The Chronicles of Eating Out

You back out of the driveway and wave to your guard as he closes the gate behind you.  You set out on the red dirt road to treat your family to lunch on this Saturday afternoon.  In the backseat, the kids are making happy sounds.  It seems the bumpier the road, the happier the children are, so you hit a few extra bumpy spots just for fun.

After a few minutes, you reach the intersection with the big paved road.  Though the nationals drive right on through, you know you must stop at the red light because the police pull foreigners over for lesser infractions than that.   When the time comes, you make your way onto the paved road with a mass of motos, bicycles, and cars.  As a newbie in this country, you are still getting used to the scenery out the window: a donkey cart loaded with garbage, a crowd of men bowing in unison on their Muslim prayer mats, a family of four all riding on one moto, a man on a bicycle balancing a load of two-by-fours on his shoulder, and a few street vendors reminiscent of old timey peddlers with an assortment of wares on their push carts or loaded in their arms.  As you approach the first intersection, the boys selling phone cards approach your car.  They are on that corner day in and day out, approaching every passing car with the hope of making a little money that day - enough for some food, maybe for school fees or rent.  It is enough to make you want to call the US eight times a day, just to need a new phone card.  But the light is green, so on you drive.  At the next intersection there is a beggar man sitting on the ground.  He cannot walk, but he uses he arms to move across the ground toward the cars.  At the same time, there are more vendors approaching your windows.  Boys selling bags of limes, a young man selling tissues, a young girl selling bananas.  The light is green again, and the traffic is moving.

At the next stop, a man approaches your window with a handful of watches.  You know you'd never wear such a thing with its fake rhinestones and cheap construction, and so you tell him "no," but your heart breaks a little as you do.  On the opposite side of the car, two young women have approached with buckets of strawberries on their heads.  If only you were going straight home, you'd be tempted to buy them, but as it is you must tell more hopeful faces "no."  It feels so counter to what you want.  You want to buy it all, even the French newspaper you cannot read, to support those working so hard just to get by.

You drive to where you remember the restaurant to be, but cannot seem to locate it.  With no help from Google in this place, you circle the area a few times before you have to give up.  It is already noon, and the children are hungry.  Instead you decide to try eating at the Cappuccino Bar that is nearby.  It takes a few minutes of circling the neighborhood to find a parking place, but a good one is available across the street.  On the walk across the street, you are approached by another boy selling phone cards and a man selling books about Africa in French.

As you step into the restaurant, it is like entering another world - the European world.  The display case is filled with gorgeous French pastries and the waiters are all in matching black and white uniforms.  You are led to a large table and are given menus in French.  The food is safe to eat here, so your family chooses a pizza, vegetable soup, a chicken sandwich, and a chef salad for lunch.  The local friend who has joined you cannot find anything on this menu that he would like to eat.  You realize he would prefer rice and sauce to our Western options.

As you wait for the food, you are thinking about the large bottle of water that your family is sharing.  Thankful that it is safe, clean water and also realizing this bottle of water costs more than most people  spend to feed their entire family for one meal.  As you continue to wait for the food, you see the scrolling news on the television screen.  It is in French so all you can figure is something big is happening in Ukraine, and something big is happening in Malaysia.  You feel very disconnected with the world at large.  It reminds you how far you are from home.  As you continue to wait for the food some more, one of your children starts melting to the floor in hunger and exasperation, another child complains of being cold.  She is no longer accustomed to air conditioning, even though is is often over 100 degrees outside, she finds the restaurant uncomfortable.

After close to an hour of waiting for the food, it is delivered.  Barely a word is spoken as everyone gobbles down their excellent choices.

Upon leaving the restaurant, you are followed by an old beggar man and joined by the man whose job it is to see you safely off into the traffic, though you need no help at all on a Saturday afternoon at sieste.  You hand them each coins worth roughly a quarter, and again your heart breaks as you see the delight in their faces.

As you bump along home, you see a crowd gathered in the road and realize there has been a bad accident.  With the lack of efficient or sufficient medical care, wrecks are traumatic just to witness.  Your heart hurts as you drive by.

You pass a woman wearing all black, with nothing visible to the world but her eyes.  You pass other women with babies strapped to their backs and a boy asking for money to eat.  As you listen to "Jesus" music playing on the stereo of your nice new truck, you have a suspicion Jesus would identify himself more with those of their position than of yours.  You are thankful He called you still.

Soon, you are back at your own gate and the most joyful guard pulls it open and greets you warmly.  On this outing you have accomplished nothing more than feeding your family a very nice lunch, and yet you are exhausted to the core.  Each time you leave the house, you are witnessing poverty.  Not the theory of poverty, but the faces of poverty.  You want to do to others as you would have them do to you, and you want to go home, too.

A Bittersweet Road Trip

Our road trip was bitter for one reason: the purpose of the trip was to say goodbye to the Johnson family and to help them load their container bound for the US.  It seems brutally unfair that our time in country would overlap so very little.

The SWEET of the road trip was glorious, though.  I mean look at the smiles of these kids as they play with other missionary kids.  Oh, how I have missed that bubbling excitement......

We are also blessed by the opportunity to purchase some of the Johnson's household items.  We chose not to ship furniture and appliances from the States, but on my master planning/packing list I jotted down three items I wished we could bring, but that wouldn't fit in our luggage.  The three items were: a good piece of carpet, a keyboard, and a rocking chair.

Then I forgot about it.

Shortly before we left the States, the Johnsons sent an e-mail stating what they would be selling upon departure and we oh-so-enthusiastically committed to their soon-to-be abandoned goods. 

A couple weeks after that, we were doing our final packing in San Antonio using that master planning list when I noticed the three items I would miss without bringing a container.  When I realized we would be getting all three of those items from the Johnson family, I started crying so hard and so fast Philip thought I had bit my tongue.  Thank you, Lord, for answering prayers we didn't even know to ask.

So, last weekend we picked up those blessed items, plus their bed from the United States (yes!), a dresser, a wardrobe, and a saw.  Here we go loaded up again......the blue tarp is not to protect our new purchases from rain, but from the red dirt of the roads.....

The people group with whom they lived sent the Johnsons off well with hours and hours of singing and dancing.  It was a gift to us to sneak in on their farewell party, and we'll let you in on it, too.  Enjoy!  (Oh, by the way, the jingles on their waist are bottlecaps and the noisemakers on their ankles seem to be crushed tin cans.)

Coming Together

Today I was looking forward to a time I had set with my friend "the bleacher" (who washes and irons clothes) to walk around the neighborhood and learn some new things.  Well, of course, the never-ending checklist of truck errands needed my attention at the same time I had set with my friend, so I asked if he wanted to come along for a taxi ride and then return in our truck.  

Here is a picture of my friend, our taxi driver who is Rastafarian, and me.  Yes, that is a seashell at the end of one of his dreads.  No, we are not in Jamaica.  No, despite the look on my friend's face we are not about to have an accident.  Yes, I did learn a lot on that short drive!

After we picked up the truck, my friend wanted to take me to his home to meet his wife and daughter before our walk.  I was excited to do this since we've been so curious about where all these people live.  We drove into his neighborhood and had to back up once because the "road" (I use that term lightly) was too narrow for the truck to fit between the mud-brick walls.  We finally made it to his courtyard where he, his wife, daughter, and mother live.  The girl next to him in the picture is his niece whom he cares for since her mother died and her father cannot get a job.  All the bricks in the pile behind them he made by hand for the new house he is about to build for his little family.  It will feature one bedroom and a living room, which will be an upgrade from the one room structure in which they currently live.

This is millet hanging from the tree in their courtyard.  They grind the millet by hand and the resulting powder is on the tarp in the background.

 Inside his mother's house more millet and corn hang from the roof for future meals:

His wife was busy preparing their dinner, a portion of which she sent home with me for Sara and the kids.

By the time we visited with one of his brother's family, some of his friends, and headed back to our neighborhood it was already getting dark.  We postponed our walk so he could get back home, rest, and get ready to work his second job.  I am humbled by this hard working man, and his family's generosity toward us. 

Our truck paperwork is almost complete and, in the meantime, we are making friends.  It feels like things are coming together.

"My whole life I have been complaining that my work was constantly interrupted, 

until I discovered the interruptions were my work." 

 Henry Nouwen

Past Timbuktu

"When you have eaten and are satisfied, praise the Lord your God for the good land he has given you.  Be careful you do not forget the Lord your God." 

Deuteronomy 8:10-11

You better believe we are not forgetting the Lord our God on this day.......the day we received our first care package! It wasn't the first care package shipped to us, but it's the first one to find us all 383 miles past Timbuktu!

I wish this box could tell us the journey it has been on the last six weeks......and why there are chicken feathers stuck to the side.

Pepperoni, craisins, and granola bars sure do make a rather exciting lunch.....all the more exciting for the simple fact that it means we have not fallen off the face of the earth! 

Packages CAN find us after all.  What a sweet day! 

Thank you, Abba Father.

GiGi's Home in Kentucky

When our house sold way-too-quickly last January, Philip's grandmother let us use her empty house as our Kentucky home anytime we were in the area.  Since her house had already been on the market for months, we knew it could sell at any time.

We had friends lined up to host us in the event her house sold, but it didn't.  We knew we could be inconvenienced when someone wanted to show the house while we stayed there, but never once did that happen.  For all those months it was our family's little country haven where we enjoyed the wood stove in the winter and the huge yard in the summer.  We always joked, "The house will sell as soon as we're done with it."

Would you believe THE DAY we flew out, Philip's grandmother received an offer on her house?  THE DAY.  After seventeen months on the market, it closed last Friday, selling exactly when we were done with it.

God makes us laugh sometimes.

Merry Christmas

For Christmas we promised Emily she could get matching skirts made for her and her Kirsten doll.  It took the sweet child all of five minutes in the market to find the fabric she wanted. Pink, of course!  The tailor we met in 2011, who is a believer, had her skirts ready in a matter of days.  The headband and the baby wrap.......those are Emily's own creations with the scrap material!  Was this girl made for Africa, or what?

Out of the Desert

We received a phone call this week that went a little something like this: "Look outside, you might see a camel walking down the street."  That's a first!

 Sure enough, at the little "boutique" where we buy bread, yogurt, matches, and Fanta was a man riding a camel.

We ditched all pretense of not being American tourists and went tearing through the house grabbing cameras and yelling at the kids: "Get your shoes on!  Hurry, go outside!  Now!  There's a camel outside!  A CAMEL!"

The camel man must have noticed our commotion because he came over to us!

I'm not sure who had a better time: us seeing the camel or the neighborhood seeing us see the camel.

 The man was extremely nice and let the kids pet his camel.  Through the guard we learned that the man had been riding the camel for four days from the desert.

 Won't it be cool for Bible stories to start coming to life for our kids as they grow up in a place where women go to the well for water and travelers use camels for transportation?