You might live in West Africa If...

You know you live in West Africa when you find a gross looking pussy bite on your side and your first thought is “I hope there is not a worm in that.” You know you’re in West Africa when complete strangers invite you to eat lunch with them on the street. When 80 year old men propose to you but are deterred when you tell them you don’t work in fields. When people call you a bean eater and then laugh good naturedly. When children run up to you like you are Mickey Mouse and shout Tobabou or Forteh (Foreigner!). You know you are in West Africa when people hiss at you to get you attention. When men say “You drive? No, where is your chauffer?” If it acceptable to propose after asking the woman’s name. When people ask you how Obama is doing and you say “I don’t know I’ll ask him some time,” and they believe you. When being told your fat is a compliment. When you buy fabric one day and have a tailor made outfit the next day. When people call and take orders for cheddar cheese because it is so cheap in neighboring countries, meaning it is not $20. When bacon bits is a stellar Christmas gift. You know you live in West Africa when you see a moto (Motorcycle) pass with two people and two goats and you think “what a waist, they could have tied at least three chickens on the back.” You know you live in West Africa when your taxi driver stops at the Mosque so all his passengers can go pray. If you are able to get out of a ticket by telling the police officer “I am sorry but I have no husband to teach me how to drive.” When your taxi breaks down twice and has two flat tires and then the driver decides to take a nap and not one of the 9 passengers (in a 7 seat vehicle) say one word of complaint to the driver. You know you live in West Africa when you realize six flags is just a cheap imitation of African back roading. When you hit a pot hole so hard everyone in the car hits the ceiling, when you apologize all the Africans blame the road, while all the Americans blame you.  When a child pinches you to see if she can get through to the black. When you stop breaking for chickens, honk at goats, swerve for sheep, approach cows with caution (noting their number, position and direction), but always stop for donkeys. When seeing a goat at the beach ceases to be weird. If it is raining you know it is naked day/ bath time for all the kids in the neighborhood. When you don’t think twice about scolding someone else’s kid. If you witness an accident and the first thing you hear is “Oh Allah!” When people give you a live chicken as a welcoming gift, and you genuinely get pretty excited about it. When someone hands you a spoon to eat rice and you feel a little offended. You realize your host really likes you because he included the chicken head in your dish. When you drink out of a plastic bag without spilling juice on yourself. When you ask, “is the monkey a pet or dinner?”

God is Never Random

 

 

      Do you ever feel like God is listening to your thoughts. Like those days when I’m feeling so lonely, and I start to have a bit of a pity party and just as I think, “No one cares…” one of my most favorite persons calls my phone just to say hello. I hang up the phone “Yes Lord, I get it, I’m loved.”  Or the other day when the Guinea heat was getting to me and I was thinking I’d much rather take a car then walk, and then I turned down a street and both the people walking in front of me were lame, they don’t have the car option either. “Okay God I got it, I am blessed.”

 

     There are moments like these that I could take as coincidence or providence. But then there are some moments, like in our travels across Cape Verde that I can really only attribute to providence. Like jumping into the back of a Yassi and just happening to meet a girl, who speaks English, who goes to the church we are about to look for and has time to take us there.

 

     Or the time Rita and I are walking out to a street about to catch a Taxi to go wander around an area in town to locate a denominational office. As we approach the road, I start getting creeped out by this man watching us, there are other people around but he has zoned in on us. He walks forward and back and then asks where we are going. We name the area and he says. “Oh I am going there too. Would you like to share a taxi?” He goes through a big explanation telling us it’s cheaper and faster to share a taxi then to take the bus. “Um okay, we can share a taxi.” In the Taxi we find out he is pastor of an Evangelical church and knows the office we are looking for. When we get out of the taxi he insist on paying the cab driver and then takes us the office we are looking for and introduces us to the man with whom we need to speak. The man gives us the name of another pastor who is Guinea-Bissauan and tells us he is a good contact for finding out about ministry among West Africans in Cape Verde.

 

     The coincidences continue as we leave with a church and a neighborhood name on a piece of paper. Walking down the street we are not sure which way to go, we ask a few people and are being directed towards the ocean. “Can we walk there?” “Oh, yes, it’s not far!” So we keep going we pass a bus stop, just as an overcrowded bus pulls up. Rita wants to get on; I don’t feel like being sweated on. The bus leaves and we start to walk again but suddenly Rita stops. “I want to ask that man!” She exclaims and then walks up to a random guy standing with others at a bus stop, except the word random never really applies with God. This fellow not only knows the neighborhood, he is a Maninka speaker from Guinea, the northern district close to the Mali border. Rita lived in Mali for 9 years and is fluent in Bambara. His Maninka is so close to Bamabara that Rita and our new friend have no trouble understanding one another. This man apparently has plenty of time to take us to the neighborhood. He hails us a taxi and we all set off together. He is obviously enjoying speaking is heart language with Rita but despite his Muslim background, he also seems just as interested as we are in finding this church. When we arrive in the neighborhood he pays for the taxi himself and escorts us to the building, he stays with us through the interview and ask the pastor a few questions of his own. After the interview he suggest a few more evangelical churches we should visit, hails another taxi and takes us into some West African communities. We end the day at his place drinking a cold Fanta and making arrangement to meet again when Rita can Bluetooth some Bambara stories into his phone. At our next meeting, he invites two other West Africans over who speak English (so I won’t be left out), one is from lower Guinea his heart language is Koinyanka, I have a friend working on translation for Koinyanka. I call her up and she sends greetings to him in his native language, huge smile on his face. The other is a Mandingo from Liberia which happens to be the least reached people group in Liberia. He gives me contact so that when I move to Liberia in January I can look up his sister.

 

     This Maninka man and the coincidence of running into such an open person, is what I have heard termed as a “person of peace.” You can read about them in Luke 10:5-6. God not only can and does interact with us even through simple things like a timely call, but he has been at work all over the world long before we gain the initiative to walk into an unreached neighborhood. Many people are afraid to take the step of following God’s lead into overseas missions because they believe they will be beginning with hard soil. But God says, “The harvest is plentiful.” God may not be asking you to lead an entire African village to the Lord, he may just be asking you to go find the person of peace that he has already prepared and invest your time and wisdom with him.  

 

     In closing, God is never random. If you think, “Wow that was a pretty big coincidence,” it probably was not. God has big plans and he reveals them to people who are paying attention. And sometimes even to people who blunder through life like me; who don’t want to inconvenience the girl on the back of the Yassi, who get creeped out by the guy staring across the street, who would have rather passed the man at the bus stop. Stop and pay attention; He is doing stuff.

Maio, Cape Verde

      The last island we were privileged to visit was Maio, named by the Spanish for the month in which it was discovered. Maio is the second smallest inhabited island of Cape Verde (next to Brava) and the least visited by tourist. Up until recent years, many of the inhabitants of Maio lived without any contact with white Europeans. As we drove into the smaller villages in Maio, the children reacted in much the same way they do in West Africa, smiling and waving wildly at us. Along our way, we met and expat from Nebraska and travel author, Bert Lane. Bert moved to Maio when he could claim to be one of three white people on the island, there was also a French man and a German. He chose Maio because it was more relaxed and removed from the rush of life. Tourism is also beginning to make its mark in Maio. The Island has few resources to boost its economy so has begun to accept tourist into its less populated beaches. 

     Maio only has one evangelical church for the entire island, however the pastors of this church are passionate and devoted to the people of Maio. Emmanuel and Celita are reaching out of the capital of Villa Do Maio and into two nearby villages Celita glowed as she recounted that they recently were able to hand out Gospel pamphlets to all the school children in Maio. The faith of the two precious people was humbling to behold. At the beginning of the school year, Celita was approached by dozens of students asking for books for their classes, Celtia did not want to tell them no so she asked them to pray. Within the week, they had more than enough funds to buy all the kids the books they requested. Emanuel and Celita are concerned for the people of Maio because of social oppression coming from the dominate Catholics and also because of a recent  outbreak of suicide on the island.  “In the past 8 months there have been 7 suicides and 1 attempted suicide. People are saying that there is a devil possessing people.” Emanuel grew up in Maio and had never heard of a suicide on the island until this year. Pray for the people of Maio that the villages on the far side of the island will receive a gospel witness. Pray that the spirit of suicide will be banished from the island. And pray for Emanuel and Celita that they will continue faithfully and be encouraged and joined by other believers.

Boa Vista Cape Verde, West Africa

     We finally found them. Since stepping off the plane into this different West African country, where Taxis are clean and yellow and women wear pants, we had been looking hard to see any semblance of the West Africa we find familiar. We found it in Boa Vista.  Probably the most visited island by tourist, Boa Vista holds many beautiful spectacles. But because of the recent influx of tourism, many native Cape Verdeans have left the island and been replaced by West Africans from the continent seeking a better life. They can all be found in a ten block by ten block neighborhood off the main strip in Sal Rei. As we approached the neighborhood, it was like stepping back into Conakry. Little kids ran up to us immediately and put their hands out, expecting something from the white women. People shouted their greetings to us; we begin to shout greetings in French again. There are no cute potted plants out front of these buildings. They are all half-finished, grey, trash in the streets, and everyone is sitting outside on their stoops. I can see people cooking over their little coal burners, probably pepper soup, yes this is West Africa!

     Our first morning is Boa Vista, we head out to the only evangelical church in the city. It is several blocks from out hotel. We walk around the building and can see that the lights are out and it is closed for the day. We talk to bystanders, “oo est Nazareno Pastora maison?” Puzzled looks. Then a boy passing by is motioned to, chattered at, and we are soon following this young man around. “Nazareno Pastora?” we ask quizzically to the woman whose door we are brought too. More chattering, pointing, gesturing.  Soon we are again following this young man down side streets, past shops and to a building clearly marked, “Nazarene Pastor Counseling” I look down one more door and there is the sign for our hotel. We literally made a circle from our hotel around the entire town and back, if we had turned left instead of right, we would have been at his door in two steps.

     Inside we met with a young pastor anxious to bring the truth to Cape Verdeans as well as immigrants into his country. Pastor Ivan played the voice of Jesus in the recent production of the Jesus Film in Cape Verdean Creole. Ivan tells us the West African community we walked into is called Bash Proenza but is better known by the name “Barraca” meaning shanty or shack.  Ivan’s congregation is doing what it can to reach out to this community by holding small groups within this West Africa n community. Please pray for the people of Bash Proenza, both for their living conditions and the conditions of their hearts. Pray that believers will reach out to this predominantly Muslim neighborhood with the truth found in God’s son.

Sal, Cape Verde

     Imagine the purest aqua blue that you can, this was better. I have simply never seen this color so brilliant and so consistently gorgeous with each new out pouring. As I watched the waves hit the white sand beaches of Sal, I cannot believe that color could be more pure than in that moment. And there is sand, I took for granite that beaches meant sand, until I arrived in West Africa. Around Conakry beaches mean black scum, but here clean, powdery, white, sand.

      Sal is the word for Salt in Portuguese. There are salt beds on Sal caused by… well I don’t know what, let me try to explain, there are these pools of water that have been captured from the ocean, so they are salty. And the ground beneath the pools are real hot, so the water evaporates and leaves salt. Also these pools are ridiculously fun to play in. Rita and I visited these salt flats not understanding quite what they were. As we approached the pools, I could see, a bunch of middle aged people acting very serious about their turn about the pool. To the side was some weird, tree-hugger couple they were scooping mud from the bottom and coating themselves with it (ew), they were also being very serious. The water in the pools acts just like the dead-sea and turns ordinary people into buoys. How could I not giggle? The ground beneath was sooo hot, it burned my footsies! So you’re hopping around trying not to burn your toes and you lose balance and that’s it… beached whale. It is so hard to regain composure, after your feet go bobbing to the top, involuntarily. I giggled a lot, okay I laughed out loud and the serious people gave me menacing looks.

      In Sal, we acted like true tourist and headed to the African trinket market but we were not looking for souvenirs. We went in search of West Africans from the continent.  Tourism is big business on the Islands of Sal and Boa Vista, and the draw of making quick money brings hundreds of West Africans to these Islands. Senegalese, Guinea-Bissauans, Nigerians, Togolese, Sierra Leoneans and many other have moved to Sal and Boa Vista in hopes of sustaining themselves and to send money back home to their families. Many of these West Africans can be found in the little open air souvenir market. Senegalese are especially prevalent, if you are approached by a salesman in the street a majority of the time he is Senegalese.

      In one of the kiosks, we met Leo, a Senegalese man from Dakar. Leo had been around the tourist game for a while; he was a tour guide, in an area called the Pink Sea outside of Dakar, before he moved to Sal hoping to make a bigger profit on the Island. Leo real name was Moussa (Moses), but he found his traditional African/Islamic name too hard for his European customers to remember. “I told them, I am Leonardo De Vinci! Then they remembered my name.”  Leo’s English was beautiful; he said he learned from an Irish woman down the street. Leo also speaks, Italian, French, Cape Verdean Creole, Portuguese and Wolof (and more than likely some other Senegalese languages). I had been in Cape Verde for almost two weeks, two weeks and not a single proposal I was beginning to feel I had lost my charm. A young American woman in West Africa can count on being proposed too multiple times each week. “Hello, what’s your name? Are you married? NO! (With genuine shock on their face) Well then you can marry me!” Leo didn’t let me down; his offer was especially attractive because his came with a promise to let me travel, “Yes! Yes! You can be my wife and go where ever and just call I will send you money.” Hmm tempting, I got his number just in case I change my mind. I didn’t even use the “you’ll have to talk to my father” line (btw Dad have you been receiving any long distance calls?)  Leo is a fairly devout Muslim. The Cape Verdean government has been fighting the influx of Islam into the country and has denied the Muslims the right to build any Mosque in Cape Verde, but Leo still meets every Friday with other Senegalese to pray. Rita asked what he did for prayers during the day, and he said he always closes his little shop and walks down to a meeting place to do prayers with other Muslims. Leo’s shop is one block away from an evangelical church, spatially he is close to the truth, but culture has built a strong barrier between Leo and truth. Many evangelicals are afraid even to talk to Leo because of the cultural difference. I pray that the Churches in Sal continue to push past the cultural barriers and reach out to the growing Muslim population, that they do not view Muslims as people to be feared but instead as people to be loved and brought to a saving knowledge of JC true nature.

Brava Cape Verde, Island of the Brave.

     Brava, Island of the Brave. This quaint little island received its distinguished name from the hardtack sailors/Bravians, who once whaled in its waters. I think Brava has earned its name for another reason, the first evangelical missionary to Cape Verde, Jon Dios, was a Bravian and established the first congregation on the island of Brava. The church Jon established through his dedication to Christ call even in the face of fierce persecution, still stands in Brava’s capital, Nova Sintra. Jon’s bravery has brought hundreds of Cape Verdeans to the truth and cleared the path for future believers. The congregation Jon founded no longer meets in the building built in 1908 which was converted to a museum, now they meet in a newer building at the center of town.

      Brava is out of the way and seldom visited by the tourist that flood the more popular Islands in the summer months. It retains a homey feel mainly due to the small population (8000).  It has another title, “island of flowers.” It is indeed covered in many different varieties of flowers, but especially orange lantana, which means, many butterflies flitted about among the shrubs. There are two Nazarene Churches a few Adventist congregations on the island but there are some villages on the outskirt of the island that have no evangelical witness.

     Cachaco is one of these villages. Transport only goes to Cachaco twice a day, we just happened to catch the only yassi heading out there carrying a single high school student home for midday break. As we walked from courtyard to courtyard, we followed up on a lead that there were some Adventist in the area. “Adventist?” “No, no Catholic, only catholic here.” Finally one person said no but then changed her mind and pointed down a hill. This was a majestic walk down through fields of corn lined with lantana by the road sides. At the start of our walk we passed two very old women puttering about their porch they smiled and greeted “Bom Tarde” we smiled and waved back. At the end of the road we asked again, “Adventist?” “No, No there are only Catholic.”  We leisurely made are way back towards where the yassi was parked; he would not be going back to town for another hour. As we passed back by the old ladies they invited us to come up on their porch out of the sun… this is what I love about Cape Verde and West Africa, you don’t have to know them, you don’t have to have a purpose, you don’t even have to speak the same language, you can just come into their courtyard, sit and enjoy the shade with them. As we sat Rita commented on the heat of the day, and fumbled through a few sentence in Spanish maybe. The women laugh and their wrinkled tan faces beamed at us. Rita asked if they knew of any Adventist in the area and one of the ladies smiled broadly and motioned to herself and made some joke about her old catholic friend beside her not knowing the way. The two women laughed at her joke, you could plainly see decades of friendship were shared between them. We found her, the one old woman brave enough to embrace a religion other than her neighbors. That village was so full of beauty and peace, I pray the Adventist and Nazarene established on the island do not forget little Cachaco. I pray they continue to bring the truth to these furthest villages until they have their own congregation to stand as a witness to G0ds kingdom.

Fogo Cape Verde. Island of fire!

     Fogo means fire. Why name an island fire? Because it’s an active volcano! It last erupted in 1995 and the hardened lava flows are present all over the island. Before heading to the island we were told that some time the island rumbles and shakes because of the still active volcano, “but of course not when there are visiting Americans,” laughed our friend in jest. There is a saying among the islands, if someone is acting strange they will say, “are you from Fogo?” basically “are you crazy?” I don’t know why the saying originated, some say it is because the people on Fogo are eccentric, I think it is because the Island is an active volcano, why are there 40,000+ people living there! Rumbling and dooms day aside, Fogo is beautiful and quaint. There are sweet little houses all around the almost perfect circle of the island. Every house seemed covered in some sort of flowering something; all had potted plants on the patios. Rita and I viewed the coffee plants with the green berries not ripe yet, and we sampled some Fogo coffee in one of the diners. Rita became an instant attic and began demanding coffee almost before we could seat ourselves at every restaurant (exaggeration). Having heard early on that you can hike to the volcano mouth, Rita and I began to train for the excursion. As we visited the other islands, whenever we happened to be taking the stairs or walking up a bit of an incline, we’d turn to each other and shout Fogo! Despite our elaborate training we did not end up hiking to the mouth, it was just too much to be done in our limited schedule. We did however hike the little peak beside the volcano that gave a pretty decent view of the 1995 lava flows. This venture was enough to prove our inadequacy for the actual peak. Walking up a volcano is like trying to hike up a pile of black sand. We were both wearing inappropriate hiking shoes as well, my Chaco’s helped zero in keeping the little pebbles and sand from creeping between the sole and my foot. They did a pretty darn good job at holding the pebbles in place once they crept in there. It was worth it though and fun to watch Rita try to bare foot it before realizing the ground was to hot and putting her flip-flops back on. 

      Our last night in Fogo, I awoke with a start, a loud noise, and did the building just rumble? “Rita did you hear that?!” Rita rolled over and sleepily responded, “Someone slammed a door, that’s all.” I was very awake and sitting up in my bed I was incredulous, “that was a loud door.” As I snuggled back into my sheets, two more very loud explosions shook the building. “That was not a door!” Soon Rita and I were hanging over our balcony listening to the Creole chattering of the neighbor’s and watching men running down the streets. I peeked at the clock, 4 am. We eventually decided to go find out what’s up and we followed the crowed and the smell of smoke two blocks down the road. Apparently a propane tank had exploded in a house (one of those small tanks used for cooking). There was smoke billowing out of the windows. The next morning we could see two explosion marks outside the building on the concrete. We never could get the whole story but the important thing is Rita and I did not get consumed by a lava flow.

     Probably my favorite interview was the one we conducted with a Brazilian ministry called Kyros on our way out of Sao Filipe, the capital of Fogo. It was my favorite because not a single sentence was completed in any one language. After greeting, “Bom Tarde!” we quickly run out of our Portuguese vocab. Then we are left with the French and Spanish words that they might know or that might sound similar enough to Portuguese to pass. Last we try English and charades. It sounds something like this, “Mon Ami, (person’s name) told (gesturing towards mouth), us (Gesturing toward each other) about Kyros.” Everyone around the table shakes head in understanding.  Though I don’t know what we communicated verbally it was like one Nazarene pastor said, “culture can separate us but God can unite us.” I felt close to those Brazilian believers who had also left home and normalcy to seek out God’s plan. I don’t always know what is going on around me, or why things happen the way they do, but God does and He orchestrates things for His own purpose.  And He unites His people across culture, denomination and language in beautiful ways.