GIVINGTHANKS when it's tough

Yesterday was a tough day. I woke up early (not my thing) to find out that my guard had somehow locked me in the courtyard. I climbed the 9 foot wall over the steel-spiked gate to ride on the back of a motorcycle to a prayer meeting. The setting, beautiful: overlooking the river. The focus, tragic: after 90 years of ministry focus with an unreached people group, it seems our generation is still being asked to clear rocks out of the field-the seeds haven’t really been planted, much less harvested.

I got back to the house and took Hannah next door to a missionary nurse to have a look at a bump on her side that’s been giving her constant pain for over 4 days. It IS a bump and she DOES have cancer history on both sides of her family so I don’t feel like a hypochondriac. It’s about a 6 hour, $200 ride to a hospital with an MRI and it’s in a different country. The car we would need to take has been trying to overheat despite my very diligent radiator monitoring. Sidenote, the nurse didn’t have much to go on so we didn’t really get an answer. 

At 11:00 I rode my bike about 4 miles across town in my jeans to give said car a break. Plus the trip costs about $5 round trip. So I gratefully accepted the dry 90’s heat in place of the muggy 100’s that awaits us in March. I spent about an hour try to fix a printer problem (I’m far from a technician) but the blue and black ink refuse to flow consistently. 

The printer was bought on CraigsList and carried in a Hager box stuffed with boxers through 4 airports in 3 countries before it started the bumpy 6 hour ride to Kankan. So maybe it doesn’t owe me much, but it DID work perfectly the day BEFORE we announced the business was ready to go. 

Ready to re-enact a certain scene from “Office Space”, I rode home- away from the river, so uphill. I stopped and bought bread, and after dodging a (very small) rock a kid threw at the “toubabou” I got home for lunch: A tomato on bread, plus mayo. My 22nd loaf of bread this month. 

After lunch I decided not to set the Solar Shower bag in the sun- a cold shower later would feel nice, I’d be sweaty. I got back on the bike and rode around a nearby neighborhood for 40 minutes trying to find another nurse’s house. I’d only been there once before so I had to turn around a lot which drew extra stares. Like a circus monkey on a bike. Some days the stares and chants wear on me more than others. Today was one of those days. 

Finally found the right house and headed for home trying to remember how I got there. Topped off the radiator and a grimacing Hannah got in the passenger seat. After a prognosis of “maybe an inflamed nerve, try Ibuprofen”, I inched the car home wondering if anyone recognized me as the bike-monkey from earlier.

At home, I can get out of my shoes, socks, jeans and shirt in about 15 seconds and I do almost every time I close the door behind me. I decided to see if I could send and receive emails. 

Our internet wasn’t working last week, but I think I figured it out Sunday and bought 5 hours worth of time as a test. In the past 3 days, we had used 1:04.52 and it turns out that’s all my $6 was gonna be good for. So much for that money I saved riding across town.

Normally, this would be a run-of-the-mill inconvenience but through time zone and internet delay, I just found out my dad had a heart attack Sunday night. I was hoping for a little more info. The rest of my family will make it to Maine to spend Thanksgiving together, I’m just hoping for enough internet to find out what’s going on. 

Especially since we’ve been planning a family Christmas vacation (all four boys and the two “new” wives) to Cote d’Ivoire: Hannah’s never been there. And because of the civil war and second evacuation this would be the first time in 10 years my family would be all together in the place I most often call “home”. Looks like that might be on hold now too.

No internet, back on the bike to the Areeba store. I explain that my 30 hours of internet didn’t last 8 hours and my 5 hours barely made it 1. I am told that if I disconnect the internet thumb drive before clicking “Disconnect” it stays connected. “I choose to remain dubious” (-Ghost and the Darkness) but have no choice. 

Butt, meet bike seat. Oh, you’ve already met. Gotta buy phone credit now to try the new internet solution. The phone credit guys all tell me the same thing: “You gotta get rid of Areeba, they’re thieves. You need Orange.” “Good idea. Maybe I’ll try that”. I already know that Orange is not compatible with our Mac. I think we over-updated or something. They tell me the Areeba lady must be crazy because of course it doesn’t stay connected when you remove the thumb drive. Great. I buy another $5 of time and since it’s dusk, bike home. I arrive smelling like sweat, exhaust, and cooking fire smoke. I slowly realize what an awful day it’s been. 

Then...

I hear my neighbors. Pretty easy because people basically live outside here.

Most of them were up before me, even today and don’t have guards or gates. Most are sharing a home with extended family. Many of them are plugging faithfully away at a job with a barely sustainable future. And even MORE faithfully, they’re responding to the Muslim call to prayer and totally missing out on the grace and rescue Christ brought us. Tragic.

Most of my neighbors do not have cars. (Some do. Some are much wealthier than we are). Most of them might struggle to find a nurse. If they found one could they afford it? Family medical history? Good one.

The AVERAGE Guinean seems to own their own business. Not quite as lucrative as you may think, but there IS a lot of freedom in that. The constant battle to keep something going when it seems to fail inconveniently is just life. Also, CragisList- not real big here.

Eating a (meatless, cheeseless) sandwich for 3+ weeks straight? You eat what’s in season when it’s in season. When it’s out, you eat the other stuff in season. There ISN’T a stashed jar of homemade strawberry jam to satisfy a craving.

It would not be inconceivable for all of my neighbors to die never having had a hot shower. Hot bucket bath, sure, but not a single hot shower? It could happen. And I suppose I’ve been trained what to yell every time Neil Diamond sings, “Good times never seemed so good.....” so the chants are really just a product of culture.

One of the nurses we saw had told us that when they ask people if they’ve been taking medication for ailments they say “yeah, the red ones and the brown ones”- often Asian knock-offs or maybe even placebos. Sometimes the red ones are iron pills sometimes Sudafed. So I guess that 500ct bottle of Ibuprofen is a real luxury for this neighborhood.

I guess I’m even a lucky “displaced person”. I got out of that war pretty cleanly compared to most. Then I realized that even though my dad is in his fifties, he has exceeded my neighbors’ life expectancy significantly. Yikes. And I’m not even sure how many hospitals are within 6 hours of him right now.

Most of my neighbors have (multiple) cell phones and many of them are smart phones. But buying internet to check email or texts or Twitter? To blog for people thousands of miles away? People who support you and believe in you? People who will give you an American job, watch your dog while you’re gone, check your mail for you and try to send you concert clips to keep you connected? People who could bring you home with a few mouse clicks? People who miss you? People who pray for you? People who care about your neighbors enough to pay for you to come try help people show them something new? Probably not that kind of internet.

So you know what? I struggle most days over who’s doing it right. The lonely, spoiled, rich, educated, convenient, democratic Americans or the community fueled, optimistic, surviving, knowledge-thirsty, HARD-working Guineans in my neighborhood. At the river this morning I remember something that brought me my answer: 

Neither. The WHOLE world is broken. Ruined. Everyone is trying to get by because this isn’t how God wanted it. But He’s gonna fix it and it’s gonna be literally (that word is sacred to me) perfect. And I’m gonna be there to see it and I really, really want my neighbors to be there too. And that’s why this wasn’t such a bad day at all. Yeah, life is really hard here for us. We didn’t choose this as a vacation, we chose it because we feel God asked us to.

As I look around, I guess there are plenty of things I can be GIVINGTHANKS for...besides Fanta Cocktail (the truck came in).

Psalm 30:5 “Weeping may remain for a night, but rejoicing comes in the morning.”

Grocery Shopping in Guinea

You’ve never really experienced grocery shopping until you’ve had to do it in an African open-air market!

I believe we’ve shared about the market and food here in Guinea before... but this time we have pictures! You’re really not supposed to take pictures in Kankan without some sort of written permission we’ve been told... but my husband is a rebel and is very sneaky. Thanks to bringing back a smart phone we don’t use in America because of a broken screen (yes it was me that clumsily dropped it!) Brandon was able to pretend like he was talking on the phone while snapping some candid shots of the market place in Kankan! (the things we do for our readership!)

This includes of course, some very disgusting pictures of how the meat is delivered to the market:

Yes, despite seeing that picture we still bought some beef, still cooked it, and still ate it!

Grocery shopping is a process: going from one vendor, to the next, to the next until you finally are able to cross off every item on your list (which in the end only costs you about $15!). We try to go to market only once a week and get all the fresh veggies, flour, sugar, milk and other assorted items we need for that week. Most of the Guineans go every day because there is no electricity, therefore no fridges. And in the spirit of Thanksgiving, this reminds me: I am SO thankful to have a fridge here!

There are stall after stall after stall of fresh bread, potatoes, onions, peppers, avocados, tomatoes, carrots, cucumbers, eggplant, squash, lettuce, eggs, cans of tomato paste and mayonnaise, flour piled high on a rickety table, sugar, and stacks of chicken, beef, shrimp and fish bouillon. I’ve yet to figure out the thought process behind vendors setting up next to someone who sells the exact same thing. There’s a whole street of dozens of women who sell just onions! I often wonder where the competitive edge is--how do they stand out from the lady next to them selling the very same onion?

And after a hot day of tramping through the market, shoulder to shoulder through crowded streets, smelling delightful smells like raw beef, fish ground into a fine powder and the general aroma of sweat, with everyone staring at us because it is painfully obvious we are not African, we finally get home... only to have to soak our veggies in bleach and water for some time before we can even eat them!

-Hannah

Yep, despite a brand new unmarked “speed mountain’s” best attempt to bust our axles and send us into the ditch, we drove the old potholed airport runway to our overgrown driveway. After arriving in Kankan we were reunited with the hospitality and caring that surrounds the mission community here. Getting in Sunday evening there was not a lot of time to think of preparing food and definitely no quick, pre-packaged food to buy or eat, so we were extremely pleased when we heard that different missionaries would be providing 5 meals for us this first week! So thoughtful and kind!

Despite having to leave our passports with a stranger and sneak through Senegalese immigration to recheck our bags, have our overweight fees (for the transfer airline) waived, and being taken into the airplane underbelly to verify that nothing was being smuggled in the soccer balls, all four bags survived the plane rides and “speed mountain”.

It turns out when you take 200 + pounds of luggage with you there is a lot of unpacking to be done! The printer, cheese powder and fans all made it safely. We’ve already re-wired the 12v fans we purchased in Elkhart (huge advantage to living near the RV capital of the world). Although the heat is not nearly as intense as you may remember us writing about in March. Still warm but we’ve been heading to bed at about 84 degrees and waking up at 79. 

We’ve mostly established ourselves in the same house we were in last time. We arranged bathmats, made beds, moved furniture built a spice rack, and found a home for our stuff. We were expecting to be sharing it with two Korean girls, but it turns out we’ll have it to ourselves for a while. 

As we prepared to rinse the traveling dust off our bodies and head to bed, we received our true “Bonne Arrivee”: no water. It seemed a much easier pill to swallow this time around as we bucket-bathed ourselves clean and headed to bed. The problem was easily solved the next morning. With the help of some gifts from friends and the Mishawaka hardware, we've got a solar heated shower now

We’re struggling to work out some internet kinks. It seems our Mac software was updated too much to be compatible with the best USB internet available here. The older company doesn’t require a download but the connection is poor so we may be walking to a nearby SIM office to buy some of their internet every few days.

We are definitely taking advantage of the fantastic French bread available here (as well as adopting Guinea’s high-carb diet): We’ve had sandwiches every day since the plane landed!

-Brandon

We've Made It!

There’s no doubt most of you have not lost any sleep over an absence of news about our recent travels (excluding of course, our parents... maybe!), but incase you have and need to sleep badly.... the good news is we made it!

After an hour or so from O’hare to Washington DC, eight hours from DC to Dakar, Senegal and two hours from there we made it.... to Bamako, Mali! After all that traveling we still had not made it to our final destination of Kankan, Guinea. 

We arrived in Bamako late morning on Thursday October 31st, which despite it being Halloween we did not see a single costume! :) We spent most of Thursday recovering from traveling and finding out when the Guinea Consulate was open so we could try to get our visas, hopefully before the weekend came. And (as an amazing answer to prayer... a huge thanks to everyone who prayed for this!), we were able to obtain the visa we needed to leave Mali and go to Guinea, without having to extend our stay in Mali! 

We loaded up on some supplies that are expensive in Guinea, or even non-existent, things like: toilet paper, canned goods, a stove lighter (this means I no longer have to worry I will singe my fingertips off when I light my stove by match!), cheese ($11 a pound!), ground beef (surprisingly, only $2.50... I expected it to cost much more!). We opted out of purchasing special K ($11 a box!)...besides we had two bags of lucky charms in our suitcases. You have to pack the essentials. 

We ate a lot of fruit that was in season; watermelons, guavas and I got to try a new one that the lady in the market called a sousous. It was delicious! We were able to eat in a restaurant near the grocery store and enjoy a Lebanese speciality called, a fatayer, which is a meat and onion filled pastry (actually, very yummy!) and some passionfruit ice cream. We opted out of the Obama ice cream flavor they had to offer. The Obama flavor was vanilla and coffee/chocolate mixed. Just one of the many quirky things that bring a smile to our face when we live overseas. :)

Sunday before lunch we drove to Guinea, with Brandon expertly entering each border office and procuring the proper paperwork and signatures from the officials, all while managing to keep the officials laughing with his sense of humor. It’s still up for debate whether he’s funnier in French or in English! 

Stay tuned to find out how our first week in Guinea has gone....

-Hannah