Villages

So I think it’s about time for an update again.

There is another team coming in Saturday night (same flight as I came in, hopefully they won’t be delayed though...). I think it is a team of four people. We’re going to be going to a couple of villages with a clinic and doing medical stuff and Operation christmas Child (which apparently, even though we only send these boxes out of the US at Christmas, they are given out year round, so that will be fun. Although Tim said that we only have girl boxes, so that will make it interesting).

 

Anyway, today I went with Tim and Pastor Jacob and Mamma Jennine to go to two of these villages to sort of scout things our and arrange everything with the churches there and the chiefs (the French word is “chef” though (no idea how that’s spelled, but it sounds like “chef”) so it sounds like we’re talking about meeting up with head cooks all day. I think that’s funny, which is a little 4^th grade of me, but that’s fine.).

 

We set out early-ish at 8:30 and picked up Pastor Jacob and Mamma Jennine in town somewhere ( I don’t really know my way around and nothing here seems to have names, I think maybe it was in Zion, but don’t hold me to that, and it doesn’t matter, because none of you know where that is anyway).

 

We headed off to the first village to meet up with the Alliance pastor there. I learned on the way home that Pastor Daniel and his wife are Cameroonae. They came here and they were Muslim and Pastor Daniel didn’t have a trade so he told people he was a carpenter till he got a job and then he learned how to be a carpenter. At somepoint they became Christians though and now he’s the pastor of this church in a village about 30 minutes from here.

Pastor Daniel wasn’t at his house, so we headed towards an annex (it’s basically an offshoot of his church, but it’s not an official church until it meets some requirement that I can’t quite remember and then it gets its own pastor) where he was doing communion.

We drove on this crazy road. Road is generous. It was more like a hiking path that we somehow got the truck along. I believe I have a picture. Let me get my camera and make this a nice photodocumented post...

So, incidentally, this picture doesn't really do justice to what most of the road was like. But it's something. This road was insane. My favorite part was when the road looked about 5 feet wide, but there was a huge whole on the edge leading to a bit of a drop off, so it was more like 3 or 4 feet wide where the hole was. Somehow we didn’t slip off the road and roll down the hill. I’m not sure how. But I prayed alot. So maybe it was a miracle. It looked rather like it would require one. I felt pretty certain at this point that at least one person was going to wind up seriously maimed or dead. But I was wrong (there, I just took all the suspense out of my story...)

 We got up to where the Anex was and they were in the middle (or maybe the beginning) of the service. So we all sat down. I don't know what they were saying really, but Pastor Daniel would say something and then a lady would translate it (I think that's what she was doing) into something else. Although, they all seemed to speak French after the service. I'll have to ask about that.

They introduced us, and sang a welcome song where they say "samba" and you hug a lot of people. 

 We had communion too, and they must not have grape juice because it was red soda. Which was not quite what I expected. But, as I am in learning, when you are in Africa, you really just have to improvise a lot.

After the service, there was a lot of talking and then a lot of driving as we searched for the Chef. It seems that no one was quite sure who was the Chef, so we would go one place only to hear that it was someone else Eventually we found her. Everyone laughed a lot at one point, and Tim explained afterwards to me that Mamma Jennine had commented on how it was good that Chef Yvonne came back early from the plantation so we could talk to her, and she said that it would have been alright because her secretary is there (who was her husband). So he replied that she may be Chef of the whole village but he was chef of their property and everyone thought this was hysterical.

After this they offered to feed us lunch. So I had my first thoroughly African meal. We had Turkey, and then some other meat. Tim said it was like porcupine at the time, and then he said it was what they call a "palm tree rat" but that it wasn't really a rat. It wasn't my favorite. But it was an experience, and I ate everything I put on my plate. They also had manioc, both the root which is this white potato like thing, and the leaves, which are kinda like steamed spinach, except it doesn't taste anything like spinach really. There was also some plantain dish. This looked like cornbread and somehow managed to taste like nothing at all. So it was good. 

Before we went into have lunch, a lady was telling us something about an elephant I think. Because Tim told me they had elephants around. We didn't see any, I kept an eye out though. She made really funny noises and was swinging her arms around. I have no idea what happened in her story, but it was really fun to hear even though I have no clue what she said.

I think the order in my story might be messed up a little, I can't remember exactly how everything happened, because I tended to not really know what was going on when it was happening. I'd figure it out or ask later. 

We went back to where Pastor Daniel lived and he showed us the new church building they are building. It's big. I think he wanted me to take pictures, because he kept making picture taking hand gestures, so I happen to have some pictures of the church and the people with us.

So here you can see the church and: Pastor Daniel's wife(with the red umbrella) I don't know her name, I think it was Bernadette or something like that, but I'm not positive. Then in the checked shirt is Pastor Daniel. Mamma Jeanine is in the denim dress and then Pastor Jacob is in the brown tee shirt.

When we were in this village we looked at the River too, because they like to see what their water sources and such are like to see things that may be making them sick. Anyway, over the river was a bridge they had made of logs that were laid across it and then had dirt on top of them. I took a picture of that too. It seemed really sturdy. I think if tim had told me what it was before I walked on it I might've been a bit more reluctant to venture out on it. Luckily, I generally do and eat things here before knowing anything about it. 

Here is the river, I think it is rather pretty. The little white dot towards the center back (just above the log) is a person fishing.

And here's the bridge, not a particularly great shot, because generally you need to see the whole surroundings to figure out what is going on, but you can't really do that in a picture, or at least I haven't managed it.  Anyway, you can see that log on the right, well next to that is a drop off, with the river below it. So it's logs like that, laid across (up high though, the river is a ways down, the river picture is from the bridge, so that should give an idea of the height of the bridge) with dirt packed on top of it.

After that village we went to the next. I discovered that you shouldn't drink liquid when you're out because then you have to go to the bathroom and there aren't bathrooms, just people and houses around, so that's an unpleasant situation. It turned out alright, I only had to wait about 3 hours till we got home...

But we drove to the other village after dropping off Pastor Daniel and his wife and looking at their new partial church building.

First we found some Christians and we looked at the church and they figured out how to fit a general clinic and then an eye clinic into the space. Then we went to the Chef's.  You have to go clear everything with the chef because they like everything to be official. Tim said you could just go and eventually convince them to let you do the clinic but it would offend people, and that would not really help. So  we went and talked to the Chef. She had us come in and we sat down, and out from the sofa runs a huge spider. It ran under the table and I don't think anyone else could see it, so I watched it and tried not to jump up and squeal. There is a lot of stuff like that here where you just kinda have to bite your tongue and try to smile.  At another persons house I watched all these little red bug bites appear on my feet and arms while trying to look polite and not just horrified.

This stuff doesn't bother me too much, but it is different. Plus, I have plenty of time to look around for spiders and bug bites when we're at people's houses because I can never understand much of what's going on (especially when it's official talk or church related...so most of the time). So I eventually zone out or get distracted by other stuff. 

Alright, well tomorrow we're going to go look at stuff that the American embassy is selling in an Auction Saturday and I think we're going grocery shopping for the incoming team and then going to the Solvigs. 

The team comes in Saturday night and I think it will be pretty busy thereafter, but I will post whenever I get a chance again!

Jessica