Becoming Part of a Community

There’s teaching and Chosen Children but since living here we’ve also been able to:

Help build a church...

The church we’re attending is relatively young. It started with less than ten people gathering on a small front patio of the pastor’s house. The number of people grew, but the space stayed the same.  Finally, after months of building the congregation now has a church building to gather in.  They’re continuing to build so that the many children will also have a place for sunday school.  Building a church here is a little different than just writing a check.  Tuesdays and Fridays of every week whoever is free comes after work grabs a pick-ax, bucket, or shovel, and helps.  It’s hard work, and takes a while but little by little a church is built. 

Share  a Jesus Film...

I don’t know when, where, or how this international ministry started (it’s funny how much you don’t know when google isn’t at your fingertips).  What I do know is that it’s the book of Luke translated into the native languages in a medium they can all comprehend-film. We’ve been able to travel to a nearby village, Rom-Kong, and after dealing with some technical difficulties, show the film at a conference too.  We hope to go out with it once more before we leave.   

Take a Ride in a Helicopter...

This is something I have not experienced yet, Tammy has. A family that lives “down the road” so to speak are long term missionaries here. We’ve spent lots of time at their house, playing outside with the kids, and walking around town with them.  The husband is a pilot and flies a helicopter here.  Usually the helicopter is used for transportation of people and goods or medical emergencies.  One Sunday a month however, the pastor of the church we’re attending and the pilot fly to a hard to reach village and preach.  They’ve been generous enough to include us in this.  The helicopter is small so we go one at a time with them.  Tammy loved it and I’ll be flying high in a couple of days.

CEF aka 85 kids in a space big enough for 40...

Child Evangelism Fellowship is a children’s ministry that started in the U.S. Although, I didn’t hear of it until coming here.  Every Sunday over eighty neighborhood children pour into a small room practically sitting on top of each other until they can squeeze in no more.  Then they crowd the door and windows.  They sing, talk, laugh, memorize scripture, read through a Bible story and talk about application (with a focus on prayer).  This coming Sunday Tammy and I will get a chance to lead.

Guava Picking and Marketing...

Unlike everything else in this list, these aren’t organized activities, but they’re just as common as the rest.  

Guava picking here is what apple picking is in New York.  Lucky for us there’s a tree right outside our front door (and 5 more close by).  You can’t climb the tree-well African children can-but I don’t because it’s covered in ants, and ants bite here. Instead after jumping for the guavas you can reach, you grab a long stick of some sort and hit the ripe ones (which are yellow instead of green) off the branches.  It’s really a creative version of t-ball.   There’s two kinds-sour and sweet, but they look the same to me.  I don’t like just biting into either but they do make a nice sauce, and tomorrow we’ll attempt to make a cake.

Marketing...

I love Wegmans, but I’m afraid the experience may be a bit dull after learning how to grocery shop here.  Market is every eight days right in the center of town, about a fifteen minute hike from our house (longer on the way back when carrying bags and going uphill).  Like Wegmans, the market has pretty much everything.  When you first enter you pass rows of shoes and clothing.  you hook a sharp left in the middle of all of this and enter the meat section. 

 A note on butcher “shops” in Cameroon: 

1. there is no refrigeration. 
2. The meat sits out all day 
3. every part of the animal is for sale 

This means that in this alley of the market your poor nose is assaulted, and you gain a new found knowledge of the anatomy of a cow. skin piled on the floor, hooves/legs on one side of the table all the way to the head and brains on the other.  After testing how long one can hold there breath through here(never long enough) you come to a wall, make a left, and enter the vegetable section.  This section thankfully runs on a grid, and always has lots of delicious food available.  After progressing through vegetables you reach an open air area which is the seafood dept.  This always confuses me since we are nine hours from the ocean, nonetheless, there are all sorts of fish and crawfish and other unidentifiable things.  After walking through you make another left, then right and start working your way to fruits.  If you miss the right you end up in the fabric quarter, but that might be all that bad.  The best fruit so far has been pineapples and watermelons, but this morning apples were added to that list.  Once you’ve purchased all you can carry (a great way to scale back on how much you spend by the way) you weave in and out of venders back the way you came. 

So, This is Life in Cameroon.

If anyone in under the impression that they need more stuff I urge them to try and fit their possessions into a suitcase. 

Just over a month ago I tucked everything I would want for a couple months into a suitcase and headed towards Kumbo, Cameroon with my mom and sister. Let me begin by saying Kumbo is far away-no matter how you try to get there. We started with a car ride to Boston on a sunny day.  A couple hours later we were on time and flying to Paris. Now, I’m still at the age where I think red-eyes are fun.  Sit next to my sister, eat prepared french food, watch movies all night, and end up in a foreign city whats not fun about that? The answer is nothing, except for the minor detail that once we landed in Paris we we’re only a third of the way to our destination. The fun of flying wore off about half way to Douala, Cameroon. We flew over the Sahara desert for what seemed like hours.  I was impressed by the emptiness and simultaneously thought that this would be a horrible place to crash. We didn’t. 

After flying for twenty hours I was happy that I would not have to step on an airplane again soon.  Doula was a blur of crowds, motor bikes, different languages, and soccer games.  After a swim in a pool and sleeping well we embarked on one last day of travel-A nine hour car ride to Kumbo.  Riding in a car in Cameroon is akin to taking the Night Bus in Harry Potter.  It is a bumpy ride on tight windy roads.  You are convinced you’re going to crash, but somehow never do.  At last after three days of smooth travels we arrived in Kumbo.

Kumbo is beautiful. It’s mountainous, mostly bug-free, and tropical. 

I’m surrounded by banana, guava, and palm trees.  Elephant grass well over my head and tons of wildflowers whose names escape me. Our house is nice, are neighbors are nicer, and I’m starting to learn shortcuts around town. 

I’ve settled into a as much as a routine as possible here.  I wake up just before seven tutor a student in English and French for a couple hours with Tam.  Afterwards, we break and meet our mom along with other hospital staff for tea and puff puffs (puff puffs are essentially fried dough, and an acceptable breakfast here). This if followed by more tutoring, lunch, and then working with Chosen Children, the adoption agency, in the afternoon.  Work for Chosen Children has included everything from doing nothing and just talking in an office to folding clothes for days to my favorite- traveling to the  different homes of adopted children.  When this happens we meet caregivers, see how the program works, and see a variety of lifestyles in Kumbo and other villages. The day winds down with time to relax/explore, dinner, and we often spend the evening with new friends. Our week is also sprinkled with market days, bible study, church, and travel.

 I say this is as much as a routine as possible in Cameroon because they don’t really believe in schedules. time is fluid here, things change without warning and advance notice is a foreign concept.  Even though we teach amazing people eager to learn there’s always a chance that they won’t show up.  Appointments aren’t for an hour but rather a day, and nothing is ever “on time.” One must be okay with waiting-it comes with the culture.  

Would you like an adventure now, or would you rather have tea first?-Peter Pan

 When Wendy, John, and Michael first arrive in Neverland Peter asks them "Would you like an adventure now, or would you rather have tea first?" Like Wendy, when I was invited on an adventure I too chose to have my tea first. For the past few months,  I have been working at a tea shop in a quaint little tourist town called Sackets Harbor.

 Working in a tea shop is not quite as relaxing as everyone who walks in the door insists it must be, but it is pretty awesome.  I spend my days hosting tea tastings, helping grandmothers and mother's of the bride plan tea parties, packaging teas, reading about tea, and sipping, or rather, oh so gracefully slurping all kinds of tea. Another nice perk- I get to dress up like I'm going to a tea party every day.  Who knew having tea with my stuffed animals so many years ago was actually job training?  I love my teashop, but in just about a month I will be off on an adventure with my mother and sister to Cameroon.  A country on the west coast of Africa that is just a little bit bigger than California.

While ma mere (they speak french in Cameroon) is working in a hospital Tam and I will be headed off to local villages to work with children who are orphaned due to HIV/AIDS.  Now, AIDS is not something I've ever given much thought to, I don't actually know what it stands for (acquired immune deficiency syndrome by the way). According to Cameroon Health Services 40% of their population is infected with AIDS. 210,000+ children under the age of 14 have lost at least one parent to this incurable disease. This leaves a lot of children without help facing malnutrition, poverty, homelessness, and often their own medical needs. These children need to know that they are not alone, that someone in this world cares about them, there is help available, and they are loved. This is what the staff members at Chosen Children do every day and for nine weeks (Oct 20th-Dec 19th) I will be able to too! Through post-adoption co-counseling, I'll be able to make sure medical needs are being met, school fees are paid, food is on the table, and encourage/support the caregivers.  I'll be able to show children and caregivers that, despite any discrimination (and there is a lot when it comes to HIV/AIDS) they are so loved-by me but also by someone much bigger than myself. It will certainly be an adventure.  Like all good adventures there will be many unpredictable twists and turns so please follow along with me and add to the script when you'd like.

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