Visa Victory!

On Monday, I drove down to Lome to renew our Togo visas. (I had tried to do it in August but I was denied due to the fact that our visas were still valid for a month.) I was not looking forward to this process, but it had to be done as the visas expired… on Monday.

Since I asked many of you pray for my trip and our visa renewals, I wanted to let you know that the trip was successful and the hand of God was with me.

First, the grumpy customs dude who rudely denied my request to renew the visas in August was actually helpful when I made the same request on Monday. He suggested (demanded?) that I change the wording of my explanation of why we were in Togo - which could be seen as being nit-picky, but since he gave me whiteout and didn’t force me to do my work back out in the crowded lobby, I’m giving him the benefit of the doubt. (Beside you guys were praying for me so - influenced by a holy hand - his motives had to be partly altruistic right?)

A huge burden was lifted off of my chest when the visa applications were accepted with out a fight. Answer to prayer #1.

Answer #2 came when I returned to the visa office on Tuesday. They had told me that I could pick up our passports at 4pm — too late in the day for me to make the drive home to Kara. So, I arrived there just before noon hoping that they had the visas done AND would give me the passports.

Things were looking up when I saw that grumpy customs dude was not at his desk.

Then one of the other customs guys starts talking to me in Kabiye saying, “Hey there! What’s up? You remember me right?” I indicated that there was a good chance we had met before but that I couldn’t remember where. Turns out, he used to work the customs checkpoint I drive through every week to get to one of the villages where I work.

Things were looking WAY up.

After more greetings and pleasantries, I humbly inquired as to whether our visas were done and if so, could I please get them now so I could drive home.  Since our common bond as Kabiye speakers had melted the bureaucratic ice, it was only a short matter of time before I had our 5 passports, which contained new Togo visas, in my hands. Praise God!

I thanked my Kabiye ‘brother’ and customs ’saviors’ and happy hit the road for home. I was home by dinnertime and reunited with my family a full 14 hours before expected.

Thanks for praying for this trip and our visas. Rest assured, those prayers were answered.

Resoundingly.

Pics from Pendjari 2007

Our teammate Becky Reeves returned from a trip to the US this past week which means that I was finally able to see the pictures I took during our last 3 safaris — 2 at Pendjari in Benin and 1 at Masai Mara in Kenya. (Film processing here in Togo is not very good so I always wait to have my film developed back in the US. Maybe someday we’ll get one of those nice 35mm digital cameras…)

Anyways, I’d been anxious to see how the pictures turned out and I was happy to see some good ones. I’ve scanned a few of my favorites and I’ll be posting them throughout the week. (I’m also hoping to use some to change the header of the blog from time to time too.) Here are a couple of pictures I took in Pendjari - along with the stories behind them.

We saw these elephants at Mare Bali during a trip in mid January. Isaac, Graham and I went with David & Elijah Reeves and Brett Emerson. I think we later met this group while driving back to our campsite.

Another highlight of that trip was getting lost and having to drive around the park until 10pm - a big no-no. We stayed at Mare Bali until it was almost dark waiting to see the lion we heard roaring nearby would reveal itself. It didn’t. Since it was dark, we drove by the turn off for the park campsite, searched for it for about 2 hours and we eventually found to be abandoned. So we drove for another hour and camped at an unmanned guard post.

While it doesn’t sound like much of a ‘highlight’ it really was. We saw lots of animals which aren’t out during the normal park view hours including 1 cerval, 4 jackals and a crested porcupine. We also came across a big buffalo who looked like he was more lost than we were! I digress…

Here is a picture of the buffalo kill and 2 of the 4 lions we saw near it during our February trip to Penjdari with our teammates and friends from Tabligbo. The kill was maybe 20 yards off of the road so we had a great view.

The buffalo was killed during the night so we got to watch the ensuing post-kill drama throughout the day. We watched as the lions kept a wary eye on a nearby herd of buffalo (mourning relatives?) and took turns chasing off the increasing numbers of opportunistic vultures. In the afternoon, the vultures had free reign of the carcass but the lions were back at the kill around sundown. By the time the next morning rolled around, the kill had been reduced to a pile of skin and bones.

Lions are difficult to see at Penjdari so this was rare treat. That the whole family - indeed, the entire group of 35 people - got to see these lions up close and with a kill made it all the more sweeter.

Emergency! - Update

Good news on both fronts!

Ezra & Esther are doing well at the Tsiko hospital. The doctors are pleased with their progress and hope to be able to release them by the end of the week.

Rosaline, from Po Wayi, had the infection in her foot surgically removed on Saturday night. No need for amputation!!! (She did say, though, that the doctors were amazed at the size of the wound.) She is being cared for at a hospital here in Kara. She’ll be there is doing well. I visited her today and she looked better than I had seen her in some time.

Please continue to pray for these precious people and for God’s healing power to be a witness here in Kabiyeland.

Emergency!

Remember the late 70’s tv show Emergency!? I don’t remember all that much about about the show except that it was about paramedics and there were lots of sirens.

When I was little, I had an irrational fear of sirens. (I think some older kids in the neighborhood told me the sirens meant the police were coming to take me away.) So, I would run crying to my mom whenever I heard a siren, whether it was nearby or far off in the distance.

Anyways, my parents thought it would be a good idea for me to watch Emergency! so that I could learn that the people driving those vehicles with sirens were actually the good guys. Evidently it worked. I’m not afraid of sirens any more. In fact, I wish my truck was equipped with one.

It would have come in handy as I played the role of ambulance driver over the past two days….

On Friday, I took our day worker, Joseph, his wife and their preemie twins, Ezra (pictured here) and Esther to a mission hospital in Tsiko, Togo (a 4 hour drive). The twins were born here in Kara on August 17th at least 6 weeks early. They were released from the hospital last week on Tuesday, but they were taken a back in on Thursday. Esther was having trouble breathing and here heart rate had dropped precariously low.

God had providentially led us to ask Edith Friesen - an SIL missionary who lives in Kara and has experience working as a nurse in a neonatal ward - to help with the care of these babies. Edith noticed Esther’s complications during a house call and rushed her to the hospital. She also twisted arms (diplomatically of course) at the hospital until they gave Esther the care she really needed.

Once we realized that the twins weren’t going to get the best of care without our continous badgering, we decided to take them down to Tsiko where they’d be watched by American doctors and a more competent staff.

It was the right decision for sure. The looks of relief (and hope) that washed over Joseph and Germaine’s face as swarm of nurses placed the twins in a incubator, took their vitals and set up IVs told me so.

The twins are doing okay. Esther is being treated for malaria and Ezra may have it as well. They are eating well and are staying hydrated via the IV. They will remain in the hospital until their health improves and they make steady weight gain over a 4-5 day stretch. Please pray for these little ones, their parents and the medical staff at Tsiko. Thank the Lord for his providence which is working in their lives.

I drove home on Saturday morning and then headed out to Po Wayi - a good ways out in the Kabiye bush — in the afternoon. I went there to visit Rosaline, one of the Christians there who had a nasty infection in her foot. We had given her some antibiotics but after consulting with a doctor in the US, I decided that she needed to come to the hospital here in Kara to have the infection removed surgically.

Sadly, the infection had only gotten worse since I had last seen her. She now has a huge abscess in her heel and it appears that her skin is being eaten away. (No pictures. Trust me, you wouldn’t want to see them.) Myself and couple of other Christians visited with Rosaline and prayed for her while we sat and waited for her children to come in from the fields. Once they arrived, one of the men carried her piggy-back style to the truck so I transport her back to Kara. (Cue the siren…)

She was admitted into the hospital last night, but I do not yet know what has been done about the infection. I’m afraid that the infection may be so bad they will have to amputate her foot. Please pray that Rosaline will be healed completely and will be able to keep her foot.

Thank you for your prayers. I’ll do my best to keep you posted on these situations.

Last Things

Our family is moving back to the States next May. We’ve known since the end of 2006 that this was going to be our last term in Togo, but it took us awhile to decide when we’d actually be moving back.

May 2008. Now we’re less than a year out from it, I’ve started noticing all the ‘last things’ we are experiencing. (Tracey calls it “The Long Goodbye”.)

This summer we hosted our last group of interns. (What a fantastic group! We went out with a bang for sure.) Isaac just had his last birthday in Togo (unless we’re back here visiting on July 24th). I realized yesterday that we’re living through our last rainy season. Before we know it, it will be last harvest, last harmattan, last safari, last retreat, last prayer time….last goodbyes.

It makes me sad.

There are a ton of things I’m going to miss about our lives here. I doubt I’m even aware of them all. And, I’m certain that with time, I’ll forget some (most?) of them.

Well, I’ve decided to start a running list of “things I’ll miss about Togo”. Whenever I’m feeling nostalgic about something, I’ll try to write it down and then post it here for prosperity’s sake. Hopefully it will help me remember Togo as I see it now and remind me of ‘where I came from’ once I’m a resident American again.

Things I’ll Miss About Togo…

• Stepping out on my front porch and seeing the Kabiye mountains.

• Stepping out on my front porch, looking east and seeing a big thunderheads that will dump on us in the next few hours. (The big storms almost always come from the east here.)

• The nervous excitement of wondering if the truck’s 4-wheel drive is going to get through that really big mud hole in the road.

• The overwhelming generosity of the Kabiye men who end up covered in mud after they drop what they are doing to help you get unstuck from that big mud hole. (Not that I drive through big mud holes looking to get stuck!)

• Sunsets behind the Kabiye mountains coming home from Ketao.

• The view out the north window of the Soumdina Po Wayi church building on a sunny Saturday afternoon. Blue sky, green mountains, the sun making the top of the grassy fields glow.

That’ll do for now.