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April 27, 2008
Gastroenteritis
Charlie and I have food poisining. Notes of sympathy below, please ;-)
Posted by sahelsteve at 12:16 PM
April 25, 2008
Ladies of Djibo
Charlie's April newsletter is now online.
Charlie has started an embroidery group with local ladies. You can see (or buy!) samples of their work on the Ladies of Djibo webpage.
Posted by sahelsteve at 12:30 PM
April 18, 2008
Mr Gum Storms Norfolk Shorts!
Congratulations to Andy Stanton on his Norfolk Shorts award for 'You're a Bad Man Mr Gum'. Another well deserved award for a hilarious book. If you know any eight or nine year olds, buy it for them.
The six shortlisted authors were invited to attend the ceremony, but I had to decline, what with being in Africa and all. So I was asked to send a letter instead.
Dear children,
Don't you just love short books? You can carry a short book in your schoolbag without breaking your back. You can read a short book on the bus (or on the loo) and finish it before you get off. You can recount the story to your friends without them falling asleep.
Sometimes a short book is called a novella, but most people are a bit hazy about what that means. I'm not sure either, but I like to call Sophie and the Albino Camel a novella because it sounds cool and Spanish, like paella.
Not that there's anything Spanish about Sophie and the Albino Camel, mind you; the story is totally African. It's set on the southern edge of the Sahara Desert, not far from where I live, and some of the characters are even based on real people. Sophie is based on a real nine year-old English girl called Milly who lives with her parents in Burkina Faso. Muusa ag Litni is based on a bandit who hijacked Gorom-Gorom's ambulance a few years ago and drove off in it, which in my opinion is even worse than stealing a camel!
I've always had a soft spot for African adventure stories. When I was ten, I used to love King Solomon's Mines (by Rider Haggard) and Sahara Adventure (by Wilbur Smith). Stories of exotic and dangerous places used to keep me up late into the night, reading by torchlight under the bedclothes. If you like African adventures, there are lots of recent books for you to choose from. The Door of No Return is very exciting, as is Ringmaster. Or if you enjoyed Sophie and Gidaado's first adventure, there are two more in the same series: Sophie and the Locust Curse and Sophie and the Pancake Plot.
I'm writing this in my study and it's very hot here. In April the temperature gets up to 48ºC in the shade, which is so hot it makes you want to take your brain out of your head and rinse it in cold water! Apart from the April heat, however, my wife and I love living in Africa. We have five hens, one horse and lots of very friendly neighbours.
I feel very honoured to have been shortlisted for this first ever Norfolk Shorts award. I really wish I could nip back to England and pop into the award ceremony to say hello, but I'm afraid it would be a very long way to travel for just one day. If you would like to write and say hi, please do (I love getting snail mail!), or else you can visit my website and leave a message there.
Very best wishes to you all, and happy reading!
Steve
Posted by sahelsteve at 08:47 AM
April 15, 2008
Kittens in the desert
Something unexpected happened the day before yesterday. We were out in the bush, Charlie riding, me on the bike...
...when suddenly Charlie stopped and said 'Steve, look!' (the photo below was not staged - I just happened to be taking a photo at the time!)
Two kittens, each about the size of a highlighter pen, were running over to us. A woman passed by carrying a heavy load on her head. 'They've been thrown away in the bush to die,' she said. 'The sun will kill them soon.'
Well, we couldn't let that happen...
Our new kittens are called Chiiwel (Fulfulde for sparrow) and Wiliwindu (bat). They are very cute and playful. Expect, with sincere apologies, occasional kitten posts on this blog.
Posted by sahelsteve at 09:25 AM
April 11, 2008
Djibo on Google Earth
Here are some pics of Djibo courtesy of Google Earth and Keith (who very kindly uploaded them for me).
Posted by sahelsteve at 07:09 PM
April 08, 2008
Would you vote for this man?
Gidaado rode off a short distance, stood up in the saddle and began to sing at the top of his voice.
The delightful General Crêpe-Sombo
Has a dish of Election Delights,
There’s a sugary treat for each voter to eat
Get your crêpe from Crêpe-Sombo tonight!
A ripple of excitement ran through the crowd. The moonlight and song and the promise of food were making them giddy with pleasure. On and on Gidaado sang:
When Crêpe-Sombo comes into power
He will rename this market Crêpe Plaza;
The history books will honour the cooks
Who pan-fried his Victory Maasa.
Sophie passed a plate of banana pancakes up to Gidaado and he began to throw them into the crowd. Eager hands reached out to catch the delicious morsels as they rained down.
Crêpe-Sombo’s a generous giver,
Crêpe-Sombo’s the lord of largesse,
Believe all the hype, he’s the head-of-state type,
Have a pancake on General C.S.
The people of Gorom-Gorom laughed and munched and told each other what a good fellow General Crêpe-Sombo was. It took a very big-hearted man to distribute crêpes on such a large scale. He would surely make a fantastic president.
Gidaado held up the last pancake, swung his arm round and round and then lobbed it high into the air. All eyes were on the pancake as it flipped over and over in the moonlight, and then - BANG!
A shower of tiny stars filled the sky. For many of the people in the crowd, this was the first time they had seen a firework. Children shrieked. Herders ducked and cowered. Women grabbed hold of each other and hid their faces under their shawls. Young men whipped their staffs off their shoulders and brandished them, alert and battle-ready.
Another firework fizzed through the air and exploded into a frenzy of coloured sparks. Gorom-Gorom was not under attack. This was all part of the Crêpe-Sombo Spectacle.
And there he was! The General was standing on the roof of Salif dan Bari’s snake-pill shop, silhouetted against the backdrop of coloured stars. His feet were planted wide apart and he held a writhing snake in each hand. Gidaado was right, thought Sophie – Crêpe-Sombo is magnificent.
(Sophie and the Pancake Plot - in shops from August 2008)
Posted by sahelsteve at 06:43 PM
April 01, 2008
April prayer requests
Dear friends,
Here is a Fulani tongue twister for you to try:
Fulfulde na tiiDi, Fulfulde FulBe na tiiDi. Pullo biiDo o buri FulBe waawde Fulfulde na tiiDi.
Literal translation: Fulfulde is hard. The Fulfulde of the Fulani is hard. And for one Fulani to claim that his Fulfulde is better than other Fulanis, that's hard!
It's true, Fulfulde is a difficult language. Take noun classes, for example. English doesn't really have noun classes but French and Spanish have three (masculine, feminine and plural) and German has four (masculine, feminine, neuter and plural). Problem is, Fulfulde has twenty-four (humans, small animals, big animals, bovine animals, ovine animals, trees, grasses, grains, wooden things, metal things, little things, big things, long things, round things, indefinite things, noises, mats, bugs, drums and five separate plurals). So when Ali Bari, pastor of our local church, asked me to teach Fulfulde to his congregation, it was with some trepidation that I agreed.
Since coming back to Burkina Faso last year, Charlie and I have been part of a new church plant on the outskirts of Djibo. The congregation is very enthusiastic but not very Fulani - almost all of them are Mossi men and women who have been sent to Djibo to work in the public sector - Christian teachers, nurses, policemen, forestry rangers, topologists and fiscal engineers. In the past it was normal for these settlers to be disdainful of the local Fulani population and wish a swift end to their exile, but all that is changing now. Our Mossi brothers and sisters are seeing themselves more and more as Christ's ambassadors in Djibo - missionaries to an un-reached people group. And with that in mind, they want to learn Fulfulde.
We have acquired a lovely white board and some coloured markers. We will be starting with the basics (Jam waali! Jam tan!) before progressing to the problematics (such as the twenty-four noun classes), but always with an eye on how best to convey the love of God to the Fulani people of this province. I'm very much looking forward to Lesson One.
The market outreach continues weekly and I am now being helped in that by Harouna, a young Fulani believer. If you ever find yourself praying on a Wednesday morning, perhaps you could give us a mention.
A Swiss missionary on the board of Djibo FM has been meeting with a government minister who is sympathetic to our application for a broadcasting license. If you still have the stomach for it, please pray new life into this floundering project.
Charlie is preaching in French at church next Sunday morning. Her text: 'Shining like stars in the universe' (Philippians 2:15). You can read Charlie's March newsletter here.
Another prayer request: on Saturday April 19th the church is going on an evangelistic visit to Bourgeinde, a nearby village of 3000 Fulani without a single follower of Jesus. Pray that we would go in humility and that our Fulani friends there would find the message of redemption to be good news for them and their families.