A new Sister

Since Yankuba (Eric) is leaving we decided to get Asobes (matching outfits). Don’t be too weirded out. Eric’s doesn’t really match ours and it’s something they do for a special occasions. We went with some of our friends to pick out fabric and talk to the tailor. Lori and I got a custom made dress for the equivalent of $7, Eric’s was about $17. But like we told him, he bought a suit when we just bought a Sunday dress.
We have a new sister! Our landlords wife had her baby on Feb 18. She is a tiny little girl named Mariama. And our outfits were ready just in time for the naming ceremony.

Eric holding Mariama after the naming ceremony

This was a mis-shot but you can see the end result of the skin dye from the earlier post

Me and Mariama

Fun stuff

We decided to make doughnuts about a week too early for Fasnacht day. We didn’t have yeast but we made cake doughnuts instead. We a great 3 man assembly line going and they turned out really well. The first ones got a little too dark but then we discovered that putting a potato in the oil with the dough keeps them from getting too dark.

We also had an evening of “painting” our nails. There is a local tree here that they pound and make a powder with. They then mix that with sugar to make a paste. It is very similar to the Indian Henna that we are familiar with. So they spread the paste on your finger tips, palms and sometimes the bottoms of your feet, cover it with plastic bags. You leave it on over night and your skin is dyed in the morning. They think it is very beautiful and on their skin I think it is too. It makes a very nice, deep tone. We aren’t too impressed with the orange color that it dyes our skin but that eventually goes away and we’re left with nail color.

rolling & cutting

Frying


Dipping in glaze & Cin/sugar


The finished product


Yay, doughnuts!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Applying the paste to my foot

My fingers covered with plastic

Lori's feet all finished ready for bed

Abuko

A lot has happened since the conference. I’ve been unable to update my blog with pictures so the stories have been piling up. I will split them into a few posts.

On Monday after the conference our team had a day out. We went to a wildlife reserve Abuko; where we walked through the bit of jungle that is still left in the area. It was really cool because you turn off the main road in the large city and you’re right in the middle of a jungle. Here in West Africa we don’t have the big, exciting animals that you typically think of when you think of Africa but it was exciting to see monkeys, antelope, crocodiles and lots of beautiful birds. They also had a few animals in cages that used to be found in the wild here; such as baboons, tortoises, a pelican, and hyenas. Let me just tell you, hyenas are much bigger and scarier than “The Lion King” makes them look. They are almost the same size as a lioness and some lions will actually back down from a hyena in a confrontation. Scary!

Our little guard at the MEHDA Gate

In the forest

A path made just for Denise

Tarzan or Eric

Crocodile (this guy was what we saw from behind that sign^)

Cute Monkey

Killer Ants (ok, maybe not killer but fierce)

Snarling Hyena

The conference

I had asked you to pray for the conference in Senegal and I thank you for your prayers. It was quite an ordeal to get there and I’m sure that Satan had tried to keep us from arriving. There were issues with the amount of money it would cost to travel. We ended up giving our money to the church leaders so they could go. Gary wasn’t sure if he wanted to try making the trip alone as a team without any locals with us but we were set on going and were sure that we wouldn’t have any problems. So then we had to wait while Gary traveled to the money exchanger to get more funds. We sat on a metal-grate bench for 4 hours until we left. We made it there safely, tired and hot from being cramped in a small car, but safe none the less.
We knew a team was coming from America but I was surprised when I had some sort of connection with everyone there. I knew Elaine and Lloyd Hoover’s daughter Sheila from EMM and Glenn Hoover is from Ephrata and shops at Roxanne’s flowers. Zach Mininger and I had met several times in Lancaster when our groups of friends would hang out. We joked how we never would have imagined that we would be eating with our hands out of the same bowl in Africa! What a small world.
The conference was a combination of the Mennonite churches in Guinea Bissau and The Gambia; with the majority being from GB so most of the people spoke Creole and we couldn’t communicate with them. There were a few who really tried to talk to us but they just kept repeating the Creole and that didn’t make it any easier for us. The time consisted of a lot of sitting on hard benches listening to teachings through 3 interpreters. It was good teaching but it was hard to sit through most of it. I enjoyed when we had the church leaders talk about their culture and customs and had them sift through them to see which traditions were good and which should be stopped. Over all, it was a good time with lots of energetic worship times and fellowship. It was also refreshing and very encouraging to be with a few other Americans.

In the little car

Glenn Hoover Preaching

Lloyd Hoover teaching

Zach Mininger baby sitting

Hello everyone! I hope you all were able to enjoy watching the Super Bowl on Sunday; I heard that is was one of the most memorable of all time. The team here went to a guest house for the weekend. We are now headed to southern Senegal from Wednesday till Saturday. It is a conference for the leaders of the church here. There is a group from New Holland Mennonite coming. The topics will be on marriage and family, culture, transformational development & Evangelism. Please be praying for our time there. That the leaders would be open to the teachings and that God would be working deep in their hearts. Pray also for safety as we are taking public transportation for a 6 hour trip.

Life in the Compound

It has been a long time since my last update. Life has become normal here so it’s hard to know what to share with you. I thought I’d give you a glimpse into what a typical day looks like.

Morning prayers (5:00am) come a little too early for the men on these cold ‘winter’ nights. But once the sun comes up the compound is bustling with activity. First thing first, the entire ‘yard’ needs to be swept. This means that an area somewhere around 20x100 ft of sand is swept clean of any other debris by some of the younger women; and they have it down to a very orderly process. Many women must head out to the gardens to water. Selling the produce is one of the main sources of income for the women; so it’s absolutely necessary that the gardens are maintained. Washing clothes is a long process so it’s good to get an early start. You may be making quite a few trips to the well before it is finished. The process for making lunch starts somewhere around 10am and it is not served until 2pm or after. Rice may need to be pounded and then picked clean. If this is the case it’s good to have 2 or 3 people pounding together. It makes the work go faster and you can make a game of tossing the stick in between pounds. You may need to walk to the market to buy all the necessary accoutrements for cooking for the day. Many women do not keep a kitchen stocked with all of the basics like we do. If they did it would be susceptible to mice or other creatures eating it or they could be asked by a neighbor to ‘borrow’ something that never gets returned. So it’s easier to go out and buy what is needed for that day. If you don’t have to go back to your garden to water again, the afternoon is time to chat, to pull out a mat and rest or maybe you need to get your hair braided by a friend while you chat.

Quite honestly, I’m not sure what all the men do. Some head out to the fields all day and some are herding their animals. But I know there is a large amount who sit around under a shady tree, drink tea and shoot the breeze for most of the time.

My compound from the entrance. All of this gets swept in the morning.

Getting water from the well at the garden.

Pounding Rice

A mix of Christmas Traditions

When part of 4 different families come together for a holiday each has their own set of traditions. Lori’s family has chili for dinner on Christmas Eve; so she got her grandmother’s recipe and made it for us. Only the measurement for the chili powder got mixed up and it was incredibly spicy. Lori and I could barely finish our first bowl and Eric was sweating. Nyamo & Chun, some of the Gambian MEHDA staff, enjoyed it immensely; it was the first thing we cooked that Nyamo didn’t have to add hot sauce to. Then we had our final Advent service and ended with singing Christmas Hymns by candle light. Then we got up early on Christmas day to open presents and had a breakfast casserole and Eric’s family’s Hard Cake. We took the long walk to church for the Christmas service that didn’t have a whole lot to do with Christmas and later went in to the city to visit friends. We ended the evening by celebrating with our compounds and sharing with them a little bit of why we celebrate Christmas. At Lori and my compound we made a fire and cooked hot chocolate to share with everyone. We passed out candy and cookies as well as Christmas cards. We did have to explain to many of the adults that the card did not have any money in it as they expected; but instead we had bought a large (50kg) bag of rice for the compound to share.

The temp made it up to 102 on Christmas Eve

Lori's Chili Dinner

Eric Sweating from the Chili

Our last Advent Service

All of the presents on Christmas Morning

Jim and his Christmas tree

Handing out candy to the kids

Singing and Dancing

Serving Hot Chocolate or Chocolate Tea