Village Stay

I have just completed my two week village stay! Of course I took a fair number of photos, but sadly I'm not in many of them. Funny how that works. At any rate, I have uploaded a vast majority of them to the usual purgatory, my dropbox account. You can browse them at your leisure here. They will not, however, have any colorful commentary. Therefore I have chosen a selection of particularly interesting pictures to launch what will probably become multiple blog posts about my experiences in the village. On y va!

 This is the "Baobob" quartier of town. It is entirely made up of one family (aunts, uncles, cousins, etc.) This is where I lived for two weeks. It is beautifully green right now because we are in the rainy season.  All around the town are fields, though between the hill from which I took the picture and the town it is mainly pasture land. You can see the church. Nearly the entire family is Catholic. However, a majority of the town is Muslim so there is a mosque just across from the church (behind some other buildings there so you can't see it).

It is hard to explain where these buildings are in the first picture, but at any rate I slept in the room with the open door farthest to the right. It is the room of the man who was hosting me. He slept with his younger brother while I was there. To the left, with the door closed, is the room of another of his brothers. That brother is currently in the capital but his wife lives there with their baby daughter. To the left of that, mostly hidden behind the tree, is the hut of the mother and father of the family. Behind that is turkish toilet/shower, which you really can't see. And the building on the left is where the cooking is done. There is also a water reservoir in there. Each morning the girls bring the water up to the reservoir from the one tap in the quartier. Fortunately it is only about 150 yards away.

 Here is the tap for the quartier. From here the girls bring the water to different reservoirs (one for each family).

The bigger the girl, the bigger the bucket. I caught RC just as some of the water splashed into her eyes. I must have distracted her too much!

While we are on the subject of RC, here is what she looks like when she isn't carrying a bucket of water or trying to terrorize you. It took her a little while to get used to me, but once she did she followed me everywhere I went. She and J became my permanent shadows.

I never did get a good picture of J. Here he is being carried by his uncle N. N is the life of the party, always ready to start singing and dancing. He loves all of the songs from church and will often start singing them alone until others join in. Part way through my stay a friend loaned me his guitar. From that point on N was constantly asking me to take it out and play.

I did play fairly often. I think I got quite a bit better at playing by ear, particularly in the key of D. I realized most hymns are written in the key of D and you can fake them with just the G, A, and D chords, tossing in an F#m if it sounds high or a Bm if that doesn't work.
There were also some other musicians who wandered through once they heard that there was a guitar in town. They provided several evenings of entertainment.

I also used the guitar at a little gathering that was held each Sunday evening under a tree in the village. My friend A (on the drum) is the one who hosted me. The guy to my right is his younger brother G and the guy on the far right side of the picture is their cousin E.

 Here are some more folks at the gathering.

And a carpet load of kids!

We even did a little dancing!

And that's all for now, it is half an hour past my bedtime. My next post will probably focus on how I spent my time while in the village.

p.s. It would really be a shame to not include a picture of the bathroom. This is the neighbor's, which is pretty much identical. A "Turkish toilet" is a porcelain hole in the ground. Once you get the squat down it works pretty well. Because there is no running water, these are also pit toilets. They do a good job of ventilation so it normally isn't too bad, a good thing since it also serves as the shower room. You fill a pail with water and then bath in the little space between the toilet and the door. A drain hole in the corner allows the water to drain off outside the room.

Off to the village

Hi! Sorry I haven't written in a very long time. It hasn't been for lack of material, that's for sure! I have at least a month worth of photos sitting on my hard drive, most of them even edited and scaled so they can be posted here, but I haven't had enough time to actually do so. And now, in about 15 minutes, I am headed off for a 2 week village stay (no internet. Not even electricity.) I hope you can hang on to your hat for another two weeks! Here are two pictures from a recent trip to a wildlife reserve to hold you over.

What are you willing to leave in Egypt?

The Bible frequently makes references to the exodus from Egypt as a sort of spiritual analogy. One aspect of the exodus story that really strikes me is the way that Pharaoh tried to bargain with Moses. Moses requested that the entire Israelite people be allowed to make a three-day journey into the wilderness to hold a festival to God. Several times Pharaoh promised to let the people go and then changed his mind as soon as the most recent plague had ended. Then, at the insistence of his officials, Pharaoh  finally agreed to let the men go- but only the men. No women or children.

That wasn't what God wanted, so He sent two more plagues. Then Pharaoh called Moses and said that everyone could go, including women and children, but they needed to leave their flocks and heards in Egypt. Moses said "no," they needed the animals to offer sacrifices. Pharaoh refused, so God brought His final plague. At last Pharaoh set the people free. The Egyptians were so terrified of God and so relieved to see the people go that they gave the Israelites whatever they asked for on the way out.

My question is, what would have happened if Moses had accepted one of Pharaoh's offers? What if he had agreed to have a men-only celebration? What if they decided to go and dedicate themselves and their children to God but leave their possessions in Egypt? Pharaoh knew that in either case they were almost certain to go back to slavery in Egypt. If Moses had given in, if he hadn't trusted God enough to hold on when it got ugly, the world would have never seen the full extent of God's might demonstrated against the Egyptian dieties and the nation of Israel might not exist today.

What kind of spiritual analogy is there?  We are always tempted to accept God's salvation on our own terms. We see that we need Jesus and we are willing to leave some of our sinful life behind in order to follow Him. But some things are harder to submit than others. It is one thing for me to follow God myself, but what if that has an impact on my loved ones? As my values change, dare I allow that to change how I lead my family? What if it means that our lifestyle changes? Can I do that to my kids? Isn't that shoving religion down their throats? They might resent it. What if God calls us to be a missionaries in Africa?

While you probably won't become missionaries in Africa, following God can be scary. If you remember that the other option is slavery to sin and death, however, the cost doesn't seem significant. The key is learning to trust God with your loved ones, something which is even harder than trusting God with your own life. When you marry you make your vows to God first and each other second. As such you are united by God and for God, and He expects you to prayerfully follow His leading together. If God  leads the parents to something, He will be faithful to guard and guide the children just as much (or more) than He does the parents.

As for possessions, how often do I sing "I surrender all" and then decide how much of my wallet is "all" this week? Jesus did not say, "give to Ceasar what is Ceasar, to God what is God's, and keep what is Yours." There are only two categories. One is Ceasar's, that which is demanded by the authorities God has placed above us, and the rest is at God's disposal. That doesn't mean that He will never let me use any of the money, property, talents, and resources that He has given me. It means that I need to view them as His, invest them as His, and treat them all as a loan from Him- and realize that He expects interest on it! Otherwise I will be investing my resources in Egypt and eventually they will drag me back into slavery.