Fevers & Weavers

It's not every day that you come across a ewe giving birth, but it's hardly surprising when you live in a town where the livestock rules the streets. In this case of this sheep, it had been brought into town for help as the birth was problematic – she had mated with a sheep of a larger breed and as a result the lamb was too big to deliver. I thought sheep were all the same, but no, and now several people took turns at rummaging around in its innards before the lamb was finally extracted and the ewe could recover.  The whole operation drew me in with a fascination that I guess every ER telly-addict understands. Personally, I am intrigued by animal anatomy but far too squeamish for human biology. I only have to think about the red stuff and my head starts spinning – as demonstrated when I once fainted while waiting for my blood pressure to be taken.

Having a week in a Ouagadougou hospital at Steve's bedside was not what either of us had planned for this month. There is no time for sqeamishness when your husband is writhing around in pain from both typhoid and malaria. I hope, as he does, that he is never that ill again. Thank God, he is now making a remarkable recovery – the day after I sent out an urgent prayer appeal, he made a real turn for the better and has been getting better since. Thank you so much for your prayers.

In between leaping up at every potentially malaria-injecting mosquito and spending a luxurious amount of time on the internet and reading, I have been able to continue with my language studies even while we are away from Djibo. A former missionary in Burkina devised a brilliant language course, grammar study and Fulfulde-English dictionary so I have been working through these. It is incredible to have such a resource available. We are so blessed in many ways. As Steve pointed out – a Fulani out in the bush with typhoid and malaria would have no hope of receiving the treatment available to us. They would have to depend on God alone.

This month has been my first experience of Ramadan here in Burkina, although being in multi-faith Ouagadougou we have missed many of the side effects. Muslims are notoriously grumpy during the daytime, when religion requires that they neither eat, drink, or even swallow until sunset. Here in the city, the only noticeable evidences of it are the food and drink billboards advertising special offers for the festival. Fasting during the day is apparently made up for by feasting at night which makes it seem more do-able, although I am thankful not to have to go even an hour in this heat without water.

It will be good to get back to Djibo at the end of this week. I am mostly missing the children and the animals and I wonder how the ladies are getting along in the shop. I am looking forward to putting plans into action for the girls club and for the weaving project. While in Ouaga we've taken a look at the loom available to us – it's pretty big, as you can see from the picture. I'm not sure quite how we'll get it there but when we do it will be an exciting venture.

Umbrellas at the ready

Every Wednesday, hundreds of villagers, cattle and merchants descend upon Djibo for the weekly market. On one side of town the herders, cows, sheep and goats congregate in a huge iron-railed compound for the day's negotiations. Elsewhere, the streets are lined with piles of aluminium pots, plastic shoes and second-hand clothes for sale. These piles of jumble come courtesy of clothes banks in America and Europe and are the reason why Oumarou might be wearing an Oxford University t-shirt and his daughter a pink flowery outfit from Next. It's not very traditional but it's an affordable way to dress.

It's not just the fashion that has been affected by imports. Traditional crafts and skills such as weaving and leatherwork have all but died out with the onslaught of cheap Asian replacements.
There are a few local craftsmen here and there but even the ubiquitous African printed wax cloth is apparently of foreign origin. That's the sad state of things here but I had to laugh one market day when I found a group of children enjoying one of Asia's latest blessings; paper cocktail umbrellas. They hadn't the faintest idea what they were, but they kept them amused for a morning anyway.

The children here are a real source of delight but hard work when they are trampling through our gate from morning to evening, so Steve and I have started a weekly 'party' for them on Thursday afternoons. These have been a real success and probably the single most enjoyable hour of my week. We play games, sing songs and tell them bible stories. They seem to love it, as they laugh and squeal and come around every other day asking when the next one is. We have a home-made puppet, called Baasi Fuu Walaa who helps with the presentation and they are very fond of him too – especially now that they understand that he is in fact controlled by Steve's hand and not some form of witchcraft.

There has been sadness for me too this month as I have learnt that Precious Girl Magazine in Cambodia is to end in October. Finances have dried up, the Art Director is leaving and the publishing licence is due to expire then so it seems like the time has finally come for it to close. I am very sad that this should be so, as it is now established and quite well known in the garment worker community. However, I am confident that I have done all that I can with it, and that the 3- years worth of magazines will continue to bless and encourage the workers for a long time to come. Thank you to everyone who supported that work in prayer and finances.

I have realised that my heart is still predominantly to work with young women and so as Precious Girl ends I am considering starting up a work with the young women of Djibo. Not a magazine, as many of them can't read – but a club probably. Several teenage girls have asked me to teach them sewing and drawing so I am thinking of doing something weekly – not a business effort but more of a recreational thing, with bible teaching too. The church here is supportive of new outreach ideas and have also asked me to head up a weaving project as they have been given a loom. This is an interesting prospect for me, not least of all because it means working with local people, materials and skills – no cocktail umbrellas required.

Digging It

For as long as I have known it, Djibo has always been orange. The houses are orange, the ground is orange and as a result my feet are often orange too. If left alone, the books on our shelves turn orange and there's orange between the letters on my laptop keyboard. It's generally a very orange place.

For this reason I have been quite excited about rainy season, as I am seeing Djibo in green for the first time. The dusty football pitch has turned into a cow pasture and the hills are alive with the sound of cultivating. There's quite a buzz in the air, and it's not just the mosquitoes. Rainy season is farming time and everyone and his donkey is out in the fields, planting beans, millet, corn and peanuts. There isn't a tractor in sight; this is all back-bending, hands-and-hoe work.

It was with a little trepidation, therefore, that I accepted my friend Dikore's offer to help work in the fields. "It's fun to give the white person a field to cultivate" she said. Fun, or funny – I'm not quite sure which she meant. This is a woman who pounds millet all morning, carries a two year old on her back and can walk miles with a bucket of water on her head. I get worn out watering the garden twice a day.

Nonetheless, I accepted and so have recently been out in the fields ploughing and scattering. I was amazed this morning as I rode out of town (I take the horse out to graze at the same time), at the number of people who knew I was going cultivating. If there was a local rag it would be in the gossip column "tubakku sows beans!"

As well as earning me a reputation, stomping around the fields in bare feet has given me a good workout, a farmer's tan and a lot of pleasure. It feels so…well, earthy. Meanwhile I am also learning more Fulfulde words, such as 'lamdam gertorde', which is a small grub and literally translated means 'salt for chickens'. I'm picking up other more useful words too, mainly about farming. Hopefully I'll soon have enough to tell the Parable of the Sower.

Language learning has really been my main focus of the last few weeks; I am now desperate to be able to communicate properly as I have so much I want to share and understand. I see the ladies from the sewing group regularly, although we only meet to sew together once a week now. We're going to start meeting in the shop so we can sell at the same time, but we're not expecting much business this month as most people are out in the fields. I have recently had some new contacts and ideas concerning working with more traditional crafts such as weaving and raffia-work which interests me greatly. More on that later!

Thanks for your prayers and emails, they mean a lot.

Back in the Saddle

 'Praise the Lord, O my soul; all my inmost being, praise his holy name. Praise the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits - who forgives all your sins and heals all your diseases, who redeems your life from the pit and crowns you with love and compassion, who satisfies your desires with good things so that your youth is renewed like the eagle's. 'Pslam 103 v 1-5

This verse comes to mind when I look for some way to express how I'm feeling since my last sulky newsletter - much, much better!Thank you to anyone who prayed; I feel so different it is quite remarkable.

For two weeks in England, I nattered my heart out with friends and family, ate copious amounts of toast, bawled my eyes out in church and stocked up on books, DVDs and marmalade. My trip home came just at the right time. I feel refreshed, rejuvenated and ready to get back in the proverbial saddle. Hallelujah.

To our great relief, too, the rains started this week, and it is as though the baker has finally opened the oven door. The hens weren't quite so delighted to see their eggs floating around the chicken house, and the ground has turned into a mass of squelchy, slippery yet flip-flop-adhering mud, but it's great. Walking through the market after a downpour is a bit like competing in 'It's a Knockout' but without the goofy costumes.

Another door has opened, too, it seems, as the Ladies of Djibo have acquired a place to sell in the market. My sales efforts in England and on-line shop have been virtually fruitless, so the timing of this is spot-on. For now, I have decided to channel my efforts with the group into making business for them locally. I pray that it will be a success - they are mainly making disaaje at the moment - sarongs with colourful embroidered designs that the women use to carry their babies. Later on, I hope to teach sewing-machine skills so we can launch into children's and babies' clothes.

The Tuareg refugees that have set up camp on the edge of town serve as a reminder of how much we have to be thankful for. So what if my laptop has just packed up, and we have barely any vegetables to eat right now (being the end of dry season)? We have a house to live in and plenty besides. Most precious of all, we have the hope that is in our loving and compassionate God - and that's a hope that never disappoints us.

Sulking & Milking

I've just passed the six month mark of being here in Djibo, and I have probably just officially hit level four of culture shock. I mean the one when everything seems more difficult and it feels like my sense of humour is hiding behind a cloud. So please excuse the rather sulky tone to this newsletter!

Of course, many things about living here have become easier since my arrival in November. I now know exactly where to buy groceries, how much a handful of aubergines should cost and what I can do with them. I can communicate, albeit basically, in Fulfulde. We have our own egg supply and a couple of kittens who are as entertaining as French & Saunders, which is good when you're living on the edge of the desert without a telly.

Other things have become harder – I miss having girlfriends with whom there is a mutual understanding. With local people it is hard to talk about anything much deeper than the weather or the washing with my limited knowledge of verbs and nouns, and some days it feels as though the omnipresent orange dust has finally filled my head where my brain should be. I think the sun's potency is enough to have even the hardiest of us English longing for the green grass of home.

I am ashamed to admit that while we live in Sector 1 of Djibo, surrounded by people who can barely afford to buy millet to make nyiiri for their family, millet makes my stomach turn; we live on pasta, meat and vegetables instead. I am supposed to be sharing the love of Christ with these people but we have so much compared to them, that I often feel no better than the rich man with Lazarus on his doorstep. I am frequently unsure of how and when to help. I want to create work and life skills for people, not dependency. I want them to see through us a God who loves and cares deeply for them, not just white tubaakus who give stuff away. It's a constant struggle to do the right thing.

The embroidery club is a success in one sense – seven ladies who couldn't sew can now embroider and one of them has just sold a piece of work locally. That's me with a group of them pictured here. Mariama (in the front row on the left), who suffers from a debilitating illness and finds it hard to earn a living, has appreciated being paid to embroider insects onto napkins for me – one quirky idea I am hoping will sell in the UK. It's been two steps forward and one step back a lot of the time though as I've had to redo some of her work myself.

I am happy to say that I am about to head to England for two weeks. As well as seeing family and friends, my plan is to approach some retailers, in the hope of getting commissions for the products I have designed that the ladies can produce. The new products will be on the Ladies of Djibo webpage next week if you would like to see them. I'd love your prayers for the success of this project please.

In case I've left the impression that I'm finding life here unbearable, I had better explain that there are aspects of it that are unbeatable – riding my pony out in the bush, the animals to-ing and fro-ing, bleating and crowing all day long (I helped milk a cow the other day) and the neighbours who always say hello. And when we fantasize about moving back to Battersea, the thing that pulls on our hearts the most is the fact that there are still hundreds of people here who have never heard about Jesus, who know nothing of the hope and freedom that comes with following Him. There aren't churches or Alpha courses here like there are at home; people don't realize they have a choice. As it says in Romans chapter 10v14, 'How then, can they call on the one they have not believed in? And how can they believe in the one of whom they have not heard? And how can they hear without someone preaching to them?'.

That's what keeps me going. Please pray for His grace and strength for me to do that.

Stars

It gets dark early here in Djibo. By about 7:30pm every day, the sun has disappeared and so have all our visitors, back to their yards to eat Nyiiri and drink tea. The heat of the day has lost its edge, but being April, it is still like being in an oven - only with the grill turned off now. This makes sleeping indoors unthinkable, so we've been dragging a mattress outside and hanging a mosquito net from the washing line to sleep under. I never had any of those luminous star stickers on my bedroom ceiling, but I have thousands now.

I didn't have to look up too long, therefore, to find inspiration when I was invited to preach a couple of weeks ago. I kind of fell into it unintentionally when the ladies at church were given responsibility for the service one Sunday. It was a challenge (my French would still appal my A-level teacher) but quite a satisfying one. I took Philippians 2v14-16 as a starting point 'Do everything without complaining or arguing, so that you make become blameless and pure, children of God without fault in a crooked and depraved generation, in which you shine like stars in the universe as you hold out the word of life…'

It's difficult to feel satisfied when there are hundreds of people around you who aren't hearing the message of the gospel. And I find it hard not to complain - especially when it is 42 degrees centigrade. However, I've been reading the biographies of Hudson Taylor, David Brainerd and Don Richardson lately and that helps me keep my perspective. At least the Fulani aren't head-hunting cannibals. If they were we probably wouldn't be sleeping outdoors.

Thankfully, the Fulani that I have come to know are much friendlier than Don Richardson's neighbours were. I now have ten ladies doing embroidery with me. We sit on the veranda in the afternoons and there is much laughter, although I gather that most of it is at my Fulfulde. If it's not me saying words that sound like something rude, it's my regular announcement at 6 o'clock that 'I'm finished'.

Their tenacity to learning has been impressive so far, but we're still a way from producing really good quality work. There is just one lady so far who has been embroidering sarongs that I am ready to sell. She is Haybata, pictured here wearing one of the sarongs she embroidered. If you would like to see the detail and colours of others, you can do so on the Ladies of Djibo webpage. I am selling them for ₤10 each (postage excluded) and would love to know what you think (or if you'd like one). I'm hoping to use some of the profits to start a market stall to help the ladies to sell their work locally. It's a small idea but one that I hope will make a big difference to this particular group of stars.

Pony Tales

I've been dreaming of having my own pony for several years. Up until the age of 14, horses were my main obsession; my bedroom wall was plastered with rosettes and when I wasn't mucking out at the local stables I was reading Pony Magazine. At the age of 10 I was lucky enough to have my own, until GCSE's, boys and fashion put equestrian pursuits on the backburner, but I never stopped hankering after the beautiful quadrupeds. All the time that I lived in London and then in Cambodia, the longing was there but the horses were not.

I'm painting the picture so that you can understand a little bit of how utterly thrilled I am, therefore, to find myself living in a culture which has a rich equestrian heritage. Earlier this month, Steve and I travelled to the West of Burkina to spend a few days at a special festival for Fulani and their horses. The bumpy, arduous journey there was absolutely worth it; there were dozens of horses, hundreds of Fulani and more colourful tassels than at a Dolce & Gabanna fashion show. It was a real feast for the eyes, and a brilliant time of meeting new people who were fascinated to come across white people who speak Fulfulde (mine is still very basic, you understand, but Steve's fluency gained him instant local celebrity status).

Now we're back in Djibo and one of my dreams has become a reality, as we have acquired our own pony. Psalm 37v4 says 'Delight yourself in the Lord and he will give you the desires of your heart'. I've clung onto that verse through difficult times, but never thought that it would extend to God giving me a horse one day. But there are no bounds to His generosity it seems, and I thank Him every time I go out riding around Djibo – there are hundreds of kilometres of beautiful landscape here and nothing quite like exploring it on horseback. It is a wonderful way to go out greeting people too – the women and children have been particularly excited to see me riding, and a few have had a go themselves. Traditionally, equestrianism has been the preserve of the marabous – Fulani religious leaders, so it is the first time that most of them have ridden.

We've also been able to share this month from the fruits of our garden – the lettuces, tomatoes and eggs have been abundant, praise God. It has been a real blessing to have salad on tap, as hot season has now begun. As well as the soaring temperatures, the daily power cuts have been a challenge – early afternoon seems to be the worst time, when the heat seems to overwhelm all hope of achieving anything physical or brain-taxing.

So it is in the late afternoons that I have begun to run the embroidery club. So far, I have six students of varying levels of ability although most of them have never done any sewing before.
It has been a great way of making friends and improving my language – I now know many useful phrases such as 'keep it tight', 'they need to be all the same' and 'it's wonky'. I'm hoping not to have to say 'it's wonky' too much as it would be good to have some marketable produce soon. Hot season is also known here as hungry season, so I hope to be able to give them a means of earning an income to help them get by. For now, the women are enjoying learning and more are asking to learn every week. It's an encouraging start.

A Happy Easter to you all and your families.