My first visit to Tabitha House

There is this place called Tabitha House. It is located in Sector 30.

Ouagadougou is divided into "Sectors" or neighborhoods, or areas of town, like in the States.  

Sector 30 is considered the poorest neighborhood in Ouagadougou.

When I first heard that I was dumbfounded. Truly. I mean in a place that is so severely poverty stricken, to actually have a neighborhood that stands out as being the poorest, out of all the other poor neighborhoods is saying a lot.

Sector 30 is like a little village in the middle of the city. One minute you are on a nicely paved road lined on each side with street lights and little businesses...the next second you visibly cross the threshold into where Sector 30 lies. The paved road ends. The lights stop. The businesses stop. And you enter into an area where there is absolutely no electricity or running water. Little homes made of mud and bricks. Just like in the villages. Except you'd think that in the city, especially the capital city, all people would at minimum have access to electricity and water. That is not the case here.

 

The poorest of the poor...in a city already marked by poverty.

My mind can scarcely comprehend.

And then there is Tabitha House...a little beacon of hope that sits in the heart of it all....

Tabitha House is a building, a project, that was started many years ago as an opportunity to teach skills to some of the neediest women. The women of sector 30 are already poor. And then there are the widowed and abandoned women of sector 30 who are among the poorest of this poorest neighborhood. In enters Tabitha House. A place where these widowed and abandoned women can gather 3 days a week to learn a trade in hopes of earning money for themselves and their children.

Sadly, over the years the project fell to the way side and the once thriving establishment now had just a handful of women who devotedly still came each week to make products.

Until God led a woman named DeeDee to Burkina to overtake this ministry and do a complete overhaul on it.

As God can only do...the once barely surviving ministry is once again thriving, going from just 8 women to over 40 each week.

It is here, at Tabitha House, that these women work to earn an income making dolls, bracelets made out of rolled up magazines, earrings and placemats.

The women who come here to work and earn a respectable income are from diverse religious backgrounds....Muslims, Animist and Christians. But despite their religious differences DeeDee leads the women in a bible study and prayer time every morning before they begin work. And at the end of the work day they have another time of prayer for the sick among them, where those suffering or needing specific prayer gather at the front of the building and everyone, as is Burkinabé culture, speaks prayers over them out loud all at once. 

Until recently all the women would come to work with their kids in tow and the children would busy themselves at their feet playing or running around the property. And then DeeDee had a little gated children's area installed for the children of the women who work there. Now, they have a little area where they can go each work day and play in a safe environment while their mommies work. One woman is responsible for sitting in the gated play area to watch the kids, but she still gets credit for working and is paid accordingly.

And it was today that I had the privilege of visiting Tabitha House with Marvelly and my friend Joanna, whom DeeDee is living with during her stay in Burkina.

DeeDee had mentioned that she has a need for more interaction with the kids during the women's work time. So we drove down there today and spent the morning hanging out with the kids, playing with them and entertaining them while their mom's worked.

A mission team that just came out brought some toys with them to donate to Tabitha House so they had a small pile of Legos, some styrofoam alphabet floor mat puzzle, and some other miscellaneous toys, along with two rocking horses that Marvelly just loved.

So we sat and we played and made new acquaintances. As all the kids there spoke Mooré, before I knew it I was teaching the alphabet to the kids around me in French. I would say the letter in French and they would repeat it. We'd go back and forth through the numbers and letters. I found it quite comical, that me of all people, in my limited French speaking abilities would be sitting there teaching it to kids who knew less French than I did.

At Tabitha House the only kids allowed inside the gated play area are the ones whos moms work there. However, there are dozens of other kids from sector 30 who stand outside and around the gate staring in.

And this is what it looks like. It is not easy, to see so many kids in need, and longing to be a part of something more than what they have and deny them the opportunity.

It might seem cruel, but the gated area is just a small cemented slab and if they let all the kids in to play it would be an absolute madhouse, quickly getting overrun. It would become unsafe, and so out of necessity boundaries have been established.

The cool part, and what this picture doesn't show because I wasn't fast enough with my little point and shoot camera...is every time Marvelly rocked forward on the horse she would reach out her hand and tickle the children's arms. And they would smile big smiles and reach back out to her and she would do it again and back and forth they would go. And I would sit with my back near the gate and turn around quick and tickle tummies and they would touch my hair, and we would shake hands and say hello over and over again. And what I love is that despite the very visible barrier, we still found ways to connect through it.

With simple touches and words and eye contact we were able to tear down the fence unseen, the fence that is covered with graffiti telling them they are inferior, unworthy, forgotten, inadequate, less than....that's the fence we succeeded in tearing down a little more today....even though the visible fence still stood between us.

I tell ya....Jesus is in the little moments.

Behind this fence there is a concrete wall, this one seen here, that divides Tabitha's property with other residents of sector 30.

The wall sits maybe four and a half feet high and runs along the back of the Tabitha House...creating a little alley way. This is where these kids stand, in the little alley between the wall and the Tabitha House. 

As I sat near the fence, playing, Joanna sat next to me on a bench. All of a sudden a little girl came up behind the kids, having climbed on top of the wall and sat straddling it, crying. Kids are always crying here, so at first I didn't pay it immediate attention. But I turned my head around again, as her crying continued, and I noticed a boy standing below her on the ground pinching her legs really hard causing her to cry harder. As I looked from the boy to the girl I then saw that her nose was bleeding. In an instant I yelled at the boy in half french, half mooré, "vous la! Ayo!" (You there! Stop!) and the boy takes off running. I look at Joanna as we both stand up and notice that the girl's face is now covered in blood. We start heading towards the gate and right at that moment DeeDee is approaching the gate to say hello to us and I tell her a little girl has been beat up and is bleeding badly and ask her if she has a towel. DeeDee runs back inside the main building and grabs a first aid kit and runs back out ahead of me and we all take off after the girl. The girl, scared, was running away but one of the women from the center was already running after her, caught up to her and was leading her back to the buildings steps. We sit the girl down and I give DeeDee my water bottle and she pours it over the girls face in an effort to wash some of the blood away. Her face, stomach, back and shorts (the only clothes she wore) were all stained with blood. DeeDee takes out some gauze and I lay the girls head back and she applies pressure to the nose to help stop the bleeding. Many of the women from the center have come out at this point and formed a circle and start inquiring as to what happened and send word for her mother. The little girls grandma shows up and then her mother and after a few minutes the blood has begin to slow down. Joanna grabbed some tissues out of the car and we put some in her nose and told her mom to keep her head back until the bleeding stops.

It must be said, that during all of this as I stood over the girl, and we cleaned the blood off her body with my water and I held her head back....Marvelly was standing right next to me. It was well over 100 degrees already and Marvelly was sweating up a storm and as she saw our water poured out onto the little girls body...she became very concerned that there would be no water left for her. So in the middle of caring for the girl, I had to stop and care for my little girl and speak truth over Marvelly, 


"Marvelly, this little girl needs our water more than we do. So I am going to give her our water because she needs it, and I know that by helping her God will provide more water for you to drink. Miss Joanna has a water bottle and I bet she will share her water with you, just like we are sharing our water with this little girl."

Marvelly, at just five years old, has seen, and will continue to see more than most kids her age. And I do not wish to shield her from it. She is sensitive but very strong, and by talking to her about the needs and suffering she sees around her....it makes her less afraid of it. She will grow up, prayerfully, not shunning and retreating away from what is hard to see...but rather running towards it. I don't want my girls to run away from the pain in the world around them. I want them to run to it, like we did this day, because they are confident that God is running with them and will equip them to help.

As the girl, her mother and grandma started walking off towards home I still had about a 1/3 of my water left (it had 1.5 liters in it) and so I walked over to the grandma and handed her my remaining water to take back with her. She stopped in the dusty dirt path, with her daughter and granddaughter behind her, and looked at me, with curious eyes. She spoke no French, and was struggling to speak Mooré because she didn't have any teeth left, and with her toothless smile she looked at me, held her hands together and brought them up to her mouth to show "to drink". I nodded my head yes many times as she stared back at me, continuing to bring her hands up to her mouth, and finally she understood that I was giving her what was left of my water. I have no idea what she said, but she was so excited she started shaking and smiling and we hugged and her eyes spoke of the deepest gratitude.

For what was but a few cups of water.

I stood there for a few seconds, and let the reality wash over me that there is a deep level of suffering and poverty here like I haven't seen before. And I have not even scratched the surface of what life must be like in Sector 30.

As I walked back with Marvelly to the children's area we sat down again to play and one of the kids brought me the only book that was there....it was a children's book with three stories from the New Testament, and the very first one was about the Good Samaritan.

If that's not irony for you.

I sat with Marvelly and one other girl and read the story and after the other girl got up I told Marvelly this story is exactly what just happened. We saw a girl who was hurt and needed help and we stopped to help her, just like Jesus told us to do in the story. There was even a picture of the Good Samaritan using his water to wash off the hurt mans wounds. I mean truly, I still stand here, in awe. That moment was scripture in action. And for that book to just so happen to be there, to read to Marvelly right after we got done helping the little girl....I don't think God wants her forgetting this day. Or me for that matter.

As we prepared to leave I asked DeeDee what some of her needs were for the center and she told me that someone had donated a huge stack of felt Bible teaching materiel with all kinds of bible characters and backgrounds and she needs someone who would be willing to come once a week and lead the children in the play area in a bible lesson. The kids just sit around playing as their mothers work, and since many of the mothers who come are not Christian their children are not hearing the gospel either, so this is a great evangelizing opportunity for the children. Then, as their mothers are  hearing the gospel during devotion time before work, their children will now have an opportunity to hear the gospel as well. She even has a translator lined up to come and interpret to Mooré.

She asked if I would be willing to do this.

And since Marvelly started asking me in the car as we were driving away if we could come back every Monday....I think I just might. :~)

It helps that she made a little friend during her time here.

So, that was our first visit to the Tabitha House.

It was good. And hard. And I am finding that that always seems to be the case here in Burkina. It is always equally good and hard. Filled with joy and pain. Hurt and healing. A filling and an emptying.

Life happens fast here. You can't hesitate. You must be ready at all times to take action. You must be ready at all times to stop and serve. You must be ready to reach out and take a hand. You must learn to find light in dark places. You must be willing to do the small tasks. To go where you are needed. To serve in humbling and subtle ways. You must learn to carry Jesus with you everywhere. You must learn to see beauty in the raw and unrefined. You must be willing to surrender all.

Lessons that I am, of course, still learning.

But learning I am....we all are.