Amazing women......

I was visiting a grandma in the village today, when I saw her daughter and granddaughter get ready to leave.  I just leant a new phrase today and so I was very happy to practise it!  ‘Where are they going?” I asked kind of right….

They were off to their fields a way out of the village.  It was late, nearly 4 o'clock, and they hurriedly left with only one big clay jar filled with bits of dried food, some clothes topped with an upside down cooking pot.  Brave women!  It was such a reality check for me!  Here i was complaining of loneliness  - and I have a phone, computer and car to go places!   They will stay on the field until all the land is tilled – by hand – and then after the rains come they will stay out there to guard the new plants against all manner of enemies!  And a lot of the time they are out there all alone!  Very brave indeed!

Some people think i am brave to live out here – I once read only 6% of missionaries live out in the sticks – so I guess it seems brave.  But it is NOTHING in comparison to the women who have been living here for centuries!

They carry 20L cans of water on their heads and this with babies tied to their backs!  They give birth at home or walk about 4km or 20 , to the nearest clinic to deliver their babies!  Sometimes when the birth is too far advanced or complications arise,  they travel on the back of a bicycle!  They work the fields, harvest it all and then need to peel/husk/dry all the food until the next crop will be ready!  Amazing women!

I learn so much from them.  Here I have come to teach them, but they teach me.  My wish and hope and dream for them is that they will come to know and trust my God and Saviour, .....but all in due time.  Until then it is me who is the learner!

Bella, humbled by the women around me