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May 31, 2008
Motorbike accidents in the Sahel
Another motorbike accident in Djibo today. This time it was Pastor Nikiema - hitting a hole at speed, on the way back from Weendupooli. He smashed his face quite badly but it'll mend. There seem to be a lot of motorbike accidents around town at the moment, and a lot of fatalities - more so than any year I can remember.
The gold rush just north of here is partly to blame (not in Pastor Nikiema's case, but in others). Young men at the mines measure in motorbikes how much gold they find - casually saying things like 'Isa Yero brought two motorbikes out of the well yesterday'* - that's how automatic is the assumption that motorbikes is what a lucky miner will buy. New money buys Yamahas and Kaiser 140s, end of story.
But neither youth nor new money are guarantees of being able to ride a motorbike safely. These guys fly through the wasteland between Broo and Djibo like desert djinns late for a haunting, and frequently total their bikes in sand.
For older men who acquire new motorbikes, the problem is not the same as for the boy racers. No - their problem is their turbans. This year two men I know of were strangled by their turbans when the loose end went in the wheel. I kid you not. And all because the stylish look for a West African turban is to have a loose end hanging down to your waist or beyond. As Charlie commented, those men are the ultimate fashion victims.
I ride my Yamaha DT every day, for errands and visits (and sometimes, I confess, just for the fun of it). But these days I always try to remember the three rules of Sahel riding: Watch your speed, watch the sand, and keep your turban short.
(*The Fulfulde for this even more baffling when the euphemism 'horse' is used. 'Isa Yero brought two horses out of the well yesterday.' Wow. Now there's a heavy bucket.)
Posted by sahelsteve at 09:21 PM
May 30, 2008
God's Call new content
Inspiring new content over at God's Call
Posted by sahelsteve at 09:17 AM
Sophie and the Pancake Plot - chapter one
'Sophie and the Pancake Plot', the third in the Sophie series, comes out on 7 August 2008. Here's chapter one as a taster:
Posted by sahelsteve at 12:20 AM
May 29, 2008
Ladies of Djibo Launch
'The Ladies of Djibo Embroidery Club' sounds like something Alexander McCall-Smith might have dreamed up. Every Monday, Tuesday and Thursday afternoon, the veranda resonates with the plip-plap of ladies' sandals, the cawing of laughter and the repetitive tickety-whirr of half a dozen embroidery needles.
All right, so the needles are inaudible, I made that last bit up. But they must be working extremely hard, because the Ladies of Djibo product range is growing at an astounding rate. And today we are proud to launch the official Ladies of Djibo website, for your perusal and pleasure.
All the items you see on the Ladies of Djibo website are available for order. In true African style, prices are negotiable - at least until the requisite market research has been carried out!
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You remember Mariama Gurbitinoowo? She's one of the star members of The Ladies of Djibo: official Embroiderer of Stylized Cockroaches onto Napkins and Tea Towels. Mariama was saying only the other day how this project has changed her life for the better - getting paid to embroider makes her self-sufficient in a way she has never known before. Here is a photo of her:
Embroidering with a baby in one hand is not easy. So whenever Mariama's son disrupts the embroidered-insect-production, he ends up tied to Charlie's back:
Charlie is currently in England, taking the Ladies' work on a tour of Chichester gift shops before moving on to the fashionable London boutiques. She is hoping they will commission lots of Quirky Cockroach Napkin Sets and other equally engaging products, thereby keeping the Ladies of Djibo needles busy for the next few months.
Why not get in early and commission something from the Ladies of Djibo? Browse the website and then email 
Posted by sahelsteve at 04:19 PM
May 28, 2008
Muslim-Christian Dialogue
Regular readers of Voice in the Desert will already be familiar with its sister (or should that be brother?) blog, Under the Acacias.
Keith Smith, who writes Under the Acacias, encouraged me to come and work in Africa, then taught me all he knew about Fulani ministry. One of his many inspirational anecdotes can be read in this year's June edition of Christianity magazine, also available online as The Day I Preached in a Mosque.
It's a fun little article, and encapsulates his 'common ground' approach to Christian-Muslim dialogue.
Christians sometimes get nervous when they hear talk of dialogue, but there really is no need. Muslims, Jews and Christians have a common back-story to celebrate - a story which provides the context for an extraordinary event: the explosive arrival of self-sacrificial Love on the scene of religion.
Posted by sahelsteve at 12:30 PM
Sulking and Milking
Just to let you know, Charlie's May newsletter is now up.
Charlie is heading to England for a two week break and a good friend's wedding.
I've been left with some equine babysitting. Can anyone tell me: how much hoof oil is too much?
Posted by sahelsteve at 11:12 AM
May 25, 2008
Master Fulfulde in six seconds
We're all familiar with dazzling language-learning promises made by Linguaphone and similar companies: Speak fluent Arabic in just three weeks! Swedish in a weekend!
Well, here's Fulfulde in six seconds. Just learn this word:
CHIBBEL-LIBBEL
That is the word for the very top of a tree, the point that's always growing upwards.
When any Fulani is 'testing' you on your Fulfulde, they will invariably say 'Ada anndi Chibbel-libbel, naa?' (Do you know what Chibbel-libbel means), and if you point to the top of a tree, they follow up with 'Eeeeeeee, a hanti Fulfulde' - you have mastered Fulfulde!
Posted by sahelsteve at 09:29 AM
May 18, 2008
Cute kitten photos
Way back in November 2004, I linked to Baghdad Girl's blog - a mixture of hard-hitting grass-roots Iraq news and cute kitten photos. Baghdad Girl hasn't posted in a while, but the archives are definitely worth browsing.
Meanwhile, here are some more pics of Ciiwel (sparrow) and Wiliwindu (bat). They're both girls. Wiliwindu is the one with the totally black face.
(Above: kittens exploring)
(Above: Ciiwel in basil plant)
(Above: Wiliwindu doing the washing up)
(Above: Ciiwel walking among buckets)
(Above: blurs)
(Above: more basil)
And if all that isn't enough for you, here's a link to the world famous Random Kitten Generator!
Posted by sahelsteve at 11:54 AM
Persecuted Church in China
At church this morning we looked at the story of Brother Yun, taken from his wonderful book The Heavenly Man. It is a faith-inspiring testimony of one Christian's ministry and his endurance of suffering for the sake of Christ. Here is a summary of Brother Yun's story (I defy you not to put the book on your birthday list after reading this summary!).
In Burkina Faso we have freedom of worship, for which we are very thankful. There is some persecution of Christians (as everywhere in the Islamic world) but it tends to be individual and familial rather than governmental. Christians here often experience name-calling in the marketplace or parental disapproval. This seems to sharpen their desire to pray for their brothers and sisters in China, Pakistan, Indonesia, Algeria and Nigeria.
There are untold numbers of Christians currently imprisoned in China because of their faith in Christ. Please pray in particular for Shi Weihan, Alimjan Wimit and Wusiman Yiming.
Posted by sahelsteve at 11:14 AM
May 12, 2008
A cautionary tale for African fathers
The librarian in Djibo is called Tamboura Mamadou. He has formed a theatre group to travel around local villages and perform entertaining dramas with a social message. Today I accompanied Mamadou and his troupe to the village of Bani, 5 kilometres west of Djibo.
The sketch they performed was about fathers who take their daughters out of school at an early age to marry them off. The message of the piece was 'Let your girls finish their education before marriage, and don't force them to marry someone they don't want to.'
The picture below shows Seydou and Asseta, who played the father and the mother in the sketch. The chap between them was Seydou's sidekick, complete with comedy shaving-cream beard.
Here is Seydou promising his young daughter in marriage to an old friend. Old in both senses of the word. The old friend gives Seydou 100,000 CFA in brideprice. 'Go and buy yourself some cola nuts,' he says. (That's an awful lot of cola nuts.)
Here is Seydou bursting into the classroom to take his daughter out of school.
The daughter refuses to marry the old man. She flees the village with her mother and continues her education elsewhere . This leaves Seydou with a problem. He has already eaten the brideprice and is unable to pay it back. Time passes and the debt is still unpaid. The cops are summoned.
Sedyou is arrested and is dragged in front of the police commandant...
...who turns out to be his own daughter. In an improbably short time she has finished her education and risen through the ranks of the gendarmerie to become a Big Cheese. Which just goes to show that if you leave your daughter in school rather than marrying her off early, she can go on to do rather well for herself.
Seydou's daughter (La Commandante) pardons him in a forgiveness scene reminiscent of Joseph forgiving his brothers. 'You meant me harm but God has turned it all to good.' She gives him cash to pay off his debt and everyone lives happily ever after.
Fathers, be warned.
Posted by sahelsteve at 07:49 PM
May 08, 2008
Never play on railway tracks
This week I passed the halfway mark in Hacking Timbuktu. Writing is very part time so it's taking a while, but 25000 words is a nice milestone all the same.
Most researchy things can be answered by Google these days, but here's one I've given up on. I'm sure somebody out there knows...
Are all railway lines 'live' or just some?
Does track have to be 'live' for a train to run on it?
If you step on 'live' track, do you always get electrocuted?
Would the track next to the platforms at Clapham Junction railway station be live?
Thanks.
Posted by sahelsteve at 10:37 PM
May 05, 2008
The Meaning of Stories
I spent part of this morning in a home-school classroom, helping an eleven year-old English lad called Joshua to plan a fantasy story. Story-writing is part of the SATS, whatever they are, and fantasy is one of the required genres. Joshua was a natural, and ideas were not in short supply: he came up with the Mountains of Grindoom where lives the evil Lord Vladux; Hezron the knight, set to work as a slave in Lord Vladux's gold mine, his heroic escape to an underground river, his meeting with Clovely the friendly turtle and the turtle's gift of a set of wooden panpipes which, when played, summon the Magic Molluscs of Minsk. Plus a good helping of zombie villains, courtesy of last week's Doctor Who DVD!
Out of the imagination of an eleven year-old boy, Story appeared, original in many details and yet obeying all the archetypes: the Hero, the Villain, the Helper, the Quest, the Magic Gift. Compelling.
I've been thinking a lot about Story over the last few months, since receiving The Seven Basic Plots by Christopher Booker as a Christmas present. It's a delicious 700-page tome, surveying the history of Story all across the world, from Beowulf to Batman and from Frankenstein to Frazier. Booker reckons that all stories follow one or more of the Seven Basic Plots: Overcoming the Monster, Rags to Riches, The Quest, Voyage and Return, Comedy, Tragedy and Rebirth. But beyond these seven plots, he sees that there is a more Universal Story being played out. Here is a passage plucked out of the middle.
"The essential message of storytelling all over the world is that there are two centres to human nature: and that to become reunited with the totality of life it is necessary to make the long and difficult transition from one to the other. From our earliest years, the first point the unconscious tries to make through stories is that the greatest danger to the human race is its own capacity to think and to act egocentrically. This is why those first properly-formed stories which make sense to us as a child tend to show a little hero or heroine, much like ourselves, venturing out into a mysterious outside world, such as a great forest, where they encounter some terrifying dark figure: a witch, a giant, a wolf or some other monster. The purpose of this is to introduce the child to a personification of that dark power of egotism which it must learn to recognise as its most deadly enemy.
Initially this enemy is shown as something wholly external, and the point of such stories, as we saw, is simply to awaken the child's subconscious awareness to the fact that, in this strange new world it is entering, such a deadly power exists. But progressively, as we grow older, the message is filled out, as it conveys to us with greater subtlety and depth those qualities the hero or heroine must develop for them to reach the complete happy ending; not least when we come to those types of story which show the hero or heroine having to wrestle with that same dark power in themselves.
So, whether we respond to it or not, the constant feeding of our imagination with stories provides us with a unique mirror to the inner dynamics of human nature. Above all, below the level of our consciousness, the consistency of their symbolism gradually builds up an image of what the pattern of a human life can be, and what happens if we fail."
The Seven Basic Plots, Christopher Booker, page 563
Charlie has been reading a similar book, by Christian author John Eldredge, called Epic: The Story God is Telling and the Role that is Yours to Play. Eldredge, like Booker, recognizes the Universal Root of the stories we tell ourselves:
"Every story, great and small, shares the same essential structure because every story we tell borrows its power from a Larger Story, a Story woven into the fabric of our being - what pioneer psychologist Carl Jung tried to explain as archetype, or what his more recent popularizer Joseph Campbell called myth.
All of these stories borrow from the Story. From Reality. We hear echoes of it through our lives. Some secret written on our hearts. A great battle to fight, and someone to fight for us. An adventure, something that requires everything we have, something to be shared with those we love and need.
There is a Story that we just can't seem to escape. There is a Story written on the human heart. As Ecclesiastes has it, 'He has planted eternity in the human heart' (3:11 NLT)
Look, wouldn't it make sense that if we ever did find the secret to our lives, the secret to the universe, it would come to us first as a story? Story is the very nature of reality. Like the missing parts of a novel, it would explain these pages we are holding, the chapters of our lives.
Second, it would speak to our hearts' deepest desires. If nature makes nothing in vain, then why the human heart? Why those universal longings and desires? The secret simply couldn't be true unless it contained the best parts of the stories that you love.
Yet it would need to go deeper and higher than any of them alone.
What if?
What if all the great stories that have ever moved you, brought you joy or tears - what if they are telling you something about the true Story into which you were born, the Epic into which you have been cast?"
Eldredge is onto something here. The 90-page pocket book Epic is very lightweight alongside the Seven Basic Plots megalith, but the vision it conjures is not dissimilar. A Story written on the human heart, an appreciation of human capacity to think and act egocentrically (and the self-destructive force of this), an image of what the pattern of the human life can be and a vision of some strange and wonderful rebirth.
The stories that move and inspire you, me and eleven year-old boys are not meaningless. Like it or not, we've all been cast into an epic.