The hot season in Niger. It is dreaded by Nigeriens and missionaries alike. I had one friend liken it to childbirth - you forget how bad it is until you go through it again. Jonathan and I occasionally look at each other and say, “Well, we’re really doing it! We are really enduring the heat of Niger."
In the hot season:
• My candles melt on their own. I can shape and form them like soft dough in my hands.
• The water (when we have it) comes out of the tap hot – almost hot enough to burn. I have to be careful when I pour water for the children.
• The kittens' milk curdles within hours.
• The walls of the house are all hot to the touch – they feel like an oven that was turned off several minutes ago.
• When we mop the floor, we don’t wring the water out. One side of the room is dry by the time we reach the other side.
• I don’t worry about spills. They’ll dry within minutes.
As we delve into the heat of the hot season, we are discovering that the this time of year isn’t difficult simply because it’s hot, but because other resources run low as well. We jokingly have “3 Essentials” to living well in Niger. Electricity, water, and internet. I know, I know. They aren’t all essential to living, but they certainly do make things easier to cope with. The one that IS essential to life is water. And lately we’ve been asking ourselves, “Where did the water go?”
Well, there is no specific answer to this question. Not really, but there are some really solid reasons for why it’s been disappearing lately…
1. It’s running about 115 degrees outside during the day, and probably about 100 inside. If we’re lucky, the cooler rooms in the house are probably in the 90s. With AC on, which we only have in our bedrooms, and run at night and naptimes, we get it down to the 80s.
2. It hasn’t rained in over 7 months.
3. Everyone NEEDS water, so when there is water, it's in high demand.
4. Oh, yeah, did I mention that we live in a desert, that it’s 115 degrees out, and that everyone needs water?
It seems that the water supply is now being rationed. We have hardly had running water in the house during the day for several weeks now. It’s been cut at about 7am, and may come back on between 10pm-12am.
This means:
• Late nights and early mornings filling buckets so that we will have essential water throughout the day
• Drinking water comes first. Only if there’s extra do we do dishes, cleaning, etc.
• Bucket baths only. What’s a bucket bath? Using a cup of water, dipping water from a bucket, and pouring it over one’s head. Try this on exceptionally muddy/sandy children. It’s a real riot!
• Giving the dishes a bucket bath. Seriously never realized how much I love having running water for washing dishes!
• No laundry. Oh, yeah, in 115 degree heat. The dirty clothes pile is getting higher and higher. Thankfully, at least one day a week, we’ve had enough running water to wash a few loads. Praise God!
• Limited ability to clean in the house.
• Rationing toilet flushes. I won’t go into details, but I’m sure you can imagine how this affects one’s life!
• No extra water for play. Isaiah and Anna can’t swim in their little pool, because there isn’t enough water to fill it. Somehow, they manage to find a little water to play with here and there (one day, unbeknown to me, it was the filtered (precious!) drinking water, other times, they sneak into the buckets that are allocated for bathing and dishes).
And so we slog through the month of May, knowing that all things must come to an end, even the heat of Nigerien hot season. We all look to the sky, hoping to see rain clouds. We dream of rain, forgetting that the rainy season brings humidity and loads of bugs. But still, we dream of rain! It should be coming in just a few weeks.
The remaining “essentials” from our “3 Essentials” are electricity and internet. While we do have electricity most of the time, we experience a phenomenon that was most definitely foreign (no pun intended!) to me when we lived in the States. It is that of fluctuating electrical current. Yes, we have electricity, but the strength of the current sways back and forth between good and barely functioning. Our fans may be on “high”, but there are many times that I can watch every blade as it lazily makes its way around and round. It’s like the electricity has a rhythm – up and down, up and down, up and down. Very difficult on appliances! We usually don’t notice this problem, but our air conditioners (which we keep in our rooms and run at night and naptimes), have a certain threshold of electricity that they need to pump out the cold air. Therefore, we have electricity, but if the current isn’t high enough, the AC units are pumping out warm, humid air. Sigh… You know it’s bad when the room with the AC on is hotter than the other 100-degree rooms!
Internet, which has been great up to this point, has decided to cop out on us, too! It’s been flashing on and off all day, not on long enough to check email, write email, or post a blog. I’m writing this in faith that it will come back on soon!
On the flip side of things, there is living water that is flowing freely in this desert! The living water that Jesus offers is never rationed! We find ourselves flowing from one event to another – this week, there is a Pastor’s Conference for all Vie Abondante pastors, we are hosting Pastor Ron Childs in our home, and Jonathan is coordinating a Youth Camp event that will be taking place this coming Friday-Sunday. The definition of youth is between the ages of 15-26, and we are expecting from 60-90 youth to be present. The Bible School has 3 weeks remaining before the end of the first semester. Jonathan has absolutely loved teaching these new believers “The Attributes of God”. Last week, we took part in the baptism of 9 of the Bible School students. It was incredible! As each student entered the water, his/her classmates sang and joyfully danced nearby. After the baptism, I turned to Jonathan and said, “THAT made every moment of difficulty worth it all.” Yes, we may be fighting heat, lack of physical comfort, and inconvenience, but, like the tribulation of childbirth, the results are worth it all, and the pain of labor is forgotten.
In eternity, we won’t remember the “3 E’s for Living Well in Niger”. We won’t ever wonder where the water has gone. We’ll be with Jesus, the source, and that is all that matters.
(This was written 10 days ago on May 9th. We had our first rain 3 days later on May 12th.)
