mmm-BELLY-may Days

Back to school with Barakisu

Meet Barakisu.  Her name means "blessed."  She's one of the volunteers on the mmm-BELLY-may storycrafting team, pictured here getting her certificate after a training session.  Even though she's a full-time student, she works hard with me to craft Biblically accurate stories into her heart language.  I haven't asked her, but I'll bet she tells them to her mother, who is blind.

The Saturday last year when I took the second picture, we were the first to arrive for a storycrafting work day, so I got to chat with her. 

Being a teacher, I asked her about school.  Being a teacher, I was horrified to find out that out of the 7 or so subjects she was taking, she could only rent textbooks for 2 subjects that she would be tested on, and she had to share those with two other people.

Of course I bought her books and a dictionary.  Her pastor, who is shaking her hand in the top photo, told her that she needed to organize her class of 50 into study groups so that everyone could benefit from the textbooks.  She did.

After tests kind of like midterm exams, she came and told me that she passed, as well as 23 other people in her class.

The other classes only had 5 or 6 out of 50 pass.

I asked her pastor how it was that she was lucky enough to be in the most hardworking class that did the best on the tests.  Pastor Olivier looked at me like I was kind of dense and said, "It was the books."

One set of textbooks shared among 50 kids more than quadrupled the pass rate.  Priceless.

 

Am I one of the crowd?

The crowd says:

Poverty is for losers, because they have nothing worth offering.

Mourning is for losers, because they will be left out of the in-crowd.

Kindness is for losers, because they will be shoved aside.

Being hungry and thirsty for righteousness is for losers, because ‘might is right’ and money makes the world go round.

Compassion is for losers, because only the fittest survive.

Integrity is for losers, because they will be taken for a ride.

Peacemaking is for losers, because they will be caught in the crossfire.

Being persecuted for doing right is for losers, because in the end it’s all in vain.

When Jesus saw the crowds, he went up on the side of a mountain and sat down. Jesus' disciples gathered around him,and he taught them:

   God blesses those people who depend only on him.

   They belong to the kingdom of heaven!

   God blesses those people who grieve.

   They will find comfort!

   God blesses those people who are humble.

   The earth will belong to them!

   God blesses those people who want to obey him more than to eat or drink.

   They will be given what they want!

   God blesses those people who are merciful.

   They will be treated with mercy!

   God blesses those people whose hearts are pure.

   They will see him!

   God blesses those people who make peace.

   They will be called his children!

   God blesses those people who are treated badly for doing right.

   They belong to the kingdom of heaven.

God will bless you when people insult you, mistreat you, and tell all kinds of evil lies about you because of me. Be happy and excited! You will have a great reward in heaven. People did these same things to the prophets who lived long ago.

(HT: Fritz Goerling)

Corded

Living in another culture means always having to wonder if I really know what's going on, no matter how well I speak the language.

We're building a little shelter (read as, I am watching people build a little shelter) in my front yard.  On market day, I was sent to buy some cord.  Ok, cord.  I know what that is, brightly colored plastic stuff.

Except I never really entirely know what anything is.  So, since market day comes around only once a week, and I was in a hurry to get this thing at least placed before I had to leave for the States, I asked a friend to help me buy the cord we needed.  Not green plastic stuff at all.  Here's a picture of what it was used for, pretty cool.

Overflowing

So, three days before I left Africa for my little sojourn in the States, I noticed that the batteries on my solar power system weren't holding a charge as well as usual.   I concluded that in order to fix this I would have to...

DUM DA DUM DUM

touch the batteries.

True confession-I don't like touching car batteries.  There's acid in them.  There could be acid on them!  I could touch acid, and then touch my clothes or my eyes or my cat...not much good comes of touching the batteries.

So.  I go to unscrew the little cap on one of the cells to see if I need to add distilled water.  As you can see, the battery is filthy, because dusting it would involve touching it. 

Apparently I haven't looked at my battery either, because there was this little sticker on the cap, in English even.  Oops.

So, I take off all the little stickers, and start merrily topping up the distilled water in the batteries.  I have two sets of batteries-one on a table in my office next to all of my computer equipment and language materials, and the other on my kitchen floor.  I'm a little paranoid about the acid (big surprise) while I'm filling the ones on the kitchen floor, because I notice my eyes stinging.  Turns out it was sweat dripping into my eyes, and not horribly toxic and dangerous and nasty acid fumes.  I hurried up and finished my little filling job.

I'm really glad that I overfilled the batteries on the kitchen floor and not the ones in my office. 

Note to self:

If you put too much water in a battery, it overflows. 

A lot. 

Of acid. 

Everywhere. 

Thankfully, no damage was done, and the cement floor around the batteries and out my back door has never been cleaner. 

What it's like where I live in Africa

The village in this article is about 6 hours from where I live, in a neighboring country.  It's a little hotter and drier than mmm-BELLY-may land, but the situation is much the same.

Read the whole article or watch the video by clicking here.

HT: Ben Byerly's blog

In Africa, One Family's Struggle With the Global Food Crisis

Video

Ruth Bamago's Struggle

Ruth Bamago, who lives in Burkina Faso, is like many African women, who aid workers say suffer disproportionately in the global food crisis.

» LAUNCH VIDEO PLAYER

By Kevin Sullivan

Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, July 20, 2008; 6:23 PM

LOUDA, Burkina Faso -- All day, Ruth Bamogo hacked at the ground with an iron hoe, trying to coax sorghum out of the hard, red dirt.

This Story

• In Africa, One Family's Struggle With the Global Food Crisis
• Field Notes: In Burkina Faso, Running Afoul of Mr. X
• Follow Kevin Sullivan on Facebook
• Find the World Desk on Facebook
• Ruth Bamago's Struggle
• Coping in the Countryside

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Finally exhausted, with the temperature still over 90 degrees in the dying afternoon light, Bamogo strapped her 4-year-old son onto her back with a bright pink cloth and started the one-mile walk home.

But at the edge of the field, she suddenly started grabbing at low-hanging tree leaves. She stripped branches bare, collecting the coarse leaves with her bare hands.

A year ago, this tree was shade. But now, with even basic foods suddenly too expensive to feed her six children, it is food. The leaves taste awful, she said, but they are free -- one small advantage of living in the countryside.

Bamogo carried the leaves home on foot; her husband rode a bike.

She looked older than her 42 years. Her face and arms seemed far too thin; she said she's lost 10 to 20 pounds in the last year, because there isn't enough food for everyone, and she eats last.

"I don't want my children to cry," she said. "So I take care of them first."

Women are suffering disproportionately in the world's worst food crisis in a generation, according to aid workers studying impacts in developing nations.

In this poor West African nation, as in much of the developing world, women are responsible for feeding their families. They grow, buy and cook food. But at mealtime, men and children eat first and women eat whatever is left.

But when food suddenly becomes more expensive and scarcer, there is less leftover. And aid workers said they are seeing that women are the first to suffer.

Life for women in the capital, Ouagadougou, is harsher lately because all their food comes from markets, where prices have risen sharply. But in rural villages like this one, 60 miles north in the countryside, the problem is also acute, but different.

Here, there are virtually no jobs, and women must feed their families -- and themselves -- with whatever the ground gives them.

Read the rest of the article here.  There are some interesting details in the written version that aren't in the video.

I love the internet

I love email too.  It's a great way to keep in touch, get pictures of adorable nieces, keep up my stock of spam...

Two months ago I was down to 99 emails to deal with in my inbox.  Today I was back up to 285, but now I'm down to...wait for it...

zero emails in my inbox!

OK, so my new DMZ folder has 230 emails in it, but I have a fresh start, thanks to a great idea from a blog.  I love blogs too.  And pepperoni pizza.  Which I am going to go eat right now, while admiring my empty inbox.  Gosh, it's gorgeous.

Tchotchke

I have a collection of these cans stocked full of diesel, because sometimes it's not available where I live in West Africa, like right now.  They are not cute.  They're greasy, because I usually spill diesel down the can, unless I'm cleverly siphoning it.  They're rusty, and my kittens liked to use them before they were litter trained.  These are not cute cans.  I don't like to look at them, much less touch them, any more than I have to.

Imagine my surprise and delight when I found this tiny treasure at my church garage sale.  A cute little ceramic jerrican, for only 25 cents!  A veritable tchotchke, as I like to call knicknacks, being a linguist who's watched too many home decorating shows lately.

Yes, I am indeed going to use up some of my precious and ever shrinking luggage allowance to haul this thing back to Africa with me in a couple of months.  Such a deal!

Where's the diesel?

Today it seems like it's not too bad to be in the States for a while instead of West Africa.

This is yesterday's post from great friends of mine who live about 20 miles from me, in the town where I get my diesel.

I’m including a picture of some of the most important vendors in northern Benin – the fuel “re-sellers.” They buy fuel in Togo or Nigeria, transport it in large 55-gallon drums and then re-sell the fuel (gas, diesel and oil) in glass liter bottles. Buying 30+ liters for the truck can sometimes be a 20-minute venture. For the past month or so there has been no diesel available at the gas stations (2) in our town or the town 30-minutes south of us. In order to keep truckin’ we go to our friendly and exorbitantly priced fuel re-sellers.

In the last few days it has only gotten better. Now that there is no diesel, the supplies of the local electric company for their diesel generators have been used up (I think an enterprising employee may have also been aiding & abetting the fuel re-sellers by selling the power company’s diesel.) So now we have electricity in our region for about 8 hours a day –usually at night. At least it is rainy season so the food in our refrigerator & freezer are surviving. It is ironic to us that now our nearly completed house in the bush has a better electrical supply than our house here in town.

http://theministryofjesus.com/blog/

Am I pickle relish?

Last week I was at Cornerstone music festival talking about storying in Africa and other good stuff, and meeting interesting people.  Very interesting people.

Garage sale joy

The past two weeks I've been sorting through stuff at my parents' house to donate to a garage sale.  It was great to have that as a deadline to make me get it done.

Going through Christmas ornaments and things my sister and I used to play with was a little hard.  That's where my garage sale girlfriends stepped in and made my life a lot better.

Sue helped me price the ornaments..She admired them one last time with me, and liked some of them so much that she took them home to put on her tree come Christmas.

Ann bought the tiger toy chest, not even knowing it was what my sister and I played on and in while we were growing up.  Someone liked the tiger toy chest with the cool plastic whiskers that are miraculously still there after more than 30 years of love and tugging. Even though we got green paint on the front of it and red paint on the top of it.  Someone else liked the tiger toy chest!

Seeing our treasures go to people that I know made letting go of them so much more bearable.  Having friends to be with me and get me and what I'm experiencing makes life so much better.  Thanks.