burned-out bus
I’m sorry this is such a long entry, but I wanted to finish my Africa update and let you in on my continual processing development, just in case you’re interested. The time in the Bush really was eye-opening and life-changing. Besides getting a goat and experiencing a gratefulness beyond anything I’d known, God taught me things about myself and my expectations of other believers, and I know I grew through it all.
What was a bit more unexpected were the days that followed the Bush experience. We left on Thursday and arrived back in Ouagadougou without any major delays. Our driver even took us on a round-about tour past government buildings and the president’s house. The students went off to youth group that night with the African MK’s, and we all went to bed pretty early, exhausted as we were. It was a great night in which the air conditioning never went off, and after three nights under constant mosquito attack, our guesthouse felt like the Hilton. Until we found out on Friday morning that the night had actually been rather eventful.
There had been an attempted coup on the president’s life, and he’d been whisked away to his home outside the city, leaving an upset military who took their weapons’ storage out into the streets to protest, loot, and damage. When vendors arrived at their businesses Friday morning and saw the mess, they took the streets to voice their complaint as well, and things escalated from there. The President returned by Friday afternoon, promptly dissolved government, which in turn brought about more demonstrations. I can now say that I have heard live gunfire in my life, just a block away from the guesthouse. It was pretty new and awfully scary for this European MK (I’m such a wimp compared to African MK’s). All our planned activities for our Fun Friday were, of course, cancelled, and we spent the day watching old movies, taking naps, getting our hair braided, and playing games when the electricity went out. And truth be told, we passed the night in relative calm. By Saturday, the kids were antsy to get going, and I myself was counting down the hours till we’d board out plane at 7 pm.
There were still protests going on downtown – right around all those buildings we’d seen Thursday on our drive – so the president issued a curfew for the dark hours, basically 6:30 pm – 6:30 am. And that’s when things got thrown upside down. AirFrance, realizing they wouldn’t be able to take off after 6:30 pm, decided to not even fly into Ouagadougou on Saturday. So: no plane. Fortunately/Unfortunately, we hadn’t left the guesthouse yet, so it did save us a trip to the airport, but it meant that we were stuck inside for yet another 24-hour period. It wasn’t so much feeling like the Hilton anymore, more like prison. The kids, as you can imagine, were upset and could only think about calling their families, but as a whole, they managed this new obstacle really well. I was so impressed. We had an impromptu praise session and then watched more movies, took more naps, and played more games.
We did finally leave Africa Sunday by 1 pm, though we missed every single connecting flight in Paris. 4 stressful hours of rebooking 11 people on various flights later, we were at our AirFrance hotel by 12:30 am, only to have to get up and be back at the airport around 6:00 am Monday morning. We got back to Kandern 27 hours later, and all I can say is that I take no responsibility for any of the things I said that day because at that point I was so loopy!
At no point, however, did I feel unsafe, even when there was gunfire a block away, and at no point did I ever doubt God’s goodness or his sovereignty over this African nation. But I definitely doubted myself and my ability to handle new challenges completely out of my normal realm of thinking. Which did make me wonder: how many of the risks I take in daily living are truly “risks” for God’s glory, or are they more a show of reliance on myself? “Come everybody and see how good I look doing … you name it” when I already trust myself to handle it well. Teaching someone to drive a stick shift. Inviting a class over for a movie night. Baking cookies for the church luncheon. Africa was a big and true “risk” for me. I’d never intended to sign up for this trip and only went because I was asked to and heard God’s confirmation. If nothing else, he wanted to increase my dependence on him. Of course, that does put me in the precarious situation of wondering what other comforts God will remove from my life in order to increase my dependence on him. J
We arrived at the Centro Evangelico Magliosa outside of Lugano around 5 pm, giving the kids enough time to explore the grounds and get settled in before supper and our evening program. On Tuesday, the devotions were about "encouragment," and the students engaged in a cool activity in which they wrote each other notes. I love the look on JB's face as he reads his sheet. The rest of the evening was for fun and games - various versions of Minute to Win It. That's what the video in the last post was about, too.
