A Cookin’ and A Cleanin’
Cooking and cleaning in a missionary home is quite an experience. They run a tight ship here! Each couple has a cook day. More couples, more cook days.The meal is served at noon (12:30ish) and then the cleaning takes place around the cooking and some in the afternoon. The meal is no small task. Since we are visiting there are 6 for the meal. It takes on the proportions of a “company meal”every week. They cook for 8 (12 while we are here). That is so that aside from the major meal, each couple will have a meal of leftovers. It is very hot because there is no A/C in the kitchen. “If you can’t stand the heat”. . . doesn’t cut it here! The week starts with shopping on Monday. They make sure the home is stocked with necessary staples and the needs for the weeks’ cook day. The meat and grocery items are bought at a modern grocery store and the fruits and veggies they get from a colorful stand on the street. Pineapples, papaya, mangos, passion fruit – A February treat for a Canadian! The cooking starts first thing in the morning while the clothes are washing and drying. While we are here the girls do the cooking and the guys do the cleaning. Each couple takes care of cleaning their own space, and each week a they are assigned a different part of the common space. This is all detailed on a chart on the fridge Continue Reading →
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In the Heat of the Night
After a couple of long, hot service days we were looking forward to a nice night, sleeping in and regathering strength. We were all invited to John & Mandy’s room to play dice last night. We had a good time and then crawled off to our nice cool room and collapsed in sleep. About 1 or 2 in the morning I woke up a bit warm. I thought Leslie had turned off the air-conditioner, a bit funny, but …. maybe she found it too cool. I woke up again, bathed in sweat, sweltering hot. Too bad for her! I’m turning it back on. Click. … click, click. …. click. Then I notice that it is pitch black. Not a light anywhere. The power is off. It turns out that Leslie had thought that I had turned the AC off, until figured out the same thing. “Our power is off.” she mumbled. Half-asleep, I said “Our bottle-gourd plant died.” We tossed and turned all night. Showers of water (almost cool, but as cold as we could make it) helped in the morning … for about five minutes. We were very glad when, about 9:00 am the power came back on. We made mad dashes to turn on all the AC units and planted ourselves in front of them for a bit. I don’t know if I would have survived two weeks here without the AC at night!
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Where’s the Beef (been)?
Another hot, humid day. Serious sweat going on. And Marvin kept me going until 7:30 tonight! I finally got a chance to start a study! We only did 3 doors this morning before heading off to studies. The last door I tried. Two woman answered the door in spite of the fact that I woke them up and they weren’t dressed. When I said we were sharing a thought from the Bible, they went and got dressed and had us in. They got each one their Bibles and were ready to chat. I did an introduction and then got into the “Would you like to know the truth?” tract. They read the paragraphs and the verses from their Bibles. A very nice call. Marvin & Penny will have to fit it into their schedule somehow. We have had quite a variety of calls. I have been with Marvin on a study where we sat in a a courtyard of a nice house and had a servant bring us pineapple. Today we studied with a man living in a ‘squatters’ hut, sitting on a very low stool. Basically, this is a very small one room shack with a tin roof. There is a line of these side by side with all the people sitting outside. You have only a curtain for a door so there is no privacy. We sat in the sweltering heat, inside, with one dim light bulb to give us light. The whole room is maybe 6′ X Continue Reading →
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A Long, Hot Day
Another big service day! Up at 6:00 am, breakfast at 6:30, text & Bible reading at 7:00. Out the door at 8:00. Home for lunch & siesta at 1:00 pm out the door again by 3:00. Finally home for showers and supper at 7:00. Quite the day! We are seeing more of what the territory is really like now. The first couple of days we were in a more ‘favored’ area, but now we have seen some of the poorer ones. Some that don’t even have locks … nothing to steal! We had our service arrangement in the open market today. To the tune of wild music in the background, we divided up into groups and said our prayer. Today Marvin and I did 8 calls in the door to door work and then 2 studies in the morning and 3 studies in the afternoon / evening. Lots of door to door, eh? We were in less favorable territory for the door to door work. I tried a couple of calls but got pretty much the same reaction we get at home. sigh. Marvin had one good call there. As to the studies …. gold! We had a second study with Ange (if that doesn’t ring a bell, go back a read the rest of the blogs!). He didn’t come to the meeting last night, but he was very apologetic. He just forgot what day it was. We were about 10 minutes late for his study today and he was Continue Reading →
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Safety First!
We, in Canada – especially in smaller areas, take safety for granted. We lock our doors – if we remember – and occasionally pay attention to a “boil water” notice on the radio. No big deal. In the cities we pay attention a little more, perhaps not walking alone at night. Here safety is a big thing. Every dwelling is locked up tight. Almost every property has a wall around it for protection. When a new place is being built they will first build a wall around the property, otherwise their building materials will disappear before they can finish! Only the very, very poor have no locks, since they have nothing to steal. Many communities are “gated”, that is there is a gate to access the area and there is a guard (sometimes a couple of them) that open the gate for those who have business there. They carry clubs. Other guards roam about in the community. The missionary home we are staying in is in one of these. That is the first line of defense. The next line is the wall. The wall here has a door in the back and one in the front. In the front there is also an entrance for the car. The top of the wall is spiked to make climbing difficult. Although the home here does not have it, some walls also add broken glass or razor wire to the top. The gates all lock from inside so that they can only be Continue Reading →
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A less Manic Monday
Today we did some shopping in the morning and service in the afternoon. It was mostly the grocery run this morning, like last week, but we also made a trip to the Cocody market. This is where we were trying to pick up a few things for souvenirs etc. Wow! Its a scary event. The second they see white people coming everyone is calling out to you “come here, come see my things” “lower prices, best prices” “why aren’t you coming here” “what are you looking for? We have it?” And a thousand other things that I probably missed. There are no prices, of course. They will give you an extreme price and hope that you just pay it. As tourists we would think it wasn’t that expensive, but Penny knows better. We were very glad for her protection. She can haggle with the best of them! There is a huge disparity here between the rich and poor. Marvin & Penny’s territory seems to include a little of both (perhaps not extreme in either direction). The picture here is not in their territory but it shows the contrast. A beautiful building in the background and squatters huts in the foreground. Today we worked in the poorer area of town. So far we had been on the high end, so to speak. Today we got to see the other side. (actually, Leslie had been there before, but I had not) Still, the same basic attitude. People have a sense of spiritual Continue Reading →
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From feast to feast
And here we go again! Saturday was mostly a study day. Leslie and I had two Watchtower studies to do. One for this week and one to get ready for Monday night’s family study. Yikes! Then it was meeting time again. Remember the “Sunday” meeting here is Saturday at 5:00 pm. (Supper most nights is between 7:00 and 8:00 …. and I’m getting used to it!). We were both able to comment again and Marvin got me to say the closing prayer. I thought this wouldn’t be too bad as there were only about 40 or 50 people there when we started the meeting. Imagine my surprise when I got up to say the prayer and the place was almost full!! Probably about 100! I think some of them even understood my Anglo-Montrealais accent! After the meeting everyone heads outside and talks for some time until finally they drift gradually away home. It is a happy congregation (everyone must shake hands with everyone – both before and after the meeting. ) They sing loud and give generous commendation after the meeting (even for strange anglos that try to pray). After the meeting we were all invited to Serge & Elizabeth Seri’s for supper. They have 12 living under their roof, with only him working. They are very hospitable. They use to have the book study in their home and they still have service arrangements there. For our supper they set up a table outside, banished the children to the house Continue Reading →
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Being there
(NOTE: this is the second of three posts. Somehow it came up first. The order should be “The Really Fun Trip” “Being There” and “Water Blogged”. So we had arrived at Mammy Wata (http://www.mammywata.net/index.html to see more). What a great time we would have here. The setting was ideal. Marvin & Penny had prepared us for the worst as they had never been here. “We will stay one night and then see …”, “I hope there aren’t rats running in the ceiling, it keeps you awake”, “There may be a lot of mosquitoes, but we can sit under the mosquito net on the bed and play cards”. Best to be ready for the worst. All for naught. It is wonderful. Very few bugs (tons of ants, but they don’t count), only a couple of mosquitoes, and no rats (that we saw, anyway.) Tons of lizards, but we like lizards! Nestor and Aruna …. these are the ‘boys’ that looked after us. They are not boys (and we didn’t call them that), but they are the hired help that serve and look after the people that stay in the bungalows. Nestor is the prime ‘guy’ and Aruna helps him. They probably serve most people hand and foot most of the time. Penny told Nestor right off that we were not used to having servants and would probably not require their services very much. So they mostly disappeared. Of course, they were watching from a distance. We would finish a meal in Continue Reading →
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The Really Fun Trip (or a trip within a trip)
We’re back to Abidjan now. What a great 4 days we had! Let me try to fill it in …. We headed out Tuesday morning at 6:50 am (Ick!) in order to beat the traffic. Apparently we did, although I would have considered it deadly, back to back, kill or be killed traffic. (We heard today that after we left the traffic locked up good. Cheers for leaving early!) It took an hour to get out of the city and then another hour to get to our destination: Mammy Wata in Assinie Mafia (Google that one!) Along the way we went through other towns lined with little shops selling all manner of local goods, foods, crafts, furniture …. if it can be sold, its there! We will probably be back to the shops next week and will try to get some pictures. We went though areas where there are coconut groves and also “Palm nut” groves (you can see them here gathering that crop). Some of the areas are beautiful – others scream of poverty. The huts that the fisher folk live in are (by our standards) deplorable. All along the road (in city and elsewhere) you are constantly approached by people selling whatever they can find to sell. You can buy a phone card or toilet paper at your car window, making Ivory Coast the world’s biggest drive-through shopping center! We finally arrived where we would park the car and proceed by boat. We weren’t sure where exactly to Continue Reading →
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Water Blogged
“ The greatest fun I had was playing in the waves! Imagine going into the ocean in big waves and finding it refreshing instead of freezing! You actually don’t want to come out because you get too hot when you do. How’s that for a new experience? I have always loved waves, but it has been years since I have been anywhere that had good waves and I could stand the temperature. I think we did a bit in Musquodoboit Harbour, but really it has been since we were in the Magdalene Islands. Apparently most places here you can’t go in swimming like this. The undertow is too strong. We had to be careful here too, but we still could easily go in to our waist. In the morning the waves were quite calm, but in the afternoon they were savage! I was constantly being picked up and thrown down. Sand-burnt and scraped up knees …. and loving it! When will I ever get to this again! After our frolic in the rough waves in the afternoons, we would go over to the lagoon where the water is calm … like swimming in a lake. There the de-sanding could begin. Let me tell you, the sand goes everywhere …. and I do mean everywhere!
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