Friday, November 23, 2007
Disturbances and Being Disturbed
Our Thanksgiving traditions here in Dakar are two. But maybe after yesterday, I’m personally adding a third.
Our first tradition is "Turkey Bowl" at Dakar Academy. School lets out early the day before Thanksgiving each year and the kids spend the afternoon playing American football. It’s the flag version, not full contact with pads and helmets and all. This is always a lot of fun, with the climax for the high-schoolers being a grudge match with a staff/parent team. (I wore my boots and nice pants to avoid the temptation of joining in at the last minute.)
Wednesday was no exception. But this year, besides separate HS boys and HS girls competitions, they added a Middle School and an Elementary School tournament. Jonathan moaned a couple of weeks back that the team they had assigned him simply had no chance. They were nice kids, but his buddies, the athletic ones, were all on the other three teams. Lo and behold, though, things didn’t turn out that way. Jonathan quarterbacked and led his boys and girls to victory!
This year’s emotional context was a bit different, however. Halfway through the afternoon we started hearing reports of rioting downtown. Ejected street vendors were taking out their anger with the government spontaneously. By the time we needed to leave school, disturbances were reported in a section of the city we needed to get through or around (Grand Yoff, Castor). In the end, we left Jonathan with the Mulays for the night and Jane and I drove the long way around. We saw lots of riot police as we inched in heavy traffic around the north side of Grand Yoff. They seemed to be preparing for things to come their way and we were glad that we only saw crowds suddenly scattering through our back windows as we left that zone. It took us a while to get home after that, but we saw nothing more than lots of others folks in cars finding ways to stay out of the city, too.
The second Thanksgiving tradition is a gathering of the UWM team and friends for a pitch-in (potluck) feast on Thursday afternoon. This year we filled the main dining hall / conference room at the Phare. The food was great and the sharing afterwards was encouraging. Two of our couples are celebrating 25 years together this year. Others have come through tough years, with losses of parents or other struggles. Some of our teens are getting close to heading off to the US for college. It was an important time of reflection and remembering the good life that God has given us.
The third repeating Thanksgiving event is not one I really want to make a tradition. I was robbed yesterday. This brought back memories of a November several years ago, driving home from the holiday gathering, that year at DA, when I had the glasses stolen off my face. Yesterday, as we loaded the car in the street with pies and such, I foolishly left it unguarded for a few minutes. Two young men got in and stole my old Timken soft-sided briefcase from the back seat. I realized immediately what was happening through the open front door and dashed after them. But I’m not young anymore. After a couple of blocks, the kid with the case jumped a wall and I gave up. I did drive around the neighborhood for a while looking for them, but it was hopeless.
All day I kept going over the scenes in my head. Even this morning, the next day, I’m still pretty restless with it. I’m afraid I wasn’t much company at the big meal and I’m not sure how much I’ll get done productively today...
As far as I can tell, they only got our digital camera (with Jonnie’s football shots for this blog), $150 in local cash on its way to the mission safe, and a 2 GB memory stick (a recent gift from Anna and Frankie). Worst of all, all of my notes as secretary from two days of team strategic planning for the year were in that sack. That is the worst. And I hope there wasn’t something else I’ve forgotten that was in there.
These losses are nothing catastrophic. I wasn’t attacked. I didn’t lose anything irreplaceable. But if you have ever been robbed, you know how awful this feels.
