Monthly Archive for December, 2008

Well, you’d never know it from looking at the picture above… everything looks pretty good… lights on the tree, packages under it, a few decorations on the hutch, no evidence of moving boxes – but you should have seen the place about 10 hours earlier!  This was the first year when I really wondered if we’d be able to get it all together by Christmas morning.   But, with the help of many people who were probably getting ready for bed, or even fast asleep at the time, back in America, we were able to pull it off in the last few hours before dawn.  Some of the people who helped us are dear family members, some of our helpers were people who have never met us in person.

Some of those people purchased gifts for our kids way back in the summer, wrapped them, and put them in a “Christmas in July” box for the Martin family, which then made its way over here on our sea container.  (Thank you, Fite Memorial Baptist Church in Marion, Ohio!)  Some people filled a box full of gifts for our kids and mailed them to us in Dakar just a few weeks ago.  (Thank you, Conklin Avenue First Baptist Church in Binghamton, New York!)   My parents went to the post office on multiple occasions to send the kids lots of fun things for their stockings and wonderful Christmas gifts as well.  My friend Lori Clements was the designated receiver for several things we ordered online, and got them to the post office and on their way here.

And one friend in Arlington Heights was responsible for getting us the gift our three boys have been hoping for since it came out a few months back – the only item on their Christmas lists… Guitar Hero 4.  Our friend fronted his own money and braved the holiday shopping madness to get to the Arlington Heights Target, where, according to the Target website, there was a “limited availability” of this game – one of the hard-to-find items of this Christmas season.  Our friend then delivered the very large box to another missionary in Chicago, who was returning to Dakar in early December, who was able to then carry it to us.   Here’s how the kids felt about it…

Well, okay, mostly you can see Will’s reaction, but the other kids were equally excited.  I’ve heard “Sweet Home Alabama” and “Hotel California” more times than I care to count since Christmas morning.  (I’ve even taken my turn on guitar – and got as high as 91% accuracy!  Okay, it was on the easy level, but still…  Bill took a turn singing and got 83% – and that’s all I’ll say about that.    )

Late at night, after the kids had gone to bed on Christmas Eve, as I wrapped gifts and Bill put Anna’s new bike together, we were overcome with gratitude as we thought about all of the people who helped to make our Christmas so special.  In the days leading up to Christmas, it did not seem special at all – in fact it seemed quite depressing.  Not only were we dealing with separation from family, missing winter, and all the other emotional issues of spending our first Christmas overseas, but for some reason, we thought that moving 5 days before the big day was a good idea!  I don’t know where our brains were!  We had paid rent for the full month of December at the apartment we had been subletting since August, but had to begin paying rent here beginning December 18.  We could have stayed at the apartment until Christmas, but I had the idea that it would be more special to celebrate at the new house, thinking it would be a nice memory to begin our time here, at our “own” place.

So as a result, we spent the days before Christmas looking for things we couldn’t find. “Where’s the scissors?” “Has anyone seen any soap?”  “Where do I sleep?”  Add to that all the Senegalese issues – the fact that American Christmas lights do not plug into Senegalese outlets, and washing machines need filters and transformers and who knows what else before they work… and throw in a 24 hour stomach bug for Bill on Christmas Eve… this was life for the Martin family this past week!  But, by about 9 PM on Christmas Eve, with Bill upstairs in bed trying to get over his sickness, Sam and I figured out how to plug about 4 things together in succession (some borrowed, some newly purchased), and, voila, the lights on the tree came on!  (It was almost like Rockefeller Center.  )  What a difference the light can make in a darkened room.

Which made me think of the power of light.  “The people that walked in darkness have seen a great light.”  (Isaiah 9:2)  Bill loves the words in the song “How Great is our God,”

“He wraps himself in light,
And darkness tries to hide
And trembles at his voice,
And trembles at his voice.”

It’s Light that pushes back darkness – and the darkness can do nothing about it.  Seeing the lights twinkling in our new living room really was a great reminder of how much we love the Light.

After that, we watched “A Charlie Brown Christmas” and “It’s a Wonderful Life,” courtesy of Will’s iPod, and at almost midnight, just in time to see George Bailey running through Bedford Falls shouting “Merry Christmas,” Bill rallied and came downstairs to join us.  Then the kids went to bed (Anna had already fallen asleep in the chair, of course), and Bill and I were able to finish up.

On Christmas morning, we enjoyed a delicious breakfast pastry that Julie made for us, and the kids had a great time opening gifts.  I baked some pies, with ingredients brought here by the BGC Prayer Team when they visited back in late October, and even the exploding wall behind the oven (more about that in another blog!) didn’t get us down.  We shared a delicious Christmas dinner with the Adamsons and another missionary family, who were able to find a turkey in Dakar (not an easy, or inexpensive, task).  It was wonderful to be with friends on a day when we missed our family so much.

We were back here by evening, and just spent the rest of the day relaxing and, for the boys, playing Guitar Hero.  And that ended our first Christmas here, in Africa.  Merry Christmas to all of you, from all of us!

PS – And a huge thank you to Bobbie and our friends at Emmanuel Baptist Church in Norfolk, Massachusetts, who took time out of their own busy holiday schedules and met together to address and send out our Christmas cards.  We appreciate it so much! 

Yesterday Senegal celebrated Tabaski – their biggest holiday of the year.  Tabaski means “sacrifice” in Wolof, and it is the day that they celebrate God’s provision of a ram to Abraham, to sacrifice in place of his son.  Every family is supposed to sacrifice a sheep on Tabaski, and for weeks there have been large herds of sheep along the roads and people leading the sheep they purchased away on a rope.  We were invited to celebrate Tabaski with our friend Ibou and his family in a town about an hour away.

The traffic on the way to Ibou’s house is usually terrible – there is only one way out of Dakar and many people use it as they head out of the city for the weekend, to visit their families in the villages.  But yesterday, since it was a holiday and everyone had traveled home the day before, there was almost no traffic at all – that was wonderful!  When we arrived at his home, carrying a basket of fruit and armed with a donation toward the sheep, we were welcomed by Ibou and quickly set off to visit his extended family.

The Koran says that a man can have up to four wives, and many men do have more than one.  Ibou says he is the only man in his family to currently have only one.  (His wife would like to keep it that way – she told us so!)  Ibou’s father had four wives, so Ibou has many siblings, and they all have their own large families.  We drove over to the family compound consisting of a courtyard and several homes, where we sat and visited with various brothers and sisters.  We didn’t stay more than five minutes at each place, just long enough to sit down, share greetings, and perhaps ask a question or two.  I wondered if our visits were unnaturally short, since we were “toubabs” (foreigners), but when I asked Ibou later he assured me that short visits are the norm.  He said if you were particularly close with a family member you might stay as long as a half hour.  We visited his mother in her room – she is in her late 80’s and as far as I can tell stays in her room most of the day.  We’ve visited her before and she always receives us in her small dark bedroom – we just sit on the side of the bed and in the few chairs there, and as with the other visits, stay just long enough to take a picture (she is the one who asks for that) and say hello.

I think I may have said this before, but it frustrates me not being able to take more pictures of the daily lives of the Senegalese people here.  It just seems rude to shoot photos of people along the road or in the fields.  So many of the pictures I have been sending home are of our family in our apartment – we could be in America from the looks of them!  But yesterday I had a great opportunity to take photos, since we were guests in Ibou’s village.  I would ask one child if it was okay for me to take their photo – and as soon as other people saw me with my camera, they would clamor for me to take their photos, too!  Even the grownups seemed to like to get into the picture.  There was one exception in the group of women I spent some time with – she did not ever look at the camera and I got the impression she was not fond of having her photo taken, but all the other woman asked me and I think she felt like she couldn’t walk away.

One of the not-so-pleasant things about celebrating Tabaski was seeing all the mutton lying around!  When we were at the family compound, everywhere we looked we saw evidence of the slaughter earlier that morning.  Sam has always been  particularly queasy, and had to keep looking straight down at his feet when he walked.  The rest of us didn’t love seeing the raw meat either, but we managed to deal with it.

After visiting the extended family we drove back over to Ibou’s neighborhood – he is the only one who could afford to build his own home on a lot a bit farther away from the center of town.   He worked in the United States for seven years, sending money home to his family, and was able to build the first floor of his home.  He has plans to add the second floor eventually, but for now there is no money to do that.

We were excited to greet Ibou’s sister, Awa, at his house – we got to know Awa last year when we were living in Québec.  She is here for a quick visit, to do some research for her thesis and to spend Tabaski with her mother and siblings.  I took a nice picture of Awa and her namesake, Ibou’s daughter Awa.   I sat with Awa  while she finished preparations for the meal – Ibou’s wife had a toothache and wasn’t able to do much of the cooking.

Once the meal was ready, we sat around two common bowls – the men at one and the women at the other.  Normally, the food would be arranged over a bed of rice, but on Tabaski and the other high holidays, no one eats rice.  It’s understood to be the food for common days, and on special days they eat other starches, mostly bread and potatoes.  So our meal was on a bed of lettuce instead of rice.  Spooned over the greens were the mutton, french fries, and raw peppers, tomatoes and cucumbers.

Eating around a common bowl is the way the Senegalese eat every day.  Bill has eaten this way before, and so has Caleb – his class spent the day with a large group of Talibé boys and shared a meal with them a few weeks ago.  But it was the first time for the rest of us.  Even though I was a bit nervous about how it would work, I was pleased that we were served this way on this visit.  The last time we visited for a holiday, Ibou served us at the table while his neighbors ate around the common bowl.  We liked being treated like the rest of the gang this time around!  You are supposed to eat using your right hand only, and although picking up the fries and vegetables and even the lettuce was not difficult, I had a harder time with the meat.  There were large chunks of meat, so you had to kind of pinch a piece off with your hand – and it did not come apart easily!  I ate just a bit of meat.   Bill reported that the boys ate mostly french fries at the men’s bowl. 

After the meal, Bill, Ibou, Sam and Caleb played a round of Scrabble, Will watched the soccer game that was on TV, Anna played with Moussa, and I visited with the women.  We didn’t stay as long as we normally do – that gets a bit tiring for the kids.  We left around 4:30 to head back to Dakar, and again the traffic was very light.  We had hamburgers for dinner (!) and watched “The Grinch Who Stole Christmas” before bedtime.  And that ended our first Tabaski here in Senegal!