growth!

Since I posted the following photo, taken on July 15th, I have realised I was wrong to assume this field had peanuts in it again this year.



Now it is plain to see that it is full of corn, and I find it amazing how it can grow this much in just a month and a half!


Simon's corn is also doing well, seen here on our rainy day yesterday:



And here is a photo taken the day before, of a rain cloud over neighbours a few miles away! (To the naked eye you could actually see the rain pouring out of it, but unfortunately it didn't come out on camera - obviously too shy!)

out with the old, in with the new

Every parent knows that once a child has adopted a favourite toy or softy, there is no replacing it, and a crisis of international proportions looms if that particular friend goes missing. Simon has had the same softy (in French, "doudou") since he was about 6 months old, and Benjy similarly adopted one when he was about the same age. Simon's, called Little Prince, has been confined to his bed since Simon's third birthday, and only comes out if we are travelling. So far he's never gone missing for more than 15 minutes or so. He has got grubby at times, but washes well, and has come out of his first four and a half years looking pretty good.

Benjy's softy is called Bengy (yes, it's confusing, but that is what it says on his label) and he has spent more of his life on African floors than Little Prince. Thanks to some foolish parental behaviour he also ended up with some large holes ... and thanks to Benjy's gnawing teeth many little ones.

Then came the day when the (admittedly filthy) Bengy got thrown into a basin of water at 6pm by Benjy's "helpful" older brother who thought he would "clean" Bengy. Very unhappy Mummy, as I do prefer softies to be dry when they are taken to bed, especially during rainy season when they can smell very mouldy! So I decided that Bengy couldn't get any wetter, so I would give him a proper clean, and just to buy myself some time brought an alternate softy out of the cupboard, one rejected by Benjy many months ago. He also has "Bengy" on his label, so I said, "Look, Benjy! New Bengy!"

And Benjy adopted him and hasn't spoken of old Bengy since. Now Benjy isn't stupid, and new Bengy is quite obviously different from old Bengy, so I can only assume that Benjy was a bit tired of old Bengy's damp smell and head coming loose, and decided to quit while he was ahead. ("Ahead" in this case being "in possession of a clean, sweet-smelling and actually soft softy"!)

And here they are, old Bengy after being washed and just before retirement:


New Bengy:


And here is Simon with the Little Prince in his hand, at 5 months old!


And again when he was nearly 3:

the big city (or "and our nomadic lifestyle continues...")

We were down in Cotonou last week to apply for our new residency cards. Hopefully these will be 3-year ones, as we have to both apply in person and pick them up in person, and with Cotonou being a two-day journey from home, that's a lot of time on the road!

I took this photo of Cotonou. Probably not one that they'll be using for their next tourist brochure, but it does show all the cranes working on the new port extension.


It is already an extremely important West African port, bringing goods in for Benin but also for the landlocked countries beyond - Niger, Burkina Faso and even Mali. And anything going to Niger comes up the road in front of our house, on the back of lorries. No wonder the road deterioates so fast! And unfortunately the lorries don't always last long either - this is not an uncommon sight when we are travelling:


The long journey down isn't much fun, especially the Parakou-Cotonou day, which includes about six and a half hours of driving. So we try to enjoy ourselves when we are in Cotonou, getting some shopping done and treating ourselves to meals out, for example this restaurant on the beach:

neighbourliness

We have picked up our language sessions with Pastor Samuel with enthusiasm. We've had lots of news to share on both sides, after five months apart, and we showed him photos of our family and the churches we visited in France and England.

We have also done some revision of vocabulary and money (not simple!). I have also been looking out for discussion topics. One day last week I used a question from my Bible study notes, which was, “How has your Christian faith made your life more difficult? How do you feel about that?” which kept us talking for nearly an hour.

Another day I used a proverb I'd read during my daily reading, as I was sure it would be something foreign to the culture here.

“Seldom set foot in your neighbour's house – too much of you, and he will hate you.” Proverbs 25:17

I found it in the rough draft Monkolé translation of Proverbs, and gave it to the pastor to read. Then I said that a lot of people in the West would tend to follow the gist of this proverb – better to have your neighbour wish he could see more of you than have him hide when he sees you come up the garden path!

The pastor laughed and said that among the Monkolé people this proverb doesn't apply. He said, “We are so close to each other that we are always together.” He gave the example of one of the elders of the church, and said that if he didn't call in on him for a week or two, this man would come to him and say, “What's wrong? Are you ill, or are you angry with me?”

He then confirmed what I'd suspected and said that they only feel like this about other Monkolés. He said that although people from the village would like to come and visit us, they don't want to bother us, and they think we don't understand the language well enough yet. They are afraid we won't understand them and vice versa. He said that was good since he thinks we'd be worn out if we had constant visits! I did point out that unless we have opportunities to practise the language we are never going to understand very well! But I had already got the impression that some people don't speak to us other than to greet us because of fear of our incomprehension. I am grateful for those who do make the effort!

But it isn't as if we don't have any visitors at all, even now in rainy season when most of our friends from the village are in the fields working. Last Saturday we had about 28 people for lunch – not only did a short-term French team visit us, but Beninese friends who were driving past stopped and joined us to eat! It was great fun!

Part of the team as they left – and Benjy getting the gate for them!

Family stuff

Someone asked me when we were back in the UK what our boys do with no special activities to go to out here in Africa. I said, "Um, play?" We are blessed to have a sizeable and relatively secure compound around our house, and the weather being what it is here in Benin, they can play outside more or less 365 days a year! We were also handed-down a whole lot of toys by other missionaries with older kids, and for the kids from the village our home is a bit like Disney World, so there are often other kids here to play with ours. Simon is quite into Lego at the moment, too, but most of the time he is taken up with imaginative play. The Bible being quite an influence on him, there tend to be a lot of soldiers (they have replaced his disciples for now!).

Just a few examples of what our boys get up to. Today I made the boys a little kitchen unit out of some cardboard boxes, with a margarine tub as the sink, and Simon made lunch which he and Benjy sat down to eat together. Apparently it was pasta and cake. He then ordered Benjy to "bed" (in the squashy playpen) for his afternoon nap.

Later I heard Simon telling Benjy a story he'd made up (I was making our real lunch so didn't hear much of what it was about). The story was a very long one, and after a few minutes I heard Simon say, "No, Benjy! Come back, the story isn't finished yet!" to which Benjy replied, "'tory finish!"

There was also a lot of running round the house chasing each other, with Simon shouting, "I'm going to 'pirate' you!" amid shrieks from Benjy. There was also some turning round in circles just to experience the world continuing to turn after they'd fallen over on the floor.

And this afternoon I went out for a walk in the fields with Benjy. He was very enthusiastic about it, and walked well, except when we saw a goat and he needed me to hold his hand. He also kept up a running commentary, reminding me about the place where we saw an elephant 6 months ago (except we hadn't - it was a large cow which we mistook from far away ... why does he have to remember our most embarrassing moments?!) and happily waving to the children we saw working in the fields. (I suppose if we run out of activities to propose to our kids there's always that!)

The boys in their "squashy play pen" playing at being in bed:


Newly-planted fields we saw on our walk:

second year of planting!

We know we've been in the village for a while when Simon's field is being planted for the second year running! We're branching out this year - not only are we planting corn and okra, but we're trying our hands at tomatoes, cucumbers, aubergines and carrots. Not that we're doing much, to be honest, most of it had already been planted when we arrived back from Europe! But Simon and Benjy have been helping with wedding and re-planting parts of the field.


The rains are disappointing so far this year - after starting late they haven't yet started to fall as regularly as the farmers would like. When they do come, we have been enjoying seeing the sky turn dark, and the wind pick up - seen here behind the recently-planted peanut field next to our house:

oops there goes my linguistic competence...

(Written on the 11th, but took a while to get posted!)

Ten days back in Benin and I'm feeling the changes. Obviously there is the material side – suddenly electricity, light and internet are no longer reliable friends, and I'm missing having a washing machine – but also the change of status. In Europe our main role was face-to-face communication with friends and churches about the ministry out here. In many ways that suits me very well – I love spending time with people, and in both English and French I feel confident expressing myself and explaining things. So I felt fulfilled and encouraged in that role.

Back here in the village, while it is good to be home, it is with some trepidation that I step back into the role of the person who doesn't understand everything and can't say all she wants to. I still feel on the outside here – everyone is friendly, but only with a handful of people do we have anything resembling a real friendship. This is partly our choice, in that we chose not to use French with people (with a couple of exceptions) to help us learn Monkolé. But it is really hard to build a friendship with another adult when you feel you talk like a child and can't show much of who you really are! We do need prayer that we wouldn't lose courage as we persevere with this.

Fortunately we have good friends among the missionaries and French-speaking Beninese in Parakou, and in our 3 days of vision and strategy planning for SIM Benin-Togo last week I retained the role I'd had in Europe, feeling I could participate freely and usefully in the discussions!

The pastor is taking his annual leave at the moment, so we have been settling back into life here, sorting out as many of our practical problems as possible, and easing back into using our Monkolé. While it is a little rusty, we don't feel we've really lost it. We'll be doing some revision sessions with the pastor before September, when I'll start on the translation work and Marc will begin his preparation for Dry Season Bible School. He will also begin home-schooling Simon in the mornings. I have been looking through resources I bought to help me with translation, and am getting quite excited about finally working with the team!