Here's a video of a motorcycle taxi ride I took on the streets of Bo:
http://youtu.be/IHkfDiuzW0g
You asked me what the men of Salone are like. Yikes, don't get me talking about the men of Salone. Some are quite nice and honorable, hard-working men. Others, not so much. Most provide for their families by strict manual labor. The construction industry is big here, as is farming, and anything related to government, police or military. If you're a really exciting pastor, you can make bank here, but you're not usually married. You just have concubines. Oh the irony. And of course, you can be one of the infamous Ocada men, or in other words, motorcycle taxis. That pretty much sums up most of the work that men do here, if they do any at all. Work is hard to come by. The women work quite a lot, mostly in producing and selling something, like mangoes, plantain, ground nut, sugar, etc. As far as the diamond industry goes, there's a pretty big influence here. China has tons of mineral rights here, so they're sucking money out of this country like crazy. There are lots of mining villages too, but the taskmasters have pretty rigid control on the diamonds that come out of the ground. Some miners will eat diamonds that they find, and dig through their excrement later to find it. The good ol' "toilet diamond" as they call it here.
You also asked about seeing other Americans. Well, as far as other Americans go, I like it better when they're not around. The American elders are just fine, but we run into a heckuvalotta Baptist preachers whose job in Salone is to harangue us and stifle our "lies". In fact, just today one was tearing into a group of eight of us Elders today. It was interesting, because it makes one wonder how someone with such a strong spirit of contention could even dream of living with God. His closing words were "enjoy life while you can, because it's not getting any better for you from here." We laughed. Not much you can say to someone like that. Other than that, whites are few and far between, and they're not all that pleasant to talk to. I'd rather talk to the Zimbabwean Elders here, or just anyone else at all. Americans are so stinkin' rude.
You also mentioned the violence in the Ivory Coast as of late. That sort of thing is worlds away for us people. If it's in another country from us, it's very far away. Most of these people can only ever dream of leaving this country, and if something bad does in fact happen here, we the Elders are very well loved by everyone here.
This Saturday we had a baptism. it was really nice, but kind of a downer for Elder Lancaster and I. the baptism itself was great, but we found out from Festus that Sylvia, the mother of that family, had told him that she had no intentions of being baptized. Ouch. She was soooo strong before. What happened?? That baptism was for her and two of her kids. The kids came, but she didn't. She lied to us and said her man had come and forbade her from going. Festus told us that it was a lie, because the man hadn't shown up there at all. We're pretty heart-broken, and don't really know what to do. Elder Lancaster and I are just praying to know what to do next. It was just a big blow to us, considering how excited we were for her, and how long we worked to prepare her. It was quite a shock.
Unfortunately for us, the satellite at our district center was only just installed, so it wasn't ready for use this past weekend for General Conference. I really wish to hear about the talks soon. The Liahona magazine shouldn't take too horribly long to get here. There sure was much emphasis on marriage in those conference talks. I keep thinking Hil will be married long before I get home. She's more than welcome to, I just need to see pictures from the wedding. ;-)
Other than that, not much to report. It was a pretty tough week. Lots of bounces, and lots of trying to find new people. Most of our old investigators are not progressing, so we're white washing things a little. On the plus side, we're getting a couple chickens today that we'll eat on Wednesday. one of them will be made into ground nut stew, and the other I'll make into fried chicken. I'm pretty excited for that.
Alrighty, time to jet.
Love,
Elder Vaughan
No comments:
Post a Comment