For the last 3 weeks our lives have pretty much looked like this:
Monday-Friday:
7-8 Bible Study
9-11 French Class
11-12 Culture Class
12-1pm Lunch
1-2 Nap time (because it’s too hot to do anything then [even in the winter!])
2-5 Service project or go into town
5-7 Free time (is dark at 6:30)
7-8 Dinner
8-9:30 or 10 Free time
Saturday and Sunday are usually days to take it easy and one time we went camping in the bush, but I’m sure I’ll write more about that another time.
Every day here has felt like 2, partly because we nap in the middle of the day, and partly because we are learning and experiencing so many new things. So, here is a compilation of things I have observed and learned so it may seem quite arbitrary.
So, the Ivory Coast. First thing: it is not a desert, it is very tropical, so it has lots of trees, bushes, flowers, and plants. It is a very green place, like Minnesota in the summer. Right now we live on an old boarding school campus outside Bouake. On the campus there are a ton of fruit trees, banana, grapefruit, papaya, orange, lemon, and a bunch of other ones I don’t remember. We go and hit the fruit off the trees with a stick and eat them. Grape fruits and papaya are what we have been eating lately.
We are learning French and about how they do things differently here (culture class) . The best example is the left hand. The left hand is considered dirty, so it makes people mad if you give or take anything from them if you do it with your left hand. So I have to learn to only use my right hand for things like that, and the hardest time to do that is when eating. You can’t pass, take, serve, or even eat with your left hand. It pretty much gets in the way and I feel bad all the time because I forget, because I’m trying to listen to the others speak French, which I can only understand some. It’s a lot of work in my mind so I am tired fairly often.
More exciting than that difficult stuff. Motorcycles! That is pretty much the way to get around here, some taxi cars, and a few vans that are actually busses. But motorcycles are EVERYWHERE! But they are all normal sized motorcycles like the one I owned, but the engines are ONLY 125cc (very small). So some SERIOUS power pushing those suckers (the reason they are so small is so no one has to have a license for them!). Better yet, it is not common to see a bike with 1 person on it (if you do it’s loaded down with giant bags of rice or something), very common to see 3 people on one, and not uncommon to see 4 adults, 2 kids, and a baby strapped to a mom’s back riding around. When we take a moto both Jess and I ride behind the driver. The only reason there is enough room for both of us is that all the motos have racks that stick straight out the back. The roads are so bad most of the time spent driving is purposely maneuvering pot holes.
Another exciting thing here is the food. The main thing the people eat here is rice and sauce. There are many kinds of sauce, most have meat in them and are good. I’ve been told that the national food is Atteike (sounds like “a check-eh”) which is kind of like rice, but smaller and has more flavor, and you eat it with chicken, and the best part is you eat it with your HAND!!! But only your right hand because you offend people if you use your left hand. It is by far the best food here.
Devin (the ME) and I worked on some florescent light fixtures there. It is funny how reliant I became on the internet when working on things. If I ever needed to understand how something worked here I would just google it, here you have to just figure it out. One great thing I learned working at Medtronic was how to trouble shoot circuits by comparing a function one to the broken one. I will get to trouble shoot some stadium lights at the soccer field/track on campus later on this week. They are doing work to get the campus ready to rent to the University of Bouake for the medical students, which should happen in January. It will be nice to have more people around campus, it’s a huge campus and it feels deserted and kind of like an apocalypse movie because everything is kind of run down, but mostly just not been used.
Culture: It is completely opposite of the culture here to not have kids right after getting married. The way you know a woman is married in Cote d’Ivoire is that she has an extra pagna (wrap skirt thing) on because “she should always be expecting a baby.” The extra pagna is used to hold the baby on the woman’s back. And we thought we got out of the trouble the single people have with everyone trying to marry them off. I guess we won’t fit perfectly into this culture, but that is to be expected.
Rice! We eat rice here all the time, but this story is about how we got to be part of the harvesting process. We went to a rice field on the outside of the campus on Thursday Dec. 12 to harvest rice. Tenanan (don’t pronounce the last n, it’s French) a guy who works on campus had invited us to go help and when we arrived he showed us the rice field and said it wasn’t ready to be harvested. But there was some already harvested that needed to be thrashed. So he gave each Steph (a 2nd year journeyer), Jess, and I long sticks to thrash the rice. *Rice looks like wheat (I didn’t know that before) and they had it stacked in a U shape with an extra row inside with the grain end facing in.* The group of guys who started beating the grain end of the pile and scooping it away from the pile with their sticks. As they beat the pile one guy would push more onto the pile and they would alternate hitting the pile in 4/4 time, if more joined they would hit at the same time as someone else, usually someone on the other side of the pile. It was really cool. Once they had thrashed it a bit, the chaff (with some rice left on it) was passed from their pile to our pile (at first we were pretty sure they were just being nice to us [like small children] and our step wasn’t necessary). So we were the secondary thrashers and we beat that rice with our sticks. As we thrashed the grain, the rice is disconnected from the chaff and because it is smaller it falls to the bottom and the chaff can be pushed over the top. So we swung our big sticks over our head and beat that rice. When the other guys finished with the inside row (about 1/4th of the total rice) they came and took over our pile, the girls took a break and I stayed and finished it. They guys said I could stay because I worked hard. When it was thoroughly thrashed, we all picked up the chaff and shook it a bit to make sure all the rice was on the tarp, and tossed the chaff into a compost heap at the side of the rice field. At the end of thrashing I was exhausted, but we all stopped for coffee so it was alright. Then we went on to do another 2/4th of the thrashing before we had to French class. We were very thankful the thrashing floor was in the shade.
New photos on my (Steve’s) facebook: https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.595976517230.2068838.110900143&type=1&l=e83a9bbea9
Saturday, December 24, 2011
Saturday, December 10, 2011
Child-like Faith
Bonjour from Cote d’Ivoire!
We’ve been here for a week now and to say we love it is an understatement. We both expected that there would be a time of adjustment and awkwardness while bonding with our team, but we came and felt at home and found new brothers and sisters in Christ right away.
After a 3 hour plane ride, a 7 hour plane ride, a 5 hour layover, another 7 hour plane ride and a 5 hour drive in the dark, we finally got to Bouake, Cote d’Ivoire at 1am on December 3rd. We’re living on a campus that used to be a missionary kid school until about 2005 when it was right in the middle of the war. It’s a beautiful campus that keeps reminding me of the Garden of Eden (I picked my own grapefruit to eat for breakfast this morning off a tree out front our dorm).
We started French class on Monday and have been learning so much about language and culture ever sense. I’m just going to post a bunch of pictures because I can’t really describe it here in words.
The biggest thing we’ve been learning is child-like faith. Since we don’t really know the language (or the accent that they use), we have to depend on others for everything: to get us a moto taxi (everyone rides on the backs of motorcycles – seriously, a family of 6 can fit on one), help us buy clothes and food, schedule our French lessons, even things like teaching us how to cook or use the restroom (no toilet paper for Ivoirians). Because of that, we have to trust that these people know what they’re doing. That they’re going to get the best price for us (it’s rude not to barter for taxis and clothing). We have to trust that they’re not going to tell us false things about the culture.
Anyway, faith has been a huge thing this week – as we learn the language little by little, I more understand the “being sure of what we hope for and certain of things unseen” Heb. 11:1. Because I see that the Journeyers who have only been here for 4 months and the ones who have been here for a year can get around and are really having no trouble, I can be sure that we will figure this language/culture thing out, but there are a lot of unseens – what is our ministry here? What family are we going to be put into? Am I going to figure out the language by the time we get put in host families? What does it look like not only to be a Christian in this culture, but a Christian couple (we’re the first couple to do Journey Corps)?
Both Steve and I have learned that we need to trust God for these things and follow and trust Him, just like we've been trusting our friends, who know more then we do about this culture and language.
Anyway, we have internet about once a week or so, so we’ll try to keep you updated! Please keep praying for us, here are some prayer requests:
• Language – our French teacher, Timotee is getting married at the end of the month and here the man is the one stressing out about all the details, so he’s probably not going to be around much. Pray that we can get another teacher lined up.
• Culture – pray that we can know, understand, and embrace this culture. It’s an amazing one full of traditions and protocol (more on that in another blog).
• Team – we have a team of 3 returners (who have been here a year), 3 girls who have been here 4 months, and then us. The girls are in host homes and the returners are training us in. Pray that we can learn to work with one another and learn from one another.
• Service projects – the campus is getting ready to be rented out to med school students. There’s a lot to be done, pray for efficiency.
Okay – it didn't work to post pictures onto here, but here's the link to our facebook album...we'll add pictures from Dec - Jan as we go:
We’ve been here for a week now and to say we love it is an understatement. We both expected that there would be a time of adjustment and awkwardness while bonding with our team, but we came and felt at home and found new brothers and sisters in Christ right away.
After a 3 hour plane ride, a 7 hour plane ride, a 5 hour layover, another 7 hour plane ride and a 5 hour drive in the dark, we finally got to Bouake, Cote d’Ivoire at 1am on December 3rd. We’re living on a campus that used to be a missionary kid school until about 2005 when it was right in the middle of the war. It’s a beautiful campus that keeps reminding me of the Garden of Eden (I picked my own grapefruit to eat for breakfast this morning off a tree out front our dorm).
We started French class on Monday and have been learning so much about language and culture ever sense. I’m just going to post a bunch of pictures because I can’t really describe it here in words.
The biggest thing we’ve been learning is child-like faith. Since we don’t really know the language (or the accent that they use), we have to depend on others for everything: to get us a moto taxi (everyone rides on the backs of motorcycles – seriously, a family of 6 can fit on one), help us buy clothes and food, schedule our French lessons, even things like teaching us how to cook or use the restroom (no toilet paper for Ivoirians). Because of that, we have to trust that these people know what they’re doing. That they’re going to get the best price for us (it’s rude not to barter for taxis and clothing). We have to trust that they’re not going to tell us false things about the culture.
Anyway, faith has been a huge thing this week – as we learn the language little by little, I more understand the “being sure of what we hope for and certain of things unseen” Heb. 11:1. Because I see that the Journeyers who have only been here for 4 months and the ones who have been here for a year can get around and are really having no trouble, I can be sure that we will figure this language/culture thing out, but there are a lot of unseens – what is our ministry here? What family are we going to be put into? Am I going to figure out the language by the time we get put in host families? What does it look like not only to be a Christian in this culture, but a Christian couple (we’re the first couple to do Journey Corps)?
Both Steve and I have learned that we need to trust God for these things and follow and trust Him, just like we've been trusting our friends, who know more then we do about this culture and language.
Anyway, we have internet about once a week or so, so we’ll try to keep you updated! Please keep praying for us, here are some prayer requests:
• Language – our French teacher, Timotee is getting married at the end of the month and here the man is the one stressing out about all the details, so he’s probably not going to be around much. Pray that we can get another teacher lined up.
• Culture – pray that we can know, understand, and embrace this culture. It’s an amazing one full of traditions and protocol (more on that in another blog).
• Team – we have a team of 3 returners (who have been here a year), 3 girls who have been here 4 months, and then us. The girls are in host homes and the returners are training us in. Pray that we can learn to work with one another and learn from one another.
• Service projects – the campus is getting ready to be rented out to med school students. There’s a lot to be done, pray for efficiency.
Okay – it didn't work to post pictures onto here, but here's the link to our facebook album...we'll add pictures from Dec - Jan as we go:
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