A year ago today we were Passing through Paris after saying good bye to our life in West Africa. This picture, taken on our last Sunday in Togo at the Tabligbo church, is one of my favorites, as Maureen said goodbye to Edemno.
Our lives have been filled with uncertainty, decisions, and transitions since that time. I’m convinced that we are exactly where God wants us. But through all the transitions, there hasn’t been a lot of opportunity to reflect on how our Africa experience has formed us. Just within the past week or two, however, Jeremy and Jonathan have been asking when we can visit Togo. We haven’t talked a lot about the one-year mark, but Togo is on their minds.
Here are a couple of examples from yesterday that illustrate how my (Anthony’s) thinking has been changed by being in Africa.
Weather Reports A good friend complained yesterday about the fact that satellite dish TV service goes out whenever there is a storm, so they are left not knowing what the weather was doing. Look outside. It’s storming! In Africa we managed to get by without weather reports for 13 years, and the weather still happened. Of course I look at weather reports here, but it seems to me that we lose the feeling of spontaneity, and also perhaps the place of prayer regarding the weather. It almost seems that those forecasters actually control the weather, which of course they don’t given how often they miss it!
Eating Out I love to eat, and I love to eat out. But Dee’s passing reference to towns that did or did not have “places to eat,” struck me as interesting. She was traveling, but if I understood correctly, she wasn’t speaking about their tourist potential, but as places to live. After living in a small West Africa town, I came to think of home as the place you go to eat. Now, in a small West Texas town, we tend to live the same way. That’s largely economics, but partly the welcome weirdness that comes from being profoundly touched by Africa.
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May 5, 2007 at 10:27 am
Dee Andrews
I don’t remember if I said it last time, but I really like the title of your blog, Anthony.
Your “picture” of the contrasts between West Texas (the U. S.) and Africa may not be as striking as you think in some places in this country. Just as I was writing about the rural Mississippi Delta, I think there are many other poverty stricken places in this country, as well. But then, I guess even at best, they all (mostly all, anyway) have electricity and running water and often times big T.V.s, although that’s not 100% true, of course.
And what I was writing about the small Mississippi towns DID really strike me with the contrast between them and the way Tom and I live and the rather small town we live in here (which has about doubled in size amazingly enough since Hurricane Katrina).
Those towns all tucked in along the way all across the Delta are dead towns, except for the few remaining souls who are too poor and too engrained to ever leave. I don’t know what the rate of attrition is among their young people that grow up – it’s hard to say. I know that if I had grown up there, I would have been out of there to ANYWHERE else as fast as possible as soon as I could have been, but then that’s me.
Tom & I were talking about that, too, and I’ve been thinking about it (just as you have been thinking about Africa) ever since. Even yesterday and the day before.
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And I WAS struck by the lack of any little local place whatsoever in which to go eat at a cafe or anything. No grocery stores, many with no gas stations. No quick stops, even. Nothing. Just dead little towns with live people in them.
We were looking for a place to eat because we were hungry and traveling and had no food with us. We drove for 3 1/2 hours before we found the first little local place and we stopped to eat there. It was what you would call a “greasy spoon” and was one, indeed. But we both ordered the fried catfish plates and they were excellent. Worth the wait, but for how many people would that be a really long way to go . . ..
Good post!
Dee
May 5, 2007 at 10:36 am
Dee Andrews
Another thought – about the weather and weather reports.
I don’t know about it so much there in Albany where you are, but when I was growing up up at Abernathy (just north of Lubbock) on the farm, we watched the weather constantly! My dad was a cotton farmer and the weather was vital to his crop, in every way.
I don’t know about there where you are. What is the main source of income for the townspeople there? I’m sure there are some who either own or run small businesses around town, and then there are the schools, but what caused the town to build up there to begin with and what is the main thing that sustains it today?
Tom and I came up there from Abilene last summer and went through the old jail, museum and watched the historical movie about the area while we were there and talked with the guy who was with the Chamber of Commerce over at the train station while we were there and found it all really interesting. It seems to me, if I remember right, that ranching and raising cattle was the biggest draw to the area, with the towns springing up because of that.
Sometime when you go down to Abilene for a day trip, you all will have to go to the big – is it – Frontier Texas – the historical center that has holograms in it. It is WONDERFUL!! You and the boys all will just love it.
And speaking of eating out. There are lots of good places to go out to eat in Abilene, for a treat. So save your pennies – make that dollars! – and do that.
Cheers! & Blessings! Dee