While I was away our neighbors engaged us
in some mild water wars. I’ve already
mentioned that our backyard is like the watering hole for most of the community. What we’ve discovered since, is that our next
door neighbors (the house full of ladies) have a well in their front yard. We discovered even later that there is a
community spicket about a stone’s throw from our property. But for whatever reasons, most people like
coming into our backyard. Maybe it’s
because they feel they have some sort of privacy (never mind the white folk
looking on from their porch) to do laundry or even bathe themselves. We also discovered the reason why we hadn’t
up till now had to pay a water bill.
Apparently the water guy is friends with Ali (the man we share a
property with) and regularly accepts bribes from people to set up water without
giving anyone a bill. Right before
Christmas he started coming to us, asking for “payment,” which we promptly
refused to pay without seeing proper documentation from the water company. We knew right then that if the company ever
came and set up a water meter, we would be in trouble because of the amount of
free water we give out. Thankfully we
were able to come to an agreement, thanks to Cees speaking directly to the
company, and are only being charged a flat rate per month. No meter necessary.
So all this time we’ve been feeling pretty
good about ourselves, thinking we’re providing a service to our community,
being nice to allow them to come into our backyard and fulfill their water
needs for free. All of this is in spite
of the fact that our water pressure drops significantly when the spicket is on
outside, and we are constantly walking out to turn off the spicket which is
left on about all the time. Thus we were quite baffled one day when our water
didn’t come on all day. There have been
strikes from the water company before, but to our knowledge there wasn’t any
conflict going at this time. This same
day our gardener went over to borrow water from the neighbor’s well, which we
have had to do on occasion, and was refused.
The lady simply picked up the bucket and the rope and took it
inside. This prompted some questions on
our part, and we finally discovered that the faucet handle on the spicket
outside our property was broken. We
didn’t quite understand what this had to do with us, but the ladies next door
clearly felt like we were responsible and needed to pay for it to be
fixed. After a few rounds of
negotiations we finally managed to convince them that the community should be
responsible to pay for the repairs as they were the ones who regularly used it,
and seeing as we regularly allowed everyone to use our spicket without
cost.
Mind you all of this happened while I was
away. Now imagine being in Jen’s shoes,
not able to speak the language, with our neighbors declaring a silent war
against her, trying to pressure us into fixing a faucet we don’t even know is broken. Thankfully between Diana, Andres, and our
helpers, the situation was resolved somewhat peacefully. This incident, however, is somewhat typical
of our relationship with this community.
We might feel like everything is going well, we go out of our way to be
kind and bless our neighbors, and then suddenly we find out there is some kind
of underlying tension we didn’t even know about. It’s been an ongoing struggle. We feel pretty safe here and no one has tried
to harm us or our home, but we sometimes feel like we’re walking on pins and
needles, trying to understand the people around us, and never really
succeeding.
The second war we’ve been waging is
against mice. Since we first started the
year, we’ve known there are mice in the school building. We’ve never seen them, but we can hear their
squeaks and we see their poops. They
live in the rafters in the ceiling. A
few months ago they started invading our house.
First they chewed through some of our screens. Then they found a hole where wires are passed
to the exterior. After we plugged up
those entrances, they started chewing a hole in the corner of our door. On multiple occasions they succeeded in
raiding our food pantry and getting out unseen.
In fact, the only clear viewing of the mice we’ve had is when one of them
turned up dead in a bucket of water we had left out by accident.
Finally, after trying unsuccessfully to
stop them, I bought some traps. Mice in
Guinea are familiar with traps.
Apparently they go to a school where they train their little mouselings
to avoid traps, and there’s even an elite squad of them that know how to steal
bread right out of a trap without setting it off. So I moved on to a mild form of poison Andres
gave us. Really it’s some form of
medication for humans. The idea, as
Andres explained, is that you sprinkle the powder on some bread, and when the
mice eat it, they then develop ulcers and slowly bleed to death. Apparently this is considered more humane
than proper rat poison. Well, our mice
are familiar with this powder too. They
don’t touch it. I sprinkled it on bread,
I sprinkled it on cheese, nothing worked.
What kind of a mouse refuses to eat cheese? The ones in Guinea do.
I had had enough. The mice were now chewing holes in the rug I
had strategically placed next to the hole in the door. Every morning there would be new piles of
rubber and fiber on the floor. I think
they were actually enjoying it more than the bread from the traps. I sent Calissa to buy some real poison. This stuff is so toxic, it comes packaged in
three different baggies, one inside the other.
The warning on the label reads:
“bury any dead mice, left-over bait, and/or receptacles used to mix and
administer the bait.” No you know when
you have to bury the stuff that it’s lethal.
Sure enough, the day after I put it out we had a dead mouse in our
backyard. The second day we had a dead
bird. The third day we had dead lizards. The fourth day we didn’t see anything dead,
but we started smelling something coming from the rafters in the school. Sure enough, another victim. I was starting to feel pretty good about the
poison when I noticed goats in the yard, as is pretty common. I panicked.
The last thing we needed was to be held responsible for singlehandedly
killing off the neighbors livestock. To
my knowledge none of them have died.
Still, I’ve made extra sure that none of the poison is out in the open
and that we close off our gates as best we can.
Well, the title says there’s more. There are plenty of other things to mention,
like the bible study Cees and Andres are starting with a core group of young
men in Correrah, or the fact that I’ll be preaching at Boke church on Palm
Sunday, or the fact that we’re now counting down the days we have left in
Guinea (less than 90), looking forward to returning to the states and Panama, but
talking about war has worn me out. As
you can see, never a dull moment in Guinea.
Thank you for your continued prayers and support. Thank you for your love! And thanks for reading the blog. I appreciate everyone’s feedback and
compliments. It’s always nice for a
writer to know he has at least a handful of readers. Peace in Jesus!
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