• Basetown

            Life is starting to normalize for me in basetown as I’m growing accustomed to the chaos.  I just returned from a week-long trip to the mountains (more on that later) and I was glad to be able to come “home” to basetown.  Bargaining for items at the souq, washing clothes in a bucket, taking often cold showers, and walking everywhere I go is everyday life for me now.  But I love it! I’ve also been able to build many relationships with locals.  They love Americans and stumble through English (as I stumble through Arabic!).  Despite the language barrier, though, we have still been able to develop great friendships.  It is still disheartening for me, though, to hear of so many young men who have college degrees but can’t find jobs.  Here, you don’t get a job if you can’t pay a significant bribe and/or know someone.  It’s a different world over here.

• Berbers

The indigenous people we visited in the mountains are called the “Berbers”, from the word “barbarian”.  They have inhabited North Africa for thousands of years.  And it felt like I was stepping back in a time a thousand years when I visited them.  Since they are subsistence farmers their days are filled with shepherding sheep and goats, working in the fields and gardens, and everything else you have to do when you live off of the land! It was an amazing experience to say the least!  They are some of the most hospitable people I have ever met.  Often, they live to be very old; many over 100 years.  But reality is within earshot as every village has a “Mashtid” or a “small mosque.”  Ever since the spread of Islam over 1000 years ago, the Berbers have been Muslim.  While they live a life free of many of the stresses we know as Westerners, they don’t know the Father.  The Berber experience was amazing, definitely, but also very bittersweet.  One day, they will know. 

• Coming Back To Basetown

            Getting back from the mountains was a long trip.  I spent pretty much the entire day in cars, trains, and taxis and arrived back in town close to 10PM.  The trains are very hot so I was soaked in sweat from head to toe by the time I got off.  I actually had a seat for most of the trip, so that was a blessing!  Usually the trains are overcrowded so the last people on get to stand up in the aisle for hours. One thing did happen, though, that really stuck out to me.  I was sitting next to a young man who spoke absolutely no English so, after we exhausted my very limited reservoir of Arabic, we didn’t talk any more!  The sun was setting, though, as the train sped through the countryside.  I was looking at it thinking how beautiful it was and how glorious and indescribable our Father is.  I wondered if the young man next to me marveled at the sun as I did.  That’s when it happened.  He took out his cell phone and took a picture it.  It seems trivial now, but at that moment it hit me like a ton of bricks.  The heavens proclaim His handiwork.  I hope that, one day, the young man will look back at that picture and wonder if there is anything more.