A Week in the Village

In January, we spent a week in our newly constructed huts in the village. It was a very productive trip, and we were grateful to how warmly we were welcomed into the community. The women were very hospitable, offering us food and peanuts from their fields. We in turn, shared our dates and candy from the big city – a special treat they can’t get in the village.

Josh was able to visit several markets in surrounding towns. These are “traveling” markets that only come once a week. It was helpful to see what food items and household goods are available.

Isaac, Judah, and Calla were all able to make some friends, even though the village children only speak Maba. We are hopeful that this will help them transition well when we spend longer periods of time in the village.

One highlight of the week was hosting women from our village and 3 other neighboring villages to make grass mats for a privacy fence for our home. They each donated one or two bundles of millet stalks, walking or coming on donkey, and then spent the day making the grass mats for us. We thanked them publicly and also provided a goat and a sheep as a thank you gift for the women to share a nice meal together.

We attended a village baby naming ceremony that was actually not in a village, but in the middle of a field! We used our car to carry a laboring mother to a nearby hospital and back again, only to learn that her baby suffered trauma during delivery and is paralyzed. I had two women from different villages walk by foot to come greet me and bring me food. We saw camels almost every day outside our front door. We saw amazing amounts of stars in the night sky, and walked far away to use the bathroom since the wall around our actual bathroom was not yet complete! We have so many more stories to share; we look forward to sharing more with many of you when we come to the States this Spring.