Fixed Greetings

Today was a long day at work. As I walked home I met one of my local friends and we launched into the standard set of greetings. He asked me how I was, how my wife was, and then how work was. Each of these questions has an expected answer, or at least an expected type of answer. You are required to say that the you are doing well, that your wife is doing well, and that work is going well.

The correct response to the question, "How is work?" literally means "I'm on top of it." But tonight when my friend asked about work, I changed one of the vowels in the phrase in order to say "It's on top of me." My friend didn't notice, or else assumed that I had made a simple beginner's mistake, and continued with the greetings. Then he asked again how work was and I replied, "I'm tired." He rebuked me sternly (but with a smile on his face) and listed for me the possible correct responses to his question: "I'm on top of it", "it's going okay", or "I'm working hard."

He then added, as if he had to pull it out of his distant memory, another possible response to the question: "I'm praising God," followed by "It will be good." Okay, I could go with that. So I repeated it back to him. He had me repeat it a couple of times to make sure that I got it right. Then he asked me no less than half a dozen times if I was "at peace." When at last he had been sufficiently assured that I was at peace, he bid me farewell.

The moral of the story: don't deviate from the standard greetings!

Polyglot in the making

Yesterday as I was walking home from work a guy greeted me with the often-used "Hey, foreigner!" I responded with "Peace to you" in the local language. He then began asking me the normal greeting questions in the normal language to see how much of it I actually knew. When I succeeded in responding appropriately, he asked me where I was from. I said America.

He told me he had a brother in Miami (I was surprised he didn't say New York; everybody has a brother in New York). He continued by saying, in impressively clear English, that he didn't speak very good English. I asked him basically the same questions in English that he had asked me in the local language and he answered them with moderate success.

This whole exchange took place as we walked about 50 yards. We were coming to a T and it was evident that I was turning right and he was going to turn left. So as we started to split off in our separate directions he said to me, "You are quite impressive. You speak English, French, and the local language. But you know, you really need to learn to speak Tubar*."

Well, it just so happens that my wife and I were in a Tubar-speaking village two weeks ago. So I greeted him in Tubar. At that he stopped dead in his tracks and his jaw just about hit the sand. He asked me another question or two in Tubar and I tried my best to answer correctly even though I wasn't really sure what he said. "Where did you learn that?!" he demanded. I gave him the name of the village, which he obviously had never heard of, and then gave the name of a larger town nearby. "Oh," said. "Well, I'm from up North. We speak the real Tubar up there." There are three different dialects of Tubar spoken in the country and they are each quite proud of their language.

He then said that he worked just down the road, so hopefully we would see each other again. We said farewell and went our separate ways.

Believe it or not, this interaction was not unusual for me. As soon as I step out the door, I never know who I'm going to end up chatting with.

*name changed

Projectile Watermellon

We bought a watermelon, thinking it would be a nice treat. We carefully selected one that looked ready and sounded hollow. Once home we bleached it, as we do with all of our fruit. Then we set it on the dining room table so we could admire it until we had a chance to eat it.

The next day we were surprised to see bubbles coming out of a small hole in the rind. Where did that hole come from? And what was making the watermelon bubble? Was there a worm inside? Or did the farmer accidentally gouge it somehow? I put a piece of tape over the hole and ignored it for another day. The following afternoon. we noticed that the watermelon was still bubbling despite the tape. I removed the tape but didn't have time to cut up the melon, so we let it sit some more as we went off to another event. Later that night we were sitting in the living room when a significant CLUNK! resonated from the kitchen. My wife arrived just in time to see the watermelon rolling across the floor, bubbling furiously. It had managed to roll itself clean off the table!

That performance finally pushed me to action. My wife dug a large knife out of the kitchen drawer and I plunged it into the watermelon. As soon as the knife plunged through the skin, the watermelon began venting like a deflating hot air balloon. I smelled sweet alcohol. Aha! I should have guessed. I refrained from investigating any further. I picked up the watermelon, which hissed and gurgled in protest, and dragged it downstairs to the garbage pile.

My wife was discouraged that our money had been wasted but I told her that all things considered, I think we got our money's worth. It's not everybody who can say they've built a watermelon rocket!

Nigeria Free- Praise God!

Today Nigeria has been declared free of the Ebola virus. I believe it is a fitting time to share with you something I noticed a couple of weeks ago when Nigeria was unofficially declared Ebola-free.

Most of the Ebola cases in Nigeria were people in the city of Lagos who had contact with Mr. Sawyer, who collapsed at the airport shortly after his arrival in the country. However, one of the last Nigerians to die from Ebola was a doctor in another city who treated one of those who had been in contact with Mr. Sawyer.

On September 3rd Reuters released an article about this doctor. It said that he had seen some 60 patients and also a large number of family members during the period of time between when he was first potentially contagious and when he was hospitalized, and that when he was on his sickbed, "members of his church visited him in the hospital in the oil hub Port Harcourt and performed a healing ceremony 'said to involve the laying on of hands.'" The article went on to lament, "Given these multiple high-risk exposure opportunities, the outbreak of Ebola virus disease in Port Harcourt has the potential to grow larger and spread faster than the one in Lagos."

My heart sank when I read that article. "Even the church is spreading this thing," I thought. I believe in praying for the  sick. But laying hands on an Ebola victim? That's presumptuous. That's leaping off the pinnacle of the temple and expecting the angels to catch you. I was frustrated, but I've read many frustrating things in recent months and I soon forgot about it. I forgot, until I read another article.

On Monday, September 22 Reuters carried an article titled "Ebola outbreak 'pretty much contained' in Senegal and Nigeria." In the article I discovered that several hundred people who had been in contact with this doctor had been put under surveillance, but not a single one of them had died. His wife and sister were the only ones to catch it from him and they both recovered. The terrible outbreak in Port Harcourt never happened. What's more, one month after that doctor died the entire country of Nigeria was unofficially declared free of ebola.

I don't know whether God really told that church to lay hands on an Ebola victim, or whether they acted foolishly and God extended grace. What I do know is that God moved in power, and I want to make sure that He gets the credit. Despite a large number of contacts that could have led to sickness and death, God halted the disease. If I understand correctly, this man was the last Ebola death in Nigeria*. The rest of the country was spared.

Praise God that Nigeria is Ebola-free, at least for them moment. Pray that it stays that way, and pray for the countries that are still fighting this beast.



*There may have been one other death after his. I read various online sources but couldn't figure it out for sure.

Village Trip

This past weekend we took a little trip (but it was not down the mighty Mississipi). It was six hours there and seven hours back. We took a bush taxi down and a bus back up, which is the reason for the difference; the bus couldn't swerve around the potholes as quickly.

Yes, we were in a village, and we had a wonderful time. They killed a chicken for us on our first night, and normally a chicken is only killed for an important event or holiday. They then proceeded to feed us way too much for the next two days until we headed back home. On our last day we had four meals and two snacks before 4 PM (which was when we left). We could have had a fifth meal but we declined it.

The people were super friendly. They were amazed that we had traveled all of the way from the big city just to visit them. Both my wife and I have visited villages before, but we always had a particular purpose or goal for being there, and the people knew it. They were very eager to help us with our research or our projects or whatever it was that we were doing, but they also understood that we were primarily there for our project and not for them.

This time we had no purpose and no project; we just wanted to meet them. And their reaction was like nothing we had ever experienced. The father of the house nearly broke into tears. We were told again and again how privileged they felt to have us there. Not because we were doing anything; we did nothing for three days but sit around and eat their food! Just because we cared enough to go and meet them and enter into their world. In two and a half days we had a couple of conversations that I'm not sure we ever thought we would have with locals here- and certainly not with locals we barely knew. We never realized how powerful it can be to just BE.

Praise God for an amazing weekend. May He show us how to follow up with this family, and may He teach us to BE with people more often!