Category Archives: Missiology

Francophone Africa

Missiology, ,
African countries with French as a national or dominant language

As you can see, there are actually lots of countries in Africa which have French as an official language as one sort or another —together they are called francophone Africa. When we started working in DR Congo (DRC), we had to first spend time learning French, because French is the language of government and higher education in the DRC.

Francophone Africa reaches from the DRC in central Africa, to a large chunk of West Africa, as can be seen in the map above. But it isn’t just the geography of this area that is impressive; francophone Africa also includes about half of the remaining Bible translation needs in Africa (details at wycliffe.net).

While English speaking Nigeria has an astounding 344 languages with no scripture whatsoever, every other non-francophone language has less than 50. On the other hand, the needs are much larger in francophone countries for a variety of reasons: Cameroon has 139, DR Congo has 115, Chad has 74, and CAR has 53 (stats as of Oct 1, 2017).

In terms of the availability of workers, another reality of life in francophone Africa is that one cannot simply go there and work in English (unlike in countries like Kenya or Uganda, where English is an official language). This means more training, preparation and finances, resulting in fewer people ready to do the work. It also means French-speaking translators and linguists have fewer resource and reference materials accessible to the local community.

As we have been thinking and praying about our next assignment with Wycliffe, we have decided to continue to focus on work in francophone Africa. We have the training in French, and we have experience working with Africans under a francophone government. Given that we are ready to meet what remains a real need, we’ll keep at the work in francophone Africa.

So as you think about francophone Africa, pray that the people who live there would have the resources (economically, personally, spiritually, culturally, linguistically) to initiate and sustain local Bible Translation movements, and that we and others like us could do our part to support them.

Stuck in Traffic

Family, Missiology, Personal

At the end of a hectic week of appointments in the big city, it is probably good to take a moment to reflect before heading off on vacation next week.
Yesterday I had some time to reflect, as I spent an hour and a half driving 12 km to pay a debt and pick up a few things we needed before the weekend. I did some calculations after I got home:

12km/1.5h = 8kmph (and 8kmph/1.6km/mi = 5mph)

So I drove an average speed of a slow parking lot, or maybe a fast walk, through traffic for an hour and a half.  Welcome to Nairobi.
But there were some consolations, like being able to listen to Car Talk podcasts I’d downloaded – one and a half of them. And another was being able to reflect a bit more casually than I normaly do, about the life going on around here. I got to see a lot of people walking (and faster than I was driving, to be sure), and I got to read more of the signs.
We had many appointments booked with various doctors and therapists, and it is somewhat amazing to see that we got it all done. But there are a couple doctors we didn’t get to see, who advertise along my route of yesterday, and I was driving slow enough (did I mention that?) to take pictures:

But even if you don’t wood to make a sign for a telephone pole, or color ink, or a website, you can still advertise (this is an A4 sheet of paper taped to a tree stump):

I particularly like the breadth of competence Dr. Karim has. He isn’t limited to helping you with your marriage/sex/relationship problems, like Dr. Khalif.  Dr. Karim can also help you with politics, and with ‘lost items’. I wonder if he can help me find that hour and a half…

Corn Mush Diet

Anthropology, Congo + Culture, Missiology, Recipes, SCD - GAPS Diet

I got asked a good question about our life in Africa, “What is it about your African lifestyle that slims you down?” My first steps on African soil were 11 years ago this week, so in some ways I have forgotten what is different here.

The rain waters seep into this red clay soil, and the African way of life seeps into my own.

There are several things about life here that encourage weight loss (though to be fair I have to note it doesn’t work like this for everyone*): more walking, more sweating, more stress, less favorite foods, etc. If I want to eat pizza for instance, I make the crust from flour/oil/milk, I make the sauce from tomatoes/onions/spices, I grate the cheese, I cut up the fresh pineapple. It is all very ‘locavore’ and usually very fresh, but it is also all very much work! Because of the work it takes, and the core of laziness I have, I snack less. No quick easy munchies here. Farmer’s market without all the prepared goodies.

It seems the weight is proportional to the level of civilization you live at. In discussing this with colleagues, it was commonly expected one would gain the ‘furlough 15’ (15 extra pounds) by returning to the US. I know some people have avoided this with care, but if one weighed 120 in the US (don’t we wish), then in an African city one weighed 110 on average, and out in a village they weighed 100. Here we are somewhere between a city and a village.

In the US I can visit Starbucks for a chat, drive through any number of fast-food restaurants, and even the foods I put on the table are processed and manufactured often so that tortillas are not just wheat and oil. There are more options and there are yummy options and they are all filled with little things to make them MORE yummy.

In the big African cities I have seen, there are several meat options, always fruits and veggies and sometimes even imported varieties (how much is a real, crisp apple or few blackberries worth to me??). There are fewer ‘fillers’ in foods (but then your bread gets stale more quickly too) and fewer packaged foods. There are restaurants, but they are not drive-thru and don’t have huge luscious extravagance. The richest thing I ever splurged on was 5 handmade spinach raviolis in a heavenly gorgonzola cream sauce in Kenya (but the restau was owned and operated by an Italian).

In the few rural areas we have lived, extravagance is eating meat or using oil. In one place salt and sugar were even a splurge for people. The place I lost the most weight (and even heard of a colleague losing almost 40 lbs in one month!) was in the northern hills of Cameroon where we lived with a Cameroonian host family. They splurged and made us meat sauce to eat with our corn mush. Most families we know eat one large meal in the evening and cold leftovers or porridge for breakfast (usually nothing for lunch). Joel was just a few months old, nursing like crazy in the heat and I had him strapped to my back as we hiked up and down the hills visiting friends and churches and clearing their fields. It was physically exhausting just to accomplish basic life. Now why on earth was I ever enamored with Little House on the Prairie??! Hauling water. Scrubbing laundry. Hiking up. Hiking down. Hiking some more. I still think Jenny Craig really could be on to something with the ‘corn mush diet‘…

It is no wonder we have colleagues who have to work at keeping enough weight on. Add in a few tropical illnesses or a bout with malaria, and you start to think about how to gain weight.

And so it goes… weight = wealth here.

*For some, who would benefit from all the fat-free, non-fat, diet soda options in the US, they actually gain weight overseas where carbs are ever-present and diet soda non-existent.