The Small Things

So here are some of the small things that made me happy today:

dark rain clouds mixed with the bright blue sky, a mid-afternoon cold pizza snack, the joy that comes with picking out small gifts to send to friends far away, rainbows, watching Beth play with her new stuffed monkey, eating good cookies from Jewel, having all the housemates home for the first time in months, receiving an encouraging and delightful e-mail from my NYC small group leader

Dear Strong Girl

Dear Strong Girl,
There is a saying that goes, “he who loves your child, loves you.” We thank you for taking your time to humbly play with the kids which showed that you really felt free around. Thanks for spending your energy working like a man. My family decided to give you just a little groundnuts. God bless you. Yours in Christ, Reverend Bitrus. EYN General Evangelism
Coordinator.
This is a note that I received my last night at the EYN headquarters in Kwarhi while participating in a four week workcamp to Nigeria. It was not until this night that I met Reverend Bitrus. He sat close to me at the special thank you dinner that EYN held for the workcamp group. While he did not know me by name, he did know me as the young and strong girl. After I accepted the gift and read the note I realized that I was not ready for all of this to end.
Not ready to leave the children of the primary school that I played with every day. Not ready to leave the young girls who came up to me at church and shyly asked if we could be friends. Not ready to leave the in depth conversations on faith and the church, life and the world. Not ready to leave the people whom I had come to know and love.
My short time in Nigeria has left me questioning and wondering about many things and at the same time has left me wanting more. Wanting to listen carefully to what God is calling me to do. What God is calling us as a church to be. I have been back in the states for almost three weeks and not a second goes by that am not thinking about my friends, my brothers and sisters, in Nigeria. God brought us together for a reason. To work together, fellowship together, learn together and grow together. Relationships were created that know no boundaries. This is what I believe God calls us to do each and every day.

The Welcoming

So this morning as I was trying not to wake up I was dreaming that I was back in Nigeria at a church service. It was the part of worship where the ZME Women's Fellowship begins singing a welcoming/greeting song and the rest of the congregation joins in. Everyone is on their feel dancing and singing and moving around greeting one another with a handshake.

This was my favorite part of the worship service. When everyone is singing and smiling and laughing and shaking hands and praising God for one another. Words cannot explain the wonderful feelings and emotions that come with this simple act of greeting one another.

So I dreamed of that this morning and then later in the day I was able to attend chapel at Bridgewater College. There was a time to greet one another. Again it was a time where I was able to greet and hug and smile at my college friends and family. This was also a special time. Only different. Different is good.

What A Day

So in one day I think I've felt every emotion possible.

Nerves from speaking in front of a class.

Joy from seeing and catching up with old friends.

Anger, frustration, and every other negative emotion possible with the news of a good friend and mentor losing her job.

Uncertainty of if anyone would come to talk with me about BVS.

The lightheartedness of laughter while talking with a good friend.

The excitement of making plans to put on a cute dress and go into the city when it's warm.

Disappointment in knowing that I won't be around to send off a good friend before she moves away.

Yes, it has been an emotional roller coaster of a day.

I don't even like roller coasters.

Always Thinking

So since I returned three weeks ago my mind is constantly moving and thinking. It just doesn't stop. Ever. The only way I have a chance of sleeping at night is if I journal a bit before bed. While I was on the trip I would write myself to sleep almost every night. Everyone I see asks me how the trip was, to which I respond it was great! Or they ask me what the best part about the trip was, or what the hardest thing I saw or experienced was. Those of course require a bit more thought and time to answer.

The best thing about the trip by far were the people I was lucky enough to interact with everywhere we went. From the girls who would come up to me and in a whisper ask if we could be friends, to the woman who invited me into her single room home for a night. From sitting with Ester on her front porch visiting before it was time for a meal while working at the headquarters in Kwarhi, to being invited to come out and play with the children at the primary school right beside the work site. From sharing unspoken words and smiles when language barriers could have gotten in the way, to having serious conversations about faith, life, the world and everything in between. I could keep going on and on about the people I met...they made the trip for me what it was in so many ways.

As far as the hardest parts about the trip, those take more thought for me. I have realized since my return that I was seeing the country through a very optimistic and positive lens. Which isn't necessarily a bad thing, but now that I'm thinking more realistically, it makes the trip less perfect (but still completely worth it in every sense). So some of the hard parts about the trip was to not be able to drink water that to me looked perfectly clean. Coming back to the states and having the unlimited supply of water that we have available to us each and every day and knowing that isn't good enough for some people. They still need to go out and purchase bottled water. It's a lifestyle I guess. One of the things that I saw everywhere I went was people washing their cars each and every day which is a very curious thing to me. How is it that they can use all that water in that way when not everyone has water to drink and cook their food in is something that I wonder about. Having a clean water source is a big deal everywhere in the world and Nigeria is the same. I was watching a movie the other night with my parents and on it the main characters introduced an engine that was run solely on H2O. I didn't think too much of it at the time, but later on I realized how much I didn't like that idea. Sure initially it sounds like the perfect soloution. Use water to run our engines. It's clean, renewable, safe. But then you have to think of the fact that so many people do not have access to clean water every day of their lives. How can we use that precious water in this way when people aren't having their basic needs met? Then there is the concept of pollution in the country. Trash is everywhere because there is no way to dispose of it as we do in the west. There are no trash cans, no weekly trash pick up. What people will do is rake trash and grasses together and burn them. This will get rid of some of the garbage, but when it comes to the millions of plastic bags that are all over the place, they don't actually burn, they just will seperate into smaller pieces and blow away to cover a different area. There is a joke, with a lot of truth to it, that the national flower is of the black and white plastic kind rather than the beautiful flowers that grow.

As time goes by I'll come to more realizations and revelations but it all was and is worth it. I want to be constantly thinking and constantly being challenged by what I experienced and saw. It's part of my journey and it has become part of who I am as a young female in this world, as a child of God, as a daughter, as a friend. In every way.

Nigerian Highlights

- all the fresh fruit I could hope for! Pineapple, bananas, papaya...
- beautiful, colorful, bright, bold cloth
- going to the bathroom in the bush :)
- singin' along with a banjo
- throwing my Frisbee as far as I could and watching the children run after it
- seeing the tamarind tree where the Church of the Brethren began in Garkida
- fried plantains!
- the universal language of smiling and laughter
- leading a devotion on Fruits of the Spirit
- dumping water on my head as a form of showering
- playing with children everywhere I go
- washing clothes by hand
- being called the 'young and strong girl' around the EYN compound
- seeing someone carrying a couch on his head while riding a motorcycle...no joke!
- singing a medley on Down by the Riverside and When the Saints go marching in at every church we visited
- attending a naming ceremony and holding the new born baby
- being able to see the bright stars every night
- hearing stories
- eating hard boiled eggs for breakfast
- my first attempt at bartering (I'm not very good at it)
- playing hand games with the girls from the primary school
- being told that coffee is a man's drink and tea is a woman's drink ;)
- the big white-toothed smiles of the children
- watching a Nigerian film
- trekking up a mountain in Gavva to the water source for the village
- ICE CREAM!
- all the various choirs at the churches we visited...amazing music
- worshiping at the largest EYN church (3ooo members), EYN Polo in Maidugari
- receiving a gift of beautiful cloth
- eating fried grasshoppers with peppe
- attempting to learn Hausa
- being asked by girls and young women to be friends. just like that.
- receiving a gift of ground nuts (peanuts)
- being bahago (left handed)
- visiting Yankari Game Reserve
- MANGO'S!
- swimming in Wikki Warm Springs...soooo refreshing and wonderful!
- the baboons getting into my room and then having a song written about it!

And many many more! This list gives you a taste of what I experienced and saw!

Back in the States

Honey I'm home!

So as many of you have discovered I had no internet available to me while I was on my journey in Nigeria. I've already heard from several people that they checked every single day just to make sure that they didn't miss anything.

So now I have the huge task in front of me of telling you about my time in Nigeria. There is so much to tell and I think the easiest way for me to begin talking about what I have seen and heard is to show you pictures that will remind me of stories and thoughts that I've had as well as to be asked questions that are more direct than, "how was your trip?" My stories will come out naturally in conversation over time. And I will constantly be processing my thoughts of what I have just seen and experienced these past four weeks. (Which for the record, may SEEM like a long time, but in all honesty was not nearly long enough.)

So now I'm back stateside. In many senses part of me feels as though I didn't just experience this trip. As though it was a dream. I feel very detached from the whole experience. I think my tiredness and the fact that I'm extremely overwhelmed at this moment could have something to do with it.

Here are a few of my initial questions/thoughts:
wanting to go back, wondering what the real reason is why I want to go back, do I really want to go back because I want to or because everyone else wants me to, what does this whole experience mean for me in my life, how will it affect my life in the long run, the relationships I've created there, the relationships I have here...I could go on and on.

Former BVSers say that they may not realize for several years how their time in BVS has affected them. I think that will be true for this experience as well. I'm not expecting the answers to come immediately, but I feel that they will be revealed in their own time.

"Unrevealed until it's season, something God alone can see."