We started off pretty close to hating each other, not knowing what it was like to live in community 24/7 and learning to ALWAYS be flexible.
We finished out an amazing, yet challenging three months in South America.
We knew Africa was going to be completely different, but we didn’t know how much different until we got here..
The first full day here we learned that we were going to sweat A LOT! Apparently it was the hottest month in Cote d’Ivoire. We also learned a little bit about African culture and what life was going to look like the next 3 months. Lots of skirts and dresses, lots of French, malaria meds and even more bug spray. But even getting told doesn’t prepare you for culture shock.
It was a Wednesday morning. We woke up at 5:45, finalized our packing and headed out the door. We made it to the “bus station” (a lot of terms are used loosely these days) where we sat on a bus, for what seemed like forever, and waited for people to fill it. Finally the time came and we started our hour and a half bus ride to our new home for the next month.
We arrived, unloaded, got all our things squared away and off we went into the little town to figure out what it was going to look like.
We got to see the Wednesday market, tour the little marche (grocery store), and then finally go find something to eat. Our first West African food experience… Well, it was a rough one. Goat, that contained some meat, the skin and even some hair (very appetizing). The word spicy doesn’t even come close to explaining how it tasted. Along with this lovely yellow ball of saltless play-doh, better known here as fou fou. After sitting for a minute to enjoy the cool breeze next to the water we took the 20 minute walk back into town to go buy some necessities at the grocery store before returning “home”.
The first day was like any other first day, but the days to follow were more traumatic than most of us expected.
We spent the next three days living in fear, surrounded by a lot of spiritual warfare, French speaking people whom we did not understand and not knowing if we were emotionally going to make it a whole month in our small village.
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By day 3 a lovely Tennessean couple were headed to pick us up and show us the most kindness and a little piece of a safe haven that we so badly needed. We gathered our thoughts, processed our emotions and got to reflect on how great God truly is. During the good times and the bad.
We learned that we take a lot of things for granted.
We are blessed more than we could ever imagine.
God always has our best interest at heart. We don’t have to worry about tomorrow because God already has a plan.
But most importantly God will never fail us. He hears our prayers and in his time he will answer.
