What a treat to have my parents come and visit us in Niger. The kids just loved seeing Grandma and Grandpa and were well treated to constant love and game playing as well as lots of goodies from Oz. I was so impressed and encouraged at how mum and dad embraced our local friends here and even were game to eat at our local restaurant! Africans love visits, and seemed just as encouraged as we were by mum and dad being in the country with us. Constant translation was good practice for me too! Here are a few happy snaps... including a trip to see the endangered West African giraffes. I watched my son chasing the baby giraffes around in the wild open air, only a few meters behind and just unable to catch them, and I thought, oh my goodness, who gets to chase giraffes in the wild? Seems like a dream. What a gift. Amazing God.
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A dear friend I used to teach with asked what a day in the life of Andy looks like. It is a far stretch from my art teaching days… The kids usually drag me out of bed at 7am, my room around 30 degrees throughout the night. They’ve already had a run around outside saying goodbye to our night guard for the day and playing with the kittens from our stray cat’s 2nd litter, but they decide I should be up even though I’d dearly love a sleep in. It’s not rare to wake up to immediate discipline. The kids are awesome but they are extremely adventurous and the list of ‘naughty’ things they get up to even before 7am grows. For example, digging up the paving of the path in our yard, setting off the car alarm, chasing the guard down the street in their undies as they say goodbye to him. Recently I intercepted Hunter with a shovel on his way to dig up the dead kittens because he ‘wanted to know what they looked like.’ These are my kids (who I do love) and they are the reason I wake up feeling behind every morning of my life!!! Between the four of us we eat toast and porridge for breakfast. I made the bread for the toast a day or two before. The flour I made the bread with began as grain we bought from the market that we’ve taken to get milled. The whole picture of food preparation here takes, I reckon, at least four times longer than the time I spent in Australia, and therefore a large portion of my day… there is now a midday meal as well as evening meal to prepare for the whole family, and minimal options for eating out/take away. For example, my shopping includes at least two supermarkets crowded with beggars and salesmen targeting the rich man, as well as one or two fruit and veg stalls, and I still return home without half of my list because there is no consistency to what is kept in stock and all fresh food is seasonal. If its not holidays, I pack the kids some food and take them to their French preschool in the car across the bridge. I share the road with cows, camels, donkeys and carts, boys pushing cards, no road rules and a bunch of crazy car and motorbike drivers. If I don’t need to be in town for something I come home to either a language lesson, language homework, quiet time or housework alongside my househelp who comes and sweeps and mops the house for me twice a week. All rooms are tiled with no carpet or rugs and there is constantly dust and sand coming in from outside via windows or feet. With the kids on holidays time for study or quiet is hard to come by. So I might go for a walk with the kids or visit a friend with the kids or meet at one of the two playgrounds available to us in town. I have a couple of local friends (one muslim, one Christian) I visit and a couple of missionary friends. I operate in French throughout the day unless I’m seeing a missionary friend. We also have a bunch of friends who run various boutiques behind our home and I will sit and chat with them as I get fruit from one, oil and sugar from another. There are many stares at why on earth there is a white person sitting with the Africans. The kids of our closest friends here come and play at our house every other afternoon for a few hours as well. In the background there are 5 calls to prayer each day from many surrounding mosques. Since we live next to the hospital and morgue there is a constant flow of motorbikes escorting their dead to their burial site. Each time I think I am hearing a bikey gang it is actually the sound of the parade of death, a constant reminder of the need for Jesus here. In the evenings Brad often goes to sit with his friends to chat for the evening, and it is through these relationships that opportunities arise to show love in different ways. Other evenings we gather to pray with other missionaries, or sit with our guard and give him a meal, or chat and pray together the two of us. Life is a much slower pace. There are still lots of headaches and migraines that make me ever thankful for my amazing husband who is so good at caring for the kids and cooking or whatever is needed while I try to recover. But it always slows me down and emphasises the feelings of ‘catching up’ everyday!
In my mind I have so many ideals about the way my life looks here, but as you can see, it’s not all straight forward. Sometimes its quite mundane, but there are highlights that arise which I try and share about in other blogs. There are also lots of random cultural moments that chime in unexpectedly… finding people asleep on our porch, street kids fighting over who gets the bigger bag of locusts, my househelp in the yard hosing her baby off after it pooped, Belle coming out with full French sentences like 'where are the mangoes' to the fruit man… We are trying to be obedient with what God puts in front of us, and we continue to seek what it looks like for us to share his truth here. We live beside a public hospital. There are always many people strewn about under trees out the front, waiting for family inside. The morgue is also attached to the hospital. The average life expectancy here is 57 years compared to Australia’s 83+.
If you are sick here you need to purchase the medicine you will be administered before it will be given. You need to pay up front for any tests or even to be seen by the doctor before it happens. No money, no doctor (or any medical care). Lots of people are just waiting because they don’t have the money to see a doctor. They have come in from out of town, have phoned family and are waiting, hoping that someone will arrive having sold something to raise the money needed. It seems that for many, no one ever comes. The old ute / pickup that is used to transport the mat wrapped bodies, the day after death, to the grave site, are often not accompanied by a single mourner. Life here is difficult and can end with little fanfare. The first time I visited the hospital was to visit a man who’s brother has been there for a month. He was sleeping and very ill with heart trouble. I prayed for him and as soon as I did his eyes opened, although he couldn’t see. We all commented on his response. Yesterday I received a call from my friend, the man who sells us fruit. His 11 yo daughter was very ill, his wife was out of town at a wedding, could I come in the car and pick them up because she needed to go to hospital. When I arrived the girl was very sick. She had no strength. Her father carried her to the car and we drove to the hospital. We carried her in and took our place amongst the dozens of very sick people waiting to be seen. When we finally were seen we were sent to the paediatric area. There we found countless mothers trying to comfort very sick children. Some were limp. Others frantic with fever. There was one doctor. When I say hospital think of something from the 50’s. Everything tired and tiled, very dirty, stray cats, not one piece of modern equipment, empty vials and used needles, bandages and iv drips strewn everywhere. When we were seen to, it was decided they needed to test for meningitis and malaria because of the fever. My friend went to pay the bill. As I waited with the girl, the doctor motioned for me, amongst the other crying infants in the room to brace the girl because he was going to do a lumber punch. I knew what he was going to do because I had it done one in Australia. It was excruciatingly painful. It required cleanliness and precision, and yet here we were, in a crowded, dirty room, one doctor, and I, and he was about to stick a needle in her spine. The process was extremely distressing. After several minuets no fluid could be extracted. He pressed the same alcohol soaked swab that he used to clean her skin, onto the area to stop the bleeding. I continued to brace a feverish, and extremely distressed girl, a strange white man that she had met once, as she called over and over for her mother. I prayed over the next hour for her that the fever would go. I prayed every way I knew. I prayed until I was emotionally spent. There was nothing else I could do. Finally after many hours we were told that she had serious malaria. Reluctantly my friend asked if I had any money. The medicine was expensive. As much profit as he might see in several weeks from his business. I gave him what he needed and the medicine was administered. Many hours had passed. I was tired, hungry and thirsty, but how must he and his daughter be? I was upset that night. Why had God not responded to my prayer? What could I do to help the mass of sick people? Why had God brought me here if not to bring his presence and change at a time such as this? The next morning I went to see my friend. He told me that the fever had lifted. We went and visited his daughter. Her mother had returned and was by her side. His daughter was week but the fever was gone. She just wanted to sleep. When we returned to the street we met our other Muslim friend who had come looking for us. He chastised us for taking a shortcut through the morgue, much to the amusement of the friend I was with. As we sat and talked the second friend spoke up in English. He said “we can see you are a man of God, you gave when there was nothing in it for you in return. You care for people who you hardly know. Only someone who truly knows God would do that. We thank you.” It was a humbling statement and one I wasn’t expecting. We found out that the old man I prayed for first has anaemia because he has been taking traditional medicines to reduce his blood to help with his heart problems. Sounds logical. His son asked if anyone was willing to donate blood. I agreed along with my friend, and both the son and Brother were amazed. The donor centre was clean and not very old. I don’t think they had seen too many Australians before because after repeatedly stating that I was Australian, the bemused clerk wrote ‘Angletare’ (English) on the paper. We pray that the blood will be seen as an act of love and that this small gift which cost me little will me received and attributed to a loving God one hundred fold. I still struggle with the last couple of days events. I still find it difficult to know that every day hundreds of people come to that hospital, many leaving no better than when they arrived. Many leaving in a matt in the back of ute. Certainly almost all leaving not knowing that there is a God who loves them, no matter what the outcome of their illness. The small gift is to know that people see when you love them. They see the difference from the world around them. The profound thing is that even though my friends don’t believe that God is love, when you love, they attribute it to knowing God! May our God of love, continue to reveal Himself to those around us. Even though we are weak. He is strong. May His love spread through this land like a wildfire. |
AuthorWe are Brad, Andy, Hunter and Belle. Hoping to keep you connected! Archives
May 2019
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