Light of Togo

Because this is such a long story, I decided to do two versions of it.  Feel free to read the longer one if you’d like , but I wrote it more for ourselves as a memory and for our family who may be interested in the added details.  This is the abbreviated “journal version.”

Friday early afternoon: I get a phone call.  It’s a missionary friend asking for our help for their coworkers who’ve just had a car accident 3-4 hours North of us.

Two hours later: Tiffany and I take two vehicles up to the accident site.  We meet Glen (who was driving) and his wife, Karen.  Rick is the owner of the truck.  He was in the backseat with no seatbelt, so he’s in the hospital with some possible broken ribs.  Broken ribs and busted truck, poor guy.  Glen and Karen are fine, but their stuff isn’t.  They were moving from Togo to Mali, so all their personal belongings went through the wreck too.  We load all their things into the two trucks and head to the Dapaong hospital.

Five hours later: It’s been decided that Rick’s in too much pain to go anywhere by vehicle.  I coordinate with Randy Alderman to have him fly up the following morning to get Rick and Karen and bring them to Lomé.  Rick has a great attitude about the whole thing - amazing.

One hour later: Tiffany and I are settling into our hotel room after deciding it’s way too late to attempt the drive back home to Kara.

45 minutes later: Tiffany and I have just finished a successful preemptive strike against the flock of terrorist mosquitoes living in our hotel room.  We go to bed not realizing they have called for reinforcements.

30 minutes later: I have become the target of the mosquitoes’ counter attack.  I decide these must be some kind of specially-trained covert ops mosquitoes, since they’ve somehow figured out how to bite me through the sheet! I get up and exterminate another 20 or so of their forces when I realize that this could go on all night.

10 minutes later (now 1:30 in the morning): Changing rooms.  Check…double check…ok, clear.  No evil, winged phantoms of death in this one.

2 hours later: “Why am I awake?  Why do I feel like I haven’t slept at all even though I’m exhausted?  Why am I itching…again?”  The hunt begins…again.  Found out that one mosquito can ruin your sleep just like 500 can.  Thankfully he was fat and slow due to sucking half the blood out of my body, which inevitably ended up smeared on the wall and my palm.

5 minutes later: Aaaah, sleep!

90 minutes later: Randy calls letting me know the weather is good and he’s clear to fly.

Around 8 o’clock: We discover the hospital’s sole ambulance is broken down.  I’m the new ambulance.  Rick laid in the back seat as I drove slowly, like 2 mph slowly, down the 15km bumpy road to the airstrip.

5 minutes later: Bump.  Rick, “ouch!”

3 minutes later: Bump.  Rick, “Are we there yet?”  Me, “Sorry, it’s gonna be a while.”

50 feet later: Bump.  Rick, “Can anybody see the plane yet?”  Poor guy.  He asked “are we there yet” more times than a 7 year old kid on a road trip to Disney World.  I don’t blame him, the back seat of a pickup truck is the last place I’d want to be with broken ribs!

Around 9:30: Saying a prayer for Rick, Karen, and Randy as they take off headed to Lomé.

30 minutes later: Picked up some sandwiches at our hotel’s restaurant for our trip back to Kara.  More on the sandwiches later.

Two hours later: Took Glen to the gendarmerie (local government office) so he can sort out the formalities of the accident.

Three hours later: Home at last!  Glen is sorting through all his things in our living room, picking out what’s damaged or broken.

27 hours later: I’m feeling unusually tired, my back aches, and I feel chilled.  Guess what?  It’s malaria time!

Two days later: Malaria’s gone.  Wasn’t nearly as bad as the first two times I had it.  But remember the sandwiches?  Tiffany and I think the chicken was bad.  For three days she couldn’t wander more than a stone’s throw from a bathroom, and I’m still fighting it.

Summary: Thankful.  Thankful we could help people in need.  Thankful to see God work even in bad circumstances.  Thankful for the new friends.

Oh, and as for the truck, it was rolled twice and looked to me like it was only good for scraps.  The mechanics, however, managed to do a couple temporary fixes, drive it all the way to Kara (2 hours), and they say they’ll have it looking and running like new.  I’m beginning to believe the missionary myth that Landcruisers are indestructible.

This is a very detailed version of the story that is meant to keep a memory for our family that we can read in the future, but if you like all the details of a story go ahead, but you’ve been warned…

This time last week I was having a pretty normal Friday afternoon when I received a phone call from some missionary friends of ours in Lomé.  They explained that some of their coworkers had been in a terrible car accident near Dapaong, and asked if we would be willing to drive up and help them out if necessary.  They didn’t know many details at the time, but we told them we’d of course do whatever we could to help.

Two hours later Tiffany and I were headed North with our SUV and our coworker’s truck, still not really knowing what exactly what the situation was, what we needed to do, or how long we’d be gone.  What we did know is that one guy, Rick, was in the hospital in Dapaong and that the guy who was driving, Glen, and his wife, Karen, were not hurt but had all their personal belongings sitting on the side of the road next to the accident.  They were in the process of moving from Lomé up to Mali, so the vehicle was packed to the brim with all their household things.  In case you’re wondering, it’s generally not a good idea for all your possessions to sit on a roadside in Africa.  On top of that, it had been raining all day.

When we arrived we met Glen and immediately started loading all their things into the two trucks.  One of the many miracles of this whole situation was that the accident happened not even one mile away from one of their mission’s Bible schools, so the first people to show up on the scene were the pastor of the local church and some of the members!

While we did this, Tiffany talked with Karen to make sure she was alright.  She was visibly shook up what happened, but not hurt in any way.  Once they explained the accident we understood why she was so shook up.  They were traveling through a rural area when they came up on a village, going about 60 miles per hour.  Coming up on their right side were three large cows and a small boy “leading” them.  At the very last moment one of the cows stepped into the road directly in front of the truck.  Glen quickly swerved to the left and managed to miss it, but because of their top and rear-heavy load the inertia caused them to spin out, bringing them to the right side of the road where the truck went down an embankment and rolled two times.  When it finally stopped, Glen’s window was flat against the ground, Karen was suspended in air by her seatbelt, and Rick had been bounced all around the back because he wasn’t wearing his seatbelt (kids, take note!).

Then it was off to the hospital to check on Rick.  Because of the poor quality x-ray machine, we did not know at the time what the extent of his injuries were other than some possible fractured or broken ribs.  It turns out that he broke four ribs on his left side, one on his right, and the membrane from his lungs separated from the ribs.  I’m no doctor, but that just doesn’t sound good!  He was amazingly in great spirits though.  By the end of our four hours at the hospital it was decided that he was in too much pain to drive, so we arranged for Randy Alderman to come up the next morning in his airplane to pick him up and bring him to Lomé.

By this time it was too late for Tiffany and I to head back down to Kara for the night so we ended up staying the night in a local hotel.  We learned an important lesson that day: always come prepared to stay the night!  In typical only-in-Africa fashion, our hotel room evidently was the local breeding ground for mosquitoes.  I killed 30 or so, was satisfied that I had got them all, and went to bed only to be bitten through the sheets from head to toe.  After killing another 20, I figured there had to be a hole in the window screens where they were flooding into the room.  After changing rooms (it’s now 1:30 in the morning) I discovered that there was one, yes only one, mosquito in our new room.  How do I know this?  Because at 3:30 I awoke from a very restless and itchy sleep to kill the accursed blood-filled agent of death.  Then I went to bed for a very restful hour and a half when Randy called letting me know he was clear to fly that morning.

This is the part of the story that gets very painful for Rick.  Because the hospital’s sole ambulance was broken down, we had to load him into the truck I was driving, bring him 15 kilometers to the airstrip, and load him onto the airplane.  Even though I drove a maximum of 2 mph down the bumpy road to the airstrip, he often winced in pain and asked at least 10 times, “Are we there yet?”

As he and Karen took off in that tiny airplane, I remember thinking how thankful I was that the situation worked out as it did.  After seeing the vehicle, I was amazed that the worst that happened was a few broken ribs.

The next few hours were spent taking Glen where he needed to go in order to take care of the legalities regarding the accident, then we finally headed home.  I had a really great time talking and getting to know Glen while we drove and Tiffany, well, she followed behind us.  I felt bad that she had nobody to talk to, but I think she probably enjoyed the peace and quiet.

That night we emptied both vehicles’ loads into our living room where Glen sorted through all the broken and damaged luggage.  Surprisingly, there was not a lot that was broken, even from the two trucks that were strapped to the roof and therefore had been crushed, twice.  The trunks have seen better days, but the only major losses were Glen’s Kindle (he’s an avid reader) and their coffee maker (a great tragedy!).

The next morning some of Glen’s coworkers came and picked him up along with all his things to bring them back to Lomé, which is ironically where their journey started.

That night (Sunday), I started to feel unusually tired, achy, and chilled.  Guess what that means?  It’s malaria time! Thankfully after having it twice I know what it feels like at the beginning so I was able to begin treating it right away and by Wednesday morning it was completely gone.  Unfortunately, Tiffany and I both picked up some kind of illness, probably from Dapaong, which has caused all kinds of stomach issues including not being able to wander too far from a bathroom.  Thankfully Tiffany got over this pretty quickly, but I’m still having major problems with it a week later.

We are incredibly thankful that God allowed us to help out these people in need and to make three new friends in the process.  It was a very unfortunate circumstance but we’re glad to see that everyone came out of it with their lives.

Oh, and the truck?  It’s a Toyota Landcruiser, which are evidently indestructible because the mechanics simply changed the tires on one side and drove it three hours South to Kara!  I didn’t think it was good for anything but scraps, but the mechanic says he’ll getting running like new!  Only in Africa.

Have you ever wondered what it would be like to have no access to clean water and not enough money to buy an expensive filter?  Unfortunately, that’s the situation of one billion people around the world including many here in northern Togo.  This has always been a concern of mine, but trying to figure out what to do about it can be a bit overwhelming!  That is until I heard about a form of water treatment known as SODIS, which is becoming very popular all around the world.

SODIS is such a simple method that it almost seems impossible that it could work.  All that’s required is a clear plastic bottle and 6 hours of sunlight, both of which are in abundance here.  Numerous scientific studies have shown that when using the right kind of bottle (PET plastic is preferred), the UV light from the sun will effectively kill all the common pathogens found in water.

I recently made a bunch of photocopies of the SODIS guide in French and have started giving them to people after talking with them about their need for clean water.  Our friend next door named, “Mama Bienvenue,” and her daughter were quite excited about it and asked for 10 more flyers to give out to their friends and family so they can explain the process to them as well.  She said that she’ll be buying some bottles (at 20 cents a piece) at the market soon so she can begin providing clean water for her and her kids!

I’m very thankful for those who have put in so much time and research in developing this method.  I pray that God will use it for His glory not only in our ministry here in Togo, but also around the world to bring physical (and hopefully spiritual as well) healing to those who begin drinking clean water for the first time in their lives.

Early this morning I got a call from a Togolese friend saying there had been an motorcycle accident, and that Tchala, a member of one of the churches in town, had been injured.  He wasn’t able to ride on the back of a motorcycle to get to the hospital, so they asked if I could bring him.  I rushed out of the house and headed to the “round point” (the major roundabout intersection in Kara).  When I arrived, there was a large group of people standing around.  I parked and got out as a couple men brought Tchala over to my truck.  Frankly, I was quite shocked when I saw him.  He is normally a very cheerful guy, always wearing a big smile.  Being a mason he’s also incredibly brawny.  This morning, though, with the help of two men he limped over to the truck like a wounded dog.  He had a massive lump on the front of his head, as if he had a baseball under his skin.  He was coherent, but barely.

Since there wasn’t anything more I could do for him after arriving at the hospital, I left some money with his pastor  to help with some of the expenses and headed home.  A couple hours later I received news that he had left the hospital and was resting at home.  He didn’t break any bones, but his knee was hit pretty hard by the guy who ran into him. Many people in Togo don’t wear helmets, but thankfully he was.  Otherwise, his head injury could have been fatal.

Please pray for Tchala that he can make a full recovery quickly.  If he is not able to get back to work soon, it can cause major financial difficulties for him and his family.

Click here to download this update on our letterhead.

Next Steps
A few months ago we asked you to be praying for direction regarding the next steps for us to take in our ministry. We are happy to tell you that at least part of that prayer has been answered.

Since arriving in Togo we have been observing and learning the culture as much as possible in order to develop an effective church planting strategy. And while our primary goal is and always has been to reach Kabiye villages with the gospel of Christ, we also desire to give something to these communities which will help them in their struggles of daily village life.

What we cannot help but notice in the Kabiye culture is the very important role that agriculture plays in their daily life. Almost without exception, every family has land which they are constantly cultivating to feed themselves and sell what remains.

The Problem
Over the past few generations, however, people have begun to use chemical fertilizers and insecticides in order to get a quick increase in crop production. In the long term this has all but destroyed the soil, which is now producing very little compared to the past. This is, of course, not at all helping their condition of poverty. Most people now find themselves realizing there’s a problem, but not knowing what to do to fix it.

A Solution
It’s not only foreign missionaries or NGOs who are noticing this problem, however. I recently had the privilege of meeting a Togolese Christian named Latté, who is incredibly knowledgeable in organic agriculture and husbandry. He is greatly burdened for his own people not only to know Christ, but to provide for themselves the necessities of life they so often lack. He has already seen amazing success in areas where he has taught his organic agricultural practices.

The Plan
So where does this fit in our mission to the Kabiye people? As I am currently learning the language I will also be learning more about agriculture from Latté and elsewhere. I then plan to use this knowledge to create open doors for the gospel and to give something tangible to the villages we work in. Please pray for this next step in our ministry that God will use it all for His glory!

Thank you for all your prayer and support!

Making Progress
As I have mentioned in previous letters, I am currently devoting the majority of my time to studying Kabiye.  Just about two weeks ago, I finally felt like all this studying is starting to pay off as I began forming simple sentences.  What’s unfortunate is that the Kabiye people assume this means that I will understand anything they say.  That is definitely not the case!

Health Concerns
Over a week ago, we noticed a gland under Joshua’s right ear starting to swell and become painful for him.  After seven days, two doctor visits, a blood test, a throat culture, and speaking with an American doctor on the phone, we were still baffled and the swelling was getting worse.  Finally we talked to another doctor on the phone who gave us a good indication of what it might be and how to treat it.  That was two days ago, and since then he has been doing much better.

We are pretty sure that it was a bacterial infection of some sort.  It is definitely a test of faith at times living in a place where you can’t drive 15 minutes to the nearest fully-equipped hospital.  We are very thankful that God directed us to speak with the right people at the right time.  It’s good to have the energetic old Joshua back!

As I’ve mentioned a couple times before, Joshua has fit right in with the Togolese people and culture.  He seems to handle change and new experiences very well.  One of those new experiences is fufu.  He tried it for the first time just a couple months after our arrival here, and he loved it.  This shocked me, since I can’t stand the stuff!  It’s a nearly-tasteless, chalky, pasty, gooey substance that  you dip in some sort of sauce.

Well, Joshua likes it so much that he asked our house helper, Yvette, to make it for him.  She was very glad to do so, and Joshua was very glad to eat it!  Here’s a short video of her preparing it, Joshua trying to help, and Joshua eating it.  You’ll notice that they mash it up in a wooden bowl using a large wooden stick.  They slowly add more and more water until it becomes very pasty.  The best way to describe the texture is wet Playdoh!

Joshua’s fufu from Jesse Shanks on Vimeo.

What do you get when you combine a broken bridge, 200 semi trucks, angry taxi drivers, and four tired missionaries?  A big adventure!

After a few days in Lomé, Jim and I started heading back for Kara around 11 am, which normally means arriving home around 5 pm.  Around the half way point, however, things started to get interesting.  We came up on a 4 mile-long line of semi trucks that had been building up since at least Monday.  It was at this point that we just “happened” to run into a couple other missionary friends from Kara who were only two cars ahead of us.  They had a map, and we had no clue, so we decided to follow them.

We got turned around, drove back to the last village, and asked about a road on the map that could have brought us out north of the bridge.  The locals, however, told us that the road is impassable.  So at this point we had two options: sit in traffic, going nowhere; or sit on the side of the road drinking Coke, going nowhere.  The decision was unanimous.

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Once we started seeing vehicles coming from towards the bridge, we figured it was time to move out.  Our progress was stopped short, though, by all the traffic trying to go north. After two hours of stop and go, we were diverted off the main road and onto a narrow dirt road.  This road wasn’t at all a problem for our 4×4 vehicles, but there were all kinds of small cars, overloaded taxi vans, and huge semi trucks trying to make one lane into two.  As night fell we slowly crept along, hopping out of the vehicles from time to time in order to direct traffic, push vehicles out of the mud, or just to find out why we weren’t moving.

A couple hours later, we were past all the traffic and on our way to wherever that road would take us.  Five and a half hours after starting into the traffic jam, we came out a whopping 7 miles north of where we started!

Now it’s late, we’re tired, we’re hungry, but at least we’re past all that mess…right?  Let me interrupt my own story here and explain something.  I have learned two things about frustrating circumstances in Africa: first, that you don’t get too excited about a bad situation getting better because it’s usually not over; and second, that you don’t get too worked up about it because it just makes everything worse.  Just take a deep breath, say “WAWA” (West Africa Wins Again), and go with the flow.

So, not even an hour of driving on the main road brought us to the toll booth where we would normally pay 300 francs and pass right through.  But not tonight!  A line of taxi vans was blocking up both lanes of the road, making it impossible to pass.  Walking up to the booths, we saw a group of about 150 people standing around, some talking, some arguing, and some shouting loudly at nobody in particular, and some just watching the whole scene like a movie that you don’t want to be in.

We eventually found out that several taxi van drivers wanted to protest the bridge situation by blocking the road and refusing to pay their toll.  We soon realized that there was nothing we were going to do or say to fix the problem.  They wanted to voice their complaint to the local authorities, so until they showed up nothing was going to change.  We had the idea of just jumping the curb with our vehicles, and going around everyone, but we seriously felt like it wouldn’t have been the smartest move at that point.

We felt like the best place to be at this time was back at our vehicles, which is where we stayed until everything settled down.  Once the local “préfet” arrived, they came to an agreement that those who wanted to pay their toll and leave could do so, and those who didn’t could stay as long as they wanted.  The only problem is that the people blocking the road were the ones staying and they had no desire to move so that everyone else could leave.

With the situation having settled down a bit, and us getting more tired by the minute, we went back to the curb-jumping idea.  We moved several small concrete barricades out of the way, payed our toll, jumped the curb, and drove off into the sunset.  Well, the sunset part isn’t exactly true since we missed it by several hours.

In all, the 6 hour trip took 12.  A 12 hour trip doesn’t sound that bad, but I’m sure you’ve heard this phrase before: “You just had to be there.”  Honestly though, I wouldn’t have traded it for anything!  It was a great adventure and something that we’ll remember for the rest of our lives.  I can imagine us missionaries sitting around 20 years from now laughing about the “good ‘ole days.”  Just do me a favor and please tell me if 20 years from now I’m repeating this story over and over again as if it’s the first time you’ve heard it.

I’d like to ask you to pray for my trip to Lomé today.  I’m taking the Huffs down so they can pick up their vehicle from the port, while Jim and I will do some shopping and other errands.  Please pray for our safety there and back on Thursday or Friday.

Asking for prayer for safety on a trip sometimes seems like such a “catch phrase” kind of thing to say, but after taking a couple long distance trips here in Togo, I take it very seriously now!  During the pastors’ conference, we were coming down a mountain around a curve when all of a sudden a guy on a motorcycle was in the middle of our lane coming straight at us.  To make matters worse there was a large semi in the other lane, which gave the motorcycle guy no place to go.  But, he was completely unaware of all this because he had his head turned almost completely backwards talking to somebody behind him!  With only a split second to react, I honked and swerved as far off the steep road as I could, which gave him barely enough room to squeeze between me and the truck, just inches away from hitting our bumper.

This is just one of the many “incidences” we’ve had already in the short time we’ve been here.  So, when I ask you to pray for our safety, it’s because we really do need it!  Thanks very much!

In one corner, the unsuspecting missionary.  In the other corner, the heavyweight champion of African sicknesses.   In the first of many bouts to come, Malaria threw the first punch and knocked me flat on my back for 48 hours, but thankfully due to a very effective treatment we found I am now back on my feet again and recovering from it.  Tiffany had posted on Facebook that I was sick, so thanks to all who were praying for me.  I’m sure it will not be the last time that we meet this opponent, but we sure do hope that it’s very infrequently!

What I’m very thankful for (other than the obvious, which is of course that I’m not dead) is that I did not have many pressing obligations this week, so the sickness did not set me back too much in that respect.  I am also thankful for a wonderful and as-close-to-perfect-as-possible wife who took great care of me while I was stuck in bed for two days.  Thanks Tiff, you’re the best!

I know that it has been an incredibly long time since I have posted anything on our blog other than the monthly updates.  Yes, we are still alive, and I do plan on writing more often once we have an internet connection of our own.  For now, though, I want to tell about what’s going on with our container and to ask you to pray for the situation.

The container arrived in the port on April 24th, so we drove down six hours from Kara on the 28th, expecting to get the container out of port and up to Kara by around the first few days in May.  Well, we’re still in Lomé!  Without going into a bunch of unnecessary details, the basic problem is that something on the container’s paperwork doesn’t appear to look right to the port authorities.  So, they have decided to open the container and go through it.  They might get around to doing this on Monday or Tuesday, and the whole process could take several days.

There are several things to pray for in this situation:
Pray that nothing gets stolen while many of our things are laying on the ground outside of the container.
Pray that they will be content to only look through a part of the container instead of every single item in every single box, which literally could take a full week.
Pray that after looking through everything they will not assess an insanely high value to everything, which would then mean that we would be paying much higher taxes than necessary.

We are completely confident that all of this is just part of God’s plan, and that He has a very good reason for it all.  That doesn’t necessarily make it easy to go through it, but it does give us the assurance that God is seeking to do something through this that we either don’t understand or that we don’t yet know.  Thanks so much in advance for your prayers about this!

One of the biggest adjustments to living here in Togo is the weather.  We come from the beautiful, but cold and rainy Northwest.  Coming here was quite a shock to our quickly thawing bodies!  Right now we are entering the hot and dry season.  There is a unique weather phenomenon here called the Harmattan which blows hot dusty air south into Togo from the Sahara Desert.  In a month or so it will cause temperature of up to 130 degrees.  I’m not too sure exactly what the outside temperatures have been like lately, but I do know that we walked into a 93 degree room the other day and it felt very cool and refreshing, almost like air conditioning!

Joshua has been dealing with heat rashes now and then, so please pray for him.  He’s a real trooper though and doesn’t complain too much.  He’s doing really great here, and enjoying all the new sights and sounds that Africa has to offer.

So, if you find yourself freezing this winter, remember to pray for your overheated missionary friends!