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December 14, 2005
Gut-ache and grain stores
“Hey, tubaaku, umma! Yuwoonde wari!”
I sat up groggily and looked around me. It was the middle of the night, but the stars had disappeared in a thick blackness. The wind was whipping up unrelenting clouds of dust, announcing what Yero had just called out:
“Hey, white man, get up! The rain’s here!”
I watched blearily as, buffeted by the wind, he opened the tiny 2 ft square hatch to the granary. The granary (you can just see it in the background in the photo) was like a little thatched hut on stilts, about 5ft in diameter. He invited me to clamber in. I blinked, not quite understanding what was going on, but scrambled through, and Yero followed me.
Of course. His small hut had a leaky roof, and there was just enough room for his wife and kids to shelter. But the granary had to have a good roof to protect the precious remainder of last year’s harvest from the weather. So we settled in and tried to make ourselves comfortable in the dark amongst the millet. In the silence, with the hatch open, we felt more than watched the rain suddenly thunder down, attacking and pounding the dry earth. It was a good feeling, knowing that our work in the fields the last few days had not been for nothing. If the rains continued like this for a few more weeks, Yero and his family would have food for another year.
I had come from Gorom-Gorom to spend just two weeks with Yero. I’d been there about a year, and my progress in learning Fulfulde, the language of the Fulani , had reached a plateau. I needed a short time of total immersion to give it another boost. A nearby missionary was teaching Yero the way of Christ, and had suggested this might be a good place to come for a couple of weeks. Yero had become a Christian, but had been forced to leave his village because of his faith. He had set up a hut by his field just outside the village, and sometimes men would stop by when passing. Some came to berate him for abandoning God. Others obviously wanted to stay friends, risking the wrath of the local imam for associating with the apostate Yero. Yero had learned the basics of reading, and we were reading together through Luke - almost the only New Testament portion we had in Fulfulde at that time. The idea was that this would help his reading and his understanding of the way of Jesus, while I was force-fed a daily diet of undistilled Fulfulde.
Yero was captivated by reading the story and teaching of Christ in his own language, and it was thrilling to see him amazed by accounts which I had become almost inured to through over-familiarity. The challenge of Jesus’ words came afresh as I saw again what it must be like to hear them for the first time – the provocative and deliberate challenge to the complacent self-satisfied religion of those who considered themselves God’s chosen. How we need that challenge afresh in our lives…
Yero’s favourite bit was 6:27-42. Whenever someone stopped by, he would read that passage: “Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you.” And he would do it. Those who had mocked and rejected him, he would welcome, and give them food and tea.
I enjoyed most of my time there – apart from two days of agonising gut-cramps, which had me doubled up on my mat in the shade under the acacias. Occasionally I would let out a grunt of pain, to the great amusement of Yero and his wife. The Fulani take pride in their "pulaaku", never expressing pain or discomfort, and I heard Yero’s wife laughingly telling her friends that the white man had been “crying with agony!”
It was only two short weeks, camped out with Yero and his family by his field. But I learned a lot in that short time – not only about Fulfulde and Fulani culture, but also about weakness and dependence as part of the shape of our ministry of the gospel. Too often we go with an arrogant, even colonialist attitude, imagining ourselves saviours rather than servants. We go thinking only of what we can give or teach, rather than what we ourselves might need to learn. We have the idea it is our strengths that God will use, rather than our weaknesses. Yet the gospel is cross-shaped – expressed in weakness, service, and suffering. And its treasure is in jars of clay that need to be broken for it to be released. The cross is not just to be announced, it is also to wound our own lives.
A couple of years ago, I went back to visit Yero and his family. He is one of the strongest Christians among several Fulani believers in the area now. They reminded me about my time there all those years ago. They still laugh at me “crying with pain”, and at Yero getting me to climb into the granary in the middle of the night. I know I myself met with God there, in my weakness. I know I learned from Christ through the life and response of a new Muslim convert. I hope and believe Yero was blessed too by our time together. But I know that if he was, it wasn’t because of my brilliant preaching or powerful ministry. I didn't have any of that to give.
All I had to offer was the willingness to have gut ache, be laughed at, and spend a night in a granary.
Tags: burkina faso africa stories burkina fulani bible fulfulde pulaaku ministry mission missionary
Posted by Keith at December 14, 2005 08:14 PM
