North Trip Part Six ~ Roomsiki

On Cameroon's boarder with Nigeria there's a random "little" area of land, about as spontaneous as North Dakota Badlands.  Roomsiki is a little tourist village nestled in a gorgeous landscape of unique rock formations and little mountains.

 Our trip to Roomsiki was in a HOT little crowded bus, the sun was beating in my open window on my already sunburned skin and I thought my arms were going burn up.  We got a serious flat tire just outside of Roomsiki, when we slowed down to stop I could hear the air furiously hissing out of the tire, louder and faster than any tire "leak" I've ever heard!

 Two little content, lounging children in the village of Roomsiki.

 This man is weaving cotton yarn (made by the women) into pure cotton strips.  Each time he alternates his feet in a pedaling motion it alternates the strands and he weaves another strand through.  This little village knows tourists... you were free to take pictures, but leave a donation if you do, we gave them 50 francs for this shot (about 10 cents).

 When we were leaving Roomsiki the early morning bus we were told would be our transportation back to Mokolo was not actually going, so we got a "Toyota ride" with a load of people taking their goods to a local market along the way.  It was nice and crowded on the back of the pickup, and it was early, we were tired... and Mary fell asleep!

 It was great fun! I love riding in the back of a pickup, was a little like home!

 We had a very nice meal at a little family run restaurant, this is the oldest boy of the family who was selling his "musical instruments" very beautiful!  ....yes, I bought one! 

 Like I said, they know tourists and have a pretty good idea of the strange things tourists are interested in...when they served us the "traditional bread" we were informed that if we would like to visit the oven where the traditional bread is made, that was very possible.  So of course, when we finished eating we had to go visit the oven, and this is what we found!

 an old gas oven... with a fire built inside!  It was great!  I couldn't help but thing of the Beverly Hillbillies episode where they don't know how to use the appliances in their new mansion, and build a fire in the oven!

 This was our amazing supper! Awesome food, amazing service, and a nice price. :)

 Roomsiki got it's name from a Nigerian hunter many years ago named Siki, who discovered the area and climbed Mt. Room... thus the village founded there was called Roomsiki.

 Notice the bottom... or lack there of in this little guy's pants.

 What a creative and marvelous God we serve!

 The sun setting on Roomsiki

 These two are the sunrise early in the morning on our Toyota ride :)

North Trip Part Five ~ African Hospitality

Zara's House

 One of the many strong aspects of African culture is their munificent hospitality.

When we are invited to share a meal they love inviting us to come early and cook the food together so they can teach us to cook their African dishes.  We brought some of the ingredients and sat together on the mat learning from Zara.  We were suppose to pick the leaves off the fulary stalks to be cooked into a "soup." As I picked though the greens I was suppressing countless urges to discard almost every leaf, ones that at home I would throw over the fence for sure.  I felt I was being pretty generous with the sad, wilted leaves I was allowing into the soup pot.  As I laid the remainders of one stalk, with  the leaves I had deemed just too far gone to make any possible excuse for, I watched Zara softly pick it up without missing a beat in her conversation and proceed to pluck every single undesirable leaf and add them to the pot.  I just had to smile to myself, and picked up the next stalk.

 Zara fell on hard times when her husband died and began working for the hospital for free as a translator for the local dialects of Fufuday and Moffa, because she had nowhere else to go.  When the last missionaries came and discovered she was working for free they made her position official (which gave her an income). 

 Audrey, Zara's youngest, who was named after the missionary doctor :) he became our fast pall throughout the evening.

 We each got to take a turn stirring the pot and trying all the different jobs, much harder work than cooking at home.

 After a good couple hours of preparation and visiting, the food was ready :)

 coos coos and fulary soup, it was SO GOOD, it's pretty much the north's equivalent of fufu and okra soup which is common in here in the southwest.

 creative little stoves.

 The Goats love to "help" in the kitchen! ;)

Hache's House

 Hache is one of Spencer's good friends and his family invited us over the last night we were in Koza

 This is "bwee" yes, in "German" we'd call it something like "bree" (with a good German rolled R) it's a mixture of rice, peanut butter, flour, and a little sugar, to make a nice slimy...drink? food?

We had it for breakfast every morning and it's really not that bad... but you can only eat so much...

Apparently, another part of the African hospitality culture is to eat until you almost cant walk, Hache proudly informed us that not only was the blue and brown bucket full, we had the whole red thermos too!

When we had eaten so much bwee that we could hardly stay in a sitting position, They brought out the salad!

I'm sure there were a couple heads of lettuce and about 10 tomatoes for each, plus about a gallon of "dressing" in that salad.  If you slowed up in your eating pace at all, Hatche would scold, "mange!" (EAT! in French).  I ate salad, with my hands, out of the community bowl, until I didn't think I could eat ever again.  Then Hache dug up a big spoon and started to scoop up the dressing on the bottom of the bowl.  Since I knew he couldn't understand anything I said in English I just said out loud, "There is no way I'm drinking that!" He offered me the first giant spoonful and I politely said, "no mercy, jai' suis plain" (no thank-you, I'm full).  And Spencer took the spoonful like a trooper.  Hache dug up another spoonful and offered to me again, I knew that there's just no such thing as turning down food in the African culture and I simply was not going to get away with denying this "salad dressing" plus, this spoonful wasn't QUITE as full as the last one, so I decided I'd better just get it over with.  I swallowed the dressing hoping it'd stay down, and Hache continued to give everyone one, then finished it off himself, all with the same spoon. 

When we were leaving their home we saw where our empty dishes had been set outside and the goats were happily cleaning out anything we had missed as well as drinking out of the bucket we had washed our hands in; and somehow, I have this feeling it wasn't the first time they had licked those cups.

 Hache's kids plus a few neighbors.  (it was about 100 degrees, with no exaggeration, but the little kids in the front still felt a need for a nice warm coat when the sun went down! haha). 

Don't forget to show hospitality to strangers, for some who have done this have entertained angels without knowing it!  Hebrews 13:2

Share with God's people who are in need, practice Hospitality.  Romans 12:13

North Trip Part Four ~ Village of Bardam

This is another long post, but trust me, the journal entry that contain this adventure consists of many, many pages!  I explained a few things in detail and hope you take the time to read the short stories with my pictures, it's only a small taste, but it's a taste.

Yet another, and one of the most interesting of our adventures during our stay in the north was the ancient village of Bardam.  The previous missionary doctor in Koza performed an operation on the chief of Bardam at the hospital, then managed to find his village for a follow up visit to check on him.  A positive relationship was formed and made it possible for us to visit the village.

 We brought a gift for the chief and his family as a peace making and respectful gesture in exchange for being welcomed warmly and being allowed to take pictures.  We greeted the chief with a respectful "balli baba" which means "hello father" in Moffa.

 When we got to the village everything we wanted to convey to the chief or anyone in the village had to be translated to the dialect of Moffa.  So we would discus what to say in English, Spencer translated it to French so that our motto driver could understand it, then he (Vambi, one of our drivers) translated it from French, to Moffa... then the response would come back through the translation train... reminded me of playing "telephone" as a kid and made me wonder how clearly our messages were really being conveyed.

 We packed extremely light for our north trip because of the quality and ease of transportation... but just before we left our room I spotted a bag of balloons and threw them in my bag thinking I'd probably be able to find some kids who'd love to have them.  The morning we left for Bardam I brought them along and was so glad I did!!

 The kids were really quiet and didn't show much epression besides what seemed to be utter shock.  The villagers had gathered around in a crowd to watch us; as each balloon was released to a child, the whole village would cheer!

 All of a sudden there was a small commotion and somebody brought a goat into the middle of things, I had no idea what was going on, I was hoping supper hadn't just showed up... then all of a sudden the goat was presented to Spencer as a gift.  It was a huge honor, we were told later that a chicken would have been a big deal, but a GOAT... very honored!

 "Kitchen counter"  containing three nicely worn grooves from hours of grinding.

 This was the little mud hut for making billbill (millet beer).  It sat beside the mud hut that held the grain, sort of a mini silo.

 I don't know what this "berry" is called, but they knocked some out of a tall tree for us to try, they're really good :) but not a "berry" like you would think, they're dry and you just chew on them until you clean all the "meat" off the pit.

 picture perfect typical African tree, with some huts fading into the background.

 The doorway of the chief's main hut, notice the bones in the rocks/bricks on the top right corner of the doorway.

 I got this picture when the Chief's first wife came to greet us, here's a quote from what I wrote about her in my journal that night:

"When we were sitting on the rocks a thin little lady with less teeth than normal came to greet us.  We were told she was the Chief's first wife, first of 9, but 8 are still alive and have produced 28 kids.  She greeted us with honor by using both hands to shake our hands.  She expressed her deep joy and honor, moving her hands and whole body to gesture and show emotion as her mouth moved but not a single verbal word was said.  She knew that our words, verbal languages we use to communicate, were different and words would do no good.  So, she used every other emotion showing feature she could, to express in some small way what was overflowing in her heart and mind."  ...the message was conveyed, in silence.

 Motto rides!

 Here's another quote from my diary to explain this picture:

"One little boy looked like he was standing funny, I realized his pants were 5 or more sizes too big and tied with a rope in attempt to make them suffice.  But when I looked closer in a quick, casual glance I realized that his large pants were the least of his problems.  His stomach was huge and round from malnutrition and there was something abnormal with his leg and hip which accentuated the problem of the large pants."

Interesting story, one of these three bulls will be the lucky participant in the famous beef feast coming up in March.  I'm sure by now, whichever one of these bulls was selected, is locked in a mud hut with no light, their goal is to make the bull as crazy as possible until the day of the feast when they give it millet beer until the bull is literally drunk and then make it angry and let it out... the entertainment is to run around chasing and being chased by it until someone gets it pinned.... then they have a barbecue!