And Not Forget

Tom & ceremony organizer & crowd

As you may recall, we are English teachers.  It may seem like a lowly profession to some, but here on the islands it actually commends some status.  This is never more apparent than at an English Ceremony.  It used to be we went to very few ceremonies.  Maybe a couple of times a year, but as English programs have grown and expanded, we find a good bit of our time taken up with these certificate ceremonies.  In fact I had one yesterday and I’ve got two more scheduled for this week!

We’ve noticed as the programs have grown and expanded, so have the certificate ceremonies. It has gotten to the point that these ceremonies have become something of a double-edged sword.  We feel great pride and happiness for the great accomplishment it represents for students, teachers and programs.   But on the other hand, we now expect all ceremonies to be multiple hours long with some very predictable parts that start to get rather boring...I’m recalling a college professor who always brought a good book tucked up his robes for the commencement ceremonies...I think I understand (though it might look a little different in our context.)

So, having just been to a ceremony last night, I thought I could share with you some of the comedy and drama that an English ceremony includes these days:

The arrival: Walking in, I and my teammates were all met with rousing cheers.  I felt like an English teaching rock star!  Ushered to our seats of honor, we were then given our flower necklaces and greeted by all the teachers and program directors.  Then, and this is vey standard, we sat for another 20 minutes waiting for the ceremony to get going.

Students singing ABBA in candelight

The prayers: Most ceremonies start with a prayer and are followed by someone reciting in Arabic from their Holy Book. This does not usually take very long.  Perhaps most striking is the total lack of interest of most people there.  It is expected, but no one pays it much attention.

The entertainment: It has become pretty standard for there to be some kind of a skit, song, or both or multiple of both.  Song choices are always interesting...Abba’s “I Have a Dream” and Michael Jackson’s “Heal the World” are perennial favorites.  This time we listened to “We Shall Overcome.”  Skits are various.  Some are really good, others are not, but three things can be depended on: someone overacting, yelling into microphones, and a moral of ‘Learning English will solve all your problems’.

The speeches:  After that usually comes the torturous part of the evening- handing out certificates.  This is unpleasant in almost any language, but one program had the bright idea of making their students say speeches of thanks after receiving their certificate.  Now every program does the same.  The results are like the Oscars with limited English.  Honestly, it’s kind of funny if it didn’t take hours.  The thanks are always to the same people (because who else is there to thank except the teachers, and program directors and maybe your family).  The mistakes are predictable too.  We’ve talked about making some sort of game of it: How many times do they pronounce the H in “honorable guests”?  How often do they thank the “honorable assistants”? How many students say, “And not forget, my teacher.”?  How many end their speech with, “Let me stop here.”?

Young student giving his speech

The Closing of the Ceremony: When all of the certificates have been handed out we still have two more speeches to go.  One is from the director of the program and the other is from one of us (usually Tom). Again, programs learn from one another, and at one point one program decided that these speeches should be introduced by the national anthems of the respective speaker’s countries.  Now, it just so happens that I (Tom) did not realize when a teacher asked me for the words to the national anthem that this is what he wanted to use it for.  Thinking it was for a listening exercise and since the words to “The Star-Spangled Banner” are quite difficult, I explained to him that instead of the national anthem I was giving him the words to another patriotic song, i.e. “God Bless America.”  And so that is why, now, when I stand up to give my speech I am greeted with the strains of “God Bless America” our not-quite-national anthem.

Four hours later the ceremony is finally done.

Even as I write, I can’t help but smile at it all.  And the teacher in me says, “Hey, they’re trying.  They’re learning.  They’re doing great!”  I just wish we could speed it up a bit…

PRAYERS ANSWERED
Our island sister has recovered well from having hot oil splashed in her eye. We are thankful that there was no permanent damage. Our team’s guest for the past few weeks has left for the small island before returning home. We were thankful for her time with us. We’ve heard some encouraging stories lately of islanders seeking truth and even standing firm in the midst of persecution. 


PRAYERS REQUESTED
Continue to pray for our plans to do a memorial event for Megan’s grandfather— we are going to do it on Sunday (Sep 30th), the same day that they will be doing a memorial service in the US. Pray that both events go well and could be good, encouraging times. Pray for us as we decide who to invite, what to include and how to communicate well to islanders about the good news as seen in Grandad’s life. The kids still haven’t started school! They will go tomorrow and find out their classes and hopefully actual classes will begin sometime this week. Continue to pray that the kids would not be anxious but would transition well back into local school. Tom is still having tummy troubles— pray for his stomach to calm. One sister is having a hard time with her husband who has been repeatedly unfaithful— pray for her as she seeks God’s will in how to proceed in love and truth amidst her own hurt and frustration.

Mourning from Afar

Megan & Grandad

On Saturday morning we got the news that Megan’s grandfather had passed away.  While this of course was sad news, there were many things to be thankful for in his passing. He went relatively quickly.  He had lived a long, full life of 96 years. He was a man of God who had shined light into the darkness. He loved and was loved by all his family. His ministry, thoughts, art and poetry have effected many. He will be missed, but also well remembered.  We are so thankful for his life and for the opportunity we had to know him.

Now this is actually the first death of a family member that we have had since we’ve been on the islands and we have been struck by the thought— how do we mourn here? In much of our lives we look to make our actions understandable to islanders.  In many cases we do things as islanders would do but when we choose not to, we usually try to have a reason or explanation ready in case someone asks.  Sometimes we choose to do things in a “foreign” way for our own sanity or because we have misgivings about the “island” way of doing things… sometimes because we fear it is wrong or hurtful or we are concerned about the implications it has on our beliefs or worldview.

Obviously it is always natural to default to our American way of doing things, but what is the American way of mourning? We have very few rules that we follow. People can mourn in very different ways in the US and no one would think twice about it. On the islands, however, there are many rules and guidelines for mourning. Close female family members stay inside the home for either 3, 7 or 40 days (depending on the relationship). Forty days is the time period of official mourning. It is during this time that people will visit the grieving family, offer condolences and in which the family will have different events for the dead loved one.

Now many island families live in close proximity— often multiple generations can be found within a block of each other, if not the same house. So the grieving process is something done at home with the family and everyone working together to make the events and special prayers happen.

So the question is— should we mourn like islanders? What does it all mean? Obviously our thoughts and beliefs about death are very different.  As soon as we got the news, I went outside and told our neighbor, Twama, who lives directly downstairs (technically we share a two-story house with her family).  She told me that if a family member dies abroad then the expectation that most of the things will happen abroad where the burial happens. But even if the body isn’t being brought back to the islands for burial, the grieving person on the islands would still go into mourning on the islands and would often host a prayer event, the special days being the first day, the third day, the seventh day and the 40th day.  She even went so far as to suggest that her husband could go find a local prayer man that we could hire to do a prayer at our house, even that day if desired.  I thanked her but also used this suggestion as an opportunity to remind her that we believe different things. We don’t need to pray our loved one into heaven. We know he’s there already. If we held an event it would be about remembering the things God did in and through his life, for thanking God for his life and for perhaps praying for those that have been left behind.

Kids & sunset

Now usually we are not naturally event-organizers— we never volunteer for the party-planner role, but in this case we felt like doing some kind of event would be appropriate both for remembering Grandad and also for our testimony on the islands. We decided to consult an islander who shares our beliefs. She understands the value of making our actions understandable to our neighbors while at the same time challenging the status quo beliefs and rules. She gave some good insights into how the typical island event could be changed to reflect our different beliefs and what would be good to include. She also relieved some of the pressure to do something by the seventh day, by highlighting that all the counting of days happens after burial, not after death. On the islands, burial is always right away, so this distinction usually doesn’t matter, but with deaths abroad this becomes significant.  In our case, it buys us some time as no one on the islands would do an event until the burial had happened.  Megan has opted to stay at home for these first three days as an acknowledgement that we are not unaffected by the death of our loved ones.  In the mean time, we are thinking and praying about what an island event in Grandad’s memory will look like.  Don’t worry, we’ll tell you about it once we figure it all out.

PRAYERS ANSWERED
We are very thankful for Grandad’s life and that his death was not drawn-out. We are thankful that Megan’s mom was able to make it in time to be with her siblings and mother before he died. Ma Imani has made it back to the islands! Thank you for praying. Her surgery and recovery went well and she only ended up being gone for 2.5 weeks!. (Now we hope that she’ll come back to Clove Island sometime soon!) Our team’s guest has continued to be a wonderful sport, going to lots of different events and participating in team life— we pray her final week goes well and that she learns a lot.

PRAYERS REQUESTED
Pray for Megan’s grandmother who lost her husband of 75 years (their anniversary was in just a couple weeks). They had still been living in their own home. Pray for everyone as they make decisions for her and for all the logistics of the coming weeks. Pray for us as we think of the memorial event we will do here— that it could be a blessing to brothers and sisters and other island friends. An island sister recently had hot oil splash into her eye— thankfully it seems to be healing well, but please pray for her recovery. We continue to pray for our teammates that have returned home that they would be finding good community to come around them. Our family has been hit by a tummy bug— days into it and many of us are still struggling with nausea and fatigue.  Pray that our tummies would calm and that we’d get our energy back. The kids will most likely start local school on the 24th, pray for them, all of them have changes this year that they are nervous about. Pray for calm spirits and for easy transitions back to the school routines. Pray for us as we ponder how to balance homeschool and local school without wearing our kids out.  The translation project hopes to complete consultant checking the first book in the next couple months— pray for that whole process!

Having Children

Visiting new baby

Having children is a big deal here. Islanders believe it is a religious obligation for everyone to get married and have children. You are called by a new name when you have a child (for example, Tom’s mom would be called Ma Tom). We’ve known women accept a bad marriage with the thought that they would stay long enough to have a kid and then be done with it. We’ve known men pressured by family to take second wives in order to have kids. There is  such societal pressure to have children that you can see the relief for a couple once they have a child.

While even one child is relief of societal pressure, the ideal is to have children of both gender. During our first years on the islands, I remember getting in a taxi and an old women telling me I needed to have 8 kids, 4 boys and 4 girls. I only had one child at the time, but she asked me my age and assured me that I could still manage it. Since then, I’ve heard similar sentiments repeated—traditionally islanders like big families 8-12 kids, with ideally equal numbers of boys and girls. You always get a little sympathy if you only have one gender (whether it’s boys or girls).

So children are important, but at the same time “mama” and “child” are very generic words on the islands. It has caused us much confusion over the years as we’ve tried to understand the make-up of different families.  Someone can say “This is my child” and it might be a niece/nephew, grandchild, young cousin or just a young member of their extended family or a child they are raising. In the same way, “mama” can be any aunt or older female relative and/or the woman who raised you. I’ve even had the experience of being introduced to two women where the first was “my mother who raised me” and the second was “my mother who gave birth to me”. 

Last week our good friend Ma Nadjma was at our house and told us that her brother and sister-in-law had asked to take her baby (Nadjma) to the small island. Nadjma is her only child. She seemed a little nervous about it, but it was also clear that she couldn’t really refuse. Nadjma was over a year old and already weaned, so she had no reason to refuse. The most she could say was “Don’t be gone too long!” They assured her that they were just thinking of being gone a month, but Ma Nadjma expressed her concerns that they were visiting a sick relative and that they might be asked to stay longer, even two months.

Ma Nadjma & Nadjma

Now we’ve wondered why a young uncle and aunt (only in their early twenties at most) would want the extra hassle and trouble of taking a baby with them on such a trip. But then I remembered—they don’t have any kids. They are visiting the family that raised her and because of the convenient linguistic ambiguity they can call Nadjma their “child” and, without lying, they can remove any stigma from the fact that they don’t have kids yet.

Sometimes I wonder if the important thing is really to be a parent, to reach that social status and that the children are sometimes secondary. Last week we talked about visiting three newborns in one day. One of the newborns was a firstborn. There were people around helping the new mother and the baby had all brand-new clothes and blankets. Next we went upstairs in the same house and visited another mother (the two mothers are actually sisters). This mother had just had her 8th child! Her small home consists of two rooms.  Each room is crowded by a large bed, so there is almost no room to move around.. Her and the newborn were alone on one bed, while the other bed was packed with at least four napping teenagers— four of her older children.  No one seem much concerned with the new baby.  There was none of the fussing over her like we had seen with the baby downstairs. The most telling moment was when we asked the baby’s name and the mother thought for a moment and then had to call for someone else, “Hey, what’s the baby’s name, again?” This was her own child! Now in her defense sometimes other relatives choose the name and the mother doesn’t get a say, but still, the baby was already a couple weeks old.  You’d think her mother would have learned it by then! 

Nadjma has been gone for over a week now, and it is obvious that Ma Nadjma is missing her a lot. She keeps showing us pictures. A few days ago Nadjma got sick!  Ma Nadjma arrived to work quite upset about it and starting strategizing with us ways of collecting money to get Nadjma a ticket back to our island as soon as possible.  As part of the planning, we let her use our phone to call her brother and sister-in-law only to discover that Nadjma had already recovered. Ma Nadjma’s relief was visible… but I think she’s still looking for an excuse to get her baby girl home soon.

Kids exploring Rocks

PRAYERS ANSWERED
Ma Imani’s test results are in and they are all negative.  She does not have cancer and will soon return to the islands.  Megan was able to share the two kingdoms with our old neighbor, Ma Raziki.  Ma Raziki has never shown any interest in these matters before.  It was exciting to see her responding and listening to the story.  May it touch her heart.  Tom had another good time studying with his friends. They plan to go back to studying the book.  Pray that this time will be illuminating! 

PRAYERS REQUESTED
Our kids are supposed to start school soon, but the teachers are on strike.  Pray for the strike to end soon and for the the kids’ transition to school (whenever that may be) for connecting with their friends and teachers and for their language to come back.  We have a visitor with us.  She has been great and has jumped into life here.  Pray that the rest of her time would go well and that this would be a useful time of reflection and learning.  We video chatted with some potential future teammates this week.  The conversation went well.  We pray for the Lord’s leading and discernment in these things.

Little Things

Rainbow among clouds

If you’ve been following our blog at all these past few weeks you’ll know that we’ve had a rough time of it.  When things are hard, it’s not always easy to see the light at the end of the tunnel, to feel joy or to be thankful, but this past week there have been a number of little things that helped to restore the soul. Little things that remind us to be thankful.

The first is a simple thing, but one that I often take for granted.  We live on a tropical island!  Every morning I can climb to our roof balcony and look out over the morning light glistening upon the vast ocean waters.  I can turn and see the sharp green jungle peaks of our  small volcanic island.  Sometimes the sky is a clean, clear blue.  Other days it is filled with puffy clouds.  And many a cloudy day, early in the morning, we will see a rainbow.  I am thankful for rainbows, and mountains and blue oceans.

For our anniversary, our teammates agreed to watch the kids over the weekend.  Megan and I were able to go hiking.  We followed a trail that led us along a mostly secluded beach and then turned inland and climbed one of the mountain peaks.  Later that night we went to a nice restaurant.  It was relaxing and rejuvenating and I am so thankful for a wonderful spouse and for wonderful teammates who would allow us to have this time together.

Every week I meet with some guys and we talk about the important books and the two kingdoms.  At times it feels like we are talking in circles and not getting anywhere.  This week as I was waiting for my friends to show up, two other people were hanging around who seemed interested in talking.  So I ended up telling them about the two kingdoms.  I’m thankful to be able to share the important things of life with the people of the islands.

Anniversary hike

I’ve been teaching a teachers’ training class in a village outside of the capital city.  It’s an hour taxi ride to get there.  But the teachers are eager to learn and a fun group and they live in one of the prettiest villages on the island. Twice a week I step out of the taxi and find myself feeling thankful for a good class and a chance to come to this beautiful village.

A bunch of our island friends have given birth.  We’ve had the privilege to hold four different newborns in the past two weeks.  As we look at these tiny lives, hope grows in our hearts.  I’m thankful for new life.

It has been a hard time lately, and I’m not trying to say that we can “just look on the bright side of life” and that the hard things will all be better.  But amidst the darkness there is always life and truth to be found, and that is an encouraging thought.

View from top

PRAYERS ANSWERED
We have heard news that Ma Imani’s surgery went well in Madagascar. They were able to remove the problem and don’t believe it is serious. They are just waiting test results to confirm that the cyst was benign. We are thankful for all the things mentioned above. It feels like we (and our teammates) have turned a corner and are in healthier places after some hard few months. We’re thankful that we serve one who is faithful and walks with us and give us the above reminders. We were thankful to our teammates for watching the kids— the kids had a great time and we had a nice break together too.

PRAYERS REQUESTED
We are making some plans for the coming years and writing up documents that will hopefully prepare the way for us to welcome new workers to our team. Pray for good direction and guidance as we look to the future that they would be His plans, not ours. No news about what is going to happen politically on the islands, but schools are getting ready to reopen and some teachers are already planning on striking since they haven’t been paid for past work. Continue to pray for the group Tom is meeting with and for more opportunities with new people. We’ve heard that Megan’s grandfather’s health is declining— please pray for him and Megan’s grandmother and other family as they process this news and prepare themselves.