Thanksgiving Festivities

Holidays are an interesting thing overseas. Of all the times that you want to be home, these are the strongest. So, in an attempt to recreate the jollity of yore, we Americans gather together to bring our home to Chad. This particular holiday, is of course, Thanksgiving. Of all the holidays, besides maybe the 4th of July, this is the most obscure for non-Americans. It has nothing to do with them; it is a purely national celebration. The Canadians may come close with their version a month earlier, but in general, we were already alone on this day, and it’s no different here. I’ll let you in on how the preparations went this year…

It began back in early October when a thoughtful mom sent a package of Thanksgiving napkins. A little gesture, but very helpful to get the table looking the part. These napkins were safely stored away through three different moves. The next was a search for a table cloth. When I first arrived in Africa, I realized that my house needed some color, so I purchased some brightly colored yellow fabric with all sorts of designs on it. Took it to a tailor to cut and finish the edges, and cut 8 matching napkins. We have been using this since April, giving some sort of continuity to our various living locations. But in October I finally decided that despite the still “summery” weather in our neck of the woods, it was time for a more “seasonally-appropriate” cloth (hey, even when it’s 90 in California you don’t leave the summer stripes on the table, do you?). So I went to the huge outdoor N’Djamena market, it mid-90 degree weather. I went to vendor after vendor in search of the perfect thanksgiving table cloth (what exactly does that look like again)? No, didn’t find any turkey ones, but after hearing some outrageous prices for some of the beautiful embroidered cloths (I mean, come on, I can maybe see paying $100 for a hand-embroidered table cloth from Pottery Barn or something, but I’m in Chad!), I finally landed upon a beautiful brown cloth with burnt orange flowers and cream-colored leaves, all embroidered and small little clear crystals sewn on throughout. After getting an original price of $50, I eventually bargained him down to $16…Okay, napkins, tablecloth, check.

Next was to begin thinking about the food. We would be moving to Abeche soon, and who knows what they would have there. I purchased some sort of large squash. It looked like one of those fancy whitish-greenish pumpkins in the states, you know, the kind Martha Stewart would do her jack-o-lanterns out of. It had an orange-yellow flesh, and I figured it could pass for pumpkin. It sat on our counter for a week or so, and then was the last item in the car when we got all packed up for our move. It was 6am on Monday morning, and Rob said, “Anything else need to go in here?” I presented him with the beloved squash and watched as he found space inside a small trashcan at the back of the car. The poor squash stayed in that little black trashcan in the depths of the car, for two hot days on the way to Abeche, but made it safely there, after one small tumble in the desert. For lack of a kitchen table in our current house, the pseudo-pumpkin and tablecloth graced our coffee table for the last two weeks.

Two days ago the little squash fulfilled it’s purpose in life. My house helper, Hadidje, hacked, sawed and chopped up the little guy until he was just large chunks of orange vegetable. The next day, I boiled all the squash until it was completely tender, then mashed it and drained it through a colander…getting closer to that pumpkin pie…But this was not the end. That afternoon, after reading up on homemade pumpkin puree, I realized that the mixture needed to be thoroughly drained. So I placed the puree into a dish towel (for lack of cheesecloth), into a colander, and then placed a bowl and two giant cans on top of the mixture. After leaving it for about an hour, I was pleased to find what looked almost exactly like canned pumpkin puree! I broke out the spices, a few different recipes, read up on “patee brisee” (flaky pie crust), and re-wrote the recipes for the only pie plate that I have in my possession, and 11-inch wide, 1½- inch deep tart pan, and began cooking. I waited with baited breath as people sliced into the creation and took their first bites. I tried to look uninterested, but was relieved with the first sounds of “who made this pumpkin pie” and “this is delicious, it tastes like real pumpkin pie!” Yeah!

My attempt to make whipped-cream without cream, was not as successful. The first attempt turned into sugary butter, and the second attempt, though having the appearance of whipped-cream, tasted bad and was a liquid mess by the time it was lined up on the dessert table. (note: butter and milk will never become one…no matter how long you beat it, it will still be whipped butter in a bowl full of milk…) There are some things that just have no substitute.

So did we have a successfully reproduced American thanksgiving? We had roast beef instead of turkey, but who likes turkey anyway? We ate mashed potatoes, gravy, stuffing and green bean casserole. We were with friends, many of whom are like family. The guys threw the football around in the yard; the girls spent the morning cooking. Everyone ate too much and was stuffed before desserts came out. We thanked God for our blessings, and we ate pretty-close-to-real pumpkin pie. Pretty similar. I’d say the only differences would be that after putting on our “Sunday best”, we covered our heads, got in a huge truck and rumbled down the unpaved road, past donkeys, horse-drawn carts, soldiers with guns, and various displays of livestock. We arrived at an orphanage, where an African guard opened a large gate for us to enter. We sat in a dimly-lit, hot room, because there was no electricity available. Around dusk, we had to think about getting home, as most car-jackings take place after dark. We arrived home, killed a few crickets, watched a movie on our computer and got ready for bed. However, we have no sink in our bathroom, so I came to the kitchen to brush my teeth and found there to be no water in the pipes, as normal, so we went to some large reserve barrels outside and got enough to last us the night. We locked the doors, and crawled underneath the mosquito net...just like thanksgiving when I was little…

I think today I’ll head to the market to take advantage of the day-after-thanksgiving sales!

Adventures in Henna

We met some women in the market the other day that wanted me to get “henna’ed”, because that’s what married women do here, mostly on their hands/arms and bottoms of their feet. So we went back on Thursday, and had a crazy experience. Upon arrival at the market, each of the ladies, Zenaba and Hawa, spoke in very rapid Arabic to us, that we did really catch and then called a rickshaw (these three-wheeled, little moto carts that look a bit like ford model-t’s and go about 10 miles an hour, like something from Thailand, that somehow found it’s way into a desert, non-paved road community.), and shoved us into the back seat. We were then driven down little tiny roads, through little alleyways (where’s the video camera when you need it!) and taken into someone’s house. The “house” consisted of mud brick walls, a dirt floor covered by plastic mats, and a few stools. Our original “market lady friends” left and we were left there with the henna lady in her house and were pleased to find the room also filled with about 6 or 7 other girls/women that were also getting henna’ed. One of them was getting married that day and the others were her sisters.
Despite the oddity of the experience, it was really fun. It reminded me of getting a mani-pedi in the middle of the summer in LA; tons of girls sitting around giggling and getting their hands and feet worked on. Once everyone got their henna done, we all had to sit there with our hands and/or feet up in the air so as not to get the wet henna to touch anything. Friends standing by would help get money out to pay so that we wouldn’t mess up the new “do”. Margit even had to help one girl get her laffay back on because she was still wet and it had fallen off. No UV lights to speed up the process, but people waved hand held fans over us. At the end, the girls stood up, and while bargaining the price, mentioned that they were going to the hair dresser next! We had a fun time for about three hours just sitting and chatting with these girls. They actually had a Chadian father, and French mother. They were very beautifully colored, and a lot calmer/timid than normal Chadians. The henna lady, Zara, actually made us laugh a lot. She was very Chadian! So, yes, as I type, I have beautiful (jet black) henna (actually black hair dye) all over my arms and hands (which you can see above)…I chickened out on the feet, so now everyone thinks I’m not married, oh well!

On the way back EVERYONE commented on it, and the ladies in the market went WILD. I doubt they’d ever seen it on a white person before, and of course it stands out a lot. The lady did a beautiful job. It was very intricate, and I love it, although I have to admit that now, four days later, I often look down at my hands and thing, hmmm, not wearing off yet, eh? I guess I’m not a good candidate for a permanent tattoo!

I've attached a few other pictures just for fun (sorry they're small this time, the connection isn't so fast today...The one of me and Rob is from our Halloween party, still in N'Djamena, then then henna room, then me and Kirsten in N'Djamena at her 31st birthday brunch!),
More next time…my adventures in Chad!

Back in the Saddle

Just a quick note to say that I'm able to get on blogger again, so I'll try to update this spot regularly again. Here's a picture as a teaser. I'll write a longer blog later.

karen gets henna'ed

Be writing soon!

My life in Chad via Pictures

Here are some new pictures so you can "see" us in Chad. We wish you were here...really! (I'd put more, but the internet is too slow right now)

Rainy Season is Upon Us. It's beautiful at times, very wet most of the time, hard for the people who's mud houses are collapsing during the heaviest rains in 9 years. And our 5 mile drive to school can take up to 45 minutes (with a pretty sore tailbone and muddy car by the time you get there). We came upon this "traffic jam" for the second time in two days, when several cars got stuck in the mud and couldn't get out. The night before there was a line up of 30 or 40 horse drawn carts waiting to get through here. We encounter lots of interesting things on the way to school!

CEFOD is where we spend 4 hours every morning asking each other things like, "Do you have a dog? Is your dog bad or good? How are the people in your house? Are they sick? What did you do yesterday? Did you go to the market? How did you get to school this morning? Were the roads good or bad?" All in Chadian Arabic, and we ask questions like this for over an hour every morning, trying to use our new vocab from the day before. Then we learn 20 new words over the next three hours. There are now 17 people in our class. Several Cameroonians, a few Chadians, some Spanish volunteer workers, and the rest of us who are here for the same purpose, from America and Switzerland mostly. This picture is taken in front of our school, run by a Catholic relief organization. It's pretty cush, we even have two air conditioners in our classroom, and we only have to wear headscarves in the classroom, not a full veil!

Pictures!

Rob, Margit, Kirsten and the McKenzie kids





Karen in her new kitchen!


Locals crossing the river . . .

July 16, 2008
“So no one told you life was gonna be this way. Your job’s a joke, you’re broke, your love life’s DOA. It’s like you’re always stuck in second gear. But when it hasn’t been your day, you week, your month, or even your year…I’ll be there for you, like I’ve been there before…I’ll be there for you, when the rain starts to pour…I’ll be there for you.” Great lyrics, I think. If you don’t already know, you should know that I am an extreme Friends fanatic. The series started when I was fairly young, so it was above my head at the time. But at the end of college and beginning of grad school, I got hooked. Things in Friends world are so calm and relaxing. You know how sitcoms go, some laughs, some conflicts, but by the end of the 30 minutes, everything is pretty much worked out, the happy music starts to play and everyone feels good (unless of course it’s the season finale, and then it’s an agonizing four months of waiting for resolution).

Anyway, since we’ve been overseas, Friends has been a real life-saver/sanity-preserver for me. I can remember one of our first few weeks in our scary first apartment in France, when I discovered that our Friends DVD’s would play on the player there. We were very excited. Just a taste of home. I remember late nights after holidays wishing we were with our families. We whipped out our favorite episode, and felt the tears fade to the back for a while. I vividly remember one night in particular. It was June 18th of last year; the day that Ella was born. It had been a very long weekend and an even longer day. It was about ten or eleven at night and we had just said our final goodbye’s to our little girl and laid her in a little box that the nurse then took away. Could life had been anymore messed up? After all the nurses left Margit popped out a little cake that Kirsten had made for me as a little reward for making it through the day. My mom and Rob, Margit and I were munching on the cake, and they asked me if I wanted to do something. I didn’t have to think long, and I said, “Yeah, I want to watch Friends.” I had originally planned on watching several episodes during labor, but the way things turned out, it was too intense. But this was the perfect time. So on my trusty Dell, we started it up, and for a half an hour it felt like the world would keep turning. For thirty minutes, the tears actually dried up on my face. For that short bit of time, everything stopped feeling so foreign and felt familiar again. Am I proposing that we take refuge in our favorite sitcoms? No. Reality always comes rushing back after the credits role. I had a counselor tell me once that he thought I watched movies so often because I was trying to escape the real world. I looked him straight in the face and said, “Well, that’s exactly it! If you could leave all your problems behind for 2 hours, just take a little vacation from them, with renewed energy to deal with them afterwards, wouldn’t you?” He wasn’t sure what to answer. In the life that I live right now, I don’t take many “vacations” from the reality all around me, but I’m thankful for my thirty minute “coffee breaks”.

So, why do I even mention this? Have I become Warner Brothers’ newest rep? No. It’s just that since we’ve been here in Africa the last three months, I’ve started to identify with the theme song. We used to fast forward through it and just get straight to the story, but now I always ask if we can listen to it. “No one told you life was gonna be this way…” First favorite line. Have you ever felt like that? A lot in the last few months has made me think, could I have gotten a memo about this or something? We grow up with these grand plans for our life, that turn out like nothing we had thought. Sometimes these days I think, do I have a reason for being right now? (don’t worry, I’m not depressed, just pensive). I don’t know how many of you have jobs like we have right now. I wouldn’t think it’s very common in America; maybe more akin to unemployment. As we wait for our next step and we attempt to make our days useful along the way, there is a lot of waiting, and lot of doing nothing. I am ashamed some days that all I have done is baked 2 loaves of bread, made meals, attended a Bible study and written a few emails. It’s not a lack of desire to do something “important,” it’s a lack of “important” things to do right now. Arabic doesn’t start for two weeks, our tutor hasn’t quite worked out yet. We’re moving today for the third time in 3 months, today is my day off of teaching Annelise. So those words from Friends always resonate with me…no one told me. I know that we have been told life would not be easy as pie, and there will be trials and it produces perseverance. All of that is true. But what it has taught me recently is to lighten up a little. Instead of thinking, poor Karen, out here in Africa, suffering the fate of extreme boredom and lack of purpose, I think, everyone thinks at one moment or another, “No one told me it was going to be this way!” But the beauty of this song is that it continues, move on, it doesn’t matter, it’s not the end of the world: “If it hasn’t been your day, your week, your month, or even your year…I’ll be there for you…” It says, yeah, your life has kind of sucked for a while, in terms of earthly value. It may look like you have kind of gotten the short end of the stick the last few draws. But you know what, it’s cool, life goes on. Life is so much more than the sum of the good and bad things that have happened to you. It’s about who you are. You can imagine this theme song having a slow rhythm in a minor key and being kind of sad, but it’s not. It’s upbeat. That’s what I love about it. It says, life is this way, but it will go on. And I just need to do my best to enjoy what I can along the way.

Odd as it may be, it has given me a different perspective on things, so that when I read a devotional from my “Hope” book the other day (a devotional book for those dealing with loss and grief; highly recommend it) about trusting God’s plan, it made a lot of sense to me. The writer wrote, “Jesus calls us to abandon our own agendas, what we have deemed will please and fulfill us, so that we can embrace the kind and quality of life that only he gives…This is the call for everyone who chooses to be a follower of Jesus. The problem is, we don’t really believe that God’s plan for our lives could be better than the one we’ve crafted. We don’t believe we could be as fulfilled by the life he offers as we would be by the one we’ve planned.” Yeah…isn’t that true. She was just brave enough to say it. The truth is, deep down, I really don’t believe that the cards that God is dealing me are honestly better than the way I want it to be. It’s true, I don’t. I try really hard to think that, but I just don’t. Sure, I know cognitively, but feeling it is different. But part of what I started to see more clearly is that I do look at the “my day, my week, my month, and my year(s)” and think, yeah, this is not better than what I had planned. But the reality of it is that I have to look at the whole picture. The song says, “even if”. Even if it hasn’t gone the way you though, it’s cool, it is going to work out. Okay, maybe it’s not going to work out because Monica, Chandler, Ross, Rachel, Phoebe and Joey will “be there for you.” But it will work out because of God’s character of perfection and goodness (and he will “be there for you” …okay, admittedly a little cheesy, but I had to say it!). And in the mean time, I just need to rake through my life and do the best that I can with what I have, believing that even though it looks like I’m living in Africa doing absolutely no good for the human race at the moment, God had these weeks, months, years in His plan since before time, and so, it’s all good. He wants it to be this way, and we’re here to please Him, so I can confidently say, “No one told me my life was going to look this way; but even though it hasn’t been a great day, week, month or year, it’s gonna be fine…in fact, great, in the end.

July 2, 2008
Today is our first true day in Chad. Other than the time that I visited in 2003 and Rob again in 2007 for a few weeks, we now have moved everything we own (that isn’t still somewhere in the Atlantic Ocean) to this place called Chad. We left the place we had called home, Meskine, Cameroon, for the last two months, piled into a rented van and the McKenzies car, and drove north four hours to the border. A pretty uneventful trip, except for the herd of over 100 elephants that casually walked by on our left at one point – a poignant reminder that we were indeed still in Africa, just after I had been musing that the scenery made me think of the plains in Wyoming.

The stop at the border is the worst part. It took over an hour today, pretty normal. What we actually do there, I’m not sure. But you stop for half the time on one side, sitting in the blazing hot sun, and about half the time on the other side, again, in the now hotter sun. Then today, something was wrong with the driver’s visa, so we had to be pushed aside into the customs area, usually reserved for large trucks carrying goods. At least there, we weren’t suffocated by the continuous black exhaust from the passing vehicles.

After leaving the customs area, we were officially in Chad. The scenery was dustier and the people dressed a little different. The area was a bit slumish, so it wasn’t a great comparison with the nice village that we had just left. But I know all “big” cities have their “underbelly” that isn’t meant to be their best side. We quickly left the paved road and began on a bumpy and puddle-filled dirt road. About ten minutes later we arrived at the Lutheran Guesthouse Compound; basically a 10 foot tall grey wall topped with shards of broken glass (think pretty barbed-wire). The guard opened the large metal gate and we drove in. The first thing that struck me was the lack of vegetation. It has been raining for a month in Meskine, the grass has sprouted, and there are beautiful flowers and trees everywhere. Chad is a bit more barren, and this compound was built in the last year and so doesn’t have any large trees.

Upon arrival and inspection we found that our apartment was actually being inhabited by another person, who will be moving in 2 weeks…hmm. So, Rob and I were sent to the available studio apartment. A far cry from the 4 bedroom house that we just came from, but as they say here, “flexibility is the hallmark of missionary life” (don’t think I’m a saint, I did get angry and then cried quietly in my room before agreeing to actually place my luggage in the studio…). After further reflection and the realization that there was nothing to be done to change this situation, I just decided to better it. We unpacked what would fit in the tiny room. We turned one of our luggage trunks into a small table by throwing a piece of fabric over it and placing some pictures and books on top. We found an unused low wooden table outside, wiped it down and turned it into a coffee table. The two sitting chairs, we placed side by side to act as a couch. I arranged all my spices on the counter to make it look homey, and hung some brightly colored aprons on the side of the cupboards. I also, just yesterday picked up a large tablecloth that I had a seamstress sew for me, and it fit just perfectly on our table! It really brightened up the room! I pulled out our fridge magnets and a few snapshot pictures of me, Rob and my mom at Disneyland from February, and one of McCain, our niece and Rob reading a book together. The fridge comes up to my waist and doesn’t hold much, but having the magnets made it seem bigger somehow.

We finally sat down after about four and a half hours of working (with the iPod blasting tunes in the background, of course) and tried to cool off. We then realized that all of the bugs that had been outside, had somehow found their way in to our house, attracted by the fluorescent lights. So we quickly closed all the windows and swatted down what we could. They were mostly just termites (like flying ants), so harmless, but gross. There were about 1000 in our kitchen sink. Next job…cooking dinner. We decided that despite the grunting and groaning when I was packing the extremely heavy boxes of canned food and other kitchen items yesterday, we were now exceedingly glad for every morsel of food we had with us, since we have no car and no idea where the market or even any small shops are. We opened a can of beef ravioli that I found in Cameroon before we left, sliced some white bread that Madeleine, my house helper had made for our trip, and grabbed a couple of bananas. A very tasty dinner for a first night in a new house in Africa. After dinner we went to the McKenzies house for a rousing game of Carcassonne and we munched on some yummy Lemon Poppy-Seed Tea Cake that I made the night before we left (Everyday Food, May issue). Pretty good end to a rough day. Could have been a LOT worse. Thanks God! In a few minutes, we’ll tuck ourselves in to our new bed: two twins put together to make a king, with a pretty lace mosquito netting all around the bed. And this time, no waterbed and the mattresses are the exact same height! This is good living! Until next time…

Happy 1st Birthday Ella Joy

To my little angel, we're celebrating your birthday today. One year ago today, we got see this beautiful face! We miss you. Love, mommy and daddy

Home Tour

By popular demand, the home tour has finally come. At the end are also some pictures of some kids that hang out around our house from when I went out of our walls to take pictures. They begged me to take their pictures. I tried to put them in order, but it's kind of hard on the blog. The pictures are from outside our place, then walking in that big front gate towards our veranda, then a couple in the veranda, some from the living room, kitchen, our bedroom and the backyard. (Dad, this is for you!)

Celebrity Status

Have you seen my new movie? I haven’t either, but apparently the people of Cameroon have, and I’m the leading role! Every missionary has had to cope with not exactly “fitting in” in their new culture, and we are no strangers. We have white skin, weird clothes, a funny language and “lots of money”. At times the pointing and staring and hollering and laughing gets on my nerves. But last week I started thinking of it a bit differently. I looked at the faces of the little kids chasing after our truck as we drove by, hands waving wildly, bright smiling faces, and thought, they don’t mean any harm. Somehow they are filled with extreme joy every time we cross their path. It doesn’t matter if we walk or drive by 50 times in one day. As soon as they see us, they call out to us, “Nassara, nassara” (white man, white man) and laugh and wave, and they won’t stop until you wave back or at least throw a smile their way. For a while, I couldn’t understand how we could possibly be so interesting every single time. Won’t we eventually get boring? So then everything changed.

Now I think of myself as a celebrity. I am your favorite movie star walking down Hollywood Boulevard. Rob is your heartthrob of the silver screen. Hey, what the heck, our team is the whole cast of Friends! And you just saw us walking past you on the street! Aren’t you going to say hi? Think about it, we are different, we are seen as having tons of money (at least in comparison to them), we are a novelty, they wonder what our lives are like behind those “mansion” doors. No one actually knows our real name, so instead they yell out, “Nassara!” just like we might yellow out “Rachel!” instead of “Jennifer Aniston”. It makes the walks and rides oh so much more pleasurable. Now, instead of being annoyed by the constant attention from the onlookers, being annoyed at looking different and not fitting in, having to wave to every person we pass on the street; now I think, I am a celebrity, and I owe it to my fans! I wave with pride (they love me!), give the biggest smiles to the shyest and littlest ones on the side of the road, just to see their big grin appear. I stop in front of my gate, before opening the door to greet each one of the fans who have been anxiously waiting outside the door just waiting for the “Nassara” to come home. I gladly wear my head covering and clothes that they can respect so that I don’t lose favor in the eyes of my loyal fans. You have to be a good influence for the youngsters, you know?
This comparison gets even funnier as the days go by and I find new ways to identify myself as a celebrity (so much nicer than being annoyed all the time by the “lack of privacy”. On Friday night, Rob took me on a date to “Porte Mayo”. Porte Mayo is a nice little hotel here in town that is made up of several little bungalows, with a giant courtyard, beautifully decorated in “African Jungle” style with grass huts, hanging lanterns, African print tablecloths and bamboo furniture. It would certainly fly as an upscale romantic restaurant in the states if they would throw in a little AC! Owned by a Frenchman, the food is delicious (and no doubt imported, since I had pork on my pizza!). We were amazed as we sat there at this great little find in the middle of a small African town, eating delicious food and enjoying the stars (and Norah Jones playing over the speakers), that almost every patron at the restaurant was white! Maybe not that amazing to you, but when you are the minority the whole day long every day, it is a bizarre sight to be sitting at a restaurant with all white people. Now, any one of you who saw this restaurant would call it “cute” “quaint” “authenticly African”, but let me tell you, sitting there that night, I felt my “celebrity status” more than ever. This must be what it is like to be a star: dining at the finest restaurants, owning the nicest cars, being adored by your fans. Lovely! Who said it’s so bad being a missionary! …Now if only we could speak their language…

Week 2

It’s a nice Saturday morning here in Meskine. The sun is covered at the moment by a cloud cover. Very nice as it’s nearing the hot part of the day. We are extremely excited because, thanks I’m sure to many prayers, the electricity came back on after 4 days of hot, powerless days and nights, and it came on earlier than expected! That is somewhat unheard of around here. People had been saying to not expect it back on for possibly weeks. While we did end up having to throw out a lot of rotting food from the refrigerator, we were also able to salvage a lot.

Yesterday afternoon, after Arabic tutoring, the Carters and we decided that we needed something fun to look forward to at night, since we knew there’d still be no electricity, it would be hot and we weren’t sure what we’d eat for dinner. So, I suggested that I try and make a yummy dessert and we’d watch a movie on one of computers whose battery was still fully charged. It definitely worked out great. Despite the lack of electricity and refrigeration, I was able to come home and re-heat some leftovers that I’d been storing in the hospital’s freezer (shredded beef tacos), make tortillas (actually rob made them this time and they were fabulous!), and I found a recipe for pineapple upside down cake in the Wycliffe cookbook, and I had all the ingredients! All of it turned out deliciously…of course, we had to go through about 5 eggs before we found 2 that were not rotten, but in the end the cake was delicious. I thought it was funny as we sat with our measly little solar bulb, in the middle of West Africa munching down on tacos and pineapple upside down cake, and watching “We are Marshall”. It’s amazing what you can accomplish (and how God provides good things for us) It got even better when suddenly in the middle of the movie all the lights came on in the whole house and the fans started whirring and fridge light came on! We were all cheering! We couldn’t believe that it had come on. We turned some lights on just for the sake of having the light again, shut the fridge and freezer doors to start trapping some cool, put the leftovers from that dinner, which were going to be thrown out, into the freezer. It was great! We finished watching our movie with nice air blowing all around us from the fans.

We also had a fun afternoon at Madeleine’s house. Our house helper had asked me the other day when we were going to come visit her and I said, “How about Friday?” So, after we left the hospital from tutoring, we started on the 30 minute walk back towards our house. Being 2:30 in the afternoon, you can imagine it was quite toasty out, and there is a large portion of the walk that cuts through a dried up field, thus there are no trees and you walk through direct sun for about 10 minutes. Luckily, I had my white head covering on, and had remembered to soak it in water before we left, so it kept me pretty cool. Well, despite the detailed directions she had given us (“about half-way through the field, when you see the big tree that is buy a big burn pile, then turn right, you will see a metal corrugated steel door, go in there and that is our house…right!), we were unable to locate her house. We stopped and asked people if they knew her and where she lived, but they didn’t, in fact they didn’t really even know what we were asking because they didn’t really speak French. We greeted them in Fulfulde first and then they would just keep answering us in Fulfulde as well, even though we were speaking French, it was great fun. In the end, the answer was that they didn’t know who she was. Finally, I found some shade to wait in while Rob retraced our steps to see if he could find her. Eventually, she found him, they came and got me, and we made it to her house, about 45 minutes late. But that’s Africa time, right? We had a great time sitting and talking with Madeleine and Musa (her husband) in their house. Musa is a nurse at the Meskine hospital here. It was actually a very nice house for African standards. It was built out of mud bricks, with curtains in the windows and doorways. It was very clean with big plastic woven mats on the floor and plastic patio chairs to sit in. One of the rooms in the house was full to the ceiling with onions. The women stockpile them during the hot season, and then sell them for a lot during the rainy season when they aren’t as prevalent. So they store them in their homes. We met their four children; three girls and one boy…they said they are still hoping for 8 more and thought it extremely hilarious and unbelievable that Rob and I both came from a family of “only one other child!” I’d never seen them laugh so hard. It was a nice time and it was actually cooler in their house than it was in ours once we got home. I guess they’re better at planning out their homes for the best breezes.

I had asked another missionary who has worked here for a long time, how we should properly take our leave when we were ready to go. We found out that we needed to say that we needed to go, and then sit and talk for about 20 more minutes. I was glad that we asked, and it worked like a charm. We said we needed to go and nobody budged. In fact, we started a brand new topic of conversation. After a while, we announced that we were leaving. I gave them a giant ripe avocado as a gift, and I think they really liked it (she told me avocados are her favorite “fruit”, but to buy just one avocado, would be about 1 days wages for her, as she would have to take a taxi into the town, and then the avocado itself is what she gets paid for about 2 hours of work). Musa and Madeleine then proceeded to walk us out of their yard and they kept walking with us. Apparently, they told us that it is polite to walk your guests halfway home, and that they did. It was kind of nice because they knew everyone that we passed on the way and stopped and said hi, and introduced us to some. For the first time walking down the road, people (children) weren’t yelling (white man, white man!) at us, we finally fit in a little, because we were walking with some insiders. It was a nice feeling (see, we’re normal, we have friends just like you!).

Time to go prepare some lunch. We’re meeting up with Carters in a bit to go refill our fridges with some mangos and bananas for the weekend, to go search for an alleged ice cream shop in Maroua, and to check some email at the hospital. They’re going on a date tonight, so we are going to have fun playing with Ben (and seeing if we can find the French National Soccer Championship game on the short-wave radio!!)

(the pictures are [top to bottom]: homemade vanilla ice cream that was a welcome success!, a picture outside our window of the sandstorm last week, Karen washing veggies the first week we were here.)

Official First Week

It’s officially one week today that we have been in Meskine. It seems amazingly longer than that! Right now I’m sitting at my dining table. All the curtains in the house are closed right now, because although it is only 88 this morning (a new low!), it feels like it’s 100 because of the humidity today. Cameroon is different than where we will be in Chad, because it’s a bit more tropical. The sun was pouring in when we woke up, meaning the alarm that was still to wake us up, was a bit useless. We rushed around the house closing up the curtains to block out the blazing sun, and started a pot of oatmeal. We haven’t yet found a good cold alternative to our normal breakfast choice. I suggested frozen oat pops, but Rob didn’t go for that. My house helper, Madeleine knocked on the front gate around 8:10am. We scurried around the house trying to find our clothes (to them, wearing shorts and a tank top is like walking around in our underwear.). We greeted each other, and she started on all the dishes from yesterday. A big help here, where we basically have to wash all of the dishes three times in order to sterilize them. Today she will also wash our laundry for me an cut up all the veggies for dinner. Usually people have the house helpers cook all their meals, but for now, I love cooking so much, I am just letting her prepare all the food and then I will cook it.

I’m sure it seems very weird to hear about having a helper in the house, but it’s actually very necessary here. The days before I had her, I spent the entire day either cooking, cleaning, sterilizing, disinfecting, etc. This left no time to actually do the work that we are here to do. This way, we are able to study our Arabic books, go to tutoring lessons and meet people in the village with whom we can speak Arabic. We are so thankful to have this help. It is also nice just to have someone around to talk to in the mornings and to teach us a few Fulfulde phrases that we can use with the village children and people we pass on the streets. “Jam Jam” is the new phrase that we learned today. It basically means both “how are you doing?” and “I’m doing fine”. (Similar to the French “ca va?”.).

So now, after giving all the instructions to Madeleine, we are preparing for the 30 minute walk over to the hospital compound. There we will send some email (and post this blog!), and meet Habiba, the Arabic language tutor. Then we will try to bum a ride home from someone so we can eat lunch before the heat of the day. We’re having shredded beef tacos! I made them last night, even the tortillas! Forget store bought, these things were yummy! We also made some great guacamole from the avocado that Jane bought us on Saturday. Well, off to work! Enjoy the AC for us!

My Afternoon in Meskine

After several hours at a hotel pool in nearby Maroua, with friends from the hospital, a great meal of beef kebabs and french fries for me and Tilapia kebabs and plantains for Rob, a nice cold orange Fanta (soda), and a bit of a break from the sweltering heat, the afternoon changed pace. Sheltered from our normal daily routine and the busy crowded streets of Maroua, we reluctantly pulled ourselves from the cool blue pool, changed out of our would be “revealing” bathing suits and into skirts that sweep the top of our dusty sandals, a t-shirt, hot from the sun, and wrap up our hair and heads to be properly covered. It’s amazing how quickly the coolness of the pool faded away. We gathered our things, payed for our stay, and opened the doors to the outside world. Motorbikes rushed by, all sorts of sounds and languages that I didn’t understand whisked around me. We got into the steamy truck and bounced along down the street. We had a few stops to make before we headed home. No big deal, I thought, it has been such a nice cool and relaxing day. The first stop left us on the side of a very loud and crowded market. Rob negotiated the prices of three trash bins with people who knew only broken French (they speak the local language, Fulfulde, in the markets). After about 20 minutes. Success, three dusty trash cans with lids (important!) got placed next to me in the back of the truck. While waiting for Rob, Rachael and I had hopped out and gone into a bakery (boulangerie) to look for some bread so we wouldn’t have to bake any that night. After surveying the large mass of flies that had taken up residents on the baguettes we decided that we weren’t really craving bread anymore. So our journey continued. Bouncing along, honking at passing goats, zooming around motorbikes. Stop! Rachael spotted a food store, the kind that might sell flour. I had purchased flour the day before only to find out that even after sifting it, it still had some mysterious brown specs all throughout. So, we entered the store, which was probably nearing 100 degrees inside. Some great finds! We got two kilos (4lbs.) of flour (I tried to peek in and check for the mysterious brown specs, but wasn’t given the privilege), a small notebook, tomato paste, a bottle of imported vanilla (from France), and a bottle of very dusty shampoo. As we stood to pay, not realizing that Rachael understood Arabic, the lady next to us commented to her friend that we were very rich (we were paying with the equivalent of a $10 bill).
Back in the truck and off to drop off some mail at a friend’s house in town. Not being on the main paved road, we bounced along a bit slower and a bit bouncier to get to their place. At the end, they weren’t there, but we left the mail with the guards. By the time we waited in the hot car to see if our friends were there, said goodbye to the guards, and got back to the paved road, I thought about how nice it would be to have been magically transported from the cool pool to my couch…Maybe next century! We stopped at the hospital compound (yeah, still driving, this is now back in Meskine, the suburb where we live, no paved roads here…lots of bouncing). We were stopping here to pick up a bag of beef that Roy and Jane, a British doctor and his wife, had picked up for me at the market that morning. You have to buy the meat in the morning so that it hasn’t sat out in the sun all day long. The meat market in Meskine is only open once a week and I had come in after it, so this meat delivery was very much appreciated. We bounced along home and unloaded all our goods. Memories from the cool clean pool had long faded. Children gathered all around as the “nasara” (the white people) unloaded their strange goods from the car. They attempted to talk to us, but we don’t their language. I just shrugged my shoulders, said “How are you?” in French and we entered our gates. Ah, home.
I opened the bag of meat, which turned out to be meat, veggies and fruit! I was ecstatic. I hadn’t bought any fresh produce since I’d been here, so I’d been rationing our canned green beans and corn until market day in Meskine. But here in my hands I had things I didn’t even know you could buy here: Green Peppers, Leaks, Carrots, Green Beans, Potatoes, Bananas, tomatoes, cabbage and what…an avocado!!! I was jumping around the house! Rob, I’m going to make us a real meal tonight! Not just bread and jam with canned green beans! Then the real fun began. Oh yes, I need to wash the produce before I put it away. The process: Fill a bin with well water and dish soap, scrub each veggie to get of dirt and any critters (I didn’t find any this time!). Then transfer the produce to a clean bucket that I filled with 1 gallon of filtered water and a capful of bleach. These need to soak for at least 20 minutes. The cabbage didn’t fit, so I had to put it in its own bucket. Sadly, though, we ran out of filtered water after filling up the cabbage bucket about half way…hmmm, this isn’t good. Well, I’ll just flip it over and soak it for 40 minutes…that’s okay, right? Oh, and is it okay that the peppers are floating and not actually submerged? Like I know!?
Well, it’s getting late, so I need to start dinner. Rob goes outside to see if the well tank has dried up but the ladder is missing. Eventually he finds out that there is still water, it’s just the filter that has dried up and we have to wait for it to refill until tomorrow. Dinner was going to be Tuna Casserole. Although I had decided I wouldn’t bake it because it was 95 degrees in the kitchen and the thought of raising the temp via the oven to 350 was not appealing. I open the can of tuna, Rob chops the onions. Oh, there’s no pan left for me to use, we haven’t washed them from breakfast…That’s a process to (washing, filtered water, boiling, I won’t go into details). Okay, a clean pot! Now, I need some milk for the recipe. Oh, no milk. But here’s milk powder! Three spoonfuls to one glass? Okay…alright, now what? Finally, the recipe is finished. I planned to have leftover green beans for dinner, but they were in the fridge. With no microwave, I needed to heat them on the stove, but I had no will left. So we sat down with sort-of tuna casserole and cold green beans. We washed it down with our malaria medicine that we had forgotten to take at lunch. We sat looking at each other at dinner…I guess we still have to rinse the bleached veggies, but there’s no filtered water. We decided to use our drinking water from the fridge, because the veggies couldn’t sit out all night, and hoped the filter would refill by morning.
At 10 o’clock, after all the cleaning, spraying the ants that had surrounded the food trash bin, watching an episode of Cosby on the computer, turned off all the fans, killed a roach, 2 crickets and a centipede, the thermometer said 92, and I crawled underneath the mosquito net of our bed, and closed my eyes…dreaming of that far away time when I was laying in the pool…ah!

Did I Get in the Wrong Line?

Sometimes I sit and wonder why I was chosen for this job. The other night I was overwhelmed with the chaos that is my life. I thought back over the last two years. I moved to a new country, into a "quaint" little 15th century apartment with no sun in which we were trapped for 8 hours one frightful night, three weeks after arriving, when someone threw a rock through our second-story window in an attempt to break in. Without a phone or internet or any way to call for help, Rob and I sat huddled together, barricaded in our room in the dark, me trembling for hours, him praying for our safety. Shortly thereafter we moved into a new apartment, much better than the first. About 1 month after that move, we found out we were expecting a new little baby. Yeah! We celebrated our 2 year anniversary in Geneva and joyfully followed the growth of our little girl. 7 months later, on our vacation, we lost our little girl, and were flown back to France where for the first time, and on the same day, I went through labor and delivery of a child, and for the first time, laid my child to rest. I saw for the first time my last name on a gravestone. For the first time, I felt the most grief, pain and sadness of my entire life thus far. I spent the next months of my life trying to keep my head above the mire of depression and continue on with normal life.

In January of this year, Rob and I decided that God had said "no" to another baby for this time, and that we should plan our move to Chad for April. We took a short vacation to the US to visit family and have some time to rest. With us, we took all of our clothes and belongings that we wouldn't be taking to Chad, we purchased the final necessary items for a move to Africa...and then we found out that the rebel army had invaded N'Djamena, the capital and our team was being evacuated. We came back to France to sit through week after week of meetings during which we try to determine our plan of action. Do we wait in France, can we move to Chad, do we go to another country, do we go home? We make decisions and the next day find out that all the information has changed. We make new plans and find out the next day that the same thing has happened. And in the midst of all this, I continue to watch almost every woman that I know get pregnant, while God still apparently shakes His head to me. In the midst of the uncertainty, I still have to deal with the reality of my own pain, that few can imagine or know is still so vivid and real to me as it was on this day 9 months ago.

I was thinking the other day, God, I didn't ask for this. I got in the wrong line. This is not what I want. When I was 16 years old, twelve years ago, I told God that I wanted to have my life work be full time ministry, to thank Him for what He had done in my life; for saving me. But when I said that I wanted to be a missionary, I didn't say that I wanted to do the "hard work." I didn't say that I wanted to be fighting my way to the village through a war zone. I didn't say that I wanted to be sitting at my kitchen table reading the US Army Ranger's Field Manual for Outdoor Survival and making an "Evacuation Bag Packing List". All I wanted to do was tell the T people about Jesus. That's it! I'm tired of being stressed out, having to make life and death decisions. I literally do not know what each new day holds.

Rob and I were on a hike the other day, and during this one part of the hike, you turn around the corner, and ahead of you is this very long stretch of path; you can hardly see the end. When I rounded that corner, I looked up at Rob and said, "I don't think I can do this anymore." We'd already been hiking for about 5 hours, my feet were blistered, it was getting windy and cold, the sun had been behind the clouds for quite a while, and we were low enough in the trees now that we couldn't see the valley anymore to know how close to the bottow that we were. He promised me that after this long stretch we would be ten minutes from the bottom. Now, this stretch of the path wasn't any more draining than any other part, but the fact that I could see so much of it, made it extremely daunting and left me wanting to give up. It made me think about our life journey. If God had shown me at any point in the last 12 years how long this strech of the path was going to be, I would have chosen a different hike. Hands down. And I've thought, when I beg Him to let me know what is going to happen in the future with our lives, I think He is wise not to show me, because I would most likely pick a different hike. He is good. Is my life chaotic? Yes. But I praise the Lord that He is kind enough to show me nothing of what will happen in the future.

These difficult times, feelings of uselessness, hopelessness, fear and pain have begun to teach me a difficult lesson. That is that although God is pleased to use me in His plans, I am not central to them, and they are so much bigger than me and my little world that I cannot make sense of them. Our friends told us the other day how they were trying to give their 17mo. son some homemade bread for breakfast instead of his normal cereal and yogurt, because the homemade bread is what he would have to start eating in Chad. They said that he screamed and cried when they gave him the bread, because it wasn't His normal breakfast. I asked why he didn't like the bread, and they said, "Oh, he likes it fine, He just doesn't want to eat it for breakfast because that's not what He's used to. But it's better that we start giving it to Him now, because then it will be much easier for Him to adapt when we are finally in Chad." It really is true how much my relationship with God is like that of a parent and a child. Children know nothing of the things of life, of the "Big Picture". There's just no way they can comprehend it, and neither can I comprehend the things of God. When people tell me things like "This is all in God's plan" I used to think, what a rude thing to say...and how could allowing me to hurt really be in God's plan? But the thing is, there are things in life that hurt because they have to (immunization injections for example) but the child doesn't understand the necessity of the pain, and there are things that God allows because it is preparing us for some future event (even if that be simply drawing us closer to Him, which He knows will really bring us more happiness). It's just so hard to see, isn't it, being that we are children. Only God knows why Ella had to die so early, but He allowed it for a reason, and He has it under control, and I choose to believe that my Father knows exactly what He's doing with our chaotic lives right now, and that this is ultimately for a greater good.

And Now For Christmas!

Rob and Dutch friend Maarten playing the song "Layla" (Eric Clapton) and "Moondance" (Van Morrison/Michael Buble) at the year-end Christmas party at IFALPES. Our teachers performing a hilarious song which made fun of things that happen daily at IFALPES (teachers are l-r: Pascaline, Pascale, Sandra, Nathalie, Bernadette, Corrine).

Making my mom's (really my grandma's) famous delicious Christmas cookies. There were 70 to frost, and I have to admit that Rob was the fastest froster the Erickson family has ever seen! We frosted while watching "It's a Wonderful Life" for me, the first time in its entirety. I'm now a fan!

Then, Christmas Dinner and Christmas Eve (below) at our house. In the picture at the table (l-r): Rob, Julie, Sue, Margit, Annemarie (Margit's sister), Rivers and Becky Camp (with Team, going to Chad), David and Rachael Carter; the babies, Ethan Camp and Benjamin Carter were out of the picture. We dined on avocado salad with a honey vinaigrette (by Becky), pulled pork tacos (me), sauteed apples with Thyme (margit), sweet corn tomalito (Rachael, thanks for being brave and trying it out, it was perfect!) like the kind they have at Chevy's in America, and some delicious appetizers of crab dip, spinach artichoke dip and homemade salsa. For desert we ate Black Forest pie (Charla) and Pear Cranberry Crisp (made by ROB!!!). Fun had by all.

We missed our little girl on Christmas, but Rob and I enjoyed our first Christmas alone as a couple on Christmas morning. We were also thankful for all our families and supporters who sent us gifts, and for our great friends and team who made it a really special time of year!

Thanksgiving Festivities (Belated)

Well, here they are, pictures of our Thanksgiving and Christmas times. Thanksgiving was spent with other missionaries, and one other American from school at David and Rachael Carter's house. Rachael did a beautiful job of decorating the table and organizing the day. We watched Elf afterwards and had lots of fun! We at yummy Turkey, mashed potatoes and gravy, and every other traditional food you can imagine. I even made cranberry sauce for the first time (and even kind of liked it!...thanks to Margit for finding the elusive cranberries after they disappeared from the stores two days before Thanksgiving!)



Step 1: Wash the Cranberries and pull out the shriveled ones. Step 2: Peel and grate the fresh ginger and prepare other ingredients. Step 3: Add all the ingredients to the pot and cook the cranberries until they start to pop (they really do pop!). Sorry, no finished product picture, it wasn't that interesting!


I also made homemade buttermilk biscuits, and my new (for the last three years) Thanksgiving tradition: Carrot Cake!

We had lots of fun together, even though the world around us had no idea it was a holiday (our fellow classmates were in class at the time).

Can't wait til next year! Mmm! I'm getting hungry. Do you think it will be like this in Chad?