I am going to try to give you a look at what life is like here! I will do my best. Please feel free to ask any questions that you might have. You never really understand though until you have lived in it. I find myself almost daily being thankful for just the little things. It feels like you just get something fixed and something else breaks or needs repaired. These situations make you very thankful for the times that everything is fine! It also makes you consider how good life was in the US! I don’t understand why life can be such a struggle here, but you just learn to live with it!

The rains have come very heavy over the last week or so. It isn’t all day. Often, it is in the evening that it rains. Well, this helps us to see where we need to have repairs made on our roof! We will be needing to replace the whole roof at some point in the dry season.

This is what a normal roof looks like here in Africa. They call it zinc. The darker patches are the clear pieces that are put in so that you have a skylight in your house. This is very nice as it allows a lot of natural light to come in the house! The downside, these clear pieces are not as strong as the regular pieces. We had problems awhile back with people shooting rocks at bats that had decided to take up residence here on the campus. Some of the time, they would miss and the rocks would hit our roof putting holes into it.

Little things like water. In North America, it is so wonderful to turn on the tap and have running water, let alone, hot water from the tap. Here, we have a couple of tanks that sit out behind our house on a tower. We are excited when we find out that water is flowing into these tanks. We are super excited when both tanks are full as this tells us that we will not have to worry about water for a little while! Unfortunately, lately, we have been having issues with the water. For some reason, we are not getting it here on our compound. You think of ways to conserve on water. To do the laundry or wait to do the laundry in hopes that there will be water flowing soon J Rinsing the razor in a cup of water instead of having the shower on the entire time. Catching rain water to use to flush toilets and possibly bathe in….yes, the list does go on! We carry water from the bathtub to the kitchen when it is time to do the dishes (By the way, this is fresh water from the tap J WE ARE NOT bathing and then using the water for dishes…lol).

 

Here is our water tower looks like. The cement square is our lower water tank. The black tank is our upper tank. There are many plumbing issues here, so we are just thankful when we have water. You become very thankful to have your needs supplied. I keep holding on the verse that says, “My God will supply ALL of my needs.” Water is a need. We continue to trust Him to give us the water that we need, when it is needed.

  

Power- this too is a precious resource here! When the power goes out, we find ourselves really excited when it comes back on! I have been by myself outside on the porch to have it go black all of the sudden. Then, you get to try to find your way to the solar lights hanging on the porch charging! You have a child in the shower and yelling that they can’t see! I am very thankful that we have cool weather at night. This way, if the power does go, you aren’t sweating to death while you are trying to sleep. At these times, you are very careful how many times you open the fridge. During these instances, you realize just how much we rely on power. Yes, I would love a piece of toast- oh wait, no power. Being very inventive is very much a way of life here. You exercise your inventive genes just finding different ways to heat up leftovers! It could be much worse, so we will be thankful with the little power cuts that we do experience.

Food, this could be a long one J There is so much wonderful food here! Fresh fruits all of the time and beautiful vegetables. EVERYTHING is made from scratch though. You will NOT be able to just pop open your jar of spaghetti sauce! We make our own spaghetti sauce. It is wonderful. By making a very large batch, we are able to freeze some in quart size bags. I have to say, this fresh sauce has really spoiled us. The jars back home will never be the same. This is one thing that will be expensive to make back home, so we will enjoy it while we are here! Mango, pineapple, banana fruit salad is also something that each of us enjoys. Like I said, everything is made from scratch – even our peanut butter! J Anyone who knows the Kropf family knows that this is a major staple.

The process for making peanut butter is very time consuming:

First you sort the peanuts (ground nuts as they call them here)

Then, you pour boiling salt water over them and allow them to soak for about 15 minutes.

Once they have soaked, you must lay them out in the sun to dry. This takes about 45 minutes.

After they are dry, you then place them in a frying pan and constantly stir them for about 45 minutes.

You then let them cool. Next, you must take the skin off the peanuts. (This is a process that I have not mastered. They somehow toss the peanuts in the air, while not losing any, they land back in the bowl. I lost a bunch on the ground!) Finally, your peanuts are ready to be made into peanut butter by placing it in the blender! Nine cups of Peanuts makes about 1 ½ jars of peanutbutter.

We can get meat here, but it is very pricy. So, we do it sparingly. We have been trying to get used to eating more beans. There is a dish called ground nut stew. I think this is probably the family favorite for local dishes. It is rice with a sauce made from peanut butter, garlic, green spices, and tomato. Don’t judge it, you will have to try it first!

This pile of tomatoes costs about $9.00. With what you see here on the counter, we make about 15 quart size freezer bags of spaghetti sauce.

Oh! Look what I found!!!! Ummmm it was a nice touch from home, but it does not contain what you think it might. There is this shop called, Signs and Wonders. It is my African version of a US corner store. In this little shop, you can find oatmeal from Aldi, Cornflakes from Aldi (The local cornflakes are nasty). They sell children’s shoes from Once Upon a Child (Yes, the stickers are still on them). J Nail polish and some Suave hair products. This is the bag that they used to put our goods in!

The container of oatmeal costs $7.00. That box of cornflakes is about $5.00. As you can see, some things are very pricey while the fresh fruits and vegetables are pretty inexpensive!

This basket is full of mangos! For $8.00, we are able to purchase all of these mangos. We cut some to freeze, save some to eat now, and the rest we made mango sauce! YUM

Going out to town is always exciting! We always pray before we leave that God will give us traveling mercies without any accidents or being stopped by the police! God has been very good with this one! You just have to love the lawless traffic. It is crazy. I often get a headache and feel sick to my stomach traveling just in town from anxiety.  It is awful. I opt to stay home as much as possible. I am very thankful that Jeremy doesn’t mind going to town to run errands. Emily says that her and I will skip shopping here, but we will make up for it when we go to North America again! There are motorcycle taxis everywhere. They are often parked at main intersections. One of these intersections happens to be where we do most of our grocery shopping. I hate it. They often will yell, “White Mama, you come ride with me.” Just obnoxious things like that. So, you learn to just keep walking and act as though you don’t hear them. I never really thought of the struggles for the children. They often get stared at. Poor Emily, everyone wants to shake her hand. She has had people poke her, pull her hair, this makes her not very happy. I try to explain that they want to see that her hair is real, because any hair like that here is fake. These situations, make you ask God for special grace. It is so odd. We are used to going around North America. You don’t stare at people, or call people….everyone is just a person and we don’t really see a difference. Here you often here “White man, White man…” It gets old. I have sometimes just waved at children to see them smile. To be able to walk around and not feel like the sore thumb sticking out would be wonderful!

This is a view from our truck as we are driving down one of the main streets here in Bamenda. For a little bit of an idea of the traffic. Notice that there are about 4 lanes of traffic going here. This really is only a two lane road. When things get really backed up, they sometimes like to try and make it a 5 lane road. The motorcycles are everywhere. They often are running down the middle of the road and on the opposite side of you. You have to be so alert when driving here. 

Hope that you enjoyed that glimpse into a little bit of our lives here!