Why So Busy?

You can count on this blog being informative because our last few weeks have been so busy that we’re just now getting around to writing about our adventures.

If our curriculum work was “Oregon Trail”, the pace would be “breakneck” (and people would be dying of dysentary). The English version is entirely finished and Brandon is working with Hannah’s French teacher on finishing up the French version. At our last (you read that right, keep reading…) Leadership Group meeting on Monday, we hope to get feedback on the overall format and a few key portions of the 40 page curriculum. 

Right before our trip to Paris there was an Evangelism Campaign in Kankan. It was organized by Guineans with a special guest speaker from Sweden. We were happy to see Hannah's French teacher translate from English to French and another member of our Leadership Groups translate from French into Maninka!

The weather has been changing. We were a little surprised to return from Paris and find it even hotter than when we left. For several nights in a row it was 95 degrees in our room at bedtime. We’ve benefited from a few small rains but mostly we’ve gotten the clouds or edges of storms headed in other directions. Although we welcome the relief of shade, our solar powered house has been suffering because of it. 

If you have solar panels on your house in the US but don’t have batteries, you aren’t actually off the grid. Most people receive their power from the utility company at an enormous discount due to the solar power they sell back to the utility company. Solar panels are a great way to use the sun’s renewable energy, but they can rarely provide the “oomph” we need to run things like microwaves and hair dryers.

At over 5 years old, our house batteries and fridge batteries are on their last legs. The fridge has been working overtime to stay at 60 degrees (barely below some AC levels!) in such a warm house and the batteries are barely making it through each night. The occasional cloudy day has necessitated the first running of the generator since we got here. We ran a 3 day regiment of 1 hour charging sessions before sunup in order to boost the batteries.

However, without electricity to run our fans, we moved outside for several nights. We renamed our “mosquito net” a “scorpion net”. This was also the first time we’ve used a net since arriving here. 

The delay in the heavy rains that we love so much has allowed the well-digging at the Center to begin again. The water table has dropped far enough that guys can shovel into the bucket and pull it up by hand. Talk about slow going…and biceps.

Katie and Kelsey (our roommates) shared a room to make space for a few nights while we hosted a missionary couple from CMA Canada (the Ibsens) who are showing their interns around Upper Guinea. We’re one big happy family.

Brandon has also had to buy new soccer shoes since his “Drogbas” finally broke. He’s been playing with the church team a couple times a week. They’re currently in a “maracana” (small field and tiny goals that require direct divine intervention to score on) tournament and have qualified for the semi-finals. New gravel burns and blisters serve as souvenirs.

We also celebrated our second Easter here. Being almost a full month later than last year, the 4 1/2 hour long (on the dot) service was exceptionally warm. It was 105 in the shaded canopy outside where we sat. The Heat Index pushed just over 125. So despite the occasion being to celebrate Jesus rescuing us to an eternity in Heaven, it felt (in one way) a little closer to Hell.

Keep reading the blog… although we leave Kankan May 4th we still have a bit more time left in Africa and we can’t wait to share our plans for that with you all!

A bientôt! 

How we ate and bled our way through Paris

As promised, this blog will be heavy on the pictures: we were recently able to spend a long weekend in Paris. It did not go as planned but we were able to spend a few days with a family studying French before moving to Senegal to do some pastoral training. We'll give you the highlights in no particular order.

 Bridge near the Military Museum and Palaces.

 We really enjoyed the architecture. This was near one of our train stops, Chatelet des Halles.

We took a walk down Champs Elysees starting at the the Arch of Triumph. There was McDonalds and Starbucks and yes, that black car IS covered in velvet.

Obviously, the Eiffel Tower. We walked about 10 miles on Saturday and ate a lot of delicious crepes.

We came back at night to se the Tower all lit up. It was definitely worth it. The Eiffel tower now "sparkles" for the first 5 minutes of ever hour.

We spent a morning in the Louvre which was enormous. If you were in there 24/7 and looked at each work of art for only ten seconds it would take 6 weeks to get through. We did see the Mona Lisa. Spoiler Alert: it's an 8x10.

 Again, beautiful architecture and the weather was fresh-in the high 60's which was a welcome break from the heat for us.

We even met a man from Dakar, Senegal selling Eiffel Tower keychains. He understood my Wolof. 

The bridge near Notre Dame (while there, you have to pronounce it correctly). Traditionally, when someone gets engaged here, the couple puts a padlock on the bridge and throws the key into the Seine. 

The Luxembourg Gardens 

We spent a good chunk of time on the RER subway system. We saw some tough guys working out along the river which reminded us of our Weightlift-a-thon...Also, cops on rollerblades. 

The Notre Dame Cathedral was one of our favorites. The builder started a project that took 190 years to build. What a visionary! And people have been worshipping in this building for 850 years!

We also walked our (literally) bloody feet to the Musee d'Orsay where there was a big Van Gogh display.

 We enjoyed the outdoor market shops all over: bakeries, pastry shops, cheese shops, veggie stands, nutella crepes. We ate our way through the city!

A few other things you should know:

Thanks to your faithfulness our account is full enough for us to finish out the month of April and start working our way home. We're aiming to be back by June 1, details forthcoming.

The Ebola Virus epidemic in Guinea has pushed Senegal to close their border with Guinea. Although this does not effect us directly, if Mali closes their border with Guinea, we will have a hard time getting out of here. Most of the cases remain about 200 miles south of us. Pray that we will still have the ability to leave Guinea when the time comes!

To give you some perspective on Ebola, we'll give you a little reading on some"Flu Facts" as everyone is supposedly well-versed in how dangerous the flu is in the US. Keep in mind that Ebola kills 90% of its victims regardless of age. Keep the people of Guinea in prayer too as they fight against this disease, and for the people who have lost many family members to the disease. 

Community

One of the things we have observed and truly admire about Guinean culture is the depth of the sense of community. We’re going to share a few unusual places where we’ve seen community manifested while being here. 

You’ve probably heard about the extension of the African family unit. Someone’s relation to you is basically upgraded at least one step higher than how we describe relations in America: an uncle is called your father, a cousin (or even close friend) is your brother or sister, etc. This is how you see these people and how you introduce them. 

I think in our Western search for clarity, we both hate the fluidity of this idea but love the specific meaning it allows us to apply to people close to us. When someone we went to college with makes it big, we use the same word to describe them as we use for someone we’ve roomed with, laughed and cried with, vacationed with, and fought with: friend. Or how often have your heard someone describe their cousin as “more like a sister/brother”?

The second place we see radical community in is closely related. Due to the absence of a formal social security, retirement fund, life/health insurance system here, Guineans use a (perhaps more Biblical) very reliable, informal system: the family. When you don’t have money for an operation, you ask family members instead of depending on insurance, knowing that they’ll be asking you at some point as well. Or when your “mother” and “father” get old, you help feed, house, and care for them just as when you get old, your “children” and “brothers and sisters” will do the same for you.

Part of this may be a necessity in a culture where most people live on the edge day to day. And although there are opportunities for people to abuse the system and mooch, as long as almost everyone is committed to the system (and most are) it works beautifully. The relational servanthood may be a little closer to God’s heart than the American independent, DIY, earning rewards.

People often accuse Africans of being poor planners (in fact, part of our ministry is to help improve Guineans’ ability to plan businesses), but we recently had an experience that showed us the reality of what we call “poor planning”. 

We brought cold medicine with us when we came even though the weather is never cold here (94 inside our room at bedtime last night), the rare cold can knock you down for a few days. With limited suitcase space and not expecting to deal with colds as much as malaria and the ebola virus (in case you haven't heard about the Ebola Outbreak in Guinea) we only brought a little. The girls that moved in with us in January did the same since we warned them that cold medicine is not available here. But I got sick one more time than we expected so naturally I asked Kelsey (Read Kelsey's Blog) for some of her medicine which she of course agreed to share with me. Suddenly I realized that if Kelsey gets sick, she’ll have to use Katie’s medicine and if Katie gets sick, everyone will tell her she should have planned better or “saved for the future”. 

This experience brought a new dimension to how we might advise people to plan ahead in business. In Luke 14:28-31 Jesus encourages us to “count the cost” before building a tower or going to war. But in Luke 3:11 He tells those of us with two coats to share with him who has none-and to do the same with food. Furthermore, Matthew 5:40-42 says we should also give our coat to anyone who asks for our tunic, give to those who beg and not refuse those who wish to borrow from us. Sounds a lot like Africa to me.

We also found community in business. We wrote a while ago about our confusion at why multiple people would set up onion stands right next to each other (Read it HERE). While in Conakry, a Ghanaian man explained how Fulani people do business and through that we learned a new level of depth to community. He told us that after a long learning process and apprenticeship, a father will finally allow his son to open his own shop-right next to his father’s. The idea being that it doesn’t matter which guy you buy from, the money will stay in the family, PLUS you’ve doubled your client base. 

I’ve often wondered why vendors will give money to someone else to give change. when your margins are slim, how can you give someone money to use as change? Because they’ll give when you ask and no one keeps trap.

There’s an intersection on SR19 in Elkhart, Indiana where there are two Speedway gas stations kitty corner from each other. I always thought that was dumb. They should spread out and get more customers. But the reality is that it doesn’t matter which direction you’re driving at that intersection, Speedway is easy to pull into and Speedway gets the money either way. Plus, they aren’t competing with BP or Marathon right there.

Similarly, it seems TV stations are always competing for our attention, but it doesn’t matter if you’re watching MTV, VH1, CMT, or BET, you’re watching a Viacom station (You should see what other media Viacom owns).

We’ve even found community in traffic. More than I do now, I used to get really irritated at drivers (particularly motos) who would turn through an intersection or out of a driveway without even looking. In America, that says, “I’m more important than you so I can do what I want, you just have to get out of my way.” This invariably leads to increased heart rate, loud honks, inappropriate gestures, and the occasional violent outburst. Here, I noticed no one ever seems upset when they get cut off. They just see it as an opportunity to be hospitable and help someone get safely to their destination, knowing soon they will be the ones making that turn and someone will help them out too. 

I mean, it does seem a little narcissistic, egotistical, selfish and maybe not servant-like or Christ-like to let someone have it for an inconsiderate maneuver that set us 3 seconds behind schedule. If a lady was carrying too many groceries to her car, we’d offer to help, right? That guy needs help merging into traffic. Maybe. 

Lastly, in airport we recently saw Muslims gathering at the complimentary Mecca-facing prayer mats at prayer time. Total strangers from different countries would greet each other, wash, and pray together. The structured Islamic faith actually fits perfectly into the community culture here. But the freedom Christ has given us to pray anytime, to spend time with him rather than to earn something makes us look pretty independent and is therefore seems to be a major obstacle to Christianity taking hold here. Islam is an excuse for community but Christianity isn’t. Doesn’t it seem like maybe we’re doing something wrong?

A lot of the community aspects we’ve seen here seem to be things the church could (or maybe should) be doing in America and we plan to start with “the man in the mirror” (Michael Jackson).

Although this post was only “click-friendly” and heavy on dialogue, our next one will be very “photo friendly”.