Tanti, c'est comment?

One of the biggest joys in my life these days has been my ministry at Centre Providence. The first time I came to the school, back in December, I was clueless to what anyone was saying or doing. Now, I can be and joke with the girls in a way that they understand! If you’ve ever lived in a cross-cultural context, you will understand that to be able to joke in another language, in another culture, is a HUGE step. The girls call me “tanti Stephanie”, and “c’est comment” is sort of like, “what‘s up?”

The girls at Centre Providence are coming out of various sex trafficking situations (ages 10 - 18). Some were forced into prostitution at a very young age, while others were sexually violated by neighbors or members of their own family. They come to the school to learn basic reading, writing, and math as well as positive values and morals that they may not have been taught previously. They play sports, sing, dance, and create artwork. The social workers at the school visit their families biweekly, and every day, the teachers and social workers meet to talk about the girls’ progress. After a year or two, when a girl is ready, she starts an internship with a hair dresser or tailor in her neighborhood, a job which she can do for the rest of her life. I am finally able to comprehend their language and situations, and I feel I have built a level of trust with the girls and with the other teachers. I am an integrated part of the team. Tuesday mornings, I have about an hour to lead a drawing activity with some of the girls. I have also started co-leading a painting class with another teacher at the school. But mostly, I share in life with them, whether that’s eating rice and sauce, playing handball, talking about STDs, letting them braid my hair or sleeping on a straw mat after lunch.

I think they saw me as a foreign alien at first. They even asked me questions like "are you albino?" or, "did you change your skin color like Michael Jackson?" And when they don't understand my French, they'll turn to each other and ask, "do you know what she's saying? I can't understand her." The thing is, those girls add SO MUCH to my life. One girl, Nathalie, has decided she's my daughter. At lunch one day, I stole her bowl of rice and passed it to a table behind me. For a good 5 minutes, she was searching for it, and saying "tanti, je n'aime pa ca." (tanti, I don't like that.), while I'm laughing. The other girls involved thought it was a pretty good prank. Another day, we had a conversation about how she doesn't have any friends she can really confide in. She does have a sister, however, and I had a chance to ask her about their relationship, which sounds like it's a positive one. These pictures below are what a normal Friday morning looks like. After we clean the center, we play handball and dance to the beat of the tom-tom.

Awa and Dorothee For a few Tuesdays now, I’ve led an art therapy task called a “bridge drawing”. I ask them to draw a bridge. To the left, they draw their past, whether it be a job, house, or someone they knew. The bridge is the present, their time here at Centre. After the bridge, I ask them to imagine their future - the trade they will learn at the end of their time there, a family, whatever it may be. I have noticed that a lot of these girls cannot see the future. I ask them 2, 3 times to draw it, but its nearly impossible for some of them. Some, but not all, of the girls have included their past in prostitution in their drawings. One girl told me there were only things she didn't like in her past, so I asked her if she could draw that, and she said ok. After every class, I write comments in French on the back of the drawings, based on what the girls have told me and what I see. This new class has given me an opportunity to take a leadership role, which improves my French, my trust relationship with my colleagues, and my relationship with the girls. I have started teaching a painting class with 7 girls every Tuesday afternoon, with my colleague, Madeline. These girls have never painted in their lives, but they are catching on fast and loving it. I can't explain the amount of joy I find in teaching these girls. One of them, Awa, has no fingers on her left hand, but she has a natural artistic ability. I hope she can gain a confidence in herself through this painting class. My supervisor, Jean Noel, talked about holding an art gallery for the girls’ artwork during the next fete (party) that we have! I can't wait. Below are two of the bridge drawings produced by the girls.

Here are some more pictures from the recent kids day we had at the church. Dancing, singing.

Timothee and Chazz

All the monitors and I, recieving encouraging awards at church.

Saturday's wedding - 2 of the youth from the church got married.

Alyssa and I. I went to Abidjan this past week to get some visa things taken care of. First sight of the ocean since I got here!

Everyday Occurences

I walk into the courtyard door to my little brother, David, saying, “Il y a porc!” (There’s pork!). And there, sitting on a rice sac on the ground, is the head of a pig. It was probably killed a few hours earlier. Yum.

I saw my host mom, Kadi, crushing up piment (little hot peppers), late one night, after we’d already eaten. I asked why. She told me that Bakary said there wasn’t enough in the sauce already, so he threw it up. I asked what was wrong, and she threw up her hands. “He’s like a pregnant woman!” she said with exasperation. I laughed. She said that if I marry someone like him, I’m going to suffer lots. Guess no one finds marriage easy.

One night, there was a lunar eclipse. You could hear people marching through the streets, banging pots and pans. My host dad told me the traditional belief is that a cat caught the moon, and one must scare it away with all the noise. My sister, Kolo, was scared when she saw it, and I likened it to our belief in werewolves. I explained to her that the moon is hidden in the earth’s shadow - something she has never had the opportunity to learn, having left school at the age of 9. In her mind, something’s wrong with the moon, a scary thought, seeing that it’s this mysterious, far-off shape in the sky.

One of the teachers at Centre Providence gave me a piece of sugar cane chute. She demonstrated peeling off the sides and sucking the juice out of the pulpy insides. I got home and sat on the front porch, cutting off pieces and sharing it with my siblings. It’s called “cané sucre” in French. There’s nothing like drinking natural sugar out of a plant.

The first time I went to church with my hair braided, my friend Mai saw me and said I wasn’t leaving Côte d’Ivoire, ever. I need to stay here now. She said I can marry her older brother. But when Susanne heard that, she said her brother was a better catch. The two argued over which one I should marry.

Every Wednesday night, I have a prayer meeting with the other people from church who live in our neighborhood. We pray for one another in 3 languages: English, French, and Senoufo. Often, when praying for good health, Ivorians call out to God saying, “you are the ultimate maribou.” A maribou is a traditional Ivorian healer, who traditionally, people went to for wisdom, good health, and even revenge. Mariam, one of the women who speaks only Senoufo, asked us to pray for a marriage decision regarding a young girl who lived in her house. She said that before, she would have gone to a maribou, but now, she seeks God for wisdom and direction.

My neighbor, and a good friend of my host-dad, Coulibaly, stops by once a day, and he usually calls me by “mon petit coeur” or “my love”. I’ve cycled through excuses for why I can’t marry him. He’s already married with 2 kids, he’s not a Christian (he’s Muslim), he’s too old for me (38), I’m not ready for marriage, I want to be free like a bird, I can’t and won’t make cabato or futu (2 staples of the Ivorian diet).. The list goes on. I’m 99% positive he’s not serious.

One night after dinner, the power went out. The kids and I were in the courtyard, and it seemed like the best opportunity to tell scary stories. So I made up one about a girl who went to the well.. But something caught the bag as she pulled it up. I gave them a good scare. Then, Manygi took a turn. She was 5 lines in, when our neighbor, Yao, made a growling sound from the window of our courtyard wall. Everyone screamed, including me, and all 4 kids were all at once on my lap (I was sitting on a little wooden footstool). As soon as we realized it was him, we all died laughing.

Last week we had a seminar, and 2 new girls (Kelly and Tricia) joined our Journey Corps team. Wednesday, we all came to my house and fried up a ton of ignames and alloko (plantains) with a spicy sauce they call “piment“. It was like a block party. Heidi, Naomi, and I worked with my sisters to cut everything up, and the 5 of us worked together for a few hours straight (from 4 to 6:30), to fry it up, in two skillets over charcoal fires. All of us, plus my host family, and a few other friends, made about 20 people. Aaron and Chris, from the Colorado side of our program, were visiting, and they documented the whole thing. I felt a little like I was on a reality TV show, in an awesome way.

I asked Sarah to teach me a worship song in Jula, the local language that she speaks. She and her husband (both Ivorian) make meals for us when we have seminars at Ecole Baptiste. So one afternoon, she wrote down two songs for me, and we sat on the kitchen floor, rearranging the Tupperware together, singing in Jula. Sarah has a beautiful voice, she traveled in Mali with a theater group during the war. She has the most beautiful smile you’ve ever seen. She’s one of those people that you feel an immediate connection to, no matter your ethnicity. She’s also one of the few Ivorians that I hug on a regular basis. The first song goes like this:

Matigi Jehova Ka Senu (Lord Jesus is holy)
A Bonyogen te Senumaya la (There’s no one like Him)
Serafin ba Wele su ni tilen, (The angels call him day and night)
Senu, senu, senu. Senuma ye (Holy, holy, holy, He is holy)
Matigi Jehova ye. (He is the Lord Jesus)

We are in the middle of a morning study on the book of Acts with Pastor Keo, chatting about baptism, when Naomi and I are both struck with the importance of baptism as a profession of your faith. We were both baptized as babies, but it wasn’t a choice. Stories like the Ethiopian Eunuch, who heard the word of God then was baptized, mixed with the degree of importance of baptism here in our churches, brought it to light. So, that afternoon, we went down to the river, in the middle of the African bush, and were baptized by Keo. Sarah led worship songs, in French and Jula. A lot of our Ivorian campus family came, including Songimay, my favorite little 5 year old girl. The setting, I imagine, wasn’t too far off from some of the baptisms in Acts. I have never before been full of such joy.

Pictures taken by Chris and Aaron. At our "block party" and the baptism.