"Oh, What A Night"

WOW! It was a doozy of a storm! 

Last night, just before midnight, the rain began. To say it was raining was like saying the Grand Canyon is a nice valley. Just when it seemed that the rain could not get any heavier...that no way could the air hold any more water droplets! and then the rain would ratchet up another notch! Within minutes, the ground surrounding our house was flooded.

Soon after the precipitation started, the lightening/thunder show began. We were at the epicenter last night, with several booms hitting at the same time as the flash. Lightening lit up the sky continually for an hour, often within seconds of the last bolt. It was wild. Now if you are a person who was raised in the Midwest U.S., this storm may have been "normal" for you; but for us native Californians, it was crazy. I am getting braver about the storms (the choice was get used to it or go totally insane!), but this storm was in the "Top Ten Storms That Can Freak You Out".

At one point, the main generator cut out and the whole village went dark. (Well, as dark as it gets with lightening bursting all around. It was like a crazy black light show!)  The generator is wired to a GFI. For those of you who are not technologically in the know, that means Ground Fault Interrupters. I personally have had this explained to me several times, and still do not understand! But apparently, last night there was a lightening strike close enough somewhere to cause the switch in the generator to know that for it's very survival, it had better shut down NOW or be fried.

One of us bravely ventured out into the wet, saturating night to re-start the generator in order to restore power to the security lights while the other one of us stayed inside, nice and dry (one of the perks of being technologically ignorant!) The storm raged overhead for an hour before slowly moving to the west. What a night!

I asked the children at breakfast this morning if the storm was scary. Most of them slept right through it! Lucky kids.

Wishing you a pleasant, dry day, with no interruptions to your "current" (electricity).
Love, Babs

A Sunday's Drive

Because of Liberia's close ties with the United States, many buildings and areas are named straight out of U.S. history books. A county is named Maryland. A town is named Hartford. The public medical facility is "J.F.K. Hospital."  Monrovia itself is named after president James Monroe. So Sunday, driving through the New Georgia area to get to Louisiana Baptist Church did not seem odd.

(A beautiful mansion in it's day)

We were checking a reference for a possible new hire at the village. In the process of finding this lady's home church, we discovered territory that we had not previously driven. We only got lost twice. Pretty good for us!

As we drove along the unpaved road, we asked people for directions. We were told to "continue on" and "just axe further down" and that we would see "the bulletin by the road."  We balked at crossing a bridge, but a gentleman declared "the bridge-o fine." As we got to an intersection in the the road, and had to make a decision of left or right, we were advised to "go down"  and later were told to "bend here." And we understood all these directions!  Our Liberian English skills are improving!

(This bridge has not been retro-fitted for anything!)

Forty five minutes from the main road, after dodging pot holes, creeping across two bridges, and sliding through several streams, we found the church on the top of a hill. What a lovely place for a church! We enjoyed worship with this small congregation who so warmly received us into their midst. How wonderful that our common faith transcends language and culture and skin color and hand-clapping abilities! (We still have none!)

(All dressed up for church)

It was a joy to worship our great God with newly found friends at the end of a muddy road.

Dave & Babs

A Hard Life

A Liberian cemetary

We met an older gentleman who was recovering from stomach flu. He went on and on in great detail, about how he had "the diarrhea" and how he was dehydrated and it lasted more than a week, but now he was better and gaining his strength back a little each day. "Thank the Lord" he said. It seemed like an odd conversation to us, with someone we hardly knew, but he was very pleased to have survived this bout with stomach flu and wanted to share this fact with us.

We all know people who are overly "in tune" with their bodies. Every ache and pain is a big deal that they seem to enjoy sharing with anyone who will listen. Upon our arrival to Liberia, I at first thought that this place was full of these types. Not so. Every illness, infection, accident, has the potential of being life-threatening. And Liberians are painfully aware of this fact. When they are recovering from some ailment, they freely praise God for healing. When employees return after an illness and we ask, "How are you doing?", they usually answer, "I am better; praise God!"  or they will say, "Trying small; praise God."  "Trying small", in this context, would mean they are slowly getting better. 

One of our employees had a baby recently, and she called Babs within hours of the event and said, "Mother, I have given birth and I am OK!" (The nationals call Babs "Mother.") In a country where the maternal death rate in childbirth is one of the highest in the world, it is an accomplishment to give birth and be well. She was happy to have had a baby and to be alive.

Last month, one of our maintenance men took a day off to bury his brother in law. The brother in law had a fever, and hailed a taxi to go to the clinic for treatment. In route, the taxi rolled over, killing him. He was thirty five years old.The next day, another employee had a niece die from unknown causes. Her niece was thirty four years old. Two days later, one of our mother's had an older sister pass away. She was in her fifties, "a good age." And then another employee lost a ten year old nephew from unknown causes, and a cook buried an uncle who died from malaria complications. It was a rough month.

Yesterday, we were reminded again how hard life is here in Liberia. I had to go into town. Going into Monrovia is not an activity I enjoy. It is much work! But I could put this chore off no longer. We were out of some essentials in the kitchen. At 8 a.m. I was out the gate, dodging pot holes filled with water from the overnight rain. About a mile from the highway, ten young guys flagged me down by standing in the roadway. The spokesman of the bunch said that they needed help getting their friend to the hospital. One of their cohorts was being transported in a wheel barrow. I was informed that he had been "chopped" in the head and was not doing well. Would I transport him to the clinic? Sure enough, this young man had taken a "chop" with a machete, right in the middle of the face. Being the gracious Samaritan that I am, I said, "You can put him in the back seat. Keep him from bleeding on the upholstery," and off we went. This young man did not need a clinic; what he needed was a trauma center and a neurosurgeon, but today the local hospital would have to do. His buddies informed me that everyone had been robbed in the area where they worked, and a neighbor thought this guy was the thief, so he chopped him.  When we arrived at the hospital some 30 minutes later, the victim was alive but not responsive. If he lives, his life will never be the same.

 

This is how it is here. If you get sick and have "the diarrhea" and you put off the visit to the hospital too long because you know the visit will use up all the money you possess, you die. If you deliver a baby and everything does not go well, you most likely will die. If you get into an altercation with a hot headed neighbor and you do not have friends that will run the neighbor off and load you in a wheel barrow and stand in front of a white man's car, you will die. 

So, when I ask that question, "How ya' doing today", and they answer, "Doing well, praise God", they are not answering flippantly. They are quite serious! They are alive today, by the grace of God.

 

 Dave

More Expressive Cab Drivers...

Road Hazard Ahead!

On any given day, one can come upon some driving situations that are far removed from anything we have experienced in the California Central Valley. 
Here are some traffic hazards we have encountered recently here in Liberia:

---How many guys can stand on the back bumper of a Toyota pick-up?

---Nothing like a parade to cheer up your day!  It was not even a holiday! You gotta love a country that can muster up a parade on a regular weekday.

---We were hoping this fella did not have to go far with his load of poles.

---Miles of mud, lots of jungle, and no cell service!  Sounds like the beginning of a horror movie to me!

---Home Depot delivers!

"Let us go to the house of the Lord" Psalm 122:1

Today is Sunday morning and Babs and I are "on duty" this weekend. This means that we will stay on site while the other staff and children leave to attend church. It becomes a ghost town around here shortly after breakfast as all the children are old enough to now attend church with their mothers. So this morning, everyone is gone...well, all except Obadiah. He has had malaria since Tuesday. Malaria is not that common with the Rafiki children since they are in cottages with screened windows and they sleep under mosquito nets. Last year we had one confirmed case of malaria with the children and it was about this time of the year.

 

Every morning, two year old Obadiah has been saying to his mother and the medical manager (Babs) that he is all better as he laid listless and feverish on his bed. The closer we got to the weekend, the more he tried to convince them that he was all better and that he would be going to church. These kids love going to church!

 

The "outing" of attending church takes an effort. At breakfast, they are all be dressed in their Sunday best. By 8am or 8:30am they leave through the front gate. They walk a mile down a muddy road to the the "junction" where they hail a cab. This morning it is raining. I think it rains every Sunday morning.  Hailing a taxi is a process, as there are more people than cabs to transport them into the Monrovia area. It is not uncommon to see adults verbally fighting over who will get the empty seat when someone gets out of a taxi. Our mothers and children have an advantage because they can fill the whole cab and pay for each person riding. More children can fit into the cab than adults; a lighter load too. Taxi drivers like that!

 

Church lasts for about two hours. Some of the churches have Sunday school for the children; but some do not or it is sporatic because they have a hard time getting people to lead Sunday school. After church, it is back to the street to find a cab to get back to the village.  

 

This whole process of going to church can take hours to accomplish. Somewhere in this process the children and mommas eat their sack lunch that they took with them. Any time between two and five o'clock the four families will come walking back through the gate. We have voiced our concerns to the mothers about walking out into the mud when it is pouring rain. The mothers replied, "This is Liberia; it will rain. The children need to go to church". What a good attitude!

 So, this morning everyone is at church except Obadiah and the auntie who is with him. He is bummed. He is feeling better, and has been without fever for twenty four hours. The duty personnel are thinking that they may show Obadiah a video when the power comes on at noon. It will be our secret; hah! like it is possible to have a secret in the village! But I don't think we have to worry about the children faking malaria to stay home from church to see a video. Going to church is too big an adventure!

 

Hope you enjoy going to church this Sunday!

Dave  

Sweet Dreams

There's a scene in the movie "The Sound of Music", where Maria looked at the Von Trapp children in their stiff uniforms, and asked if they had play clothes. No, she was told, the children had uniforms!
Later, Maria eyed some curtains slated for replacement, and then in the next scene, all the children are wearing new play clothes made out of old drapery fabric. Good recycling, right?

We had our own recycling program here. Every child needed new pajamas. For one week, we were blessed with a clever, gifted seamstress from the States. She took an overabundance of crib sheets, and operated her own little sweatshop out of a vacant home here at the village.

Voila! Nine sets of boys' pajamas, and nine nightgowns for the girls! All out of crib sheets! The woman is a genius! Plus, she also made seven dresses and two skirts: a new Sunday outfit for each girl! The dresses are not made out of crib sheets, but fun African prints. The girls felt very pretty going to church this past Sunday.

Don't you love how God gives different abilities to His people, and then uses them so creatively?
Babs

P.S. In the pictures, the children have had their evening baths, and several of them have baby powder rubbed all over. That is the "white" on their necks and chest.