Life in Africa....

February 9

Life in a remote West African town is part community, part care-free living, and part chaos. Everything and everyone spills over to the next-door neighbor. Pigs, goats, and dogs roam free. Small children, too. Sometimes rugged wooden stakes mark property boundaries, but more often it is a pile of dirt or unoccupied patch of weeds. There are no code enforcement officers here. In a way, this place reminds me of life in the college dorms. Come and go as you please, our doors are always open.

I'm enjoying life in Africa. I guess if I had to eek out a living here – chores in the early morning, a job at the market or school during the day, and pumping water from the well every few hours (might as well be pumping iron) – I would have a better appreciation of what it means to be an African. But I am a white man -- a “Blanco” as the neighborhood kids constantly remind me. I am living life easy at the missionary house. In this house, the breeze from the sea-fed river that abutts our front yard gently flows through the window screens. The view is fantastic. Sometimes, as I walk around the house in sandals and look out at the sun-lit river, I have to remind myself that I am not in a vacation house somewhere in America. Many of my days are filled with Siestas, reading, reflection, and just chatting or goofing off with the locals. Yesterday I went swimming with a guy my age. He complained about the cold water. The river is as warm as the oceans off a San Diego beach. Other days, however, are activity-packed and filled with hours-long meetings. Either way, I am living the white man's version of the African life. And for that reason, I am sometimes confronted with a sense of uselessness.

The irony is that the pastor and his wife who are working closely with FLAME make lunch and dinner for us and the rest of the many people they feed almost every day. We plan to reimburse them for the cost of the food, but still – it is an odd situation. No matter how much we insist that we have enough food stockpiled already, they continue bring over plates of fried fish, pans of rice and pots of soup. The food – especially the fish -- is fresh and delicious. Salmon in Seattle has nothing on the catches in Canchungo.

But I know that my time here, in fact, serves many purposes. This, my first time in Africa, is a personal education. I am learning much about this part of the world: its needs, its culture and its lessons for Americans. I am also Tom's teammate. An encouragement more than a responsibility, I hope. I am learning about FLAME and its work here. I plan to spread the word when I get back to the states.

The community life here is inspiring. Lately, I've been intentionally spending more time at a gazebo-like structure outside the pastor's house. There the pastor's family and some locals spend their afternoons and evenings hanging out. Meals are held there. Dinners in Africa are much different than America. There are no tables. Instead, everyone walks into the gazebo and two or three people gather around each communal bowl of food. Then they dig in. The dogs lick up the scraps. Any leftovers are swept up on the cement floor afterward. Sometimes we play on a guitar. Other times we just talk. When dusk settles, the night sky is spectacular.

Yet, for some reason, some of the Africans believe their country is not “bonintu” -- beautiful. Waniwu, a young man, told me yesterday, “Everywhere else in the world is beautiful, but not Africa.” Sitting in the gazebo, I opened my laptop and pointed to a photo. I had set it as my computer's desktop background. The picture was taken less than an hour after I woke up from my first night's stay in Canchungo. As the early-morning sun rose over the horizon, its reflection shimmering off the river, a lone fisherman in his canoe was silhouetted against the purple-hued water. The blue river and dawn's red glow mixed together. “That is bonitu,” I told Waniwu.

As I was writing this, I walked out of my house to the gazebo. There, about 50 neighborhood kids and teenagers had crammed into it to watch a Christian film. I'm not quite sure what it's about, though it looks like a cheap Spanish soap opera. A few days ago I spoke at the pastor's church to many of the teenagers and kids that are here now. Many of them greet me with smiling faces and yell out my name in their African accent: “Chrees!”

It's 9 p.m. now and probably 65 degrees outside. A perfect evening. Like the one before, and the one before that. Every once in a while I have to stop and re-orientate myself. Here I am in Africa, it's pretty amazing. I've seen things I've never thought I would see. Like a bunch of African kids watching a movie under a gazebo at night. Like the Grade F meat market I saw yesterday with flies everywhere and stray dogs trying to sneak in through the back door. Like a goat climbing a 7-foot-tall termite mound. What a bizarre country.