Giraffes

We learned a new French word.  Giraffes.

Last Saturday, one of the staff here took us, along with two young women from Campus Crusade who were staying at the center, to see the giraffes.  Niger has the last free roaming giraffe herd in West Africa.  It is located about an hours drive east of Niamey

When we arrived we hired a guide who sat on top of the car along with the two young girls.  He had a long stick that he held over the driver’s window and directed us with that.  The area is huge has no roads to speak of, is very flat and hard, out in the open, and has few tall trees – a place where you would think it would be very easy to spot giraffes.  However it took almost an hour before we spotted some. 

We were delighted and privileged to find a group of about 20 – with some young ones too.  The staff person who has been several times before has never seen such young ones or so large a group. 

Out of the truck we all piled and all that could be heard for the next hour was the clicking of cameras.  We had all seen giraffes before but seeing them in this way was just a treat.  They were bigger than we expected and looked really awkward.

On our way home we stopped at the Hotel Sahel to have fries (French fries) and brochettes off the grill.  The Hotel is located overlooking the Niger River.  The river is red brown in color – not very refreshing looking.  Even though Niamey was its usual hot self, we did eat outside in the shade and it was quite pleasant – well pleasant might be a stretch. 

Sally purchased a batik that depicts 3 scenes common to Niamey – and the colors look great in our “home”. 

Hope you enjoy the pictures:    

If you can't find giraffes, you take pictures of goats.

These two below are not giraffes, nor are they goats.  They are two shoppers with a purchase.  A much more dangerous animal group.

More Pictures

Barb and Mary.  Our transportation, our friends, our orientation leaders, our bosses, our prayer group leaders, and our baby sitters.  They have been just wonderful!
Our kitchen, living room, and bedroom.
The conference center.  Note on the river all the stuff floating down.  That will go away soon because the rainy season is over and the river will go down.

A time to whine

Stories of being hot.

•            We have figured out that we can only walk from 6:00 to 7:15 in the morning.  If you go before that it is dark and you can’t see and if you go after that it is way too hot.  You can also walk from 6:00 to 7:05 in the evening.  Too hot before 6 and dark after 7:05.  We walked home from the Rec Center and it was cooler but we left at 7 and it was too dark by the time we got home at 7:10.  All this means that it is unbearable to walk between 7:15am and 6:00pm.
•      The sun takes the water right out of you.  Dehydration is a big problem.  We each have to carry a water bottle around even when we are in the center.  We have never consumed so much water in one week and yet peed so little.  We’re learning to take the good with the bad.
•       When I say walk, and yes, we walk with a water bottle, that doesn’t just mean exercise walking.  We live below the main building.  Much of what we do is in the main building.  There is a slight slope up the 300 feet to the main building, a few steps but not many. I am usually soaked by the time I get up there.
•       Did I mention it is hot here?  It was 104 today and I was sitting in our apartment, calmly, for a long time, under the fan, dripping sweat.
•       We went to the American Rec Center today basically to sit in their “cool” room.  It was almost too hot for adults to be in the pool.  A couple of guys and their boys from the center played softball there, two games, in the sun, in the heat.  Thank God I am not young.
•       Did I say it is really hot here?  We went, around 3pm, to the Musee/Zoo yesterday with Barb, Mary, and two girls working on a Mary Magdalene movie.  It was billed as a shopping trip. That should have been a red flag in and of itself, but I was so hot I wasn’t thinking straight, so I went.  Most of the time was spent outdoors.  It was hot in the car, hot walking to the Musee, hot at the Musee, hot at each and every stall that was selling stuff, and hot going home.  Barb and Mary took us there.  They have been there before, several times.  They are saints for going back in the heat of the day.
•       The hot water in our place is not working yet.  It is not a problem.  Why in the world would you want hot water?  What you want is cold water.
•       Finally, sleep.  We have a fan and an air conditioner in our bedroom.  We have slept 2 nights without air so far.  It is doable, not nice but doable.  We will be using AC tonight.

I  am very sure I will be visiting this topic again, and again.  Sorry.  But we are constantly reminded that it is hot here.

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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Pictures of Niger and the Center

Lorsque dans Rome

Lorsque dans Rome

When in Rome… Well our African education is beginning.  While still somewhat jet lagged we are starting to get with the program. 

First - dress code for Sally.

She has not had to cover her head.  But she does have to have her shoulders covered (i.e. a t-shirt works) and a skirt that covers about half way between knees and ankles.  This is good, as it keeps the hot from being hotter! 

Unlike what we think many experience while living in Africa, looks like we will be doing the cleaning, cooking and our laundry ourselves. Sally was rather looking forward to living a spoiled life. 

Our friend Darwin would love to be here.  There are many, many birds.  We have seen a whole “group” of green parrots like those we saw in Chile.  We need a bird book to help us with some others.  But the ones we are seeing are very colorful.  And we did bring our binoculars.  We were told this is a great birding place right at the center because we are along the river.  Apparently some birders are coming to the Center in October so hopefully we can learn some things.

We can see the river from this property (not from our apartment) but we haven’t been close to it yet.  You can see big clumps of “grass” flowing fairly rapidly downstream.  This is because it has been the rainy season and the river is really full.   We’ve been told this will be a good time to see hippopotamuses.  Hoping we will.

We have been surrounded so far by people from the States i.e. we are barely hearing French much less speaking it.  When we left the center to go shopping today it was much different trying to use French to actually purchase something.

There is no way you would exercise during the day in this heat and intense sun.  We were up walking at 6am – while it is “cool” and before the sun is up.  Right now the only place we really know to walk is around the Center which is 10 times around to go 1 mile.  Hopefully we will discover other options.

Food hasn’t been a problem.  The “American” ladies filled our refrigerator for the first few days and we have our first dinner in someone’s home tonight.  There is a conference going on at the Center so we joined them for a lunch, which are like a dinner meal to us – rice or couscous and meat and vegetables – cooked veggies.  Actually the heat right now makes us not so hungry.  We are drinking a ton of water and it is almost entirely secreted by sweat.  We always feel like we just finished exercising and we look that way too – wet!

We eat lunch with about 30 people since there is a class on Translation 101 going on.  At 12:30 everyone and we mean everyone takes a “rest” until about 3:00.   Then people go back to work until 6:00 or so.  So our schedule is quite different from home.  This week we are under strict orders to not worry about working.

We went for groceries this morning in one of the nicer grocery stores.  It was nice (air-conditioned) and fairly well stocked, but expensive. We then went out for ice cream, a real treat. 

The Americans at the center live pretty frugal lives.  They do not buy some of the things we might like because they are too expensive.  Not wanting to look entirely over indulged, we passed by some things we might have liked.

We went to the store in an un-air-conditioned truck that belongs to the Center.  They hope to take us a few times and then have us driving.  You’ve got to be kidding!!  I, Sally, have no desire to drive.  It’s not like there are really rules to follow and the narrow roads are cluttered with cars, taxis, goats, and motorcycles .  

Driving from the Center to town we pass the Chinese, French, Nigerian and American Embassies.  The main road is paved but the minute you turn off of it you are on red dirt bumpy roads.  This is the capital but it is like a country village.  Goats are wandering all over.  We can’t imagine how they know whose goat is whose.  There are small stands everywhere selling tobacco or bottles of gasoline or vegetables.  It feels chaotic, very hot and dusty.  

    

Nous et notre sac a fait.

Nous et notre sac a fait.

As they say in French, we and our bags made it.

Our last week in Minnesota flew by with wonderful leave taking dinners, walks, and conversations with family and friends.  Our children put together a DVD of summer 2011, and a cute little book to help us remember – remember what?? Family, friends, Minnesota – as if we could ever forget!

Besides the good byes, we were packing the 4 wonderful duffels our church lent us.  We were able to take 2-50lb bags each.  We still had room in our bags but keeping to 50lbs was tricky and we left leaving some stuff at home – hopefully the right stuff.  We were using our bathroom scale to weigh the bags but had such fluctuations that on Thursday we ended up driving to the airport and weighing our bags, coming home and taking 20 lbs out and then on Friday we ended up with 48, 48, 49 and 51 – whew we made it!

We also had a wonderful send off at 4 am Friday, Sept 16^th.  Dear Molly volunteered to spend the night and get up and take us to the airport.  She had emailed earlier and wanted to know exactly what time we were leaving – like why would she care?? But she wanted to know!  Well it was because our entire family, with one dog and the Popes were there to send us off.  Good thing I don’t wear mascara or I would have started the trip with black streaks on my face.  We were really touched.

We flew from Mpls to Atlanta to JFK to Casablanca to Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, and then Niamey.  We learned how to pronounce Niamey from our grandson Josh – picture a knee, then a mouth open wide saying ahhh and then a calendar showing the month of May and you have correctly said Niamey!!  We were able to check our bags all the way through which really helped our bags and our stress levels.  All flights were smooth and easy. 

The flight from JFK to Casablanca was the most interesting.  Every kind of person and dress that you can imagine and many African children!  Elgin was playing games on the ipad and made friends with two small African boys who did not speak English but loved playing on the ipad with him.  There were also two beautifully dressed African women who were on the plane that I got to “know” – who were from Niamey and had been to NY to visit the son of one of them!  We also met a man, Sos (Sauce), who was from Benin, lived in Tex. and was going to Ouagadougou.  He became our interpreter.  Pretty cool.

The “hardest” was Casablanca – arriving at 6:30 am with a 14 hour layover.  But God provided a few angels along the way – one was Sos who helped us manage Customs.  There was a group of us, the two ladies from Niamey, Sos, a professor from Carolina, and a man with two small children,  and the two of us who were trying to find the place to get hotel vouchers.  We roamed the whole airport.  I know we took one set of stairs three times.  The escalators were broken.  We finally did get a voucher for a hotel where we were given a room (prone sleeping and a shower) and two meals.  So that helped immensely.

On the flight to Niamey they showed no movies.  It didn’t really matter, they showed SpongeBob, Donald Duck, and Mickey Mouse cartoons.  It didn’t really matter, because there were no headphones.  It really didn’t matter, because there was no place to plug in headphones. 

Our kids gave us envelopes to open in route – i.e.  - Atlanta, JKF, over the Atlantic, in Niamey – filled with pictures and notes and wonderful messages.  How blessed we are. 

We arrived at 3am and went through the dreaded Niamey customs.  Actually it all went quite easily and then miracles of all miracles – all four bags arrived and were among the first off the plane.  They had “hired” a helper inside the airport for us who had a sign with our name and a cart for the bags and we breezed through! 

Stan who works at the SIL center and is from North Carolina picked us up and brought us to our “home” for the next 6 mo.  You could smell the paint – they had worked really hard to get everything painted for us.  New curtains, bedspread to match, etc.  Really very nice.  We did do some unpacking – needed PJs – and then we crashed until noon on Sunday. 

Merci, mon Dieu

When Sally and I went to Chile with our six friends for two months in camper vans we ended our last trip email with Henri Nouwen’s word, “Gracias.”  We felt that it summed up the way we felt having had all of the wonderful experiences of the trip.  We were simply, “thankful.”

The way we felt then is much the same as the way we feel now and we haven’t even taken our trip yet.  And since we are into French and not Spanish it seems fitting to use Merci and not Gracias.  Also, since the genesis and impetus of this trip seems to come so directly from God, our French phase for this blog is, “Merci, mon Dieu.”  “Thank you, God.”

We are truly thankful to be going to Niger in less than a week.

In one of our emails, Barb, my contact in Niger, asked, “Will you be sharing about your trip before you leave?  Make sure you come with a good group at home who will support you in prayer.  Aside from the security issues, this is just a difficult place to work.” 

We have been so blessed by “a good group at home.”  Our church community has “prayed” us on.  We have received notes and well wishes from so many friends.  We have had gatherings where we could really spend quality time with people we love and will miss.  And throughout the summer we have had opportunities to receive the love and support of our children and grand children.  Yes we are blessed to have “a good group at home” who will be praying for us. 

We have been so blessed to be on stimulus overload.  Our thoughts and prayers for the last four months have had Niger on either the front or back burner for pretty much 24/7.  It has given us new vitality.  OK  - it has made for some waking up in the middle of the night too, but the excitement has felt good. 

We also feel blessed to be able to experience and learn new things, like:

     •   We already know more about Niger than we did last March. 

·     We know no one in Niger. We will meet all new people, people with different experiences and ideas.

·      We have no idea what living in a Muslim community will be like.

·      We have no idea what it will be like to be in the minority for six months.

·      One thing we read is that Niger is the most underdeveloped country in the world.  Another was that Niger is the 9^th poorest country in the world.  We have never come close to experiencing how the rest of the world lives.  How rich that will be!

·      Despite our best attempts, we do not know the language.

Finally, we feel so thankful to have God in our lives.  What a privilege it is to feel that He is leading us. 

We are conflicted however, by the fact that while we are feeling so blessed there are many we know and love who are struggling with health, relationship or other of life’s issues.  We know we can only care and pray when really we would like to “cure” the difficulties they face.  Maybe we will feel that way in Niger too.  Seeing the needs there may feel totally overwhelming.  Our hope is knowing that while God walks with us, He walks with others too – here and everywhere.  We are dependent on God to help us.  Where would we be without Him?

So – Merci, mon Dieu