Today I accompanied Mariam, my
neighbor friend to the “marigot". In West Africa, a “marigot" is a
water source fed by rains, over flows from a river or from underground. It’s
free water and the ladies from Kong come here to wash anything what takes a lot
of water, but nothing with soap as the water washes into the fields. Mariam had
two big bowls filled with néré seeds still covered with the yellow powder.
I
helped her carry the utensils while she had the heavy stuff on her head. There
was a big old well at the marigot where she immediately got water to fill the
bowels soaking the powdered néré seeds. I started washing the seeds with her by
hand.
The position we were doing it reminded me of my first yoga lesson for complete beginners which I had followed on YouTube. It was great being outside working alongside a friend, who was explaining me everything in Dioula I wanted to learn. It helped me to make progress in understanding the Dioula language better.
Once the soaking was done, the yellow mud then needed to be sifted off the
seeds.
We finished just before noon and carried everything back home. It’s amazing how strong the women are and how hard they can work. There we
put the wet seeds right in front of her court yard to dry on the asphalt.
Natural solar energy is used here all the time to dry plants, piment
(hot pepper), millet and corn powder, cloths, etc.
Everywhere I go here in Kong I see women going or coming
back from the bush loaded with big bowls on their heads filled with the fruit
or better said, beans from the Néré tree.
Last Saturday, I accompanied Mantènné,
a neighbor lady to pick Néré. “An ka taga kongo ra ka néré tigé.” We went into
the bush to pick Néré. Mantènné carried a big bowl with bottles of water and
some food and I pulled a long picking stick along. It was a beautiful walk through mango and cashew fields until we found some big Néré trees further on and
started picking the beans. It was harder then I thought. I had a hard time
balancing the long picking stick aiming to catch a batch of beans. My arms
tired quickly. But Mantènne and Aminata, who we met there, were amazingly strong in my eyes. In the end I picked up all the fruit from the ground.
Last night we cracked the Néré shells open to get the seeds out which are bedded in a yellow powder. The powder is sweet and delicious. The kids here love it. But for you it may be kinda chalky and strange tasting.
This morning we processed the beans; first washing off the yellow powder,
then boiling them for quite a while. After they were drained we pounded them
with sand to get the black peal off the tiny beans. Then the sand needed to be
washed off and the clean white pealed beans needed to be cooked again.
isn't it a little bit like gold washing?
Monday, 3rd April 2017
Walking through Kong, I see nearly in every courtyard women
pealing and pounding Néré. Mantènné since went twice or more back to the bush
to pick more Néré. Her whole living room is filled with Néré which need to be
pealed by hand. Guess what I was doing the past few days. It’s a great way to
listen to Dioula and learn some more new words and trying to take part in a
conversation as we sit together around a big bowl which slowly is filling up
with the yellow beans.
Why all this hard work you are asking? It’s to make Sumbara.
After the cooked beans are all dried in the sun, you make little balls out of
them and dry them again. These are sold in the market like bullion cubs which
make a delicious sauce which is rich in protein to put over rice or to eat with
“Kabato”.
As Emily P Freeman says: Instead of waiting for the world to stop, let’s slow ourselves, look around, and name what we see. What have I learned that I don’t want to forget? I am inspired by her, who shares a list of what she’s learning four times a year. This is my first try and I am linking it with her blog. I like Emily's way of creative and spiritual direction and took her Fall class of "Create + Complete", last October. But the learning continues and I am often coming back to process what I thought I understood.
1. Finishing a project that matters
is about learning the balance between pushing through resistance as well as pacing yourself as you go. It’s also about ignoring good things on purpose which don’t matter. My husband and I live and work in northern Côte d’Ivoire to help train pastors and their wives. But deep in me developed the wish “to understand the muslim Dioula women better and help them to find creative solutions to develop, become alive and grow spiritually." So I moved to a Dioula town in January to learn the Dioula language and to understand the culture better. It’s not easy at all to learn a new language. But I enjoy my simple setting, living in a court yard of the Coulibaly family in the midst of the Dioula people. As I am learning their language, I am also listening closely to Jesus and his word to follow his guidance, to understand of what the project wants to be.
2. Learning that Limitations and Boundaries
are good and necessary. They are even the very borders within creativity grows best.
3. I learned a lot from Emily’s Quiet Collection especially Day 10
“Anti-Hustle” Bread - Mark 8! So good. Jesus wants to have Kingdom conservations with us but because of our limitations, he always needs to come back to provision. V 17 He is inviting us to live differently and we are looking around distracted counting bread. He is pointing out the YEAST of the Pharisees and how selfish ambition can ruin the whole batch. But I can’t hear it because I am all about where is the bread? There is not enough. Am I going to be o.k.? But this is the Jesus who fed the crowds already twice with lots of bread leftover! How so often am I pointing out the lack rather then having Faith for the plenty. Jesus says: “I am the BREAD !” And there are plenty of broken pieces left over in the baskets! Why am I always forgetting the point? Jesus invites broken people to come and feast on broken bread. It’s not about my way and my timing with whole loafs of bread. There is an invitation to hold the bread in your hands to see your day and your work with kingdom eyes. To feast on Him, to move forward with the energy that comes from eating the broken pieces. “This is my body broken for you. Do this in remembrance of me.”
4. Dawa is a special ink
During my Dioula language study I am also drawing quite a bit to help me memorize words and phrases. I discovered DAWA. Dawa is an ink, made from the Kotoyiri tree used for medicine. My neighbor is a Marabou (Koran teacher) and uses Dawa to write Koran verses on tablets to wash them off and collecting the liquid in bottles. He let me try drawing and writing with his ink. When dry it has a beautiful dark brown shine.
5. “Breathe” and “Wonder”
are the words to help me pay attention to life, myself, and God’s presence. How sad would it be, when we stand before great wonder and feel nothing. Let’s ‘breathe’ to awaken and to be attentive to the world around and in us. Let’s ‘wonder’ with passion about the beauty of God’s ways. I want to close my reflections in summarizing this past 3 months with a quote from Joy Saweyer:
“We want to be fully aware of God. And we want to be unified with his purposes in the world. In short, we want God to find his perfect artistic expression in us and through us.”
We like to hike Mont Lataha, about 7 km out of Korhogo.
This last week, it was good to be in the cotton fields and pick some soft cotton with the farmers. Away from the internet and phone for a while. Wandering in and wondering about God's creation, appreciating the harvest season and the new colors. Jumping into and lying on a cotton hill. Hiking and flying! Thanking God for relationships and meeting new interesting people in the variety of their personalities, cultures, ages, and different languages.
"We
should be astonished at the goodness of God, stunned that He should bother to
call us by name, our mouths wide open at His love, bewildered that at this very
moment we are standing on holy ground."
— Brennan
Manning
Going Dioula
- 4th - 11th August 2016
Angelika’s Impressions
And off we
went Thursday early morning from the Kong bus station in Bouaké. Damaris and I
had the privilege to sit in front beside the driver. People entered and left
the little bus as we drove further north. The rainy season had turned the
landscape into a fresh green: cotton, corn and peanut fields were in full
bloom.
By 2pm we
arrived in Kong where Seydou and Tata Coulibaly picked us up. Seydou is the son
of BaOuleyman, where Rod lived in 1990 to learn the Dioula language. The
Coulibaly family is our first address in Kong. This family also has its roots
in Bouaké. BaGaoussou, the older brother of BaOuleyman, is the chief of the
Kong courtyard in Bouaké and a well-known teacher of the Quran. Through him we
announced our trip a few days in advance.
Seydou came
with his motor bike and brought our luggage and the 25 kg sack of fresh ginger
home. Tata, Damaris and I walked home alongside the 18th century mosque of
Kong. We exchanged greetings in Dioula as we passed by people.
Damaris, from
Leipzig, is at the end of her master’s study in ethnology and wanted to spend
the summer with us in Côte d’Ivoire. We wanted to introduce her with the Dioula
people and their capital, Kong.
After lunch
and after greeting all the neighbors, we went into town to participate in the
wedding celebration. Seven weddings were celebrated that week in Kong.
Thursday, late afternoon until sunset, the whole town watched the brides riding on different men’s shoulders as the friends of the groom dance with his future
wife to demonstrate their joy for their friend and their strength. It was
fascinating.
The next
morning, we accompanied Tata to help one of the bride’s mother. As we
approached the courtyard we heard drums and singing. Finding out that the whole
family and friends were already there since 4am cooking millet porridge for
breakfast on a wood fire in a huge cauldron. Later they cooked a huge cauldron
of kabato (polenta or corn porridge) and in another pot okra sauce. There were
about 50 to 70 ladies who helped. Their main job was to keep everybody happy
with dancing and singing. The old ladies used different rhythmic instruments.
Only the djembe was played by two young men. To prepare such a big amount of
kabato over a wooden fire gets everybody sweating.
The food then was
distributed and a group of ladies brought lunch to the bride, continuing with
singing and dancing on their way. There the dance really took off until 3 brides came out of a house and joined in the dancing. This continued every day
until Tuesday.
It was a
colorful week. In the midst of all there was the national independence day, 7th
August, with a parade in front of the mayor’s office.
Damaris gives her insight
of the time spend in Kong below, so that you can see a little bit how everyday
life looks like.
One Week in Kong, Or: A
Fascinating KONGlomerate
Damaris’ Impressions
Long bus tours are not even that
bad if you can sit in front and buy roasted peanuts and popcorn through the
window. And so our trip to Kong passed by pleasantly quickly. Every attempt to
read a book would have disappeared into one of those huge potholes, but thanks
to Angelika and her smartphone I could listen to Rainer Maria Rilke‘s „Letters
to a Young Poet“ - maybe out of place in the Ivorian bush, but then also not
more than me.
Our host family put us into a room
next to their little rented house - a room painted in Ivorian blue. That blue
in which many houses here are painted (if the owners can afford it) and that
makes you feel kind of cool even during great heat. At night, of course, you
don‘t see this blue any more, and then the heat keeps you awake, the heat - and
the mosquitos.
I had to get used to a lot of
things: Washing myself from a bucket, in a shower that was located in the
sleeping room of our hosts and also served as a toilet - except for the (big
business???). For this, you had to use the squat toilet outside, where in the
darkness cockroaches the length of your finger would crawl over your feet. Yey.
I would only go by day. I also had to get used to eating with my fingers.
That‘s a lot of fun, but it was embarrassing at first, because more food would
end up on my pagne and on the floor around me than in my mouth. I also learned
that contrary to the title of a popular movie* you better observe birthing
goats only from the corner of your eyes, if you don‘t want to be thought of as
weird.
In Kong we spend a lot of time
„greeting“ people, which means stopping by their courtyard, exchanging
greetings and sitting with them. During this sitting and after the greetings,
there was not even a lot of talking. Sometimes somebody would put a baby on our
lap or offer us a drink of water. Otherwise, we would just sit there while the
children and chickens and goats scurried around us.
I try to withhold judgements, but
one thing I can say without hesitation: Weddings in Kong are different from
weddings in Germany. First, because they are longer, they take a whole week.
Second, because most of the activities are separated by gender: Angelika and I
cooked and danced and talked and sat with the women for days, the only men
present being two or three drummers. In Germany gender is only important while
bachelor(ette) parties and the throwing of the bridal bouquet. Third, „western
weddings“ are the couple‘s „big day“. It‘s about them and their love for each
other. In Kong I got the impression that it was only marginally about the bride
and the groom. The groom, for example, I almost never got to see, and I‘m sure
he could have said the same thing about the bride. But don‘t ask me what it was
about instead, I haven‘t figured that out yet. It all felt more community based,
more collective, less individual.
Every morning, the women would cook
Kabato - maize porridge - in a boiler that was at least as big as the one
Obelix fell in as a child. The women would cheer each other on with dancing and
singing and clapping, since the porridge has to be pounded well, and that‘s
hard work. When the Kabato was done, it was distributed among smaller pots, and
then the women would leave with rattles and drums and deliver it to the brides,
who sat, beautifully dressed, in a dark room. Most pots the women would take
home and eat there.
In Kong, I also rediscovered
crocheting. It has the advantage of giving you something useful to do while
sitting with people for a long time - it builds a bridge, so to say, between
the cost-benefit way of thinking which takes a lot of room in my everyday life
in Germany, and the Just-Being-There which I encountered here in Côte d‘Ivoire
and which is sometimes not easy to endure. It‘s like a cold withdrawal, and
crocheting alleviates it somehow. Angelika and I had the idea of finding out
whether the women in Kong would like to learn it. This way, they could make
hats or other clothes for their children while sitting at their market stalls.
Maybe they could even sell their crocheting products. We found out that wool is
indeed available in Kong for a moderate price. And the women then were excited
about the first hat we presented to them. Two of them already knew some basic
crocheting and we spend a few fun hours with them and the wool in the shadow of
our hut. Others began to learn. It would be great to further teach them and
thereby spend time with them and be part of their lives, building relationships
that do not build on cost-benefit calculations.
It was fun feeding them and watching them grow and hopp around. Unfortunately, one morning when we let them out off their cage to explore, one got too far off and a big crow caught it for breakfast. We got so used to the one left and it was fun watching it trust us and hearing it distinguish tweet whenever it was hungry. We fed it raw meet. Then came the day it flew away and we couldn't find it. Then hours later we heard it tweet and it was right there on our porch again.
After our trip to Kong for two days, we didn't see it again and thought may be it didn't survive. One morning when Rod was teaching his class, he heard our little owl's tweet outside in the trees. After class he looked around and there it was (:
