My Sister's Wit.

I couldn’t understand the anything the preacher said at church last week, the Liberian English was just too thick as it often is when the preacher’s here get excited. So my mind started to wonder and rested on one of my sisters, Michelle. Which means I smiled and chuckled to myself throughout the rest of the service. Michelle may not have been born a comedian but she certainly, perfected the dead pan comedic timing over the years.  She studied hard under my Dad and our older brother, I can remember the painful attempts at humor when she was five years old, we did not “humor” her efforts and so she quickly learned what was funny and what was annoying and became the mastermind she is today. But still I can hear her telling her favorite joke “Why did the Skelton cross the road? Because it was being chased by a dog!” Five year old Michelle cracked herself up with that one. Here are some of the stories that made me smile and make odd noises trying to squelch my giggles.

 

Michelle’s Birth

The earliest memory I have pertaining to Michelle was the night of her birth. So it’s not really about her but she caused the incident. I was 4 ½ years old when Michelle was born and somehow in the process I was dropped off at my Grandparents house during her birth, that is all blur now but I distinctly remember falling asleep alone in the center of a giant bed at my grandparents and waking up horrified to find a giant person in the bed with me. It turned out to be my great-grandmother, who complained all the next day of little Vickie hogging the bed. She didn’t live there at the time so don’t really know how she got there in the middle of the night either other than that it was the power of Michelle’s personality causing humors awkward incidents as she came into the world.

Ears

Baby Michelle had a thing for ears. Didn’t matter who you were, if you held baby Michelle she would reach up and stroke your ear lobe while she sucked her thumb and took a nap. This caused many awkward situations when introducing baby Michelle to new friends.

Play place

We were home school hippies. We ate homemade bread with home ground grains, I don’t remember eating out that much unless we were with our Grands until we were much older. Therefore I remember Michelle’s first romp in a CFA playhouse. She may have been 2 or 3 and she excitedly went scampering to the top of the slow incline foam ladder ramp, and then promptly fell all the way down it. I just remember her turning into a flailing ball and seeing head, butt, head, butt all the way to the bottom. Granny and I both busted out laughing as we watched through the window. Granny and I both have that fault of laughing when people fall… ungracious, I know. She was fine, didn’t even appear to notice the playhouse rejection.

 

Will You Open This? No.

There were not seatbelt law yet… or maybe we just didn’t abide them. But often we scrambled around in the back of the minivan on our trips around Georgia. On the way back from the grocery store Michelle had a package she couldn’t open herself. She went to each person in the car (Mom, Dad, Clay and Myself) shouting “Can you open this!” We all answered “No!” in turn so she continued around the circle until Mom stomped the breaks and all we saw were her feet straight up in the air. Did I mention I have a fault about laughing when people fall down?

 

Best Friends

Michelle not only never met a stranger when she was a kids, she never met anyone who wasn’t her best friend either. She’d come running over pulling a kid by the hand and exclaim “this is my best friend!” turning to smiling new comrade, “hey what is your name?” New comrade, “Mary.” “This is my best friend Mary!”

 

Bicycle Trick

When we moved to “the city,” which was actually a close knit subdivision, we no longer had property, creeks, and wildlife to entertain us so we resorted to amusing ourselves in other ways. One was a bike trick Michelle came up with, in which I road on the peddles, Rebecca stood on the pegs, and Michelle drooped her legs and arms over the handle bars with her butt hanging just over the tire. The older she got the more difficult this trick became as her butt began dragging on the tire below. “Alright I can still do it! (ZZZIPPP!) Ouch! It’s okay I got this!”

 

The Linen Closet

At our new house in Jackson the hall was very narrow and at one point had the laundry room to one side and the linen closet at the other. This was probably a fire hazard but you couldn’t open both the doors at once and you couldn’t pass through the hall if either of the doors were open. The four of us kids were always in and out of the linen closet getting dish rags, towel, sheets etc. And we were perpetually leaving the door ajar to our mother’s great displeasure. Who would come through the hall lamenting the door being open again and slamming it shut. Michelle wasn’t tall enough to reach most of the shelves in it so would climb up on them. Multiple times Mom would come from behind the door angrily exclaiming “Who left this door open again!” and slam the door shut, pancaking Michelle between the door and the shelves. It would be quiet for a minute and then you’d hear a little “ouch” come from inside the closet, as she was thinking out her escape route. Mom always felt really bad after the incidents but sometimes because Michelle wasn’t loud about it she didn’t even know she’d squashed her in there, until she’d pass back by and Michelle would ask politely to be let out. 

 

Cleaning the Room

While both our parents were working (Mom had a part time Job) I often stayed at home with Michelle and Becca and made sure they did their chores and some school work. Michelle and Becca shared a room. Rebecca has always been the neatest person in the house. Her bed usually made with her animals arranged in order etc. Michelle’s bed was usually made too but that was because she didn’t want to unmake it so she slept on top of the made up bed with a small blanket or towel. While cleaning their room Michelle became convinced that the mess was primarily created by Rebecca (the neat one) but that she was always having to clean it up. Michelle taped a line down the center of the room and declared that half was her side and the other half Rebecca would have to keep clean herself. In a short time Rebecca’s side was spotless and Michelle had become distracted by some toys and hadn’t put anything away. Michelle realizing her error did not relent in her conviction that indeed the messes were due to Rebecca, gathered up all her toys and dumped them across the line in defiance.

 

The Shoes

We all got up and got ready for church like we always do on Sunday morning. Michelle took her shoes off the front porch and slipped them on and we headed to church. Right about the time we entered the front lobby of the church I began to smell a putrid smell but it wasn’t that strong so I went to Sunday school and forgot about it. Michelle was still in children’s Sunday school so she went down the opposite hall to her classroom. She sat next to the pastors’ son in class and was overcome by an awful smell. She didn’t want to embarrass him but she was sure the horrid smell was coming from him. So all through class she just held her breath and didn’t say a word. Finally Sunday school was over and Michelle and I met in the lobby like we normally did. I sat down next to Michelle on the sofa in the foyer and found myself overwhelmed by that putrid smell again only now it had worsened. “What is that smell?” I exclaimed. “I don’t know” Michelle said in wonder, “but it’s all over the church it was like this in my class”. Mom came into entrance hall and smelled it too. People coming in and out the front door were scrunching their nose in disgust and saying to each other “where’s that smell coming from?” Finally, and I’m not sure how but, my mother discovered it was Michelle’s shoes. My sister had left them on the porch where our male cat sprayed them, it was winter when this happened so she did not smell it when she put them on because they were cold, but as she walked about the church they heated up and the awful smell followed her where ever she went. Needless to say Michelle didn’t wear shoes the rest of the time at church that day. I can still remember the cute guy I had a crush on singing out loudly “it only smells on that side of the lobby” pointing in our general direction; Michelle and I still oblivious to the rancid shoes.

 

Biscuit Head!

As Michelle got older her comedy became less physical humor and more, funny sayings and quick humor. While walking the Dogs together she exclaimed that I was a “biscuit head!” for allowing our leads to cross. When I asked what on earth a biscuit head was she explained calmly it was “half human, half delectable goodness.”

 

Lim-rod

While cleaning the kitchen together (a job that was usually hers) I tried to put the ice cream scoop in the dishwasher she yelled, “That doesn’t go in there you.. (she paused as if searching to find the appropriate word to vent her fury)… you Lim-rod!”

 

I Have A Dream

Michelle came to me one day while I was on the computer in my room. She said she wanted to make two boxes of cupcakes and asked if she could just double the recipe on the back of the box and mix the two mixes together. I answered in the affirmative and after a few minutes (because we were home alone) I went to check on her baking progress. When I came into the kitchen she had just begun to stir the two mixes together which turned out to be one chocolate mix and one vanilla mix. I said, “Oh Michelle! I didn’t know you meant two different mixes!”

She glared at me for a second and then continued stirring them again while she proclaimed, “I have a dream! That my twelve little cupcakes…..”

 

Strength

Michelle was always small and cute but she was also strong and athletic. She played softball and had a pretty good arm. I was never the athletic one, I would always bring a book to her games or while she was practicing in the front yard. It’s not that I hated to play sports, it’s just that, I always ended up injuring myself or others and I also hate competition… yeah I guess I did always hate sports. She tried to get me to practice with her a few times but after I beamed her in the butt every time I struck the ball, (I had nearly a perfect batting average in high school PE but never made it to base because I always hit it straight at the pitcher) she gave up on that and bounced the ball off the house.

At a church youth event we both attended, I was standing with some boys watching their valiant attempts at throwing stones across this manmade lake. They were trying their hardest to land a stone on the ground at the other side of the lake and failing. Michelle came flouncing up behind us oblivious, “Hey what are y’all doing? Trying to hit that skinny tree there?” she said squinting across that water. The boy already knowing Michelle’s strength, mumbled some things under their breath, and kicked at a few pebbles as they looked at the ground. Michelle not noticing picked up the first stone at her feet, “Fun! I want to try!” And then succeeded in hitting the skinny tree on the other side of the lake on her first throw. She jumped back and said “Yay I got it!” expecting to be high-fived by someone. The boys just mopped off, while I smiled at her. “What?! What did I do?!”

If you wanted to flirt with Michelle playfully punching her on the arm was not something you should try, as the boys quickly learned. “Ouch why’d you do that? (Serious Punch back).

As we were standing in the church hall the youth pastor passed Michelle and hit her on the arm playfully as he passed. “What was that for!” Michelle exclaimed. “It was just a friendly hit,” replied the pastor in passing. Michelle then turned to me and said “this is just a friendly punch!” And then punched me straight in the face! My head went back and hit the wall! We couldn’t stop laughing after that one. She really didn’t mean to follow through with the motion, she just miss-judged.

I Was Just Doing This!

 

Standing during a homeschool Co-op meet, I was holding a glass of juice in a plastic cup. Michelle walks up punches the cup from the bottom sending it splattering everywhere. Me: “Michelle! What on earth are you doing!” Michelle “What?! I was just doing this.. (displays latest dance moves which include punching the air).

 

Bob

Growing up I had two imaginary friends and a fairy which was born from a bean pod I found in the woods. Those who have had imaginary friends know that they find you, you don’t find them. Michelle was jealous of my imaginary friends growing up so she fabricated two, Nicholas and his girlfriend Necklace. They were conspicuously only around when My imaginary friends came over to play. But Michelle shouldn’t have made all the fuss because eventually an imaginary friend did find her albeit a little late in the game. His name was Bob. He showed up around the start of Michelle’s middle school career. Bob was special, I couldn’t see him (obviously he was Michelle’s imaginary friend) but she said that Bob was a dwarf who had no arms and legs, was mute and spoke through sign language.  Bob often came with us to play tennis. (since they wanted me to continue playing tennis with them we never learned the rules to the game so we couldn’t be competitive and we ended the game whenever Michelle sent the last ball sailing over the high fence with her soft ball arm.) Bob always missed his set. Rebecca and I were always to one side, and Michelle and Bob on the other. Whenever the ball would go to his side, Michelle would yell to warn him “That’s yours Bob!” but he always missed. If we ever bemoaned Bob’s poor tennis skills Michelle would get really defensive of him and call us insensitive to his physical challenges. She would also send him down the court to retrieve tennis balls and we would sometimes wait 10 minutes for him before we’d get impatient and get them ourselves while Michelle stood back saying “No Guys! He was almost there! Now you made him feel bad…” One day inexplicably Bob went missing, for weeks Michelle kept asking if we had seen Bob, to which we always replied “He’s Invisible!” Michelle walked outside with me as I was preparing to drive to work, I opened up my car trunk and Michelle exclaimed suddenly “BOB! Vickie How could you!?”

Telepathy

Homeschooler become really tight with their siblings, often we would finish each other’s sentences. Sometimes we can just look at each other and know what the other was about to say. We had conversation like:

“Hey did you get that thingy?”

“Yeah I gave it to…”

“Oh yeah, what’s his face, right?”

“Right.”

Once we were watching our youth ministers 7 year old while he was preaching on an out of town trip. I said something vague to Michelle and she answered the question and the kid was baffled. “How did you know what she wanted?” Michelle answered nonchalantly “Because we can read each other’s mind.” The kid was like, “That’s not true!” To prove it Michelle and I then stared at each other and did random tasks as though the other had just commanded us to do it through our thoughts. We would exclaim, “Oh don’t say that!” after a long stare, and things of that nature. Blew that kid’s mind.

 

Secret Hand Shake

Michelle and I, also perfected our secret handshake. Not with each other, with other persons. It goes like this. Meet friend in public setting. “Hey do you want to learn my secret handshake?” Unsuspecting victim, “Sure.”

Begin to shake hands, then hold tight to the person’s hand as you phantom pulling away and begin shouting, “I don’t know you! Let go of me!”

Good times good times… (also a frequent Michelle quote)

 

Slap in the face

Whenever something almost fell over, or two people almost collided or some other disaster was narrowly avoided if Michelle was standing close to you she would always exclaim “That was a close one, Fhew!” while wiping her brow with the back of her hand and then smacking you in the face with the continued hand swipe. It made me laugh every time.

Aliens

Michelle was even humorous in her sleep. She often talked in her sleep but she never said anything about the weather or asked for pancakes, she always sat bolt upright in bed suddenly, stared at you with bleary eyes and began exclaiming “They are coming! They are coming!” If you ventured to ask who were coming? She would get annoyed and yell louder, “THEY ARE COMING.”

 

Social Life

Whenever people worried about those home school kids who have problems socializing… they were talking about me. But luckily Michelle came along to help me navigate the confusing public schoolers social rules. Before she entered the youth group I contented myself with climbing trees to spy on their weird ways unnoticed or read the Bible more during youth events. When she graduated up, we discussed the public schoolers huddles and tried to discover how your broke into them. It was truly perplexing, people walked up and sometimes the group opened to include them and sometimes they remained closed. We tried creeping around the outside of these huddles and that didn’t work. Eventually Michelle decided to take a bolder approach and got a running start. She ran right through the middle of them and to our surprise they opened up like a failed red rover and let her pass straight through before closing up again. She trotted up beside me… “Well that didn’t work.”

But that didn’t last too long for Michelle, by the end of that school year, I was standing by my popular young sister who had amassed an entire group of homeschool friends who were attending our church now due mainly because of Michelle’s influence. There was a large group all in a circle and Michelle was chattering and entertaining them suddenly she stopped noticing that a public schooler had intruded their group standing beside her. She said (sarcastically) “Hey you’re not a home schooler?!” And bumped him out of the circle. Sometimes things come full circle.

 

Movie Short

Michelle, Rebecca and I only attempted two movie shorts. The first was “Odd Anomalies of the Church.” We completed that one and still watch it from time to time. The other we never completed and we lost the tape but I still play it in my mind often. I wrote the outline of the skit and Michelle filled in everything else. We painted Rebecca completely green and put her in my big green sweat shirt. Michelle painted green around her eye and a green splotch the shape of Texas on her stomach. She then proceeded, in a melancholy tone, to the camera, to explain that her and her sister were half alien and half human and had recently been banned from their spaceship home because of something she did. She said, “My sister, ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ Narf Click Click, Is angry at me for getting us kicked out.” The rest of the skit whenever she talked to Becca’s character without cracking a smile Michelle would call out “ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ Narf Click click, please don’t be angry!”

 

The Stage

After Michelle and Becca moved with the parents up too Cincinnati I would come up on breaks to visit and Dad was continually improving the house or yard in some way. One break I came up and he had just installed a platform in the living room in which he was planning to install a wood burning stove on after the next pay check. As we all sat at dinner Michelle commented to Dad, “When are you going to finish building that stove?”

Dad answered sarcastically, “Who said anything about a stove?”

Michelle answered gesturing towards the platform, “Well what is that?! A home Stage?”

Dad answered simply, “Yes.”

Michelle turned Rebecca immediately, “Your puppets can go on tonight, I’ll do interpretive dance tomorrow night.”

 

As Big as My Face

It seemed for a while there people were saying that about everything “Wow That is as big as my face!” Especially when referring to food. Mom plopped a giant baked potato on Michelle’s plate, it was so huge it literally knocked all the other food on the plate off on to the table. Michelle gasped and exclaimed “It’s as big as! AS BIG AS!” She then stuck her face right down on top of it and said coolly, “Yup.”

 

It Bit my Toe!

Rebecca woke up with start, as she heard a sharp yell followed by the disruption of a table in the bathroom connected to the bedroom she and Michelle were sharing at our grandmother’s house for the holidays. She jumped out of bed anxiously and went to the bathroom door to knock, “Michelle, Michelle? Are you okay?” (More shuffling around). Rebecca a little more alarmed, “Michelle! Are you okay?” Michelle flung the door open dramatically, standing in her towel at the door she exclaimed, “It’s in there and it bit my toe!” I woke up when I heard the door creak as they opened up their bed room door beside the air mattress I was sleeping on in the living room. I rolled over and opened one eye to discover both sisters staring at me in an alarmed manner, Michelle in her towel, Rebecca with disheveled bed hair in her pajamas. Me: “What do you want?” Becca: “There’s a lizard in the shower.” Me: “What do you want me to do about it, there are two of you.”  They answered at once: Becca: “I can’t touch a lizard!” Michelle: “It bit my toe!” Michelle apparently saw the lizard in the shower and tried to shoo it into a cup with her foot. The lizard backlashed and latched on to her toe which startled Michelle into falling over backwards out of the shower and on to the furniture against the wall.

 

This was Michelle’s second incident involving a lizard bite. On a youth mission trip, Michelle had attempted to save a lizard who was becoming over heated under a plastic tarp at a worksite. When she got him untangled he thanked her by biting her thumb and then running away with a hunk of Michelle’s skin hanging in his mouth. Michelle was dubbed “Lizzy” the rest of the week.

 

The Story of Esther Through African Eyes

A month or more ago, I was asked to speak at a women’s conference up country in Liberia. At first I refused, I’m not a speaker and they were using the term “Preacher” which I doubly am not. But they stopped using the term preacher and they said I could just teach a story instead. I can do that. Anyone can teach a story. So I started to think on what story to teach. I was thinking either Ruth or Esther because they are women and it was a women’s conference. I couldn’t decide though so I turned to my most trusted advisor, my mother, and we decided together Esther was the best choice. Liberia is the first African country to have a woman for a president. Madame Ellen Sirleaf is in her second term now and her presence as leader in Liberia has done a lot for giving women recognition and respect. Today, more than any other time, women in Liberia are able to take on important leadership roles in their society. So Esther seemed like an appropriate choice, I mean she is beautiful, she stood up to the man, she was firm in her beliefs and she shines out as an independent godly woman, right?

The awesome thing about storying or teaching bible stories orally is that I don’t actually do anything but tell the story and let God do the teaching through his own word. There are some rules to storying which I cling too, one is you never answer a question out of your own knowledge, you always refer back to the story and retell whatever portion is applicable to the question. Example: Q. “Did sin come into the world because Adam ate an Apple?” A. “What does the story say?  The story says God told Adam he could eat from any of the trees in the garden except from one, the tree that gives the understanding of good and evil….. etc.”  This allows me to be off the hook for my limited knowledge on ancient biblical script and hard to define theology and keeps erroneous personal thought from becoming new African Theology. Also it has the added benefit of not allowing me to crowd the discussion with my western ideas but instead really learn a story and the alternate way of viewing it.

So the Story of Esther, to my western mind, was about how Esther with God’s help, stood up for herself. It was about her independence, I mean she came alone to the harem she made a name for herself, she was praised above the rest, and then she stood up for her people. Y’all all saw “One Night with the King” right? I wasn’t a huge fan of that movie (I may have laughed so hard when her necklace exploded into sparkles that my friends made me leave the room) but it summed up a lot of how I viewed the story of Esther. It filled in all the “gaps” just as I had always been trained to fill them.

There were about 70 or 80 women at the conference from young adult to shameless dancing grandma’s also present were about 20 to 30 men who were there for curiosity sake or maybe they were spying on us? I broke the story down into 3 parts (it’s a long story) and told them in sections over the course of two days. After telling the part of the story twice I would ask them “what was your favorite part” and “For you, what was the hardest thing to hear or if it has happened to you what would have been the hardest thing?” I asked before I started the story who had heard the story of Esther before and only 3 or 4 people raised their hands. I was a little skeptical that so few had heard it before but when I ended the second part of the story before Esther makes her request to the King and they all started to ask “Did the King spare Esther? Did Esther go to the King?” then I knew they really hadn’t heard the story before.

Okay so without further ado, here are some of my observations on how the Liberians view the Esther story.

The Liberians were far more interested in whether or not Queen Vashti was right or wrong for refusing to come when the King called her than any American would be. We spent more time discussing this point than any other. There were a few women who voiced that they thought Vashti was ashamed to come and that’s why she didn’t come but no one thought she was right not to come. I tried to make them see my American version in my head by reiterating that the King was likely drunk. In the Americanized “One Night with the King” version, the King is drunk and orders for Vashti to come before him half naked and she refuses for modesties sake, but the story doesn’t really say that. It just says she was ordered to come wearing her royal crown, in order to display her beauty to the people and nobles, for she was lovely to look at, the king might have been drunk but the texts is silent on whether that hindered his decision making. I wouldn’t exactly be upset if my own husband wanted to show me off in front of his friends, maybe a little embarrassed. There could have been cultural “no, no’s” that were being crossed but how can we know from the text? So the African view was predominantly that Vashti should have come whether the king was drunk or not he was still her husband and she should have obeyed him. They all seemed to agree (both the Liberian men present and the women) with the advisor’s decision to punish Vashti. They clapped when the decree was sent out proclaiming that “every man should be ruler of his own household.” Now they did not say “the King was right to put her away and take another wife,” but they did say Vashti should be punished. They didn’t clap when Vashti got put away; they all looked grave, like they were trying to decide if it was too harsh a punishment.

I never paid that much attention to Vashti, I always felt a bit sorry for her and thought the king was a jerk for putting her away but to me she was just the backstory. Whether or not the king was right or wrong was of no consequence to me as far as the story goes. But to the Liberians it was one of the most important points; Queen Vashti was disobedient and therefore was punished.

The second most important point is contrasted against the first; Esther was an obedient woman since childhood and therefore is rewarded. I never noticed it before in the text, twice before Esther is made queen the text says that “Esther kept her family background a secret because Mordecai told her to do so and she was always obedient to Mordecai since her childhood.” In fact, while crafting the story I considered leaving that line out but left it because of the hiding her family background part. I always noticed the keeping the background a secret that was a major piece to the plot, without that piece the king never would have made those decrees knowing his favored new queen was a Jew. The Liberians acknowledge that Esther was wise to keep it a secret because more than likely the Jew were not favored (that what they think, they didn’t give a reason but I suspect the reasoning is either “well why else would you keep your nationality a secret?” or maybe they caught on that Mordecai was in exile) but what they emphasis the most is that Esther is obedient to Mordecai’s command.

The women loved that Esther did not take anything with her to the king except what the man in charge of the women suggested. In fact, on their retelling of the story they kept on trying to embellish this part of the story (much like is seen in “One Night with the King”). To them, her following his suggestion is another sign of Esther’s obedient behavior and that she did not care about the outward appearance like the other women.

Something else they talked about a lot, which I had never given a second thought, is the fact the Esther was adopted by Mordecai and that she treated him with authority even though she was adopted. And they also brought up that God can use any body even orphans. I did not expect them to pay too much attention to the fact she was an orphan but it became a major sub topic. “She did not go running around and being disrespectful because he wasn’t her father; she listened to him and obeyed him like he was her father!”

Okay are you catching the differences here? To me this first part of the story is mainly back plot, “here’s how Esther became Queen.” To them, this part of the story is crucial, “here’s why Esther became queen; obedience” (and also “here’s why Vashti is demoted; disobedience”).

The second part of the story, from Mordecai revealing the murder plot at the King’s gate to Esther saying if “I perish I perish,” they focused on Mordecai a lot more than Esther. (What?! Hello! People this story is about independent Esther!) They were so proud of him for being brave enough to tell the King about the murder plot. They did not say too much about his refusal to bow, the pastor of the church made a point of it. I think they did not make any definitive statements about it because Mordecai was breaking the law by refusing to bow. The text again is quiet on whether Mordecai is right or wrong in doing this, just that he refused to bow. It doesn’t even tell us why he didn’t bow. In my Americanized version, Mordecai always makes a little speech about how he will only bow to God and not to man, but in the real story he doesn’t say anything. He just lets you interpret his actions. They were way impressed with him for tearing his clothes and putting on a display, when he hears about the forth coming doom of his people, especially since he was a marked man. They made comments like “If I were him I would have laid low, I would have been scared to make a scene.” This probably hit home to them a lot more being as during the Liberian civil war certain people groups became larger targets than others, you wouldn’t have wanted to put your neck out there like Mordecai did.

 They made approving sounds whenever Mordecai says to Esther “Do not think that because you are in the King’s household you alone among our people will escape. If you remain silent, help will come for our people from another place but you and your family will perish.” They were much more impressed with these two lines than the tagline the Esther story goes by in America “For who know that but you were given your royal position for such a time as this.” They made statements about how Esther did well because, unlike some people who would just forget their people when they came to power, Esther stood by her family. That line “Do not think that you alone among your people…” I think was the kicker for them, which is distinctly African. To me the story of Esther was always about a woman standing alone by God’s help but to them it was a woman remembering to obediently stand with her people with God’s help. As I told the story of Esther to the Liberians, which comes from the book titled for her, I began to see her as less of a major character. Esther is applauded because she is obedient, but Mordecai becomes the major hero for having raised and directed Esther, for standing against Haman, for saving the King’s life, for reminding Esther that she cannot stand alone without her people and for continuing to remember his people after he is made the second in command after King Xerxes. Why wasn’t it named the book of Mordecai?

In my telling of the story, for time’s sake, I left out the portion of the story involving Mordecai being honored, the part when Haman has to walk him around on the horse proclaiming “This is what the king does to him who delights to honor!” but one of the ladies present knew the whole story and went ahead and told the portion I had skipped during discussion time. I was glad she did. When I crafted the story I thought the major character was Esther but it turns out Mordecai is really more important. The Liberian’s loved that portion. The fact that Haman was forced to serve the man he wanted to kill. They were pretty excited about that. They said at the beginning of the story because Esther sowed a seed of obedience she reaped all the blessings of being queen. And they expressed the same sentiment for Mordecai’s story. Because he was a good man and reported the murderers and stood up to Haman he was rewarded.

Other high points: They clapped when the King extended the scepter to Esther. They clapped when the King gave Esther and Mordecai his signet ring to write the new law. They were very grave looking when Haman was killed on the pole. They all laughed when the king walks in on Haman falling on the couch to beg for his life and the King yells “will you even mistreat my wife while I am in the house with her?” It’s kind of fun to tell people a story new to them, it reminds you how you reacted the first time you heard it.

In closing Esther is an important part of the story, she’s just not as important as I thought. One thing they brought out about her that I found inspiring was that she did not go alone. That really is what made Esther and gave her that “for such a time as this” opportunity. One woman remarked, “I am really impressed with Esther because she prayed. That is the only reason that she was able to go to the king, she asked her people to pray for three days and she prayed too. That is the only reason she was able to do what she did and save her people.” Esther, the obedient orphan with the hero uncle stood by her people and prayed. She didn’t go alone.

How to make Instant Oreo Cream Pie box mix in West Africa

How to make Instant Oreo Cream Pie box mix in West Africa

Step 1: Scour all westernized groceries stores for anything premade.

Step 2: Discover Instant Oreo Cream Pie box kit and become exuberantly happy.

Step 3: Bring kit home, realize it requires milk and refrigeration and you do not have either milk or a refrigerator

Step 4: Put Instant Oreo Cream Pie box kit inside of Ziploc bag, place zip locked kit inside of plastic container with other mixes, put container inside of cupboard and let sit 4 months.

Step 5: Clean cupboard, find box kit and get excited because you’ve recently acquired a refrigerator and have milk inside it.

Step 6: Melt butter over gas stove because the refrigerator part of your frig doesn’t really work, only the freezer part so butter is hard (also there is no such thing as a microwave in West Africa).

Step 7: Combine provided Oreo Crumb crust with butter and mash into bottom of container

Step 8: Pour last of milk into bowl.

Step 9: Pour instant pie mix on top of milk along with two table spoons of dried ants you didn’t realize breached your food security system.

Step 10: Muffle your anger outburst so the guard doesn’t hear you and ask what it wrong.

Step 11: Strain milk, ants and instant pie mix through colander and paper towel (because the mesh is too large on the colander to catch the ants).

Step 12: Realize you have acquired some pretty sturdy paper towels and the milk isn’t leaking through.

Step 13: Milk paper towel like a cow utter until the milk streams through.

Step 14: Ignore any extra flecks of black floating around in your milk

Step 15: Add cold water and scoop of powder milk to make up for milk lost to the draining of the dead ant swimming pool.

Step 16: Congratulate yourself for purchasing two Oreo Cream Pie Instant box kits and steal the instant pie mix from the second box.

Step 17: Examine pie powder before you pour it into the milk (mama didn’t raise no dummy).

Step 18: Whip pie mix into fluffy yumminess and add provided Oreo bits to cover any remaining remnants.

Step 19: Press pie fluff over pie Crust and add more Oreo bits to the top (why not? You now have double the Oreo bits because you have already broken into the second pie box).  

Step 20: Chill in freezer and enjoy.
Step 21: Regret ever making fun of your teammate when you cringed at her for using your fork and she exclaimed “I’ve eaten a dead cockroach!”  

How a Braille Bible made it to Maryland West Africa

 

It’s crazy how life turns out. Back in April 2010, I was still in college and dreaming about hiking the Appalachian Trail and trying to squelch my longings for Africa. I just happened to mention my plans for adventure too my brother who had recently purchased a VW Bus and was about to be a hippy in L.A. I was thinking I would work a bit, then go to Europe, hop some trains, backpack around and then come back to do the ultimate backpack trip and hike the trail. Clay said if I switched things around and started the trail in 2011 that he would go with me. “Really Clay? You are serious? Because I am serious about this? If you really will do it then I’ll see what I can do about moving my classes around so that we can do this.” “Yes Vickie I am serious, if you can make it happen in 2011 then I have always wanted to hike the trail too.” I couldn’t really believe it. All through college I had been asking among my friends and trying to find a hiking partner, some people said they wanted to but no one was ever truly committed. But I knew Clay; he’s a Tarleton, if he says he will do something he will. So that next week I met with professors and Deans and I worked out a plan to complete my remaining courses in one semester instead of two. I Clepped out of three courses, gained 6 credit hours through an international course, wrote my capstone, and kept two jobs that summer… I also hiked some, I was kind of psyched about the Trail. The next semester I could take it easy on the courses, I only took 12 hours but I worked 40 and I had to revise my capstone along the way and with every pay check I bought new hiking gear. When I decide to do something I can get super obsessive. I was always thinking about the trail, about the packs and the food drops, etc. By the time I joined my brother at his hippy pad on Venice Beach L.A. in January 2011 I had already mentally hiked each step of the trail, I knew tourist locations along the way and what shelters to stay in, how many days to take an various portions of the trail, and what we needed to eat to stay healthy. But mentally walking the Trail and actually walking it are very different. Clay and I trained in L.A. at the Tapanga State Park, and one day we hiked 22 miles and I thought well if we can do that we can hike 12-15 miles a day on the trail no problem. But it was a problem.

 

 

 The first day on the trail, I barely made it 8 miles and I started feeling sick. I think we made it 13 miles that day, and that night I started puking and couldn’t stop. I got scared, I rarely get sick like that. I mean I’ve lived in Africa for over a year and I’ve only lost my lunch once on this continent. Which is an incredible record considering what I have eaten along the way. Well I got scared, but thankfully the Trail starts in GA and I have friends familiar with the access roads. I called my friend Keith, and he came out and picked me up and brought Clay and I back to my friend Stephanie’s house so that I could feel better. Stephanie was still living in the basement of a retired missionary to Africa. After a day recouping, we left out again. Mrs. Rhoda came out to greet us before we left, we told her what we were doing and she exclaimed, “Well that is just great practice for the mission field!” She wouldn’t let us go until we held hands and she prayed for our trip. I felt honored to have her praying over us. She was a missionary in Rhodesia before it became Zambia and Zimbabwe. I kind of wish that day she was praying over me for the trip I knew I should have been starting but I was honored all the same and God was doing things even if I wasn’t doing what he wanted. So after that I lasted like maybe 4 more days. I knew by the time I got to Blood Mountain that I wasn’t going to continue. I was miserable trying to keep up the pace and I also knew deep inside that this wasn’t the plan God had laid for me. But I had put so much time and money into this already and there was my pride of finishing what I started. I started trying to psyche myself out to make it up the next mountain. “What would make me want to climb this mountain? If there was something or someone waiting for me at the top, that would make me want to climb it, what would it be?” The answer I discovered was Africa. If I knew that when I reached the top I’d be in Africa, the place I knew God wanted me, then I would be able to run up the next mountain. Well, I thought, “I will at least make it to the first Trail town and then go home”, but I didn’t even make it that far. I made it to the top of Tray mountain about 55 miles of that 2200 mile trail and then a tornado hit and yanked my little Hennessey Hammock ties right out of the ground and soaked me. That was an awful night. Everything was soaked. I couldn’t even find some of my things the next day. I think they blew away. I made Clay Clay skooch over and let me in his tent but I still had to ring out gallons of water out of my sleeping bag the next day before I said goodbye to Clay and walked the opposite way.

 

 

I was pretty embarrassed about the whole thing. I regretted leaving Clay to hike “alone” but I knew he’d make friends fast and would go a lot father a lot faster without me there. And I was right, when I left he started speeding right along and before I knew it he was already in Virginia getting ready to Aqua Blaze part of the trail. Meanwhile I had visited around GA, MS and SC doing a little ministry mainly making excuses to see old friends, had made my way back up to North KY and completed my J-man application. I was on my way to doing what God wanted me too but I was still feeling pretty ashamed of myself. Clay Clay was just about to meet someone special. He met Amber that summer rafting the Shenandoah River. We started hearing about her mainly through Mom whenever he talked to her on the phone about food drops. Through his description I immediately liked her. None of Clay’s other girlfriends had made the sort of “Yeah she so right for him” impression that I was conjuring from his description. She was tough, courageous, sweet, beautiful and southern to boot. In October Becca, Mom, Dad, and I all traveled up to meet Clay at Katahdyn the final mountain in Maine. We came to hike that bit with him and to pick him up but we were equally excited to see if this girl was all he was saying she was. She was, we liked her a lot. We even liked her Mom and sister too. A week after bringing Clay home I flew out to job placements for J-man program. Then there was Field Personal Orientation in January-March. During that Clay called me to ask “what is the tallest mountain in Georgia” because he wanted to propose to Amber on it. Amber said yes. I was excited for them but worried I’d miss the wedding because I was leaving for my two year term in April. But God was gracious and one year later I was able to come home and be a part of their big day.

But a few months before that, I was on a research vision trip in southern Liberia called Harper Maryland. In Harper we met with pastors and they told us all about the history of the former SBC work there. They really miss the SBC presence in Liberia, it was a huge morale booster for them and SBC also provided theological education for many Liberian pastors. Since the Liberian civil war there has been much tension not only among tribes and peoples but also in the church. There has been church politics just like you see in America and it has left many pastors feeling alone in their struggle for the Gospel. One pastor stood up in the meeting and spoke to the other pastors about their need for unity among the body of Christ. The pastors listened in silent respect to Rev. Appleton. He spoke directly to their hearts though he looked in no particular direction. Rev. Appleton lost his sight sometime after the war, no one really knows why he lost it but they say that it happened rather quickly. After the meeting, Rev. Appleton slowly made his way onto the platform in the church where we were meeting and over to a desk which had pages of braille spread out all over. I watched in awe as he moved his hands over the bumpy paper. In Liberia the literacy rate is extremely low. Some people quote 75% illiterate, yet here was a blind Liberian man reading Braille in the furthest county in the country. While I was watching him, another pastor told me that Rev. Appleton did not have the full Bible in Braille; he had a few portion of it but not the whole thing. That struck me as a very sad thing. Here in a country where it is a feat just to learn how to read with seeing eyes a blind man had somehow learned to read Braille yet still could not read the book which was obviously so precious to him. I knew that it would be impossible to find a Braille Bible here in Liberia; the only way was to get one brought by a team but we did not have any on the schedule. So I made a mental note to try and get a Braille Bible while I was home for Clay Clay’s wedding. A couple of weeks before I was scheduled to leave I looked up some ministries to the Blind in the U.S. One was the Lutheran’s outreach to the blind. They produced NIV Braille Bibles free of charge, they even ship for free but only in the U.S. So I contacted and asked if they could ship me one. They informed me that the Braille Bible was a 40 volume set, weighed 70 Lbs and took up 5 feet of space on a shelf. I was a little shocked. I was expecting it to be large but not that large. Never the less, if they could get me one for free, how could I refuse to take it over? It’s such a precious thing made available free of charge. They were asking questions about what sort of Braille Rev. Appleton read and I did not know so I gave Rev. Appleton a call and explained what I was trying to do for him. He immediately said, “I will take any Braille Bible, NIV, KJV, etc. Grade 1, Grade 2… I don’t want to make things hard but I would be so happy for any Braille Bible.” It took me some time to get him to tell me which he would prefer because he didn’t want to cause trouble, he was just too humbled at the possibility of getting a full Bible. The day before I flew home I called Mom to let her know a few boxes might show up on her door step. And when I walked in the front door to my parent’s North Kentucky home I was surprised to see the four boxes filled with God’s word already sitting in the parlor. My Mom was pretty delighted with delivery of a full braille Bible to our home but rolled her eyes in mockery of the things that show up at our house. After attending the most beautiful wedding I think I will ever be a part of (outdoors, arches, Chinese lanterns, and a very beautiful bride… Clay looked pretty suave too), Rebecca and I packed the 70 lbs. of Bible into our two checked bags, and I still had space for two boxes of life cereal... it’s the important things you make space for.

Did I mention Becca was coming home to Liberia with me? Fhew! This story keeps getting longer.

Way back while I was still traipsing through Guinea, Sierra Leone, Mali and Cape Verde and dreaming of settling in Liberia, we made plans for Becca to come back with me from the wedding and do some ministry with me in Liberia. We came in to Liberia and the first week we told Bible stories to some kids in a village and in an orphanage close to Monrovia. The next week I was really concerned over because that was the week we planned to take the Braille Bible down to Harper Maryland. I was hoping we’d be able to take a helicopter ride down there because I had been told the conditions of the road in rainy season was atrocious and I didn’t really want to waste Becca’s precious Africa time stuck in the mud for several days. However, we could not find a helicopter headed down there so after talking with several Liberians and finding a few good Liberian pastors who agreed to go with us we began our journey down early Tuesday morning.

 

Becca and I left out alone from Monrovia with plans to pick up the two pastors along are route before we hit the back roads of Liberia. However the front roads of Liberia aren’t exactly a walk in the park either and an hour and ½ outside of Monrovia I knocked my battery cord off my battery and shorted out my windshield wipers (a must have during rainy season). I didn’t know what was wrong at first I heard a pop and my windshield wipers froze so I pulled over to see what was up and then I couldn’t get the thing to crank again. I lifted the lid of the vehicle to pretend like I knew what I was doing and peered inside, and there to my great relief was my battery cored popped off. Back in college I had issues with my battery cord corroding on my little Mazda and remember a very trying day being stuck in a Piggly Wiggly parking lot not know what to do. But today things were different and I thanked God for that day in the Piggly Wiggly parking lot as I slipped the clasp back over the metal thingy and drove back to the closest gas station/ mechanic. I was happy to instruct the mechanic to please tighten down the clasp thingy on the metal thingy but dismayed to discover the windshield wipers still not working.  After a few minutes a car electrician was found (I don’t know the difference between a car mechanic and a car electrician but there is one apparently in Liberia). He took of the steering column cover and fiddled with things, I asked him to replace the fuses and he did that, he fiddled with the wires connected to the wiper motor and then declared it “fixed” (he had gotten it to work on one of the three speeds and I had to time it just right to get the wipers to set down and not freeze in front of my face). I thanked the man, paid him and then was getting ready to pull out when the steering column began to smoke. I called him back over told him to try again. The fuse had melted in the box and I could see smoke coming from the wiper motor as well. This time he took the wiper motor off and banged on it for a while before putting everything back together and sending me happily on my way. I don’t know what he did, the detour took us about three hours but the rigged wipers worked the rest of the trip which is all I really wanted at that point.

 We continued on picked up our two Liberian Pastor travel buddies and made it all the way to Tapeta by 4pm. West Africans are generally very severe on Women drivers and are always suggesting that maybe you should let them drive, but I was rather pleased by these pastors reactions. The more I drove, the more impressed they became by this white ladies driving skills. “Wow we are really moving!” they kept exclaiming as we passed town names familiar to them. I was really nervous about the roads ahead and what kinds of conditions I might find so I just kept my foot down and only stopped once for a combined lunch / potty break. But the truth is all those white faces back in Monrovia were wrong, the road was awesome. Rebecca may not believe that but my definition of awesome roads is any day I don’t have to turn on the 4x4. The next morning was the same drill, we were on the road by 5:30, I didn’t let anyone pee and we made it to Harper by 4pm. There was only one short section of the road that I could feel my tires drifting a bit.

The entire trip occasionally the pastors would ask why it was again we were headed down to Harper. This amused me a lot, no American would sign on for a trip like this without fully understanding the reason why and all the “how’s” to the logistics of it but not West Africans. One friend calls another and asks him to assist two strange white girls on a journey down to the furthest county and they don’t even ask why. I tried to explain what a braille bible was and they shook their heads like they understood but I could see they really weren’t getting it. They were just content to be with us and to be with each other, the two pastors were old friends and had not seen each other in several years. One of the pastors had not been down to Maryland since 1979 and was very interested to see the place again. When we got to Harper and greeted the pastors there they again asked about what type of Bibles (plural) we were bringing. And I tried again to explain it was just one Bible and it was Braille for a blind person. “right, right” shaking his head. “It’s really big, you see, because they have to write all the words with little bumps,” I tried to explain. “Yes, yes really big,” he says smiling and shaking his head. Then one of the local pastors says something about Rev. Appleton being blind and being excited about the Bible and suddenly the pastor explodes, “OH! It’s a Braille Bible! For a blind person!” Two day into the journey and now he knows why we are here. Though Liberians speak English and I speak English sometimes I feel there is less communication happening then when I was using my one weeks’ worth of French lessons in Guinea.

The next morning the big unveil happened over at the local Baptist Church where Rev. Appleton has been teaching Bible to the students in the church’s new elementary school. We open up the two trunks filled with the 40 volumes that contain the complete Braille Bible and I present Rev. Appleton with the first volume of Genesis (it comes in two volumes). I explain to him that he now has the full Braille Bible Genesis to Revelation. He is excited to be holding a portion of the Old Testament since he has only had portions of the New Testament up until today. But his excitement barely matches the other pastors present when they see the Bible for the first time. Everyone grabs a volume and begins to exclaim about how big it is. “Wow! Look, this is just 1 Samuel alone!” “Whoa this is the other half of Genesis, do you see it’s so big they had to put it on two books!” Each person runs their fingers over the bumps in awe of this technological feat that allows the blind to read. When everyone settles down the two pastors who traveled with Becca and I, come to shake my hand. Their faces are beaming as they thank us for allowing them to be a part of presenting this Bible and for meeting this need for Rev. Appleton. We all sit back down and as Rev. Appleton feels the name of Genesis impressed on the cover of the volume he says, “This week I am teaching about Abraham but I did not have a copy of Genesis, so whenever I was studying I had to walk out into the street and ask people to read Genesis for me. Now I can read it for myself.”  

The tone of the trip changed after the presentation. Before there had been confusion but now there was joy. We spent the rest of the day visiting and touring around the town of Harper. The two pastors were eager and overjoyed to see the sights of Harper, the old port and the deteriorating monument built in the 60’s. They thanked me often for allowing them to see this part of the country and to see history with their own eyes. I was more thankful to have them along, to see pastors connecting with other pastors and sharing their struggles and their dreams and to see their joy in recognizing that they are not alone. Liberia is a little larger than the state of Ohio. It’s really not that big yet the roads and the poverty keep many pastors cut off from each other. There are so many things they could help each other with and teach each other if they could only reach it each other.

We stayed in Harper only one day and I drove out confidently early that Friday morning thinking now I know the roads I have nothing to fear. We had driven maybe an 1 ½ hours when I noticed my back tires felt odd. I had checked them before I left that morning and everything looked okay but I pulled over to check again. Nothing looked low. So I continued on for a while and one of the pastors asked me to pull over and we both checked the tires again. We got back in and began again, we drove just a short ways and as we were topping a hill I had the thought, “You know it doesn’t really feel like it’s dragging it kind of feels like my back driver tire is wobbling.” Just at that moment my back driver tire came running along beside my window. I think it smirked at me before it went dashing out into the bush. I guess I hit one to many potholes and it gave up the fight. I skid on the drum until I stopped at the bottom of the hill. The pastor in the back seat, thinking we had a flat yelled at me, “Vickie, pull off the road!” I yelled back “I can’t my tire just rolled into the bush!” The two pastors suddenly morphed into road crew; one running off into the bush to retrieve the escapee, the other jacking up the back off the Cruiser. It took maybe 20 minutes and their Liberian ingenuity, as they borrowed a few lug nuts from each of the three faithful tires to re-enslave the fourth tire and we were back on the road. I made use of our satellite phone for the first time to tell Rita what was up and where we were. We limped on for an hour, my confidence in my vehicle shot, until we reached the next town in which we visited the local mechanic. I could hear an abnormal squeak. They took off the tire and opened up the drum, stuck a few things back in place that I had knocked out in the skid and sent us on our way, again it only took like 30 minutes. In most ways Africa is never convenient but in rigging up a vehicle so you can continue a trip, I am on the right continent. The rest of the trip with broad smiles the pastor repeated, “I can’t my tire just rolled into the bush!” I think that made his week. He laughed and laughed and I laughed too, what else can you do?

Things work out weird sometimes. Clay Clay wouldn’t have hiked the trail unless I had been traipsing along doing my own thing (not what God asked me to do) and so he wouldn’t have met Amber and gotten married this past May. I wouldn’t have ended up taking the position in Mali which dissolved and left me in Guinea, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Cape Verde everywhere but Timbuktu (get it, Timbuktu is in Mali) if I had gone straight out of college into the J-man program. If I had started the j-man program sooner Becca would have been too young to visit me in Liberia and I wouldn’t have had a partner to take with me down to Harper. If Clay hadn’t been getting married while I was on my term I wouldn’t have come home and brought that Braille Bible back with me. So there you have it the story of the Braille Bible and how it made it to Harper Maryland in Liberia. But those are just the details, I know what really happened. God loved Rev. Appleton and He saw his faithfulness. He didn’t need me to be in Liberia, I think he would have found another way to bless His servant if this servant had been absent but like the pastors exuberant just to come along for the ride, I am extremely happy He let me ride along.

Life in Africa

My Mom asked me to write about my life in West Africa… my first thought was “haven’t you been reading my blogs?” but I got her point. She wants to know the hard things, the things I forget to mention like the buckets of water by every toilet for when the water stops working and you need to flush. The “yellow mellow” rule in Guinea (also pertains to flushing) and the other different things that don’t happen every day in the U.S. I don’t like to talk about hard things except with sarcasim but here are some of the different and difficult things in my journey through West Africa. I will start with Guinea since I just moved from there and I don’t want to forget.

In Guinea life was different. When I walked out on the streets I did not expect to be understood and there was a lot of preparation in my mind before I ever said a word. I would practice in my head again and again how I was going to ask where can I buy some eggs? And then, listen extremely hard to try to understand the answer. In Guinea, where ever I was I could always hear the local mosque calling out the prayer. The drowning noise at first oppressive became normal. Even early in the morning 5 am I would listen to the plea. In Forecariah, we did not have a well; we relied on city water which would come every two or three days. When the water came it poured into a lower reservoir which we would then pump into the higher reservoir on a raised plat form so that there would be enough pressure to have water come out of the faucets in the house. There was also a pipe system set up to catch rain water off of the roof and funnel it into the lower reservoir which is actually how the tank stayed full most of the time. We were blessed in that we did not have to experience dry season in that house because often city water doesn’t come in dry season and then water had to be carried bucket by bucket full from other locations. In Forecariah we had electricity about every other day, usually at night for about 6 hours at a time. We learned that if we had electricity or ran the generator for about 5 hours a day that was enough to keep our Freezer cold enough to keep meats. Right before we left Forecariah it got its first convenience store, where you could buy things like, canned beans, pasta, spaghetti sauce, canned veggies, etc. But still you could not buy meats, which means you could do two things, purchase meat at the market or purchase meat in Conakry grocery stores and bring it back in a cooler. Based on market meats displays, (blood and meat chunks smashed everywhere, hacked at with a machete and you never knew how long it been sitting in the sun), we picked carry it from Conakry. Our refrigerator was small and the frig part didn’t actually work so we packed as much meat in the Freezer part as possible and were careful to keep it cold. The small amount of time spent in Forecariah I was becoming a rather good cook. In Guinea, there hardly anything pre-made. You have to cook everything from scratch.

 Internet in West Africa can be a challenge, especially when traveling. Internet is done through the cell phone companies and each country has their own companies. So unless we were at the few Guest houses that had internet we would need an internet card that plugs into your USB port. The cell phone towers in some magic way makes this work. But most of the Internet cards required you purchase a month subscription and we were never anywhere that long. In Guinea, I had a support of a community, especially in Conakry. We have several people with the company there and I spent many enjoyable evening playing cards and laughing or worshiping around a camper fire with these lovely people. They also taught me what a true M does. One of these couples has raised their families in Guinea and devoted themselves to a certain people group. I loved going out with them into their community, listening to them chat in the local language and watching them share unashamedly the good news. And watching how they work through the hard things with the local believers. What if your husband isn’t a Christian? What if your family forces you to marry another man? What do you do then? They never took these things lightly, they thought and prayed before they proceeded carefully and they worked with the local church, humbly.

That was life in Guinea. Life on the road was different. I came to Africa with three trunks and a guitar. Two of those trunks remained largely packed until I moved to Liberia a few weeks ago. I have ULA back pack that I purchased when I thought I was tough enough to hike the A.T. I only made the first 55 miles of the trek but that pack made it a considerably farther because at the midway point my brother called and asked to borrow it because of it shifts weight to your hips well. That pack has proven to be well worth what I spent on it. I have lived out of it for most of last year. When my clothes were dirty I transferred them to my old World Changer laundry bag, until my green back pack would look all deflated and then I would know it was time to wash again. Washing clothes is one of the harder things to do. In Forecariah, we had a washer that didn’t really work so we hand washed our clothes, just a bucket, soap and our hands. On the road, if the Guest house had a washer I used it but they usually didn’t have a dryer so you had to plan on being there for at least a day (or more depending on humidity) to hang dry them. More than once I packed damp clothes and rehung them at the next location. Most the time you can find a local who will hand wash your clothes for you, which is what I have been doing this week since I haven’t got the kinks worked out of our new washer set up. Most of the times if you try you can get your clothes washed but sometimes things just don’t work out and you end up wearing dirty clothes. I have enough t-shirts and Ponya’s to last about two weeks but there was a low point in which try as I might I couldn’t get my clothes cleaned in time, I am not nor have I ever been a girly girl but I may have cried a little when I couldn’t find a shirt without visible dirt on it.

 

 As I said before, each country has their own cell phone systems and towers which means in each country you have to get a country specific SIM card. They are easy enough to get, they sell them on the street. But keeping up with them is another challenge as you switch from Liberia to Sierra Leone to Guinea, up to Mali, back to Guinea. It gets confusing. Between that and keeping credit on them and the little internet access, it gets kind of hard to keep contact with people that you love. You end up calling on Birthdays and feeling shocked at their voices and ashamed at the length of time it’s been. You end up missing a lot. Mom will talk about family things that I haven’t heard about at all, like its way in the past. And I’ll be like, wait when did that happen? Three weeks ago… oh. Most the time now I just let it slide and pretend like I’m tracking.

 

I am not incredibly smart but I had traveled some in the past with World Changers and new the value of a good pillow and blanket. Everywhere I go I take my memory foam pillow and my sea to summit sleeping bag liner. I call it my safety blanket and whenever the creepy crawlies start coming out at nights or the mosquitos, I pull the blanket tight over my head and form a giant string bean (it’s a lime green liner). My supervisor and roommate make fun of me for this but I would rather sleep soundly than have mosquitos buzzing my ear all night. I have slept in many beds in West Africa, some more comfortable than others, some I wasn’t sure there was a mattress, some I was sure the mattress was made out of corn cobs. When we visit villages they are gracious and offer us their own beds, usually they vacate the hut for you but sometimes they sleep in the bed with you. Our creepiest (and cheapest $10) place was what we refer to now as the “brothel.” We had nowhere else to go so we stayed in a hotel that was well below par even for West Africa. When I entered that room I noticed there was no lock and I said something to the manager she seemed flustered went into the room and then showed me how you pushed a crooked nail down to keep the door closed.  “Oh right, obviously, the nail.” I pushed my trunk in front of the door, tucked the mosquito net in tight (thank God for Mosquito nets) said a prayer and slept soundly. At many of these guesthouses outside of major cities, there is no running water so you take bucket baths. It’s the same in villages, except where as in motel’s you can choose to take a bucket bath or just wash your face in the village you have to take a bucket bath every night. Your host brings your water and your seen as rather dirty if you don’t take full advantage of it. But in the village that is also a problem as many of the “stalls” that are provided for bathing are also the toilet (some with holes and some used as urinals with no hole). These stalls are often to short (and I’m 5’2 so that is saying something) or partially fallen down. At night it is pretty lovely to take a warm bucket bath under the stars but at twilight when people are still walking about and they are ready for you to bath. It gets a little awkward trying to be modest.

Eating on the road can be a challenge too. When I first came I rapidly lost weight because I couldn’t stomach the spicy food that is served in Sierra Leone and Liberia. I have never liked rice, which is rather unfortunate for a person living in West Africa. African’s haven’t eaten until they have had rice. You could feed them a four course meal and if it didn’t include rice they’d still feel incomplete. So when we hit the road without road snacks Rita and I call this our starvation diet. Not all African foods are bad though, we traveled with a man who was made sure we did not have to eat spicy foods in southern Liberia and some of those meals were very decent. I still had to watch out for the ridiculously boney fish (I’m also not a fish fan… picky I know). On the road, we really don’t eat much, we carry tuna and crackers, peanut butter and you can get market bread, and sometimes we make pita sandwiches with meat the day we leave. But sometimes it’s just seems better to be hungry then risk getting a bug at a chop shop. We do often eat at our hotel’s in the evening and I generally get the same thing, Chicken and Chips (French fries) it’s safe and it’s usually the only thing they can make besides rice and soup.

On the road the thing that is always dreaded the most is the border crossings. Some are easier than others, Mali to Guinea, easy (we did get turned around their once but our papers were bad). Sierra Leone to Guinea, okay most the time. Sierra Leone to Liberia, ridiculous! Each border consists of between 8 and 13 stops (just at the border this isn’t including police stops before and after). At each stop they all want to see the same papers, they all want to be greeted and smiled at and complimented. They all want to know why you’re not married and why you don’t marry them. And they all yell out African woman! As you approach in your ponya. Some are nice and some are not so nice. Some official are drunk and sweating all over your money as they insist on emptying your purse and counting everything they find. Some official are smiling and say they remember you from last time! How was your trip? You don’t need to come in today I remember you! On good days border crossings take an hour to an hour and ½ on bad days, they can take four or five. There is always much prayer before each crossing.

The awesome thing about the road is that, it’s the road man! You don’t know what’s around the next bend, whoa what was that totally awesome iridescent bird?! Are we going to get out of this mud hole?! How many people have been to Maryland Liberia? It’s neat, it’s exciting. I hear a lot of cool stories and meet a lot of unique people. But the downside is that I don’t get to keep those people. I have to move on to the next place, it’s hard to put down roots and therefore it’s hard to stay emotionally nourished. I am a rather reserved and introverted person. To build relationships takes time for me to feel safe. So why I feel energized by the mud slinging off our tires and the recording of stats of people groups and Church plants and the things I learn about culture and communities I feel emotionally exhausted by the small talk that happens in between. I hate how it’s called “small” talk because for an introvert it seems rather big.

And then there is the added cultural expectations, and the trouble with those are, you don’t know what is expected. Things change across borders, not drastically but they do change. And for me trying to figure out what to say and how (and I’m not talking about learning a new language here) is tiring.

 

So now we are in Liberia and it has its own set of blessings and opportunities. There is English here, I can “communicate” easily here. When I try to on the phone it is intensely difficult Liberian English is very different then American English but not unrecognizable. I have my own apartment, two bed rooms, a kitchenette, living area. I have a cat… she’s not really mine but she’s living with me right now and keeping away the mice. I can unpack my bags for the first time since January (2012). It is a struggle that the owner of the compound who we are renting from is gone and therefore, all repairs, replacing the stove, installing lights etc has to be done on our own (Rita and I). We are the first of our company back into Liberia since the war started in the 80’s so there is a lot of healing that needs to occur among people here. It’s a new place, and I don’t know where to start. I have had these past two weeks with Rita being out of the country to kind of reevaluate things and try to get my house established. It’s kind of fun to learn things on the fly, I know things I didn’t think I needed to know: things about 12 volt systems and solar panels, things about water towers and pump systems, things about getting vehicles fixed and buying transformers for refrigerators, generator maintenance and how to get furniture made. I know where to go to buy stoves and washer machines and muffin tins. Along the way I’ve learned the city pretty well, where the embassies are and where the car rental places are, where all the major Hotels and Restaurant are located. And that a Ponya is called a Lappas here.

I was freaked out. I have been longing to finally be settled somewhere to really get started on something. But then when it was finally getting here, I didn’t (don’t) know what to do with it.  What if I fail, miserably at this part of my job. What if I don’t make any good relationships, what if I can’t hack it here? May be I missed something, this isn’t really where God wants me right? In this ridiculously outgoing culture, with all these hipsters walking around and shouting at me in the street. And I remembered something that an old supervisor at World Changers ingrained in us my first summer on staff. “The one who called you is faithful and he will do it.” 1 Thessalonian 5:24. I don’t like things out of context (English Major), what did that “it” mean, I wondered.  “May God Himself, the God of peace, sanctify you through and through. May your whole spirit, soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. 24 The one who calls you is faithful and he will do it.”  He will sanctify. Maybe that sounds out of place in context of my outgoingness fears but the truth is deeper than that it’s the fear of failure to live up to expectations.  To sanctify means to bless, consecrate, purify, approve, dedicate, to make holy. And the God who called me can and will do it because he is faithful even in our lack faithfulness (Romans 3:4).

Memories in Mali

“She’s an older lady, well kind of, she’s old but not, and she’s a retired English teacher… trust me you’ll like her.” This was something of the introduction I got for Mrs. M.L. When I saw her bright smiling self, wrapped in her cheetah jacket, come out of the airport terminal in Bamako, I understood what they meant. I don’t think anyone could not like Mrs. M.L. In her late 60’s, Mrs. M.L with the consent of her “very old husband” (her words not mine) has been coming to Mali for the past 5 years with her Church to minister to a remote tribe in the south east. This trip was the first she made alone and so I was there to be a companion, a driver and a partner. To say Mrs. M.L. is a character is an understatement. Her grey hair and her charisma give her a free pass to say just about anything she wants among her people group in Mali and she takes full advantage of this.  In each of the villages we visited, the chiefs and elders were eager to greet and laugh with Mrs. M.L. and Mrs. M.L. never let an opportunity pass to speak the truth to these very animistic people.

Fun stories from my time with Mrs. M.L.

Mrs. M.L. asks a lot of questions of both me and our translator, Shea. Most of the questions were legitimate but some were impossible to answer like, “What was the chief thinking?” The hardest question of the week came while we were studying in our mosquito tents inside the thatch church building where we slept, “Vickie, Where is the story of Ruth?” “Well Mrs. M.L. I believe that story is in the book of Ruth.” I replied with a broad smile. She looked at me for a moment then laughed and said, “That was a very kind way to answer that question!”

 

As the week went on, Shea and I became very good at preempting Mrs. M.L. request. I realized as I was getting ready to leave the hut that Mrs. M.L. had left the picture prints she was taking to the villages as we visited sitting on the chair. I took them and put them in my bag. She often forgot them, so as I exited Shea asked if I had gotten the photo’s for Mrs. M.L. and told them they were in my bag. We both went and sat down under the tree by the truck where Mrs. M.L. was reading. As we all got ready to go Mrs. M.L. exclaimed, “Oh no I left the pictures in the hut and it’s all locked up again!.” Shea said, “You worry too much, don’t worry. All I have to say is pictures come, and they will come to me.” Mrs. M.L was incredulous, “Oh give me the keys and I will go get them!” she began checking in her purse to be sure they were not there. Shea continued, “You don’t believe me? You worry too much. Pictures come!” I passed the pictures from my bag to Shea’s hand behind his back. “Viola!” he exclaimed.

 

The best moment could have also been the worst. As we drove along the bumpy back roads from time to time Mrs. M.L. would call out for me to stop so she could take pictures of the scenery or of the people. On one such occasion we happened to be crossing a bridge and Mrs. M.L. very much wanted a picture of a fisherman in the water. I thought she would take the picture from the truck and then we would move on but she instantly jumped out and ran to the front of the truck to get a better picture. We were out in the middle of nowhere, no vehicles had passed us the whole ride until that point. I looked ahead of us and knew we were in trouble. There were border control cops up ahead and no sooner had I seen them then one raced up on his Moto. Mrs. M.L. not realizing who he was tried to motion for the Moto to go around so that she could continue to take her picture. Shea got Mrs. M.L. back onto the truck and we pulled off the bridge to go deal with the cops. I told Mrs. M.L. “Okay just stay in the truck, Shea and I will take care of this.” I had been in French speaking West Africa for about 8 months by this time and so was very use too the police check routine. Most the time you just stand and smile and nod your head and show your papers and let them say whatever they want to say about you until they eventually give you your papers back. This time they were making a big deal that I stopped on the bridge and I was “blocking the way” again we had passed not a single vehicle on the way there and for the ten minutes that the angry police officer lectured the point not a single vehicle passed on the road. I was blessed in this instance with Shea because usually I would have to struggle through my limited French Vocab to express my regret in blocking traffic and admit that I was a dumb woman driver but this time Shea did all that for me and I only had to stand and look pitiful. As Shea and I joined Mrs. M.L. in the truck and I started the engine to pull off, Mrs. M.L. was very quiet for a while. I began to feel guilty for the stern way I told her to stay in the truck. I turned to see what she was feeling, She leaned toward me and said, “I would just like to say that all this money stuffed in my underpants is really starting to get uncomfortable.” Apparently my, “stay in the truck” command, had translated to Mrs. M.L. “Hide all the money!” which since we were in the village we had to have a stock of smaller bills (since there are no banks or ATMs you have to have a supply). She had stuffed the entire stock into her underwear. I pulled off the road so she could go “relieve” herself in the privacy of the bush. I laughed until I had tears in my eyes.

 

Oh, Mrs. M.L. was more than a little fun. She kept me laughing and so busy, the entire two weeks. I kept asking “Aren’t you jet lagged? Don’t you get tired?” “I’ll sleep when I get to America!” She loves every person she meets but she especially loves the little ones.

One little fellow in particular named Karim holds a special place in her heart. Back when Karim was just an infant Mrs. M.L. helped snatch from deaths door. Karim’s mother had died and as was tradition in the area there was no close relative to nurse the baby and so he was slowly starving to death. It was late one night when someone put the baby in Mrs. M.L. arms and told her the baby was dying. She made the appropriate contacts and got Karim to a hospital where they put IV’s in him and brought him back into health. She stayed with him while they were starting the initial treatments and made sure that they had all they needed to continue to care for Karim. Karim’s aunt and Grandmother are extremely thankful to Mrs. M.L. for the interest she took in Karim and whenever she is in town they take Karim to see her every day. Unfortunately Karim is not so grateful. Karim is now about 3 years old, many children that age in the village can be afraid of white people and will run and scream and hide behind their parents. Generally if you offer a few kind words and with some coaxing from their parents they will warm up and come greet and shake your hand… not Karim. From the time he catches sight of Mrs. M.L. until his grandmother muffles him as she leaves he screams top notch. That kid is horrified of white people. Mrs. M.L. just laughs and smiles and says “that’s gratitude for you!” And every day without fail you can hear Karim being drug by his grandmother to go greet the woman who helped save him. Each day, Mrs. M.L  presents him with some candy to try to win him over. Mrs. M.L. is convinced that Karim remembers that she was there when he was being poked and given shots as an infant.

Two other little ones, know to her as the “Troubles” also hold a special place in her heart. The troubles are the two youngest twin daughters to our host family. They have 7 older siblings, they are the cutest pair, but they are trouble. Each evening we had a special time for the children to come and color biblical pictures after we told a story using them. There was a limited supply of markers so I manned the marker box and asked them to return their marker before getting a new one. (by ask I mean demonstrated, they didn’t speak English).  The Troubles immediately saw this as a challenge. They were no longer interested in coloring but in seeing how many markers they could sneak from the bucket unnoticed. At first I was oblivious, there were a lot of kids and they were very sly. But soon I noticed a cache of markers stored around the Troubles and began to recollect them. War ensued. The Troubles (laughing and giggling all the while) began to double team their effort in the marker conquering. And soon one jumped on my arm as the other scooped the remaining markers and ran. The markers were not returned until their older sister, Millie, (9 years old and tough as nails) got on their case.

Millie, was Mrs. M.L. special helper. Each night it was her job to pass out a candy to each of the people present at the storying. She took her role very seriously. One day there was a man who came in a bit drunk to listen with the kids and youth, after a few minutes he fell fast asleep in a seated position. When Millie got around to him she held out a candy to him, when he did not respond because he was snoring, she knocked his head around a bit until he woke up and took his candy. Another time as she was walking around the circle passing out candy she ran out and went back to the bag for more, when she resumed where she left off a kid who already had taken a candy reached his hand out for another. She looked at him squarely and without a word pushed him over backwards off his seat, you don’t mess with Millie.

 

Over the past five years the children have become a part of Mrs. M.L. heart. She knows each of the 9 children by name, their ages, how they are doing in school. And she has become deeply invested in them. When I think of Mrs. M.L. I hope I am like her one day. She was already older than 60 when she began her journeys to Africa. She didn’t have to come, she every right to stay home and enjoy retirement with her “very old husband.”  She had already given years of her life to educating American youth. But she continued unafraid to do and learn more of what God wanted from her. She denied her “rights” as Christ did for us. Philippians 2:5-11. And I also must give kudos to her “very old husband” who, because of health reason was unable to join his wife physically on her journeys to Africa but in every other way supports her.