Village Stay

I have a new found appreciation for village life and what "developing world" means concretely, as well as a bigger picture of the church. I returned today from a week stay with a pastor and his family in a rural, millet agriculture based village a couple hours from the capital city. Honestly, it was harder on me than I imagined partly because my expectations did not meet reality, partly because of limited communication, and partly because of a loss of control over my environment. The objective of my stay was cultural and language learning and to look for opportunities for me to serve the churches in the region. In many ways a week sufficed to evaluate where I stood in my cultural learning and learn areas I can pursue to aid the churches. The hardest part for me was the lack of activity and slowness of life, and the highlights were playing whiffle ball with the pastor's daughters, finally being able to pronounce the "ƭ" sound in their mother tongue, cooking fish and rice over an open fire, and learning that they would be interested in having me help with micro-economic training.

Right now we are in the rainy season and I expected everyone to be working in the fields from sun up to sun down with a break in the afternoon, but I was wrong. Generally, it is the men (in the village I stayed in) who cultivate the millet, peanuts, and beans, and the women who grow the rice, but right now they are not working in their fields all day long but waiting for the harvest to ripen. Some of the morning and late afternoon the men spent in the fields and tending to the larger animals, but quite a bit of time was spent sitting under a tree passing the time amongst each other. You find people sitting around in the city but it is more magnified in the countryside. A typical day for the women consisted of rising as the sun came up (around 7 am), sweeping the house and yard and preparing for breakfast. Each morning I ate cere (millet couscous) with either water or milk (they bought the milk especially for me) and sometimes fish. After breakfast the women would look after the children, visit a neighbor, or go to grind their millet into flour. By mid morning they began to prepare lunch, usually a rice and fish meal with some vegetables. The preparation and cooking took some time and the lunch was served around 2 p.m.. After lunch one of the men would make attaya tea (green tea served in three rounds) while events of the day were discussed stretched out on a mat under a shaded tree. The women and young girls would play a dice game, take a nap or braid each other's hair. As the day began to cool off the men would go back to tending the animals or the field, and the women would pound millet, fetch water from the well, or perform other house work and then begin preparations for dinner. As it was getting dark the men would bring in the the animals and everyone would get cleaned up for the evening. Each night we watched the news (powered by solar energy), ate a dinner of cere, and sat outside looking at the stars before heading to bed. On Thursday night we had a time of prayer for the national church and mission and on Saturday night we had a Bible study using the shorter catechism. Although I did not understand what was being said I was able to witness the family's love for God and pursuit to know Him more. The trade language I have been studying is not their maternal language and I understood 5-10% of the verbal communication during my stay. I came back early due to sinus and allergy problems but plan to go back for another stay in the future.