Sue in Africa

The V family in Kaffrine hosted me for a couple of short days and incorporated me into their village outreach. I am particularly thankful for their willingness to enter into intense conversations with me about storying, mistakes and successes, staying for the long haul, and creative ministry in a dry and harsh land. I found myself weeping as I understood more deeply what it means to put in long years with little evidence of fruit in the sense of converts. Is it possible, I questioned, that their lifetime may be spent in this way with the possibility that the harvest may come after they part? Yet they are willing to continue boldly and in much grace. At present, it’s my impression that they have plowed much ground and planted much seed in patience. Many know more that they let on in this Muslim land. I accompanied them in two sessions of Bible stories (spiritual lessons) and practical health lessons in a local village where it’s obvious that they are much loved. Local women listened closely and asked good questions. Leaving, I asked, “where are the men?” I was astonished to learn that nearly all men had left the village in recent times due to lost crops and potential of famine. They are looking for work in other places, and sometimes avoiding the outcome of their suffering families. Profoundly difficult to grasp.

1.21.08  It takes a village… to pound the millet. Millet is a staple in this region, a grain used to feed families for generations. Whole grain is small, seed-like, and yellow/red-brown. Pounded, the hull is broken and becomes a nutritious cereal used with rice. Milled, it is a flour and made into a porridge served regularly in households throughout West Africa.
     Taking a walk before sunset out into the bush, beyond the edges of the village we found cow paths in the dry peanut stubble in sandy soil leading in various directions. Eventually, we heard a working engine and found a large group of villagers coming to the end of the day’s hard work. A village-owned tractor was running an attached millet processor. Large stalks of millet which had been drying in storage for months were brought out into the bush by multiple charets (horse-drawn flatbed carts). Together they lifted the bundles, bound by handmade rope from the baobob tree, into the thresher. Various groups of women in twos and threes were pounding the millet in large wood vats (mortar and pestle style). Others were sifting the chaff, pouring it slowly in the light breeze. Young boys carried away plastic tubs on their heads full of the milled flour, winding along sandy paths to their waiting thatched roof huts or cement block compounds. From a distance, a cloud of dust and chaff could be seen hanging over the still-working teams of men, women, and children.
     It was a beautiful scene at the end of the day that told many stories of communal dependence – depending on one another for work and for sustenance. Individualism cannot survive here. This year’s peanut crop nearly failed for lack of good rain. The millet crop has been scarce for the same reason. Now, they are using up their precious stores of grain. Before the next harvest, local resources will be severely stretched. This was a precious moment to me, knowing this village’s willingness to share with one another in abundance and need. What a biblical example, seen in the context of Muslim village culture.