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19 April 2005
Dear Family and friends
The night is loud with bugs singing and twitching and calling out to each other. I am playing Handel’s Water Music Suite in F (as if to will refreshment) with all the louvered windows open and every fan on to move the heavy air off my mood. We are just days away from the beginning of the rain season. The clouds are low and dark and yet they hold themselves in tact one more day. Humidity is in the high 80%. It is obvious we are on the brink of the new season. My sister asked me what the seasons are like, the food, the lay of the land. I think I will share it with all of you. I arrived in November to the first month of dry season. There was still a little green in the weeds and grasses at that time. Water was flowing in the stream nearby our village, as well as near town. That was 5 months ago. Today, the stream is still: a bluish milky muck. Not moving. The open field outside my door is a grey brown haze of dust. The wells in the area are dry and so a new movement of people has begun.
Children mostly, with 5 gallon buckets on their heads or alongside their skinny bodies, are in search of water for the family. I know that they have knowledge of the water sources near the hills. It is a long trek and they move in groups of 5 or 6. They always wave their free hand and smile or call out as I pass or they pass me. In the US we have our $1.00 water bottles of spring water, here we have plastic baggies looking a bit like water balloons for sale. I personally keep my water bottle filled from my water filter tank by the sink. People who can spare probably 10% of their daily income might buy a drink of bagged water. The young men I have seen on the road as motorcycle taxi men will sometimes buy a bag and open it over their heads. I love to see their relief. It has been hot and dry. Dry like I have never known. Dry, as in the wood furniture splits, the rubber bands crumble, herbs hung in the kitchen are dry in a couple hours. So dry that the blue Scotch Bright sponges that I brought with me dry up so fast and twist so that the scrubbing pad separates and peels off. Fields near the road seem to spontaneously catch fire and burn for a half acre or so and then die out for lack of fuel. Dust doesn’t burn long.
So , did I say I was heavy mooded as I await the rainy season? You betcha. The whole state of Plateau as well as most of West Africa awaits the relief. Early Saturday mornings lately I have seen troops of young boys marching along the roadway following a couple uniformed men carrying flags of Nigeria and of their organization. Kind of like boy scouts. Some times they march, sometimes they are almost dancing. I watched last week as I imagined they were out doing a rain dance. I thought they were looking a little delirious in the heat. But they are used to it. Would you believe with all that I have told you, many of our girls here at school are wearing stocking caps and sweaters anyway? I have never once heard a Nigerian complain about the weather. Not once! We Baturis talk about it (and complain) all the time. See?
Let me change the subject to food. I am not losing any weight here. Nor am I gaining any either. The staple of my diet is vine ripe tomatoes daily, one or two bananas, some cereal or granola that a woman in town makes, some kind of red sauce on starch a few times a week and the leanest meat I have ever seen. Lean and usually very tough. I don’t eat much of it any more. The pork meat is the best for texture and flavor. It is just kind of hard to think about it much though as I see the pigs along the side of the road scavenging. But so far, we cook it good and long and no one has gotten ill from it. It is the fish I won’t try at all. The waterways are so bad and Saturday is laundry day at the rivers edge. Missionaries love chocolate. In all sorts of forms, so there is always some of that being circulated. The best and grandest surprise to me has been the strawberries.
There are few local women who have planted large plots of ever bearing type and I can buy it by the kilo and soak them (as well as all produce) in a bleach solution to kill off the sickening bacteria. Really, if you bite into any of it without the soak, you are in for a difficult week of trots and belly aches. I have been treated for Giardia recently so I want to be very careful. So, anyway , the strawberries are sweet and I keep them frozen after their bleach bath and use them with powdered milk and bananas as a smoothie. Nice. The closest thing to ice cream when I put it all in a blender and add ice. So anyway, cooking and buying food is a whole day project and I don’t cook much. Did I mention that peanuts are plentiful and are roasted at the roadside stand and another local woman has learned that we folk like peanut butter. So she grinds it. Just what I had for dinner again tonight. We who like coffee bring it in from the states or have volunteers who come to help bring it in for us. I have a night once a month when I grind coffee for myself and a friend. I brought my coffee grinder that a friend gave me a few years ago. It is a 110 volt appliance. That is odd in a country that is somewhere about 220 V. more or less. And what I mean by that is that the power fluctuates a lot here so one has to buy several voltage regulators. Let me draw you a picture of how this all works. I purchased a transformer in the US before I left for Africa. It weighs about 30 pounds but is only about a 6” cube of solid coil. I need a plug adaptor to plug the transformer into the voltage regulator that needs a special plug to fit the wall sockets. I have plugged a super duper power strip from the US into the transformer and then the coffee grinder gets plugged into that. There are about 4 on and off switches that I have to remember to “on” and then I can grind the coffee. That is why I set a date and time for this event with others standing by. Once I surprised everyone at a gathering by making chocolate covered coffe beans from the coffee that I had just received from my daughters in a miracle package that actually arrived here without a real address on it. They were a hit.
I will end this news with a little bit about the critters I encounter here. No lions or tigers, not even hyenas, however, from the way the dogs pace back and forth with their noses to the ground, I think they are derived from the hyena family. One critter is my living room lizard. He is elusive and quick and kind of chameleon, apparently harmless, so I just leave him to roam. I think it is a good idea to have one or two in residence. Because, just two nights ago, just inside the door was the biggest spider I have ever seen. Very hairy. Not the kind of visitor I hoped for as I began to close up for the night. My technique for capture is not to chase them around as they are very quick and like to hide under dark, low furniture pieces. My bed is low to the ground, the bed sheets actually touch the floor some nights as I turn or toss about in the heat. So, I have perfected the wet towel toss. I can thoroughly wet a dish towel and nail an intruder from up to 6 feet away. The weight of the wet towel holds the varmint in place until I come with my club and mash every inch of the towel with primal huffs. So far so good. I would have loved to share the specimen of the huge arachnid, but there were too many pieces to reassemble to do so. I can adeptly put a glass jar over bugs on the wall or screen windows and even coax birds back outside with fly swatters. So there. Oh. Just one more. This is the best. It is common to see bugs on the floors. It is also most common that they are dead. They are usually lying on their backs. Humm. Anyway. There are ants in the front of the house that scout my house for just such as these. So occasionally, when I see a critter apparently crawling slowly across the floor, I get up close to it to observe 4-6 little ants carrying off lunch for the queen. They are very strong and agile to cart off such large carcasses. It is much like the animated bug cartoon movies of the 1990’s. I point to the door as if to give them orders or directions and they are out in a flash.
Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony is just finishing up and it is exactly what we call missionary midnight. 9 P.M. so as the final movement is playing, I will close and make it to bed for the usual early rising. My day is long at the Girls center. 7:30 – 4 each day. Tomorrow I will take the tailoring class into town to shop for fabric. They are very excited. I will take them to lunch at a bakery that makes things like pasties. Meat and potatoes in a bread crust. Tasty and spicy. We will have a mineral (soda in a bottle) and that will be a real treat for all. Emmanuel will drive us in the Rafiki van. I look forward to each and every day.
Life is a contrast of joy and sadness, fun and difficulty. It has meaning way beyond what most of us realize. May I encourage you with the following verses from the Bible.
“ I have not stopped giving thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers. I keep asking that the God of Our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, may give you the spirit of wisdom and revelation so that you may know Him better. I pray also that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which He has called you. the riches of His glorious inheritance in the saints” Ephesians 1:16-18.
Your love and concern are a topic of my gratitude in daily praises and your personal needs and trials are covered in my prayers through Christ.
I love you more than I did before.
Judy
Posted by libbystokes at April 19, 2005 12:04 PM