During those years we lived in the city, it was important we live in close proximity to Maranathe Institute since I was a professor there; Dad also taught a couple classes, and Dad was involve in constructing many of the Institute buildings. Because we lived in rented houses, we could never keep the same house more than a term, so we ended up living in three houses in the neighborhood of Maranatha.
There was one house right on the campus, and that was so handy for work for both of us - no driving. Of course, we always had an abundance of students in our homes when we lived near the Institute. We also helped to entertain visiting professors and visitors. It was in this home that we had the privilege of entertaining the Ivory Coast Alliance Church president, Joseph Koffi and his wife. They came for a few days and ended up staying longer as Pastor Koffi got very sick with a flu. We had a number of Ivoirien students at the school in those days, and our house became a Baoulé village, as they paraded in and out with food for their Papa and to pray for him. etc.
We remember one other event when we lived in that house - Dad especially remembers it. That was also the year I decided to teach an English class in a private/govenment school in town. That was an interesting experience. It was also the year of the big red dust storm - we never saw anything else like it in all our years in Africa and neither had the local population. Many people were frightened! It started during the night and I drove through the red dust down to my English class the next morning, only to find no one else was there that day. It was really eerie! The next day I was scheduled to drive over to Baramba in Mali to help train Malien pastors in TEE. Neysa Costa used to work with me in TEE and so she went with me. Everything was still red dust - you could only see a few feet ahead of you on the road. We had AC in the car so were able to keep the car closed up. It was really dangerous driving - everyone had their lights on and drove slowly. It left as quickly as it came, and no one really had any idea what it was except for a sandstorm which blew down from the Sahara. So our return trip - after several days of teaching in Mali - was normal.
But poor Dad was left with the house to cope with. That house on the campus had shutters, no glass windows and so all that fine red dust filtered through the house and settled on the floors and walls and furniture. Dad and Yusufu decided the only thing to do was to take every stick of furniture our of the house, turn a hose on inside and wash the ceilings and walls, windows, everything. Then wipe each piece of furniture and nicknachs and books, etc, wash curtains and put everything back in the house again. I came home to a very clean house and an exhausted Dad and Yusufu. We never ever saw a dust storm like that again!
Another term we lived about two blocks above Maranatha, and that was a roomy home, with a nice walled in yard. That was where we had our family reunion - I think it was at Christmas time that year. And it was Jennie's first visit to Bobo. She was such a sport to participate in everything - meeting all our friends and sometimes eating strange things and travelling crowded in our van. That was a fun time together and I always associate that time with that particular house. The Peter Colmans lived next door to us.
It was while we lived in that house that I also got hepatitus. I didn't feel well, but kept pushing myself in teaching and translation until I could not go any longer. The nurses diagnosed my illness as hepatitis and that is what it was! I was the most awful greenish yellow color - Steve said I looked like a horror movie! When Dad took me for blood work and they checked it, the male nurse came out wondering who this lady was, as my counts were so high. At first they had thought I had some other liver disease and Ruthie A. had packed a suitcase for me so I would be ready to be flown back to the States for treatment - which I certainly did NOT want! But the diagosis was a very bad case of hepatits and the cure was seven weeks lying down in bed flat, along with some medications. I obeyed the nurses and doctor and stayed down for seven weeks. I had every student from Maranatha and all our Bobo pastors visiting me and praying for me in several languages and bringing baskets of leaves from trees in the bush which the Africans boiled up and used for curing liver diseases. And I did get better and was soon back to a full schedule teaching. Not a fun time.
The last term on the field, living in Bobo, we lived in a comfortable home just a block from Maranatha, toward town. That house had a deep covered front porch which was great for entertaining people. During the African Cup games we took our TV out on the porch and had a crowd of students there, cheering for the teams as they watched! It had a couple bathrooms - handy for having company. That was the busiest term of all for me as we were working on the whole Bible in Bobo. Dad had the van for work in the bush and elsewhere and I had a nice little passenger car which I drove to the translation office every day to work with our two Bobo translators. (More about translation later.) Dad also had an orange Yamaha dame which he loved for running around town visiting people.
One Sunday morning he had gone to the bush for the day and I had been at church at Ouézzinville-Sud, and when I came home I found that someone had forced the door of the outbuilding and stolen the Yamaha. We never did find that bike, which Dad enjoyed so much. Lots of people suspected Daouda - but who knows. We had many thefts of our personal property during our years in Africa, which taught us to hold our property lightly - people are always more important than things! Jetty and Peggy wanted to replace the Yamaha for Dad but he thought it was too much money for such a short time, so they got him a smaller bike which he had to use. Jetty and Peggy were (and are!) such dear friends and lived not far from us in Bobo.
The other house we lived in in Burkina was a big house up in Ouagadougou, but I will write more on our year of living and ministry there at a later date. Wherever we lived, we moved our belongings with us, so we could have a new house looking like home again in a day. Now we have lived in one house for eleven years - the longest we ever lived anywhere with the exception of Santidougou.
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