Well, good friends, I must admit that I nearly committed the unforgivable faux pas of sending out a mass e-mail without posting it. Not that I suspect there's much of an audience around here that isn't recieving it straight to their inboxes already, but I confess that I cherish secrets hopes of anonymous millions that stumble across and are enthralled by this blog, but that is not something that I ever want to peer too deeply into, in case I should ever discover the truth of the matter. So here, ravenously impatient and anonymous millions, I have not forgotten you!
Dear erudite, enviable, and ergonomic friends, supporters, and deep thinkers of every persuasion,
Well, I am feeling rather at a loss of what to say, due in large part to the sheer number of things which have happened since I last wrote. The most notable thing which happened this week is that we had a large team of over 25 arrive from, of all places, Dallas Texas, and they have kept us so busy this week that I did not even have the chance to write even a small e-mail until tonight. I have been tagging along with them this week on a number of their outreaches because this gives me the chance to make it out to a number of SIM’s different ministries that I otherwise wouldn’t have a chance to see. For example, this week I got to see the ECWA run hospital and visit the inmates of a Nigerian prison and attend their church service. I could write entire e-mails on these experiences alone, but I don’t think time will permit tonight.
But one of the things the Texas team has come to do besides drag around STA’s who can’t afford/drive a car is put on a number of wrestling shows. That’s right, I said wrestling. They basically do a WWF style show with a Christian spin in which all the bad characters kind of represent evil forces and all the good guys are fighting with God on their side. So, for example, they have stage names like “Jesus Freak,” and “Tim Storm” as well as the only pair of pleather pants I have seen in Nigeria, or perhaps in my entire life, come to think. So the different contestants battle it out in the ring, the good guys win, the bad guys are driven off, and they give an evangelistic message. They made a very entertaining spectacle, I have to say, and I especially enjoyed hearing all the Nigerians chanting “Jesus Freak! Jesus Freak!” But, topping that to win as my absolute favorite moment of the evening was when Tim Storm, one of the “bad guys” who is really incredibly huge, came out and started tearing around the perimeter where people were standing and the little kids who were standing in front actually ran away to avoid being stomped on by this massive Bature.
I have to confess, however, that I have some misgivings about the effectiveness of this kind of ministry in Nigeria because, although the audience was composed mostly of children who all streamed forward to accept Christ at the end, I have to wonder how many of them wanted to accept Christ and how many simply wanted to touch the hands of these big men who had looked so impressive wrestling each other on the bright stage. There were plenty of tracts passed out, but I’m not sure that anyone was really directed to a local church where they could be discipled and taught the meaning of the profession of faith that they had made. That’s been a difficult trend that has emerged in my travels with the Texas team, they are really outstanding at achieving those high numbers of conversions, but I don’t know that there’s necessarily a support structure that they’ve tapped into to build on that foundation. I’ve really struggled a lot this week trying to decide what to think about this kind of evangelism. I was writing to a friend and I said that I think that kind of proclamation is like handing some stranger on the street a million dollars and then just walking away. You don’t have any idea what happens to that money after you leave. Did they use it well, did it change their life and the lives of those around them? Did they use it for evil, to rocket down a bad road they were already traveling? Or did they just stick the money in an empty coffee can and bury it at the back of their closet, never to think about it again? You have no idea, you have no control, and you accept no responsibility for the consequences of a huge change you’ve brought to that person’s life. And that’s the question that I’ve really been hit hardest by, is whether this kind of evangelism is fundamentally irresponsible, like asking someone to change trains when you haven’t committed yourself to travel with them. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve really enjoyed the members of the Texas team as individuals and I respect their willingness to give up time and money to do something as difficult as drop themselves into a foreign culture for three weeks. I just wonder if there aren’t ways their ministry could be more effective.
Another really bizarre experience I had this week was attending an African Pentecostal church, which was called, ahem, Church of God Mission International Inc. Solution House. The name “Solution House” gives you an idea of what kind of church it was, the whole sermon was a litany of prosperity theology, the preacher loudly proclaiming that if you can just earn “divine approval” you will achieve “open heaven” and you won’t have to pursue miracles, your miracles will pursue you! Amen, hallelujah, praise the Lord. Basically, the gist of it was that if you can just situate yourself properly with God, he will give you anything you want, whether it’s a promotion, a good marriage, a child, a new car, a boat, a cell phone network that actually works, whatever it is, God is all about giving it to you. But the fundamental problem with that kind of message is that no anointing is going to force God’s hand into giving us what we want. The whole point of Christianity, from my perspective is “Thy will be done,” not “MY will be done.” But part of the reason that the Pentecostal church is one of the fastest growing denominations in the Southern church is because many of them preach exactly that.
But even if the sermon wasn’t problematic enough, I was also disturbed by the degree of control that the preacher had over the congregation. The volume and demonstrativeness of their response was basically directly proportioned to his shouting and vehemence on the stage. After the sermon he actually had us all standing with our hands folded on top of our heads and our mouths open! I’m sure if he asked everyone in the church to stand on their heads they all would have been bottom up in a blink. He actually said if you don’t do it exactly the way the “man of God” tells you, you will not get “the result.” But it was by these bizarre poses that he was trying to spread his anointing to as many in the church as possible. Not satisfied with the number that were slain in the Spirit on their own, he actually went through the church knocking people over himself. Then, to ice this cake, he actually had every one who had been brought to the altar stand to their feet and a little clump while all the ushers stood around them like a human barricade. Then he waved his suit jacket over them and made a popping noise into his microphone and every last one of them went down. But just when I really thought that I had fallen completely off the map of sense and comprehension, he told us that he was trying to raise money for a plane ticket and if those in the congregation would come to the front and give him money, they could step in the anointing oil that he had poured on the floor and he would pray for them to receive the same anointing that he had. I am telling you, I have never before witnessed the kinds of things that I saw at that church. Which, for me, begs the question, how many more are there even just in this city that are just like it? I really honestly shudder to think.
But now to lighten the mood somewhat, I present to you the highlight of my week. I was going to Gyero, the CARE center about 40 minutes outside of Jos, early this week with another girl to do a craft with the boys and the woman that we were going to drive with got sick. So what one does without one’s own car is taxi down to the turnoff of Bukuru express, which is where one abandons the wide, paved main road for the small, extremely rutted unpaved road out to the village. No taxi will really go down that road, so one has no choice but to take the dreaded achaba! An achaba is really just a particular type of motorcycle that many people here use as a taxi service, hopping on the back and holding whatever they were carrying in their lap or on their heads. The thing is that SIM missionaries are absolutely forbidden to ride achabas in town because traffic here is already so dangerous and a lot of the achaba drivers are really quite reckless with the kind of stunts they pull in these horrifically busy intersections. But out on this rutted country road, there is very little other traffic to speak of, which means that we are A-OK. So we hopped on the backs of our achabas and off we went. I have to say, I’m sure that there have been things that I have done in my life that were more fun than that ride, but nothing really came to mind at the time. It was utterly fantastic to speed along that winding road with nothing to inhibit my view of the rocky hills and mountains and buttes that dot the top of our fair plateau. We winded past fields of corn and millet, past Fulani men with their sticks and humpbacked cows, past tall cacti and those elusive, bright red birds that like to sit and sing at the top of the cornstalks. It was so much fun to wave to the children who would come running up to the road and to the long train of women who laughed and laughed to see such a silly sight as Batures on the backs of their motor bikes. I had the wind in my hair and above was the sky still swirling with clouds after the morning rain, and who could ask for more than that?
So before I close, I want to say a hearty and much belated THANKS! to all of those who have replied in any fashion to my e-mails. I am so blessed to hear from each and every one of you, including those who just wrote a few lines to say that you enjoy my e-mails. I enjoy you enjoying my e-mails! Each reply really does make my day. I have felt so supported throughout this entire process that I can’t say enough thanks to each one of you who is willing to be on my little e-mail list and listen to my rantings.
That being said, I realize that I’m speaking to a very diverse audience and that some of the stuff I’ve brought up in this e-mail is a little bit more contested than what I’ve stuck to in the past. We can all agree that teaching little kids to read is a good thing, but when a sister starts going after the Sinner’s Prayer I guess she can start to ruffle a few feathers. So if you wanted me to clarify anything or continue to dialog about anything or just tell me “I couldn’t disagree with you more if your name were Arius, you degenerate apostate heretic scum!” then I invite you to write me an e-mail. I think I can promise to reply, though I make no guarantees about the timeline. You might have to wait until I’m back in the States and have had time to process this madness, but one day I will give you a reply that is as reasonable and thoughtful as I can make it.
Oh, yes, prayer requests! Well, for myself, if you haven’t gathered from the course of this e-mail, I am feeling rather exhausted after this week, not just physically, but also in my ability to take in and process all these new experiences. Please pray that I will be refreshed over the weekend, in spite of limited opportunities for rest. Please also pray that I would be able to maintain a consistent devotional life, which has always been a challenge for me, but I see a lot of opportunities for growth here simply because the nature of being in this place really does seem to demand it. Please pray that I would be able to utilize those opportunities fully and really grow in discipline in this time. Please also pray for the peace of Nigeria, there were a number of riots in Kano states of couple of weeks ago with Muslim-Christian violence and a number of robberies recently. We don’t have any particular reason to be worried, but we also don’t take our safety for granted here and want to rely on God to protect us.
Until next time, dear friends, I hope you are well and joyful and enjoying the fall!
Grace and Peace,
Shannon
Sunday, October 14, 2007
Saturday, October 6, 2007
Bature and the Creep
Kids, I think this could be the wallop that Fate was waiting to dole out. So tonight, a bunch of us Batures went out tonight to support the wrestling show (yes, wrestling show, but that's a story for the support e-mail if ever there was one) and we were all standing around the ring and the sun was going down and suddenly there was a man beside me who tapped me on the elbow and asked me if I was enjoying the show. Now, we were also there with a number of boys from our various CARE centers, and I am far from memorizing every one of their faces, and this guy looked young enough that he could have been one of our boys. So I answered that I was enjoying it and went back to the show. Then he started asking me all kinds of questions about where I was staying and where I was staying exactly, which I answered as obtusely as possible. Now by this time about five of our boys who were all standing around me were tugging at my sleeves and telling me not to talk to this goodly gentleman, a course of action which I had already deduced for myself, but as soon as I would turn back from listening to their whispered admonitions he would be tapping at my elbow again and trying to ask me something else. Finally John, one of our boys, grabbed my arm and said, "Would you like to go talk to Uncle Elisha?" to which I had no idea what to say and he very competently continued, "Let's go talk to Uncle Elisha." And off we went through the crowd. Now, we were not going to see Uncle Elisha, but we did succeed for the moment in getting away from my new friend.
So I continued watching the show for a while and then John said he had to go for a second but he would be right back. No sooner did he leave than the man was back, keeping up a one-sided conversation which I couldn't hear over the noise of the crowd. Finally he starts in with this "Oh, baby girl, baby girl" crap and I wanted to turn around and say "Buddy, I ain't your baby" and give him a good knee to the groin but instead I elbowed my way to stand in front of Jesse, who was standing just in front of me. Jesse is the husband of one of the missionaries and I don't think we'd ever had a single exchange of words directly, so I didn't quite feel like saying, "Excuse me, but there's a creepy man following me and I am just going to take shelter in the shadow of your biceps." But Jesse is in actual fact a rather tall and broad man and I did feel a great deal better putting him between myself and the creep, especially as he was the only male of our party within eyeshot.
So this creepy guy moves on to bother some of the other girls in our group, who keep trying to give him the brush off, but he doesn't take the hint and lingers. Finally another one of the guys, who I think works at Hillcrest but I had never laid eyes on before this evening, taps her on the shoulder and says, classically, "Dana, is this man bothering you?" To which the gentleman starts replying in rapid fire Hausa and even more surprisingly the new guy starts answering in the same quick Hausa and then, downright shockingly, the older gentleman in front of me, a Nigerian with no affiliation to our group whatsoever, jumps right into the fray, thoroughly and vocally irritated with the creep, and starts to chew him out. No language comprehension necessary to understand that part of it, although I would have given a great deal to know what old Baba was saying to the jerk. Soon other Nigerians are starting to join in and the boys are laughing now at the poor old creep, who is literally being driven out of the crowd with many shouts. I thought briefly that the situation was going to come to blows, but no such luck.
But the crowning glory on the whole scene, that which really gilds the lily, was that the wrestling show was an evangelistic wrestling show (which is a lily in itself), so all of this is happening as about 200 youngsters are being led in the Sinner's Prayer. Now, our crowd was small enough and their crowd was large enough that nothing was really interrupted, but come on, that is one for the books, almost starting a brawl during the Sinner's Prayer.
So, I guess I try to be lighthearted about the whole thing, as everyone else was, but I have to say I really didn't appreciate the whole situation so much. There's something about knowing that there's nothing you can really do, on your own, to stop somebody, that just makes you feel obnoxiously helpless. Not fun. And then when something like that happens, the feeling of suspicion just lingers and grows. I have to say, the perpetual celebrity of the white person in Africa is hard enough to deal with in the daytime, but at night it becomes downright unbearable. I was talking to a couple of our boys from TH tonight, just answering some of their questions about my glasses, and I looked up and realized that about 20 other kids had formed this little knot around me. And I couldn't see any of their faces because the light was behind them. It's true that they're just kids, but when every single one of them wants to touch your hands and say bye before you can get in your car and in the midst of them people are asking for your e-mail address and phone number and everything else, and you can't see any of them and you don't know what they're really asking for, you reach this breaking point when all you want to do is turn around and scream "Leave me alone! Get the hell away from me, for God's sake!" Bad moment.
But can I just say how touched I was that all of our boys, none of whom are even as old as I am, all wanted to help get Auntie away from the bad man? They are so gloriously dear that it is ridiculous. I would put up with a hundred creepy men for the chance to help them actualize their oodles of potential. But I think my nerves would force me to start carrying mace if that should be the case...
So I continued watching the show for a while and then John said he had to go for a second but he would be right back. No sooner did he leave than the man was back, keeping up a one-sided conversation which I couldn't hear over the noise of the crowd. Finally he starts in with this "Oh, baby girl, baby girl" crap and I wanted to turn around and say "Buddy, I ain't your baby" and give him a good knee to the groin but instead I elbowed my way to stand in front of Jesse, who was standing just in front of me. Jesse is the husband of one of the missionaries and I don't think we'd ever had a single exchange of words directly, so I didn't quite feel like saying, "Excuse me, but there's a creepy man following me and I am just going to take shelter in the shadow of your biceps." But Jesse is in actual fact a rather tall and broad man and I did feel a great deal better putting him between myself and the creep, especially as he was the only male of our party within eyeshot.
So this creepy guy moves on to bother some of the other girls in our group, who keep trying to give him the brush off, but he doesn't take the hint and lingers. Finally another one of the guys, who I think works at Hillcrest but I had never laid eyes on before this evening, taps her on the shoulder and says, classically, "Dana, is this man bothering you?" To which the gentleman starts replying in rapid fire Hausa and even more surprisingly the new guy starts answering in the same quick Hausa and then, downright shockingly, the older gentleman in front of me, a Nigerian with no affiliation to our group whatsoever, jumps right into the fray, thoroughly and vocally irritated with the creep, and starts to chew him out. No language comprehension necessary to understand that part of it, although I would have given a great deal to know what old Baba was saying to the jerk. Soon other Nigerians are starting to join in and the boys are laughing now at the poor old creep, who is literally being driven out of the crowd with many shouts. I thought briefly that the situation was going to come to blows, but no such luck.
But the crowning glory on the whole scene, that which really gilds the lily, was that the wrestling show was an evangelistic wrestling show (which is a lily in itself), so all of this is happening as about 200 youngsters are being led in the Sinner's Prayer. Now, our crowd was small enough and their crowd was large enough that nothing was really interrupted, but come on, that is one for the books, almost starting a brawl during the Sinner's Prayer.
So, I guess I try to be lighthearted about the whole thing, as everyone else was, but I have to say I really didn't appreciate the whole situation so much. There's something about knowing that there's nothing you can really do, on your own, to stop somebody, that just makes you feel obnoxiously helpless. Not fun. And then when something like that happens, the feeling of suspicion just lingers and grows. I have to say, the perpetual celebrity of the white person in Africa is hard enough to deal with in the daytime, but at night it becomes downright unbearable. I was talking to a couple of our boys from TH tonight, just answering some of their questions about my glasses, and I looked up and realized that about 20 other kids had formed this little knot around me. And I couldn't see any of their faces because the light was behind them. It's true that they're just kids, but when every single one of them wants to touch your hands and say bye before you can get in your car and in the midst of them people are asking for your e-mail address and phone number and everything else, and you can't see any of them and you don't know what they're really asking for, you reach this breaking point when all you want to do is turn around and scream "Leave me alone! Get the hell away from me, for God's sake!" Bad moment.
But can I just say how touched I was that all of our boys, none of whom are even as old as I am, all wanted to help get Auntie away from the bad man? They are so gloriously dear that it is ridiculous. I would put up with a hundred creepy men for the chance to help them actualize their oodles of potential. But I think my nerves would force me to start carrying mace if that should be the case...
Thursday, October 4, 2007
Long Weekend=Long E-mail
You know, I was thinking that there hasn't really been anything extra curricular to post on here in a while (except for the pastor in church saying that a dear sister had been attacked by a margarine (instead of migraine) headache during the service). Either I'm doing something wrong, or the universe is holding back on serendipitous and gut-busting misadventures because it plans to give me a wallop in the very near future. Only time will tell. In the meantime, another support e-mail for the general internet's viewing pleasure:
Dear endlessly patient and perpetually gorgeous supporters, friends, and peeps,
Well, approximately 57 million things have, I think, happened since I last wrote. So, in summation, I offer this medly: hiking, rocks, dust, Thai food, weddings, grammar, peanut butter and jelly, taxis, clever dogs, Independence Day, airborne money, red stew, basketball and electric mayhem. I don’t know that I will be able to thoroughly cover all that ground in the course of one e-mail, but for the record, all of those things did happen in just the past few days.
One of the most glorious things that has happened was also one of the seemingly smallest. I was in the CARE center out in the village of Gyero playing cards with a couple boys when someone else brought out a couple of small drums. I asked the boys if they could play and one told me that he did. After very, very little cajoling, I find myself aptly learning to play this small but difficult drum through the tutelage of a remarkably able teacher. The style of this particular drum was the typical hourglass-ish shape, but connecting the top and bottom skins of the drum was a bunch of twisted leather cords. The drum is worn over the shoulder like a purse and when you squeeze the cords with your elbow, it changes the sound of the drum beat, which definitely added an additional layer of difficulty. So Jonathan, my teacher, would begin to play a pattern and I would watch a couple of times and then join in and we would play the pattern together until he would stop and let me see if I could play it alone. Keep in mind I have had no formal drum training whatsoever, so it was really fun to be able to pick it up so fast. Sometimes I would mess up just because I would start laughing because I enjoyed the sound of us playing together so much! And what a great way to connect with the kids, they all love to crowd around and gawk at the Bature on the drum! (Bature is the Hausa word for a white person, and one that you grow accustomed to hearing quite often.) Of course, even the little ones can already play better than me, but they are gracious enough to let me have a try.
Then on Sunday, I was privileged to witness a very Nigerian celebration called a send forth. A send forth is kind of the Nigerian equivalent of a bridal shower, in which the bride-to-be is the guest of honor and all of her family and friends gather to send her forth into her married life. This particular send forth was for a girl who had worked with a lot of the missionaries in Jos, so the festivities also had much of the flavor of a church service, with prayers and a short homily and two sung performances, one in English and one in Hausa, of Prov. 31. But the centerpiece of the celebration was definitely what was simply called “dancing time.” Something like the “Dollar a Dance” tradition at American weddings, various groups of relatives were called up to dance with the bride-to-be, but instead of paying for the honor, all the other relatives and friends would come up and give the bride or the dancers money by touching it to their faces and then dropping it to the ground. Then the various bridesmaids would scramble around picking up all the money off the ground. They had by far the most difficult job in the bunch, as it was a windy day and sometimes the money would go sailing off and kids and bridesmaids would have to run chasing after it! But the kicker was when the MC called out all the Batures in attendance for a dance of their own! So out we all came, and I have to say I don’t know when I’ve seen such a stiff group of dancers. But I must, unfortunately, include myself in that description, because for me at least it was hard to balance between not wanting to seem like a stick in the mud and not having any idea what kind of dancing would seem provocative to the Nigerians and sully the good name of SIM. But we all made it through in more or less one piece and the effort was much appreciated by the Nigerians. Another very African feature of the experience was that, even though we had to leave early for another engagement, they insisted that we take our food with us. Fried chicken and puff-puff anyone?
Monday was a holiday for us because we were celebrating Nigerian Independence Day! I’ve been told that in the past there have been parades and festivities in town, but this year there’s a new governor who, for whatever reason, did not see fit to host anything this year, to the irritation of many Nigerians, some of who talked about ousting him for this one grievous social sin. But, in lieu of parades, me and a few friends and fellow missionaries drove out of town for a little hike in an area known as Golf Ball Rock, so called because of the rock formation that looks strikingly like a golf ball set up on a tee. We had a nice climb up to where we could sit in the shade of the golf ball itself and look out over the landscape. It was a gorgeous day, and so nice to be out of the city for a while. I have to confess that the piles of trash and endless dust get old after a while, so it was nice to be reminded by soft-sided green mountains and quiet corn fields cradling grass-roofed huts what a beautiful country Nigeria actually is. And climbing on rocks is pretty much always fun no matter where you are.
However, it hasn’t been all fun and games, though because of the long weekend that’s mostly what it’s been. :-) I am continuing my glorious library work and had a great opportunity to have a long chat with one of the boys’ Nigerian teachers and hear his views on educational changes that need to take place at T.H., the educational system in Nigeria and where Plateau state fits into that, life, the universe, and everything in general. People here really love to talk! But I’ve also started another one of my projects, which is working with Abigail, a young Nigerian woman, on the biographies of boys at T.H.
SIM has set up a sponsorship program for the different CARE centers which is similar to Compassion or World Vision. Right now some of the SIM team are hard at work trying to get out annual reports to the boys’ sponsors, but although Abigail’s English is pretty stellar, it’s not quite to the point where American sponsors could understand what she writes. So I am trying to work with her on her English skills and computer skills as well so she can take over the biography project more completely someday. Yet again, this was not something I had any idea that I would be asked to do when I came and definitely presents its own unique challenges. It has been interesting though, to see the way this project dovetails with work in the library because many of the written mistakes Abigail makes are the same as the ones the boys make when reading out loud. There is the additional difficulty that spoken Nigerian English is very different from American written English. For example, there are a number of words (like live and leave or bird and birth) which sound exactly the same in Nigerian spoken English, but come across very differently on paper. And once again, I am in no way trained in teaching ESL, but we continue to slog through. Fortunately Abigail is a good student and lots of fun to work with and continues to teach me lots about Nigerian thinking and ways of life.
The other thing (and this could really use intense, miraculous breakthrough kinds of prayer) is that the technology we are trying to work with here is not the best. The mouse on the computer Abigail has been should have been marketed as a tool of spiritual formation because it absolutely requires the patience of a saint to operate the stupid thing! You push it right, it goes left, or else it absolutely refuses to move, and everything takes three times as long, which is really frustrating considering how much work there is to get through in the first place. But what can you expect from a machine that was manufactured when cell phones were the size of bricks?
As far as actual prayer requests go, please pray that I could continue to build and strengthen relationships with Nigerians and with individual boys at the center. I am starting to feel that a foundation has been laid, but I hope that God will show me who specifically to focus on for the next few weeks. And please pray for grace in learning names! There are at least 85 boys who I’m trying to keep straight, not to mention house uncles and aunties, other missionaries, tailors, cooks, vendors in the market…every relationship in Nigeria is a personal one. And please pray for the boys for help in their studies. I feel like a number of circumstances in the center right now are coming together to push them towards more enthusiasm and discipline in learning to read. Please pray that they would not be discouraged and that they would be captured by the power of the written word and their potential to master it!
Thanks for sticking with me through another tome, friends. Just remember, as I said at the beginning, I didn’t even cover the half of it! And, as always, if you no longer wish to receive these e-mails, make like a fisherman and drop me a line. (Yes, I did make that up just now.)
Embracing the adventure,
Shannon
Dear endlessly patient and perpetually gorgeous supporters, friends, and peeps,
Well, approximately 57 million things have, I think, happened since I last wrote. So, in summation, I offer this medly: hiking, rocks, dust, Thai food, weddings, grammar, peanut butter and jelly, taxis, clever dogs, Independence Day, airborne money, red stew, basketball and electric mayhem. I don’t know that I will be able to thoroughly cover all that ground in the course of one e-mail, but for the record, all of those things did happen in just the past few days.
One of the most glorious things that has happened was also one of the seemingly smallest. I was in the CARE center out in the village of Gyero playing cards with a couple boys when someone else brought out a couple of small drums. I asked the boys if they could play and one told me that he did. After very, very little cajoling, I find myself aptly learning to play this small but difficult drum through the tutelage of a remarkably able teacher. The style of this particular drum was the typical hourglass-ish shape, but connecting the top and bottom skins of the drum was a bunch of twisted leather cords. The drum is worn over the shoulder like a purse and when you squeeze the cords with your elbow, it changes the sound of the drum beat, which definitely added an additional layer of difficulty. So Jonathan, my teacher, would begin to play a pattern and I would watch a couple of times and then join in and we would play the pattern together until he would stop and let me see if I could play it alone. Keep in mind I have had no formal drum training whatsoever, so it was really fun to be able to pick it up so fast. Sometimes I would mess up just because I would start laughing because I enjoyed the sound of us playing together so much! And what a great way to connect with the kids, they all love to crowd around and gawk at the Bature on the drum! (Bature is the Hausa word for a white person, and one that you grow accustomed to hearing quite often.) Of course, even the little ones can already play better than me, but they are gracious enough to let me have a try.
Then on Sunday, I was privileged to witness a very Nigerian celebration called a send forth. A send forth is kind of the Nigerian equivalent of a bridal shower, in which the bride-to-be is the guest of honor and all of her family and friends gather to send her forth into her married life. This particular send forth was for a girl who had worked with a lot of the missionaries in Jos, so the festivities also had much of the flavor of a church service, with prayers and a short homily and two sung performances, one in English and one in Hausa, of Prov. 31. But the centerpiece of the celebration was definitely what was simply called “dancing time.” Something like the “Dollar a Dance” tradition at American weddings, various groups of relatives were called up to dance with the bride-to-be, but instead of paying for the honor, all the other relatives and friends would come up and give the bride or the dancers money by touching it to their faces and then dropping it to the ground. Then the various bridesmaids would scramble around picking up all the money off the ground. They had by far the most difficult job in the bunch, as it was a windy day and sometimes the money would go sailing off and kids and bridesmaids would have to run chasing after it! But the kicker was when the MC called out all the Batures in attendance for a dance of their own! So out we all came, and I have to say I don’t know when I’ve seen such a stiff group of dancers. But I must, unfortunately, include myself in that description, because for me at least it was hard to balance between not wanting to seem like a stick in the mud and not having any idea what kind of dancing would seem provocative to the Nigerians and sully the good name of SIM. But we all made it through in more or less one piece and the effort was much appreciated by the Nigerians. Another very African feature of the experience was that, even though we had to leave early for another engagement, they insisted that we take our food with us. Fried chicken and puff-puff anyone?
Monday was a holiday for us because we were celebrating Nigerian Independence Day! I’ve been told that in the past there have been parades and festivities in town, but this year there’s a new governor who, for whatever reason, did not see fit to host anything this year, to the irritation of many Nigerians, some of who talked about ousting him for this one grievous social sin. But, in lieu of parades, me and a few friends and fellow missionaries drove out of town for a little hike in an area known as Golf Ball Rock, so called because of the rock formation that looks strikingly like a golf ball set up on a tee. We had a nice climb up to where we could sit in the shade of the golf ball itself and look out over the landscape. It was a gorgeous day, and so nice to be out of the city for a while. I have to confess that the piles of trash and endless dust get old after a while, so it was nice to be reminded by soft-sided green mountains and quiet corn fields cradling grass-roofed huts what a beautiful country Nigeria actually is. And climbing on rocks is pretty much always fun no matter where you are.
However, it hasn’t been all fun and games, though because of the long weekend that’s mostly what it’s been. :-) I am continuing my glorious library work and had a great opportunity to have a long chat with one of the boys’ Nigerian teachers and hear his views on educational changes that need to take place at T.H., the educational system in Nigeria and where Plateau state fits into that, life, the universe, and everything in general. People here really love to talk! But I’ve also started another one of my projects, which is working with Abigail, a young Nigerian woman, on the biographies of boys at T.H.
SIM has set up a sponsorship program for the different CARE centers which is similar to Compassion or World Vision. Right now some of the SIM team are hard at work trying to get out annual reports to the boys’ sponsors, but although Abigail’s English is pretty stellar, it’s not quite to the point where American sponsors could understand what she writes. So I am trying to work with her on her English skills and computer skills as well so she can take over the biography project more completely someday. Yet again, this was not something I had any idea that I would be asked to do when I came and definitely presents its own unique challenges. It has been interesting though, to see the way this project dovetails with work in the library because many of the written mistakes Abigail makes are the same as the ones the boys make when reading out loud. There is the additional difficulty that spoken Nigerian English is very different from American written English. For example, there are a number of words (like live and leave or bird and birth) which sound exactly the same in Nigerian spoken English, but come across very differently on paper. And once again, I am in no way trained in teaching ESL, but we continue to slog through. Fortunately Abigail is a good student and lots of fun to work with and continues to teach me lots about Nigerian thinking and ways of life.
The other thing (and this could really use intense, miraculous breakthrough kinds of prayer) is that the technology we are trying to work with here is not the best. The mouse on the computer Abigail has been should have been marketed as a tool of spiritual formation because it absolutely requires the patience of a saint to operate the stupid thing! You push it right, it goes left, or else it absolutely refuses to move, and everything takes three times as long, which is really frustrating considering how much work there is to get through in the first place. But what can you expect from a machine that was manufactured when cell phones were the size of bricks?
As far as actual prayer requests go, please pray that I could continue to build and strengthen relationships with Nigerians and with individual boys at the center. I am starting to feel that a foundation has been laid, but I hope that God will show me who specifically to focus on for the next few weeks. And please pray for grace in learning names! There are at least 85 boys who I’m trying to keep straight, not to mention house uncles and aunties, other missionaries, tailors, cooks, vendors in the market…every relationship in Nigeria is a personal one. And please pray for the boys for help in their studies. I feel like a number of circumstances in the center right now are coming together to push them towards more enthusiasm and discipline in learning to read. Please pray that they would not be discouraged and that they would be captured by the power of the written word and their potential to master it!
Thanks for sticking with me through another tome, friends. Just remember, as I said at the beginning, I didn’t even cover the half of it! And, as always, if you no longer wish to receive these e-mails, make like a fisherman and drop me a line. (Yes, I did make that up just now.)
Embracing the adventure,
Shannon
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