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Mali Trip: Village of Relationships

This morning Tom, Mamado. Douda, and I loaded up in Tom's 4 wheel drive and headed for the villages. A 4 wheel drive vehicle is essential for Mali during rainy season. The "roads" become little lakes and are impassable sometimes even with a 4 wheel drive vehicle.

Life seems simple in the villages. At night, everyone sits around in the courtyards and talks (mainly because that is the only entertainment they have). This is a huge opportunity for language study, relationship building, and interaction with people. While walking through the villages, we would always go to the chiefs first, to ask permission to take pictures in his village and look around. All of the chiefs were very generous and asked if I would come and live in their village. One chief even offered me a lot of free land to start building right then. Imagine being the chief of a village where a white family lives. What prestige to brag about, let alone everything the white man brings.

Mamado and the others were discussing where they would like to see the team go throughout the day. I understand that I will always be different than the Senoufo, but I wonder if there will come a day, after enough time has passed, where they would view the team as one of them, as family? If not, I feel destined to be caught in life without a place, for even now America doesn't feel like home and how can Mali be home if we are always the foreigners? Will I always be the foreigner, whether in the States or Mali, where my heart rests?

Plus, today I felt lonely again. After seeing Douda's village, we moved him and his wife to Mamado's house in the town that the Requadts live. Since they are the only Christians in the village, the fetish women are making life miserable for Douda's wife, so they are moving. But as we were moving them, I envied their gazes to one another, as if they had a language all to their own. I envied the playful touches that reminded me of Justin and Leah (my teammates) and longed to have that with someone. It seems like today relationships were flaunting themselves all around me. For example, I read this morning in Genesis where God provided a wife for Isaac supernaturally; in Segu (the book I am reading) the young boy is asking his teacher's daughter for a relationship; two young lovers walked past me on the trail holding hands and giggling (which is actually very uncommon for that sort of coed affection to be displayed in public); the birds are showing off in an attempt to attract a mate; and every day I watch Laura and Tom live in Mali, I am reminded of how I would need a wife to be able to do ministry here. Lord, you said that it is not good for man to be alone. You provided a wife for Isaac, Justin, and for Douda. Lord, please provide a wife for me.