Building desks for a village school

Christine's Journal - Mission to Inatés

Thursday, January 24, 2008

Morning:

Tomorrow is the big day we have been gearing up for. Our team of 8 high school students and 4 adults has been meeting twice a week since early January in preparation for the outreach trip to Inatés, a small Tuareg village only a few kilometers from the Mali boarder. Today at lunch we have one final planning meeting. This trip is a joint venture with Samaritan’s Purse (SP) and Sahel Academy. We heard through SP, which works on nutrition and livestock projects in the area, that the village school is in need of new desks since their present desks are falling apart. Samaritan’s Purse was able to get funding for materials to build new desks. The Southern Baptist Mission provided some of the manual labour in building the metal frames. We all spent a Saturday at the shop cutting, sanding and drilling holes in the wooden desktops and seats. Our job in Inatés is to assemble the 60 desks. We are all ready for the 6 hour drive tomorrow. The food team has enough ice in the freezer for the water coolers and all we have to do is pack everything tomorrow.

Afternoon:

None of us was prepared for the news that awaited us at lunch. Pastor Dave informed us that Ralph Sauers, one of our adult leaders, had just become very sick overnight with malaria. He is an important member of our team; not only is he the only one on the team who really knows how to assemble the desks, he is also the only one who speaks the local language of Tamashek. On top of that news, we learned that the truck that was loaded with supplies and sent to Inatés ahead of us had been in an accident. Luckily there was little damage to the desk frames and the wood. After much concerned prayer, it was decided that we would put off the Inatés trip for 2 weeks. This seemed to be for the best anyhow, since many of us were running low on sleep over the past few nights and could use some time to re-energize. We all prayed that Ralph Sauers would be restored to full health before then.

Friday, February 8, 2008

Morning:

Today is the big day we have been gearing up for since early January. The day has finally arrived! The two week delay has dampened our spirits somewhat, but yesterday’s lunch meeting renewed our enthusiasm. We are eager to serve the Muslim Tuareg community and also have a bit of a camping adventure in the process. J

Afternoon:

More unexpected delays! We had planned to have the 2 land rovers packed by 11am so that we could leave immediately at 11:15am when the students got out of classes. It appeared that things weren’t going to go quite as planned when by 10:30am we

were still waiting for the 2 trucks to arrive! There had been traffic delays due to student demonstrations at the traffic circle near the ONLY bridge that crosses the river. By noon, we were finally ready to hit the road! We arrived in Inatés well before sunset, by 5:30pm. We had made excellent timing despite the initial delays. Half of the trip was paved road. At the town of Ayorou, we turned off on to a dirt road which later become a rutted track. We traveled through as many kinds of semi-arid landscapes that one could think of: dry grasslands with scrubby acacia trees, barren gravel hilltops, dry sandy riverbeds, seasonal “ponds” or lakes surrounded by leafy trees, rocky moonscapes with large termite mounds resembling the stone statues of Easter Island. It kind of felt like we were on a safari; large herds of goats and sheep were roaming free like wild herds of antelope. Camels were wandering around and grazing on acacia leaves just like giraffes.Squirrels and birds darted in front of the trucks. Donkeys stood patiently for their owners in dry fields or else stubbornly in the middle of the road! In some places, we drove through sand tracks that were about 1 foot deep! At times, it felt like we were fishtailing through deep snow! We passed by a number of villages or “camps” along the way, but you would never notice if you didn’t look hard, for the straw and mud huts blended in with the sandy surroundings.

We were warmly welcomed by the community as we drove into the school’s yard. The school director had organized the students and they were singing as we got out of the trucks. We politely greeted the school director, the village chief and some of the other important men of the village. In no time at all, the curious children started to crowd around us in an effort to shake our hands. At first we stood around awkwardly with our limited language abilities, but soon we were also eagerly shaking grubby hands and snapping pictures of the cute kids.

Mr. Sauers and Tim went off to visit with the important men of the village and have a customary round of Tuareg tea while the rest of us set up camp. We had quite a few curious onlookers as we set up the tents right in the middle of the school yard! We had a choice of 2 latrines: the closest one was a shallow hole in the ground encircled with an old straw mat located in the corner of the school yard.Most of us preferred the newly dug latrine on the other side of the schoolyard wall which had a decent mud wall around it for privacy. It also had a nice west facing view of the “mare” or seasonal pond if you stood up and looked over the latrine wall. J

Supper was bread dipped in delicious peanut sauce as we sat around in the glow of flashlights. Tim and some local boys got a campfire going later that evening. John had brought his guitar and some music, so we sat around the campfire singing worship songs as a small group of boys listened and watched from the other side of the campfire. We involved them in a Tamashek song that Mr. Sauers and Daniel taught us. A memorable moment was watching the boys as they listened with fascination as Mr. Sauers read them the story of David and Goliath in their own language. We drifted off to sleep with a glorious starry sky above us and the sound of donkeys braying in our dreams.

Saturday, February 9, 2008

The morning began at around 5:30am when the roosters started crowing and the donkeys began their awful bawling! Mr. Sauers was the first one up at about 6:30am. The rest of us crawled out of our tents not long after. The sun itself didn’t peak over the horizon until around 7:30am. It was a chilly morning! Some of the girls huddled in their blankets around the little Tuareg charcoal burner as Mr. Sauers handed out little shot glasses of sweet Tuareg tea.

By 8:30am we had finished breakfast and were already starting to assemble the first desks. There is no electricity in the village, except for the health centre where they have their own generator. Thankfully, Dave Ceton had loaned us his generator so that we could use the power drills to drill holes in the metal desk frames. We had quite a system going between the 12 of us: a few people drilled holes while the others screwed on the bolts.

Three people could drill at a time until 1 drill sparked and died on us.Of the two remaining drills, only one of them really worked very well. That slowed things down a bit, but by lunch we had completed 20 desks out of 51. It looked like a daunting task, and some of us were getting sore backs and hands, but we managed to up the speed and efficiency after lunch. It wasn’t all work and no play. There were dramatized scenes of the dentist drilling teeth , and other creative childhood moments finger painting with varnish. J Hafsa, Aagje and I got ourselves covered in sticky varnish from one too many varnish fight! It wasn’t fun, though, bathing in gasoline afterwards! Our last desk was completed by about 5:15pm!

The community presented us with gifts of decorated pens, leather pouches, wooden spoons and bracelets. We in turn thanked them with a colourful soccer ball which the boys quickly blew up and started playing with.

That evening, we invited the entire community to watch the “God Story” film translated into Tamashek. Mr. Sauers hooked up his computer and the projector to the generator so that we could show the film on the school wall. Around 60 or 70 eager children and interested adults came for the entertainment under the starry skies. It wasn’t hard for me to imagine Abraham looking at the stars of the sky long ago and wondering how God would make his offspring as numerous as the stars.

Sleep came easily, for most of us that is except for a few hyper teenagers, for we were all exhausted!

Sunday, February 10, 2008

Again we were up before the sunrise. Mr. Sauers had a nice fire going to warm up the chilly morning air. Our first visitors began arriving just as we were eating breakfast. We girls weren’t quite prepared for visitors so early, for some of us were still dressed in our cozy pajamas and didn’t have a head scarf on yet. There wasn’t much privacy as we started taking down our tents and packing up. The school director and other important men were there to greet and thank us before we left. Kids were peaking over the school walls, climbing the thorny trees nearby, playing soccer in the school yard, or standing nearby. Goats and guinea fowl were wandering around the yard. Donkeys and women were at the village well next to the school. Imagine brushing your teeth,
doing your hair and putting in your contacts with almost the entire community watching you!

Before leaving, we wanted to get a picture of all the kids sitting in their new desks. We asked the director if he could round up the kids. News spreads like wildfire here. The director only had to tell one boy who was listening nearby, and in less than 5 minutes all the kids were assembled at the desks.

We had a 2-sided colouring sheet for the kids along with a dozen boxes of colouring crayons for the school. I explained in French which Bible stories the pictures were from while Mr. Sauers translated into Tamashek. Then we passed out a handful of crayons to each student to colour with. It appeared that many of the kids had never seen crayons before (or maybe they aren’t given many opportunities to colour in school), because it took them a few minutes to understand what they were supposed to do with the crayons. So we went around showing the kids what they could do with the crayons. After an exchange of “thank yous” and “goodbyes”, we were on our way back to Niamey. We left Inatés feeling a special bond with the people. They really appreciated all that we had done for them; that we had cared enough about their little village to drive 6 hours and make them new desks to replace the 40-year old desks. In sharing with them God’s love, we had also been richly blessed by their friendship.