What Africa has taught me about the Bible

A couple months ago Steve and I were reading the account of the Last Supper, where Jesus instructs His deciples to go into town and find a place to have the Passover meal.  In the middle of reading the chapter, Steve stops and says, “weird.”  I mean, the whole part of Jesus asking them to find a man and ask for the room is kind of strange, but I asked him what he meant.  “Men don’t carry water,” he simply said. 

Sure enough, when we looked at the notes for the section, it said that a man carrying water, in those days, would be a strange sight and the disciples would easily recognize what Jesus said.  Because of the culture we have been living in for the last 14 months, we are more and more able to see the Bible through the eyes of people closer to that culture.

Since then, as we’ve been reading the Bible, there are so many things that we’ve realized that we understand better because of the West African culture we’ve experienced in Cote d’Ivoire (and now Benin).  We would like to take the next few blog posts to share that with you:

WOMAN AT THE WELL

When we lived in Niakara, each morning the young girls in our household would get up and pull water from the well.  We lived on a hill, so our well was probably a good 70 feet deep and it was a long, hard process.  After our family got enough water for the day, women from the neighborhood who didn’t have wells, or whose wells had dried up would come and fill huge bowls/tubs of water and transport them back to their houses on their heads.  All morning they would walk back and forth getting water, then pour it into a metal barrel to use throughout the day.

It was the same thing every morning and every evening. 

So, when I read the account of the woman at the well, when it says “it was the sixth hour” (of the day, meaning around noon), it caught my attention.  Another thing about West Africa – it’s HOT!  Okay, I know that doesn’t surprise you, but it gets so hot that no one really goes out at noon.  Usually shops are closed from 12-3pm for “nap time” because of the heat, so for a woman to be working like this at noon means she was avoiding something – the other women.  Another weird thing for this type of culture.

Since much of the work is manual and women don’t have time to just sit and socialize, most of the socialization comes around food preparation, cleaning, selling, or walking to and from the farm.  Getting water from the well is not just work, it’s a social hour.  Women talk, laugh, sing, and share what’s going on in their lives and the gossip from the community.

This women didn’t want to talk to, see, or socialize with the other women.  She was out casted…had shame. 

Just realizing the depth of this woman’s loneliness helped me realize what relief, what peace she must have had when Jesus told her about “a sprint of living water welling up to eternal life.”  How amazing it is that Jesus looked into her heart and gave her exactly what she needed – life.