Our trip to the village part I

Following our trip to a few villages this last weekend, I thought that I would write about our experiences here rather then take up a whole newsletter. I am VERY glad that we asked you to be praying for us, because as it turned out, we would need your prayers more then we ever imagined, especially the first day of our trip.

A little background information on Islam here in Senegal will help you to understand some of what I am going to tell you. Here in Senegal there are several sects of Islam and the biggest and strongest is called the Mouride brotherhood. The Mourides started from their founder who was persecuted by the French for his work in liberating Senegal from the French government, and he was banished to the southern region of Senegal, which back then was VERY under developed with swamps and few people. He was from a town called Touba, and he is buried there, and the Mourides have a big pilgrimage their every year on his birthday (most will say that if you go to Touba enough, you do not have to go to Mecca). They are very syncretized with traditional African Religion that listens more to their religious leaders then to traditional Islam and are very big into charms, religious incantations for protection and worshiping of their dead religious leaders. Theirs is a dark religion full of fear of the spirits, while trying to control those spirits for their own use. They also are less open to toubabs (white people) and their religion then other sects here in Senegal.

My friend A, whose village we went to first, is not only part of this sect, but his whole village, of @ 1000 people, is a Mouride village. I knew he was, and in spite of that, we have formed a sort of friendship and he has been a big help during our time here to become familiar with the culture of Senegal. What I was unaware of was that the whole village was Mouride. As we entered into the village, the first sign that things were going to be different was that almost nobody came out to greet us, even in the family compound. This is NOT normal anywhere in Africa!! Normally white people are followed by a group of children and when you get out of the car you are surrounded by them, followed by the adults that you are their to visit and their friends and family. Instead we had family members keeping their distance, other than A’s mother and a few others. His father did come to greet us, but did not stay around long, nor was he around almost the whole time we were there, instead he laid on a mat right outside the compound.

This was the way that the rest of the visit would go. There were even times that my friend left us alone while he visited briefly with a few friends or his religious teacher. While normally, children will almost fall over themselves to play with William and Mariama; his main playmates the whole time were the chickens and the goats that he chased after. There was one boy who played with him after we pulled out his soccer ball, but that lasted all of about 20 minutes, and then William was seen kicking the ball by himself. When we went to visit A’s friends, we always had to pass by and greet his religious leader, where you could cut the spiritual darkness with a knife. That night, we did not sleep well due to the spiritual activity. Actually, after fighting with sleep for about 5 hours, I asked God to have our prayer warriors praying for us and covering us with prayer, only then did we get any rest that night. So thank you for the coverage and protection.

That next day we arraigned to meet our friends in the next place we were going to a day early. The whole time we were there, both kids were fussy and did not sleep well, not even a good nap. We were only about 2 minutes out of the village before Mariama fell asleep and slept for over and hour, William lasted about 30 minutes before sleeping for about an hour. We later realized that this village is about 1 hour west of the town of Touba. The spiritual arena in this whole area is VERY active and very dark. This was one of the darkest places I have ever been to.

Thank you for your coverage, and if you were one of the ones that God impressed to pray for us on Thursday evening, especially from about 9pm central time on, I would be interested in knowing that. Thank you for your prayers. To see how the rest of our trip went, see part II below.