After the day’s 5 hour hike, we were
in dire need of a good cleaning once we arrived in Menji, the village where
we’d be staying for two days.
I’ll be honest, it felt rather
convicting to feel as though I had somehow earned that luxury by merely hiking from
one village to another, given that these people exert that much effort on a
regular basis, and it’s nothing out of the ordinary for them. There are teachers that walk that far to work
in the valley during the week. Some walk
further.
Church alone is nearly a two hour
walk from Menji, a walk that many faithfully make every Sunday morning, as well
as for additional church services. Regardless
of the physical exertion we’d put out that day, cleanliness required water, and
water was precious and scarce.
Our best option was a local stream an
easy 10 minute walk past Menji. Captain
Ed offered to walk the women to the stream so he could show us where to bathe,
and while we bathed, he would hike back to Menji and get the boys.
The best place to bathe was just below a shallow waterfall that flowed under an old footbridge. The water was cool, clear, and refreshing to our tired, dirty and achy bodies.
It felt so good to have an
opportunity to wash up! I had brought
goat milk soap, and used a bit to wash off what seemed to be an inch of caked
dirt and sweat off of me. Once I washed
up, I chose to sit down in an area of the river that enabled my body to be submerged
up to my shoulders, that way I’d let most of my body soak, but not get my hair
wet. It was so good for our limbs to
float, gently supported by the water.
Wendy sat nearby as well, each of us
allowing our tired muscles to soak, relax, and cool down, while watching a
gorgeous array of butterflies converged on the opposite shore.
It was mesmerizing to see so many varieties
of butterflies in one place, especially the ones with unusual color
combinations that we would not have the opportunity to see back home, such as
black and aqua.
As my eyes adjusted to the colors in
the stream and the flow of the water, I began to easily track the movement of
fish swimming nearby. There were so
many! As I kept watching them, I
realized that their movement was unusual but familiar... It took me a moment to realize that these
weren’t regular fish, but seemed more in line with a plecostamus or “algae
eaters”. They would hover above all the
rocks, moving slowly as they fed off the algae on the rocks, but would bolt as
soon as they sensed nearby movement.
Traditional plecostamus originate from South America, so these weren’t
likely true plecostamus, I don’t know, but they were a very similar style of
fish as far as swimming movement, behavior, and activity went. I’m surprised that with as many of these fish
as there were, that they’d be any algae left anywhere in the stream!
Glad that these weren’t
piranhas! As long as they stuck to algae
and not flesh, all was cool! :o)
Back at our guest house in Menji, we
ate supper and prepared our sleep area for the night by claiming a spot on the
ground where we’d prefer to sleep, and getting our sleeping bags set up while
we still had the advantage of daylight.
As we were going about preparing our spots, someone noticed that we had
unexpected company. Maybe to this enormous
brown hairy spider, we were the
unexpected company.
(One of the team members took a photo -- once the photo is available, I will share -- I know y'all want to see it!)
Isn't he lovely? Those boards are 4 inches across, just for some basic size reference...
Hairy Beast, as I’ve chosen to name
him, was resting on a wooden beam above us, and didn’t seem to be in a hurry to
get anywhere. I wasn’t alarmed, but I
must admit I made a mental note to periodically check to ensure it was still
there. It seemed preferable to me for it
stay in that spot, rather than to find him wandering through our sleeping bags
in order to find a dark and cozy corner in which to sleep... especially given
that I had chosen the corner spot to rest my head that night... just sayin’!
On a good note, no one had said that all spiders in Cameroon were
venomous! Still, something about this
one didn’t seem overly innocuous. Had
any of us suffered from arachnophobia, he/she would have been able to add
insomnia to their list of issues for the next lil’ while... at least until the sight of this spider the
size a human hand faded from memory.
The kids... oh my heart, the
kids... It was altogether different than
what I had witnessed in Honduras and Ghana.
The kids here seemed subdued, reserved, and rarely approached us, choosing
instead to observe us from a distance. Most of the time, when they approached, an adult would "shoo" them away from us.
At one point, we were served fresh roasted peanuts, and one of the
children who had lined up against the wall with a dozen other kids approached
one of the adults that lived there to ask for some, and he was harshly
reprimanded.
Dejected, the young boy
returned to sit by the wall.
I stopped
my mid-afternoon journaling to wrap my mind around what I was witnessing, and
began to think back to earlier interactions I had witnessed between local
adults and children...
Time and time
again, I had seen what I can only describe as adults treating children as
though they are stray dogs. It’s a harsh
description, but here, children come last, they are pushed away, and seem to be
invisible.
The more I watched, the more
my heart broke.
I got up, went to get a
handful of peanuts from the tray, and went in search of the boy who had been
pushed aside, his needs/wants dismissed.
I called him to me, looked into his eyes and smiled as I opened his
hand, and quietly gave him the nuts. I
tenderly touched his face and communicated love to him without words.
After all, are not a boy's heart and spirit worth so much more than a mere handful of peanuts?
I was aware
that doing so could cause trouble, as children learn quickly in this harsh environment that they can take advantage of our presence there and beg
aggressively... and we'd had such issues already in Cameroon.
Still... there are times when we are called to be love against the
grain, and this was one of those times.
It had less to do with the food than it had to do with this boy’s
crushed spirit.
Children need to know
they matter to someone, that someone notices them with love.
As much as it pained me to see their dirty faces, their torn clothes, their bellies swollen with parasites and malnutrition, their hunger...
Perhaps it hurt more to see that these children are not suffering from such things as much as they're suffering from the world's lack of compassion. I'm so thankful to the ones who do reach out to these children, to the broken, the hurt, the sick, the poor, the oppressed, the enslaved, the lost... may it lead to a viral outbreak of compassion that touches the lives of each and every one of those in need.
I spent time with the kids who were on the outside, looking in. I took their photos, and made them laugh, paying attention to each and every one of them individually.
A young girl was carrying
a precious baby on her back, and I asked her for permission to hold the
baby. I wandered up and down the
courtyard, completely lost in this beautiful little girl’s eyes that I held in
my arms. The world could have stood
still, and I’m not certain I would have noticed. I eventually had to give her back, much to my
chagrin, and doing so made my arms ache from the emptiness, but there were so many more kids who were hungry for attention. 
The activities for the following day
were optional, so I asked Dominica, the woman who had been hired to cook for
us, if she attended church in the area on Sundays. She said that yes, she normally went to a
Catholic church in the area. I asked her
where it was, and if I could accompany her.
She said that it was a little less than a 2 hour walk, but that since
she was cooking for our team, she wouldn’t be able to attend church the
following morning. It deepened my
appreciation even more for the hospitality she extended to us.
I asked if she had a Bible, she said
that she had never owned a Bible, and she did not have one available. I shared that I had brought a Bible, and
offered to join her in the morning as she did our meal preparation – if she
couldn’t go to the church, we’d simply bring church to her! She chuckled and agreed, and said “Ok, we
will see you in the morning, then!”
As I was sitting outside at the table
that evening, journaling by flashlight while the team hung out and swapped
stories, I began to think of Dominica not having a copy of the Bible, and how
difficult it would be to get to know God intimately without His words, His love
letter to us, His guidance in written texts.
(One of my Bibles, March 2010)
All through this trip, I had taken
advantage of any down time we had to study my Bible and journal, and I couldn’t
imagine not having His Word at my fingertips.
It’s the first thing I pack, the only thing I really truly need. I thought back to the other Bibles I had at
home... the Greek & Hebrew Study
Bible, a Mom’s Devotional Bible, a NIV/Message Parallel Study Bible, as well as
several others, along with the Bible app on my phone...
How rich are we, to have more than enough,
when the opposite of extreme poverty is simply “enough”?
Even
as much as I give, I still have too much.
I
thought of the small sacrifice it would be to go without a Bible for the
following 7 days, in order for someone seeking His word to have one for
countless years... I could give her the
Bible I had brought with me. Nothing
less than that would ever make sense. I
just wished I could do more while I was there, with her.
As I was journaling, some of my team mates asked about my journal, what kind of things I write, and whether I'd be willing to share. I said I'd be willing to read a few pages to them if they'd like, so they joked that we could have tomorrow night's round-of-beers non-campfire activity as "JD reading from her journal." Although in the end it didn't happen, they're welcomed to read bits and pieces of it on these blog pages. As for the paper version, the journal was quickly filling up. My Bestie had prepared this journal and sent it to me just for this trip, so that I could write during my down time. She had written a letter in the beginning pages, as well as tucked letters of encouragement in the back for me to open as I felt led to. In the journal's pages, she randomly wrote secret little notes and messages to make me smile. My favorite was "Still writing, eh?!" She knows me well.
I still had so much to journal, but
the light I had tucked into my bandana to light the pages was attracting an
increasing number of bugs, which was in turn drawing the bats to me. They were swooping around my head in search
of a late night snack.
It was well past
time to go to bed anyway, my mind was doing the craziest things the longer I
stayed up – like considering going for a run the following morning... I had walked, hiked and climbed in Africa,
but never run... Someday, I will – but
not this Sunday.
Unless I end up having
to chase a snake, or outrun Hairy Beast’s 8 long hairy legs?
