Innocent Faith | Togo | African Bush |

Trying to explain every day life in the bush is like a soldier in a war trying to explain a combat or skirmish and how he felt and all the details of what went right and what went wrong. No one unless he has actually been in a battle where people are killed can even imagine or understand. So it seems to me that no one unless he has actually experienced life in the African bush can understand why that life is so unique.

Just as an every day example. We live in a large cement garage with a tin roof. Our house is the only house in the entire village of 4,000 for the African people live in either small round or square mud houses with thatch for roofing. Some of the well to do Africans may have tin for roofing instead of thatch.
We have an indoor flush toilet and an indoor "running water from above" as Africans call our shower. We have only cold water showers as our solar panels would never be able to produce enough electricity for a real water heater. Some of the Africans take their bath behind their house. They carry a bucket of water. They strip off their clothes, scrub their bodies with soap and dip cup by cup of water from their bucket and pour it over their bodies to rinse off the soap. The Christians, knowing it is not good to expose oneself construct small three walled structures of mud or rock or thatch in which they take their bath. These are constructed outside behind their homes.

One day last week Michael agreed to drive the Pastor and his wife to the city so they could go to the hospital and pray with one of the church members who was being treated there. It was raining that morning so Michael drove to their house to pick them up. He arrived at the hour of departure, but they were not ready because it was raining. They explained patiently to my husband that they were unable to take a bath because their bath house was outside and it was raining. If they went outside to take their baths they would get wet. They would also become cold because it was an early morning rain. . At first to us this seemed ridiculous and incomprehensible that they could not go outside to take their baths in the rain because they would get wet. In the African bush, when it rains, everything and everyone come to a complete halt. Rain is something which forces the average person in the bush to take quick shelter and wait it out. Everyone in our village walks everywhere as no one owns a car. You cannot walk in the rain because you do not own an umbrella and even if you did own an umbrella you would most likely not walk in the rain because it is very cold when it rains, maybe 75F.

One rainy day I was walking home from town. It was a nine mile walk but one last mile remained to my house when it began to storm, with cold winds and rain. The women I was walking with said they could not walk any more, and they had to take shelter. I did not take shelter but walked that last mile in the rain. The umbrella was useless as the violent winds turned it inside out, I was drenched when I arrived home twenty minutes later. I quickly toweled myself dry and sipped a cup of hot tea and was perfectly comfortable. The women arrived at my house cold and wet two hours later to say hello. They commented, "We do not understand you white people. It seems like you purposely enjoy suffering yourselves to walk in the cold, wet rain. This is a pain we do not understand." To me they were cold and wet two additional hours than necessary. To them I did not have enough sense to come in out of the rain.

There are absolutely no fast food restaurants or convenient stores where precooked food can be purchased any time day or night. Everything from a hamburger to a carrot must be bought fresh in the local market and prepared. Food preparation consumes one out of seven days. We decided we wanted a pizza so we stopped at the one and only little store in the entire city of 60,000 people who sell pizza cheese. Inside the store the pizza cheese was only $3 an ounce and it was covered in mold. The store clerks agreed with me that the mold was not good so they expertly sliced off the mold, but low and behold there were tiny streams of mold growing throughout the entire block of cheese. Needless to say it was a bitter disappointment not to be able to make a pizza. --Cheese is something no friend can send us in the mail. -- We proceeded to the next little hole in the wall store to buy some essentials such as macaroni, soap, tomato paste and dry milk, but they seemed to be out of these essentials which I have been purchasing from them for the last six months. Their lack of basic ingredients forced me to go from stall to stall looking for items such as instant coffee, tea bags, spaghetti and bleach. And eventually purchasing each and every item one by one in a different stall from a different person.

A cow is butchered every day and we can buy a few pounds of beef. However, this meat must be cut, filleted or ground into hamburger and cooked many hours before eating and even then most of the meat is very tough. Once Michael said he chewed one bite of meat for thirty minutes.
That was only an exaggeration as its only necessary to chew a bite for fifteen minutes before swallowing it. Sometimes I build a slow charcoal fire outside and cook the meat all night long and then it is actually tender. However, we still must get used to the taste of the meat. It has a unique taste of a wild animal.