Catching Up

Having safely arrived back in Gamboula last week, we have had the last week to settle back into work and our somewhat hectic but wonderful routine.  We were welcomed back with both good and bad news regarding life here but I suppose that shouldn't come as too much of a surprise.  The good news is that Calvin, whom we and others back home having been helping with school fees, passed his exams and now holds his BPC, a kind of diploma that opens doors to college, nursing school and other government related jobs.  He is now continuing on with school and we, and hopefully others (hint, hint) will pitch in to help make his goals a reality.  He is last of twelve children so you can imagine that he doesn't get any help from family in regards to school as all of his brothers and sisters have married and have families of their own.  In fact, one of his older sisters gave birth this morning and I have just returned from visiting them in the hospital.  What a precious sight to see a brand new baby.  Speaking of babies, we were also greeted with the news that our friend Reufen and his wife are proud parents of a baby girl that they have named Angela, after me.  I am feeling quite honoured and the baby is beautiful with lots of curly black hair.  Precious! 

 

In other news, the saga of Constant continues.  He has been 'released' from prison but is being kept at the president of the tribunal's house.  Technically he is still in jail but he has really become the presidents house boy and chauffeur while he awaits a trial that has been post-poned twice.  The police reports say that Constant is not at fault, but now, one of the family members of one of the deceased has come forward to sue Constant, stating that the accident was his fault because prior to the accident he had had a fight with a women and that caused the accident.  Hmm?  Sounds suspect to me.  Roy has brought in a lawyer twice who has come all the way from the capital in Bangui, only to have them post-pone the proceedings, ONCE THEY HAVE SEEN the lawyer.  They really just want Roy to give up and pay them all off and call it a done deal, which Roy will not do.  Of course.  We have not been given a new date and it looks as if this may never end.  Perhaps once the president gets tired of having Constant around he will finally put an end to the cherade but in the meantime it is a game of waiting.  It is about as corrupt a system as you could imagine.  Every day his family has to bring him food to eat so imagine how anxious they are to get this over with. 

 

We received a letter from Constant the other day and he is also quite discouraged.  He accused three employees of ours of putting a curse on him so that either the trial won't happen or he will die in prison.  No one can accept that the system is corrupt, instead, there must be some evil spiritual reason behind it all.  Arrgh!  Everything in baby steps.  Upon our return from Bayanga I found that my friends younger brother was also in jail.  He was imprisoned under false charges and they refused to give him a proper trial or let him argue his case.  They only wanted money which they knew he had a bit of because they waited to arrest him until after he got paid for helping build a house locally.  After seven days in squalor the family managed to negotiate down his 'fine' and he was released much to our relief.  He was sick and hungry but happy to be home with his wife, kids and family.  Everybody in the village knew he was falsely charged but no one could do a thing about it.  Don't they call that a police state. 

 

It has been cool here for days but no real rain fall.  This afternoon there has been a lot of thunder but no rain.  Monday and Tuesday are holidays so we will be able to work around the house and in the gardens with relative peace.  I also put together a report this week of the Women and Children Gardening for Health Program and since January we have given away 19 machetes and vegetable seeds to mothers with infants in the hospital nutrition centre.  These women represent nearly 190 hours of labour that they put into the nutrition garden.  Of these 19 women, 8 were Fulani and 11 were Gbaya villagers.  Since January only two women have outright refused to work and the rest have been very happy to help out, harvest food for their kids and receive a machete and seeds at the end of their stay.  The hospital staff are more than pleased with the program, and frankly, so am I. 

 

We have three visitors coming out this October, the president of our mission, NMSI, and two US staff.  We are looking forward to their visit immensely as hopefully this will open up more doors for people to come and work here in the future.  The local evangelist that we worked with in Bayanga was adamant that more people come out to help him in his work in the area of development-agriculture, health, small business, what ever would be a help to the Aka pygmies that he works with.  I fully agree with the needs he sees. 

 

Speaking of needs, anyone wanting to help put some wonderful (no bias here) kids through school this year, as little as twenty dollars will put a child through school for the year.  Any size donations can be sent via NMSI (in the United States) or CCWM (in Canada) marked 'Bosses-special projects' and we will direct the funds specifically to pay for school fees and supplies.  If you have any questions please contact us through NMSI.  (www.nms-intl.org)

 

Have a great week, Angela

Tree-vangelists

Yesterday marked our first real day of work in Bayanga since our arrival last week.  Our time to rest is over and work has begun.  We rented a VCR, television and generator from the neighbourhood 'movie theatre' and set it up in the village of Yandoumbe, a couple kilometres up the road from where we are staying.  The residents of Yandoumbe have motivation issues when it comes to farming, as most residents prefer to work as temporaries in villagers gardens, getting paid just a little manioc each day, rather than work in their gardens and take home as much or as little manioc as their family would need each week.  Because it is hard to find a time to speak to everyone in the village at once, what better way than to show an outdoor film and gather the masses.  Once darkness hit we started with a twenty minute film in Sango that was produced in Bayanga introducing the work of the mission in Bayanga and the various activities they do.  i am not sure if everything in the film was understood by the mostly Aka speakers but it served our purposes of drawing a crowd of nearly 200.  During 'intermission' I, speaking through my Aka interpreter Jean Pierre, gave a demonstration and speech of why they should have their own gardens instead of working in everybody else's.  My visual aids consisted of a small bowl and a really large one, making the point that for their efforts in someone else's garden they are only rewarded with a small bowl of manioc, not quite enough for the whole family for one day.  But when you have your own garden, you can have enough to fill the large bowl which is plenty for your family for several days, meaning you don't have to go to your garden everyday even.  After a rather animated and convincing (if I do say so myself) speech we settled down to watch the second tape which was mostly Aka pygmies singing that was filmed during a pygmy church conference in the town of Liboko.  Just as I had heard about enough of the video, God did as well and we packed up just in time for a big rain storm to scatter everyone back to their homes. 

 

While I am not sure how well I would do preaching to the masses, I sure did enjoy encouraging folks with my tree-vangelistic campaign.  Speaking of preaching though, this morning at seven the local evangelist knocked on our door and asked if one of us wouldn't mind preaching at church this morning.  Darren, not one for public speaking kindly deferred to his wife and she, I, quickly prepared a sermon for delivery at eight thirty that same morning.  Me and my rapid fire mind found it a little difficult to preach through a translator (into the Aka language) as while your words are being translated you have to not lose your train of thought, but otherwise it went well.  It made me even more grateful for the time I spent with YWAM eight and a half years ago, when no-warning sermons were par for the course.  Every event in life has its purpose. 

 

Tomorrow morning we get up real early to head for Bomanzoko and Lindjombo to check in on the people and their trees.  I am sure that as I write someone down there is munching on a Jackfruit...

Firsts...

Just before leaving for Bayanga I had a terrible first--my first real grey hair.  It was long and wiry and for one short moment I thought, oh know, so this is what it feels like to really know you are getting older.  I am six months from turning thirty and while I know it isn't that old, I was still shocked to be shocked at finding my first grey hair.  I am pretty much over it so no worries.

 

Our other first occurred yesterday on our trip to two outlying pygmy villages.  We got our truck stuck in a nice, big mud hole.  It took 30 minutes, Darren at the wheel, two Aka pygmies digging with their hands, and me taking pictures to get us unstuck.  Okay, so me taking pictures probably had nothing to do with getting us out but the photos are impressive.  Once you have been up to the door handle in one mud hole I suppose all the rest don't seem that bad but I would rather not find out. 

 

So now that we have been stressed enough to get grey hairs, been stuck in a mud hole, eaten monkey and caterpillars, travelled on local transport (motorbikes sitting three people and the jungle-bus), slept in mud houses, and acquired a second language, we are well on our way to becoming 'real' missionaries, the kind that can either entice others or scare them away completely from becoming missionaries themselves. 

 

What a fun job we have!!!!

Interesting Places, Interesting People

I want you all to meet Jean Pierre.  He is a pygmy man from the town of Yandoumbe, a village 3 kilometres up the road from the Centre De Formation, our home in Bayanga each summer.  He is originally from a forest village in Cameroon but came here six years ago where he met and married his wife and is now the father of 4 children.  They say there is a sickness in Yandoumbe that causes people not to farm and its primary cause is unknown.  Some say its laziness, others say it's an aversion to becoming 'permanent', but whatever the cause, Jean Pierre is immune.  Having learned from his father long ago that life without fields is no life at all, he has been farming here since he arrived.  Every morning in Bayanga between five and six in the morning you will see streams of women coming down from Yandoumbe heading to the manioc fields of the Bilo (otherwise known as thr  typical village African).  These pygmy women will work from six in the morning until two or three in the afternoon and in return will receive a small bowl of manioc flour insufficient for the needs of a single family in a day.  Why would one want to farm for someone else for a little bit everyday when you could easily farm for yourself and gain as much as you wanted?  This we are unsure of and it is this that we are working towards changing the ideas of these pygmies but it is a slow process.  This Saturday night we will be showing a film in Yandoumbe about the work of the Centre De Formation in order to gather together a large crowd of people.  Before showing the film Jean Pierre, Capita and I will do our best at evangelizing the people of Yandoumbe about gardens.  Why farm for others when you can farm for yourself and reap all the benefits.  Jean Pierre will be our chief witness to what self reliance means.  He and his wife are not in the garden everyday, and their fields aren't the prettiest looking, but they also find the time to hunt and fish and to carry on with more traditional activities that also go a long way in providing for his family.

 

We sat down for a planning meeting with Jean Pierre, Capita and Bernadine this morning and as with most meetings here, it included a lot of story telling.  Jean Pierre told us about when he first got here he met Louis, an American that has been living among the pygmies for twenty years now.  He saw how Louis would give away money or food or soap to people without getting anything in return and immediately he told his wife that no way were they going to take things from that white guy.  He saw how dependent they could become and instead they put all their efforts into making their fields which is a pretty difficult task in the rainforest.  After having cut down all of the rather awesomely large trees in your field you then have the task of turning over the soil containing all of those trees' roots.  However, they are healthier and better off than most of their neighbours and for Darren and I, his family is a rare treat to work with.  Should you ever visit Jean Pierre's garden, you will find fruit trees planted here and there and if you walk to the end of his field, there underneath the trees at the edge of the rainforest is a fruit tree nursery containing the best of the best; Jackfruit, Mango, Avocado etc. 

 

This is the short story of Jean Pierre and we are priviledge to work with him and will be travelling with him all next week as we evangelize the masses about the importance of gardening.  Pray for us and our message.  After all, God was the first farmer on this earth!

Taking evil to court

The following true story I am about to relay to you comes only thanks to my mother who said that people are interested in knowing all about what goes on in the lives of the people we work with.  While this story may cause you to think the whole continent is crazy, if not just C.A.R., my only hope is that it challenges your world view, and that you may begin to see things amongst the unseen. 

 

Let me introduce you to a few people first.  I have changed the names of most everyone in case for some reason someone gets a hold of the cow involved.  (Will explain later.)  Christy is a young, vibrant midwife at the mission hospital.  She is widowed with 4 children and she is an active member of the church and the choir.  Her Dad is a retired pastor, her brother Rick works for agri and her sister Janet is the head of the women's bible school.  About three months ago Christy went, well, crazy.  At first her family thought she was only praying and prophesying but after two days of not eating or sleeping she began to say all kinds of crazy things, pointing out sin in the lives of many of the nurses in our hospital and church, including the pastor and the top people at the hospital.  She claimed that the hospital was killing people through the nurses use of black magic.  The pastors at the church went and prayed for her, the doctor tried to get her to go to the hospital, but nothing was helping her.  In fact she just got worse and worse.  She refused to have anything to do with modern medicine or the hospital, she stopped eating, talking and was nearly always awake, never sleeping at night.  After a week she confessed that her sickness was the result of black magic performed on her by the accountant and head lab technician of the hospital but of course there is no way to prove this.  The two hospital guys both deny having anything to do with black magic.  One is an elder and the other is a deacon in our church here. 

 

Two weeks passed and Christy just got worse and worse so to help solve matters, they called in a village doctor to perform his own magic on her using village medicine.  For the last three months they have been performing this medicine on her, which involves washing her body with the right kinds of herbs everyday.  They say her sickness isn't all that uncommon and has been seen up north.  They call it the cow sickness because when she first got sick she stripped all her clothes off and wanted to run into the bushes and eat grass.  They said she was acting like a cow.  Now it is 3 months later and she is showing little improvement.  They have moved her to another city where she is still receiving very expensive treatment from a witch doctor which is eating up three peoples salaries each month.  They are all very afraid she will die.  But it isn't quite like you think.  It isn't the physical symptoms that may eventually kill her.  What they believe is that the person who sold her to the original black magician has put her soul in that of a cow somewhere in Nigeria.  Should the cow in Nigeria die, then so too will Christy. 

 

If this in itself isn't sad enough, not two weeks after she first got sick, the father, a retired pastor, let's not forget, went down to the local police station and put in a request to sue the two hospital staff members because they caused her illness by selling her to a black magician.  I know this may sound crazy, and no this isn't  a remake of the Salem witch trials, but it is possible to be charged with causing illness or deaths by means of black magic, sorcery or witch craft, whatever you want to call it.  I have no idea how such cases are judged since to my knowledge, the hospital does not give out death certificates saying "Cause of death: witch craft".  It remains as one more example of how everything here has more than just a physical cause.  You don't just die of a heart attack here, there always has to be some underlying cause. 

 

I can't truly say what is wrong with Christy.  Maybe she just snapped, maybe she is possessed by evil spritis, maybe her soul is in a cow, or maybe she just thinks it is and fear itself has driven her mad.  I can't say but I wish I could.  I remain a physical evidence kind of person though the longer I am here the more my worldview continues to shift and challenge me. 

 

One more quick example.  My friend Elise recently moved away from Gamboula.  Her husband took a second wife after having some 15 affairs and Elise left him and took her children with her.  Technically, she isn't allowed to leave with her kids but she is frightened for their safety so they are with her. (She has 10.)  Only 2 days after she left town her ex-husband had a bad motorbike accident, breaking his femur and doing incredible damage to his leg.  After only 3 weeks in the hospital he left and headed for a small village in order to seek village medicine (which, by the way, after 4 months, is not working and he may never be able to walk again because of his stupidity).  He has since filed charges against Elise and Clarisse for 'causing' his accident by magical means to prevent him from following after Elise.  While it would have been a good use of magic the charges are false and how on earth do you prove that in a court of law.  Could you imagine a black magic episode of CSI?  Anyway, as long as her ex is hobbled, Elise is safe, though the military have come to warn her about the court case twice since she has moved.  They won't proceed with the case until he can travel and the way he is going that won't be for a while. 

 

You may think I am anti-village medicine but I am not.  However, there are some things that work and some that don't and in the case of a broken femur I think traction and a hospital bed are better than herbs and rubs.  I am also deeply concerned about women's rights and I am sure you will here more about this from me later. 

 

Ange

Life turns upside down

What is a reality in every big city weekly, is a rarity here in Central Africa.  Yesterday we were hit with the sad news that Constant, the head African of our agroforestry program was involved in a head on collision in a village south of here.  Constant was driving the centre's landcruiser truck while the other was a car.  They were both approaching the top of a blind hill from opposite directions at high speeds when they hit and two people in the car were killed along with a three year old boy who was riding in the back of the agri-truck.  To make things even worse, the two dead are the secretary of the province of Berberati and the vice-Mayor of Berberati, who also happens to be the younger brother of a recent presidential candidate and minister in the government.  There are four other people seriously injured and in our mission hospital, including a pregnant woman.  We are all in a state of shock and we are unsure as to what the final outcome of this tragedy will be.  Constant is generally a good driver, if not a little fast, but I know he must be beside himself right now knowing that his vehicle was involved in the deaths of three people. 

 

Not unlike the United States, lawsuits are common here and we are bracing for what could be an expensive battle with the families of these very important men.  One of the men has left behind four wives and numerous children.  The judicial system is very corrupt and we are hoping for the best but won't be surprised by the worst.  What this means for our programs here we are unsure.  Our work here will be unaffected but we are concerned about the mission as a whole.  We are asking for prayer from all our readers.  Please pray for Constant and for his family.  He is in protective custody as it is likely that if he is free family members of the dead men may try to harm or kill him.  Pray also for the impending court cases and for Roy who will likely be involved in much of the details as he is Constant's boss and the vehicle was a work vehicle.  Pray that we would have a positive attitude as we handle the fallout from this tragedy and that we respond appropriately and with love. 

 

Thank-you, Angela

The day I ate my genetic cousin.

Sounds kind of gross, but ask any scientist and they will tell you that monkeys are our genetic cousins, and even though I swore to my mother that I would never eat one, when it's the only thing on the table and you are the honoured guest of a Baka pygmy you have relatively little choice.  Okay, so we returned to Bamba last Sunday to plant trees with the Baka pygmies we met a few weeks earlier.  The same town where I got in trouble for taking the picture of a monkey.  I guess it isn't so bad if you eat one, only if you take it's picture!  We arrived Sunday night at the Baka village to find that in the two weeks since we had been there they had put up a house for us to stay in and they had high hopes that we had come to be 'their white people'.  This, I learned, meant that they were hoping we had come to live with them, to give them jobs, to provide food and clothes and school for them until the end of eternity, just like the Catholics are doing over in Cameroon.  I was immediately sadden by their request and though I could understand their desire for such a plan it also seemed to me like just another form of enslavement.  We suggested, that instead of us employing them, they employ themselves.  Why garden for me, I asked them, when you could garden for yourselves and then you would be the owner of both the garden and all that was in it.  No, no, no.  That wasn't a good idea at all they said. 

 

The Baka pygmies are a people between cultures fighting to find a place in both; not a very easy thing to do.  They have a natural fear of cities and the Bantu people in them and they are often taken advantage of.  However, if they could get over that fear, they would make nice profits selling their own produce in the town of Bamba, along with the sale of bush-meat.  One of the many problems is that even though they are currently selling meat in the Bamba market, they generally take that money and buy alcohol and cigarettes, not giving a thought to what they will eat next week.  Working within a culture like this is very difficult and progress is very slow.  There is a fine balance between helping out and causing dependency and I only know one or two missionaries who have succeeded at it.  We have very little time left in CAR this time around so we are doing what we can.  We planted 40 fruit trees in their village and started a small nursery with them.  We also bought them 25 high quality oil palm trees that produce high amounts of the red palm oil that is high in Vitamin A.  There is a severe shortage of oil palm in that area and it would make a good commercial product for the Baka.  After spending the night on the floor of the mud house they constructed for us we spent the day eating fruit and planting trees before going back to Bamba, the mill town, where we spent the night in the church's guest room.  Tuesday morning we went to visit another family of Baka on the West side of Bamba and were pleasantly surprised to see 2 simple mud houses surrounded by flowers planted all around and trees from the Bamba seminar.  We again ate fruit and planted trees and visited in their garden that has a very rich and productive soil.  They are very keen on planting a tree garden and are starting work on it tomorrow.  Then we sat down and ate a meal of gozo and monkey.  It is a very dark meat and tasted a lot like, well, meat.  I am not a connoisseur of meat so that isn't saying much coming from me.  I can't say I would want to eat it again but I was proud of myself for having tried it and feel initiated into the ranks of a 'real missionary'.  Darren said it was pretty good tasting if not a bit oily, but he too wouldn't be bothered if he didn't eat it again!

 

On the garden side of things, everything is growing well with the rains in the nutrition garden.  We are harvesting the Mung beans now, the first of the 17 plus varieties we have planted in the nutrition garden.  From quite a small plot we have already harvested 3.765 kg and we will be picking one or two more times yet.  It is turning out to be a very desirable bean for this area as it only took two months from planting to first harvest and total time from start to finish will only be 2 and a half months.  It seems to tolerate wet and dry conditions and the bean itself requires very little cooking time which is essential here as everything is cooked over open fire.  We are clearing space in the garden right now in order to plant a larger crop of mung beans to build up the number of seeds we have for distribution to all of the agroforestery cooperatives.  We will also be giving a large amount to the nutrition centre to cook for the children there.  The mung bean seeds are one of the 17 varieties of beans we brought back from Kenya last October for trials in the nutrition garden.  It is very satisfying to find something that works here so quickly.  We are also looking at replicating a red cow pea from Congo that I gave out to a group of women last Spring 2005, and received favourable reports about. 

 

The nutrition garden is becoming quite a model of variety on a small piece of land.  We have 5 different starch/root crops growing, beans, vegetables, bananas and peanuts on one hectare of land.  In a year and half there will be lots of food available for the nutrition centre in terms of the root crops and bananas and this summer we will be able to give them a lot of beans.  Things are happening and I am glad to be able to share the excitement with you all.

 

Till next time, Angela