Mail update

Dear friends, I hope you read this quickly and then continue on the next blog I sent out this morning about the monkey...

Just a note to inform anyone out there who has a mailing address for us that is Yaounde, Cameroon.  Please do not continue to use this address for mail.  We found out TODAY that we are not supposed to recieve mail at this address.  Why no one told us this before I do not know.  If you want to know how to mail stuff to us please send us an e-mail to bossbugs@yahoo.ca. 

Thanks for your help, Angela

Ask the monkey first....

...before you take its picture.  Well, maybe not the monkey so much as the monkey's owner.  So the story goes something like this.  I was recently in the village of Bamba, about 2 hours south of Gamboula, with Noel and Chrysler, the agroforesterie seminar teachers, and Josefine, a short-term Swedish missionary.  Bamba is a town of about 3000 people on the edge of the rainforest and the town itself is almost solely supported by a large sawmill and the trade in smoked bush meat.  We went down for 3 days (Darren stayed behind to work in Eden), and it was on day two of our visit that Josefine and I received our first Convocation in CAR.  Not conviction, but convocation.  This is like a summons to an government official's office when you have done something wrong. 

 

Okay, so Josefine, Noel and I were haplessly wandering around Bamba Thursday afternoon around 5:00 when I spotted a monkey tied up outside someone's house.   I asked Noel if he thought it was alright for Joesfine to take its picture and since we couldn't find anyone around to ask, he said no problem.  So, without getting too close, Josefine snapped a picture on her digital camera and we were on our way.  Friday afternoon we returned to Bamba after having planted trees in a nearby Baka pygmy village, only to hear that we had been summoned to the office of the Eau et Foret authority.  These are the government guys in charge of water and forests and anything that happens to live in them.  Actually we had been summoned that morning but we failed to receive their notice until the afternoon.  Noel and the Evangelist we were staying with promptly went down to the office to ask forgiveness of the head guy for missing our 'appointment' and they were told what our grievous errors had been. 

 

According to Mr. Eau et Foret, our first fault was that we did not ask the monkey's owner for permission to take the monkey's picture.  I told the guys that since the owner wasn't around we should have asked the monkey if it was alright instead.  So, yeah, I guess we were at fault.  Our second, even larger fault, was that neither of us has the proper authorising papers to take pictures of any and all things in Central Africa.  This was a new rule to me and all our immediate reactions was, oh, so the guy wants money! 

 

Saturday morning at 8:00, under a heavy canopy of a rainforest downpour, we made our way on foot to the office of the eau et foret, and wouldn't you know but it was the same house as the monkey's.  We entered the head guys office with our peace offering in tow (a lovely little fruit tree) and we proceeded to be chastised for our grievous error in photo etiquette.  If I hadn't had been shivering with cold I might well have had to suck on a lemon to keep a ridiculous and inappropriate smile off of my face.  The whole thing seemed so funny to me.  I asked forgiveness for our sins and told him that we couldn't find anyone to ask permission and we had no idea it was the office of the eau et foret since they neglected to put a sign out front of the office.  You can bet when I go back to Bamba next week there will be a sign up!  I also told him how hard it is to be new in a country and to not know all the rules, especially when such rules do not exist in our own countries (Canada and Sweden).  I even offered to erase the monkey's picture but he refused.  We chatted him up for another 45 minutes until I concluded that perhaps the rule he mentioned does not apply to Joesfine and I since we technically are not tourists but rather residents and that we had already paid a hefty price for that very privilege.  After giving him our tree offering we left without paying a dime. 

 

Needless to say, Friday and Saturday we continued to joke about the monkey and the officer and I am not sure I have laughed that hard in a very long time.  I was thankful that I contained myself enough not to say anything stupid to the eau et foret officer and that my Sango proved better than that of the officer, who grew up in Cameroon.  I was more Central African than he was at that moment.

 

In fact, the whole time we spent in Bamba was one of the best times I have had here and was one of those occasions where you think to yourself, how can I possibly leave this place.  Chrysler, Noel and I meshed together like we had been friends for a long time and it was one of the first times I have spent with Chrysler where the colour/culture barrier almost seemed non-existent.  He didn't call me madam the entire time we were there.  While I was happy to be home with Darren it was also a little like the week after coming home from summer camp, all the fun and excitement left behind in exchange for the daily grind.  Not that there is much a daily grind feeling here but I think you know what I mean.  In fact, it has been an excellent week in terms of work and Monday we had a chance to group ourselves together and plan the weeks work as we were forced inside due to rain. 

 

Darren, Chrysler and I will be returning to Bamba on June 4 to work with two different groups of Baka pygmies who are interested in planting trees, especially improved oil palm.  The red oil taken from the fruit of the oil palm is very high in Vitamin A and a rich source of oil.  A Baptist evangelist lives and works among one group of Baka and he has started a school for the Baka children using the government curriculum.  It is an impressive little school, just poles and a thatch roof but he is a dedicated, if not somewhat discouraged man.  He receives next to no salary from the EEB church and is thinking about moving back to his own village where his wife and 12 kids live.  I told him that he wasn't an evangelist so much as a missionary and that hard times are part of the course.  We are helping him with trees and vegetable seeds but that is about as far as we can go with him.  It seems to me that a denomination as old and established as the EEB here in CAR ought to be financing their own missionary campaigns.  We shall see. 

 

We are off to Berberati for the day tomorrow to look at our possible future work sight with a Central African NGO.  The roads had been fairly calm but there have been two incidences in the last week so we remain cautious and only travel by night.  It is a pain but is also just part of the routine of working here. 

 

Better get going and pack for our day away.  Remember, always ask the monkey before you take his picture, otherwise you might get in trouble!

The keys to my canoe

Walking along the streets of Gamboula is a feast for the eyes.  From the bright coloured outfits of the women, half-naked children running about, goats and sheep lying across the road and houses in all states of repair.  However, if you look really close, you might notice the pineapple top hanging from someone's orange tree or the wad of rolled up leaves sitting above the door of someone's house.  A village form of decoration you might think to yourself.  But no, actually, this is the lock and key to your house, your protection against thieves stealing your ripening oranges.  How can a rolled up wad of leaves possibly protect your garden, your fields, your home or your possessions from thieves?  Because the belief is that the curse on those leaves is so strong that anyone stealing will drop dead as a result in no time at all.  The point was driven home for Darren the other day when he went fishing with his friend Bruce.  When they arrived at the river they came to two canoes sitting side by side.  One, belonging to a missionary, was chained and locked to a tree.  The other, belonging to Bruce, had a wad leaves sitting on the bow.  This, Bruce pointed out, was his lock and key for his canoe, and a fundamental difference between Western and Central African thinking that affects every aspect of how we live and work here.  Bruce, a church member, went on to explain that while he himself does not belief in the magic behind the leaves, everyone else does and so that keeps his boat safe which took many hours of hard work to make. 

 

This belief is not just something from the old animist religious ways.  In fact it is alive and well in the Christian church.  Not so much that Christians here practice using leaves but they remain in the fear of those leaves.  You see, while you can put leaves out to protect your things from thievery, the leaves can also be used as a means of thievery.  My good friends sister, Anne, is a prime example.  Anne is an active member of the Catholic church west of here but she recently came to Gamboula because of bandits in her village.  She asked around for a piece of land to farm and was given some to which she promptly set to work clearing and turning over the soil.  At about the time she was ready to plant the field, she arrived one day to find the garden littered with wads of leaves--medicine.  The result being that she completely abandoned the garden and moved on to a field somewhere else.  Why?  Because the fear is that if she continue to farm that field harm would come to her and her children.  The person to put the leaves in the field was likely the original owner who thought he could profit from someone else's labour, and he was right.  The next field that Anne got resulted in the same thing and she is, to this day, without a garden.  When I proposed that the church elders go to her garden and pray over it, thereby cleaning it of the evil curse on it, the idea was rejected.  They will only come back and put more medicine in it. 

 

Not surprisingly, this kind of thing only happens to Christians and in my view forms a kind of religious persecution here.  If she had put a wad of leaves in her new garden at the start, no one would have dared counterattack with their own cursed leaves.  Only Christians refrain from using this type of medicine and so they are prime targets for theft of all kinds.  I am not a theologian and so have little comment as to what to do about the problem except to write things as I see them.  It is however, a frustrating aspect of our work here and affects us as well.  We have a lot of thievery problems in the nutrition garden that could easily be solved by hanging leaf wads around our fences.  Not that I am suggesting this is what we do!  Nor am I genuinely surprised that this is the way Satan is working against the church here.  Reading the New Testament it is clear that we are to face trials of many kinds and things that test our faith and convictions.  That doesn't mean that I am not angered when it happens in my neighbourhood and against my friends, many of whom work very hard only to have the fruits of their labour stolen from under them.  My question is, how do I counsel them? 

 

The other day we had an early morning call from one of the sentries who was unlocking the mission gates.  One of the locks was stuffed with leaves and he was asking for bolt cutters to cut it off.  Darren told him to just dig the leaves out to which he responded absolutely no way could he do that.  When Darren arrived on scene he was informed that it was stuffed with medicine (cursed leaves) and so they couldn't touch it.  Darren had to dig every last bit of leaves out of the lock before the sentry would put his key into the lock to unlock it, so powerful was the belief that he would die from touching the leaves.  Darren, however, is alive and well and a testimony to the power of God. 

 

I can neither deny nor agree with the power of such medicine.  I can say that in many cases, fear can cause illness in and of itself.  We have seen it at the hospital here many times where people come in very ill even though medically, there is nothing wrong with them.  They are paralysed and diseased by their own fear.  Can this be enough to kill someone, or can an evil curse on a pineapple top be enough to kill someone?  I suppose if you believe in something strong enough it can do just that.  Our witness is that the Holy Spirit is stronger and more powerful than any curse in heaven or on earth, including the death curse on the wad of leaves I picked up and threw away yesterday!

 

In other news, we are alive and well and working hard.  The rainy season has been blessing us with wonderful rain and things are growing like weeds, including the weeds.  The bean trial looks great, minus the soy beans which apparently are a favourite of goats.  A side effect of our thievery problem in the garden is that people keep stealing the metal wire used to tie the pieces of woven fence matting together.  This makes ample opportunity for goats to sneak into the garden where they find a restaurant menu of things for them to eat.  The fight against goats is one that we will never win, but small victories would be nice. We plan on being in Bayanga June and July and I will try and be better at sending updates.  Until next time, your thoughts are welcome and your prayers appreciated.

 

Angela

 

 

 

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