Our Return to Bagli

It has been six years since we left the village we had learned to love. Six years ago, with tears running down my face, I leaned out the window of a Land Rover and gave a gigantic two-handed wave to friends I didn't know if I'd ever see again. Then we were gone, John and I, after two years of living in the village of Bagli, northern Ghana. 

And we didn't see any of them again until this past week. In fact, we had lost phone contact as well so we had no way to inform them of our arrival. This time we weren't alone. In the backseat of our pickup were two children peering out the windows and asking questions like, "Mommy, why are you and daddy giving high-fives?" 

"Because we're getting close to the village we used to live in. This is a happy day for us." 

New trees were growing, blocking off the path we used to use to get to our former home in the teachers' quarters, a cement house the government had built to host teachers who weren't teaching in their home village. We detoured through the old market place, which, sadly, has been abandoned in the last few years and entirely discontinued. We drove past the pump where hours were spent hauling water. The women working there stopped and stared. They looked in the windows and suddenly recognition dawned as one woman said, "Mr. John." Her voice held disbelief and surprise. It broke the hush at the pump and they all started coming alive. 

"Woh! Mr. John! Madame Sayda!"

It was us. We were home. 

We parked the vehicle in front of our old rooms and walked to our neighbors' house. Their excitement and surprise mirrored the women's at the pump. Greetings were given. Everyone delighted in seeing our two children, Tyler especially. I had been pregnant with him when we left six years ago, so to them, he is a Bagli child. 

I cannot tell you how much fun it was to finally be back in our village. We greeted old friends, laughed at the surprise on their faces and joyed in the warm reception they gave us. We showed off our children and were amazed over theirs. The babies when we left were now school age children grinning shyly at us. One little tot had learned to walk in my room seven years ago. Now Sherifa was waist high and grinning at me. I knew she couldn't remember me, but apparently had been reminded of our friendship until it felt like we were still old friends. She stayed with me for most of the day. 

We took a gift to the chief's palace, accompanied by the school teachers as our mediators. It was here that I nearly cried in my gladness to finally be back in Bagli. The chief was the same as he always was, so glad to see us. We squatted on the floor in front of him to show due respect. Even Tyler lightly clapped his hands like we adults did, giving honor to the chief as he greeted us. Then, casting aside some of the formalities, the chief immediately launched into his favorite tale of when we lived among them:

IT WAS during rice harvest. John spent a lot of time out in our two-and-a-half acre field. I was walking through the village and came across the chief sitting by a friend, chatting. I greeted him politely and then he asked me something. I thought he wanted to know where John was, but then he ended with a sentence that included the phrase "rice field."

I knew enough Dagbanli to know that the word for a regular field was "pooni" but the word for a rice farm is "baani." The chief used "pooni" for the rice farm, possibly not expecting me to know "baani." But it confused me for a second. Was I missing something? Had he asked if John was eating rice in a farm? The chief clarified his question, definitely asking where John was, and in my relief to understand him I said, "Oh! 'Shikaffa baani!'" (Rice farm) For some reason my response struck the chief's funny bone. Maybe it was my tone or the emphasis I placed on "baani." Whatever it was, the chief never forgot that little conversation and would tell it to friends or remind me when he got half a chance.

Now as we sat under his royal pavilion after a six year absence, he related the story, laughing.  We chatted a bit, felt the warmth of his welcome, and promised to come back in the morning per his request. During our morning visit, the chief grinned at me and said, "Sayda! Where is Mr. John?" I knew what he was getting at and gave an exaggerated, "Shinkaffa baani!" as my response which delighted the chief as much as the original had. 

I wish I had a good picture of us with the chief, but this is the only one we have. We were all pleasant folks in real life; not sure why so glum on here.

Walking away from the chief's palace, I kept hearing our names. I'd turn to see little groups of shy teens looking at us, faces of women peering over their compound walls, or John's friends expressing their surprise at seeing us again. We heard our names and greetings of welcome at nearly every compound we passed. We sat in homes of our friends, me in the women's round rooms with thatched roofs and John with his friends under sitting places. We sat in our old compound and had handfuls of friends come to greet us there. We met up with children John taught in the school. Some of the six grade girls were married with a child. Others had learned English in our absence and were fluent enough in it for us to hold extended conversations with them for the first time ever. 

The chief gave us the largest yam I have ever seen in my life (so far it has provided three filling meals for 5 adults and 1-2 children and still a quarter of it is left!).

One dear friend of mine gave me a bag of black-eyed peas she had grown and her husband gave me some cash. We talked about the time she taught me how to make tizet, their staple food. Another friend gave me about a gallon of dried okra. 

Even the night sky felt like an old friend. In a place where there are no electric lights to run competition with the heavenly ones, the stars shine brilliantly and beautifully. We talked about sleeping outside under the stars like we used to when our rooms were much to hot to sleep indoors, but this is the cool season when it must get down to 70 at night. We were shivering and cold; not exactly conducive to sleeping outside. 

Bagli.  It was incredibly good to be 'home,' even for a too-short visit.

The Theft

We had a lovely Thanksgiving weekend with friends and spent the night at their house. Late the next evening, we arrived home. The lights in our neighborhood were off, which is not at all unusual, and our house and compound were completely dark. Our son was sleeping on my lap, so John told me to wait in the truck while he unlocked the house. I watched him open the door and disappear into the house. I waited, thinking he would be back with a flashlight to help me unload the children fend off our hyper dogs in the dark. But he didn't come back right away. I saw the beam of his flashlight glancing off odd places, like in the garage and off the wall in the back of the house and I thought, "Whatever is he doing? Opening all of the windows before bringing us inside?" Just when I gave up on him and decided to maneuver the sleepy children by myself, John showed up on the porch and said, "We've been robbed."

Suddenly staying in the truck felt like a really good option. "Is anyone still inside?" I asked, a cold knot tying my heart, stomach, and throat altogether. John wasn't completely sure, so he, bless him, went through the ransacked house searching for the perpetrator. Thankfully, no one was there.

We guided the children through the house, their sleepy brains much too tired to question the mess, and tucked them in bed where they innocently fell asleep almost immediately. Then together, John and I walked through each room all strewn with belongings and tried to assess the damages.

Aside from security features being compromised, our belongings weren't vandalized, only rooted through mercilessly and left lying where they had been tossed. Worse than the many things taken were the feelings of our home being invaded. I couldn't decide if I was grateful we were gone when it happened, or if I wished we hadn't left at all in case our presence would ward off the thieves. But it was done now and we are left to deal with the aftermath. Part of that included putting things back into drawers and cupboards and sorting through piles of papers that had been scrambled together in the office.

But more than that is dealing with the internal aftermath -the fear of thieves returning, the distrust of humanity, the fight to keep my heart at peace. Kind fellow-believers have sent us encouraging notes that have bolstered my courage. Many have been praying for us, giving me a remarkable level peace I never expected. I went to bed that first night and, to my amazement, slept soundly. And the second night. In the third night following the robbery the dogs woke me up with their barking and a chill ran through me. But the dogs quieted, God gave His peace through prayer and meditation, and again I slept solidly.

People have been asking me how we are doing. In some ways I almost dislike telling them how much peace I'm living in because I don't want them to take that good report as a reason to stop praying. I fully believe that the prayers of God's people are what have been keeping me at peace, the ventilator that keeps this girl alive. Good doctors don't remove the ventilator just because the patient's chest rises and falls, they wait until the patient as reached a certain level of health and are sure to breathe on their own. Prayers have been that ventilator to me.

I am grateful for the almost effortless level of peace I was able to stay in these past days. I sang and it wasn't forced. I slept at night. I stayed alone after dark and, though I heard more sounds and noises than normal, I wasn't much afraid.

But I'm overly sensitive to the unusual, as was demonstrated last night. It started when John was brushing his teeth and came out of the bathroom saying from around his toothbrush, "Did you hear that?" I had. A metallic noise in the kitchen. It was probably dishes that shifted in the dish rack and, just as a precaution, John took the large silver bowl that was balanced on top and set it aside lest it fall onto the tiled floor at midnight and give us both heart attacks. The bowl taken care of, we soon fell asleep.

At 2:20 in the morning, I heard two little beeps and woke up with a start. I knew John had set a motion detector several nights before and had commented that the battery was weak. This must be what sound it makes when the battery is low. Then cold fear gripped me. The wall hanging at the foot of our bed was illuminated. Even as I watched, the light moved off the wall hanging and the room grew dark. (Even as I write this now, goosebumps have broken out on my body.) My mouth went completely dry and I shook John awake. "I heard a couple of beeps and a light moved on this wall."

John leaped out of bed and I, so certain that the intruder was back, dashed into the bathroom to dress and prepare to meet him. John checked each room of the house but found no one. "I know I saw a light," I said confidently. The wall it shone on was untouchable by traffic on the road. Together we went on another hunt through the house but found nothing amiss.

I was confused. We went back to our room and, now fully awake, John asked what time it was. He punched the button on my cell phone and a low battery notice was the first thing we saw. Ah. That explained the beeps I heard. My phone battery was dying. I laid down on my pillow and John lit up the phone screen the second time. Yes, the picture on the wall was illuminated and the light would have changed when it went to half power before turning off. Nearly weak with relief and feeling bad to have gone on a spook hunt over my own phone's low battery light, I started half-laughing, half-crying as an outlet for my stress. It would be a while until sleep came.

Peace? Yes. Sometimes peace wraps itself effortlessly around you, bandaging raw nerve wounds with the prayers of God's people. Other times peace is a result of sheer choice to trust God and His word. We cling to verses like this one, shared via a text message by a friend:

"He will cover you with his feathers, and under his wings you will find refuge; his faithfulness will be your shield and rampart. You will not fear the terror of night. . ."

Psalm 91:4-5

And we choose to believe that all things really do work together for good to those who love God. In his book Touching the Invisible, Norman Grubb suggests that since this verse is true, even the bad things that happen to us are really good things to the eyes of faith. Somewhere, then, is a vein of good in this robbery. 

If you think about us in these days, pray that the peace of God which passes all understanding will keep our hearts and minds free from fear.