Chicken, Inc.

In September 2011 I accompanied Diocese of Virginia Director of Mission and Outreach Buck Blanchard on a visit to the ECS Diocese of Cuiebet. Buck wanted to visit Cuiebet so he could speak intelligently about the diocese with a group in the US that were considering entering into partnership with Cuieibet.
As a part of our visit the bishop offered us a gift of greeting and friendship. Cuiebet is Dinka territory and cattle form a prominent part of Dinka culture and a cow is a traditional gift of peace and friendship. The bishop asked me quietly if we couldn’t take a cow with us. I assured the bishop that I didn’t think we could take a cow, we couldn’t get it on a plane, though we appreciated the offer.
As a fall-back plan the bishop instead directed his staff to grab us a white rooster. We were thus presented with a very handsome pure white rooster! We located a box into which the rooster went for the hour-long ride back to Rumbek. It’s a long story, but suffice it to say that we missed out flight back that day and so had to spend the night in Rumbek until we could fly out the next morning. We got rooms in a hotel next to the airport. As I was being walked to me tent/room (the rooms were self-contained tents) the lady guiding me kept looking at the box I was holding and finally asked, “what’s in the box?” I told her it was a chicken. She was incredulous, saying no one had ever kept a chicken overnight in their room before.
We flew back to Juba the next morning on a small plane. Unfortunately, the chicken couldn’t ride in the cabin but instead had to go into the cargo hold. I was worried about him, but the chicken made it through alright.
After a failed effort to erect an outside pen, we placed the chicken in our outdoor storage shed which we could lock-up at night. Never having kept chickens before, we didn’t know what to expect. Most alarming was when the chicken would wander off in search of forage. We had no specific food at the house for him, and it’s not like there is a Southern States store around here where we could go and buy chicken feed. We threw out some bread and other stuff for him to eat. We thought the chicken was lost, not realizing that there was truth in that old adage about “chickens coming home to roost.” Regardless of where the rooster wandered every evening at 6:30pm, like clockwork, he would come home to the shed to sleep for the evening. In general, we found keeping the rooster pretty light work.
But: What to name the rooster? We had at the time a friend named Sarah staying with us. With her we were watching a series of DVD’s about the history of Scotland. Of course, one of the prominent figures in Scottish history are all the Bruce’s, or THE BRUCE’S! Sarah said the perfect name for the rooster had to be: THE BRUCE! And thus, our rooster became known as THE BRUCE! We were also pleased because Bruce was not much of a crower. He normally waited until around 7am each day before crowing, which was a blessing. You can hear roosters around Juba, some of whom start crowing at 5:30am or earlier, so we were pleased that Bruce had a sense of decency with regards to beginning to vocalize.
Now, there is nothing more sad than a lonely rooster. We made arrangements with someone traveling to Uganda to bring us two hens from Kampala. This friend said he had had good luck with Ugandan hens, several times getting hens who quickly started laying eggs. A few days later our friend returned with two hens: one big brown hen and one even bigger white one. Hens have a definite “pecking order,” and although to me at first the white hen seemed dominant, we quickly realized that it was the brown hen who was in charge.
We named the brown hen “Baba Ganoush,” and the white hen “Phoebe Snow.” I explained to my British flat-mate the history of the name “Phoebe Snow” from the old Lackawanna Railroad advertisements. “Phoebe Snow” was a character created to sell the virtues of the Lackawanna’s use of anthracite coal, supposedly a cleaner burning coal which wouldn’t leave travelers coated in soot like the ordinary coal used by other railroads.
Once the hens were acclimated to their surroundings in the shed they joined Bruce on his daily forages for food. It quickly became clear that Bruce and Baba were fond of one another, they stayed close to each other all day. Phoebe, though not without her charms, did not draw Bruce’s attention the same way. We were worried about the reaction from people if the chickens wandered about the Guest House grounds, and we’d even been told the birds sometimes bothered people at meal-times. I tried to create fencing to keep the chickens near our home but the birds were simply too smart and wily for me, always finding ways of escaping. I eventually gave-up and all three chickens would spend their days wandering in search of food. But again, like clockwork, every evening the chickens would return home happy to be safely locked away in their shed.
After about a month we were surprised and delighted to find an egg in one of the nesting boxes I had placed in the shed! I’d taken two small crate bottoms, filled them with straw and placed them below a shelf. It was Baba who was laying the eggs, and she began laying one egg every day. We collected the first half-dozen which a friend then offered to buy for a few pounds. We agreed and were pleased that the birds started paying something for all of the grains I was buying to feed them. Technically it was still a loss, but at least it was something. We did eat a couple of Baba's eggs. They were so much nicer than the eggs we buy here in the market. The yolks of the purchased eggs are gray-colored and the eggs are tasteless. But the eggs our hens lay are tasty and the yolks nice and bright yellow.
One question was whether or not the eggs were fertile? If left to nature, would we get chicks? I did happen to observe Bruce and Baba…getting friendly in the yard one time. So we decided to leave Baba to sit on the last few of her eggs to see what would happen.
After about two solid weeks during which Baba sat on her clutch of three eggs day and night we came home from work in late November to find a baby chick!! It just so sudden and surprising to see this little cheeping bird next to Baba! The chick was so soft and fuzzy looking, it was amazing to think we had an addition to the flock. The other two eggs never hatched and one day I removed them from the nest so Baba would stop wasting time with them. Baba was an attentive mother, being very protective of her chick and really giving loud warnings to either Bruce or Phoebe if Baba felt they were coming too close to her chick.
But what should we name the chick? My flat-mate had recently met someone with another organization named Igor and I had told her about the scene in “Young Frankenstein” where the Marty Feldman character said he preferred to be called “Igor” (Eye-gore) rather than “Igor” (Eee-gore.) So we started calling the chick “Igor,” pronounced either way!
Life for the chickens continued as usual, we turned them loose every morning and they would forage about until their return in the evening. We fed them a mixture of rice, broken eggshells, chopped beans and ground nuts, and eventually some ground dried fish, sesame seeds, and pop-corn kernels. The latter were probably the most costly item, though the cost of all of the food added-up, especially when compared with how few eggs we received in return. But still, it has been fun having the birds.
With a chick to look after Baba and Igor were inseperable. Igor rarely ventured more than a few steps away from its mother’s protection. In the meantime, Phoebe lost no time in becoming Bruce’s new favorite and the two of them became as cozy as Bruce had once been with Baba. Then, towards the end of December, Phoebe started laying eggs of her own. We think this was the first time Phoebe had ever laid eggs. I gathered this from the fact that Phoebe didn’t lay her eggs in a nesting box but upon one of the shelves in the shed where the chickens roosted. Problem was, the shelves were up high and slanted so that the eggs rolled off to the ground where they smashed. Dumb chicken. After three days of this I barricaded the shelves which caused a lot of trauma and screaming on the part of the chickens who would hurl themselves at the shelves making a lot of mess. I also took an egg purchased in the market and placed it in the nesting box for Phoebe to see. Phoebe took the hint and the next day she started laying her eggs in the nesting box and all was calm after that.
About a week later Baba started laying eggs again. Fortunately, Baba was smart enough to know to use the other nesting box without prompting. I marked each hen's first five eggs with a marking pen, planning on keeping these for chicks. All eggs above these five we took for consumption. The hens were pretty regular, each laying an egg a day up to around a dozen before knocking off. If you intended to sell eggs for market you would need dozens of hens laying to get enough to sell.
Of Phoebe's five eggs, four of the five hatched chicks! Sadly, the first hatched during the one second a day she left her eggs and when she returned to the nest and saw this chick there she didn't know it was hers and pecked it to death. Grusaome. But the other three hatched and she accepted them, though eventually two of them also died. She has one good chick left which is growing nicely.
My flatmate and I were both away alot during January and February. When we both last left Baba was still sitting on five eggs. My flatmate returned first to find no eggs at all under Baba and no chicks. We suspect either someone stole the eggs (which were old! not very nice) or stole the hatched chicks. Either way, we're pretty sure during our absence someone nicked our chicks!
This has all been an interesting experience, never having raised chickens before. It gives us something to do, and we like the eggs. We debate which chicken we should eat, or whether we should eat one at all! Most mornings when the rooster is screaming his head off at levels higher than a jet engine taking off, I vote for killing him first. Another alternative it that we give the chickens to the children at the CCC orphanage we volunteer at so they can start a flock.

MacLane

As I was heading into our office compound in Juba a couple of weeks ago there was a young man sitting on the front porch. There's always people hanging around our office looking for jobs or information or to socialize. There are ladies who have a tea-station set-up under a large Neem tree where you can sit in the shade and sip the sweet spiced tea that is so common here. Sharing tea is one of those pleasures I always enjoy but don't partake of often enough. Somedays I look down from my second floor office and see men - and it's nearly always men - the same men sitting taking tea all day.
Anyway, I walked past this fellow but I had to do a double take and go back and look at him again. The guy was wearing a short-sleeved knit work shirt and over the left pocket was a patch for "MacLane Distribution." Now, MacLane Mid-Atlantic is a huge wholesale goods distributor located just outside Fredericksburg. The patch just said "MacLane" and not "MacLane Mid-Atlantic," so I don't know if it is from the same location. I told the guy anyway that the company on his shirt was from my town! Now, the name embroidered over the right pocket was "Earl," and I was pretty sure this guy's name was not Earl. Still, it was amazing to see a shirt possibly from so close to home.
They say the ultimate Holy Grail in Africa is to see someone wearing a shirt you donated to charity. Jacquelaine Novogoratz (sp) who founded Accumen Fund and wrote a book called "The Blue Sweater" related how she saw a boy in Rwanda(?) wearing a blue sweater she had donated right down to her name printed on the size-tag. I never expect to have that experience because like most men I wear my clothes, t-shirts especially, until they are practically disintegrated and not fit for donation. But observing the shirts that people wear here is a fascinating hobby.
I've never seen a Fredericksburg shirt, save the possible MacLane one mentioned above. But I have seen shirts for UVA, George Mason, Virginia Tech and the University of Richmond. I remember when the ferry I was riding from Zanzibar to Dar es Salaam in Tanzania was coming in to dock there was a young deckhand wearing a bright orange "Virginia" shirt. I was so happy to see it. A few days ago up in Wau I saw two young men wearing "We Are Marshall" t-shirts, donated left-overs from promotions for the movie of a couple of years ago.
Many of the shirts that find their way over here appear to be left-overs from various sporting or movie promotions. I remember when I worked for a couple of t-shirt manufacturers in the Carolinas in the 1980's how we would sell large quantities of shirts to screen-printers. The companies would print-up lots and lots of shirts advertising things like "Superbowl," or "NCAA Finals." Once those events are over and no one wants the shirts anymore they end-up getting dumped in places like Africa, sold by the pound.
I've probably seen t-shirts and hats for most of the major US sporting teams, certainly baseball and basketball teams. It always warms my heart when I see an Orioles hat. More popular than shirts for US sports teams are shirts for soccer teams, especially those from Europe. There are intense rivalries here between supporters of various UK soccer teams such as Manchester United or Arsenal.
The fact that most folks here cannot read, and even fewer have a grasp of English, makes for some humorous moments, for me at least. I enjoy a private chuckle when I see young men wearing t-shirts that have on them things like "Juicy Girl," or "Navy Mom." The absolute funniest was one of our theological school students who one day wore to class a florescent pink t-shirt emblazoned with the logo "Porn Star in Training." The principal's wife caught sight of it and asked the student quietly if he knew what the shirt meant, which he did not. The principal then tried to explain to him what his shirt meant after which the shirt quickly disappeared and has never been seen again.
Other funny shirts, at least funny when you see them here, are ones which advertise things like, "Kowalski Family Reunion, 2008" and you're pretty sure the person wearing it was not at the reunion. Two of the funniest locally oriented shirts which I have seen were one showing someone using a latrine - yes, USING a latrine - and encouraging people to be careful with their waste and always use a latrine, and another warning against the dangers of Guinea Worms with an image of one of the worms bursting out from a victim's leg. I would like so much to buy one of these shirts, but most are given away by aid agencies and never find their way to the market.
I've looked around the markets for locally oriented t-shirts but they are never there, only the donated ones from overseas which have been sold by the pound to middlemen. I understand the reason. I 've been given a couple of t-shirts during the course of my work and I would be loathe to sell them away, in spite of the many other shirts I am lucky to own. The poor folks here who are lucky to have a couple of decent shirts are hardly in a position to give away or sell articles of clothing.

Start of the Dry Season

The weather is changing here. Starting about two weeks ago we noticed we seem to be heading into the dry season. There are two seasons here in Southern Sudan: A wet season and a dry. Generally speaking, the wet season runs from March through October and is characterized by frequent rains - mostly late afternoon and late night thunderstorms - and moderate temperatures.
The dry season runs from the end of October through into March. I remember being out with friends at dinner last March 13th. It was a Sunday and we were out in downtown Juba. There had been a few threats of rain the previous days, but around 8pm the skies opened-up. A couple of my friends ran-out and stood in the downpour, so happy were they to be feeling rain again.
The other nice things about the rains is that they clear the skies of the dust. The dry season occurs because the weather pattern changes. Normally the weather is driven by warm, moist air heading east out of the Congo River basin towards South Sudan. But during the dry season the winds change bringing dry, dusty air south from the Sahara desert. As the dry season progresses the air becomes drier and drier and filled with a fine red dust that coats everything. You wipe your desk down when you arrive at work in the morning and by afternoon it's coated again. You cannot look across Juba and see the rocky hills on the southside of town, the disappear into a red-fog. But when the rains come the skies are suddenly cleansed of all the dust. I remember riding out to the airport shortly after the first rain and being so suprised and excited at being able to see the mountains again.
It's a very curious mix during the dry season. It's a little like winter because at night the temperatures get cold - by Juba standards, anyway. The last few nights it feels like it got down into the upper 60's, or downright chilly. But as the season progresses the temperatures during the day escalate. It gets up to around 100-farenheight every day, with clear, cloudless skies and an unforgiving sun. Last year I recall sitting at my desk, droplets of sweat dripping off me as I sat passively. Sitting at home on a Sunday afternoon last January or February, the temperature well over 100, the only relief from the overhead fans although my flatmate reckoned that these only made the room more like a convection over, until she finally said, "turn me over, I'm done on this side."
It's incredibly important during the dry season to keep drinking fluids. I find I need at least 2-liters of fluid a day and even consuming that, not to be crude folks, but I almost never peed, the fluid simply evaporated out of me. The process doesn't stop at night. You go to bed, temps still up near 100, and you sleep in a pool of sweat. Some of the first nights I would wake-up feeling hungover even though I could not recall having had a drink the night before (talk about being cheated!) and I realized it was because I sweated so severely during the night it was as if I had gotten severely drunk. I started having to take bottles of water to bed with me and waking-up during the night to drink.
The other noticable thing during the dry season, what is happening now, is how dry and brown all the plant-life becomes. The trees drop their leaves like autumn and so many plants turn brown and shrivel-up. Plants located along the roadways wear a crust of red-dust kicked-up by the passing cars. It's sort of sad, but then the reward is the great explosioin of plants and flowers that reappears in March when the rains returns. Surely we would never appreciate the Spring were it not for the winter.

They fixed the WFP road!!

One of the many things which I have had to become an expert on here in Sudan is the handling of flights for our personnel into, out of and around Sudan. Just as people who a century ago would have known the schedule of the railroads in their local town, think of the references to the coming and goings of trains in Sinclair Lewis’ Main Street, I have had to become expert on the schedules of planes arriving and departing Juba. If I hear of a visitor arriving, say, on Uganda Airways, I automatically think, “ok, arrive around 11am.”
One of the most important means of travel within Sudan are the flights operated by the World Food Program of the UN, or WFP. WFP operates flights all over Sudan, connecting many places which no commercial airline would ever consider serving and yet which often house sizable numbers of aid workers. WFP allows personnel with NGO’s (non-governmental organizations) to fly upon their planes allowing easy access to most parts of the country. For anyone who questions the value of the UN, please know that the UN does actually provide some very valuable services, believe it or not.
The WFP offices in Juba are located on what used to be a miserable road out near the airport. It’s actually much better than when their offices were located down near the Nile River. Oh! how I hated driving on that horrible road with its monumentally deep ruts and muddy lanes. The road to the new location was just awful, which means typical.
When you first turned onto the road where the new offices are there was a small lake you had to cross. This mud-bog began life as a simple depression which simply grew and grew during the rainy season until it spanned the road and was about 20-feet long. But, because I drove to the offices so often, sometimes several times in one day, I knew that there was actually a land bridge cutting across the lake at a 45-degree angle which if you were lucky enough to know about would allow you to cross without getting too far bogged down into the mud. This was actually a good thing to know since I discovered an earlier time when the front wheels of the Toyota pick-up truck I drive got stuck down in a ditch that the four-wheel drive function on my car doesn’t work.
Beyond that the WFP road, which like nearly all roads here is dirt, was just a maze of deep potholes and uncomfortable bumps. But after not having had to drive there for about a week, I had yesterday to drop-off a paper at the WFP offices and I was stunned when I turned the corner to find that the authorities, and I’m not really sure exactly who is doing road-work, had resurfaced the road with a fresh layer of stony-dirt and graded the whole thing nice and smooth. It was so wonderful to drive upon, I was giggling like a kid in a candy shop! It’s so great when something good like that happens, especially related to driving in Juba.
Driving in Juba takes special care and diligence. I do have a Sudanese driver’s license, the getting of which is a story of its own. About five or six years ago they say you could almost literally count the number of cars in Juba on your hand. Now the narrow streets are choked with cars, nearly all of which are driven by people convinced they need to go first. Add to the mix of regular cars and lorries (“trucks” for those of you not forced to live amongst British English speakers) are large numbers of motorcycles (nicknamed boda-bodas) and various assorted other wheeled vehicles which you may find crowding the streets.
Driving around town is a death-defying experience, literally. I read in one of the local newspapers that, on average, three people a day die in auto-accidents in Juba. I think that number must be low. Driving is a constant mix of trying to avoid the vehicle in front of you being driven in an unpredictable manner while at the same time not being rear-ended by either the car or boda-boda following about three inches off your rear bumper.
The other thing you need to watch for are cars deciding that the vehicle in front of them is simply not going fast enough (never mind if you are driving on a street crowded with school-children or other pedestrians) and taking the opportunity to pass anytime, anywhere. Most of the roads around town are only two lanes but this business of passing can turn two-lane roads into three and four lane roads. The same is true whenever traffic must slow down or come to a halt for some reason. Rather than remain in a single line, which would have the advantage of allowing all of the traffic to flow past the obstruction quickly, in Sudan all driver’s first instincts are to break ranks and try and cram their way towards the front of the line thereby creating a huge bottleneck. The situation can be likened to trying to pass fluid through a funnel: pour in just enough and the fluid flows freely, try and pour in too much and the funnel quickly backs-up and gets full. Sigh. On the other hand, I have also succumbed to the freedom of random passing so often that I am no one to write critically about it.
Of course, all the while you are trying to make your way through traffic the boda-bodas, who make their living carrying people and goods upon their backseats, are snaking through traffic often at a high rate of speed and with a complete seeming disregard to human life. Anyone who has driven here can recount horror stories of trying to make turns (with turn-signals engaged!) while bodas are approaching from the same side either oblivious or unconcerned with your maneuvers. I have myself ridden a few times on the backs of bodas. It’s one of those things I only do when the shock and horror of my last ride upon a boda wears-off. I actually considered purchasing a boda not long after I first arrived, until I was advised that there is an entire wing in the Juba Hospital full of boda accident victims.
Driving in Juba at night takes scariness to an entirely new level. Never mind the fact that there is little in the way of street lighting (though there are actually now a lot of solar-powered streetlights on some main roads which is a big help) or that there is a fine layer of dust which extends above the ground about thirty-feet making the act of driving like being in a rust colored fog, or the fact that about one third of the vehicles on the roads in the evening will not (or can not, because they don’t work) use their lights, for me the scariest part of driving at night are the people who simply pop-out from behind obstructions to walk across the road directly in-front of on-coming traffic. Not to be rude, but very dark black people who in-turn are dressed in dark clothing and who pop-out from behind parked cars or other such things about five feet in-front of you scare the heck out of me. I have almost hit so many pedestrians to the point that now I rarely drive after dark unless it cannot be avoided.
Driving in Juba is so scary that a visiting friend that was left gasping for breath after we nearly struck yet another darkly dressed pedestrian who had stepped out from behind a parked car directly in front of our vehicle suggested we develop a video-game called “Juba Town” where the object was to drive around a simulated version of Juba at night without hitting or killing anyone. We think we’ll make a bunch of money off that idea.

Catching-up

Finding the time and the ability to update my blog has been so difficult lately. I'm sorry for that.
There hasn't been any town power in Juba for at least a month. Power is provided by large diesel generators and evidently the City of Juba has been unable to purchase fuel, for whatever reasons. You hear rumors that the minister in charge of electric power absconded with the money, or there are disagreements between the government and suppliers over the price and in typical African fashion no one does anything until the situation is totally resolved. South Sudan is a country blessed (or cursed?) with oil. But the crude flows north through a pipeline to Port Sudan where it is shipped off to China and India, mostly. Finished petroleum products like petrol and diesel fuel arrive from Kenya mostly, which requires hard currency.
I've been accosted several times now while buying diesel fuel for the car I drive at service stations around Juba. It's always some Somalian crack-head shouting about how awful American is and how much he hates America. The first time it happened the stupid kid kept asking all the other customers if they didn't hate America also? I told him I was suprised he hated America since we are pumping $600-million into Somalia to help its people (since raised to $700-million) in response to the drought and famine. He said he didn't care, he just hated America.
When this happened again at a different station the other day I asked the kid what is was about Somalians and petrol stations and he told me that Somalians own 15 service stations around Juba, or nearly all of them. This must be a huge windfall of cash that's flowing back to Somalia to (likely) support terrorist activities. All the Sudanese I know despise the Somalians and look forward to the day when they will be kicked ut of the country. All I know, is when I heard on the BBC yesterday that the US is operating drone planes out of Ethiopia against Somalia, I was very happy to hear it.
Anyway, lack of power has made internet access difficult. We have a solar back-up, but it too has been rather dodgy of late and there are many days we go without any power which means no internet system. We don't have internet at our house. There we have only four hours of power a night when the Guest House turns on the generator. We often have to start cooking dinner in the dark or just sit around waiting for the power to come on. Compared with ninety-percent of Sudanese we're lucky to have access to any electric power, but as a westerner more used to living with power the constant lack is wearing on the nerves.
So, having said all that, when I have access to the internet I try and limit myself first to work related materials. Today is Saturday and between having good solar and a little extra time I really wanted to update the blog.
Work has been insanely busy. I could not even begin to list all of the projects and activities I have been involved with. Every day here is simply a blur of constant activity. Fortunately, I love hectic and being kept busy, so I am thriving in this environment. The major problem, though, is that I am working so hard there is little time for reflection and serious thought, and little time for trying to organize things better so every day doesn't always have to be so rushed.
I was fortunate to be able to get to go to England for a week recently. It was my first time to go and I had a fantastic time! I will post a seperate blog entry about that, but suffice to say England was great and I cannot wait to go back.
The ECS is having it's once every five years Synod in mid-November. We have all been working so hard to make the event a reality. There are a thousand details to attend to and since organization is not one of our strongpoints it is making getting the event together that much harder. But it's all falling together, and I am sure it will be a great occasion once it actually arrives.
Apologies again for not posting anything lately. Between being to busy and lack of internet (or lack of computer!! don't even get me started. My new laptop died, my backup has also now died, and somone brought in a virus/worm into the office that wiped out my flash-drive where I had many of my files. I had my laptop hard-drive backed up to an external hard-drive, but I'm afraid the flash is gone. Very annoying) posting anything has been a challenge. Hopefully things will get easier.

The Body of Christ

At the time of independence we had an English bishop visit Juba. We had so many visitors then, it was a bit crazy. I felt like I spent half the week at the airport. But when I met this bishop, whom I not only had never met before but, honestly, had never even heard of before, the bishop amazed me by saying how glad he was to meet me and how he had been praying for me by name for some time. The bishop had heard of me in England via the community of people with an interest in Sudan.
I remember being floored by the fact that someone who had never met me before, who knew me only as a name and by reputation (always questionable in my case) had been praying for my welfare and for my work. Since becoming a missionary I have become aware of this incredible body of people around the world, the amazing community of loving, caring people who are living their faith by working in places and in ways which are a living testimony of the power of faith. It probably sounds ridiculous, but in my previous life where I was so focused upon myself and my own work I was grossly ignorant of this worlwide community, ignorant of this incredible body of people. How could this be so? I suppose because I chose to focus upon myself and chose not to interact with others.
Anyway, I was talking with my friend Jesse, an American divinity school student who was also visiting Juba at the time, about my emerging awareness of this great worldwide loving community of faith and how incredibly grateful I have been to become a part of it. It is so exciting to have made friends with people from at least four continents with whom I can share my faith and my passion for helping others. Jesse smiled and said, "I think there's a name for the community, it's called 'The Body of Christ." I realized at that moment the depths of my ignorance in not being aware of this body, as well as my gratitude that I had finally become a part of the Body and the joy it has given me to be a part of it.

Dinner

This is a tray with aceta, the doughy paste made from sorghum grains that is boiled for a long time. There are also bowls of dried fish, and chunks of beef, both of which have been stewed in cut okra for a while until is makes a sort of gelatinous mess. You grab some aceta with your hand and then scoop up some of the fish or beef mixture and stuff it in your mouth. When I first came I could not handle it, but now I kinda like it!