Self-Sustaining Enterprises Blog

Hi everyone. Just to introduce myself, my name is David Ferrell. On January 4th, I flew out of Dayton with Brian and Karen to join them for the next six month here in Jos, where I’ll be helping Brian plan and run various projects that SSE is working on over here. Having been here for a little over two weeks now, Brian had asked if I’d like to share some of my initial impressions or experiences. I’ll try to highlight a few for you.

I’ve had a couple of unfortunate cooking experiences so far, in which I burned some things pretty bad. I’m not a great cook, but I’d like to think I’m relatively competent, and these kinds of food destruction don’t usually happen to me back home. Food preparation, as I’m sure you’ve gathered from Brian and Karen’s posts, is a lot more time/labor intensive here than back in the states. Some things you could just buy at the store aren’t as easy to get here, which means if you want them, you have to make them yourself. That takes time and effort. And a lot of the food here takes a lot more work to wash and clean. And then you have to do all the dishes by hand. The little things add up pretty quick.

There are a lot of other issues too that can pop up and make the process more complicated, so after several hours working on something and having several complications arise, and then when it finally comes out of the oven, discovering that it burned—that’s not a happy moment. The first time I was making granola, and when I found I’d messed it up (it was getting pretty late at that point), I just threw it in the fridge, left the dishes in the sink and went to bed. The next morning, when I pulled it out, I found it hadn’t burned quite as bad as I’d thought, and while it wasn’t perfect, if I could pull out the burnt chunks, there were still some edible parts left over.

A similar thing happened when I was making soup the other night. I guess I haven’t quite figured out how to get the temperature just right on the stove and in the oven, because I ended up boiling off most of the broth and crisping everything on the bottom of the pot. My initial reaction was similar—oh crud, I just wasted a whole afternoon fixing this and now it’s ruined. But after the incident with the granola, I took a step back, and realized it wasn’t all lost. After throwing in a few extra cups of water, and stirring it back up again, I had my soup. Not perfect—the bottom of the pot is covered in burned rice, so I get little ashy bits floating around, and the soup tastes kind of smoky—but it’s edible, at least most of it.

I think that’s how a lot of life goes over here. Complications and delays happen, things take more time and effort to accomplish, and even little things sometimes don’t work out the way you want or expect. We’ve had our fair share of delays and complications on the projects Brian and I have been working on since we got here too. It can be a pretty hard hit to our western sensibilities, as we’re so driven by schedules and measure success based on what we’ve accomplished. It seems like here though, a lot of the victories are the small ones. It’s been two weeks and I haven’t starved or gotten severely ill—that counts for something, right? And in the meantime, you learn to adapt (I suppose you could always go crazy or go home too). You do the best you can with what you have, and if things don’t turn out quite right, it may not be a total loss. You have to be able to change your expectations of the environment, and more importantly your expectations of yourself. Maybe once you get to that point, then you can actually start accomplishing things.

Or maybe not. Things still might totally bomb, like the moldy green beans. I think it may be time to cut my losses on that one. Welcome to Nigeria!

David

Today was Bible Study Fellowship, a free educational ministry for men and women that operates internationally.  Jos has five classes per week; women’s morning and evening, men’s morning and evening, and one for youth.  I’ve been attending the women’s day study since September, going through the book of Acts with forays into corresponding epistles.  It’s been excellent.

It was my first class back since we traveled, and after working hard to get the homework done I learned with dismay that it was my small group’s turn to help in the children’s program.  (I’d been secretly hoping this would occur while I was gone.)  Since it was cold I put black leggings on under my Nigerian dress, which turned out to be inspired.  I reported for duty and was assigned to the four and five-year-olds.  When told I must participate in everything the children did throughout the morning I thought, “Oh no.”

I have always been an awkward play-er.  Brian could sit on the floor and enter into anything our children did with ease.  I, on the other hand, could bring everything to a grinding, no-fun halt.  Eventually I learned to simply read aloud when they wanted time with me.  I could narrate the same book twenty times in a row, which Brian could never do, so we each had our strength. 

When I reported to the classroom I met the three teachers.  Three members of our small group were also assigned, so ten small Nigerian children were definitely well-supervised.  From the schedule written on the white board, we were in Free Play.  I settled down beside two little girls and watched them build a palace for a plastic princess with Duplos, and then helped fix the hair of the grandmother of three baby dolls.  (Their mother was Minnie Mouse.)  Once we had cleaned up our toys, we marched outside to the bathrooms, making noise like a choo-choo.  Fortunately I did not have to use the training potties.

We were told to hold hands on the way back and one little boy shrank from mine.  I showed him the back and he said, “White!” I turned it over, palm-side up, and he said, “Pink!” Once he’d decided it wasn’t too creepy, he gingerly took it. 

We heard a Bible story which turned out to be what I had studied that week; the history of Paul, Silas and Timothy’s first visit to Thessalonica.  We discussed the lesson, sang some children’s hymns, and had a snack.  During finger play I did fine with “Where is Thumbkin?” and “Where is Pointer?” but was shocked and slightly embarrassed when Middleman came out.  Then we stood in a circle and did dance solos.  I could not believe what tiny break-dancers the boys turned out to be.  Interestingly enough the girls were far more inhibited.  When it was my turn I gave them a rendition of “The Pony.” (If I’d had my wits about me I would have chosen something less strenuous.)  I was actually relieved when it was rest time and we all lay down on mats and blankets on the floor.

Although the morning left me exhausted, I was happy to know these little ones have such an excellent pre-school program to attend.  Maybe I won’t even dread my next turn in the children’s department.

Live from Jos,

Karen