Mud Bath

[caption id="attachment_668" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="The morning after a long muddy trip through a rain storm"][/caption]

That was definitely one of the craziest trips I've ever taken!  I had to go to Diapaga (about 30 miles away) to pick up some guests at the bus stop.  Almost half-way there, the skies opened up and it just poured!  I had to make most of the trip in 4-wheel-drive.  The entire road was a bog.  There was one stretch where the road was completely covered for almost 1.5 miles.  Normally, I would play "dodge the potholes".  But all I could do was keep the truck going down the middle of the river (road), and hope I didn't get stuck.  At several places, I was just slogging through foot-deep mud.  It was crazy!  I also had to get out and help push two cars (2-wheel-drive) out of the mud.  So I looked kind of like the truck when I got home.

The Passing of a Great Man

Yesterday morning we heard the news that Bilempo Yonli passed away during the night.  Bilempo was a very pillar of the church in Mahadaga.

In the afternoon I went to the burial service, noticing that there was no sound of beating drums to mark the man’s passing.  The family would not want to confuse their neighbors – this family is Christian, and the traditional animist rituals have no part here.

I stood in a tightly-packed crowd of over 300 people surrounding the freshly dug grave next to the family’s compound.  People had come from hundreds of miles away to attend on a moment’s notice.  We all stood beneath several mango trees and watched as thunderheads passed overhead…passing by without soaking the crowd.  There were two veritable parking lots of bikes and mopeds, and people had brought several dozen benches from the church for people to sit after the service.

We sang a few hymns in Gourma, and then no fewer than 4 pastors gave eulogies.  Fortunately, my friend Ounteni translated some of the messages for me.  What I learned was amazing.  Bilempo (88 years old this year) was the first Christian convert in this entire region.  He was instrumental in leading many of the first believers in this area to Christ.  Bilempo was among the first few men from this area to go to SIM’s Bible school, about 200 miles away.  He came back to Mahadaga and served as a pastor for several decades.

[caption id="attachment_665" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="The Yonli housefold - the funeral was held off to the right of this picture"][/caption]

Bilempo not only preached God’s Word…he lived it.  For example, he adopted a young orphan girl named Anna and raised her as one of his own.  Anna is now the Walsh family’s beloved house-helper.

His youngest son, Tajua, is a teacher at our school at the CAH.  Tajua is respected by his peers for his strong faith and his maturity.  Another result of his father’s example?

Bilempo is survived by an incredibly large family that is very active in the church.  He had 9 children, 59 grandchildren and another 9 great-grandchildren.  I think that most of his family will see him again in heaven.  That will be some family reunion!

Settling In

I realize the point of a blog is to post things fairly often for people to follow and we're not exactly doing such a good job of this.  I guess I'm still a bit behind the times...I'm stuck on the old ideas of having to write something clever that has a point and is complete.  If I try to do that for every blog post...well, you see why I struggle to get one written often enough.  Anyway, I'm working on it.  In the meantime, I thought I'd just copy and paste an excerpt from an email I wrote to Dale's mom this morning.  It was meant to be a little newsy, so maybe it qualifies as good blog material, though it's not particularly witty or deep.  If nothing else, it may give you some idea of what we've been up to this past week!

"Caleb does seem to be doing better, by the way.  He took his last dose of the medicine yesterday morning.  Still has diarrhea, but only went twice yesterday, which was a lot better.  Also had a lot more energy and a better appetite.  After the diarrhea Sunday morning, Joel seemed to be fine again, so I guess it was nothing.  I just wasn't sure what to think when they both woke up with it that morning!  And Joel had it 3 times within a little under 2 hours, so it was a little concerning.  He still has some rather loose BMs, but he's going pretty regularly, too, and not complaining of any other symptoms, so I think he's probably fine.  Thank goodness!  I'll be glad when this is all over.  At the moment Joel has a fat lip as Caleb tried to "help mommy" last night by "making Joel stop playing with the light switch".  Joel was standing on the piano bench in order to reach the light switch, and Caleb pulled it out from under Joel, causing a fall that had Joel landing his mouth onto one of the legs of the bench.  If those two survive childhood being brothers and all...!

Julie started "school" with Thomas and Meya (Matt's younger sister who's staying with them) yesterday, so I guess I better start thinking about that soon, too.  We are all unpacked and pretty much all organized, too.  I think I'm pretty close to catching up on all my major cooking projects as well.  I always like to have certain things on hand (like the bread, granola, pancake mix, etc.).  I should be able to get into a routine now of doing that sort of thing on Saturday mornings anymore.  I talked to Julie yesterday and I think I will be taking over as guest house hostess and everything else I had been doing for the station on September 6th, so I have almost two weeks left.  I know the women at the church would like me to start coming back to choir and think about another Bible study.  We shall see.  The choir is not a bit deal since it only meets Sunday afternoons for a couple of hours.  For the Bible study, I am thinking of a new format that will place the women into small groups of 2-3.  Each will receive the materials I had been preparing for them ahead of time and they are two work together as a group to discuss, study, answer the questions.  The idea is to try and get them into accountability/discipleship groups and also to give them the opportunity to include or involve women who might not attend our church or who might not be able to read or write as well.  If I do this, then I would probably only meet with them twice a month to "teach" and wouldn't spend as much time going over the specific answers to their worksheets since they will hopefully have discussed this well amongst themselves.  We'll see what happens.  The other side benefit, of course, would be the fact that I wouldn't have to meet with them as often, though I expect I'd still have to put my fair share of time in preparing for each lesson.

We're ordering some of the materials for our kitchen project today, so hopefully they'll get here Thursday and we can have them start digging the foundations.  During rainy season it's always hard to get things out here, but I hate sitting around and waiting for things like this to start.  We've got a big pile of sand and a smaller pile of gravel sitting in front of our house now, though, so I guess that's progress.;)  I think the project may end up costing us double what Dale had hoped.  Not expensive by standards back home, but not exactly money we have sitting around.  Oh, well.  We'll see what happens.  We may just have to ride the account on red for a few months, or pull something out of our savings back home to cover it.  We've kinda set our hearts on it, so I guess we'll go through with it regardless.  Besides, it's one of the last major things we've been wanting to do to the house since our arrival in 2007 to make us feel fully settled.  The only other thing is a bathroom make over and that would actually be a smaller project and is not quite as bothersome as the kitchen has been.  I suppose, though, if we start having guests, we may have to think about doing it sooner...

Well, the boys seem to be awake now, so I should think about wrapping this up.  We unbunked their beds shortly after we got back.  Their room is tiny, so the only way we could get both beds to fit in the same room was to fit them in an L-shape.  It isn't exactly aesthetic, but it is a lot more practical.  I was thinking at the time that this might make it easier to work with Caleb on night-time potty training.  But it's also much easier to make their beds.  And now Joel can climb over into Caleb's bed and they have grand ol' times playing before they ever get out of bed in the mornings.  At the moment, I believe they must be playing with their stuffed monkeys because I'm hearing lots of monkey sounds.  It has been a bit surprising to watch Joel now that we've been back and to realize how much he grew up while we were home.  Of course we knew it, but it's most obvious here where he was still a non-talking "baby" who clung to mommy's skirt a lot and pretty much stayed in the house.  Now he wanders all over the station with Caleb and is learning all the proper greetings right alongside him.  People often ask, when I make postings on facebook regarding some of my crazy projects, what I do with the boys during those times.  I wonder if they remember how it used to be in the US back in the days when women were doing the same sorts of things, like I read in the old "pioneer" books.  And we don't even have winter here to interfere with that.  They can simply play outside to their heart's content...climbing the sand pile outside our dining room window, digging in the dirt with the plastic shovels we brought for them, playing soccer under the mango trees, chasing the cat or the chickens, and when they get tired of the outdoors, there's a room full of plenty of toys that entertain them plenty, too!

I gotta run now.  I started the oatmeal and am now just remembering it!;)  Some things never change!"

[caption id="attachment_659" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="Joel loves cucumber salad!"][/caption]

[caption id="attachment_661" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="Dale has spent some of his time the last couple of weeks trying to get a garden started for us."][/caption]

[caption id="attachment_660" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="Tessa, Caleb, Joel and Thomas have great fun climbing the sand hill sitting in our front yard, waiting to be used in the kitchen expansion project."][/caption]

We made it! But it was no cake walk.

After 9 days of travel (including 5 days in Ouagadougou), we’ve finally arrived in Mahadaga.  It wasn’t easy.  For a really fun play-by-play, you have to read Liz’s blog post about our travels out here.

Check out:  http://themahadagaroad.wordpress.com/2010/08/09/on-the-road-again/

It gives a pretty good picture of what we went through to get here.  Truth be told, just about everything here is as crazy as that story, so we don’t even think about writing stuff like that anymore.  It’s great to have Liz around…she’s a great writer, and she can still see stuff through American eyes.  I’d be tempted to just write, “we finally arrived in Mahadaga”, and leave it at that.

Caleb is especially excited to be here.  He remembers it well, and feels right at home.  But he’s scared we’ll leave again.  He says, “Daddy, can we stay here now?”  Poor kid’s been on the road for 8 months.

So far, we’ve been visited by most of our friends, neighbors and acquaintances.  It’s been a busy time around our house, answering the door, shaking hands, accepting chickens, remembering names, etc.  It’s been tough to deal with the boxes of stuff in storage or transported across the ocean.

“Florence, where’s the silverware?!”  You get the idea.

Oh, and not to rub it in, but we’re so glad we came to Burkina for the weather!  While most of our friends and family are sweatin’ it out in PA, we maxed out at 75 degrees today…that’s right.  Cool and rainy.  But what that means for us solar-electricity users – no sun = empty batteries.  So, we chose to have our spaghetti dinner by candlelight.

[caption id="attachment_652" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="A nice, quiet dinner by candlelight"][/caption]

[caption id="attachment_653" align="alignleft" width="225" caption="Liz wasn't happy about the death of our left-rear tire"][/caption]

[caption id="attachment_654" align="alignleft" width="300" caption=""Le Gourmand" (the glutton) - From his car seat, Joel could help himself to 3 baguettes of bread that were meant for Mahadaga"][/caption]

[caption id="attachment_655" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="A Welcome-Back present - he's escaped twice, but he's tied up now in our chicken coop"][/caption]

Driving in Ouaga

Sticker shock

Okay, we've told you before about how expensive things are in Ouaga.  Here are some new examples (and no, we didn't buy all of these):

• Salsa (8 oz.) - $14, and it was tiny!  Dale will just have to wait until Flo gets a chance to make some homemade salsa.


• Maple Syrup (14 oz.) - $8....wish our Canadian friends would send us a care package...


• Box of chocolate truffles - $60 - I know it's European chocolate, but still!


• Pringles potato chips are now up to $6 a can.  It's home made popcorn for us from now on.


• 200g of Philadelphia cream cheese (about 7 oz.) - $10.  Cream cheese desserts are a big time splurge (hence the reason we enjoyed the cheesecakes back home the last few months!)


• a pack of 6 "kiddie size" Dannon natural yogurt cups costs $7.  We buy a pack every so often to have a fresh starter to make our own.


• We were surprised to find boneless chicken breast.  It was marked at $15 for 3 breasts.  I think we'll just keep having our chickens butchered by our day guard, cooked by the pressure cooker, and deboned by a househelper.;)


• We were pleasantly surprised to find mozzarella cheese at $6.25 per pound, so we stocked up on that.  Normally we get it at anywhere between $9 and $12 per pound.


• But the best deal of the day was the shortening.  It was two for the price of one today, so we only paid $15 for two 48-ounce cans.

Welcome to Ouagadougou

Our first full day here...

We had a power outage this morning. That's normal. Then, we had a water outage. I was standing in the shower with my hair full of shampoo. Sigh...welcome to Ouagadougou.  :-)

Safe Arrival

Hi everyone,

Just wanted to let you know that we arrived in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso safely early this morning. It was a long and somewhat grueling voyage, but we're pleased that we made it without any major incidents and, to top it all off, all of our bags arrived with us! We had two flights and both were overnight, which made the traveling more tiring. We had about a 14-hour layover in Casablanca, Morocco, but the airline put us up in a hotel for the day and gave us vouchers for our meals. That at least gave us a chance to catch a few hours of better quality sleep in between flights since none of us sleep especially well in an airplane. The process of travelling generally involves a lot of hurry-up and wait, so it can catch up with you. Burkina Faso is four hours ahead of the US East Coast time, so our internal clocks will need to adjust over the next few weeks. The boys didn't do especially well on the flights, but then, there wasn't much we could expect considering how tired the poor little troopers were. They actually had the hardest time with the airport waiting times than on the actual plane. Regardless, we're here and we managed to get a few hours sleep again earlier this afternoon and are feeling a bit more human this evening. The real test will come this evening as we try to sleep through the night.

It does feel good to be back. Better than I honestly expected it to as I thought about it in the air the last several days. It feels good to know this place and these people. There's a sense of rest that comes with falling back into appropriate behavioral patterns, especially for the kids. In some ways, Caleb, especially, seems more at home here, and I find myself relaxing more as I stop feeling responsible for keeping a tight rein on him. It also feels good to have a more clear sense of purpose now that we're stepping back into our "jobs". The weather seems to be welcoming us as well. It was only 81 degrees when we arrived this morning and the temps have remained pretty comfortable. It is pretty humid, though, but running a fan or two takes care of the worst of the sticky feeling.

We'll spend this week in Ouagadougou, the capital, resting and picking up groceries to take back with us to Mahadaga. Saturday (August 7th) we will drive to Mahadaga and start settling back into our house! Thank you for your prayers during this whole process. We are grateful that things have gone so smoothly thus far!
[caption id="attachment_630" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="We had 15 pieces of checked luggage (including Liz\'s things). We\'re so grateful that all of them made it safely to Ouaga!"][/caption]
[caption id="attachment_629" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="Our carry-on bags. Caleb and Joel were very serious about having their own bags to carry on to the plane."][/caption]
[caption id="attachment_628" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="Excited to see the air planes!"][/caption]
[caption id="attachment_631" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="Saying goodbye to our parents at the airport."][/caption]
[caption id="attachment_632" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="View of the city of Casablanca from our hotel room."][/caption]