"For one human being to love another: that is perhaps the most difficult out of all our tasks, the ultimate, the last test and proof, the work for which all other work is but preparation." -Rilke
Juliana planting black eyed pea beans early one lovely July morning. Julia taught me how to plant the Jola way. You walk barefoot on the raised bed and every half step you kick in a hole with your heel. Then you drop in 2 or 3 seeds. Then you cover the hole with soil using your feet. Then you step over the planted seeds and continue along the raised bed. Simple, elegant, rootsy, fun. Whilst I am in the promised land, my wife Juliana Badjie Wilson and step daughter Marie Diminga Wilson are currently living with friends, right next door to Juliana's family compound in the coastal urban/suburb touristy area of Kololi, far from the village/town of Bamidor/Sanyang where we were staying the last time i published a blog post.
After the YWAM Discipleship Training School ended in June (see previous blog post), a friend gave us a piece of land in Sanyang to live on and farm. But we never lived there. We lived nearby and just farmed it. We moved to Kololi in September because Juliana and Marie wanted to be near their family while i was overseas. It was sad to leave the beautiful land and village life because we had just started an embryonic ministry there.
Here are photos of the land and people in the Sanyang area, and also of the land and people in the Kololi area. My next blog post will be of the USA. These photos are not in chronological order. Enjoy.
Fantastic. Isn't the earth beautiful? I'm not overly sentimental. It's just that God is a facking brilliant artist.
This is our neighbor Salimata who lived next door to us in the village of Bamindor in the greater Sanyang area. Her husband Sulymon worked in the local bakery making a bread called "Tapalapa." Tapalapa is a Portuguese word for the Berkeley word "Baguette."Salimata is from Guinea Conakry and speaks only Fula (Fulani, Fulaba, Fulbay, Pular, Twokalor). One of the largest ethnic groups in West Africa, the Fula trace their ancestry across Africa to Ethiopia and all the way to Israel from King Solomon.
Juliana does not speak Fula, but Salimata and Julia just spoke their respective languages and got on famously. The landlady on the other side of us spoke only Mandinka, another language Julia does not speak. The three of them just laughed and talked together all day anyway.
Our veranda with friends and neighbors.
Fresh palm oil stew a-cookin' in the pot on the stove top. In this case the stove top is a charcoal burner. 
A twenty minute walk on dirt paths from our house saw us reach the promised farmland. When we first arrived we scratched our heads. Then we were led to pray a blessing over the territory, clean up the garbage from the previous tenants, fell a dead tree, move some old logs out of the way, chop away some weedy bushes, plow the grass under to make raised beds, and plant crops, baby, plant crops.And pray some more.
"And I established My covenant with them, to give them the land...the land of their sojournings...And I will take you to Myself as My people...And I will bring you to the land which I swore to give to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob; and I will give it you you as a possession. I am Jehovah."
-From Exodus 6:4, 6:7, & 6:8
The house on the left is made of cement blocks with a tin roof. The house on the right is made from mud blocks with a palm leaf roof. No running water. The toilet is a hole in the ground on the other side of the property. Showers are taken using a bucket of water and a large cup in a enclosed and tiled area in back of the cement block house. The water runs through a pipe into a sort of septic tank called a "sokaway". The previous tenant was using electricity in the house powered by a gas generator and a battery. The gas generator also powered the pump motor for the bore hole which sucks fresh water from deep underground. If the pump breaks down you have to pull water from the well.
Sanyang is a fishing village. The beach is 5 kilometers from the property, about a one hour walk on a dirt road. The white sand beach is a nice long 10 kilometer crescent shape. The fishing boats use only a small part of the beach and there are a couple of tourist bars and restaurants. The rest is just empty quiet Atlantic coast beach. The surf and the water temperature are mild and pleasant, but it isn't an equatorial Indonesian style tropical paradise with crystal clear bays, coral reefs, turquoise water and bathtub temperatures. That would be nice.
After we felled the dead palm tree a wonderfully beautiful beetle came crawling out of the upper reaches of the long trunk. It must have been in shock from the the tree slamming into the earth. This huge beetle was the length of your middle finger. The picture doesn't do justice to the brilliant shiny black body.
Some local friends helped us to make a plan of action. As you can see, the fence is history. The little mud bricks in the foreground were left in the rain too long. That's a neighbors mud brick house in the background. In this picture it's still standing. It wouldn't stand for long in this the rainiest rainy season in recent memory... 
As you can see, the neighbors brand new house is falling down. The roof was poorly constructed and leaked. The hard dry mud bricks got soaked and turned to soft wet bricks. Then they just kinda went sploosh and collapsed. Amazing, because the land owner who hired the roof builders is a 3rd generation local who should have known better than to hire incompetent roof builders. That's corn growing in the field. 
This is the ceiling/roof of the little mud brick house on the land. It's made from palm tree beams and a palm leaf roof. When made well it's a perfect local village solution. The raised ceiling and airy leaves keep the house cool during even the blazing heat of high noon. The sound of the rain on the leafy roof is soft and soothing. The sound of the rain on a now-in-fashion tin roof is like a military invasion of helicopter gunships. Lastly, after a rain, the smell in the house is fresh and grassy, not stifling and musty like in a cement brick house with a tin roof.The palm leaves last about two years, but the leaves can be harvested in the bush for free and it's just good hard human labor to get the job done. Almost no tools needed. The leaves are tied together and onto the beams with plant sinew. Wonderful local technology. It looks nice too. Pleasing to all the senses.
This, my friends, is a baby banana plant. It is growing inside the mud house with hardly any sunshine. 
Good fences make good neighbors. The neighbors on the left have a ripe and ready to harvest field of Cassava plants. Cassava makes the famous West African dish "Foofoo". Foofoo is a creamy starchy tangy gooey cheesy food perfect with spicy palm oil vegetable and fish stew. The neighbors on the right have another field of black eyed peas that have just sprouted.Before the U.S.A war in Iraq started i asked my Mexican friend if Mexico had weapons of mass destruction. He paused, and said "Yeah. Beans." Beans beans the musical fruit. The more you eat the more you toot.
The land before we started clearing it for planting. That's the little mud brick house and the long form of the dead palm tree we felled. The big bushy tree in the middle-right is a lovely native tree, one of the few remaining from centuries of farming. All the surrounding neighbors are members of one Jola family. A friend of ours in that same family was the original owner of the land. He gave it to our friend Dave, who then gave it to us to use.Notice the many little banana plants dispersed in the field. About 50 young ones dot the land. With proper fertilization and watering they could produce large bunches of sweet organic bananas next year. Thankfully on the property there is a deep bore hole pulling up fresh ground water to irrigate the crops in the dry season.
The little green land with our little brother Assan.
This is the day we walked through the village to the land to start clearing and plowing. These are our friends Peter and Abraham. 
On the way we got inspired by a poetically plowed plantation. "There is as much dignity in tilling a field as in writing a poem."
-Booker T. Washington
"Sir, I admit your gen'ral Rule That every Poet is a Fool: But you yourself may serve to show it, That every Fool is not a Poet."
-Alexander Pope
"My poems are hymns of praise to the glory of life."
-Edith Sitwell
"Each man carries within him the soul of a poet who died young."
-Charles-Augustin Sainte-Beuve
"A work of art is good if it has sprung from necessity."
-Ranier Maria Rilke
"Poets utter great and wise things which they do not themselves understand."
-Plato
Abraham was enjoying his stroll through the bush as we approached the property. Or at least i was.
When we arrived to clear bushes and clean up, the property was overflowing with luscious green growth.
Finally we started plowing. Peter and Abraham doing it Balanta people style.
First they dig up one row of grass and turn it over. Then they go back and dig up the remaining row of grass and turn it over, creating raised beds of fresh grass covered in soil, with trenches in between. The instantly composted grass decays as the rainy season progresses, providing nutrition for the growing crops. The grass also sprouts back up as a weed, which means at least one good weeding is necessary per growing season. 
Here is the native tree shown earlier. Finished plowed rows in the foreground and half finished plowed rows in the background. 
One third of the land fully plowed and ready for planting.
Aint it all so purty? 
Heading home after a hard days work.
Julia planting.
The queen in her territory.
Juliana and I planted half the first field with beans and finished it with potatoes. These are potato vines. You dig a thin trench on top of the raised bed and lay the root vine down inside it. Then you gently cover up the vine. The vine sprouts buds which grow into spuds.
My brilliant friend the artist Hezekiah says he wants to paint this picture. Sez it reminds him of Adam and Eve.
"To Adam he said,
Because you listened to your wife and ate from the tree about which I commanded you,
'You must not eat of it,'
Cursed is the ground because of you;
through painful toil you will eat of it all the days of your life.
It will produce thorns and thistles for you,
and you will eat the plants of the field.
By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food,
until you return to the ground,
since from it you were taken;
for dust you are and to dust you will return."
-Genesis 17-19
My brilliant friend the artist Hezekiah says he wants to paint this picture. Sez it reminds him of Adam and Eve.
"To Adam he said,
Because you listened to your wife and ate from the tree about which I commanded you,
'You must not eat of it,'
Cursed is the ground because of you;
through painful toil you will eat of it all the days of your life.
It will produce thorns and thistles for you,
and you will eat the plants of the field.
By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food,
until you return to the ground,
since from it you were taken;
for dust you are and to dust you will return."
-Genesis 17-19
After a two months hiatus from planting beans and potatoes on the land in Sanyang i went back for a visit in September. After two months of rain everything was very green. Overgrown. Lush.This is how it should be. Throw some seeds in the ground, let it rain, and then harvest food. Why do we have to work so hard???? It wasn't meant to be like this. God says in heaven we don't have to pay rent. So if we have to pay rent here on earth it ain't heaven. And if it ain't heaven it must be...
This picture was taken from the same spot as the very first picture in this blog post.
Banana trees.
Here are our friends Mariama, Marie and Saba carrying bundles of freshly washed clothes. Marie is the wife of Peter who plowed our land. The three of them make a living washing clothes by hand. Hard labor for low pay. Marie has her newborn baby firmly tucked away in the small of her back. Now that is what i call feminine STYLE. Hands free. Hard to push a stroller on mud paths anyway. Still, it is truly a mystery to me why western women refuse the obvious beauty of this style and simply will not carry their babies this way.
Back in suburbia. This is the road in front of Dave and Fiona's house in Kerr Serigne close to Kololi. Only the main highways are paved. This picture is typical of the lakes which form in the sandy mud roads during the rainy season, especially this the rainiest of rainy seasons.
Our friend Fiona on the far left with her daughter Elizabeth second from the right. That's our daughter Marie second from the left, and on the far right our friend Save with her baby Freddy in Elizabeth's lap.
My brother-in-law Nico took these next three photos of the four year anniversary of St. Anthony's Catholic Church in Kololi. St. Anthony's is where Juliana and I had our first date on a Sunday morning last May. She was singing in the choir and then led the children's youth group after the service, all while dressed in a gorgeous flowing purple African dress. A singer and a youth leader. I was pretty much smitten on the spot. I asked her if she knew any eligible bachelorettes and she said "you're looking at her."
"Hallelujah!Praise God in His sanctuary;
Praise Him in the expanse that manifests His power.
Praise Him for His mighty acts;
Praise Him according to His vast greatness.
Praise Him with the blast of the trumpet;
Praise Him with the harp and lyre;
Praise Him with the tambourine and with dancing;
Praise Him with the stringed instruments and the pipe.
Praise Him with the loud cymbals;
Praise Him with the loud clanging cymbals.
Let everything that has breath praise Jehovah.
Hallelujah!"
-Psalm 150
"...the women came out of all the towns of Israel singing and dancing...with tambourines and joyful songs and stringed instruments..."-From First Samuel 18:6
Back in Kololi with the kids bible study pool party club. As Bob Marley once said..."Racial prejudice? How could i hava racial prejudice? My mudda was a black and my fadda was a white. Dem call me haff caste or what-evah..."
The sky above West Africa.
Kololi beach.
I took Emmanuel, Marie and Alex to the beach.
Self portrait at the beach.
Kololi beach.
The shadow of the kids on the beach sand.
Some of the children in the Badjie compound.
The Madonna and the baby Jesus. That's Emmanuel to the left.
Multiple choice question. This picture is:A. Wall street corporate bankers.
B. The pig pen in the Badjie compound.
Another multiple choice question. This picture is:A. What i used to say in this space.
B. Mango's in the Badjie compound.
Tropical flower.
Tropical plant.
My tailor Abdul and me. Abdul had a nice thriving business in Sierra Leone before he had to flee the exquisitely infamous war there.I brought about 40 yards of European hemp fabric from California when i very first came to Africa last year. I hired Abdul to make clothes with it. This is the pattern for a pair of baggy casual trousers. I am wearing a pair in this picture, along with a traditional Fula cotton shirt.
I still dream of Zax Hemp Clothes and Food company.
Me and my step daughter Marie.
The intricately braided hair of Marie.
Marie and her cousins Alex (left) and Isatou on the first day of classes at St. Teresa's Catholic primary school in the middle of a busy urban area. Note the giant HUGE baobab tree in the background. It must be hundreds of years old.
Pa Badjie with his young donkey jockey.
Juliana with her elders.
Jus sayin'Praise God.
Amen.
