Vol. 2, No. 8

Bonne Année (Happy New Year in French)

Well, I'm taking the morning off from working with our three Reformed Church of America volunteers who are here in Niger, in order to write my monthly newsletter. The fact that I can get this written on time is a very good sign-it means that things are going so smoothly that I don't have to be with them right now!

The last month has been a whirlwind, especially after the volunteers arrived. Of course, getting engaged was a pretty monumental event, too, but that was only a one-day happening! Coordinating and working with three Americans who have never been to Africa before is pretty much a 12- to 15-hour-a-day job. It has been extremely satisfying to see them interacting with the Nigeriens and accomplishing tasks at EERN facilities that have only been hopes and wishes for years. Let me give you some more details.

Wilbur and Madelyn Vander Heul from Rock Valley, Iowa, came on December 15 after having been re-routed on African carriers because their Air France flight left before they could pass security in the Paris airport. Fortunately they arrived with all their baggage, although three days late. After a day recuperating in Niamey, we headed for Maradi, where I am living and working-about a nine-hour drive. My colleague, Barbara, was in the United States to visit her mother for the holidays and the Vander Heuls were able to stay in her home for almost four weeks. That meant they were able to stay in a Western-type home with their own kitchen and bathroom and lots of privacy. This was a nice arrangement for which we were both thankful.

Neither they nor I knew exactly how they would spend the next five weeks in Maradi. Madelyn, a recently retired elementary teacher, came prepared to teach English to Nigeriens, and Wilbur, who is a farmer, was ready to do some maintenance and needed repairs at EERN church facilities. Before I left to pick them up, I asked the EERN's Permanent Secretary to announce that Madelyn would give both beginning and advanced conversational classes at two locations in the area and we would see who was interested. She wound up with eight advanced students (mostly men), and five beginners (all women) in Maradi and nine advanced students in Danja (where there is an SIM mission hospital).

Most of the advanced students have studied English in school, but many have had little opportunity to practice it since then. Others are very interested in learning American English, since they have previously been exposed to British or Nigerian (Nigeria, which lies south of Niger, was once a British colony) English. She and the students are having a wonderful time, and the advanced class she teaches in the morning has so many questions that they will hardly let her leave the premises after a two-hour session. We started Wilbur out with making some repairs to the EERN guest house here in Maradi (where I have been staying since September, while awaiting the completion of my house). There were leaky toilets, burned-out light fixtures, broken windows, torn screening, and other things that needed to be repaired or replaced before our other volunteers arrived.

With Usman, our handy assistant, who knows where one can (or cannot) find any piece of hardware in Maradi, we were able to get a lot accomplished. However, Usman, who is 31-years old, was going to leave us during Christmas week to make the necessary arrangements for his own engagement to a girl in Niamey.

Since Wilbur and I knew we couldn't get much done without Usman to guide us, we needed to find a simple project that we could do with a minimum of materials. We went to the EERN's primary school at Tibiri and discovered that all the screens in the classrooms were ripped and had large holes. So, that was our holiday-week project: removing and replacing screens.

Once you spend any significant amount of time in a place, you start noticing a lot of other things that need improving. I pay particular attention to windows and screens because the mosquitoes are so terrible here, and so many children suffer from malaria. The school at Tibiri is located very close to a river and because it has so many mature trees, it attracts lots of mosquitoes. For the 150 students who are boarders (even 6-12 year-olds need to board at the primary school, because transportation is so difficult), they were sleeping in dormitories that had no screening. When I asked why, school officials told me that the cost of installing screens on the 80 windows at the school at $15/window exceeded the budget. The school charges less than $50/year per student. Wilbur decided to take a look and he came up with a simple screening design that cost about $1.50/window and which would provide a tighter fit than nailing a separate wooden-screened frame onto the concrete walls. So, that became Wilbur and Usman's next project.

The other big project that the school identified was fixing the corner of the principal's house (at the school) that had cracked and settled. Wilbur wanted to wait until our third volunteer, Ronald Kronemyer from Hudson, Michigan, came before we started that. So, we found other small projects like replacing the bolts on the students' desks and repairing sagging window awnings to occupy us.

Ron, a former school history teacher and now Cornerstone University education professor, who holds a Michigan builder's license, came on January 10, but unfortunately, although he checked his bags onto his direct Paris-Niamey flight at the Paris airport, he arrived without them. Despite having only two changes of clothes, Ron has gotten started on building buttresses for the principal's house, after first inserting two ¾" steel rods through the entire length of one wall for additional support.

So, we Americans have been having a good time, getting needed jobs accomplished and generally enjoying the cool season in Niger-we even need blankets at night right now! I have been so busy that I haven't had any opportunity to see Aichatou since Christmas Day, when Wilbur, Madelyn and I visited her family in Niger. It certainly was a different Christmas than what we were used to! After the three-hour Christmas Eve service, and the four-hour Christmas Day service, New Year's Eve offered another four-hour service, but we all decided to pass on that opportunity!

Prayer Concerns:

• We have two more work groups coming: a group of four men and three women from Maurice and Sioux Center, Iowa (January 24 - February 7) and five women from Ankeny, Iowa (on February 6-21). Please pray for their health and safety and that all their luggage and supplies arrive with them!
• Give thanks for the wonderful experiences that both Americans and Nigeriens are having from these visits and pray that God will use these times to build, encourage and strengthen the Church, according to God's will.
• Pray that Aichatou and I will have several opportunities to see each other and that our relationship will grow stronger during the engagement period.
• Pray for my RCA African Missions supervisor, Debbie Braaksma, who is making her annual visit to Niger from January 17 - 21. Pray for her safe travel and for wisdom as she reviews our work here and that of our partner, the EERN.

Thomas R. Johnson