Sunday, April 9, 2017

Through the Eyes of a Child

Our nine year old recently wrote about her experience in Guinea Bissau.  It is written by a nine year old, and that is definitely obvious, but I thought she expressed herself well.  I hope you enjoy reading about our life through the eyes of our daughter.   

Guinea Bissau is a small country in Africa; it’s capital is Bissau. Guinea Bissau is a nice place for people to go to vacation and the people there are really nice.  Some people there are not so nice.  The witchdoctors are not the nice people. They don’t really do what God wants, they do what Satan wants.  The church in Guinea Bissau is fun and happy because you see how they sing in different languages.  It is really cool to watch them and sing along with them. 

The chief in Guinea Bissau is also very nice.  My brother really likes the chief and wants him to become a christian because right now he is a muslim.  I really hope he soon will become a christian.  Our cook in Guinea Bissau was very, very nice.  Her meals were really good.  My favorite meal she cooked was yassa.  Yassa is basically onions, meat, tomato and other vegetables all together.  It is really good.  Some other meals she cooked was white chep and red chep,  they are the same thing except one is white and one is red. Aminata, our cook, would put cabbage, but we don’t put cabbage in it because we don’t like it, and other vegetables in it like potatoes and sometimes sweet potatoes. 

I used to do preschool with my little brother, Isaiah, because he was scared to go by himself.  One time I went with him and they put the preschool clothes on me and I became a part of the preschool.  I was really happy because the preschool teacher is really nice.  She realized that Zane and I weren’t good at speaking Creole so she helped us become friends with the other kids and we learned Creole better.  

My friends there in Guinea Bissau, I miss them a lot and I bet they miss me, but it is good to know that they are doing good in their education and that they have parents that love Jesus and they are becoming strong christians. 


These are our neighbors we played with every day.
Before we went to Guinea Bissau, the kids were bullies.  One of the kids that wasn’t a christian yet bullied me and he said a bad word to me.  He said if I went to his house he would beat me up. I was scared at first, but I went home to my parents and they helped me. One day, I went to his house because some of my friends lived there, he was there, but he didn’t say anything to me.  I was really happy because God helped me and he helped him to not be mean to me anymore. Now, that kid is a strong christian. 

The mission house didn’t have a school room at first. My mom and dad and some of the other people from the church helped us to build a school room, which we basically added on to the house. We made the school room and added shelves and desks, some tables and we put in linoleum. That was the only room that had linoleum in our house.  The school room is still on the house, one of our neighbors went into the back of our house one day when we were in school and he drew on the wall. We were upset that he did it because it was really new and we didn’t want it drawn on like the other walls of the house. 

The pastor’s house is where some of my friends are, so they are also the pastors daughters and sons like I am.  When we moved there the pastor didn’t really preach a lot, only my dad did and sometimes the other church’s leaders preached.  When we left to go home for furlough or other things, we heard that he started to preach again and I was very happy. I call him Baba because he is like another dad to me and like another family to me.  


This is Baba with his wife and two of his nine kids.
I really like the clothes in Guinea Bissau. When we moved there, we had to wear skirts a lot, but we figured out that I could where shorts so I started wearing shorts a lot.  The boys already wore shorts because they can’t really wear skirts.  Every single day after school and after a little bit of resting time of playing legos for us kids, the kids would come in our compound and play all day until it was time to go home so we could eat.  So every single day, after school and after playing inside, we would go outside and play all day long.  We were only inside to get a drink or if we got hurt.  There are no bathrooms inside, so we had to go around the house to go to the bathroom.  The bathrooms in Guinea Bissau are outside, so at night, I would ask my dad to go with me to the bathroom because I was scared of the dark. I would have to go to the bathroom outside where I didn’t really feel safe to go to the bathroom because there was sometimes lizards and snakes in the bathroom.  Funny story to tell you guys, one time I was going to the bathroom. I went to the inside bathroom, which means it had a roof, we had two bathrooms, one with a roof and one without.  I opened up the door and there sitting on the wall was a snake! I was so scared that I never went into the bathroom again unless someone was coming with me.  So, I always went to the outside bathroom, or the one with no roof. It was so scary! One day, Josiah was cutting weeds around the bathroom and all of a sudden he had this big red mark on his back and we didn’t know what it was.  He was outside cutting with no shirt on, so we didn’t know what it was. Mommy put some medicine on it and we finally figured out it was from a big furry caterpillar.  Life in Guinea Bissau.  

While we were there for three years, people came to visit us off and on and one day, this kid who was 18 years old came to live with us for the rest of the time we were there.  His family came to visit him with his little brother, David. This kids name was Joseph but we called him Zeke.  Zeke had an older brother too, but he didn’t come, only his younger brother came.  Another funny story to tell you guys, so one day, we came home from walking around the village talking to people. We saw that Zeke had burnt his feet because he played soccer with no shoes, on the very hot sand and it was almost time for us to go home. Now his feet are better.  It was really funny.  

When we moved to Guinea Bissau, I was only five years old and Isaiah was only four years old. My older brother, Josiah, was eight, my older sister, Lydia, was nine and my other older sister, Jada, was 11 years old.  Now, I am nine, Zane is eight, Josiah is 11, Lydia is 13, and Jada is 15. Anyways, back to Guinea Bissau. Life in Guinea Bissau was hard and tough, but we got through it, even though we kept getting sick, boils and mango worms. We still managed to get through it, which was tough, but we did it.  We did it by the help of the people there who helped us know what sicknesses we got and what mango worms were. My mom would pull out the mango worms with the help of Zane’s best friend, Matchu, which in English means boy.  Isn’t that a weird name? We also had help from Delores, who was a missionary nurse and now lives in Gambia. We also had a mission team come and a nurse came with them and she cut out Zane’s first mango worm. God helped us a lot to get through all of what we went through in Guinea Bissau.  

No comments:

Post a Comment