Bric et de Broc

Bits and pieces

1.     Golf in Niger.  If you go to Google and look up golf courses in Niger there are none.  However, I was talking to a lady who played golf in Niger just outside Niamey.  She reported the following:

a.    The fairways are sand and rocks.

b.    You know where the fairway is because it is lined with rocks.

c.    Your drive, of whatever quality, may hit a rock and be propelled every which way.  Bad drives can turn into good ones and good drives into bad ones.

d.    After a drive you try to find your ball among the sand and rocks and if you do your caddie will put down a grass like mat for you to hit off of.  You have to have a mat.

e.    The greens are sand with oil on them.  (Unfortunately, I remember playing with greens like this a long time ago.)

f.    She didn’t say how many holes there were but I got the feeling that the fewer the better because it was unbearably hot.

2.   We have prayer time every morning at 9:45, or neuf hueres et quarante cinq.  After prayer time yesterday day I was standing on the balcony of the conference building when I heard the most beautiful singing.  It was muted somewhat because it was a floor down from me but I could hear the lovely Africa song sung in a soft, peaceful, harmony.  I didn’t know the words but I knew it was about Christ.  They sang a couple of other songs one of which I knew the melody.  It was beautiful.  A gift from God.  I learned later that a church was using a small part of the center for a meeting and they were the ones singing. 

3.   At prayer today we have a lady there who teaches languages to people in Niamey.  She started her prayer with a song.  What a great idea. 

4.   We eat lunch with the men that are in town staying at the center to take a basic two-week course in Linguistics.  They don’t speak any English and not much if any French so we don’t have long conversations.  But they are so friendly.  They are part of a language team and since it is too dangerous for the volunteers here to go out into the villages outside of Niamey these men go for them.  It is very hard for them to learn what to do and how to do it.

5.   I feel really bad about my French or the lack of it.  I’m having trouble being able to recall the right phrase on just simple things and I can’t understand much of what is being said.  They keep telling me it will come but I think they are just saying it to be nice or maybe they don’t know me.  We went shopping and I am getting to know the money but I find I really don’t know the words to say the money.  My memory is failing me and my French teacher at DePauw would be very disappointed.  I take that back, he would find it as merely meeting his expectations.

6.   Our apartment is really nice.  We have a small kitchen, an 18’ x 18’ living room, a similar sized bedroom, and bath.  There are overhead fans in the living room and bedroom, a water-cooling machine in the living room that works when it is not humid, and an air conditioner in the bedroom.  There is nothing on the walls and the floors are all tile.  We have a new stove (but we can’t get the oven lit and the oven and burners are all lit by matches), a relatively new refrigerator that has seal problems, no hot water, a water purifier, and plugs for our electronic toys.  If you are not directly under one of the fans, like where I am right now, it is hot.  Sweaty hot.  Every time we start whining we remember that the people who came here from the villages were uncomfortable staying here because they couldn’t get used to the frills.

7.   We were asked to tell our story this morning at prayer time.  It is part of our orientation.  I thought I would impress them with my French so I wrote out what I wanted to say in English and then put it through Google translator.  When it came my time to share I read my part in French, thinking they all know French.  The only problem was that after some opening smiles and some looks of encouragement I got these blank stares.  After a couple of sentences I asked if this was helpful.  They asked that I speak in English.



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