The day started well, the preschool children scrambled up and down a dusty pile of old tyres adjacent to the playground as other children enjoyed the more traditional equipment here at the church, school, and training facility.

I snapped some pics (with permission from nearby parents)

An important dining ritual is to wash your hands directly at the table. One of the young girls will bring the special basin, soap, and kettle to your seat, put it on the floor and then slowly pour the water. Your job is to feverishly scrub your hands and then shake dry your hands. Quite nice! So we enjoyed our Nescafé instant, millet grain and milk, and prepared for the day.

In Africa, waiting is just part of the fabric of life. We westerners work to be more productive, and we have all bought into the notion that the easiest way to be more productive is to eliminate waiting. Most efficiency formulas for computation and networking include careful accounting for delay times, how long a network data packet will wait, queue priorities, “QoS” (quality of service) measures, and even “TTL” or “time to live” before abandoning the work. Here, it feels like waiting is simply part of the work to accomplish. So after breakfast, we waited. No need to drum your fingers on the table, no reason to pace back and forth and check your watch. Looking down the road won’t impact the wait. So why not just wait? Make friends, ask questions, learn about the culture, laugh, poke your head into new places (and startle people :-), get introduced, tell your story, play a game, write in your journal, pray together. Just Wait!

The plan was to speed back to a major city, about an hour away, where Boureima had arranged for several people to provide health information that we could record. By 10:00 am, we were bouncing down the dusty red dirt road. While passing the baobab trees filled with nests, I imagine fuchsia colored Dr. Seuss birds popping up and cocking their heads as we bob up and down over the rutted path. Africa is full of surprises. Who knows what we might experience today.

Boureima’s SUV needs some serious work… the transmission reluctantly shifts into a lower gear after winding up so ferociously that I’m worried gears will pop thru the floor. The car was in an accident some time ago and the radiator needs periodic checks, since the temperature gauge does not work.

Despite the screeching belts and whirring gears, Boureima heard the tick, tick, tick, of something wrong with the tyre.

And so, began, the start of a very long day. The first roadside shop pulled the screws out, pushed in some rubber repair strips, and found that the tyre was also cut, so we needed a new one. Filled but still leaking, we drove into town to find a tyre shop. Boureima purchased two tyres, but the shop’s mounting machine was busted. At the third shop, they found a lug nut jammed. They could try and turn it, but it would likely break. The nut popped off, but the screw was stripped. Boureima explains that we would not be buying fish in the river. He explained… man will point out the fish that just jumped out of the water and ask you to pay him for it, then he will go catch it :-). So we would wait until the car worked, before paying, not for fish in the river.

So we ventured to one of the nurses we were planning to record, hoping to find a mechanic along the way.

Oof. By western standards, we were at least three hours behind schedule. We zigzagged across town to three different places recording medical information for the Fulani in their language, Fulfulde. It was hard for me to concentrate, because the original plan was to be back at Boureima’s by 3:00 pm to set up for the choirs. We did have a great conversation in the car, learning more about the 40 million Fulani. I’ll have to tell you about it later…

We did the recordings while Boureima found a mechanic and had the lug nut fixed.

We managed to returned after 8:00 pm. The choir, which was waiting since 4:00 pm was in the church dancing and singing. They had not eaten. I’ll upload photos and tell more tomorrow, but we recorded the choir until after midnight. They then went to get food and we crashed into bed. Tomorrow I’ll explain some of the culture we learned, including endurance / patience.