Amanda's Musings

By the way, I mentioned in the previous post that we angered the man in Benin because he thought we’d taken a photo of the palace next to the tree. Jonathan left a comment to say that he thinks now that it was because of the tree. You can read what he says in the comments section of my previous post. Thanks for clearing that up Jonathan.

Pic: Timmy Moore on our way to Benin, he was in kindergarten then, now he’s in grade 5! Time flies.

There was one other occassion where we faced danger during our time in Niger. I will describe this to you but be aware that this wasn’t a normal situation and was quite a rare event. It happened while we were visiting the city of Parakou in Benin, a country bordering Niger on it’s south-western edge.

We were travelling with some very experienced missionaries, Jonathan and Bonnie had been in Niger for many years and knew fluent French and other local languages. They know the culture and what’s acceptable in Niger. Benin however is a different country although it does have similarities. We hadn’t been on the SIM Parakou compound for long when we decided to all walk down the road to the local markets and see what we could discover. In our little group was ourselves, Johnathan and Bonnie and their 4 year old son. Two minutes down the road we came across a magnificent tree which is common in Africa (see picture above). Jonathan offered to take our photo in front of the tree and we happily agreed. (picture right – also got a flat tyre)

In Africa there are certain things you don’t take photos of but trees are not one of them so we were very surprised when shortly after our photo was taken a man yelling in French emerged from behind the tree. He and Jonathan spoke for a few minutes and while they were sorting this out I was standing off to the side holding our camera in it’s bag. It was an expensive pentax camera, one we’d saved up for a few years before but before I knew it a rather large woman appeared out of the growing crowd and latched onto the camera bag which was slung around my neck. She was inches from my face and she was very scary and she wouldn’t let go. I tried to pry her fingers off but she was so strong.

The crowd had grown to around 100 people by now, taxi’s were stopping, motorbikes were stopping and the crowd was closing in. I was separated from Michael and before long Bonnie realised what was happening to me. She came over and started doing a sort of karate chop on the lady’s arm to make her let go. Now, this is where it gets blurry. It all happened in about 5 minutes but in that time I was grabbed by the back of my top, my sunnies were ripped off my head (I grabbed them back and they snapped), my string bag with our cash in it was pulled till it snapped (I also held on tight and they wernen’t successful in getting it but I got a bit of a burn mark on my neck from the string) and I started sweating from head to toe.

Somehow, and this is only the Lord’s doing I found myself free from the crowd and pulled the camera from the bag and gave it to Michael. Bonnie and Jonnathan yelled to us to quickly go back to the compound and they’d sort this out. I was worried about their son, where was he in this mess?

As we departed the very strong lady started to follow us and Michael bravely turned around and said to her ‘NO!’. She stopped for a moment and then a prominent African man emerged and stood in her way and we walked quickly back to the compound.

I was shaking all over, covered in sweat and was worried about Bonnie and Jonathan and their son. About 10 minutes later they arrived back safely at the compound and explained what had happened. The man who originally yelled thought we’d taken a photo of the palace building which was in a different direction to the tree and this was forbidden. The man who stopped the lady from following us was some kind of official I think and he apologised profusely to Jonathan and Bonnie. He said that they were all very wrong to attack us like that and the lady was very wrong to grab me. The situation was calmed and the people dispersed and they returned to where we were.

Looking back at this event I know that it could have had a very different outcome. It took me quite a while to share this with my family members and I didn’t really want to go off the compound the next day. I did however make to to the markets two days later even if I was a bit jumpy. (pic: Beninoir lady we met)

The Lord once again showed how he will protect us. This situation wasn’t anyone’s fault nor could we control it. He made sure we made it safely back to the compound and we still have that camera today!

Short-termers may find themselves in dangerous situations and they need to be aware of this BUT if you have agreed to follow God in what he is directing you to do you must trust that he knows what he’s doing. The SIM staff on the Parakou compound by the way told us that this had never happened before so I do wonder why it happened to us. All I can say is that I learnt a great lesson in trust that day and no, it hasn’t put me off going back to Africa.

This is what the ledge above our sink looked like two days ago, it’s actually grown since then! We’re not taking everything on the ledge but most of it!

All of these things were ‘fun’ and interesting but there were two challenging events that happened which looking back may seem a little exciting but at the time were quite scary. I’ll share one event here and one in the next post.

I could hear the noise of the riot and occassionally there would be a bang on our roof which I later learnt was from gas cylinder’s landing that had been shot into the crowd by the riot police. At the time I was emailing my parents who are missionaries in Papua New Guinea. I emailed and told them about the gas cylinders and my Mum emailed back saying that the local volcano across the bay had gone off and there was ash in the air. I emailed back and said ‘you win!’.

After a little while some of the people who were streaming past the property on the narrow pathway decided to come onto the school property and our house was the first one they’d see. You guessed it, I was scared silly and rushed around, turned off all the lights, locked the doors and squatted in the corner with the phone. I phoned the front of the property and told them that four guys had planted themselves at our back door and were helping themselves to our water tap. (pic: back of our house)

They sent the school property guy up who was a local to ask them to leave and they did. I don’t think I was in any danger but you never know!

Of course the gates were locked at the front of the school and all the kids were locked inside although I heard later that some of them had climbed on top of the roof to see what was going on. It was quite exciting for them I think.

What did I learn from this? Life as a short-termer may be fun, interesting and sometimes dangerous but God is always in control. If he wants you to be somewhere he’ll protect you. Stay tuned for the next installment because the second story I have to share is actually quite a bit more scary than this and a big testament to what the Lord did for us while we were in Niger.