Samba and Sas

Unpacking and repacking has been a theme of mine the past few weeks and will continue. I just returned this afternoon from a village where I met a girl name Samba Anis who is seventeen years old and has had an infection on her leg for the past two years and because of this can no longer attend school. The pastor who I was staying with wanted me to visit her so I could take a picture of her wound---they said it looked better today because she had cleaned it but yesterday puss streamed out when she unwrapped her skirt. Three main sores which look like holes to me are scattered around her upper leg. I took the pictures and then we prayed for her healing. She has refused to see a Muslim Marabout and perform sacrifices to spirits, but has not yet been taken to the hospital for treatment. It hard to image sores like this go untreated for so long when you are used to going to the doctor for minor ills if they last more than a couple of days much less a couple of years.

I went out on Thursday to start a learning conversation group with a village 2 km from the pastor's house. We started with a lesson on household budgets and examining the income and expenses of their community. We had the session under a neem tree beside a group of huts and a tree where villagers perform sacrifices and offerings to spirits. As we discussed the expenses, we brought up the ones that may need to be cut back such as appeasing spirits. For every phrase I said the pastor spoke for five minutes explaining the concept into Seereer. He told animated stories to explain ideas and it was a beautiful picture of a Western learning tool adapted to a village context. Hopeful these learning conversations will continue to be a great way for the pastor and the village to better understand their financial limits and constraints and discover ways to improve them.