Abel

Abel is the head of the church association here in Senegal.  We have had the pleasure of getting to go out to see what he is doing twice now.  He is a very sharp fellow and it is phenomenal to see the things he is doing in his village.  He is doing amazing things here and attributes it all to God!  It is really awesome to see the Senegalese having a heart to help their own people! 

 

 

They just recently had a new church built in their village- which he is the pastor for.  He also help get 2-3 churches built in surrounding villages.  He preaches every Sunday at his own church, but he also goes into a local town each week, before his own service, to preach his message on a local radio station in hopes of allowing others to hear the good news.

 

Abel also is part of a group that runs a boutique in his village.  Boutiques are very common in larger cities like Thies, but not so much in the villages.  These little boutiques are just hole in the wall stores with flour, sugar, onions, some candy, soap, and other basic need items.  Abel first did research to see what items sell best in the boutiques and only supplies those items in the boutique in his village.  He now has something set up in Excel to help keep inventory and track of the money.  A different member of the church, manages the boutique for 3 months at a time.  Then the manages gets a certain percentage of the profits and the other percentage goes back to the church.

 
Abel also helps run a storehouse for food.  Currently there are 60 members of this program which is all they can hold right now, both Christian and non Christians.  During November (harvest time) people put food in the storehouse.  They are not allowed the get it back out until July or August sometime when they start running out of food.  If a person chooses to take out 50 pounds of food then when they bring it back after harvest time they have to bring 55 pounds.  If a person chooses to take 100 pounds, then they have to replenish it after harvest with 110 pounds of food.  At this point, 100 pounds is the most a family can take out.  This way, slowly over time it builds the amount of food they have.   

The problem here is that if people plan ahead to have food for the whole year they are still obligated to give it if a family member or friend runs out of food or wants to throw a big wedding.  Just how it works.  So this way, the food gets locked up to help prevent a shortage in the village before the next harvest comes.  They can't get to it unless it's an emergency.


They currently have 32,000 pounds of millet stored for just their village.  He says it’s good because it helps them be self-sufficient and not have to go straight to a relief group like WorldVision if famine hits.  They have a back-up plan.  He wants to be able to help surrounding villages build similar buildings. 

It is great that a national realizes they need to become more self-sufficient so they can more easily solve their own problems.  Another cool thing is that word has been travelling about their village and the storehouse.  Evens Muslims have been amazed that the system seems to really work and how the Christians have handled themselves. Many people were very hesitant to join at the beginning for fear it may be more of a loss than a gain.  However there are now Muslim families that participate, and there are even more people wanting to join.  It has been a real testament to us to watch someone who is a very smart individual who could probably move to a larger city and have a “better life” for both himself and his family.  However he has chosen to stay in the village and work with his own community where life is much harder and be Jesus’ hands and feet to them.

Life in Africa

Life here in Senegal has been very different than our lives in the United States.  We knew that our lives would change but didn’t realize necessarily how many things would be different.  In some ways, we have learned a whole new way of life here.  Most things just take longer here so patience is an absolute must.  We wanted to share some of the things that have become part of our lives since we have been here.

Water

     As you can see, the drinking water here is not clean.  Fortunately we do have a water filter.  We never drink water from the tap, but use a pitcher to put the water in the filter. 

 

     Unfortunately most people here do have to drink the water as they don’t have any other option.  Thus it allows different sorts of disease causing bacteria to get into their systems and proves to sometimes be fatal for them without money to pay for access to medical treatment.

 

Eating Senegalese Style

      In Senegal, many families eat using a bowl with about 6-8 people around it.  You are supposed to eat from the section in front of you in a pie shaped piece.  If there are things in your section that you don’t want, then you can put it in the center of the bowl where anyone can take food from.  When we have been to different villages, they have been kind enough to provide us with spoons to use to eat with but many families eat just using their hands.  Also your left hand is considered “dirty” here so we have to eat with our right hand.  Needless to say since Bekah is left handed, she doesn’t usually eat very fast or get very much to eat when we eat Senegalese style.

Meat

     When we buy meat here, we have to package it on our own.  We can’t just walk into Meijer and buy a pound of ground beef or chicken breasts.  We buy our beef from a guy in town at the main market.  He charges an extra 200  francs (about $0.40) to ground it up for us so we have opted for that option.  Meat is more expensive here by about $1.50 a pound for beef. 

 

Once we get the meet home, Bekah weighs it out and packages it to put in the freezer.  When we buy chickens, we have to buy them whole and de-gut them ourselves.  Then we divide the chicken into meal size portions to freeze.  Fortunately probably for your sake, we seem to have lost the pictures of Lucas de-gutting the chicken. 

 

Traffic

Traffic here is a difficult one to explain. The best way to describe it comes from Captain Jack Sparrow, "They are more like guidelines than rules."  People here don’t follow the rules, and they basically look out for themselves and don’t worry about other people.  At times, people here can drive very aggressively.  On the other hand, other times if there are two lanes on the road, they manage to take up both and seem to not have a care in the world. 

 

Movie Stars

 

Many times we feel like movie stars here.  We get stared at pretty much everywhere we go because we are "toubabs" or white person.  Most of the time when there is a group of kids, they yell toubab at us as we walk by.  It sometimes is a disrespectful thing for the kids to do, depending on their attitude when they say it.  However on the other hand, some kids are just really excited to see a white person.  Especially when we are in villages, the kids get so excited to see a toubab.   

 

Our favorite time when we have gotten called a toubab was when we were walking home from the John Huffman School one day.  There was a little boy standing at the community water well in our neighborhood, and he was screaming and crying at the top of his lungs.  As soon as he saw us, his crying took a screeching halt and he gasped and said in a faint whisper, "toubab."  And he just watched in amazement as we walked by.