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Published: January 1st 2009
Hyena
Abuko Animal Reserve - we got to witness a very serious feeding frenzy!Hello Friends and Family,
It’s not like me to wait until the last minute to put together a year-end summary of events; nor is it like me to sit down and be at a complete loss for what to say. I wasn’t even motivated and was going to just shut down the computer and take a nap when I saw Bridget’s request for my famous family update on FB! The year has been an incredible blur and I find myself referring to my travel calendar to assist me in remembering where we were and what we did this year! Craziness, I know!
Work has been challenging to say the least; quite a bit of travel and a lot of proposals. World Vision participated in two major HIV conferences this year, which also meant that I wrote and edited a lot of abstracts! Happily, I had some degree of success and was able to publish and present several.
I started out the year with a trip inside Senegal to help set up a pilot program for integrating ‘Pregnancy Spacing’ into existing health services, followed by trips to Johannesburg and Tanzania. It was my first time in Tanzania and the
Abuko Animal Reserve
Hard to believe that cute face can harbor such force and bad attitude! scenery was stunning. Unfortunately, I did not get out of the hotel much but we were right on the ocean so I didn’t have to go far to feel like a real tourist. I got in a quick trip to Uganda, but again, I didn’t get far from the hotel, my most exciting discovery was that they have teal green toilet paper there! How can you not be happy if you have teal green toilet paper! (That is my favorite color in case you can’t figure that out - and for many spots in Africa having toilet paper is a special treat as well!)
Kaijah seemed to suffer a short but disturbing ‘spiritual crisis’ at the start of the year, so in March I took her on a ‘spiritual retreat’. The idea was to just spend time praying with her and studying a bit. It seemed like a good idea and we were both very excited…until she found a stray dog wandering around the beach house and then Jesus and I both got bumped off the agenda! She spent the two days loving on that mess of a dog, sneaking food to it and chasing it down the beach.
Keegs and Keba
He was getting a bit of help on the long hike On the upside, she didn’t seem to have many questions or doubts when we got back and has seemed fairly secure in her faith conversations since then so who knows what happened; I usually get my ‘spiritual enlightenments’ from bizarre places as well so who am I to judge what a mangy stray can do for an 8 year old’s faith?
I had a lovely trip to Nouakchott, Mauritania in March. I found it so similar to Niger; I guess that is why I felt right at home. The WV National director is a German lady married to a Mauritanian. Her hospitality was fantastic and I spent some time in her home, eating traditionally on mats, and with my hands, in addition to enjoying her four month old baby! It made me really miss not having babies anymore!
In April I went to Niger to conduct training with Imams and Pastors for HIV&AIDS. It was a truly fantastic experience. We had some concerns about a ‘mixed’ training, but it was super! We spend so much time focusing on how we are different and not enough on how we are the same! Friends and relatives brought me tuwo just
Blister Control!
No Walgreen's or CVS! about every day at lunch and dinner. I got my fill of kosai, waina, tuwo and kopto and I was able to visit with Gaston. I was not able to make it out to Zinder on that trip, but after the Oct 2007 experience, I wasn’t all that eager to hit the road again! I hear now that the road construction is completed and the highway from Niamey to Zinder is nice - I’ll believe it when I see it!
I was able to get in a short stint in Washington DC in May and hook up with an old university chum and his wife; that was fantastic! The highlight of the trip…well, and Target of course! I came home with my absolute limit in luggage! You would have thought I’d never seen a store before the way I carried on!
I had several trips to Ghana, but never made it far out of Accra. That is one of the challenges to higher level international work; you rarely make it out of the capital cities and into the field. I really miss that! I had two canceled trips to Sierra Leone and one to Ethiopia, but the cancellations
Leia got a surprise
I'm not sure what she had, but he wanted it! were welcome as so much travel can be very tough on family life!
In July, my ‘baby’, Leila turned five! Where does the time go? My brother and his family came to visit us and we spent a week in Gambia and a week doing the tourist thing in Senegal. We had some great adventures! In Gambia we visited the Abuko Animal Reserve, The Bijilo Forest Park, went on a Camel Safari, visited the Tanji Fishing Village, and The Crocodile Pool. In Senegal, we went to Bandia Reserve, The Acrobaobab Adventure, Lac Rose, Goree Island, The Village de Tortues (Tortoise Rehabilitation Center), and Ngor Island. You will find some photos of that trip on inside this blog entry and other photos will follow over the next few days.
At the beginning of August, I went to the International AIDS Conference in Mexico City. I thought I should profit from the experience and take a trip to Taxco. It is where my father grew up. I’ve never been to Mexico before (except the border markets), so Mexico City was a very pleasant surprise! It is filled with historical and architecturally ornate buildings; I very much enjoyed my visit. Taxco
Banjul
A beautiful city is a quaint little town (city?) about 2 hours’ drive from Mexico City. I can image it being a fantastic place to grow up; although flooded with tourists nowadays. I did a tour of the silver mines; which made me miss my grandfather, who was a miner from Timmins, Ontario and whose job took him to Taxco when my dad was six. It reminded me of Spain with the little cobblestone roads, brightly painted buildings, tiles, street vendors and window boxes! Of course, I had to indulge my jewelry weakness and pick of a few special mementos! I’ll put photos and commentaries from that trip up as well.
In September I was on my way to the airport to conduct training in Haiti, and was told minutes before heading to the airport that no flights were landing or leaving Port-au-Prince. The hurricane was full-on. Very sad, what happened; poor country…some places (and people) just can’t seem to get a break! That trip was rescheduled several times, but it looks like I’ll head to Haiti mid Jan 2009.
My travel schedule has been light for the last quarter of 2008; thanks in part to very bad weather, budget cuts
due to the world financial crisis, and my change in position. As of October 1st, I have officially become the Africa Region Maternal and Child Health Advisor
. The job came with the verbal promise of relocation to Niamey, Niger; but that part has yet to materialize. It seems to be stuck in negotiation as WV is undergoing some restructuring and of course, feeling the economic crunch, as the organization is supported largely by individual monthly donations.
I turned 41 in November. I think I’m still in denial. We had a nice family dinner and I told my husband I want to spend an ungodly amount of money on a sewing machine in the near future, so we could count that as a gift! … That will likely count for Christmas too…and Valentine’s Day, and Easter…it’s going to be a very nice one!
I spent three weeks in constant ‘conference mode’ as I was on planning committees for the HIV&AIDS conferences held in Dakar. I was a panelist and presenter at the Pan African Christian Aids Network (PACANet) Conference at the end of November. I also planned, manned and organized the ‘trash and trinket tour’ from the World Vision booth for the International Conference on AIDS and STIs in Africa, at the start of December. Our booth was very popular; and after that, I attended the Global Fund Forum to see how our organization can access more money for AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria in the coming years. I have been up to my eyebrows in strategies, action plans, log frames and program plans. The first few weeks of the New Year will include revising and submitting all those plans and hiring a replacement for my West Africa job, and three Sub-regional advisors who will work with me on Maternal and Child Health and Nutrition initiatives.
On the 16th, one of my university friends arrived from the USA and spent almost two weeks with us. The first week I was working so she was pretty much a live-in babysitter, but seemed to enjoy spending time with the children who have grown so much and changed so quickly! We did a few touristic things like a trip to Goree Island (the slave island) and a day trip to the
Bandia Reserve, which many of you may have seen photos from on Facebook already.
We had a lovely Christmas. Keagan was up from about 2:30 in the morning. My brother-in-love came in all noisy about 3 and I thought it was a burglar so I got out to check and then found both Keagan and DJ awake, so I decided to get up and start cooking! Santa was very good to everyone. Mama was holed up for two days watching House MD on DVD after Christmas!
And now onto the other members of my household…
Djibo went on a trip to Benin in May to do some research and set up a vehicle import business. In October, he went to the USA to do the legalities and meet with my brother who will be his partner. Afterward, he went to Niger to check on the construction of his parents’ house. That has taken more than a year, but I think it if finally close to being finished! We bought a construction truck in Niger and he has a friend running that for the time being. He will likely head back to Benin to receive vehicles in Feb
Slavery Memorial
Sad, but 'lest we forget...' or March.
DJ - DJ is doing very well but had a rough adjustment to Senegal. Socially, I think he did extremely well, but academically, he crashed. In March it was clear that he was not passing anything but P.E. so we sent him to Niger. One of Djibril’s friends put him to work delivering construction supplies; sand and gravel from 6 a.m. six days a week. He did that for a few months and seemed really repentant very quickly. I brought him back to Senegal with me in May. We put him to work making furniture (for free!) for the duration of the summer break (I know, really mean step-mother kind of thing to do!) This semester he has done very well; his grades are good, he is much more mature and responsible and seems to have chosen a career and set some goals! I think that being a pilot sounds like a much better life than delivering gravel for 10 hours a day in the sweltering heat; apparently he thinks so too! -- Mission accomplished! He has turned out to be quite a good artist and did a sketch of Djibo and me for Christmas and even
went to the furniture shop and made the frame himself! He has had a remarkable turnaround and we couldn’t be more proud of him. I am actually hopeful that he will be able to leave the nest and support himself in the not so distant future - something I could not envision just a few short months ago! If any of you have any unruly teenagers and need to send them to Africa for a few months to straighten out their priorities, just let me know!
Keagan - It would not be a Danielle year without at least one rather large drama in it; this year the drama prize goes to Keagan. He also gets the 'Gave Mommy the biggest scare of her life moment', and after one emergency c-section, two heart attacks and a hemorrhage, that is not an easy title to come by! One Friday night in July, Djibo and I were piled up on the bed enjoying a Chekaraou children sketch (they all have the drama gene). They finished one entitled ‘Goree Island’ and were setting up to put on another show for us. They were going to run downstairs and collect props. They weren’t gone
from the room for 30 seconds when I heard Kaijah and Leila both give out a blood curdling scream! It wasn’t one of those ‘fight’ screams or ‘frustrated’ screams….but this one was sheer terror! I ran into the hall and Kaijah, sobbing, told me that Keagan had fallen over the banister. I think he was in a rush, was excited and was going to slide down the railing from the second story…he just went so quickly, that he flipped right over the thing. He fell over four meters and landed on ceramic tile covered concrete. You know how in movies, when somebody falls off the roof and the other guy runs to the edge and looks over? It was exactly like that. He was lying there, unconscious, all contorted, with his head in pool of blood. The whole way down I kept thinking, “What am I going to do if I find him dead?” The girls were freaking out so I told them to sit down together on the stairs and pray. Now, funny how things happen…the week before this happened, I told Djibril that we needed to work on ‘an emergency plan’. I knew we should put together a
Kaijah
She was so cute, vendors kept giving her little jewels. Look how much she raked in in one afternoon! plan of where we would go, who to call and all that good stuff…but it just kept getting shoved to the bottom of the ‘To Do List’ and never got done. You all know, no doubt that I am fairly anal…so keys always go on the same hook…everything has a place and everything is in its place…except that Keagan had taken the car keys to get something out of the car earlier and had not put the keys on the key hook…so there we were, needing to go to the hospital and nobody could find the keys and the last one to have them was unconscious! That is when I started to panic. Djibril picked Keagan up, and it was abundantly clear that his wrist was VERY broken! He compressed the wound on his forehead to stop the bleeding. I left the boys (DJ and Omar) to look for keys, ran upstairs to throw on some clothes, grab the safe, the cell phone and the insurance card. This is a very long story, but in its shortest form, we went to four hospitals before he was treated; the first one by car, the second two by ambulance, and the last
First Flower Tongue
Funky family genetics. My brother has the best one, but Kaijah is on her way...I think she was the only one of the kids who could it. one by car again. The ambulance was an adventure in and of itself….an old shelled out van with a little cot that dips down to the floor in the center because it is so worn out…and a tire for the accompanying passenger to sit on! It is amazing that I didn’t break a hip on the way to the hospital in that ambulance! At the third hospital, when the X-ray technician would not turn off the television to attend to us, I told Djibril that we should leave there and go to another private clinic we knew of that was not far. If Djibril had not been holding Keagan, I am pretty sure he would have laid that guy out! Keagan spent two days in the hospital. Thanks be to God, he had no internal injuries because if he had, we would have lost him to the amount of time it took for us to get care. GOD BLESS the 9-1-1 system!! He was stitched up so well with huge blue stitches on his forehead that we couldn’t resist calling him ‘Frankenstein’ for awhile. Unfortunately, his arm was set and put in a cast, but healed incorrectly, so once he
got the cast off, they had to re-break it and set it with pins and cast it again. Poor little guy. He missed the whole basketball season due to the cast. We also had to stop Kung Fu. My motherly words of advice to my young son, “All super-men can’t fly!” Even today I just looked at him and had to whisper a prayer of thanks. As his 9th birthday approaches, we are truly blessed that he is still with us! Djibril and I both were haunted for weeks on end by the image of that boy -broken, and covered in blood. Let’s hope that none of us has to ever experience that again! On the upside, he is doing very well in school and excels at sports and academics. The good news is that there is no more playing on the stairs; the bad news is that it hasn’t slowed him down in any other respect! Oh…the gray hairs that boy has given me!
Kaijah - Fortunately, I do not have the same sort of story to share about Kaijah - although I guess she got the prize last year with the maggots bursting out from her stomach!
Gambia - beach
What is it with my kids and stray dogs? Kaijah is doing very well. She is a straight A student and doesn’t seem to even try! She had a rough spot this year because she is by nature, her father’s child…’Sannu, sannu’, or ‘Pole pole’ if you are in Kenya! She has one gear and it’s almost reverse! This girl takes her time at everything. For a bit that was a challenge as she was not completing class work and had to come home with homework. Something has motivated her; although I confess, I haven’t made her shovel any sand or gravel…but she seems to have gotten some focus on her own none-the-less. Maybe just hearing about it was scary enough for her! She actually won an award and the end of the last academic year, and since only 3 are given for each class, it was a rather big deal. There are photos from that on the blog already if you are interested, you can scroll through past entries. She was in Jazz classes the last school year and enjoyed that. Her recital was a blast and she looked like a star! I had a friend braid her hair with orange mesh and the other girls in the
group were awed! She looked amazing, but too old! That is also already on this blog. Scroll back a few if you want to see her "Beyonce look". She landed a part in the school Christmas play. She was Beatrice Bee Beasley and we had fun making her costume. She has decided she wants to learn to sew, so we have worked on a few projects together. I told her she can have my old machine when I get my new one!
Leila - Where to start…this little girl is something else! Last year, you may recall, we registered her in a French Pre-K. She was very excited and loved the ‘trial day’. Then she had a melt down every day for the next two weeks! I’ve never seen anything like it. I don’t know what happened, but we had to pull her out and keep her at home. This September, she started Kindergarten at Dakar Academy with the other children. She loves being in school. I think it is because there are only 3 kids in her class that come from Anglophone homes so she gets to be ‘the leader’ all the time! Since the other kids
Gambia
Kung Fu fighters on the beach don’t have a clue of what is going on…she gets to demonstrate everything for the teacher. She is naturally bossy, so this is heaven for her! I fear what will happen in the coming years though, when she finally figures out that she can’t always be the leader! On days when she wants privileges, she is a ‘big girl’ and on days when she needs a little leverage for getting her way, she regresses into being ‘daddy’s baby’. She has perfectly developed manipulation skills! In that respect, she’s already equipped to be a teenager! She also changes her clothes about six times a day so I see her being a serious bathroom hog in the future as well! I just can’t wait to see how ‘little princess’ does in the village in Niger next year planting millet!
Yacouba - Yacouba went back to Niger to help his parents build the house and bring in the harvest.
Omar - The departure of Yacouba left Omar pretty lonely I guess; but he’s all enamored with a young Senegalese girl so I guess he has a good enough distraction! We opened him a barber shop out of our garage and he
cuts all the hair in the neighborhood. It seems that if we get the move to Niger he will settle here as he doesn’t seem to suffer from any love-loss for the homeland!
Djibo’s folks and family are all doing well. I think his dad was relieved to get the harvest in and to have Djibril there for a few weeks working on getting the house done. Unfortunately, the day Djibo planned to return his mom fell off an oxcart and broke her hip. She had to have surgery and had some plates and screws put in her hip. She’s able to get around on crutches now but has not yet gone back to the village. I fear that once she is home she won’t rest and heal, but maybe as long as she is in Niamey she will slow down.
I guess I couldn’t get motivated to write because as you can tell, I don’t ‘sum things up’ very well…I’ve always been rather ‘long-winded’…so it takes me a really long time. But, now it is done so I feel good. Thanks for thinking of us and staying in touch.
It is New Year’s Eve and I
am going to run upstairs and set fireworks on the roof. Sometimes it can be fun living in places with no laws or regulations! Well, at least none that are evident or enforced! We are going to play some Pictionary, Charades, and watch a movie while we wait for the countdown. Then we’ll break out the sparkling cider and toast in the New Year! It will be 2009 here at least 5 hours before there so let me be the first to wish you all a happy, blessed and prosperous 2009! As the years go on, I realize how precious memories and friendships are. As my 41-year old brain struggles to remember where I put my sunglasses from one minute to the next, my memories of you and our times together are vivid and clear. Thank you all for doing your part to keep our relationships alive. Thanks for listening to me babble on and on about my wonderful kids, varied adventures, and life’s challenges! I trust that you will all be filled with peace, health, joy and especially love in the coming year - truly another year with friends and family is a gift; let us savor it together!
Bijilo Forest Park
DJ and one big termite mound! Blessings,
Rebecca Danielle Kenty Guilliams Chekaraou (aka Kadija Uwargida)
You are tired of reading and you can imagine how tired I am! More photos to follow in the days ahead...
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Bridget
non-member comment
never a dull moment!
My goodness! I can't believe all you have done in a year!! My year looks like this: had a baby, went to the beach. :) You are amazing. Congrats on your promotion! Your work sounds incredible. I can't believe how much you travel! And the story about Keagan- unbelievable. I am so thankful he is fine. Much love to you and your family.