Bens trip to the Ivory Coast – March 2007
Turbulence at Manchester.
I think that the best attitude to adopt when setting out on a project to West Africa is to expect the unexpected. To expect strange experiences, to expect to be slightly unnerved by being in a foreign culture, to accept that you will have to change your mindset from the busy, have-it-done-by-yesterday way of doing things, to a slower pace of life, where manjana is actually Spanish for workaholic. All of these are to be foreseen. However, the problems for me this time began in terminal 3 at Manchester airport, they continued through customs at Brussels airport, and only finally settled down once I’d boarded the plane to Abidjan.
Having done the reasonable thing as a Northerner, I’d booked the cheapest flight I could find to Abidjan from Manchester. This was with SN Brussels, formerly Sabena, in partnership with British Airways Connect. The price to pay for paying less was that the amount of “stuff” you may carry with you is also less, significantly less, than any reasonable airline. So, the volumes of John Owen’s complete works went in the hand luggage, whilst a pair of shorts and a T shirt went in the hold.
Desperately seeking any way to get anything heavier than air onto the plane I stumbled upon a piece of guidance on SN Brussels’ website. I could take one piece of hand luggage, AND a laptop, onboard in the cabin as hand luggage. So out came my computer bag, in went a small lap top that I was carrying for a friend, and in also went the complete works of Jonathan Edwards, D. Martyn Lloyd Jones, and The Encyclopaedia Britannica, or at least that’s what my shoulders would have told you. Aha! I’d beaten the system, a suitcase of feathers in the hold, but a rucksack and computer case of rocks in the cabin. 1-0 to the traveller. Or so I thought. The equalizing goal was scored by the lady on security, who on seeing my two items of baggage, whipped out the very page that I had scrutinized only eight hours earlier and pointed to the part I had not read, the line which read something to the effect of: “ONLY ONE BAG, STUPID!!!! ( and just a laptop, not a laptop bag)” So I technically had two bags, one had to go! No protesting was allowed. But I was allowed to carry a laptop through, out of its bag.
So 50 yards from this security guard-ess, who was obviously a little bit peeved at getting the 5:30a.m roster, I desperately took out the computer from its bag, and stuffed the contents of the other bag in it’s place, folded my rucksack and stuffed that into the front pocket of my beleaguered computer bag. I then stuck the computer, wrapped up in a pink baby blanket (another story), under my arm, and approached the offspring of Boedecea. She waved me through, complete with my illegal 400ml of sun cream. Which was subsequently confiscated at Brussels.
I appreciate there are rules, and security needs to be strict these days, yet what’s the difference between carrying one bag or two if they are not checked? It surely cannot be size, there were people going through security with bags the size of the Taj Mahal’s bigger brother, but of course only one, so they were o.k. Is there an agreement that a terrorist will be carrying two bags, never one? However the absurdity of the situation came to a head, when safely through security, I was allowed, in full sight of Margaret Thatcher’s charm school coach, to unload my computer bag, and to reload into two bags again, once through security. Africa held no fears compared to British red tape, every experience subsequently was laced with utter common sense and practicality, even the Ivorian taxi drivers.
The two faces of Cote d’Ivoire.
The Ivory Coast is a paradox. Even its name can’t make its mind up. The town of Sassandra perhaps exemplifies this. Sassandra is a coastal fishing town. It’s big enough to be on world maps. Taken in isolation it is the most beautiful place on the planet, other than the Emirates Stadium. It is a main fishing port and part of a country, which should be rich from cocoa, coffee and Bananas. There are miles of golden beaches, interrupted only by palm trees, and the whitewashed surf lapping at the shore. There are acres of lush forest and jungle. The people wear yellow and purple, and green and orange. And it suits them.
Yet the centre of the town is strewn with rubbish, the children playing football play with deflated footballs and with bare feet. The buildings are a dirty off-white colour. Rusting bodies of old Citroens and Peugeots, whilst the roads themselves are served by beaten up Toyotas populates the roadside. I learned that there is something worse then driving in a beaten up Toyota taxi that has, to quote Jeremy Clarkson, RSJ’s for suspension. That something else is getting into a shiny, well looked after taxi with oiled springs for suspension. This taxi is only in the condition that it is in because the driver has not been driving it for long enough, and an inexperienced taxi driver in Ivory Coast is a little like a kitten who is playing hooker in the annual Rotweiller versus Pitbull varsity rugby match.
Down town Sassandra
Peace and War.
A country that had known unrivalled prosperity since independence in 1961, the Ivory Coast collapsed into chaos and civil war in 2002, only to spend the next five years trying to resurrect itself. The rebels in the North now seem to be becoming disillusioned with power: no schools, little electricity, lawlessness and 12 year olds with guns at checkpoints. The government in the South is fed up with the rebels in the North, and now there seems to be real movement toward a solution that will bring the country to some sort of unity again, with elections in the offing for October. France, once a unifying force, is unpopular since it blew up the Ivorian air force two years ago; yet the population speak French, and the currency is the Ivorian Franc, and its history is intertwined with that of Le French. So the people generally hold together a loathing for anything French, with a dependence upon France, and a language that reminds them with every syllable of their co-joined history.
From Oxbridge to Scunthorpe.
It is then in the midst of this struggle for true independence that the Ivorian people live. I sense that they simply desire to be Ivorian: for some that is to return home from where they fled from the North. For some of those teaching in the Bible Institute at Sassandra, this is to return and reopen the Bible College in the rebel held West at Man. Imagine studying at Oxbridge, and then being forced by situations out of your hands to live and study in Scunthorpe (no offence to Scunthorpe; but you get the idea). It was to the smaller institute at Sassandra that the college fled during the troubles, and it was to Sassandra that I was travelling to spend a week lecturing on the subject of leadership, to eleven, first, second and third year students at the Institute Biblique, run by U.E.E.S.O, perhaps a close equivalent is the FIEC, here in Britain.
Bible Institute Sassandra
After meeting, up with William Brown, the Ivory Coast director for UFM, and my fellow lecturer and Coke drinker, in Abidjan, we travelled the five hour journey through pot holes the size of Lichtenstein, and past the lush green vegetation of the wet season. We arrived at Sassandra, to be greeted by friends we’d made on our previous trip in November when we had helped to construct the main building of the complex, which was to become our home and our workplace over the next 5 days.
The Real Thing
Each day was roughly the same, up at 6, breakfast of bread and jam on the veranda in pastor Auberlines’s house over looking the beach and the sea, and lecturing from 8-12, 2 hour’s each. Lunch was at 12:30 overlooking the sea and the palm trees, a feast of spaghetti Bolognese, or fish, chips, and rice, with coke; followed by a siesta and reading in the afternoon. A walk, a deconstruction of our lectures over a coke at 4, tea at 7:30 and preparation and reading in the evening. Followed by a coke, prayer and bed.
Teaching was in English through an interpreter for me as I speak very little French. William speaks French, although the Irish brogue is quite prominent, sort of “Frirish”. The students were enthusiastic; there was the mix of personalities, of intellects, yet a thirst for God’s word, and a real desire to take this out to their tribes.
The idea of the college is that the lecturers, pastor Auberline (the director), pastor Simeon and pastor Jervais, teach so that these students can then pastor churches effectively. Once trained these men would then seek to find the men that God has raised up in their villages and send them to study in order to perpetuate the spreading of God’s word in Ivory Coast. One pastor will usually pastor a group of churches, maybe three or four, leaving lay preachers to lead and preach two or three weeks per month. The pastor will then choose those with a preaching gift from the lay preachers of the individual churches, and send them for a three year training course at Sassandra; once they have been sufficiently trained, they can then return to their area and they can pastor a group of churches, and look for gifted lay preachers to train and so and so on, therefore the network of churches grows and spreads.
As for me and my house…
Looking back the week merges into one, each day similar, each incident that was so vivid at the time, morphs into one event. But certain images strike to the heart: the image of the director working his field for 2 hours a day to provide manioc for his family; the sight of another of the lecturers returning from his field 3 kilometres away on foot because he could not afford the 20 pence taxi fare; the students who instead of politely falling asleep in the lectures broke out into songs of praise to refresh themselves; the concern for my church at home in the prayer meeting, and for my family. The reality and the effects of the war that few British news agencies have followed but that has kicked its foot print deep into the psyche of these students. The desire to resolve a sovereign God and a splintered country. Yet through all of this the trust in the one true God, and the desire to see him worshipped no matter what or where.
I realize that I was there for one week, and that to integrate into a people and into a culture it is advised that you need to be there for ten years, and then you are only just scraping the bottom of the iceberg or the top of the barrel, or whatever it is. I realize that there are those qualified so much more than I to explain to you the joys of proclaiming God’s word in Ivory Coast, those who really do bleed Ivory Coast; those who do desperately want to return but cannot because of family commitment and the fall out from the war. But as God has placed me here then I must share with you some people to pray for, to keep regularly in mind because upon these men will the future of the Ivory Coast depend. Granted, not the political future, directly, nor the economic future, but more importantly the spiritual future, and this is the true war that we face, against Satan’s strategies.
The Students
So here are some people, maybe just names to you, but living, heart beating Christians with families, and youth groups, and churches, and stomachs, and emotions, and struggles and joys, please contact me for further details of these people for pictures and more detailed prayer points:
Director: Auberline
Lecturers: Jervais
Simeon
Students: Millo
Kwami
Mrs Kwami
Paul
Abel
Emille
Bartholemew
Zirdi
Patrice
Pierre
Evangelist Pastor Kone
UFM Missionaries: William and Rosalind Brown,
Brown’s children: Matthew, Esther, Daniel, Cherith, and Joanna.
“Yours O Lord is the greatness and the power and the victory, and the majesty, for all that is in the heavens and in the earth is yours. Yours is the kingdom, O Lord, and you are exalted as head above all.” 1 Chron 29:11