what a celebration!

I can still hear the laughter ringing in my ears! Over 40 pikin running around our compound decorating Christmas cookies (aka dousing the cookie and themselves with red, green and white frosting) for the first time in their lives, making glittery shining stars and dancing to corny renditions of jingle bells and winter wonderland!

Sunday was our Pikin Club Xmas Party!

The kids crafts began in the afternoon. A frenzy of frosting and glitter flying everywhere! I made the cookies with some of the older kids the day before. It was a project they looked at me like I was crazy when trying to explain…although it didn’t take long to win them over! The kids also decorated paper stars with glitter glue to create our night sky backdrop for the program.

 

making cookies!

decorating the cookies...and ourselves!

mmmmm...

A few hours later the adults arrived. You needed a ticket to get it, and let me tell you, tickets were HOT commodities! The kids who have come to kids club over the past few months each received one ticket for themselves and one for an adult.

They proudly performed songs they have been learning and a few kids even recited bible memory verses!

Then the Christmas program began!

Some of the older kids and adults who have been doing a bible study with us after pikin club acted as the narrators and recited a part of the Christmas story and then led the audience in singing a carol. As ‘Oh little town of Bethlehem’ and ‘Silent Night’ filled the air audience members were selected to “build” the manger scene. Mary and Joseph, angels, the shepherds, the wise men and baby Jesus were all there. They did such a good job!

The rest of the night was filled with food and fun! We asked some women in the neighborhood to prepare jollof rice with chicken for everyone! Jollof rice is a traditional dish of fried rice with vegetables and an oily tomato and onion sauce served only on special occasion because it’s a bit more expensive.

What a night! And what a celebration!

the road from kono

 

“Small Small” reads the front the poda poda.  Two small words that described anything but the amount of people crammed into the mini bus that was headed to Freetown.

It was 5:30 am and still dark out.  But the open “park” I was in was already buzzing with people surrounding the vehicles that would be traveling to Freetown and Makeni that morning.  The mini buses (a bit larger than the typical poda poda transport that have four benches behind the driver and can boast loading at least 20 to 25 people) were already filled to what seemed like capacity. 

I had asked around the day before to find out what time the vehicles would be loading.  Without getting any concrete consistent answer, my colleague Fabundeh and I agreed 5:30 am should certainly be early enough.  Maybe not.

I spoke to the driver and asked if there was any chance one more could fit.  “we don fill up, we don fill up” was all I got in response.  (we’ve already filled up)  The chaos of people yelling and shouting while pushing and shoving into the vehicle made me wonder what exactly “filled up” meant, but regardless, at this point I don’t think I would have wanted to be squeezed in.

But I did need to get to Freetown.  I had been traveling “up country” to Bo for a training of paralegals and then on to Kono with Fabundeh to meet with the Village Parent Groups and a survivor I am writing a story about.  My time in Kono had been wonderfully fruitful.  I really saw the work of FAAST reaching the people.  These groups of volunteers, made up of everyone from village chiefs to teachers to police officers to mothers and even students, committed to looking out for human trafficking.  They are excited to be part of this call to justice, even when it defies the traditional and cultural practices.  A call to bring an end to the exploitation of children, which is rampant everywhere you look.  A call to treat children with love and respect.  A call to allow children to grow with possibilities and opportunities to become more than another seller of goods or themselves on the streets.  A call to change the standards of disciplinary action against those who violate this call.

Yet after a few days of primitive guesthouses, the stagnant upcountry heat, motorbikes and dusty roads – I was ready to get back to a busy week of preparing all that I had accumulated.  I just needed a ride.

As I was beginning to lose hope a man called out to me, “driva wan yu, driva wan yu!”  The driver had found space…or at least made space. 

Ten minutes later we are speeding down the dirt road, bouncing from pothole to pothole, leaving a cloud of dust behind us (as well as entirely engulfing us).  I am positioned, or wedged may be a better way to describe it, between the driver and the two people already squished into the passenger seat.  I have nothing to lean my back against and I can’t extend my legs for I am seated on the center console behind the gearshift. 

So there I sit, knees hugged to my chest, gathering a thick layer of dirt and sweat, bouncing along with the rest of the passengers (who must have exceeded 40 and included two live chickens)…for the next seven hours.  Yes, seven hours.

You just have to laugh.  There is no other thing to do. I marvel at the thought of myself, the only white girl in the dense sea of beautiful black faces all of whom didn’t seem fazed by the journey at all. 

Similarly to the night before when Fabundeh had suggested going for coffee (an idea I welcomed with skepticism because I have yet to experience a “coffee shop” that sells more than Nescafe) and we stop at a busy street side eatery.  Although “coffee” (aka very sugary powdered milk with half a spoon of Nescafe) was served, it came accompanying a piled high plate of “macaroni and beench” (aka a plate of black eyed peas piled high with greasy spaghetti and some sort of meat toped with ketchup, a glob of mayo and sliced onion.  Bona petite!  And all for about 50 cents) hmmm…just let that one settle.  Then imagine the white girl, squeezed onto a bench of hungry “coffee” goers devouring the plate that I am looking at in amazement. 

See, you just have to laugh.  I absolutely love moments like these!  And I love that my God knows me inside and out…including how much is too much.

Once we finally arrived in Freetown and I unfolded myself from the accordion I had become, I was hot, I was tired, and I was still far from my final destination…home.  I finally got a taxi into the center of town, which was as crowed as the bus was packed.  Taxi after taxi passed, disregarding the name of the location I was calling out.  And as I was pushed and jostled from every direction, horns blaring so loud I couldn’t hear myself think, I really was about to lose it.  I felt it welling up from within me.  This was my limit. 

And at that very moment, through the crowds came a white Land Cruiser with the FAAST emblem printed on the side.  It was as if Elijah came riding in on a golden chariot, that’s how happy I was to see Sengbe.  We were far, far away from the office on a side of town our Program Manager would rarely frequent, but my God knew what I would need at that very moment and gave them some reason to be headed in my direction. 

Again, I just have to smile. Simple, beautiful, messy, chaos!  And I am just along for the ride in the midst of it.

no boundaries

 

I am awakened this morning to the horribly electric and piercing sound of my phone.  I lay there for a moment, trying to figure out where I am.  I hear a car engine rev outside and the sounds of life waking up.  The sunrise is barely illuminating the batik fabric draped across the window above my head creating a soft pink glow in the room.  Then I remember, Bo.  I’m up country in a guesthouse (SL version of a motel) in the town of Bo. (Boasting the second largest city in Sierra Leone, but much more of a town than a city and a significant escape from the craziness of Freetown.)  I realize my phone, still screaming at me to pay attention to it, is not the alarm going off but the ring.  I look at the screen – it’s momma!

I answer only to hear the loud sounds of what seems like a party. I quickly compute that it is still the night before back in America. Mom yells from the other end.  She has someone for me to talk to.

Immediately I am transported from a world of roosters crowing and mosquito nets (which has caught hold of me in a tangled mess as I try to get out of bed still half asleep) to a world of runways, lights and fashion.  A voice, whose soundless words over email have become such a source of encouragement and comfort, comes on the other end of the line.  It is the voice of an incredibly driven, talented, beautiful fashion designer and seamstress.  Kelsey’s show!  The pieces start coming together into focus in my head.

Kelsey’s show!  The one she started working on designing and creating dresses for this summer when I stayed with her.  At the time, the dresses only looked like big hoops of fabric—dreams I could see reflected it her minds eye that I had to take her word for.

After some shrieks of I love you, I miss you, I wish I could have been there the phone is passed off to another.  Ash!  Oh, what a morning!

Before I know it, it’s over, and I’m back in the silence of my little room, sitting in a plastic lawn chair, drinking my instant coffee.

A pang of longing sweeps over me for the first time since I’ve been here.  A pang of longing to be part of two worlds.  My heart has become part of Africa, part of this country and these people.  But part of my heart is still at home.  Still with family and friends in Washington, California, Arizona, D.C.  Part of my heart is with my new little nephews and their parents who have truly become family.  With my sissy and her beautiful new home so full of love and life.  With each of my many friends who are faithfully walking down the paths toward the future, many barely able to see one step in front of the other.  With my family as they gather to celebrate 80 wonderful God given years of blessings grandpa and auntie Joyce have shared…the list goes on.  A pang of longing to be with each where my heart resides.

Yet while my body cannot, my heart has no boundaries.  So as I sit in my plastic chair in a little room watching the sun bring life to Bo, Sierra Leone, I know that that same sun will bring light and life to another world as well.  A world across oceans and understanding.  And just as the sun will rise with my family and friends throughout the world, the Son has no boundaries either.  The Son, our Jesus, has brought light and life to all the world, and allowed my heart to do so as well.

While my body longs to be in two worlds at once, my heart rises with the Son – in the North, in the South, in the East, in the West.  Wherever He has taken my heart – there it is.