Let’s just say it was an experience.
(I took some video for ya’ll, so you can look forward to that next time around.)
Some of our friends in the village helped us collect the mud and the dung, and one of them taught us how to mix and smear it.
We were covered in dung up to our elbows.
And, after a little fight, up to our noses.
So gross.
But so great.
I’ll let the pictures tell the tale.
What you don’t see in them, however, is Davitica (the lady there) constantly yelling at me about how HORRIBLE I was at smearing. Ugh. Unfortunately it was really true.
The whole village got a big kick out of the two idiot Americans covered in pooh. Actually, the whole of the mountain got a big kick out of it—wherever I went today, people were asking me about Ohudo and me mudding the house. News travels fast here.
And, yes, I do mean with a mixture of mud and cow dung.
(Sorry, Grandma.)
It was probably one of the most fun mornings I’ve had here in Husa. I actually wish Kimmie could tell you the story of how they got the cow dung, because it’s way funnier when she tells it. Let’s just say it was an experience.
(I took some video for ya’ll, so you can look forward to that next time around.)
Some of our friends in the village helped us collect the mud and the dung, and one of them taught us how to mix and smear it.
We were covered in dung up to our elbows.
And, after a little fight, up to our noses.
So gross.
But so great.
I’ll let the pictures tell the tale.
What you don’t see in them, however, is Davitica (the lady there) constantly yelling at me about how HORRIBLE I was at smearing. Ugh. Unfortunately it was really true.
The whole village got a big kick out of the two idiot Americans covered in pooh. Actually, the whole of the mountain got a big kick out of it—wherever I went today, people were asking me about Ohudo and me mudding the house. News travels fast here.
Day Tripper
I always get excited when our team talks about the vision we’ve all adopted—starting here in Lopit and slowly spreading out to the nine other unreached tribes as the years go by.
Saturday, I got a little taste of how that would be, and it got me even more excited.
I’ve taken to riding Steve’s bike in the morning—a replacement for my running, since my legs went kaput in Nairobi (there’s a prayer request for you). Saturday I decided it would be fun to ride to a neighboring group of villages, about a 30K ride roundtrip on the dirt roads. So I packed my language book and a banana and took off.
The villages around here are all of one bigger tribe, but they all speak languages that are a tiny bit different—often times, they hang on to the dissimilarities just so they can claim superiority over the other villages. That’s the case with the mountain range I live in. The teachers claim that our specific dialect is the best, that -------- is the richest language and if you learn it, you can learn all other languages (not just in the tribe, mind you—in the WORLD). Funny how such a rich language doesn’t even have a word for “fun” or “love” or “family.” Ha.
Anyway, it was awesome to get out and meet a whole other group of people. The place I went to was called Wolli-Wolli (best village name EVER). It reminded me of our first days here in Lopit—the people gawking, the children crying in fear. I actually came up to this small child on a rock and he fell backward off it, he was so startled by me. Whoops.
They were amazed that this white girl was speaking the words of ---------, especially when they’d talk about me with one another and I’d answer the questions they were asking. We laughed and laughed.
I was reminded again of my night out with the teenagers, when they all sat around Kim and my feet and said, “Tell us the story of America ,” ready to listen to our every word. Once again, I saw a ready audience for the Gospel.
Beyond Husa.
Beyond ---------.
The fields are white with the harvest!
Saturday, I got a little taste of how that would be, and it got me even more excited.
I’ve taken to riding Steve’s bike in the morning—a replacement for my running, since my legs went kaput in Nairobi (there’s a prayer request for you). Saturday I decided it would be fun to ride to a neighboring group of villages, about a 30K ride roundtrip on the dirt roads. So I packed my language book and a banana and took off.
The villages around here are all of one bigger tribe, but they all speak languages that are a tiny bit different—often times, they hang on to the dissimilarities just so they can claim superiority over the other villages. That’s the case with the mountain range I live in. The teachers claim that our specific dialect is the best, that -------- is the richest language and if you learn it, you can learn all other languages (not just in the tribe, mind you—in the WORLD). Funny how such a rich language doesn’t even have a word for “fun” or “love” or “family.” Ha.
Anyway, it was awesome to get out and meet a whole other group of people. The place I went to was called Wolli-Wolli (best village name EVER). It reminded me of our first days here in Lopit—the people gawking, the children crying in fear. I actually came up to this small child on a rock and he fell backward off it, he was so startled by me. Whoops.
They were amazed that this white girl was speaking the words of ---------, especially when they’d talk about me with one another and I’d answer the questions they were asking. We laughed and laughed.
I was reminded again of my night out with the teenagers, when they all sat around Kim and my feet and said, “Tell us the story of America ,” ready to listen to our every word. Once again, I saw a ready audience for the Gospel.
Beyond Husa.
Beyond ---------.
The fields are white with the harvest!
More Pictures
I told you about the dancing before, and here are some pictures from it finally.
Here’s a Lopit warrior… in a mini skirt? Nice. J
Here’s a Lopit warrior… in a mini skirt? Nice. J
Tuesday, October 31, 2006
Pictures
This one is mostly for Jen’s dad. This is her, pigging out at 748 in Loki. Your daughter is hardcore. (Steve thought this picture was necessary.)
broken down
This was a common sight, all the fellas gathered under the hood of the rebuilt Cruiser.
broken down, broken down… again, long travels
Our journey was long and hard. This first picture is of Heinrich having to get the first LandCruiser up and going again after something went awry with the brakes. Whoops. This was on the way out of Sudan .
long travels
This is Annikia, the school helper, and I in the back of the kaput LandCruiser. We shared the back with lots and lots of vegetables, which is good, because we got pretty hungry on our 20 hour, trouble-laden trip from Tinderet to Loki. I hope you’re digging my hair. That’s what lots of hours with hard wind in your face will do to you. I’m not ashamed. We were so dirty and gross after that trip. I woke up after a little nap, covered in a thick layer of dirt. So disgusting.
the river, Kenyan crossing
We hit this sweet river just before the border of Sudan . There’s not much you can do in these situations—either you wait or you try to do through. Since we’re hardcore, we just went through. J That’s the view from the top of the cabin after Dan and I had already crossed in the big 911 truck. Then there are a bunch of Kenyans piled in the back of a (very brave) truck. It was seriously so weird to see the trucks swimming through the water. I now know what that funny snorkel thing coming from the engine is for. I love hardcore cars.
a little stuck
Sometimes even the best of us fall to rivers. Steve and Co. didn’t quite make it. J
Settling In
Greetings from under the protection of my mosquito net in my mud house in the middle of no where Sudan . (Strangely, saying stuff like that doesn’t get any less weird as time goes on.) I also bring greetings from the bugs, as they’ve come out en masse at the inviting light of my laptop screen. J
So, we’re back here in Lopit. I can tell because there was a frog in my bathroom this morning and the toilet doesn’t have a flush. The children were calling my name from the fence. I went out to greet them this morning and they emptied their pockets of peanuts—a welcome-home gift for us, I’m sure. My shirt was full of them by the time they were done. What a wonderful way to begin my day here in Lopit—what a wonderful way to begin the next three months.
Unfortunately, the whole day didn’t go so well. We came home in the cover of night again (see long entry about long travels, haha), so people came to greet us in the morning and brought news that our neighbor’s child had died while we were away. Jacob was five. He died of malaria. We knew it was going to happen eventually—that this kind of tragedy, so commonplace our villages and in the bush, would hit really close to home.
Mary and William, Jacob’s parents, are some of our closest friends; their compound is just above ours. William has three wives—two of which live on the compound and have been with us since the beginning. The news came as a shock; somehow, we hadn’t prepared ourselves for it. Kimmie took it really hard. Jacob wasn’t the only one to died while we were gone; two other children also fell to malaria. Or Jok, the bad god, if you ask the locals. I’m not sure yet how to answer them when they go on about how Jok took the child. I have not the words or the understanding of their beliefs. And that’s frustrating.
That night I sat on Anuk’s (William’s other wife) compound and played with some of my favorite children—Asunta (the one laying on the rocks in a picture awhile back), Paula, Francis and Franco. We always have fun with my batteria (torch/flashlight). They just love it. Somehow, though, they’re always surprised when they turn it on and it shines in their eyes and it hurts. They’ve gotten the idea that it hurts my eyes; Asunta always takes her little hands and shields my eyes for me. I think the greatest part is when they accidentally click the torch off and then try to get it back on by blowing on it, like you would when you’re kindling a fire. They do it to the indigo light on my watch, too. Priceless. Just priceless.
I ended up on my back on a grass mat, looking up at the moon and the stars, with Asunta spread out across my stomach and Paula playing with my hair. And I looked at them in the moonlight (it’s always such a pretty thing here, seeing the light of the moon on their dark beautiful faces) and I thought what it would be like if one of them got sick and died. I know you can get callous when you’re working in Africa , especially in areas where war and disease are common. I never want to get to that place where I no longer feel at a child’s funeral. But I can feel it already some, already it’s not so shocking, not so painful, when I hear of what’s happening.
(OK, maybe read this next bit before you read it to the kids. A warning.)
Steve has seen a lot, through being a soldier and then a missionary in Sudan during the war. He’s seen dead bodies, starving children, the whole lot. And even he will say he’s callous in some ways. But right before we left, Heinrich told us about his neighbors—the mama punished her young son by thrusting his arms, up to his elbows, into boiling water. (Or at least that’s how the story goes.) Heinrich said the mama ran away with the three-week-old newborn; the boy was just sitting on the compound, quivering in pain. That hit us all hard. Even Steve, who has seen so much, had to stop things and walk away.
There are some things, I guess, we’ll never understand, except to say man is fallen. How anyone can think there is anything good in us outside of God is a wonder to me.
So, we’re back here in Lopit. I can tell because there was a frog in my bathroom this morning and the toilet doesn’t have a flush. The children were calling my name from the fence. I went out to greet them this morning and they emptied their pockets of peanuts—a welcome-home gift for us, I’m sure. My shirt was full of them by the time they were done. What a wonderful way to begin my day here in Lopit—what a wonderful way to begin the next three months.
Unfortunately, the whole day didn’t go so well. We came home in the cover of night again (see long entry about long travels, haha), so people came to greet us in the morning and brought news that our neighbor’s child had died while we were away. Jacob was five. He died of malaria. We knew it was going to happen eventually—that this kind of tragedy, so commonplace our villages and in the bush, would hit really close to home.
Mary and William, Jacob’s parents, are some of our closest friends; their compound is just above ours. William has three wives—two of which live on the compound and have been with us since the beginning. The news came as a shock; somehow, we hadn’t prepared ourselves for it. Kimmie took it really hard. Jacob wasn’t the only one to died while we were gone; two other children also fell to malaria. Or Jok, the bad god, if you ask the locals. I’m not sure yet how to answer them when they go on about how Jok took the child. I have not the words or the understanding of their beliefs. And that’s frustrating.
That night I sat on Anuk’s (William’s other wife) compound and played with some of my favorite children—Asunta (the one laying on the rocks in a picture awhile back), Paula, Francis and Franco. We always have fun with my batteria (torch/flashlight). They just love it. Somehow, though, they’re always surprised when they turn it on and it shines in their eyes and it hurts. They’ve gotten the idea that it hurts my eyes; Asunta always takes her little hands and shields my eyes for me. I think the greatest part is when they accidentally click the torch off and then try to get it back on by blowing on it, like you would when you’re kindling a fire. They do it to the indigo light on my watch, too. Priceless. Just priceless.
I ended up on my back on a grass mat, looking up at the moon and the stars, with Asunta spread out across my stomach and Paula playing with my hair. And I looked at them in the moonlight (it’s always such a pretty thing here, seeing the light of the moon on their dark beautiful faces) and I thought what it would be like if one of them got sick and died. I know you can get callous when you’re working in Africa , especially in areas where war and disease are common. I never want to get to that place where I no longer feel at a child’s funeral. But I can feel it already some, already it’s not so shocking, not so painful, when I hear of what’s happening.
(OK, maybe read this next bit before you read it to the kids. A warning.)
Steve has seen a lot, through being a soldier and then a missionary in Sudan during the war. He’s seen dead bodies, starving children, the whole lot. And even he will say he’s callous in some ways. But right before we left, Heinrich told us about his neighbors—the mama punished her young son by thrusting his arms, up to his elbows, into boiling water. (Or at least that’s how the story goes.) Heinrich said the mama ran away with the three-week-old newborn; the boy was just sitting on the compound, quivering in pain. That hit us all hard. Even Steve, who has seen so much, had to stop things and walk away.
There are some things, I guess, we’ll never understand, except to say man is fallen. How anyone can think there is anything good in us outside of God is a wonder to me.
Monday, October 30, 2006
Finally Back Home
Oh wow. It’s been a long five days.
Please, please, please forgive me for not updating for a long time.
We started off from Tinderet to Elderet on Wednesday morning at 6 and got as far as the mountains before our LandCruiser (that one I mentioned was being towed back) broke down. We knew it was going to happen, I guess. We’d been cheering every time it started by itself. It seems our TIMO cars have a bit of a problem starting; we always have to push start them. Ha.
Anyway, the thing broke down a few times, then went completely kaput in the desert. So Steve pulled us with his LandRover for ten hours. Through the mountains, through rivers, through terrible roads. TEN HOURS. We were on the road for 20 hours before we finally got into Loki at 2 a.m. and crashed for the night. The nice thing was there were just four of us in the car, plus about 200 kilos of vegetables and fruit, so it bordered on comfort. I could actually lay down in the back, one leg up on a huge back of oranges, the other on an even bigger bag of potatoes. Luxury. Pure luxury.
It’s funny: I used to think the three hours to my grandparents’ house was a killer of a drive. But now that seems like a drop in the bucket.
The last leg of our journey didn’t get much easier. We were stuck in Loki for a day while Steve fixed the LandCruiser and we did the rest of the shopping. To make matters even worse, the western place to eat there was out of every bit of good food. We’d so looked forward to pizza night and ice cream, and it just didn’t happen.
The next day we started out the last leg and hit some killer rivers on the way back. Daniel had to pull the trucks through. It’s so awesome, driving through water that’s up over the bonnet. (That’s English for hood.) Twelve hours later, we’re here in Lopit.
Ugh, I don’t have time to tell you all about it now. The rain is coming and I have to use the satellite. I took some pictures and I’ll get them up later. Just know I’m sorry for not updating; there’s so much to say here and I’ll get to it as soon as I can!
Please, please, please forgive me for not updating for a long time.
We started off from Tinderet to Elderet on Wednesday morning at 6 and got as far as the mountains before our LandCruiser (that one I mentioned was being towed back) broke down. We knew it was going to happen, I guess. We’d been cheering every time it started by itself. It seems our TIMO cars have a bit of a problem starting; we always have to push start them. Ha.
Anyway, the thing broke down a few times, then went completely kaput in the desert. So Steve pulled us with his LandRover for ten hours. Through the mountains, through rivers, through terrible roads. TEN HOURS. We were on the road for 20 hours before we finally got into Loki at 2 a.m. and crashed for the night. The nice thing was there were just four of us in the car, plus about 200 kilos of vegetables and fruit, so it bordered on comfort. I could actually lay down in the back, one leg up on a huge back of oranges, the other on an even bigger bag of potatoes. Luxury. Pure luxury.
It’s funny: I used to think the three hours to my grandparents’ house was a killer of a drive. But now that seems like a drop in the bucket.
The last leg of our journey didn’t get much easier. We were stuck in Loki for a day while Steve fixed the LandCruiser and we did the rest of the shopping. To make matters even worse, the western place to eat there was out of every bit of good food. We’d so looked forward to pizza night and ice cream, and it just didn’t happen.
The next day we started out the last leg and hit some killer rivers on the way back. Daniel had to pull the trucks through. It’s so awesome, driving through water that’s up over the bonnet. (That’s English for hood.) Twelve hours later, we’re here in Lopit.
Ugh, I don’t have time to tell you all about it now. The rain is coming and I have to use the satellite. I took some pictures and I’ll get them up later. Just know I’m sorry for not updating; there’s so much to say here and I’ll get to it as soon as I can!
Where do I begin?
So much has happened in the last month, I’m not sure where to begin. Our trip to Nairobi has left my head spinning. We left home at 6 a.m. on a Wednesday and spent most of the day bouncing on the road to Loki, the Kenya/Sudan border town. There were 11 of us in the LandCruiser. I didn’t even think it was possible to fit that many people in an automobile. After a milkshake and a shower, a couple of the teammates and I took off in Steve’s LandRover to drive through the night. Not going to lie—driving with Steve is pretty sweet. This man knows what’s up. Anyway, it turned into a dense theology lesson for me, which was superb. Steve and I feasted on some Greg Bahsen; Kim and Martin took the opportunity for some shuteye. Not everyone shares our love for theology.
It was a little crazy, to start out in Lopit one day, where it’s in the high 90s and humid, then pull into Loki, where it’s more like a desert, complete with the obnoxious, terrible desert wind and sand, then cruise through the night through more of a desert, then suddenly open the window at a police stop in the mountains and realize it’s frigid outside. And suddenly, it’s late Thursday night and we’re in Nairobi , an entirely different world than what I’m used to.
We went to a grocery store that first night while we were waiting for Steve’s family’s plane to land. (Samaritan’s Purse had room on a Loki-Nairobi flight that day and took the wives and children. Thank you, SP. Thank you, Franklin Graham.) I was so overwhelmed when I walked through isle after isle of food and stuff. This isn’t even an American supermarket, but, wow, when you come from a place where there is nothing but… well, nothing… it’s quite intense. My head was spinning. And that’s how it went the entire time we were there. I felt like my cultures were colliding again. A prime example: At one point, I found myself with a huge Turkana basket full of laundry on my head, talking to my team leader on my cell phone. WEIRD. We definitely don’t have cell phones in the bush. And, in a way, I’m really glad. J
Anyway, Nairobi was a nice break. It was nice to realize, first, how great modern conveniences can be. But, also, moreover, it was nice to realize how much I don’t need that stuff. The folks at Diguna wanted to know all about the bush and how things were going, and they’d often say how hard it must be, to live out there, to minister out there. But I’ve realized that I’m comfortable in most ways—the electricity thing, the plumbing thing, the lack-of-supplies thing, it doesn’t really seem like much of a factor anymore. And I realized the people are becoming our friends, our community. And I dig that.
It was a little crazy, to start out in Lopit one day, where it’s in the high 90s and humid, then pull into Loki, where it’s more like a desert, complete with the obnoxious, terrible desert wind and sand, then cruise through the night through more of a desert, then suddenly open the window at a police stop in the mountains and realize it’s frigid outside. And suddenly, it’s late Thursday night and we’re in Nairobi , an entirely different world than what I’m used to.
We went to a grocery store that first night while we were waiting for Steve’s family’s plane to land. (Samaritan’s Purse had room on a Loki-Nairobi flight that day and took the wives and children. Thank you, SP. Thank you, Franklin Graham.) I was so overwhelmed when I walked through isle after isle of food and stuff. This isn’t even an American supermarket, but, wow, when you come from a place where there is nothing but… well, nothing… it’s quite intense. My head was spinning. And that’s how it went the entire time we were there. I felt like my cultures were colliding again. A prime example: At one point, I found myself with a huge Turkana basket full of laundry on my head, talking to my team leader on my cell phone. WEIRD. We definitely don’t have cell phones in the bush. And, in a way, I’m really glad. J
Anyway, Nairobi was a nice break. It was nice to realize, first, how great modern conveniences can be. But, also, moreover, it was nice to realize how much I don’t need that stuff. The folks at Diguna wanted to know all about the bush and how things were going, and they’d often say how hard it must be, to live out there, to minister out there. But I’ve realized that I’m comfortable in most ways—the electricity thing, the plumbing thing, the lack-of-supplies thing, it doesn’t really seem like much of a factor anymore. And I realized the people are becoming our friends, our community. And I dig that.
Heading Back Home
Oh, wow, so it’s been a long time since I’ve posted up here. And I’ve got a lot of grief from the home front about being in a city—where there is presumably more access to email and electricity—and updating less than I have from the bush. So, yeah, I apologize for that. We’ve been in Nairobi for the last bit, but our program here as been really intense—we had some medical issues on top of the already thick schedule of meetings and buying supplies. But here I am now, writing from the beautiful mountains in Tinderet , Kenya . We’re headed back to Sudan —a three-day trip on some pretty terrible roads. The first leg of our trip brought us here to a Diguna station—about a six hour drive from Nairobi in Steve’s LandRover, a ten hour trip in the 10-ton truck. Guess which one I was stuck in. ;)
We’re supposed to start another leg of our journey tonight, but I’m suddenly not so confident that’s going to happen, as the LandCruiser we came here to pick up and drive home in was just towed by behind another vehicle. I guess the test run didn’t go so well. Hmm. I guess we’ll see!
Anyway, since I’m here now with my laptop and a bit of time, I’ll do my best to let you know how things are going…
We’re supposed to start another leg of our journey tonight, but I’m suddenly not so confident that’s going to happen, as the LandCruiser we came here to pick up and drive home in was just towed by behind another vehicle. I guess the test run didn’t go so well. Hmm. I guess we’ll see!
Anyway, since I’m here now with my laptop and a bit of time, I’ll do my best to let you know how things are going…
Friday, October 13, 2006
Call me!
Hey gang.
We're in Nairobi for a quick supply trip.
I bought a cell phone today (!!!!!) so you can call, if you'd like. I won't lie, it's not really cheap (maybe 30 cents a minute or so), but you can buy cheap international phone cards off the internet. Just Google it. It's a Kenyan cell phone you'll be calling. And it's free for me to get calls, so don't worry about that. Even SMS is free for me.
Anyway, some people were asking.
Here's the number: 011 254 726 082 961 (NUMBER CORRECTED 10-14)
Thanks for all your prayers. Hopefully I'll have some time while we're here to update you on what is going down in Lopit land. Know God is doing cool things!
-Andrea
We're in Nairobi for a quick supply trip.
I bought a cell phone today (!!!!!) so you can call, if you'd like. I won't lie, it's not really cheap (maybe 30 cents a minute or so), but you can buy cheap international phone cards off the internet. Just Google it. It's a Kenyan cell phone you'll be calling. And it's free for me to get calls, so don't worry about that. Even SMS is free for me.
Anyway, some people were asking.
Here's the number: 011 254 726 082 961 (NUMBER CORRECTED 10-14)
Thanks for all your prayers. Hopefully I'll have some time while we're here to update you on what is going down in Lopit land. Know God is doing cool things!
-Andrea
Monday, October 09, 2006
Runaway Rainmaker
So, get this: The Rainmaker ran away.
Crazy, eh?
It’s funny, the things that have happened here since we moved in, but I think this one takes the cake.
I’m not even sure why he left—or, as some would argue, was run off—but I know he’s gone, which makes the animistic culture here a little thinner (and our nights a little quieter). I guess he slept with some guy’s wife or something. And this isn’t the first village he’s been shooed out of.
God is just opening all sorts of doors for us, though we often feel limited because we’re still basic in the language and are three months away from beginning any formal ministry. (Our battle cry: Language learning is ministry.) But the Lord is at work, doing incredible things.
The AIC church, planted in the 50s, I think, is seeing a bit of a revival. People are coming, for one thing. Old people who are coming back to the church, new people who are following us there. This guy Moses gave his life to Christ years ago, but fell defeated to the culture in the villages and had fallen away. Steve put the Aussie with him for home stay when we first got here—when we stayed with families for a week—and, pole pole, Moses has come back to the church and is now just on fire for the Lord. He stood up Sunday in church and spurred on the people to walk in Christ and to share His good news. That’s nuts.
Deborah, this woman who became a Christian when she was 11 and was discipled by the Barbara and Martha—some of the original missionaries here, back in the 50s—has been a huge help to our girls in Sohot, just as he’s found encouragement and comfort in them. Christians just don’t live in the villages without backsliding it seems, but she has. Praise God.
To see how the Lopit pastors at AIC have caught the vision is also cool. No longer are they just focusing on Amerikan—the tiny village where the church and mission station are, where all the Christians flock when they’re persecuted in the hills—but they’ve got on their minds and hearts the village in the hills. They see what our living up there has done and how great a witness it is. Pastor G organized a list of past members of the church or those who had been baptized and divided it up by villages. He’s charged us (and even the congregation) to find these people, meet these people and be something to these people. Everyone is realizing it’s not impossible to live as a Christian in the villages—we are, and we’re there to stand with those who will take a stand.
We don’t go unnoticed here—not just because of our white skin, but because of how we live our lives.
God is building up opportunities for us as we build up our Lopit vocabulary. This field is ripe for the harvest. Even just last night, a group of teens we know well invited us to play—to go from house to house and eat a big of sorghum and giagi (YUCK) at each place. At the last house, under this bright, remarkable moon, they crowded around us and asked us to tell them the “story of the history of America .” (Their concept—or lack thereof—of the USA is hilarious. They know nothing of its size or culture. They figure it to be much like what they know, just a cluster of huts on a mountainside. My favorite was when they asked us if we knew Rachel—a short-termer here in June who I’ve talked about before—or someone named Ellen. They seemed so confused that we would not know them, even though we both lived in the States.) I cannot wait until we can tell them the creation story, the story of Jesus Christ.
The audience is here, at rapt attention.
Now we just need the words.
Hi Jen’s Dad
Dear Roger (Jen said I could call you Roger), I’m just saying hello on behalf of Jen. I’ll try to get more pictures of Jen up here. God bless you!
Crazy, eh?
It’s funny, the things that have happened here since we moved in, but I think this one takes the cake.
I’m not even sure why he left—or, as some would argue, was run off—but I know he’s gone, which makes the animistic culture here a little thinner (and our nights a little quieter). I guess he slept with some guy’s wife or something. And this isn’t the first village he’s been shooed out of.
God is just opening all sorts of doors for us, though we often feel limited because we’re still basic in the language and are three months away from beginning any formal ministry. (Our battle cry: Language learning is ministry.) But the Lord is at work, doing incredible things.
The AIC church, planted in the 50s, I think, is seeing a bit of a revival. People are coming, for one thing. Old people who are coming back to the church, new people who are following us there. This guy Moses gave his life to Christ years ago, but fell defeated to the culture in the villages and had fallen away. Steve put the Aussie with him for home stay when we first got here—when we stayed with families for a week—and, pole pole, Moses has come back to the church and is now just on fire for the Lord. He stood up Sunday in church and spurred on the people to walk in Christ and to share His good news. That’s nuts.
Deborah, this woman who became a Christian when she was 11 and was discipled by the Barbara and Martha—some of the original missionaries here, back in the 50s—has been a huge help to our girls in Sohot, just as he’s found encouragement and comfort in them. Christians just don’t live in the villages without backsliding it seems, but she has. Praise God.
To see how the Lopit pastors at AIC have caught the vision is also cool. No longer are they just focusing on Amerikan—the tiny village where the church and mission station are, where all the Christians flock when they’re persecuted in the hills—but they’ve got on their minds and hearts the village in the hills. They see what our living up there has done and how great a witness it is. Pastor G organized a list of past members of the church or those who had been baptized and divided it up by villages. He’s charged us (and even the congregation) to find these people, meet these people and be something to these people. Everyone is realizing it’s not impossible to live as a Christian in the villages—we are, and we’re there to stand with those who will take a stand.
We don’t go unnoticed here—not just because of our white skin, but because of how we live our lives.
God is building up opportunities for us as we build up our Lopit vocabulary. This field is ripe for the harvest. Even just last night, a group of teens we know well invited us to play—to go from house to house and eat a big of sorghum and giagi (YUCK) at each place. At the last house, under this bright, remarkable moon, they crowded around us and asked us to tell them the “story of the history of America .” (Their concept—or lack thereof—of the USA is hilarious. They know nothing of its size or culture. They figure it to be much like what they know, just a cluster of huts on a mountainside. My favorite was when they asked us if we knew Rachel—a short-termer here in June who I’ve talked about before—or someone named Ellen. They seemed so confused that we would not know them, even though we both lived in the States.) I cannot wait until we can tell them the creation story, the story of Jesus Christ.
The audience is here, at rapt attention.
Now we just need the words.
Hi Jen’s Dad
Dear Roger (Jen said I could call you Roger), I’m just saying hello on behalf of Jen. I’ll try to get more pictures of Jen up here. God bless you!
Friday, October 06, 2006
Good friends
This morning I woke up sick and was kind of bummed about the idea of spending the entire day in the house, so I took my grass mat out to our yard and curled up on the rocks with my blanket. Within seconds, I had a bunch of village kids surrounding me, asking me if I was sick and what was hurting. They’re so good to me.
One of the girls tucked my blanket around me.
Another two were petting my head and my arm.
As more kids came to play (we love to play), the kids who were already there would quietly explain, “Ongwe Ibedja” (“Ibedja’s sick”) and tell them not to be too loud. Then they’d tell the stories of the things we’d done in the last few days and laugh.
I love, love, love these quiet moments with the kids.
A week ago, I sat on the rocks and showed them pictures of my friends from home. They loved to look at them and find where I was. It became a bit of a game. “Ibedja! Ibedja!” And they even worked on getting to know the people’s names and would find them in other pictures. I was really impressed. They think my mom is really pretty. “Elehamen hotonye hoi bino!”
Sometimes the little ones sleep beside me as I read. Sometimes we all just sprawl out for a nap. A lot of times, I’ll be reading and they’ll be picking through my journal (praise God they don’t read English) or my books. Or they’ll play with my hair or study the hair on my arms or my finger- and toenails. They like to compare our skin. They’re not at all shy about the fact that I’m about as strange as an alien from outer space… and might as well be one.
Kibaki, this really adorable little one who is a bit of a princess in the village, just laid on my stomach the other day, trying to figure me out.
Everywhere I go, they want to race. And it’s not just the kids, it’s all the men. But the kids and I have made a bit of a track around the outside of my house and we run and run and run.
There’s a certain compound I pass most every day that the kids always come streaming out to greet me. I made the mistake of swinging one of the kids one day, so now they come out, arms open wide, ready for the great swing. They love it when Daniel and I come by together, because they know we’re both suckers for kids. It’s funny because my roommate Kim and I look a lot alike, so sometimes they’ll ask her for a lift. Today we were both there together and they came at her, arms open wide. She simply took their shoulders and rotated them toward me, haha. She’s not as fond of the kid attention as I am.
One of the girls tucked my blanket around me.
Another two were petting my head and my arm.
As more kids came to play (we love to play), the kids who were already there would quietly explain, “Ongwe Ibedja” (“Ibedja’s sick”) and tell them not to be too loud. Then they’d tell the stories of the things we’d done in the last few days and laugh.
I love, love, love these quiet moments with the kids.
A week ago, I sat on the rocks and showed them pictures of my friends from home. They loved to look at them and find where I was. It became a bit of a game. “Ibedja! Ibedja!” And they even worked on getting to know the people’s names and would find them in other pictures. I was really impressed. They think my mom is really pretty. “Elehamen hotonye hoi bino!”
Sometimes the little ones sleep beside me as I read. Sometimes we all just sprawl out for a nap. A lot of times, I’ll be reading and they’ll be picking through my journal (praise God they don’t read English) or my books. Or they’ll play with my hair or study the hair on my arms or my finger- and toenails. They like to compare our skin. They’re not at all shy about the fact that I’m about as strange as an alien from outer space… and might as well be one.
Kibaki, this really adorable little one who is a bit of a princess in the village, just laid on my stomach the other day, trying to figure me out.
Everywhere I go, they want to race. And it’s not just the kids, it’s all the men. But the kids and I have made a bit of a track around the outside of my house and we run and run and run.
There’s a certain compound I pass most every day that the kids always come streaming out to greet me. I made the mistake of swinging one of the kids one day, so now they come out, arms open wide, ready for the great swing. They love it when Daniel and I come by together, because they know we’re both suckers for kids. It’s funny because my roommate Kim and I look a lot alike, so sometimes they’ll ask her for a lift. Today we were both there together and they came at her, arms open wide. She simply took their shoulders and rotated them toward me, haha. She’s not as fond of the kid attention as I am.
Mail from Heaven
My roommates and I always rejoice when we reach a landmark or standard that finally makes us, as we joke, ‘real missionaries.’ The standard seems to be somehow elusive, though, as we’ve declared ourselves to truly be ‘real missionaries’ a few times now.
I think I was the first real missionary because I killed the snake with my bare hands (and, umm, a Nalgene water bottle).
But in a way, I suppose we were all already ‘real missionaries’ because we’d slugged across no man’s land in LandCruisers and a giant truck carrying all of our worldly possessions. And we’d used a longdrop toilet. We read by kerosene lamp and sleep under mosquito nets. We do cup baths and buy supplies three months at a time.
Then there was the time we never-minded the bugs in our oatmeal. ‘Real missionaries.’
But then biffing down a mountain and getting med-evaced out on a tiny airplane off of our grass airstrips—that was about as ‘real missionary’ as it gets.
And Pattie was crazy with malaria for three days, an unfortunate reality of being a ‘real missionary.’
And two days ago was the best because I really feel like this was the time, the real time—I became a ‘real missionary.’ Jon, our favorite AIM AIR pilot from Loki, ratioed Steve to say he was going to swing by and drop off a package. As in literally drop it off, out of the plane window. Steve and I ran out to the old football (aka: soccer) field to wait for him. It was so awesome because we live in a U-shaped mountain range—Amerikan sits in the bottom of the “U,” sort of—so Jon flew in with the plane, banked up against the mountains and swung back over the soccer field really low.
I’m not sure who dropped the package out of the window, but whoever it was has incredible aim, because they dropped the thing in one of the few bare spots on the field. And with the whole mountain range watching, no less. Talk about pressure.
Anyway, it was awesome to bound across the field, through the thorns and ridiculously high weeds to the shouts of the villagers, who were pointing and shouting excitedly about where it landed. It’s been the talk of the hills, that Ibedja’s mom loves her so much she sent her greetings in a package from the sky. And I thought getting mail in the States was cool.
So, yeah, getting mail dropped from planes seems a little surreal still. But I’m going to hang on to the remnants of the “romance” stage for as long as possible.
I think I was the first real missionary because I killed the snake with my bare hands (and, umm, a Nalgene water bottle).
But in a way, I suppose we were all already ‘real missionaries’ because we’d slugged across no man’s land in LandCruisers and a giant truck carrying all of our worldly possessions. And we’d used a longdrop toilet. We read by kerosene lamp and sleep under mosquito nets. We do cup baths and buy supplies three months at a time.
Then there was the time we never-minded the bugs in our oatmeal. ‘Real missionaries.’
But then biffing down a mountain and getting med-evaced out on a tiny airplane off of our grass airstrips—that was about as ‘real missionary’ as it gets.
And Pattie was crazy with malaria for three days, an unfortunate reality of being a ‘real missionary.’
And two days ago was the best because I really feel like this was the time, the real time—I became a ‘real missionary.’ Jon, our favorite AIM AIR pilot from Loki, ratioed Steve to say he was going to swing by and drop off a package. As in literally drop it off, out of the plane window. Steve and I ran out to the old football (aka: soccer) field to wait for him. It was so awesome because we live in a U-shaped mountain range—Amerikan sits in the bottom of the “U,” sort of—so Jon flew in with the plane, banked up against the mountains and swung back over the soccer field really low.
I’m not sure who dropped the package out of the window, but whoever it was has incredible aim, because they dropped the thing in one of the few bare spots on the field. And with the whole mountain range watching, no less. Talk about pressure.
Anyway, it was awesome to bound across the field, through the thorns and ridiculously high weeds to the shouts of the villagers, who were pointing and shouting excitedly about where it landed. It’s been the talk of the hills, that Ibedja’s mom loves her so much she sent her greetings in a package from the sky. And I thought getting mail in the States was cool.
So, yeah, getting mail dropped from planes seems a little surreal still. But I’m going to hang on to the remnants of the “romance” stage for as long as possible.
Mosquitoes bite
Ugh, I hate malaria.
Please pray for my team, as we’re really taking a beating from the mosquitoes. Pattie was crazy with the stuff for three days and Steve’s poor family just keeps getting it over and over again. It seems just as one gets over it, another gets it. They don’t even wait to take the tests anymore; they throw medicine at fevers right away. Poor little Christian—Steve and Iris’s youngest, a little over 1—was so bad for a few days, with a fever up to 104, we were starting to worry we were going to have to fly him and Iris out to Nairobi .
Steve got his golden mosquito last week—his tenth go of malaria. You can tell he’s about at his limit, as he saw some water standing on top of a container the other day and tipped it over in haste. (Such haste that he tipped it over on me.) He’s said that if the team weren’t here, if he wasn’t committed to serving us and leading us, he’d have yanked his family out of here two weeks ago and pulled out to Nairobi to recover.
I refuse to live in fear of mosquitoes, but I really don’t want this malaria stuff. It gets to your head. (I just wrote to my friend Lara and told her, it’s funny because if we’re even a bit emotional, Steve immediately begins to question if we have malaria. Hehe.) And it makes you miserable, miserable, miserable. Praise God for good medicine, though—this is the kind of stuff that kept the average life expectancy for a missionary in Africa once they hit the field at two years way back when.
But, yeah, keep us in your prayers. We’re headed for Nairobi in a week to get supplies, so hopefully we’ll have a chance for our bodies to recover and for the coming dry season to take care of all the mosquitoes.
Please pray for my team, as we’re really taking a beating from the mosquitoes. Pattie was crazy with the stuff for three days and Steve’s poor family just keeps getting it over and over again. It seems just as one gets over it, another gets it. They don’t even wait to take the tests anymore; they throw medicine at fevers right away. Poor little Christian—Steve and Iris’s youngest, a little over 1—was so bad for a few days, with a fever up to 104, we were starting to worry we were going to have to fly him and Iris out to Nairobi .
Steve got his golden mosquito last week—his tenth go of malaria. You can tell he’s about at his limit, as he saw some water standing on top of a container the other day and tipped it over in haste. (Such haste that he tipped it over on me.) He’s said that if the team weren’t here, if he wasn’t committed to serving us and leading us, he’d have yanked his family out of here two weeks ago and pulled out to Nairobi to recover.
I refuse to live in fear of mosquitoes, but I really don’t want this malaria stuff. It gets to your head. (I just wrote to my friend Lara and told her, it’s funny because if we’re even a bit emotional, Steve immediately begins to question if we have malaria. Hehe.) And it makes you miserable, miserable, miserable. Praise God for good medicine, though—this is the kind of stuff that kept the average life expectancy for a missionary in Africa once they hit the field at two years way back when.
But, yeah, keep us in your prayers. We’re headed for Nairobi in a week to get supplies, so hopefully we’ll have a chance for our bodies to recover and for the coming dry season to take care of all the mosquitoes.
Translation Issues
We got a copy of the Gospel of John that two of the hardcore missionaries from the ‘50s—Martha and Barbara—put together while they were here. It’s in another dialect, but it’s awesome because it’s close to Lopit, so we can try it out on people. We’re actually working on memorizing John 3:16 right now. One of the pastors here saw it typed out on our practice sheet for the first time and was just amazed that he was reading the Word of God in Lopit. What a powerful thing.
It’s awesome to think that someday we’ll be able to start translating not just John, but the rest of the Bible into Lopit. Wow. But just as we’ve been working on John 3:16, I’ve realized a lot of things about translation that I never considered before.
Take, for example, the idea of Jesus because God’s son and the idea of us being children of God. We have in our Western culture a built-in picture of this relationship as it is with God—our earthly fathers often serve as examples because our cultures were rooted in biblical principles. I mean, even if our country has strayed far from those principles in some way, the effects are still there. (Thank you, Puritans.) But the Lopit don’t have that. There’s no parallel. No hooks on which to hang this idea. So even when we get the words translated, we have to first translate the idea to these people. They know next to nothing about loving fathers or this imagery of Christ as the bridgegroom for the church.
Try explaining prayer to someone who knows only animism. Heck, try explaining it to just about anyone, it’s already hard enough.
Now try everlasting life. But somehow distinguish it from ancestors and the living dead that they know from their culture.
Now give “love” a try. They don’t even have a word for it in their language. We ask our language helpers and they’re just mystified by the idea, searching the whole of their vocabularies and senses that would convey this idea. Again, no hooks. Not even words. No “forgiveness.” Or “family.”
There’s just so much, so much I never realized you have to deal with when you take the Gospel to an unreached people.
Wow.
It’s awesome to think that someday we’ll be able to start translating not just John, but the rest of the Bible into Lopit. Wow. But just as we’ve been working on John 3:16, I’ve realized a lot of things about translation that I never considered before.
Take, for example, the idea of Jesus because God’s son and the idea of us being children of God. We have in our Western culture a built-in picture of this relationship as it is with God—our earthly fathers often serve as examples because our cultures were rooted in biblical principles. I mean, even if our country has strayed far from those principles in some way, the effects are still there. (Thank you, Puritans.) But the Lopit don’t have that. There’s no parallel. No hooks on which to hang this idea. So even when we get the words translated, we have to first translate the idea to these people. They know next to nothing about loving fathers or this imagery of Christ as the bridgegroom for the church.
Try explaining prayer to someone who knows only animism. Heck, try explaining it to just about anyone, it’s already hard enough.
Now try everlasting life. But somehow distinguish it from ancestors and the living dead that they know from their culture.
Now give “love” a try. They don’t even have a word for it in their language. We ask our language helpers and they’re just mystified by the idea, searching the whole of their vocabularies and senses that would convey this idea. Again, no hooks. Not even words. No “forgiveness.” Or “family.”
There’s just so much, so much I never realized you have to deal with when you take the Gospel to an unreached people.
Wow.
Language Blunders
Part of my job here in Africa is to greet people.
Yeah, that’s right, I get paid to greet people.
Alright, well, maybe not just like that. But our ministry right now is language and culture learning with relationship building, so that involves a lot of being out in the community with people. And it’s just the way of life in Lopit that you greet people.
And it was in this that one of my all-time favorite language blunders was birthed.
I’ve said before that everyone wants to know where you’re going and where you’ve been. And when we first got here, this was about the extent of our language learning, so we jumped right into this tradition of inquisition, even if we didn’t know exactly what they were saying in response.
My roommate Pattie met a woman on the path one morning and, being the culturally appropriate missionary she is, asked where this woman was headed. “Awu nang aler,” she said.
“I’m going…” mystery word.
This wasn’t the first time Pattie had heard this word, but she had no idea where “aler” was. We’d come to recognize the village names, the word for the sorghum fields and the word for the peanut fields, and this wasn’t any of them, so she pressed for an explanation.
After a few awkward minutes of the woman miming, Pattie suddenly had a pretty good idea where “aler” was.
It just so happened there was this old Lopit guy who speaks a little English coming down the path, so she stopped him. “What does ‘aler’ mean?”
(I’d like to note that there was absolutely no pause, no awkwardness in this man’s response.)
“To defecate.”
Yeah, she was going to the bathroom down the mountain a bit. I have no idea how many times we asked people this and just nodded our approval or gave an enthusiastic “olibo bino!” (really good!” another one of our early phrases) as they went along.
Oh, language learning.
And our question now is… how do you respond to that?
The traditional thing to say as you leave one another is “eno no libo!” which means…
“Go well!”
Yeah, that’s right, I get paid to greet people.
Alright, well, maybe not just like that. But our ministry right now is language and culture learning with relationship building, so that involves a lot of being out in the community with people. And it’s just the way of life in Lopit that you greet people.
And it was in this that one of my all-time favorite language blunders was birthed.
I’ve said before that everyone wants to know where you’re going and where you’ve been. And when we first got here, this was about the extent of our language learning, so we jumped right into this tradition of inquisition, even if we didn’t know exactly what they were saying in response.
My roommate Pattie met a woman on the path one morning and, being the culturally appropriate missionary she is, asked where this woman was headed. “Awu nang aler,” she said.
“I’m going…” mystery word.
This wasn’t the first time Pattie had heard this word, but she had no idea where “aler” was. We’d come to recognize the village names, the word for the sorghum fields and the word for the peanut fields, and this wasn’t any of them, so she pressed for an explanation.
After a few awkward minutes of the woman miming, Pattie suddenly had a pretty good idea where “aler” was.
It just so happened there was this old Lopit guy who speaks a little English coming down the path, so she stopped him. “What does ‘aler’ mean?”
(I’d like to note that there was absolutely no pause, no awkwardness in this man’s response.)
“To defecate.”
Yeah, she was going to the bathroom down the mountain a bit. I have no idea how many times we asked people this and just nodded our approval or gave an enthusiastic “olibo bino!” (really good!” another one of our early phrases) as they went along.
Oh, language learning.
And our question now is… how do you respond to that?
The traditional thing to say as you leave one another is “eno no libo!” which means…
“Go well!”
More Pictures
Beautiful Baby
KimmiePie and I visited our friend and her new little baby boy. In this picture, he’s two days old… and really cute. He was so tiny, I could hardly believe it. The weirdest thing about babies here is that, though their parents skin is this beautiful dark coal black, the babies are nearly white. This little guy doesn’t have a name yet, but he’ll get one this afternoon in an elaborate naming ceremony.
KimmiePie and I visited our friend and her new little baby boy. In this picture, he’s two days old… and really cute. He was so tiny, I could hardly believe it. The weirdest thing about babies here is that, though their parents skin is this beautiful dark coal black, the babies are nearly white. This little guy doesn’t have a name yet, but he’ll get one this afternoon in an elaborate naming ceremony.
Happy Birthday, Danimal
Our teammate Daniel had his birthday yesterday, so we celebrated in style up in Longija. Longija is pretty much at the top of the mountain, so I think his gift was just getting us all to come up there. He made us cake and surprised us all with sodas he’d brought from Loki a month ago and hauled up the mountain one by one. Drinking pop in Sudan is a special, special thing. You can tell, maybe, how excited Craiger is in this picture. And that’s Kimmie and Pattie with him. No pictures of the birthday boy, sadly.
Heno, Heno, Heno
Kim’s a champ because in this picture, she’s helping Anuk spread heno over her yard. Heno, for all ya’ll not so fluent in Lopit, is dung. Of the cow variety. We have to redo our house soon. I can’t wait for THAT day, to be covered in a mud/dung mixture.
Morika!
This is our little friend Morika. The kids love to help me with my laundry, and she helped me two days ago. We had a good time decking ourselves out in clothes pins. Totally African fashion.
Thursday, September 28, 2006
Ummmm, peanut butter ants
Tonight I opened our ultra-precious jar of Skippy peanut butter and found it teaming with ants. And so I scooped out what little I could and went right on ahead with my PB crackers. Kim yelled at me for wasting too much peanut butter, so she used her fingers to dig through what I’d taken out and picked out just the ants. It reminded me of the time we were making no-bake oatmeal cookies and there were ants everywhere in the oatmeal box, but we poured it in anyway.
I guess real missionaries eat bugs.
(Sorry, mom.)
I guess real missionaries eat bugs.
(Sorry, mom.)
Wednesday, September 27, 2006
Video!
Hey gang, Mark (one of my wonderful stateside sidekicks) finished the video I sent home from Lopit. (Insert HUGE thank you to Mark for this.) If you’d like a copy, you’ve just got to let him know. Send an email to markalexander17@yahoo.com with the subject “Andi’s VIDEO” Include your name and address and Mark will get you off a copy because he’s wonderful like that. (If you’re part of Faith Assembly or Oglesby Union church, let him know in the email. Maybe we can just get them dropped off somehow.) I’m afraid the camera quality isn’t that great (ie: I’m really bad at doing videos), but I hope you enjoy it nonetheless!
Tuesday, September 19, 2006
Fun in Loki
So we went to Loki (Kenya/Sudan border town; a UN hotspot where they pumped supplies into during the war) last week to restock our supplies for the next two months.
I’d say the theme of the trip was eating.
Within four or so hours of being there, I’d had five cold sodas, two milkshakes, a T-bone steak (or at least the paltry Kenyan version thereof), real french fries and a heaping bowl of ice cream. It was—in a word—incredible.
Loki is basically a dusty, hot mess full of the typical run-down African-style shops and bars, but there is this wonderful oasis called 748—basically a haven for the Western aid workers. There just aren’t words for how great this place is. Imagine—a milkshake!!! We don’t even have a refrigerator out here, let alone a freezer. And a pool table. And there was even a swimming pool at Kate Camp. And cold pop… oh my. I don’t even like soda and it was amazing. Daniel and I spent two days in the Uni-Mog getting the team supplies, and everywhere we went, he’d be like, “Want a cold soda?” By the end of our first day of shopping, we’d drank seven sodas each. Ridiculous.
Despite all the great food and potential for fun, though, the best part was getting back to Husa and thinking… “Home… finally.” I missed our little village and our new friends quite a bit.
PICTURES:
It took us eight hours for us singles to get into Loki in the Uni-Mog (my aforementioned favorite vehicle of all time). We’re forced to be really close for a really long time, but no lives (or tempers) were lost. Praise God.
We found this sweet river bed to take lunch in. This is Jen (from Massachusetts ) and Craig (from Australia ).
Kim and Jen, enjoying the plush back seat the fellas built.
I was stoked about playing pool at 748. Steve (my team leader) was equally stoked, so we took first game. I’d like to happily report that I whooped Steve our first game. I do believe this is why he’s giving me this ridiculous face here. I’d say this is the best picture of him I’ve ever seen. I promise he’s a competent team leader. (And I will confess that he beat me our second game. We didn’t get to play the tie-breaker quite yet.)
Kim really enjoyed the swimming pool.
This is Daniel and I at 748. We just finished big bowls of ice cream and were really happy (especially, apparently, Daniel).
I’d say the theme of the trip was eating.
Within four or so hours of being there, I’d had five cold sodas, two milkshakes, a T-bone steak (or at least the paltry Kenyan version thereof), real french fries and a heaping bowl of ice cream. It was—in a word—incredible.
Loki is basically a dusty, hot mess full of the typical run-down African-style shops and bars, but there is this wonderful oasis called 748—basically a haven for the Western aid workers. There just aren’t words for how great this place is. Imagine—a milkshake!!! We don’t even have a refrigerator out here, let alone a freezer. And a pool table. And there was even a swimming pool at Kate Camp. And cold pop… oh my. I don’t even like soda and it was amazing. Daniel and I spent two days in the Uni-Mog getting the team supplies, and everywhere we went, he’d be like, “Want a cold soda?” By the end of our first day of shopping, we’d drank seven sodas each. Ridiculous.
Despite all the great food and potential for fun, though, the best part was getting back to Husa and thinking… “Home… finally.” I missed our little village and our new friends quite a bit.
PICTURES:
It took us eight hours for us singles to get into Loki in the Uni-Mog (my aforementioned favorite vehicle of all time). We’re forced to be really close for a really long time, but no lives (or tempers) were lost. Praise God.
We found this sweet river bed to take lunch in. This is Jen (from Massachusetts ) and Craig (from Australia ).
Kim and Jen, enjoying the plush back seat the fellas built.
I was stoked about playing pool at 748. Steve (my team leader) was equally stoked, so we took first game. I’d like to happily report that I whooped Steve our first game. I do believe this is why he’s giving me this ridiculous face here. I’d say this is the best picture of him I’ve ever seen. I promise he’s a competent team leader. (And I will confess that he beat me our second game. We didn’t get to play the tie-breaker quite yet.)
Kim really enjoyed the swimming pool.
This is Daniel and I at 748. We just finished big bowls of ice cream and were really happy (especially, apparently, Daniel).
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