The trip I briefly mentioned in my last blog was quite an adventure! Friday morning Liz and I hitched a ride into Ouaga with a missionary that works in Yako, and another girl that would be on the Nazinga trip with us. She dropped us off and right away our group headed off on the four hour drive to the Nazinga Wildlife Park which is near Pô (about 15 minutes from the Ghanaian border). It was a long car ride, especially since three of us had already traveled two hours just to get to Ouaga. But we hoped our time at Nazinga would be worth it. Nazinga was originally started and run by a Canuck, however now is run by Burkina. The park is 91 300hectares- so huge! It meant that we drove 3 hours to the park gate, and another hour just to get to the campsite. Before reaching the campsite we saw a heard of baboons by a watering hole. Some baby baboons were taking a ride on mama`s back and I thought to myself- okay they`re African! We also saw some large black birds (the name of which I don`t know in English) and a monkey sitting in a tree.Once we reached the campsite we found our huts for the night, and then headed out on the afternoon tour. How it works is you pay for a guide and then drive around in your own vehicle. The roads are terrible so I was thankful I wasn`t driving- I was happy just to sit and enjoy without worrying about steering around craters.. On our afternoon tour we saw warthogs (mama with baby), antelope, cabou (i`m sorry I can`t find the English word for this anywhere. It`s another variety of antelope), gazelle (they`re tiny! I expected them to be the size of deer, they`re more like a fawn), baboons, lots of varieties of birds (okay not so exciting, but beautiful none the less!). We didn`t see any elephants so we were a little worried, but our guide assured us the elephants are eating in the evening and your best chance to see them is on the morning tour. Our tour went from 4:30 until dusk (shortly after 6:00). For dinner they serve the catch of the day. And although the only catch Friday was Cabou none of us were disspointed. We wanted to eat some game, and so we did. The cabou was delicious! It`s hard to describe but i`ll try. It`s a tender red meat, maybe most similar to deer, although lots of people compared it to beef. It had a similar consistency to steak but the flavour wasn`t the same and I felt it might be more tender than steak. The electricity at the campsite is on only from the hours of 6:00pm-10:00pm. This is because they run on a generator only. We were all exhausted so we were all in our huts and in bed before the electricity went off, however it meant also the fans went off with it. Everyone in our group struggled to sleep except for me. I must have been really tired or something because I slept like a log!
Our morning tour was really not quite at dawn, but a little bit after. 6:30am we were heading out with the truck. Things went slowly at first and we wondered where all the animals were! Then all of a sudden our truck turned a corner and there was an elephant! We stayed and watched him for a while, taking picture and enjoying watching him eat. He moved quite a bit closer to the truck in the time we were there- which was great for us because it meant better pictures. Then all of a sudden the elephant was flaring it`s ears at us and our guide was shouting ``Avance! Go forward Go Forward!`` It took a moment for our driver to get the truck in gear, and a couple of the other girls on the roof with me were shouting ``Quick! Quick!`` I couldn`t help but be taken in a bit by the excitement of it all. The elephant was angry- but it was so cool! And I was pretty sure the truck would get moving by the time the elephant could get to us. Once we were a little further away everyone calmed down, and the smiles all came out. We saw more anteloupe, caboou, birds and baboons. However we didn`t see as many of them as on our afternoon tour so we were grateful we`d opted to do both. On our way back to the campsite we came across three elephants. They were snacking some large trees and walking together. We stopped to take some pictures of them, and just watch them hang out in the natural habitat. Then when they started walking away we sat and waited, thinking they were going to cross the road. They didn`t though, instead they walked a little further down and kept eating. One of them broke a small tree in half as he was eating (I’d been wondering why there were so many broken trees around...) We got back to the campsite around 8:30 and noticed a few elephants were already playing in the water hole in front of the dining hall. There were two splashing around and wrestling a little with their trunks by some large rocks. But wait, were they rocks or..No definitely elephants we decided when we saw some ears and trunks flapping around. Pretty soon about a dozden elephants were all playing around, and more kept coming. We grabbed breakfast and kept watching them as they played, and as more came and tentatively stepped into the cool water. (One guy never even got in! He would walk in a little bit, back out, and then come back again, but never go in further..) By 10:30 the elephants were gone and we were on the road home. We didn`t see any animals on the way out, but we did see some people snapping pictures of us (that`s a change eh). We stopped in Pô to buy avocados and bread. Since Pô is so close the Ghanian border they get true Ghanian bread which is very different from Burkina bread. Our bread is baguettes which are tasty, but it was refreshing to have a loaf that was more bread inside than crust outside... Plus the bread is sweet which never hurts. Lunch was bread and avocados on the road! Mm yum. About twenty minutes or so out of Pô we noticed a man flagging us down. Kristen our driver slowed down a bit, but we couldn`t understand what he was trying to tell us and we passed him. Then all of a sudden, out of the bush, came elephants. A whole heard came running across the road (babies and all, we hadn`t seen any babies at Nazinga). Needless to say it was pretty exciting to see more elephants, and these ones weren`t even part of a wildlife park or anything! We also realized though how fortunate it was that the man flagged us down. Since we were travelling at a reduced speed before the elephants entered the road we were able to stop in plenty of time. They had their space and we had ours. We don`t know whether or not we would have trouble stopping at all if we hadn`t been travelling slower before the elephants came out onto the road. We speculated a little (maybe it just saved us a few moments of panic trying to slow down...maybe..) but then left it as is, because really only God knows. But we all took a moment to say a word of thanks, because we believe God was watching out for us in more than one way. Thanks Lord for the elephants and thanks Lord that we`re safe!
The lead pastor of our church (Assemblé de Dieu Gongene) was recently asked to lead the Assemblé de Dieu L’Eglise Centrale. Sunday morning was the church service/ceremony for his transition. It was a huge service! And a big deal. For big ceremonies or important events they paint the rocks and trees white- this was the first time I was present at an event where this had been done (I made sure to take some pictures!). There were some very important VIPs in attendance: the Chef of Yako, the Deputé of Yako, Pastors from Ouaga, theNational Head of Assemblé de Dieu and more.. I can’t remember attending a service like this one at home so I have nothing to compare it to. But I thought this was really quite special. At one point they called Pastor and his Wife on stage, layed hands on him and prayed over him. There was a giving of keys to the church. Many speeches and prayers. The message was given by Pastor (it only seemed appropriate). The atmosphere was light, people were cracking jokes- it was fun. The choirs performed some beautiful and well rehearsed pieces. I took some video maybe I’ll get it uploaded if I have time when I’m in Ouaga... After the Service we were all given instrucitions on where to exit and how to exit (the church was so full! And there were people outside the church!). Some people were invited into the Pastor’s courtyard for fresh water, and others asked to walk across the field for fresh drinks. We were included in the group invited to the retired Pastor’s courtyard. “Fresh Water” really meant a full meal (salad, chicken, fries, Sprite). After leaving that courtyard we attended a gathering at Pastor’s courtyard. He had invited us prior to the church service, and of course we would have accepted anyways. But now we knew it meant being obliged to eat several meals... Ruth drove one load of people to Pastor’s house (it would be a half hour walk) and then went back to pick up more. I was in the first load so I got out. I sat and talked with some of the children, one of our Tantines, and Adiara. Before Ruth god back food appeared. Tantine Laurentine smiled, got me a plate and started serving me. She asked first if I wanted rice or macaroni and I asked for rice. GASPS were heard from all the women. No one here thinks we nasaras eat rice! I think it’s hilarious because I eat rice at home frequently, but here they find it hilarious when we enjoy eating rice. Laurentine (one of our Tantines) started heaping rice on my plate, I started saying “that’s enough, that’s good, that’s fine.” And she smiled and kept going. Then she started serving me sauce (tomato sauce with cabbage ‘and some other veggies in it.) she started spooning it on and I was saying “that’s good, that’s enough,” but she was smiling and continuing to go... I thought that was all, but it wasn’t. She went for the meat plate and plopped a big chunk on my plate. “Merci. That’s good.” I said. But no, she tossed another one for good measure. Then she said, since I took the rice and not the macaroni, I had to at least try it. So on my plate went several spoonfuls of macaroni. It wasn’t hard to turn down the next plate of macaroni fortunately. I was sitting with Ruth and Liz, who were just being served. But I was still trying to tackle my plate of food, Coke and bag of water... The boy serving offered me macaroni and I just said “I already have food!” he didn’t hesistate, but just continued on. PHEW! Haha. I was too full to even consider a third lunch.
This week has been a busy week at the orphanage. But wonderfullybusy. The French girls finished putting in their library. It’s fully operational and a huge blessing to all our children at the orphanage and the school. Monday and Tuesday they worked on painting projects. Painitng benches, and railings. Monday I got in there and worked on painting too. I was covered in red paint- hands, arms, legs, hair..But it was good. The fresh paint looks really good.
I mentioned briefly in my last post that the water tower went up a while ago. This was a huge task that by any North American standards would require a crane. Here it took upwards of 15 people, 2+ hours, ropes, a truck and some creative thinking. However since that went up it meant Tuesday the group from Friends in Action could come back to finish up the work. They fixed some pipes and worked on putting the pipe down into our well. Our well is 74 metres deep, and the water is perfectly safe to drink- just some interesting facts for you... We were worried for a while when it looked like the electric pump was defective, however blessings upon blessings everything was sorted out. This morning we woke up and the water and had been shut off because of some breaks in the pipes (the pipe you can buy here isn’t the same quality as you can get back home, so the city water pressure caused some breaks). But quickly everything was sorted out and now this afternoon our city water has been completely shut off! We have pump water in the house, and in different areas of our courtyard. Getting to this point has been years in the making, and even though I haven’t been here long I’m so excited to know we’re finally there.
In my last blog entry I mentioned one of our babies who struggled to hold his head up. I thought at the time he was nine months old, and turns out he’s actually ten months old. I started to work with Jules on standing up an holding his head up, because he would just slump over. But then we started to watch him more closely. Liz noticed he didn’t eat hardly anything one meal, and the next meal I fed him and he didn’t eat much either. I monitored him drinking his bottle and noted he didn’t swallow most of the milk. He would suck the milk out but then the milk would trickle out of his mouth, down his cheeks and onto his shirt. By the time he was done his bottle his shirt would be soaked. It was no better when I tried to give him milk from a cup, he would spit the milk out and not drink a drop. After monitoring this for a day or two, Ruth talked with our two nurses. They agreed that they thought he’d lost weight since coming to the orphanage and everyone agreed he should be taken to Doctor’ss Without Borders. There it was determined Jules was malnourished, although certainly not suffering from a severe case. He was given a food supplement and has regular visits set up with the doctors there. He eats the food supplement hungrily. Within just days we noticed a remarkable change in his demeanour. He was crawling around, holding his head up, smiling and making lots of noises. Since then he’s continued to improve- he’s a totally different child. Today when he drank his bottle he swallowed almost all of it, and he ate almost all of his lunch. When I put him on his feet, he smiles wide and bounces up and down. I can’t say anything except thank you lord.I don’t believe it at all normal for out children to be malnourished, even though Jules case was not severe I have had no indication it’s normal. Our children here are very well fed.
And although I have encountered cases of malnourishment here it’s not like some people imagine Africa to be. At least what I have seen has not been like some people have made it sound. The food balance is different than I am used to. But people live and grow. I have encountered cases of malnourishment and those times Ruth or Adiara has referred to Doctors Without Borders. There are times when I have seen a child in the street and I’ve wanted to feed them and hug them...But sometimes I know I still things with the eyes of someone that doesn’t really understand. And as much as I understand so much more than I could have ever understood before I came, there are so many things I have yet to learn. I’ve been seeing though the amazing ways God provides. In Burkina most people can’t eat meat on a regular basis because it’s expensive. However peanuts are in abundance here and so God provides protein for the people of Burkina.
Some other exciting news! The toddlers have been talking a little more. Little by little we’ll get them there! I’ve been singing head, shoulders, knees and toes with them in French and some of them can identify the body parts now, and Tebnoma can repeat the words when prompoted. They however hate to perform so they won’t if they feel we’re making them. Each of them has a unique vocabulary but most of them can say words like: Oui, Wabo, Nez, Bleu... One of the babie started walking! Go Emma!Please pray for the new baby we received today. Pray for the time of transition that all will go smoothly and she will adjust well.
May God Keep You and Bless You
Brittany
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