The Generator and Psalm 19

Since the electrical service in our part of Ouaga experiences frequent interruptions, we needed to install a generator.  We had been able to make do with flashlights, candles, and laptop batteries, but the frequency and duration of the power cuts were beginning to make normal life nearly impossible.  When the warm season arrives in late February or March with 100+ degree temperatures, sleep would be reduced to bathing in our own perspiration.  We needed a generator.

I instructed the guards in the operation of the generator and how to transfer our home from the grid to the generator.  Rather than simply throwing a switch, the transfer involves a short warm-up cycle for the generator, flipping a set of circuit breakers that protect the generator from faults and overloads, and moving the transfer switch from the “normal” to the “generator” position.

Last night I was blasted out of a movie-like dream by the sound of the generator starting.  It was the first time we have experienced a nighttime power cut with the generator.  After a few minutes, we realized the nearly deafening din of the generator inaptly labeled, “silent” would be more than we could reasonably expect our neighbors to endure.

I pulled on my pants and shoes and went outside to talk with our guard, Desirée.  I congratulated him for following the procedures and successfully starting the generator.  I made sure that he understood that we were both very pleased that he and the generator did exactly what was needed.  After waiting a few minutes more for the electrical supply to be restored, I turned to Desirée and explained that we could probably make it through a reasonably cool night without the generator.  Desirée shut down the generator and transferred the switch according to plan.  As the generator became silent and darkness fell like a pot lid, I looked up at the sky and was stunned.

For the first time since Janet and I arrived in Burkina Faso the Harmattan winds had died and the dust had mostly cleared—enough for hundreds if not thousands of stars to become visible—countless more than the usual handful visible through the airborne dust.  “C’est incroyable!” I gasped as Desirée tuned his glance toward the sky.  He said something in Mooré that I did not understand, but I could tell that he too was marveling at the stars.  “Il est comme Psaumes 19, …“Les cieux déclarent la Gloire de Dieu,” I offered.  Desirée smiled, but I suspected that he did not fully understand the context.  I suggested, “Desirée, lisez Psaume 19.” He opened his Mooré Bible as we trained our flashlights on its pages and he read the opening verses.  A smile came across his face as he looked back to the sky and exclaimed, “D’accord!  Les cieux declarant la gloire de Dieu.” 

There we stood staring into the sky in the moonless African night made even darker by the power cut and illuminated only by the countless stars as Desirée repeated, “La gloire de Dieu.”

LEARNING FRENCH

Learning French has been the most challenging and difficult objective in my life, so far.  The past two plus years have been a period of frustration, disappointment, and an ever-present sense that it may be time just to give up.  There comes a time when the millstone of discouragement hangs so heavy that there may be only one remaining thread between perseverance and defeat and even that last gossamer cord seems to be in the process of unraveling.  The thread that checked my surrender was simple, but very enduring; failure was not an option.  God had given me the task.  Without a working knowledge of French I could not advance on the path He had set before me.

 Saint Paul set down God’s words when wrote, “…suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.”  Maybe there was more, much more than French that God wanted me to learn before I made it to the mission field.  The days, weeks, months, and years of suffering through inscrutable grammar, confounding syntax, and physically impossible pronunciation may also have been the means to another end, or two.   

My experience with learning a new language may be very similar to our waiting upon our peripatetic crate of supplies.  The much-needed box filled with tools, utensils, equipment, clothing and furnishings has been forever arriving, but never really here.  I have been forced to repair everything including furniture, plumbing, electrical devices, laptops, doors, and even our truck with little more than my Victorinox pocket tool and a few simple hand tools and at times even a stone as a hammer.. 

I have had to improvise and make do with what I had on hand. I had to learn to do much more than I thought I could with much less than I thought that I needed.  I have had to learn to use what I have to the greatest possible utility.  It has been much like that with my French language skills.  My vocabulary toolbox is still very light and relatively empty.  Lacking the size and depth of vocabulary, I have been forced to combine and arrange my poverty of words to express thoughts and subjects that normally demand more a specific and specialized vocabulary. 

Much like using a tool for a purpose for which it was not intended, an increased reliance on imagination rather than competency has been a means to an end in both repairing things and expressing myself in a still-foreign language.  I have learned that it is not so much the breadth of the tool collection or the depth  of one’s vocabulary, but how one uses the resources at one’s disposal that determines how close we come to reaching our objectives—fixing a toaster or successfully expressing an idea.

There is still the rub that this works in but one direction when it comes to language.  I may devise linguistic work-arounds by using the few primary colors of my limited vocabulary to mix more complex hues and shades, but this skill is of little to no use when the flow in in the other direction.

I cannot comprehend words and terms that I do not know.  The time required to extract meaning by contextualizing unknown words is too great when listening to someone speaking.  Words are lost in the interim while searching mental registers for possible meanings to an unrecognized word. 

Comprehension is the other half of the equation.  There a few if any work-arounds to simply understanding the spoken word if the word is unknown.  A limited vocabulary is more constraining when receiving a message than when sending.  So two lessons attended my comprehension: first, endurance does indeed produce character (or some degree of language skill) and second, while there may be work-arounds and interim solutions, they are only transitional.  In the end only continued hard work and perseverance will accomplish the objective.  So as suffering produces endurance and endurance produces character and character produces hope, there is hope that one day I will reach my objective to speak good French well and that I will have learned a lesson or two in suffering through learning a new language.

In that day when I finally am able to speak and understand French adequate to the task it will be much like the day when I finally experience the joy of opening our wandering crate of tools designed for the task and need not hobble about making do with a limited inventory of either words or hand tools.  When learning a language or repairing something there are times when “good enough” isn’t.

The “Fou”

There is a man who lives mostly on the street to the side of our house.  He is “The Fou”—the crazy man.  It is not so much a pejorative term as it is simply descriptive, at least by neighborhood standards.  He spends a good part of his day digging large holes in the dirt road next to our home.  Some of the holes are deep enough to make my 4-wheel drive truck bottom out.  Once I even had to rock the truck back-and-forth before driving out of one of the deepest holes.  The holes can even be seen on Google Earth.

He doesn’t seem very happy most of the time.  Often, he will spend the better part of the day involved in what can only pass for an angry diatribe or possibly a heated dispute with some invisible adversary.   At times he sounds to be cursing something or someone.  Sometimes, the volume of his shouts and barks even rise above the blaring rap music from the man-high speaker in front of the small boutique across the street.  He scares the young children and is the subject of ridicule for the adolescents.  To most others he is just invisible.  He’s “The Fou”—the crazy one.  Invisible, tortured, and mostly forgotten.

I started waving to him on my bumpy rides to work in the morning.  As my truck jumped and jostled along the well-excavated road I would offer a furtive wave before throwing both hands back onto the steering wheel to keep from nose diving into something slightly smaller than a bomb crater.  Often he would wave back.  Other times he would just stare.  He would hardly do what I expected.  Of course, he was “The Fou.” 

One particularly dusty African morning as I rounded the corner while scanning the road for the most passable route, I spotted a rather large fire. “The Fou” was burning a pile of trash he had collected.  Trash burning is a fairly normal part of life’s routine in Ouaga as it is elsewhere.  The only problem was that the lowest branches of the trees around our home were beginning to brown and burn.  I stopped my truck and watched for a minute as "The Fou" piled small handfuls of trash on the fire.  Few people on the uncrowded street paid him much attention.  After all, he was “The Fou.”  He was mostly invisible, but at that time he was more than just visible to me.

I walked over to “The Fou” and told him that the fire was too big and was starting to burn the trees near our home.  A youngish woman from the home next to ours and where I suspected “The Fou” had some connection came out from behind the large steel gate.  In my painful French I explained that the fire was damaging the trees and that it was too close to our home.  I asked her to throw some water on the fire to extinguish it. 

 At that, “The Fou” began to urinate on the fire.  I appreciated his directness.  As the pile of trash hissed and steamed he then offered me what turned out to be a rather wet hand.  I thanked him for helping to extinguish the fire.   As I busily wiped my hand with a used tissue from my pocket, I noticed that half the neighborhood was standing outside of their gated walls regarding the nasara (white person) who was giving “The Fou” a bit of grief—probably more excitement than they had seen in a long while.  Most turned away possibly disappointed by the rather lukewarm confrontation.  I continued on my way to the Bible translation center where I worked.  “The Fou” returned to his digging.  All was right with the world, more or less.  I was determined to wash my hands as soon as possible.

Tonight I sat at the kitchen table to chat with Janet as she prepared another of her incredible culinary surprise meldings of American and Burkinabé cuisine, we could hear the bellows and screeches of “The Fou.”  He seemed tormented by whatever spirits chose to make him miserable.  Slowly it came to me.  Maybe his “issues” are spiritual.  In this country where evil need not masquerade as something more attuned to western sensibilities, dark spirits move more freely.  Maybe he is a modern day Gadarene in need of the Savior.

With Janet’s blessing I grabbed a bottle of Coke from the fridge and headed outside.  As I rounded the gate in our wall I was joined by our night guadian Desiré who watches out for us two old(er) nasara.  We slowly walked over to “The Fou” who was chattering away as he mined gravel from one of his calf-deep holes.  Désiré exchanged greetings and asked “The Fou” how he was.  “The Fou” responded that he was okay.  I offered “The Fou” a (dry) hand and asked, “Ça va bien?”  He responded, "'Ça va."  I handed him the Coke.  “A petit cadeau pour vous.”  I shook his (dry) hand once more and wished him a “Bon soir.” He responded with a nod and a nascient smile as Désiré and I returned to the gate.

“The Fou” remained unusually quiet for the remainder of the evening.  Janet and I wondered if he did indeed need more serious praying.  Jesus healed some people and cast demons out of others.  In a world where science rules, we may miss the root cause of many maladies.  We may be too engrossed in laboratory conditions to remember how things once were when the Bible was more current than today’s news.

As soon as we can, Janet and I will have our Burkinabé French tutor who is also a pastor to come and pray with us over “The Fou.”   

Please remember him in your prayers as well.  We will also try to learn his real name.