Monday, May 26, 2008
A Mini-Email, with Just Two Abrupt Points
Dear Everyone,
This mini-email is to let you know of my intention to stay in Ghana with the Esalas past the year we'd originally agreed upon. We seem to be a good fit, and we're enjoying working together. So I'm planning to visit America for a bit in December and then return to Ghana in early January. We have not yet figured out a budget for next year, but it will probably be similar to this year's budget, which I think was around $8,000. Just in case you are the financially-supporting type, I thought I’d let you know. Of course, I will also be interested in your continued prayer support, but I feel like you might not need as much notice for that one. And I will continue to inflict you with emails; I’m not sure you can get out of that.
And speaking of your prayer support, I am sick again. My typhoid test came back positive, either because my typhoid vaccination from four years ago is still good or because I do in fact have typhoid. Or I could have bacteria. The bad kind. Fortunately, the same antibiotic is treatment for both, so I am on it to kill whatever I have. And very soon I should be able to venture away from my toilet. The upside is that I’ve had another malaria test and can now be certain my malaria is dead. Furthermore, my blood is absolutely beautiful and shows no signs of anemia, so thanks for praying about that too.
Those are my two abrupt and unrelated points. How nice that they come in this brief mini-email without all those long-winded and somehow plot-less stories to bog them down. Hope all is well with you.
Christina
Monday, May 26, 2008
Saturday, May 24, 2008
Everybody Loves a Good Malaria Story
Saturday, May 24, 2008
Everybody Loves a Good Malaria Story
Dear Everyone,
Greetings from Ouaga! I hope you are well.
Nomad month began on schedule. Sarah and Aili went to the Motherland, Nathan, Karissa, and Annaka went to Nasuan, and I went to Tamale for two weeks.
I stayed in the home of Missionary Ali of Tamale, Paul Her Husband, and Hannah and Baby Levi Their Children. (Hannah is probably technically a baby too, but since she speaks English, I’m giving her the benefit of the doubt.) Missionary Ali’s and my great plan for our two weeks together was to clean out her freezer of all desserts and replace them with fresh ones. Our excuse was Teacher Appreciation Week, which we had to extend into two weeks because our celebrating it in Ghana made it an international holiday instead of just an American one; this excuse was only convenient, not actually necessary, of course. Paul Her Husband’s great plan was to go on a business trip so he wouldn’t have to watch. We did a great job consuming the desserts, but our domestic prowess turned out a big fat negative: I burnt brownies, made wet, gummy wheat bread, and suffered several Chinese dumpling catastrophes including sticky glumping of the skin, dry crusty dumplings sticking together and to the plate and ripping when pulled apart, and slight burning of the pot stickers. Sigh. And Hannah’s comments weren’t exactly uplifting. Hannah eats mud off the car tires and old, sun-crusty rice from the dogs’ dish, but takes one look at even my cooking successes and cheerfully announces, “For goats!”
Missionary Ali’s birthday was observed the Saturday Sarah got back to Tamale. We celebrated with Thanksgiving dinner in the form of chicken, green beans, stuffing, and mashed potatoes. It was Paul Her Husband’s idea to maneuver two desserts, and this is how he was discovered: Shortly after I arrived in Tamale, Paul quietly mentioned Ali’s birthday and asked if I would mind making the cake. He claimed the only other person available to bake was him, and he assured me that would be a bad idea. So I agreed, and he asked that I keep it a secret. Later that week, Ali and I were making our dessert plans, and she mentioned needing to bake her own birthday cake. Well, my cake was supposed to be a surprise, so I cleverly discouraged her cake-baking plans with very unsuspicious comments about probably she didn’t need to bake a cake surely a cake will appear some other way possibly involving magic don’t worry about it. That’s when she said, “My husband says I need to bake my cake because the only other person available to bake is him.” And that’s when both of Paul’s plans were laid side by side and Ali and I decided he clearly meant to have two desserts on Saturday, which, of course, was perfectly fine with us. She made a lovely yellow cake with a coconut and brown sugar topping, and Karissa, Annaka, and Hannah helped me make strawberry shortcake. Paul showed no surprise at having two desserts on Saturday and, when confronted, marveled at the brilliance of his plan, making notes to plan similarly in the future.
Other Tamale events included Baby Levi receiving a Ghanaian name from the Peanut Lady, and Missionary Ali making him give it back a few days later when she found out it was a girl name. The Tailor of Tamale made me a dress and a skirt that are completely perfect; he measured and everything. And on Saturday, May 10, 2008, my feet were clean. And that is worthy of note.
Although I’ve not been to Nasuan since Nomad Month began, Nathan brought reports of Percy the Chicken’s transition from a house chicken to an outside chicken, which is apparently going well. Percy the Chicken seems to still prefer human company during the day, but he is content to sleep with the other chickens at night. In other chicken news, Helen the Chicken, whom Nathan brought to our chicken community only recently, was given away as food due to her illness. He didn’t really go into details, so I don’t know how a chicken can be too sick to live but not too sick to be food. Nathan broke the news to us at dinner in Tamale (not on the night we were eating chicken; this was the night before). “The new white chicken,” he began, and I asked, “Helen?” just as Karissa clarified, “Helen.” Karissa had named her, see, which is convenient for making sure everyone is on the same page. Nathan was perhaps still digesting the new white chicken’s person-name, perhaps in light of the news he had to share, and Annaka asked, “Where is Helen?” And in the lengthy pause that followed, I saw the phrase “Chicken Heaven” pass through Nathan’s mind, but he finally said, “We had to eat Helen.” Because when it comes right down to it, that’s just better theology.
This week I’m in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso at Pretend School. My class of 2nd graders and I are spending these two weeks working on writing descriptive paragraphs. Our theme for the class is “Descriptive writing makes me feel like I’m there.” So even though you’ve never been to China, you’ll feel as if you know the place from the way I’ve described it. And even though you haven’t eaten that particular cookie, you will know the cookie from my description. In keeping with this theme, I shall now relate my experience with malaria, that reading my letter might make you feel like you have it. Generous of me, I know.
Malaria is transmitted by mosquitoes. The little malaria parasites move into the red blood cells and breed. This destroys the blood cells, and that is bad. Since I’ve had malaria, I’ve learned that, in addition to symptoms I knew about—fever, sweating, vomiting, etc.—malaria can also come with gentle symptoms such as tiredness and irritability. So when the little guys are destroying the red blood cells, the person develops anemia, which makes the person irritable. And that, friends, was probably my chief symptom: being pissed off. I cannot describe how irritated I was, at almost everybody and for very shady reasons. If you did not write to me last week, for example, I was probably annoyed at you for not being a very good friend. I’ve been trying very hard to think of anyone I was not angry with last week, and I’ve come up with one friend in Ohio and four out of five Esalas. So to the rest of you, I’m very sorry for being so angry with so little provocation. Please accept my apology and rest assured I am not angry at anyone presently. Oy.
Nathan and Sarah reckon I’d had malaria about a week or so before it was discovered. Based on my irritation, I’d say maybe just over a week. I didn’t actually feel sick, see. Just cranky. But my bad attitude didn’t seem odd to me because I hadn’t been sleeping well at night. Okay, I hadn’t been sleeping at all really. Since I began counting, I hadn’t slept five nights in a row. And that didn’t seem so odd either because Missionary Ali and I had been working so hard to consume all those fabulous desserts . . . well, when you eat chocolate cake with kool-aid less than an hour before bed, you shouldn’t wonder at your sleeping problem. Moving Evening Dessert to afternoon hadn’t quite solved the problem, but we were working on it. And I was napping well. Several hours every afternoon. The day before Sarah arrived in Tamale I had some gentle diarrhea, but I was blaming that on the egg rolls. Oh, that greasy goodness.
Sarah arrived in Tamale Saturday morning and was conscious approximately 4 hours before I was cornered and gently grilled about my health. She says her clue was my afternoon nap, which was, she maintained, not typical for me. It had become typical of me, I argued, but she scoffed. Then she learned of my diarrhea, and that sealed the deal. I overheard her, Nathan, and Missionary Ali in the kitchen discussing whether or not to seek medical care. I thought they might be talking about me, but since I wasn’t actually sick, I wasn’t sure. Aili seemed kind of moody. Maybe Aili was sick and I just didn’t know. (Actually, Aili’s ear infection was discovered a few days later, so you see how it could’ve been her, especially since I wasn’t sick.) I was surprised they decided in favor of medical care, and even more surprised to learn they were serious—as evidenced by Nathan with his shoes on and keys in hand. Oh. Okay. So I dutifully went to the clinic, a little uncomfortable since I wasn’t actually sick, but trying to be okay with the decision since clinics are easier to navigate in Tamale than in Ouaga—apparently because Tamale speaks English and Ouaga speaks French. Right.
So we went. My malaria test cost $2.00 and consisted of a poke in the finger and a little blood smear on a microscope slide. It came back positive. Okay, fine. More surprises for the day because I thought people with malaria were supposed to feel sick. Except that just knowing I had malaria made me feel lousier. More lousy. Whatever.
I didn’t sleep again that night, and the next day we packed and went to Ouagadougou. Except mostly I just sat and let Nathan and Sarah do all the packing. Because sitting down felt pretty good, but more strenuous forms of activity began to feel like work. And when I say “more strenuous forms of activity,” I mean tasks such as reading picture books to small children. Oy. I slept some in the car on the way to Ouaga; I was mostly a slug. We went through customs and I had trouble writing my passport number on the paperwork. I’m almost certain I got our license plate number wrong—only surprising because I was copying off Nathan’s paper—but the Ghanaian customs official who checked my work didn’t mention anything, and I had trouble caring.
In Ouaga, I continued my slug-like activity for the remainder of Saturday. I went to church Sunday morning but left after a couple songs to spend the whole rest of the day closed in Sarah and Nathan’s bedroom at the guest house, which may be the only room in all of Africa that is air conditioned. I was not sleeping—only lying about in a state of perpetual consciousness. Sarah says she gets brilliant ideas when she’s on malaria medication, but I apparently cannot look forward to similarly enlightened experiences. I spent the entire day contemplating the plaid on the bedspread. It was a happy plaid but not tasteful, and I wondered why the places at which blue lines crossed blue lines were darker blue but the places at which blue lines crossed red lines were darker red and not purple. And as the sun went down, I marveled that the lines that had previously seemed blue still seemed blue but that the lines that had seemed dark blue now seemed dark green.
And this was not the worst of my Cognitive Strife:
I was trying to buckle Baby Aili into her car seat so we could leave Tamale for Ouaga. Her buckle has two pieces; just fit them together and click the buckle into the slot. Standard car seat; no problem. And I’ve done it before. I had one part of the buckle in my left hand, and that was good. But I didn’t have the other part of the buckle. I determined it must be on Baby Aili’s other side, and getting it would be just the thing to do. So I reached my right hand down between Aili and the side of the seat, which was not far away but which was out of my line of sight. I was aware of my hand, but I couldn’t see it. I sat thus for quite some time; I was problem-solving. I needed to get the buckle. It might’ve been in my hand. Or, it could’ve been roughly two inches to the left of my hand. But since I couldn’t see it, I didn’t know. With a great deal of effort, I could’ve pulled my hand up to see if indeed I had the buckle. But then what if I didn’t in fact have it? Or, I could’ve moved my hand two inches to find the buckle there. But what if the buckle wasn’t there? What if I was already holding the buckle? Then I would’ve dropped the buckle, see, and moved my hand away from it, and that’s no good. Because I really needed the buckle. If only I knew whether or not the buckle was truly in my hand. But I didn’t know. I felt what was in my hand, but I still didn’t know if I had the buckle—or if I even held anything. I ran through my options again. And again. Still no good; same problems as before. After several problem-solving moments—and I’m not kidding; this was a cognitive exercise—I hit on a workable solution. I realized I was sitting right next to Aili and Annaka. So I explained to them that I needed the other part of the buckle, and I asked them to please get it for me. This worked like a charm. Someone handed me the buckle from wherever it had been, and I fastened Aili’s car seat.
Not as desperate but still a struggle was the problem I faced in reaching my water bottle later that day. By this time, we were in Ouaga. I was in my room lying down, and my water bottle was about two yards away on the desk. The light was on too, and that was bothering me. So I very carefully crafted a plan, which had four parts: 1. Get up. 2. Turn off light. 3. Pick up water bottle. 4. Lie back down. I was proud of the plan; it seemed good. I put it into action, working very hard, and then . . . I felt that something wasn’t right. I’d turned off the light. I’d gotten back in bed. But I didn’t have water. After some minutes, I pinpointed the problem: I had skipped Step 3 of The Plan. Disappointed but not discouraged, I identified my need for a New Plan. Wishing to maintain this forward momentum, I was thinking very hard about what this New Plan might entail, and I was very hopeful, when Sarah showed up. Well. I asked her to reach my water bottle, and she, of course, did, with an amused “been there” sort of expression on her face. But I think I would’ve gotten that water very soon even if she hadn’t shown up. Because with the water I still had ideas. It wasn’t like with the car seat buckle.
On Monday I improved from lying around to sitting around. Pretend school began, and Nathan taught my class. This is only right and proper since my illness was all Nathan’s fault: I didn’t feel sick at all until he dragged me to the clinic. But that’s just another ever-present feature of life with the Esalas: They are solving my problems before I even realize I need something.
I’m doing much better now. I’ve finished my malaria medication, and I’m eating lots of iron to help my red blood cells along. “Pig out on meat,” was, I believe, Sarah’s phrase.
And now, What I’ve Learned:
1. I hesitate to put this one at the end of the malaria email, but at least this way you won’t accuse me of tricking you into an uninformed decision: Lots of missionaries want teachers to come and help them educate their children, but not many teachers are here. If you or someone you know are interested in investigating teaching options in Ghana, please let me know. Missionary Ali, for example, has two great friends named Dan and Di. They are Ghanaian and Canadian, respectively, and are married to each other. Their daughters are 10 and 11 and are currently at boarding school. They live in Tamale, so their teacher would enjoy many luxuries of city living, such as grocery stores, television, and church services in English, plus many other missionary-type service opportunities as desired in addition to teaching. Their teacher will also enjoy living just 3 hours away from me. I can’t think of anything more enticing than that, so I will end the commercial now. (But it will reoccur in the Prayer Requests section.)
2. We eat dinner before dark so we don’t accidentally eat bugs. I cooked and served dinner after dark when I stayed home with Hannah and Baby Levi while Missionary Ali and Paul Her Husband went out to dinner. I spent the whole meal picking bugs out of the pancake batter, off of my plate, out from between the tines in my fork, and out of Hannah’s mouth. Disgusting.
3. I can carry babies on my back. I can’t actually put them up there by myself, but if someone else positions the baby and then acts as a spotter while I tie, I’m not that bad. Missionary Ali let me practice on her kids, so I carried Baby Levi while I swept the floor and Hannah when we all walked down the road to have tea with Paul Ali’s Husband. Sometimes Baby Levi needs a little pep talk before he gets tied back there, but once I reminded him how everyone would know he was foreign if he screamed like that, he did pretty okay.
4. Conga lines are standard offering-collection policy at church. I went to the Presbyterian church with Missionary Ali. Her church is bigger than my Nasuan church. They speak English, they sing hymns I know, and the men and women aren’t segregated. But they still have a conga line at offering time.
5. Also at Missionary Ali’s Presbyterian church, I learned that organ music isn’t as bad as I thought it was. Previously, I held the opinion that the organ sounds basically like a small herd of dying cows. But now I know that organ music just needs accompanied by really loud drums. Then it’s pretty good.
6. Malaria is a grand weight-loss plan. Remember the perfect skirt the Tailor of Tamale made for me—the one that fits so great because he measured me? Well. It fit much better last week than it does now. But no worries. I bought a lot of chocolate at the grocery store today, and I will have that skirt fitting again in no time.
And now, Prayer Requests
1. Missionary Ali’s friends, Dan and Di, need a teacher for their daughters. Please pray for a willing someone who will fit in well with their family.
2. My malaria-induced anemia, and iron absorption to build red blood cells. Praise God that Esalas recognize malaria when they see it and can seek proper treatment.
3. And we’re still in the throes of Nomad Month. We’ll be traveling from Ouaga to Accra next week and back to Nasuan the following week, concluding approximately 6 weeks of travel. Oy.
Thanks for your prayers, letters, and friendship.
Christina
Quote of Today
“It doesn’t count as multitasking if you forget the task you started first.”
Missionary Ali, on another kitchen disaster
Everybody Loves a Good Malaria Story
Dear Everyone,
Greetings from Ouaga! I hope you are well.
Nomad month began on schedule. Sarah and Aili went to the Motherland, Nathan, Karissa, and Annaka went to Nasuan, and I went to Tamale for two weeks.
I stayed in the home of Missionary Ali of Tamale, Paul Her Husband, and Hannah and Baby Levi Their Children. (Hannah is probably technically a baby too, but since she speaks English, I’m giving her the benefit of the doubt.) Missionary Ali’s and my great plan for our two weeks together was to clean out her freezer of all desserts and replace them with fresh ones. Our excuse was Teacher Appreciation Week, which we had to extend into two weeks because our celebrating it in Ghana made it an international holiday instead of just an American one; this excuse was only convenient, not actually necessary, of course. Paul Her Husband’s great plan was to go on a business trip so he wouldn’t have to watch. We did a great job consuming the desserts, but our domestic prowess turned out a big fat negative: I burnt brownies, made wet, gummy wheat bread, and suffered several Chinese dumpling catastrophes including sticky glumping of the skin, dry crusty dumplings sticking together and to the plate and ripping when pulled apart, and slight burning of the pot stickers. Sigh. And Hannah’s comments weren’t exactly uplifting. Hannah eats mud off the car tires and old, sun-crusty rice from the dogs’ dish, but takes one look at even my cooking successes and cheerfully announces, “For goats!”
Missionary Ali’s birthday was observed the Saturday Sarah got back to Tamale. We celebrated with Thanksgiving dinner in the form of chicken, green beans, stuffing, and mashed potatoes. It was Paul Her Husband’s idea to maneuver two desserts, and this is how he was discovered: Shortly after I arrived in Tamale, Paul quietly mentioned Ali’s birthday and asked if I would mind making the cake. He claimed the only other person available to bake was him, and he assured me that would be a bad idea. So I agreed, and he asked that I keep it a secret. Later that week, Ali and I were making our dessert plans, and she mentioned needing to bake her own birthday cake. Well, my cake was supposed to be a surprise, so I cleverly discouraged her cake-baking plans with very unsuspicious comments about probably she didn’t need to bake a cake surely a cake will appear some other way possibly involving magic don’t worry about it. That’s when she said, “My husband says I need to bake my cake because the only other person available to bake is him.” And that’s when both of Paul’s plans were laid side by side and Ali and I decided he clearly meant to have two desserts on Saturday, which, of course, was perfectly fine with us. She made a lovely yellow cake with a coconut and brown sugar topping, and Karissa, Annaka, and Hannah helped me make strawberry shortcake. Paul showed no surprise at having two desserts on Saturday and, when confronted, marveled at the brilliance of his plan, making notes to plan similarly in the future.
Other Tamale events included Baby Levi receiving a Ghanaian name from the Peanut Lady, and Missionary Ali making him give it back a few days later when she found out it was a girl name. The Tailor of Tamale made me a dress and a skirt that are completely perfect; he measured and everything. And on Saturday, May 10, 2008, my feet were clean. And that is worthy of note.
Although I’ve not been to Nasuan since Nomad Month began, Nathan brought reports of Percy the Chicken’s transition from a house chicken to an outside chicken, which is apparently going well. Percy the Chicken seems to still prefer human company during the day, but he is content to sleep with the other chickens at night. In other chicken news, Helen the Chicken, whom Nathan brought to our chicken community only recently, was given away as food due to her illness. He didn’t really go into details, so I don’t know how a chicken can be too sick to live but not too sick to be food. Nathan broke the news to us at dinner in Tamale (not on the night we were eating chicken; this was the night before). “The new white chicken,” he began, and I asked, “Helen?” just as Karissa clarified, “Helen.” Karissa had named her, see, which is convenient for making sure everyone is on the same page. Nathan was perhaps still digesting the new white chicken’s person-name, perhaps in light of the news he had to share, and Annaka asked, “Where is Helen?” And in the lengthy pause that followed, I saw the phrase “Chicken Heaven” pass through Nathan’s mind, but he finally said, “We had to eat Helen.” Because when it comes right down to it, that’s just better theology.
This week I’m in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso at Pretend School. My class of 2nd graders and I are spending these two weeks working on writing descriptive paragraphs. Our theme for the class is “Descriptive writing makes me feel like I’m there.” So even though you’ve never been to China, you’ll feel as if you know the place from the way I’ve described it. And even though you haven’t eaten that particular cookie, you will know the cookie from my description. In keeping with this theme, I shall now relate my experience with malaria, that reading my letter might make you feel like you have it. Generous of me, I know.
Malaria is transmitted by mosquitoes. The little malaria parasites move into the red blood cells and breed. This destroys the blood cells, and that is bad. Since I’ve had malaria, I’ve learned that, in addition to symptoms I knew about—fever, sweating, vomiting, etc.—malaria can also come with gentle symptoms such as tiredness and irritability. So when the little guys are destroying the red blood cells, the person develops anemia, which makes the person irritable. And that, friends, was probably my chief symptom: being pissed off. I cannot describe how irritated I was, at almost everybody and for very shady reasons. If you did not write to me last week, for example, I was probably annoyed at you for not being a very good friend. I’ve been trying very hard to think of anyone I was not angry with last week, and I’ve come up with one friend in Ohio and four out of five Esalas. So to the rest of you, I’m very sorry for being so angry with so little provocation. Please accept my apology and rest assured I am not angry at anyone presently. Oy.
Nathan and Sarah reckon I’d had malaria about a week or so before it was discovered. Based on my irritation, I’d say maybe just over a week. I didn’t actually feel sick, see. Just cranky. But my bad attitude didn’t seem odd to me because I hadn’t been sleeping well at night. Okay, I hadn’t been sleeping at all really. Since I began counting, I hadn’t slept five nights in a row. And that didn’t seem so odd either because Missionary Ali and I had been working so hard to consume all those fabulous desserts . . . well, when you eat chocolate cake with kool-aid less than an hour before bed, you shouldn’t wonder at your sleeping problem. Moving Evening Dessert to afternoon hadn’t quite solved the problem, but we were working on it. And I was napping well. Several hours every afternoon. The day before Sarah arrived in Tamale I had some gentle diarrhea, but I was blaming that on the egg rolls. Oh, that greasy goodness.
Sarah arrived in Tamale Saturday morning and was conscious approximately 4 hours before I was cornered and gently grilled about my health. She says her clue was my afternoon nap, which was, she maintained, not typical for me. It had become typical of me, I argued, but she scoffed. Then she learned of my diarrhea, and that sealed the deal. I overheard her, Nathan, and Missionary Ali in the kitchen discussing whether or not to seek medical care. I thought they might be talking about me, but since I wasn’t actually sick, I wasn’t sure. Aili seemed kind of moody. Maybe Aili was sick and I just didn’t know. (Actually, Aili’s ear infection was discovered a few days later, so you see how it could’ve been her, especially since I wasn’t sick.) I was surprised they decided in favor of medical care, and even more surprised to learn they were serious—as evidenced by Nathan with his shoes on and keys in hand. Oh. Okay. So I dutifully went to the clinic, a little uncomfortable since I wasn’t actually sick, but trying to be okay with the decision since clinics are easier to navigate in Tamale than in Ouaga—apparently because Tamale speaks English and Ouaga speaks French. Right.
So we went. My malaria test cost $2.00 and consisted of a poke in the finger and a little blood smear on a microscope slide. It came back positive. Okay, fine. More surprises for the day because I thought people with malaria were supposed to feel sick. Except that just knowing I had malaria made me feel lousier. More lousy. Whatever.
I didn’t sleep again that night, and the next day we packed and went to Ouagadougou. Except mostly I just sat and let Nathan and Sarah do all the packing. Because sitting down felt pretty good, but more strenuous forms of activity began to feel like work. And when I say “more strenuous forms of activity,” I mean tasks such as reading picture books to small children. Oy. I slept some in the car on the way to Ouaga; I was mostly a slug. We went through customs and I had trouble writing my passport number on the paperwork. I’m almost certain I got our license plate number wrong—only surprising because I was copying off Nathan’s paper—but the Ghanaian customs official who checked my work didn’t mention anything, and I had trouble caring.
In Ouaga, I continued my slug-like activity for the remainder of Saturday. I went to church Sunday morning but left after a couple songs to spend the whole rest of the day closed in Sarah and Nathan’s bedroom at the guest house, which may be the only room in all of Africa that is air conditioned. I was not sleeping—only lying about in a state of perpetual consciousness. Sarah says she gets brilliant ideas when she’s on malaria medication, but I apparently cannot look forward to similarly enlightened experiences. I spent the entire day contemplating the plaid on the bedspread. It was a happy plaid but not tasteful, and I wondered why the places at which blue lines crossed blue lines were darker blue but the places at which blue lines crossed red lines were darker red and not purple. And as the sun went down, I marveled that the lines that had previously seemed blue still seemed blue but that the lines that had seemed dark blue now seemed dark green.
And this was not the worst of my Cognitive Strife:
I was trying to buckle Baby Aili into her car seat so we could leave Tamale for Ouaga. Her buckle has two pieces; just fit them together and click the buckle into the slot. Standard car seat; no problem. And I’ve done it before. I had one part of the buckle in my left hand, and that was good. But I didn’t have the other part of the buckle. I determined it must be on Baby Aili’s other side, and getting it would be just the thing to do. So I reached my right hand down between Aili and the side of the seat, which was not far away but which was out of my line of sight. I was aware of my hand, but I couldn’t see it. I sat thus for quite some time; I was problem-solving. I needed to get the buckle. It might’ve been in my hand. Or, it could’ve been roughly two inches to the left of my hand. But since I couldn’t see it, I didn’t know. With a great deal of effort, I could’ve pulled my hand up to see if indeed I had the buckle. But then what if I didn’t in fact have it? Or, I could’ve moved my hand two inches to find the buckle there. But what if the buckle wasn’t there? What if I was already holding the buckle? Then I would’ve dropped the buckle, see, and moved my hand away from it, and that’s no good. Because I really needed the buckle. If only I knew whether or not the buckle was truly in my hand. But I didn’t know. I felt what was in my hand, but I still didn’t know if I had the buckle—or if I even held anything. I ran through my options again. And again. Still no good; same problems as before. After several problem-solving moments—and I’m not kidding; this was a cognitive exercise—I hit on a workable solution. I realized I was sitting right next to Aili and Annaka. So I explained to them that I needed the other part of the buckle, and I asked them to please get it for me. This worked like a charm. Someone handed me the buckle from wherever it had been, and I fastened Aili’s car seat.
Not as desperate but still a struggle was the problem I faced in reaching my water bottle later that day. By this time, we were in Ouaga. I was in my room lying down, and my water bottle was about two yards away on the desk. The light was on too, and that was bothering me. So I very carefully crafted a plan, which had four parts: 1. Get up. 2. Turn off light. 3. Pick up water bottle. 4. Lie back down. I was proud of the plan; it seemed good. I put it into action, working very hard, and then . . . I felt that something wasn’t right. I’d turned off the light. I’d gotten back in bed. But I didn’t have water. After some minutes, I pinpointed the problem: I had skipped Step 3 of The Plan. Disappointed but not discouraged, I identified my need for a New Plan. Wishing to maintain this forward momentum, I was thinking very hard about what this New Plan might entail, and I was very hopeful, when Sarah showed up. Well. I asked her to reach my water bottle, and she, of course, did, with an amused “been there” sort of expression on her face. But I think I would’ve gotten that water very soon even if she hadn’t shown up. Because with the water I still had ideas. It wasn’t like with the car seat buckle.
On Monday I improved from lying around to sitting around. Pretend school began, and Nathan taught my class. This is only right and proper since my illness was all Nathan’s fault: I didn’t feel sick at all until he dragged me to the clinic. But that’s just another ever-present feature of life with the Esalas: They are solving my problems before I even realize I need something.
I’m doing much better now. I’ve finished my malaria medication, and I’m eating lots of iron to help my red blood cells along. “Pig out on meat,” was, I believe, Sarah’s phrase.
And now, What I’ve Learned:
1. I hesitate to put this one at the end of the malaria email, but at least this way you won’t accuse me of tricking you into an uninformed decision: Lots of missionaries want teachers to come and help them educate their children, but not many teachers are here. If you or someone you know are interested in investigating teaching options in Ghana, please let me know. Missionary Ali, for example, has two great friends named Dan and Di. They are Ghanaian and Canadian, respectively, and are married to each other. Their daughters are 10 and 11 and are currently at boarding school. They live in Tamale, so their teacher would enjoy many luxuries of city living, such as grocery stores, television, and church services in English, plus many other missionary-type service opportunities as desired in addition to teaching. Their teacher will also enjoy living just 3 hours away from me. I can’t think of anything more enticing than that, so I will end the commercial now. (But it will reoccur in the Prayer Requests section.)
2. We eat dinner before dark so we don’t accidentally eat bugs. I cooked and served dinner after dark when I stayed home with Hannah and Baby Levi while Missionary Ali and Paul Her Husband went out to dinner. I spent the whole meal picking bugs out of the pancake batter, off of my plate, out from between the tines in my fork, and out of Hannah’s mouth. Disgusting.
3. I can carry babies on my back. I can’t actually put them up there by myself, but if someone else positions the baby and then acts as a spotter while I tie, I’m not that bad. Missionary Ali let me practice on her kids, so I carried Baby Levi while I swept the floor and Hannah when we all walked down the road to have tea with Paul Ali’s Husband. Sometimes Baby Levi needs a little pep talk before he gets tied back there, but once I reminded him how everyone would know he was foreign if he screamed like that, he did pretty okay.
4. Conga lines are standard offering-collection policy at church. I went to the Presbyterian church with Missionary Ali. Her church is bigger than my Nasuan church. They speak English, they sing hymns I know, and the men and women aren’t segregated. But they still have a conga line at offering time.
5. Also at Missionary Ali’s Presbyterian church, I learned that organ music isn’t as bad as I thought it was. Previously, I held the opinion that the organ sounds basically like a small herd of dying cows. But now I know that organ music just needs accompanied by really loud drums. Then it’s pretty good.
6. Malaria is a grand weight-loss plan. Remember the perfect skirt the Tailor of Tamale made for me—the one that fits so great because he measured me? Well. It fit much better last week than it does now. But no worries. I bought a lot of chocolate at the grocery store today, and I will have that skirt fitting again in no time.
And now, Prayer Requests
1. Missionary Ali’s friends, Dan and Di, need a teacher for their daughters. Please pray for a willing someone who will fit in well with their family.
2. My malaria-induced anemia, and iron absorption to build red blood cells. Praise God that Esalas recognize malaria when they see it and can seek proper treatment.
3. And we’re still in the throes of Nomad Month. We’ll be traveling from Ouaga to Accra next week and back to Nasuan the following week, concluding approximately 6 weeks of travel. Oy.
Thanks for your prayers, letters, and friendship.
Christina
Quote of Today
“It doesn’t count as multitasking if you forget the task you started first.”
Missionary Ali, on another kitchen disaster
Tuesday, May 20, 2008
Women’s Work
Sunday, April 27, 2008
Women’s Work
Dear Everyone,
Greetings! I hope you are well.
After a lovely supper of stew, bread, and Melfloquine (for malaria prevention), with chocolate icing for dessert, I’m settling back to watch the termites swarming my overhead light while I write to you. I’m also watching a worm crawl across my rug (it’s a plastic rug, so this isn’t actually that gross). He’s a strange worm with antennae and a body that’s hard, rather than squishy. I think he may have crawled in here and died. The ants are investigating. I’m pulling my feet up into my chair.
With the rain a few days ago and again last night, the bugs are rather more prevalent than they’ve been. Fortunately, with the increase in bugs I’ve also noticed an increase in my house lizards. House lizards are my great blessing. I’ve named them all Thomas.
The rain also means farming time. And farming time means reduced church attendance.
Our church is a one-room building made from mud. We’re Lutheran; other denominational options include Roman Catholic and Assemblies of God. The men sit on the left on rickety wooden benches and the women sit on the right, children in the front. The worship team consists of a few guys with drums and a song leader. We have real live church mice who scurry in the rafters behind the preacher’s head. Sometimes I watch them if the sermon is long and not in English. So that’s pretty much every time. The specifics of the worship service are pretty standard except for collecting the offering, which is basically a conga line. The music is loud and the men go first, singing and clapping as they file out of their rows and snake up to the collection plate, drop their money in, and conga back to their seats. The women fall in at the end of the men’s line.
Church starts when the people arrive. We know it’s time to go to church when we hear the drums calling the people to worship, except that we live so far from the church we almost never hear them. So for us, getting to church on time is sort of like practice for the Second Coming. We know the day, sure; but no one knows the hour. So be ready because church will begin like a thief in the night. Today the Esala womenfold and I heard the drums and were the first ones at church (Nathan was taking a woman from the village to the hospital). We read a Bible story together, but then the babies needed naps so we went back home. Church started later, but we missed it.
I’ve written so much about “man work” that I become concerned it seems my definition of “man work” is “any work that is exciting.” But this is not the case. This week, I participated in the Women’s Work to End All Women’s Work, which, of course, was pounding gravelly dirt into floor. And what’s not exciting about that? Friends, everything is exciting about that.
Houses in the village are comprised of several round, single-room huts arranged in a circle. The huts are connected by a circular wall made of the same mud as the huts to form an open-air courtyard. Functionally, the huts serve as bedrooms for the most part (I think), and the courtyard acts as living room and kitchen. One of the houses (we also call them “compounds”) in the village needed a new floor in the courtyard, so all the women in the village came to pound the floor. It’s a community event—sort of like a barn raising. Each woman has her own floor-pounding tool—a wooden mallet, half a cylinder with a perpendicular, stick-like handle protruding from one end. They grip the pounder by the handle and smack it on the ground like a foot, standing bent 90 degrees at the waist with straight legs and shuffling back and forth over the yard in a great cluster of rows, like a sea of backs and colorful headscarves. They sing and keep in rhythm, sometimes staying always bent over in a quick tempo, pounding on the beat, and sometimes raising up with the pounders high above their heads and bringing them down for a slower beat.
I say “they,” but I mean “we” because I, as a woman in the village, got to play too. Since I’m new, I didn’t have a pounder, of course, but Sarah is not new. She loaned me her pounder because, as she told those around us who were surprised she had one, “If you do not have the tool, then you cannot have the opportunity.” When we arrived at the compound, I was immediately sent home to change my clothes. I’d missed the memo about this work being grubby; I am a rookie. When I arrived for the second time, I was handed over to a teacher to “just follow her.” So I did. In my culture, we bend our knees when we bend over, so keeping my legs straight and folding myself in half was a challenge. Actually, the whole experience was a bit of a cognitive overload. I stepped along with my teacher. Forward. Forward. Don’t pound your feet; don’t pound your face. Forward. Forward. Don’t pound your neighbor’s feet; don’t pound your neighbors face. Backward. Backward. Keep your legs straight; don’t pound your face. Backward. Backward. Keep the rhythm; don’t make divots. Backward. Backward. Keep backing up even though there’s a wall there. Backward. Backward. Wedged behind a hut; don’t pound your neighbor’s face. Forward. Forward.
The whole thing took so much concentration I didn’t notice the huge blister that had formed—and then popped and begun oozing—on my hand until I stopped pounding, at which point it began to hurt rather a lot. Fortunately the floor was mostly finished by that time, and people paused for a little break. Ordinarily, I’m told, this is the part where the pito comes out, but the family of the compound were Muslim (which apparently means no alcohol), so we drank a thin, white, sour liquid instead. On the way home, I learned the mud I’d been pounding was actually a mixture of dirt, a plant product called doua-doua (say “DOW-uh DOW-uh”), and poop. And that’s women’s work.
This week’s mouse count is one small baby, who I accidentally trapped under a book while he squeaked at me. I was going to bash it myself but wussed out and asked Nathan to do it.
Asala the House Girl is feeling better; thanks for praying for her. Falling Star the Chicken (the one hatched on top of the refrigerator) was fatally stepped on the other day, so if you wanted to pray for Karissa’s emotional well-being (since she allegedly did the stepping), that would be appropriate.
Looks like the worm is alive after all. He’s on the move again.
Christina
Monday, May 19, 2008
Chicken Mothers
Thursday, April 17, 2008
Chicken Mothers
Dear Everyone,
Greetings! I hope you are well.
All is well here. Karissa’s schoolwork is finished for the week, excepting a spelling test she’ll have tomorrow. I spent this morning making yogurt and bread while she worked at my kitchen table, and now I’m just letting the yogurt bacteria flourish and the bread rise while I write this letter to you fine folks. The Queen of Multitasking, that’s me.
Nasuan is killing-hot as we eagerly wait for rain. The borehole behind my little house is busy at all hours since the river is dry and the rains have not yet come to wet it. I hear the people waiting to pump water when I go to sleep at 9:00, and I hear them when I wake at 5:30. Sometimes they peek in my windows (and not subtlety either), and sometimes I Greet them and they Greet back. This morning, as I sat in my living room dressed in shorts, t-shirt, and head scarf and suffered to be stared at, I couldn’t help thinking how strange I must look to them, having overdressed the top of me and underdressed the bottom. But Sarah says I can wear whatever I want at home without being inappropriate. She recommends I add a giraffe mask; she has one she can loan me.
This week’s mouse count is 2. It had been a long time since my last kill, but I remembered Annaka’s admonition to come and get her next time I had a mouse. She’d set the example for me a few days before by running with frantic, uncontained excitement to bring me to see the mostly dead mouse baby Sarah had found in the backyard. So when Sarah and I returned from our walk last Thursday morning, I dutifully asked after Annaka. She was still asleep, but Sarah sent Karissa to wake her and tell her Aunt Christina has a dead mouse. We’d scarcely had time to wait when Annaka spilled out of the front door with a purpose and a raging bed-head. The Esalas are ever conscious of local fashions, and Annaka showed it clad only in her underwear. Karissa and Aili joined us, and we traipsed back to my little house for the happy joy of watching Aunt Christina fish the mouse body up out of her bathroom sink and toss it into the field. All of you who were concerned about our lack of morning cartoons can rest easy. Then I bleached my toothbrush, which was tilted at a slightly different angle than it had been the night before. Better anal than ominous; that’s what I think.
Friday was Market Day. Karissa took my list and Sarah’s and went ahead with her friends, leaving Sarah, Annaka, Aili, and I nothing to do at Market but roam, Greet, and drink pito. Since we don’t need much money for that, we didn’t bring much. We had pito with Madame Elizabeth; I still can’t drink a whole gourd by myself, so we shared. A random inebriated man asked Sarah about the Stranger with her, but Sarah said I’m not a Stranger anymore. So he bought some pito for the teacher, and I had to decide whether to have the fermented (risky because I’d had some already, but easier to share around if it turns out sharing is appropriate) or the unfermented (guaranteeing my ability to walk afterward, but also guaranteeing I’d have to drink it all myself). I got the unfermented because I’m a wimp, and Sarah helped me finish. Annaka was hungry, so we went to find her some fish. We borrowed a pot from Madame Elizabeth, and Sarah, since Annaka picked “heads” over “tails,” bought three fish heads. Annaka put two in the pot on her head and munched on one as we walked. We found the perfect jeans for Sarah, just $1.50 from a man selling used clothing. We found a bed sheet. We found earrings for Aili. We found many other lovely and unexpected luxuries, but we were fairly out of money—$5.00 goes fast—so we decided to go home. Sarah was lamenting not finding anything suitable for dinner at Market and explaining the unreliability of the meats-on-a-stick we were passing, which, she was saying, are pretty good other places—places like Ouaga—but generally disappointing in Nasuan. At this point, we noticed that the surrounding amusement was apparently directed at us; we’d walked right past Nathan without noticing. He was eating a meat stick. He said it was good. We were interested, and he seemed to indicate we might also enjoy a meat stick. He even picked out the ones we bought. Now, you know I like Nathan. And I don’t want to speak ill of him. But I think it’s impolite to help someone buy a meat stick on which some of the meat is still furry without warning them first. Oy. I’m not above eating furry meat. Nathan was right; it was really good. But we are from the same culture, and I think he could’ve tipped me off. Sarah had mentioned that the meat might not be “meat” in the strictest sense, so I was somewhat prepared for the bit of liver and the ambiguous grey blob of squishy chewiness. The great big hunk of bone was more of a surprise, but mostly because I couldn’t figure how they’d gotten the stick through it—and because that’s the piece I’d given to Aili (and she promptly gave back). Since she didn’t appear to have really eaten any of it, I just popped it into my own mouth, which is when I made my discovery. I had just decided I couldn’t make it out of town with that thing in my mouth when Sarah commented she had a bit in her mouth she didn’t want to swallow (and here she turned to look at me just as I spat the huge hunk of bone into my hand) and she was waiting to get away from all these people before she spat. Classy, eh?
Asala the House Girl is still not feeling well. Some days she comes over and tries to work, but she generally has to go home again before she’s finished. You probably don’t think of The Bush, Africa, as a land of luxury, but I’m telling you having someone to help with daily chores is really quite spoiling, and it doesn’t seem to matter that we really need the help. Let’s say, for example, you wanted to have strawberry yogurt with granola for breakfast. You’d have to know far enough in advance to buy your strawberries when you were in Ouaga during strawberry season. You’d bleach your strawberries, then trim their tops and keep them in your freezer. You’d have to make your yogurt from the culture you keep on hand in your freezer, which would take most of the day for the bacteria to grow. You’d also have to make your granola from oats you bought in Tamale. Then everything is going to need sugar if you want it to taste like it does in America, but sugar is available in Nasuan. You can buy it at Market, which happens every six days. Now imagine that Nasuan doesn’t keep any of its dirt under concrete; imagine dirt just flies around wherever the wind takes it, and imagine one of the wind’s favorite places is all over the floor of your house. It might be helpful, don’t you think, if you had someone to come sweep and mop your floors and wash your dishes. But I mentioned we were spoiled. Since Asala is sick, the Esalas and I are doing our own housework. (That is, we’re doing whatever housework is getting done. Just now, I’m ignoring the sand on my floor in favor of writing to you.) But, when I’m mopping the floor to make my mom proud, I don’t think “Oh, now I’m doing some housework.” I think “Oh, now I’m playing house girl.” Pathetic.
As of last week, Black Chicken and Red Chicken are now the proud moms of roughly 10 or 12 baby chicks. And, if you don’t count the one they pecked to death, the violently homicidal moms of one chick. They hate him. They pecked a large bald spot on his little fuzzy head, which the Good Guard Abulai blacked with charcoal, and they tried to peck right through his belly with their big ferocious beaks, but Sarah shooed them away with her stomping feet and her angry eyes. Karissa and Annaka have adopted him, and, considering the standard they’re up against, they’re the best chicken moms Rejected Chicken could ever hope for. They’ve named him Percy, and he’s lived a full 24 hours in their care, which, I think, bodes well for his future. Falling Star the Baby Chicken is also in their care, and he’s doing well too. I’m not entirely sure on the details, but it seems a few of the eggs failed to hatch and Nathan, thinking they must not have been fertilized, gave them to Sarah for cooking. Waste not, want not, eh? Oy. Well, she thought they’d been outside in the heat rather long, so she wasn’t so sure about using them, so she just put them on top of the refrigerator with her other eggs. Then she heard cheeping, thought Karissa had let Percy wander into the kitchen, but looked down and saw “Percy” was the wrong color. One of the eggs had hatched on top of the fridge, and Falling Star was chirping on the floor.
And now, What I’ve Learned:
1. If you ignore some things, they really do just go away. Sometimes Aili comes to my little house for a snack, which she typically crumbs admirably onto the floor. And I mean to clean it up, really I do. But I get distracted. And the next thing I know, an army of ants has swept under my front door and hauled off the mess. Convenient, eh?
2. I can walk home from church in my 3-inch heels carrying Annaka on my shoulders without twisting my ankle. (I’d promised to carry her home from Market, but she ran off with her friends instead, so I decided carrying her home from church would be an acceptable substitute). A quarter mile down somewhat sketchy dirt trails. Amazing, I know.
This week’s Suggested Prayer Topics are Asala, who still doesn’t feel well, and our upcoming Month of the Nomads. We’ve decided to spend the whole month of May traveling, see, because Father Abraham had many sons and we are some of them, and because living in houses is for sissies. Sarah’s brother is getting married, so she and Aili will begin by traveling to the Motherland (Wisconsin, actually). In an effort to maintain the height of propriety, I will be spending that time with Paul and Ali Federwitz in Tamale; they’ve just had a new baby, so possibly I could be of some use to them. So we’re all leaving for Tamale on or around April 29th or 30th. Nathan will take Karissa and Annaka back to Nasuan to live in their house (wimps), where he will, I’m sure, enjoy acting as my substitute teacher. Sarah flies back into Tamale about two weeks later, so Nathan, Karissa, and Annaka will return to retrieve her and Aili at the same time they get me. Rather than return to Nasuan, we’re off to Ouagadougou again for two more weeks of pretend school. Karissa and I will finish pretend school on a Friday, leaping immediately into the Esala SUV, which will be waiting with the motor running to whisk us off to Accra (yes, that’s the opposite end of the country), where Sarah and Nathan have some sort of conference for a week or so. We plan to return to Nasuan shortly after the first week in June, but I’ll let you know. I mention this also because I may not be able to write as often as I’d like while we are traveling, so you need not worry if you don’t hear from me. Do, however, continue to harass my sister when you see her at church. She loves that.
Christina
Camping in the City
Tuesday, April 8, 2008
Camping in the City
Dear Everyone,
Greetings, Friends! Did you miss me? The Esalas and I have returned from Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, and now, after well over a week back in Nasuan, I’m ready to make my report.
After ages of preparation and packing and loading the car, including a brief but thorough—and, happily, not needed—How to Change a Flat Tire tutorial for Sarah and me from Nathan, and armed with our stack of passports and almost no knowledge of French, the Esala women and I began our two day journey. Our trip through customs was long but not unpleasant. When Baby Aili began to cry, the Ghanaian customs official informed her sternly, “If you cry, you don’t go to Ouaga,” and she stopped and pouted at him. Sarah handled the paperwork to take our car across the boarder while I waited by the car with the kids. I suppose there’s nothing like standing by an SUV full of little white children in car seats to make you look married; the men selling sunglasses and general toiletries asked me to let them marry my daughters. “Give me one of your daughters to remember you by,” they said. Oy. Karissa, naturally, didn’t like that idea and announced a few times, though they didn’t hear her, that I wasn’t her mother. We had a little chat about that in the car, about how I will not give her away and how she will please not tell people I’m not married. She quickly saw the wisdom of this plan and is on board for next time. Karissa is a team player.
In Ouaga, we stayed in a little mission compound. My room was very much like a dorm room: 2 small beds, 2 little wardrobes, a desk, and not much floor space. I shared a bathroom with my neighbor to the left, and we both shared a kitchen with our two neighbors to the right. My room assignment had been changed from the room the Esalas had reserved for me, such that I was no longer assigned to use the kitchen that stinks so bad the flies come in and just die. I did visit that kitchen in the interest of seeing this strange phenomenon, but found the stink negligible and the flies very much alive. The Esalas stayed in a two bedroom half-a-house and shared only a front porch with their neighbor. So while my room felt like a dorm, theirs seemed more like camping in a cabin. Actually, the mission compound, while lovely, seemed to offer all the hassles of camping without any of the perks. Packing, dirt, bugs, packing, communal bathroom, dirt, packing, unpacking, repacking, dirty bathroom; but no quiet or campfires.
It takes a lot of stuff to sustain a family through three weeks of pretend school and an Easter holiday, and that’s why the top of the Esala SUV was loaded with large tubs covered in a tarp and tied down to the luggage rack. Ordinarily, Nathan would’ve unpacked them (“man work,” see?). As he was still in Nasuan (he didn’t come to Ouaga until midway through the second week), I had the great privilege (and fun) of climbing onto the roof myself—in my skirt; I felt like Wilderness Woman the Competent—and hauling down the tubs. I had just gotten everything untied and was trying to decide how to hand the containers down to Sarah without falling off the roof or smashing her flat when God answered Nathan’s prayer of the day before by providing two tall men to take the tubs from me as I lowered them over the side of the car. It was quite fantastic because the top of the car was easily and quickly unloaded with their help and I still got to climb it without their help. And Sarah and I shared the happy feeling that comes inside having accomplished “man work” mostly on our own.
At Pretend School, I taught the second grade class for language arts and math. For language arts, I decided to read the class the book The Boxcar Children with the help of a readers’ guide I borrowed from Marvelous Mona. Since the boxcar children have good values and nice manners, the guide highlights a “virtue” prominently exhibited in each chapter. The problem was, well, I think of “virtues” as qualities that are necessarily good, such as gentleness and honesty. Qualities such as alertness and orderliness seem more neutral; they could lend themselves equally well to goodness or evil. So. I decided to call these “qualities” rather than virtues, and I’m glad I did. The first day, our quality was Alertness. I asked for examples of when it might be a good idea to be alert. While I was anticipating answers like “When driving a car” or “When crossing the street,” or even “When we play outside we have to watch for snakes,” their first three responses were “When eavesdropping,” “When spying,” and “If you’re a thief.” Perfect.
For part of math time, each student brought work his or her parent had assigned, and I was supposed to assist as needed. One student, from Australia, had a math book from England. She was learning about place value, and the book claimed an easy way to learn this was through money. English money. Great. “How many of which coins would you need to make the following amounts?” it asked. The coin options were not listed; apparently the student should already know that much about money. Well, my student didn’t, and I didn’t either. We couldn’t switch to American money because she’s from Australia. We couldn’t switch to Australian money because she doesn’t really know about that either. And she lives in Burkina, not Ghana, so I can’t help her with Ghanaian money either. I don’t know anything about Burkina’s money, but neither did she. “My mum usually handles all the money,” she said. So much for math.
Karissa’s class was just across the room from mine, so when I wasn’t busy with my own class I eavesdropped on hers (thereby demonstrating the quality Alertness). Her teacher had them listing all the ways eggs could be prepared. It was a competition: boys against girls. Securing victory for the girls, Karissa made me proud by including “chiffon” on her list.
In other school news, our musical was a smashing success. Miss Heidi, the director, drafted help from the parents at a special parents’ meeting one evening. I stayed at the Esalas’ house with the kids (okay, I was taking a nap) while Sarah went. She came home with the happy news she’d volunteered me to do the choreography. That’s when we almost couldn’t be friends anymore. Then she explained that Miss Heidi’s list had eleven jobs, but only ten parents were at the meeting. Everyone had a job, she said, and only choreography was left, and everyone was bewildered, including Miss Heidi, regarding choreography. So I was won over and agreed to choreograph. Oy. Then Sarah described the nervous shock of the other parents when she volunteered me, her teacher, on whose good side she, obviously, wishes to stay . . . well, that was a happy picture too. And choreography was fun because, after I created it, I got to teach it too, and then I got to direct it during the performance. And this is one of my favorite parts of mission work: In America, I never would’ve been chosen for this task. But because our resources are so few, my ability, meager though it is, turns out to be our best option. Amazing.
Ouaga is definitely a land of many luxuries, internet and honey among them. Other treats of Ouaga include swimming almost everyday; milkshakes; strawberries; vegetables such as green beans, lettuce, and broccoli; ham; French bread; cheese; fantastic new shoes and T-shirts; grocery stores with real actual grocery carts; and church in English with the other families there for school. We had Easter church together Sunday morning and then a woman at the worship service invited us to Easter brunch at her house, which turned out to be a small palace. She, apparently, is not a missionary, but works at the U.S. Embassy in Burkina Faso. She is not the Ambassador, but the Ambassador was there and wearing a fine, pink Easter suit. Anyway, the Easter brunch turned out to be a buffet of all the foods we love but don’t have (Did you know Cinnabun makes mixes? Amazing.), and the promised “activities for the kids” turned out to be a sing along at the piano in the parlor, a small playroom that looked more like a little toy shop, and an Easter egg hunt.
In all the fun and busyness, I will say I missed Nasuan. Specifically, I missed the darkness at night without all the security lighting of the mission compound. I sometimes couldn’t tell whether or not it was really morning, so bright were the lights. I missed my house spiders, who kill my flies and mosquitoes without me having to do anything. In Ouaga, I was without that convenience. And I missed not going places. Swimming everyday is fun, but it’s also a hassle. And the grocery shopping. Oy! We must’ve gone grocery shopping three times in as many weeks. But no worries. It’ll be at least a month before we go shopping again, so we’ll have time to recover.
Our return to Nasuan was uneventful. This time Nathan came with me to my little house to oversee my homecoming (gallant of him, I know). We found nothing more ominous than two large roaches, which Nathan killed with the poison spray, and an extra scary spider. It took me a day or two to decide to kill the spider. On one hand, spiders are generally welcome for their bug-killing tendencies. On the other, bugs larger than my big toe are generally not welcome. Especially if I can see their fangs. So after a few days, I finally killed the extra scary spider with four or five sprays of poison and several whacks with my flip flop. I’m currently deciding whether or not to kill the scary spider that lives under my bathroom cabinet—I think I mentioned before she’d allegedly killed her husband. She ate a whole big meaty cockroach the other day all by herself—took all morning before she discarded his body into my soap dish. On the one hand, that’s certainly a service I appreciate. On the other, I think she just upped her scariness rating.
In other Nasuan news, The Chief’s mother’s funeral was last week (though her death was quite some time ago—perhaps even a year ago), and I went to some of it. It was very dark—darkness frequently being a component of nighttime—and very loud with dancing and drums and flutes and horns. I couldn’t really see the dancing because the crowds were great, but it seemed to involve several large umbrellas similar to the kind Americans associate with lawn furniture. Nathan explained the dance as sort of a competition. When we arrived, a man was just lighting off some gun powder. On the one hand, I was pleased to see evidence the gunshots I’d been hearing on previous nights may not have actually involve bullets. On the other, we were so close to the gun powder I could feel the blast of the explosion on my skin. It was unpleasant. The whole time we were there, I stuck so close to Nathan he could hardly turn around without stepping on me, but I was not easy in the dark and strange environment and I was concerned about becoming lost. Not that I could’ve actually become lost. White skin glows in the dark.
I’m happy to report the Tailor in Nalerigu has altered my skirts so the elastic no longer threatens to bisect me. Sarah and I spoke to his apprentice about my elastic problem, and he agreed to see what he could do. When we suggested measuring me to decide how much elastic to use this time, he responded, “It is elastic, so no need to measure.” Friends, I think we’ve hit on the problem. So Sarah measured me and told him how much elastic to use, which he did, and it worked out well. Then last week I had him make me some pants based off a pair I already have, and he did a wonderful job. These pants, actually, are pajamas, and instead of standard pockets, they have just one very small and seemingly useless pocket in the back, which I’ve discovered is the perfect size for my MP3 player. The Tailor asked if I wanted him to put pockets in the pants (Have I mentioned how fantastic his pockets are?), and I highlighted the small pocket for him. He was slightly disbelieving and quite tickled, but he put in the small pocket perfectly.
You may also wish to know that White Chicken has gone through puberty and begun relations (in the front yard of all places) with Red Chicken and Black Chicken, who are now rumored to be sitting on eggs. Fourth Chicken, whom I may not have mentioned before, seems to be hiding his masculinity, perhaps in an effort to avoid being pecked bald by White Chicken. But I did see him posturing threateningly awhile back, so I’ll keep you informed.
Rather than closing with a list of the things I’ve learned, I’d like to instead highlight three symptoms of my growth as a person I’ve recently noticed. First, know that big meaty cockroaches have been my nemeses since I began battling them a few years ago in Taiwan. When I saw the two roaches that Nathan killed for me, however, I didn’t freak out, as has been my custom in the past. I actually thought, “Those big roaches aren’t so bad; they probably lived outside and just came in. It’s the little brown ones that build their nest in your refrigerator insulation you have to watch out for.” Also, recall that I have been unable to pee if the lizard was in my toilet. As he seems to be making his home there, I’ve grown accustomed to his presence. I still check for him every time, it’s true, but I’m using my toilet without distress whether he’s there or not. And finally, the poison Nathan put in my attic seems to be wearing off, as the mice are back and especially noisy. (Sarah suggests the extra noise is from nest building. Great.) The other night, when I usually would’ve prayed for God to send his creatures back to the field from which they came, or, better, just kill them all, I instead found myself praying, “Lord, if they could please just do something quietly,” and I meant it. Oy. Once I caught myself praying that, I also thought about the roaches and Swamp Lizard, and I couldn’t sleep for the humor of it all. All I could think was, “Next thing you know, you’ll be dating musicians.” (That’s a movie quote for my Sister. Never mind.)
This week’s Suggested Prayer Topic is Asala the House Girl (whose name I previously was writing “Esalla”). She isn’t feeling well. She was treated last week for meningitis, so I pray that all is well with her and she suffers no ill effects from that or from her current predicament.
That’s it then. For awhile, I was concerned I wouldn’t be able to get you a full five pages, but looks like I did okay after all. Oy.
Christina
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