Bikabi Soup and Bitotos (an “Out from Behind her Eyes” entry about Africa)
copyright La Nina de Sus Ojos by The Kailyard, 2012 -2018 Any and all unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material, including all photographs, without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited by law.
I don’t know how Mom and Dad did it – fed their family of five three healthy meals a day with no grocery store within two hundred miles of Sakbayeme, the West African rainforest jungle settlement in which we lived. Mom learned quickly to rely on the friendly, spontaneous, strong and direct Basa women of our community, who would sell or gift her the local jungle foods; tiny white or light green free-range chicken eggs that had to be tested in a bowl of water (to see if they were rotten or good) before Mom dished out the francs in payment.
Many of these jungle eggs were fertilized, but still good to eat, boiled in the saucepan 3 minutes, then placed in our family’s five “humpty dumpty” 50’s-style egg cups, one at each of the carefully and fully-set places at the breakfast table.
A common supper of ours was bikabi soup, sprinkled with Maggi. And bitotos. Bikabi was a common giant tuber (taro in English!), spreading unseen under the shallow rainforest hummus under the huge, spreading dark green leaves of the plant. These giant leaves were often cut and pressed into use as impromptu umbrellas, when the ubiquitous rain would start up.
Oh, bitotos! I’ve never found an English name for these delicate strange West African fruits or vegetables which, in our household, were eaten more as a vegetable; boiled in water ’til the papery skin split a little, then rolled lightly in salt. We then nibbled the soft, greenish-gray and VERY-SLIGHTLY kerosene-tasting mush off of the inedible pit. It was an acquired taste, as Mom always said; with me, the first time or two I had them I didn’t like them and then, I did!
Bikabi Soup and Bitotos (an “Out from Behind her Eyes” entry about Africa)
copyright La Nina de Sus Ojos by NinadesusOjos, 2012 -2019.
Any and all unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material, including all photographs, without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited by law.
I don’t know how Mom and Dad did it – fed their family of five three healthy meals a day with no grocery store within two hundred miles of Sakbayeme, the West African rainforest jungle settlement in which we lived. Mom learned quickly to rely on the friendly, spontaneous, strong and direct Basa women of our community, who would sell or gift her the local jungle foods; tiny white or light green free-range chicken eggs that had to be tested in a bowl of water (to see if they were rotten or good) before Mom dished out the francs in payment.
Many of these jungle eggs were fertilized, but still good to eat, boiled in the saucepan 3 minutes, then placed in our family’s five “humpty dumpty” 50’s-style egg cups, one at each of the carefully and fully-set places at the breakfast table.
A common supper of ours was bikabi soup, sprinkled with Maggi. And bitotos. Bikabi was a common giant tuber (taro in English!), spreading unseen under the shallow rainforest hummus under the huge, spreading dark green leaves of the plant. These giant leaves were often cut and pressed into use as impromptu umbrellas, when the ubiquitous rain would start up.
Oh, bitotos! I’ve never found an English name for these delicate strange West African fruits or vegetables which, in our household, were eaten more as a vegetable; boiled in water ’til the papery skin split a little, then rolled lightly in salt. We then nibbled the soft, greenish-gray and VERY-SLIGHTLY kerosene-tasting mush off of the inedible pit. It was an acquired taste, as Mom always said; with me, the first time or two I had them I didn’t like them and then, I did!
A Fun Thing that Happened to Me in Congo! (Post #4 in series)
Those of ’round-about my generation or older, remember passing notes in highschool?
In my highschool, The American School of Kinshasa, Kinshasa, Congo we passed A LOT of notes!
Here’s a note, that got passed to me there in my school, by one of my girlfriends, R., who was my age, in my grade, and who was also, like me, the daughter of crosscultural workers, only HER parents lived and worked in the middle of the jungle in Congo, while my family was up the Continent a hop, skip and a jump, by plane. A couple of countries up, in GIGANTIC AFRICA, in Cameroun.
We were both sixteen, and Easter Vacation was coming up. Cameroun was too far away and too expensive on the planes and all, in the seventies (which this was!) for my folks to be able to bring me home for the long Easter Vacation, so I didn’t really have anyplace to go, from my boarding hostel (MPH), and I was feeling sad at the prospect of spending all those lonely days all by myself in my empty boarding hostel while all my friends went home for the holidays!
My girlfriend rescued me! She invited me home with her, to inland Congo, to spend the Easter Holidays with her and her family! It was for ten days or two weeks, I can’t remember which.
Only, she and I waited with bated breath (or, at least, I waited with bated breath – I should only speak for myself here!) because there was a potential problem. I might not be able to go!
That’s because there was no road to the place in the jungle where they lived and, the only way for us to GET there was by Piper Cub Cessna Six-seater (I’m pretty sure that was the kind of a plane. Something like that. I know it was very small and light, a six-seater.) There might not be room for me. The crosscultural worker families who lived out there needed to use most of the tiny plane’s carefully calculated luggage and weight allowances for food, medicines and supplies they needed.
Then, on the morning of March 24th, in the middle of First Period English Class , R. slipped me this note!
March 23
Dear C.,
Guess what!!!
MAF has squeezed you onto the flight that I’m going up to V. on! If you had been any bigger or fatter you wouldn’t have made it! Doesn’t that make you glad that you’re the size you are? (Note: I had had to send in my WEIGHT notification, a couple of days earlier, to see if I would be able to get onto the flight or not!)
We’ll be leaving Thursday morning, probably around 11:00 or 12:00 for the airport. Tell your hostel parents everything is clear. Your way back on the boat is all arranged. Praise the Lord!!!
It may be that it would be better if you spent the night here Wed. since I don’t think we’d be going to school that day. I’m not sure about that yet, we may have to go for half a day.
Anyhow, you can set your mind at rest now. The Lord is good.
Love,
R.
P.S. Your entire trip will probably cost somewhere in between 28-30 zaires. (Note: I’m trying to remember the exchange rate from then…..I think that was maybe around 50 dollars…)
__________________ ________________ ____________________
I only just found this old note, handwritten, slipped into an old journal notebook of mine from way back. A couple of years ago, through letter writing, emailing, and Facebook, my highschool girlfriend and I renewed contact and correspondence with each other and are presently benefitting from each other’s communications and friendship even though we live on opposite sides of the world both in very remote locations. Hopefully, she and I can be a mutual encouragement one to another, even after all these years.
Today, I thank God for my highschool girlfriend, I thank God for that wonderful trip with her, so many years ago now, and I thank God for the relationships with HIM that my girlfriend and I had, even way back then when each of us were barely older than children, and also to this day, and continuing. And I thank God for kindred spirit friendships.
I think that notes and letters, cards and emails, Facebook messages, Skypes with vidiocams, texts and phone calls, all variations on the NOTE, can be powerful tools for sharing God’s love and encouragement with others and for seeking to deepen our relationships one with another, whether these “others” be our own children, our grandchildren as they get older, our parents or grandparents, friends or acquaintances. We all know how important the thankyou note is. How would short Scripture verse-headed notes or emails be, as an encouragement to a Christian friend or loved one?
I think of younger local friends, a married couple who are intentionally raising their three gradeschool-aged youngsters without a television set in the house. I’ve noticed the three kids spend tons of time writing and drawing notes, little signs, and “funnies strips”, “cartoon strips”, with black and white line drawings that they create themselves. Not to mention that half the time one meets up with these children they seem to have their nose in a book! They often gift us with some of these creations, and we always LOVE getting them, and proudly display them on our refrigerator or around our house. Our friends seem to be raising their kids to write and give and share NOTES.
People like us tend to have a lot of transitions in their lives, a lot of airplane trips, a lot of road trips, maybe a lot of moves. Come to think of it, almost everyone tends to have a lot of transition, on one level or another these days! More and more all the time! I’ve one longtime friend who often gives tiny handwritten notes of exhortation and encouragement, with one small Bible verse that applies handwritten in there also, sealed up in a small envelope. Before her friend leaves on a plane, she gives it, and says “Don’t open this yet! Open it when you get on the plane!” It’s so fun, and helpful.
My mom has a longtime cherished personal tradition by now of sometimes, for very special ocassions, giving books as family gifts, and she sometimes writes a short note, signed, in a front page of the gift book, all in her old-fashioned, beautiful, perfect “elementary schoolteacher 3rd Grade Palmer Method teaching hand”. My grown children now have treasured little kid books, with her notes in the front of them, that they can now begin sharing with their own babies!
I know the concept of notes and letters is old-fashioned now, but does not that make the creating, the giving, and the recieving of one more special and valuable than ever?
I say, “Long live the NOTE, for God’s Glory!”
What happened in Cameroun when I was eleven…
It was a long school vacation time. Our next-door-neighbor family was going away to the seashore for two weeks of yearly holiday. The mom came up to me and asked me if I would like to earn a little pocket money daily feeding and also daily walking, on the end of his chain, their pet “baby” gorilla.
I happily said “yes” and received my instructions for my new responsibilities with conscientious attention. The particular “baby” gorilla in question was much loved by all the kids and teenagers, lived in a large chicken-wire cage/home in the neighbor family’s back yard, and had a general reputation for being tame. I was a fanatical animal lover, had several pets of my own, though none as exotic as a gorilla, and I thought I already had a great relationship with this tame gorilla.
Well! From the very first morning, the gorilla, who had been quietly growing from babyhood, and now was eight months old, (I wonder how old that would equal in people years?) demonstrated a HUGE mind of his own and, instead of walking pleasantly around the grassy yards on the end of his long metal chain, would PLANT himself in the grass and start getting mad at me, working himself up into a rage, then CHARGING me down the length of the chain, wrapping himself around my bony bare shins, and biting on my legs!
Maybe he was missing his family? Probably. Not that used to me, I guess. A few mornings of that and, I’m afraid poor Baby Gorilla didn’t get taken out each day for the rest of the two weeks! He got fed super well though, and petted through the chicken wire, and talked to a lot each day.
A Fun Thing that Happened to Me in Congo! (Post #4 in series)
Those of ’round-about my generation or older, remember passing notes in highschool?
In my highschool, The American School of Kinshasa, Kinshasa, Congo we passed A LOT of notes!
Here’s a note, that got passed to me there in my school, by one of my girlfriends, R., who was my age, in my grade, and who was also, like me, the daughter of crosscultural workers, only HER parents lived and worked in the middle of the jungle in Congo, while my family was up the Continent a hop, skip and a jump, by plane. A couple of countries up, in GIGANTIC AFRICA, in Cameroun.
We were both sixteen, and Easter Vacation was coming up. Cameroun was too far away and too expensive on the planes and all, in the seventies (which this was!) for my folks to be able to bring me home for the long Easter Vacation, so I didn’t really have anyplace to go, from my boarding hostel (MPH), and I was feeling sad at the prospect of spending all those lonely days all by myself in my empty boarding hostel while all my friends went home for the holidays!
My girlfriend rescued me! She invited me home with her, to inland Congo, to spend the Easter Holidays with her and her family! It was for ten days or two weeks, I can’t remember which.
Only, she and I waited with bated breath (or, at least, I waited with bated breath – I should only speak for myself here!) because there was a potential problem. I might not be able to go!
That’s because there was no road to the place in the jungle where they lived and, the only way for us to GET there was by Piper Cub Cessna Six-seater (I’m pretty sure that was the kind of a plane. Something like that. I know it was very small and light, a six-seater.) There might not be room for me. The crosscultural worker families who lived out there needed to use most of the tiny plane’s carefully calculated luggage and weight allowances for food, medicines and supplies they needed.
Then, on the morning of March 24th, in the middle of First Period English Class , R. slipped me this note!
March 23
Dear C.,
Guess what!!!
MAF has squeezed you onto the flight that I’m going up to V. on! If you had been any bigger or fatter you wouldn’t have made it! Doesn’t that make you glad that you’re the size you are? (Note: I had had to send in my WEIGHT notification, a couple of days earlier, to see if I would be able to get onto the flight or not!)
We’ll be leaving Thursday morning, probably around 11:00 or 12:00 for the airport. Tell your hostel parents everything is clear. Your way back on the boat is all arranged. Praise the Lord!!!
It may be that it would be better if you spent the night here Wed. since I don’t think we’d be going to school that day. I’m not sure about that yet, we may have to go for half a day.
Anyhow, you can set your mind at rest now. The Lord is good.
Love,
R.
P.S. Your entire trip will probably cost somewhere in between 28-30 zaires. (Note: I’m trying to remember the exchange rate from then…..I think that was maybe around 50 dollars…)
__________________ ________________ ____________________
I only just found this old note, handwritten, slipped into an old journal notebook of mine from way back. A couple of years ago, through letter writing, emailing, and Facebook, my highschool girlfriend and I renewed contact and correspondence with each other and are presently benefitting from each other’s communications and friendship even though we live on opposite sides of the world both in very remote locations. Hopefully, she and I can be a mutual encouragement one to another, even after all these years.
Today, I thank God for my highschool girlfriend, I thank God for that wonderful trip with her, so many years ago now, and I thank God for the relationships with HIM that my girlfriend and I had, even way back then when each of us were barely older than children, and also to this day, and continuing. And I thank God for kindred spirit friendships.
I think that notes and letters, cards and emails, Facebook messages, Skypes with vidiocams, texts and phone calls, all variations on the NOTE, can be powerful tools for sharing God’s love and encouragement with others and for seeking to deepen our relationships one with another, whether these “others” be our own children, our grandchildren as they get older, our parents or grandparents, friends or acquaintances. We all know how important the thankyou note is. How would short Scripture verse-headed notes or emails be, as an encouragement to a Christian friend or loved one?
I think of younger local friends, a married couple who are intentionally raising their three gradeschool-aged youngsters without a television set in the house. I’ve noticed the three kids spend tons of time writing and drawing notes, little signs, and “funnies strips”, “cartoon strips”, with black and white line drawings that they create themselves. Not to mention that half the time one meets up with these children they seem to have their nose in a book! They often gift us with some of these creations, and we always LOVE getting them, and proudly display them on our refrigerator or around our house. Our friends seem to be raising their kids to write and give and share NOTES.
People like us tend to have a lot of transitions in their lives, a lot of airplane trips, a lot of road trips, maybe a lot of moves. Come to think of it, almost everyone tends to have a lot of transition, on one level or another these days! More and more all the time! I’ve one longtime friend who often gives tiny handwritten notes of exhortation and encouragement, with one small Bible verse that applies handwritten in there also, sealed up in a small envelope. Before her friend leaves on a plane, she gives it, and says “Don’t open this yet! Open it when you get on the plane!” It’s so fun, and helpful.
My mom has a longtime cherished personal tradition by now of sometimes, for very special ocassions, giving books as family gifts, and she sometimes writes a short note, signed, in a front page of the gift book, all in her old-fashioned, beautiful, perfect “elementary schoolteacher 3rd Grade Palmer Method teaching hand”. My grown children now have treasured little kid books, with her notes in the front of them, that they can now begin sharing with their own babies!
I know the concept of notes and letters is old-fashioned now, but does not that make the creating, the giving, and the recieving of one more special and valuable than ever?
I say, “Long live the NOTE, for God’s Glory!”
Installment #2 from old notebooks just after I had turned sixteen. End of sophomore year.
June 1973. Wednesday Afternoon.
” I’m sitting down at the picnic table in the backyard – the sun is late afternoon – filtering down on me through the leaves of the mango trees above my head. The birds are having a symphony above me, twittering and singing and chirping at the top of their voices.
Rusty (the kitty, now with two kittens) has followed me down here and is in the process of rubbing her fur against my pen – which doesn’t work too well when your’e(sic) trying to write!
It is SO beautiful down here, quiet, filled with God. That is something I really miss in Kinshasa; Kinshasa with the trucks ROARING past the hostel, literally shaking it, the horns honking, people yelling, and loneliness. In the midst of over a million people, loneliness.
I don’t think I ever feel lonely here, really, and yet I am alone so much of the time. Probably because I’m right in the middle of my family here.
My Memory of the Simba Rebellion in the Congo, from Cameroun.
When I was seven and in boarding school in The Dorm, the dorm parents would have picnics every friday evening, outside, for all of us 49 dorm kids. There would be dessert for the meal which, during the weekdays, there was not. After these outdoor picnics, oftentimes we would gather in the Dorm living room for games and songs and, every once in a long while, a reel-to-reel movie. I saw “Lawrence of Arabia” that way – bored to tears – I thought that movie would never end!
But one weekend it was different. We got called into the living room on Saturday evening, instead of Friday, and our dorm parents were sober-faced.
They told us that, down the road, in the Congo, many outreachers were being taken hostage and were in danger of being killed, by a group of people called the Simba Army. They said that a medical doctor outreacher, whose name was Dr. Paul White, had been murdered a few days before – the telegram had just come telling the horrible news. Other people were getting killed as well. We 49 kids were very sad. We all were asked by our dorm parents to bow our heads and join in prayer for the safety and the rescue of all of our fellow outreachers that had not yet gotten killed, and all of their children, around our own ages, a hop, skip and a jump down the roads from Elat, Cameroun where we sat in our Dorm.
We did that.
Several years later, when I was a teenager, I found myself in another dorm IN the Congo, and many of my best friends were the very children, now turned teenagers also, for whom we had prayed that Saturday evening at Elat. Now, forty years later, many of us former children have found each other and are in contact once again with one another, sharing our continuing stories and lives, one with another. I hope some of us are still praying one for another, as well.
What happened in Cameroun when I was eleven…
It was a long school vacation time. Our next-door-neighbor family was going away to the seashore for two weeks of yearly holiday. The mom came up to me and asked me if I would like to earn a little pocket money daily feeding and also daily walking, on the end of his chain, their pet “baby” gorilla.
I happily said “yes” and received my instructions for my new responsibilities with conscientious attention. The particular “baby” gorilla in question was much loved by all the kids and teenagers, lived in a large chicken-wire cage/home in the neighbor family’s back yard, and had a general reputation for being tame. I was a fanatical animal lover, had several pets of my own, though none as exotic as a gorilla, and I thought I already had a great relationship with this tame gorilla.
Well! From the very first morning, the gorilla, who had been quietly growing from babyhood, and now was eight months old, (I wonder how old that would equivocate in people years?) demonstrated a HUGE mind of his own and, instead of walking pleasantly around the grassy yards on the end of his long metal chain, would PLANT himself in the grass and start getting mad at me, working himself up into a rage, then CHARGING me down the length of the chain, wrapping himself around my bony bare shins, and biting on my legs!
Maybe he was missing his family? Probably. Not that used to me, I guess. A few mornings of that and, I’m afraid poor Baby Gorilla didn’t get taken out each day for the rest of the two weeks! He got fed super well though.
Getting to the Kinshasa airport and other adventures, June 1973. God answers prayers of tenth graders! (verbatim excerpts from first journal notebook)
June 10, 1973, journal entries continued- We are three; two boys and a girl (me), two tenth graders and one eleventh grader.
What a hassle getting out of Kinshasa this morning. It was horrible, and I think it’s going to take me the two and a half months of summer vacation to recuperate! (Oh, while I’ve been writing this we have taken off, had our second breakfast of the day and are now descending toward Libreville. It’s been about an hour.) Anyways, Aunt G. got us up at 3:45 a.m. today, we got ready, said goodbyes ( me to R.), and left for the airport in the hostel combi. About halfway there, soldiers with machine guns stopped us and held us there because we didn’t have a certain paper, but after about twenty minutes they let us through. Some of them were drunk.
Well, all that made us later still when we finally did make it to the airport. After about thirty or forty minutes we got our luggage through and went on to the formalities line.
Then there was a huge mix up that held us there for at least another hour. We were not going to be able to go. Both J. and I didn’t have a particular paper and THEN……. it was discovered that J. had no visa – it had run out almost four months previously! I felt real scared, and prayed and prayed and prayed in my heart. Then, THEY LET US THROUGH!
It was a real miracle – God sure does answer prayer!
Now we have stopped for ten minutes at Libreville, and are up again, speeding north toward Douala!
Random Thoughts on Packages and Magazine Subscriptions
I’m a magazine person, but hard-copy.
I mean, yes, being able to obtain and read new BOOKS on electronic readers, because of living longterm in places without public libraries, easy access to, or reasonably-priced books in one’s own heart language, has opened out my life and given joy in absolutely watershed manner. KINDLE was a life paradigm shift!
Magazine-reading though? Uufff! I’ve tried. Those large sections of favorite subscription mags that ARE posted online, free to read, have been carefully perused by me with an experimental eye towards hoping that I could adjust myself to savouring online mag reading with the same deep enjoyment that I derive from feeling the smooth clean paper edge, thumbing for the single corner of the page, gently unsticking it from the next sheet, then turning the leaf.
Hearing that satisfying little “swish” as my eyes drink in the thoughtful words, the bright colors and images of the carefully-crafted article created out of photos and words matched up to make an entity to encourage me or provoke me towards creativity or cause me to think more deeply, or to delight me.
I really tried, but no go.
It would be SO to my advantage if I COULD adjust to reading my beloved mags online. That’s because, residing where I do, or, in some places in Africa as I used to, our magazines don’t arrive.
Even if we HAD gritted our teeth, tightened our belts and forked over the check for subscription rates by airmail to our distant and exotic locales, that amounted to 3 to 4 times the sum of a regular domestic rate for a magazine subscription.
No. These bright glossy foreign magazines in mysterious brown sleeves, piling up in the 3rd-world-nation post offices seldom made it to their destinations (our postal boxes). They were too tempting, in a context of scarcity and need, or in a context of too many people wanting to practice their english. Christmas cards often did not make it either and one time, many years ago when we lived in Sucre, my best friend from second and third grades, Joelle, from Switzerland, made me a needlepoint wall tapestry by hand and sent it to me from Geneva to Bolivia. I never got it!
Which sometimes still makes me mad, when my “Good Housekeeping” never comes for a whole year!
Oh well. Minor annoyances, right? And, this kind of thing does have its recompenses. Delayed gratification can sometimes be just as good or better than instant or monthly. These years I’m into CT magazine and, the other day when P. and I arrived at my m.i.l.’s place from South America I was showered with almost a literary Christmas of CT issues from 8 and 6 and 4 months back, shiny and new and still crisp in their wrappers. They’d been WAITING for me, SAFE on the cardtable downstairs, in hardcopy form – a FEAST to enjoy in the month of May.
Thinkable Quotables #2
“thank God, my suitcase just got delivered to me! smile emoticon The man took it back to the airport, and the airline just delivered it to my parents’ home.” – my FB post from 4 years ago, NinadeSusOjos.
Explanatory note followed by June 20, 1973 journal entry.
My first year at the African-American high school, in the last half of that school year and throughout the next school year I had a fairly serious puppy-love crush, unrequited, on a boy in the school. Here’s a June 20th, 1973 journal entry I wrote which is partly about that but on a deeper level, about my close relationship with my mother which has continued throughout my whole life so far. The journal entry is, I think, about three themes, the last of which is third-culture-kid identity issues.
“Last night I told Mom all about S. and it was an unexpected relief to get it all out to someone who would be able to view it from an objective viewpoint. What can I do except wait and pray? —– but that is about the hardest thing TO do. Somehow, God is going to work it out the very best way.
I never thought I’d REALLY miss TASOK (the American School of Kinshasa) for three months of summer vacation but I am. It is so great to have so many beautiful people, friends, around you all the time. Anytime you want to, almost, you can go talk to somebody, or goof off and act like a spazz, or just go and be quiet or listen to music or something.
I made my own life when I went to TASOK, (sic) when you go to a boarding school or something like that, you have to make your own life. While at the school, it’s kind of like, it’s COMPLETELY your own. In other words, you are what you make yourself to be when you are at a place like my school with no brothers and sisters and your parents far away.
Then you come home for summer vacation, full of independence and pride in yourself, convinced that you’ve changed an awful lot, that you’ll be pretty cool at home now. But when you’re home, you suddenly realize you’re not so cool after all, but regarded just the same by your parents pretty much and by your brothers and sisters and all the other people on the station. – and your balloon deflates! You’re fighting with your sister and taking the head off your little brother and lazing around doing nothing and making no use of yourself at all.
Oh well, I guess that’s part of coming home.”
Prayer for my day
God,
Good morning. Thank you for your presence with me and in me, through your Holy Spirit. Thank you that you promise your children your mercies fresh and new for each of them every morning. Thanks for your faithfulness to us, the children of men, and for the fact that you are good, and for the fact that you never change. Thank you also that you are love. Lord, there are so many needs around us all, millions of needs. Some of the needs and hurts are more visible and others are of the heart, hidden, but not hidden to you. People need you, Lord. You’ve chosen us to be your hands and feet, to be your light in darkness, your salt to lend savor and healing to your planet, earth, and to the hurting children of men. Help us, your children, your chosen ones who know you, to walk closely with you this day being good salt, being good light. Amen.
Getting to the Kinshasa airport and other adventures, June 1973. God answers prayers of tenth graders! (verbatim excerpts from first journal notebook)
June 10, 1973, journal entries continued- We are three; two boys and a girl (me), two tenth graders and one eleventh grader.
What a hassle getting out of Kinshasa this morning. It was horrible, and I think it’s going to take me the two and a half months of summer vacation to recuperate! (Oh, while I’ve been writing this we have taken off, had our second breakfast of the day and are now descending toward Libreville. It’s been about an hour.) Anyways, Aunt G. got us up at 3:45 a.m. today, we got ready, said goodbyes ( me to R.), and left for the airport in the hostel combi. About halfway there, soldiers with machine guns stopped us and held us there because we didn’t have a certain paper, but after about twenty minutes they let us through. Some of them were drunk.
Well, all that made us later still when we finally did make it to the airport. After about thirty or forty minutes we got our luggage through and went on to the formalities line.
Then there was a huge mix up that held us there for at least another hour. We were not going to be able to go. Both J. and I didn’t have a particular paper and THEN……. it was discovered that J. had no visa – it had run out almost four months previously! I felt real scared, and prayed and prayed and prayed in my heart. Then, THEY LET US THROUGH!
It was a real miracle – God sure does answer prayer!
Now we have stopped for ten minutes at Libreville, and are up again, speeding north toward Douala!
What happened in Cameroun when I was eleven…
It was a long school vacation time. Our next-door-neighbor family was going away to the seashore for two weeks of yearly holiday. The mom came up to me and asked me if I would like to earn a little pocket money daily feeding and also daily walking, on the end of his chain, their pet “baby” gorilla.
I happily said “yes” and received my instructions for my new responsibilities with conscientious attention. The particular “baby” gorilla in question was much loved by all the kids and teenagers, lived in a large chicken-wire cage/home in the neighbor family’s back yard, and had a general reputation for being tame. I was a fanatical animal lover, had several pets of my own, though none as exotic as a gorilla, and I thought I already had a great relationship with this tame gorilla.
Well! From the very first morning, the gorilla, who had been quietly growing from babyhood, and now was eight months old, (I wonder how old that would equivocate in people years?) demonstrated a HUGE mind of his own and, instead of walking pleasantly around the grassy yards on the end of his long metal chain, would PLANT himself in the grass and start getting mad at me, working himself up into a rage, then CHARGING me down the length of the chain, wrapping himself around my bony bare shins, and biting on my legs!
Maybe he was missing his family? Probably. Not that used to me, I guess. A few mornings of that and, I’m afraid poor Baby Gorilla didn’t get taken out each day for the rest of the two weeks! He got fed super well though, and petted through the chicken wire, and talked to a lot each day.
What happened in Cameroun when I was eleven…
It was a long school vacation time. Our next-door-neighbor family was going away to the seashore for two weeks of yearly holiday. The mom came up to me and asked me if I would like to earn a little pocket money daily feeding and also daily walking, on the end of his chain, their pet “baby” gorilla.
I happily said “yes” and received my instructions for my new responsibilities with conscientious attention. The particular “baby” gorilla in question was much loved by all the kids and teenagers, lived in a large chicken-wire cage/home in the neighbor family’s back yard, and had a general reputation for being tame. I was a fanatical animal lover, had several pets of my own, though none as exotic as a gorilla, and I thought I already had a great relationship with this tame gorilla.
Well! From the very first morning, the gorilla, who had been quietly growing from babyhood, and now was eight months old, (I wonder how old that would equivocate in people years?) demonstrated a HUGE mind of his own and, instead of walking pleasantly around the grassy yards on the end of his long metal chain, would PLANT himself in the grass and start getting mad at me, working himself up into a rage, then CHARGING me down the length of the chain, wrapping himself around my bony bare shins, and biting on my legs!
Maybe he was missing his family? Probably. Not that used to me, I guess. A few mornings of that and, I’m afraid poor Baby Gorilla didn’t get taken out each day for the rest of the two weeks! He got fed super well though.
Scraps and Pieces from a Good Textbook: “Effective Biblical Counseling” by Lawrence Crabb
” the results of the Fall include separation not only from God and from others, but also from ourselves. we “come apart” as persons, unable to genuinely accept ourselves as we are. Our consequent struggle to be, or to pretend to be what we are not explains much of our deep discontent and personal suffering.”
The Big Mudhole
Our first trip to Sakbayeme. I remember getting off the ship in Douala and being in a huge unloading hangar area, and Uncle John Smith walking up to us – tall, oh so tall! He had black hair, and was wearing long-ish light khaki shorts, a short-sleeve button-down shirt and a pith helmet!
Daddy and he shook hands with each other, then went off together to try to get our CAR – our tiny blue Volkswagon BUG – out of CUSTOMS.
I remember the drive from Douala to Sakbayeme that night, in the pouring rain, and the GIANT MUDHOLE in the road – all the long string of logging trucks and French men puffing on cigarettes and Uncle Dale’s power wagon truck all getting STUCK in the depths of the GIANT MUDHOLE, but our tiny, light, navyblue Volkswagon bug (when it was finally our turn to go!) revving and skooting and skiing right up and forward OVER that sea of quicksand, that abyss of deep, red, liquid clay, around the EDGE of that miles-long string of logging trucks stuck in the middle of the road, the ONLY road, through a NEW WORLD OF African rain forest, to our home, our Sakbayeme.
Fruit Bats Munching Mangoes!
by La NiñadeSusOjos 
Job 35: 10 WHERE IS GOD, MY MAKER, WHO GIVES SONGS IN THE NIGHT, WHO TEACHES MORE TO US THAN TO THE BEASTS OF THE EARTH, AND MAKES US WISER THAN THE BIRDS OF THE AIR?
I was four, and one evening I lay on my cot listening to my brother’s soft slow breathing as he had just drifted off to sleep under the other mosquito net on his narrow metal bed across the room. Mac always fell asleep before I did! Sweat dampened my sticky hair and made the small of my back feel tickly under the thin cotton pajamas. It was always HOT on the equator in the middle of the West African jungle!
I loved my house there, which loomed darkly on a large hilltop and was already old in the early sixties, having been built by Germans before World War One with hardwood timbers brought to the Camerounian jungles on a European ship and carried to the remote forest outpost of Sakbayeme on the heads and shoulders of Africans. Those facts didn’t bother me, at age four. Now they do.
The house stood on stilts and, underneath were whitewashed pillars with column bases. Yesterday, attracted by the cool shadow of the concrete, a Horned Viper had curled sluggishly next to a pillar where Daddy had rested his hand for a minute, not seeing the deadly snake. He was talking to our Uncle John Smith, who did life-saving operations on the Africans every day. Uncle John got sad some days, when some of his patients died. My daddy had a very important job too. He kept all the hospital equipment running smoothly and when the instrument sterilizer broke down or the electricity generators would not work, Daddy made new parts for the machines and fixed them. All the doctors and nurses loved my daddy and my mommy.
This evening, I tried to keep my eyes shut by squinching them tightly. They kept popping open anyways. Mommy and Daddy had told Mac and me to lie still and go right to sleep and, whatever we did, NOT TO GO OUTSIDE OUR MOSQUITO NETS. Our nets got firmly folded in all the way around the edges of our mattresses by Mommy when she tucked us in at seven thirty p.m. after stories and prayers, and sometimes checked again by Daddy when he came in a minute later to say “goodnight”. The bed nets made our sleep hot and sticky but we knew that malaria was the Sakbayeme killer and that mosquito nets protected us from the insects that carried the horrible illness and that flew on tiny wings all through our windowless houses after dark. Nets and quinine pills swallowed every morning protected all us mish kids – Sakbayeme ones, Edea ones and Hope School ones – from getting bitten. Most of the African kids didn’t get to take quinine or sleep under mosquito nets and when I thought about that it made me sad that they might get malaria and made me envious that they could sleep cool and free at night. Both feelings at the same time.
Now I listened for the Fruit Bats in the mango trees, or for the Mountain Gorillas trumpeting in the Babimbi Hills behind our house but all I could hear this night were the African Tree Toads roaring in my ears! When I was scared of their LOUD rasping metallic cacaphony Mommy had explained that they were only two-inch brown tree toads, hundreds and thousands of them, and that the noise was them singing me to sleep. After that I was never afraid of them any more.
Now, suddenly, their singing stopped! Silence enveloped the jungle! Was it a sleek black Puma, gliding through the trees out there, that had disturbed my tree toad lullaby?
I bolted upright on the cot, sitting cross-legged and reached down the side of the bed with my left arm. I tugged at the heavy cotton muslin edge of the bed net, pulled it loose from under the mattress, slipped smoothly down through the opening and crawled across the dilapidated wooden floor toward the open window, trying to avoid the floorboards with the worst CREAKS and the biggest termite holes, which hurt my tender knees. Crouching under the black hole of a window opening, I imagined the black Puma gliding, the tree frogs huddling beneath leaves on their trunks and stems, the Fruit Bats munching mangos and the gorillas trumpeting in the Babimbi Hills, just across my beloved Sanaga River a short walk down the forest path below.
Mommy was coming! One of my floorboards must have CREAKED! Brisk, light footfalls sounded, coming closer through our shot-gun styled house. She was through the large living room, into hers and Daddy’s room, where Baby Sister lay sleeping in her bassinet under a soft mosquito netting of her own. She was almost here!
I slid behind the mahogany door to the huge boxy room. Just then, the chorus of tree toads started up their nightly song once again. Perhaps Mr. Puma had felt hot and sweaty too and had glided into the swiftly flowing river to have a swim, leaving all the little tree toads in peace again?
Mommy looked at her children’s beds and saw that mine was empty, the wrinkled voluminous net hanging loose at the side. She looked all around the shadowy room, then saw my back and my pony tail hunched close to her and the floor, behind the edge of the open door!
“There you are, NinadeSusOjos! What are you doing?”
Mommy and I have always breathed from the same set of lungs, imagined from one brain together and felt with one heart.
“I was looking for the tree toads, Mommy! I needed them to sing me to sleep! Mommy smiled.”
A Fun Thing that Happened to Me in Congo at Easter
Those of ’round-about my generation or older, remember passing notes in highschool?
In my highschool, The American School of Kinshasa, Kinshasa, Congo we passed A LOT of notes!
Here’s a note, that got passed to me there in my school, by one of my girlfriends, R., who was my age, in my grade, and who was also, like me, the daughter of crosscultural workers, only HER parents lived and worked in the middle of the jungle in Congo, while my family was up the Continent a hop, skip and a jump, by plane. A couple of countries up, in GIGANTIC AFRICA, in Cameroun.
We were both sixteen, and Easter Vacation was coming up. Cameroun was too far away and too expensive on the planes and all, in the seventies for my folks to be able to bring me home for the long Easter Vacation, so I didn’t really have anyplace to go, from my boarding hostel (MPH), and I was feeling sad at the prospect of spending all those lonely days all by myself in my empty hostel while all my friends went home for the holidays!
My girlfriend rescued me! She invited me home with her, to inland Congo, to spend the Easter Holidays with her and her family! It was for ten days or two weeks.
Only, she and I waited with bated breath (or, at least, I waited with bated breath) because there was a potential problem. I might not be able to go! They said I might be too fat and heavy to be able to go on the plane!
That’s because there was no road to the place in the jungle where they lived and, the only way for us to GET there was by Piper Cub Cessna Six-seater (I’m pretty sure that was the kind of a plane. Something like that. I know it was very small and light, a six-seater.) There might not be room for me. The crosscultural worker families who lived out there needed to use most of the tiny plane’s carefully calculated luggage and weight allowances for food, medicines and supplies they needed, and the potential flight was already almost full.
Then, on the morning of March 24th, in the middle of First Period English Class , R. slipped me this note!
March 23
Dear Niña de Sus Ojos,
Guess what!!!
MAF has squeezed you onto the flight that I’m going up to V. on! If you had been any bigger or fatter you wouldn’t have made it! Doesn’t that make you glad that you’re the size you are? (Note: I had had to send in my WEIGHT notification, a couple of days earlier, to see if I would be able to get onto the flight or not!)
We’ll be leaving Thursday morning, probably around 11:00 or 12:00 for the airport. Tell your hostel parents everything is clear. Your way back on the boat is all arranged. Praise the Lord!!!
It may be that it would be better if you spent the night here Wed. since I don’t think we’d be going to school that day. I’m not sure about that yet, we may have to go for half a day.
Anyhow, you can set your mind at rest now. The Lord is good.
Love,
R.
P.S. Your entire trip will probably cost somewhere in between 28-30 zaires. (Note: I’m trying to remember the exchange rate from then…..I think that was maybe around 50 dollars…)
__________________ ________________ ____________________
I only just found this old note, handwritten, slipped into an old journal notebook of mine from way back. A couple of years ago, through letter writing, emailing, and Facebook, my highschool girlfriend and I renewed contact and correspondence with each other and are presently benefitting from each other’s communications and friendship even though we live on opposite sides of the world both in very remote locations. Hopefully, she and I can be a mutual encouragement one to another, even after all these years.
Today, I thank God for my highschool girlfriend, I thank God for that wonderful trip with her, so many years ago now, and I thank God for the relationships with HIM that my girlfriend and I had, even way back then when each of us were barely older than children, and also to this day, and continuing. And I thank God for kindred spirit friendships.
I think that notes and letters, cards and emails, Facebook messages, Skypes with vidiocams, texts and phone calls, all variations on the NOTE, can be powerful tools for sharing God’s love and encouragement with others and for seeking to deepen our relationships one with another, whether these “others” be our own children, our grandchildren as they get older, our parents or grandparents, friends or acquaintances. We all know how important the thankyou note is. How would short Scripture verse-headed notes or emails be, as an encouragement to a Christian friend or loved one?
I think of younger local friends, a married couple who are intentionally raising their three gradeschool-aged youngsters without a television set in the house. I’ve noticed the three kids spend tons of time writing and drawing notes, little signs, and “funnies strips”, “cartoon strips”, with black and white line drawings that they create themselves. Not to mention that half the time one meets up with these children they seem to have their nose in a book! They often gift us with some of these creations, and we always LOVE getting them, and proudly display them on our refrigerator or around our house. Our friends seem to be raising their kids to write and give and share NOTES.
People like us tend to have a lot of transitions in their lives, a lot of airplane trips, a lot of road trips, maybe a lot of moves. Come to think of it, almost everyone tends to have a lot of transition, on one level or another these days! More and more all the time! I’ve one longtime friend who often gives tiny handwritten notes of exhortation and encouragement, with one small Bible verse that applies handwritten in there also, sealed up in a small envelope. Before her friend leaves on a plane, she gives it, and says “Don’t open this yet! Open it when you get on the plane!” It’s so fun, and helpful.
My mom has a longtime cherished personal tradition by now of sometimes, for very special ocassions, giving books as family gifts, and she sometimes writes a short note, signed, in a front page of the gift book, all in her old-fashioned, beautiful, perfect “elementary schoolteacher 3rd Grade Palmer Method teaching hand”. My grown children now have treasured little kid books, with her notes in the front of them, that they can now begin sharing with their own babies!
I know the concept of notes and letters is old-fashioned now, but does not that make the creating, the giving, and the recieving of one more special and valuable than ever?
I say, “Long live the NOTE, for God’s Glory!”
Our Friend Polly Puma
When I was a child my family (Mom, Dad and five siblings) were outreachers in West Africa. I loved my life as a child and teenager in West Africa in the sixties and seventies! Here is a paper, for English class, that I wrote for Miss Orynitz (when we were on home assignment in Pennsylvania the year I was in Grade Nine. It is about something that had happened to our family the previous two years in Africa.)
_________________ ___________________ _______________________
62 pronouns My Friend Polly 25/25 A (La Niña de Sus Ojos)
10/18/71
6th Period
My Friend Polly
What is your favorite kind of animal? Mine are dogs, horses, cats and parrots. I’d like to tell you about one baby parrot that found a place in my heart.
Her name was Polly Puma because my father picked her up when he stopped for gas at the settlement of Puma, paying 250 francs for her. (note: equivalent of about 1 dollar) She was only a baby, the downy fuzz still clung to her back, neck, and under her wings. The two boys who sold her to Dad had been cruelly hurting and teasing her, and she was half-dead when she was finally brought to us.
We kept her in a cardboard box in the dining room, feeding her mushed-up bananas and fa-fa (note: home-processed manioc root). She later ate mangos too. At first she was deathly afraid of us, and really froze in fright whenever one of us looked in or tried to touch her. Then Dad built a large roomy cage for her and we changed her living quarters to there. Gradually she became less frightened and more tame. Finally, she let me pick her up on my hands and she would perch there, head tilted, cooing at me, or nibble at the buttons on my blouse.
She loved bright, shiny, colored things.
Polly missed her mother and her playmates. Every morning as the wild parrots flew overhead, whistling, she would squawk and scream for them, flapping her small wings. She loved it when I scratched the top of her head and neck, cuddling her and making small, soft bird noises to her.
Gradually, her confidence grew and she even made friends with our dog. She would flap and fuss and try to hop out of her cage every time we opened the door. She would hardly eat a peanut unless it was handed to her. We knew we were spoiling her, but we didn’t care.
Easter morning she got sick and died the next day. A good friend was taken away from me just as I was learning to love her and know her.
The Big Mudhole
Our first trip to Sakbayeme. I remember getting off the ship in Douala and being in a huge unloading hangar area, and Uncle John Smith walking up to us – tall, oh so tall! He had black hair, and was wearing long-ish light khaki shorts, a short-sleeve button-down shirt and a pith helmet!
Daddy and he shook hands with each other, then went off together to try to get our CAR – our tiny blue Volkswagon BUG – out of CUSTOMS.
I remember the drive from Douala to Sakbayeme that night, in the pouring rain, and the GIANT MUDHOLE in the road – all the long string of logging trucks and French men puffing on cigarettes and Uncle Dale’s power wagon truck all getting STUCK in the depths of the GIANT MUDHOLE, but our tiny, light, navyblue Volkswagon bug (when it was finally our turn to go!) revving and skooting and skiing right up and forward OVER that sea of quicksand, that abyss of deep, red, liquid clay, around the EDGE of that miles-long string of logging trucks stuck in the middle of the road, the ONLY road, through a NEW WORLD OF virgin African rain forest, to our home, our Sakbayeme.
A Fun Thing that Happened to Me in Congo at Easter
Those of ’round-about my generation or older, remember passing notes in highschool?
In my highschool, The American School of Kinshasa, Kinshasa, Congo we passed A LOT of notes!
Here’s a note, that got passed to me there in my school, by one of my girlfriends, R., who was my age, in my grade, and who was also, like me, the daughter of crosscultural workers, only HER parents lived and worked in the middle of the jungle in Congo, while my family was up the Continent a hop, skip and a jump, by plane. A couple of countries up, in GIGANTIC AFRICA, in Cameroun.
We were both sixteen, and Easter Vacation was coming up. Cameroun was too far away and too expensive on the planes in the seventies for my folks to be able to bring me home for the long Easter Vacation, though they very much wanted to! They had arranged a good plan for me for the vacation, with trusted old friends in Kinshasa! But I wanted to go home!
My girlfriend invited me home with her, to inland Congo, to spend the Easter Holidays with her and her family! It was for ten days or two weeks.
Only, she and I waited with bated breath (or, at least, I waited with bated breath) because there was a potential problem. I might not be able to go! They said I might be too fat and heavy to be able to go on the plane!
That’s because there was no road to the place in the jungle where they lived and, the only way for us to GET there was by Piper Cub Cessna Six-seater (I’m pretty sure that was the kind of a plane. Something like that. I know it was very small and light, a six-seater.) There might not be room for me. The crosscultural worker families who lived out there needed to use most of the tiny plane’s carefully calculated luggage and weight allowances for food, medicines and supplies they needed, and the potential flight was already almost full.
Then, on the morning of March 24th, in the middle of First Period English Class , R. slipped me this note!
March 23
Dear Niña de Sus Ojos,
Guess what!!!
MAF has squeezed you onto the flight that I’m going up to V. on! If you had been any bigger or fatter you wouldn’t have made it! Doesn’t that make you glad that you’re the size you are? (Note: I had had to send in my WEIGHT notification, a couple of days earlier, to see if I would be able to get onto the flight or not!)
We’ll be leaving Thursday morning, probably around 11:00 or 12:00 for the airport. Tell your hostel parents everything is clear. Your way back on the boat is all arranged. Praise the Lord!!!
It may be that it would be better if you spent the night here Wed. since I don’t think we’d be going to school that day. I’m not sure about that yet, we may have to go for half a day.
Anyhow, you can set your mind at rest now. The Lord is good.
Love,
R.
P.S. Your entire trip will probably cost somewhere in between 28-30 zaires. (Note: I’m trying to remember the exchange rate from then…..I think that was maybe around 50 dollars…)
__________________ ________________ ____________________
I only just found this old note, handwritten, slipped into an old journal notebook of mine from way back. A couple of years ago, through letter writing, emailing, and Facebook, my highschool girlfriend and I renewed contact and correspondence with each other and are presently benefitting from each other’s communications and friendship even though we live on opposite sides of the world both in very remote locations. Hopefully, she and I can be a mutual encouragement one to another, even after all these years.
Today, I thank God for my highschool girlfriend, I thank God for that wonderful trip with her, so many years ago now, and I thank God for the relationships with HIM that my girlfriend and I had, even way back then when each of us were barely older than children, and also to this day, and continuing. And I thank God for kindred spirit friendships.
I think that notes and letters, cards and emails, Facebook messages, Skypes with vidiocams, texts and phone calls, all variations on the NOTE, can be powerful tools for sharing God’s love and encouragement with others and for seeking to deepen our relationships one with another, whether these “others” be our own children, our grandchildren as they get older, our parents or grandparents, friends or acquaintances. We all know how important the thankyou note is. How would short Scripture verse-headed notes or emails be, as an encouragement to a Christian friend or loved one?
I think of younger local friends, a married couple who are intentionally raising their three gradeschool-aged youngsters without a television set in the house. I’ve noticed the three kids spend tons of time writing and drawing notes, little signs, and “funnies strips”, “cartoon strips”, with black and white line drawings that they create themselves. Not to mention that half the time one meets up with these children they seem to have their nose in a book! They often gift us with some of these creations, and we always LOVE getting them, and proudly display them on our refrigerator or around our house. Our friends seem to be raising their kids to write and give and share NOTES.
People like us tend to have a lot of transitions in their lives, a lot of airplane trips, a lot of road trips, maybe a lot of moves. Come to think of it, almost everyone tends to have a lot of transition, on one level or another these days! More and more all the time! I’ve one longtime friend who often gives tiny handwritten notes of exhortation and encouragement, with one small Bible verse that applies handwritten in there also, sealed up in a small envelope. Before her friend leaves on a plane, she gives it, and says “Don’t open this yet! Open it when you get on the plane!” It’s so fun, and helpful.
My mom has a longtime cherished personal tradition by now of sometimes, for very special ocassions, giving books as family gifts, and she sometimes writes a short note, signed, in a front page of the gift book, all in her old-fashioned, beautiful, perfect “elementary schoolteacher 3rd Grade Palmer Method teaching hand”. My grown children now have treasured little kid books, with her notes in the front of them, that they can now begin sharing with their own babies!
I know the concept of notes and letters is old-fashioned now, but does not that make the creating, the giving, and the recieving of one more special and valuable than ever?
I say, “Long live the NOTE, for God’s Glory!”
The Birds Chat.
a poem
by
NinadeSusOjos
The Birds Chat.
Chuckle. Coo. Chortle. Twir.
Click. Play a flute.
Whistle. Call. Trilling. Scales.
Hoot. Diggery-do’s.
GlobeRoamer 
