OUR FAMILY INCREASES..........

Before talking about the increase in our family, just a few more items about our first days at Parehon.   We felt totally at home there, and as we learned the language better, we felt like local Bobos.  And were treated as such.  The town was divided in two parts - one side of the road were the fetish people (our side) and the other side of the road were the Muslims.  The mosque was on the Muslim side and the church was in the mission yard.  The fetish people did their regular sacrifices and gatherings, and basically the Muslims all joined them for those as well.  We were always among those who heard all the village news - births and deaths and any other unusual happenings in our village.

You kids liked to watch the masked dancers (which you called the grassy men). They had costumes of grass died red or black. They wore large carved headdresses.  There was one fetish that the women were not allowed to look at, and no women came out of their houses when that fetish manifested itself. 

There was also another masked group of fetish dancers called the Boli.  They walked on stilts and were all dressed in white costumes and looked like ghosts.  These only came out when the moon was full and coincided with some other aspect of nature. Their dances were beautiful  and these dances were only performed at midnight and beyond.

We had been in Bobo one day and stayed until quite late at night. Of course, we had no town lights and we just lit some lamps and got everyone to bed since it was late. We had just fallen asleep when we were startled awake by shouts and gunfire!!  We could not imagine what was going on!  But when Dad went out, he encountered a military commander who apologized.  They had staked out our town for military manoeuvers and had not informed us, so we found ourselves in the middle of a mock war!  All in the life of living in a busy village! 

Even before I finished language study, I had begun to work on reading primers for our people. We set up an office and workshop in a new building Dad had had built in back of our house.  We had two offices there and a mimeographing room, plus an outside kitchen for heating bath water, etc.  You kids probably remember our printing Bobo materials there in our office - thousand of pages of reading primers, little reading booklets, S.S. lessons, and the first copies of NT books which we translated. You used to help us collate the pages in the evening.  In this way we produced thousands of pages of material for the Bobos to read in their own language.  More about translation later. 

We also had seminars for our pastors, training for our Sunday School teachers and short term schools to train the young and old from the several churches in our Santidougou district.  In addition to that we would pull our old house trailer out to a bush village and set up there for a week or ten days, teaching all day in the open or in a mud church.  We lived in the open and you girls loved it when we went to these villages.  You played with the kids all day and fell onto your mattresses at night exhausted.  You would get so dirty playing in the dust of the village, and we always made sure we gave you each a sponge bath at night before you slept. In the village of Leguema the water matter was hard - the women would carry buckets of water up a steep hill from the creek below to keep us supplied while we were there.  One night after dark, there was only half a bucket of clear water left and we had five of us to take sponge baths!  Elin was a little baby so we bathed you first.  Next came you, Debbi, and Cheryl followed you.  The bit of water that was left in the bucket was for Dad and me!  Did we ever appreciate our abundant Parehon water after that trip!

Which brings me back to our Santidougou bathroom, with the little basin set in an iron ring.  We were expecting you, Elin, and you would scarcely fit in that little basin for a daily bath.  So Dad and I decided to give ourselves as a family a special Christmas present - a real sink with faucets and all in our bathroom.  They had them in Perissac in Bobo and so we splurged and got ourselves a white sink and that is where I bathed you as a baby.   Later on Dad also put a black and green tiled cement tub in a corner of the bathroom, and we loved using that during cold season.  Again water was scarce and we all bathed one by one in the same water, adding another teakettle of hot water with each new bath!   Those were very basic days for us!!  But we were happy and never felt underprivileged. 

And now for our growing family.... we were excited about your coming birth, Elin. You were due towards the end of December, and you were the only one of all five children who surprised us by coming early!  Our field conference had been held in Bobo early in December and so we were there for that.  Conference had followed their usual procedure and assigned a mission nurse for "the confinement of the Pierce's" - how do you like that for a title??  Marian Pond, nurse in Sangha. Mali, was given to us as nurse to help with the baby and mother, and she stayed on in Bobo since our baby was to be born later on in December - and Sangha was a LONG ways from Bobo!  We went home to Santidougou and resumed our schedule there until the night of December 11th. I was uncomfortable when we went to bed, and it got worse to the point that we decided it was time to go to Bobo, as my contractions were getting stronger by midnight.  So we loaded the family in our VW and took off for town where we wakened my parents.  As the contractions got stronger, we alerted the midwife that we were going to the Bobo Hospital and thought the baby would be there by morning.

Just a word about our midwife, Madame Diallo.  She was a beautiful little round Fulani woman, trained in widwifery and the most pleasant person imaginable.  She was the head midwife at the hospital and I had seen her several times.  She was there at the hospital to meet us and we went directly into the delivery room.  I noticed the blood on the sheet from the last delivery, as I climbed up on the delivery table - but at that point, I could have cared less, I just wanted to have this baby!  And at five in the morning you gave a lusty cry, Elin, and you joined our family!  Dad and Grandma Kennedy were both there in the delivery room also. 

Dad went back to the Mission after I got settled into a bed in a hospital room. They had a little child's crib right beside me bed - and you were such a beautiful little baby girl, Elin.  Dad announced the news to Labari, the ancient yardman who was in charge of the Boble mission yard. Labari's first question was "What did she give us?" And Dad answered "a girl" ! He was not happy with that news and wanted to know when I was going to give birth to some children of worth??  He wanted a boy!  But we were very happy with our Elin Mae.  Elin, you were our smallest baby, and you were also the only one of all five of you that we gave the name of a friend.  Elin Mae Duncan was a friend from Nyack, an MK also (from Indonesia), and I loved her name so that is where your name came from.

We just liked the name Cheryl Lynn and so named our first girl that.  Debbi has my middle name, Lee. John has Dad's first name, Milton, as a middle name. And Mark has Dad's middle name, Amasa, as a middle name. 

I was in the hospital three or four days and had lots of visitors, and then we decided it was time for us to move back to Santidougou!  Marian Pond went with us and helped as she could, but she said she had never been with a family for a "confinement" as easy as ours!  Dad did most of the work and the baby did well and so did I. But we did enjoy her visit and remained friends for life.

And so our family grew as you joined us, Elin!  We had taken mostly barrels of household stuff with us as an outfit that first term. But we did have one crate and had put all of our baby furniture in that. So we had a crib, a canvas and aluminum baby carriage and a Baby Butler, which served as a high chair but had a play table around it also. We had used this furniture for our first two girls and it came in handy for you - and also for your brothers later on.  We had found an old rocking chair in our Santidougou house, left there by another missionary. Dad repaired and painted that, and I loved rocking you and your brothers in that old chair!

Speaking of furniture, our second term we took a very large outfit, several crates.  We took a couch and two matching chairs, plus good beds, dressers, etc.  Martin Sanou was our yardman, as you remember, and he was helping Dad uncrate the furniture when it arrived at our home in Santidougou.  When he saw a couch and two matching chairs, he was amazed and ran out to tell Yusufu, "The big chair gave birth and had twins!" We had taken a dining room set also, and all of that furniture served us through our eight terms in Burkina Faso! 

Our Life continues in Santidougou.................