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

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

 

 

 

Please note that this address sends and receives e-mail via a satellite phone connection.  All e-mails over 25 kb will be returned to sender unopened.  Sorry for the inconvenience.  For more updates on the Bosses, please log onto http://thebosses.blogspot.com

Questions from a college kid

I recently wrote this in response to questions from a Christian college
student who is preparing to go to Kenya for a two-week missions trip. These
questions were part of a pre-field assignment. I thought my answers might
be of some small interest to my readers. In other news, we finally had rain
today and our bean field trials are up and growing and will most definitely
appreciate the rain. Because most of the Fulani have fled from our area due
to bandits, it is getting harder and harder to find beef for sale and the
price is increasing. This makes a perfect opportunity to distribute bean
seeds and to really preach the replacement value of beans for meat. Will
let you know how it goes.
The questionnaire:
My name is Angela and my husband Darren and I are missionaries in the
Central African Republic. Where are you working?: We are into the second
year of our two year term here. We live in a small town called Gamboula on
an old mission station first established by Swedish Baptist missionaries
nearly 60 years ago. While the village has no running water or electricity,
the mission station has 24 hour electricity thanks to a small hydro-electric
turbine built on the nearby river. Power is supplied to the 7 missionary
homes, a 125 bed hospital, bible school and nurses housing. We are very
close to the tropical rainforests of Congo and have a short dry season in
the winter months. When we are not here, we are ministering in the Bayanga
region of CAR, in the middle of the rainforest zone on the border with Congo
and Cameroon.
Who are you ministering to?: Through our skills as agriculturalists we
minister to a broad group of people. There are three people groups in CAR.
The Bantu's make up the majority of the population and can be subdivided
into more than 100 tribes and languages. The Fulani are a nomadic cattle
herding people with some Arab origins and are almost 100% Muslim. The third
group are the pygmy peoples who themselves can be split into different
language groups depending on which part of the forest you are in. Through
seminars and one to one teaching and visiting gardens we are able to meet
and have relationships with a variety of people. We also minister to
missionaries in the country helping them start good development projects
with the people to whom they minister. Do you have a targeted group you are
ministering to?: We do not have a specific target group although when we
are able to go south we specifically target the Aka pygmies. Our original
intent was to work specifically with this group but it worked out to the
contrary. How long have you been there?: We have been here 14 months so far.
What is the biggest lesson(s) you have learned in your time in Africa?: We
have learned a lot of lessons and learn something new everyday. I guess you
could say the biggest lesson I have learned is to keep on learning and never
think you 'know it all now'. The other lesson I have learned is that God
really does put you in places, He decides when you leave, how long you stay
and when it is time to go. Sometimes this produces anxiety but He really
does know best. What are your biggest challenges personally and in ministry
in Africa?: Africa is a very challenging place to live and our country in
particular. We are living in one of the bottom 15 countries on earth in
terms of poverty. We are ministering to some of the poorest of the poor and
while we are trying to help, the fact is that most of the people we work
with will always be poor and will always struggle and this is very hard to
come to terms with. We are constantly bombarded with requests for help, for
requests for work, we see needs everyday--they come right to our door. It
has been difficult and will always be difficult to not help everyone, it is
just impossible. Jesus promised us that the poor will always be with us and
so we do what we can. The best thing we can give is hope and encouragement.
The other challenge is learning a new language. We are in a French speaking
country though most of the people only speak Sango, a national tribal
language. I picked up the language inside
of 2 months but for Darren it has taken longer and is sometimes a source of
frustration. Challenges in our ministry are there as well and many stem
from the lack of funds to do the things you really want to do. It forces
you to be more creative, however. For us in particular, we do not have our
own vehicle so this limits where we can go and when. We also have trouble
with bandits that make certain roads unsafe for us to travel on. What is
one thing you would tell me before coming to Africa?: BE FLEXIBLE. I can't
stress it enough and the more flexible you are the less frustrated you will
be. Nothing is at is seems, everything has a spiritual root or a reason why
things are done in a particular way. Nothing ever goes as planned and this
is OKAY, as long as something happens. The key is flexibility. If you go
with the flow you won't have any problems. What can I do to be as effective
as possible during my stay in Africa?: To be as effective as possible,
besides being flexible, remember that you are the outsider. As much as you
don't want to be, you are. Before you even arrive, they will have
assumptions about you and ever so slowly you can break through these
assumptions. Remember that you don't know everything and neither do you
have the answers to everything. You are a learner and the people you will
meet will be happy to teach you things about the themselves as they see you
have an interest in their culture and their way of doing things. One thing
I learned the hard way is not to be too quick to share what things are like
'where you come from'. Often times this can be seen as you asserting that
how you do things is better than how they do them. What are things I could
do that would bless missionaries and national church leaders while in
Kenya?: Things you could do to help missionaries would be to not have too
many expectations upon arrival. Be grateful for everything, even if your
bathroom has cockroaches crawling around and you aren't quite sure what the
pastor served for dinner but you ate it anyway. Flexibility. Also, a
little encouragement goes a long way. Many missionaries are tired, they are
'given' out, they are stretched and are under enormous pressure from the
groups they minister too and from their churches back home. Encouragement
and prayer are wonderful tonics for hurting hearts. This is also a good
thing to do on behalf of the locals you meet. A large part of my job is
encouraging women who have nothing but their gardens, and when I go visit
their gardens, ask questions about what they are doing and praise the work
of their hands they are significantly lifted up. You don't know how far a
kind word can go in cultures where their skills and worth as people are
underappreciated. M and M's are also appreciated! Can you describe for me
what kind of group a missionary loves to have and what kind they hate to
have?: Not having hosted a group before I can only guess but I have been a
short termer and I have heard from missionaries who spent many years hosting
groups. Groups that get the most praise are the groups that are there to
serve, who are willing to do anything to help and don't have an agenda of
their own. Make all attempts to communicate with nationals on your own
before asking for the missionaries assistant in translating. Try to be
happy with your accommodations and food even if it isn't quite what you were
expecting. Above all, the most complaints come when groups are noisy and
disrespectful in public places. Remember that as a group you are a
reflection of the missionary and the missionary will be in that culture a
lot longer than you will be. What is something I can be praying for you
about over the next 6 months? We are in a very busy time of year, doing
lots of travelling, giving seminars on tree planting and gardening, etc.
Please pray that we have safety on the roads, that bandit activity is not a
threat and for good health while we are in many small villages.

Culinary delights?

Darren suggested I write about the interesting culinary delights of the past
week so you all know that we are 'real missionaries' in a strange land.
Custom has it here that everyday at 10:00 is break time. Because of Roy's
big, soft heart, he agreed to provide coffee, tea and 'donuts' for all the
agroforestery staff everyday. This was great and we were all happy until we
had this great brainstorm that maybe if we order food from a local
restaurant it would be less expensive each day. Ends up it isn't! However,
for the equivalent of $3 each day, we are provided with 6 balls of gozo (the
local starch made from manioc which isn't at all nutritious but extremely
filling) and a bowl of meat and sauce that sometimes has greens in it. The
local restaurants are nothing more than a few local women who serve food to
the public in front of their houses, thus, a restaurant. We started by
ordering from a different restaurant each week until we decided on the best
one and she comes with her food everyday at 10:00. It happens that our cook
is Nadege, Clarisse's younger sister and my Gbaya teacher. Her food is
really good but in the last week beef must have been hard to come by or bush
meat is preferred, as we have been served gorilla, monkey and wild pig all
in the same week. I didn't try any of the above, and especially objected to
the gorilla and monkey. If it is an animal that women aren't supposed to
eat according to local custom (like gorilla, sorry, it is for the men only)
she always sends a small plate of beef and sauce for the women and for our
one Muslim employee. Muslims here don't eat anything with top teeth,
including pig and forest rat. We had the pleasure of eating forest rat the
other day after the women I had hired to work in the nutrition garden killed
two while cutting down brush. It was quite tender and not as bad as it
sounds. Darren partook of the monkey and forest pig as well as lele (forest
rat) and found them all to be quite ordinary tasting. I may be a
missionary, I may speak sango, know how to plant gozo, and wear traditional
clothes, but I am a North American and I don't think I will ever want to eat
a bowl full of monkey.

I also learned today that eating dog is quite a delicacy around here, if you
are a man. They are also forbidden for women to eat. I also learned that
if you eat cat and then subsequently find yourself in a bad traffic
accident, you will be the only one to walk away without a scratch, because
you ate cat of course! Guess I best keep a close eye on Coco, our dog,
right now. This is the time of year for cooking up dogs as people have big
work parties in their gardens and as payment they cook food for all that
comes. The favourite item on the menu for these work parties is dog. One
more reason to bring Coco home with us.

We are well despite the things we eat, though I have a wicked cough from
what I think is a bacterial infection of some kind. Don't worry though, I
am drinking all kinds of concoctions from local herbs and bark to get rid of
it (just kidding, I am on antibiotics instead). If the antibiotics don't
work I will resort to the potions from the medicine man. I hear he is very
good. Things are progressing well and the rains have started so we and
everyone around us here are busy planting gardens.
Till next time, Angela

The Chief's Son Returns

I am writing with gladness and sadness all mixed into one, as life tends to
go here. While death is a thing of daily life here, being so close to the
hospital, and bandits and disorder are no longer news to us but part of life
here, we are happy to report on some good things in the midst of it. As you
may or may not know, New Year's day the eldest son of the local Fulani chief
was taken captive by bandits and held ransom for 10 million CFA (20,000
USD). Initially we were told that if the ransom was not paid in three days
he would be killed. It ends up that the bandits had a little more patience
than that and after a 2 and half month ordeal, he was released by the
bandits this past Saturday. It is through much prayer by many people around
the world that his life has been spared. The family had only been able to
pay 5 million CFA (about 10,000 US) through the sale of cows both in CAR and
Cameroon. He has been held out in the bush for the last two and half months
with only the clothes he was taken captive in and a straw mat for shelter.
His legs were held in chains and he was given only small amounts of food as
there were leftovers. This past Saturday there was a lot of discussion
amongst the bandits as to what to do with him. They told him that since his
family didn't love him enough to pay the full ransom that they should just
kill him but the captain said they should just set him free. Eventually
they agreed just to set him free and he made it back to Gamboula on Sunday
to the great relief of his family and of the missionary community. In
Fulani culture, the first born son of the first wife becomes the new chief
of the clan when the father dies and as the chief is nearing death it was
very important to have the son back. They are all thanking and praising God
for the son's return.

In other news, our turbine has finally been fixed and we now have power and
water back at our houses. It is amazing how much more complicated life is
without running water. And, while the Eastern half of Africa is suffering
in a drought we are having a remarkably wet dry season. As I type I feel
like I am back in Victoria as it has been raining off and on all morning
just as it would be at home in the spring. We thank-you each one for your
prayers regarding the chief's son and regarding our work here. We are very
busy as this is the time of year for travelling around giving seminars on
agroforestery, grafting, banana production and gardening. I also just
finished writing a seminar guide book in Sango which was a fun challenge.