Month: September 2020

Cocody and Dokui Zone Conference at Cocody

Today was a great day in the neighborhood!!  We had our first Zone Conference with Pres & Sis Bendixsen here in Cocody with both the Cocody and Dokui Zones.

Pres Bendixsen welomed everyone and started off the conference.  Elder Guei followed with some wonderful thoughts about charity.

Elder N’cho was next.  He was teaching us about security and keeping our phones safe.  As he was teaching us, his body decided to take a rest, and he crumpled to the floor.  He was revived and given a Priesthood blessing, then taken to the hospital where he was treated for exhaustion.  He has been working so hard these last few weeks.

Elder Amani carried on for him and we continued.

We also heard from Sis Ahoulou who taught about why it’s important to plan and follow a schedule.   Then Elder Luboya talked about using the BoM as our primary teaching tool, Elder Amani talked about using our time well and planning, and Elder Mwamba spoke about patience.

 

 

 

Today we also heard departing testimonies from several who will be traveling home this month.

Then we broke for lunch.

 

These Sisters are amazing and beautiful women.  The Elders are pretty great too!  We love being around them.

At the end of the day, we divided into our 2 zones to review what we’d heard and learned today and the Zone Leaders made lists of the principles and teachings they want to pass on to their districts.



Our Bamako Elders, Elder Brown and Elder Ikpeti will both be traveling home later this week.  We love them and are so grateful for their service here.

Farewell to Elder Danziat and Elder Malonga! (Republic of the Congo)

Today we said good bye to 2 more wonderful missionaires–Elder Danziat and Elder Malonga.  These two have been waiting a long time to finally return home.  They are from the Republic of the Congo and the border there has finally opened.  We will miss these two.  They are long over due to go home.

The Adzope Elders’ Apartment

Our last stop today was at the Elders’ apartment in Adzope.  We have 5 Elders serving here now and they are doing a great job.

Here are our Adzope Elders:  Kouadio, Zile, Gandaho, Bah and Aka.

And here is their home.


The kitchen

Bedrooms and study areas

Elder Bah and Elder Aka are our Adzope Zone Leaders.

There is a lime tree in their front yard.  Those are uncommon here.

The Adzope Sisters’ Apartment

I think these Adzope Sisters should get an award for their very clean and tidy apartment!  They did a fantastic job preparing for our visit.

Meet Sis Yao, Sis Gaze and Sis Siehi!  Sis Awa also has been living here, but she’s in Abidjan for a few weeks getting some medical help.

Sister Siehi was preparing their lunch.

Water storage

Bedrooms and study areas

Other Sisters have left there mark here.

The Akoupe Apartment

Every apartment we visit has a history.  Some have housed missionaries for a very long time.  Some are more recent.  In every apartment important and life-changing things happened.  Missionaries grew up, learned to love new areas, learned to appreciate their families at home, and some even learned to cook and clean.

Every visit speaks to my sense of history.  Who has lived here?  Who has come and gone?  What did they take with them from this place?  What memories do they hold dear?  Or have they forgotten.  I hope posting these photos will bring back some of those memories for those of you who once lived in these places.

The beautiful views from Akoupe.

These water bottles are for our missionaries.  Today they are being refilled.

The kitchen

Bedrooms and study areas

 

More Today in Affrey

We loved seeing the women making attieke and the cocoa grove, but it was also fun just to walk along the street and capture a bit of every day life here in Affrey.

Here’s a vendor selling attieke and vegetables and oil.

An empty gas station

A full gas station

Plantain  supplier

Trash pick up

Seed corn

A flat tire

Housewares

Scones for sale

A little food place.  The large leaves are used as the plates.

A Cocoa Grove in Affrey

We noticed a cocoa tree grove right behind the women making attieke.  What caught my eye was the beautiful pink and purple pods.  The women told us these are Ghanaian cocoa trees, not Ivorian.  The Ivorian variety are green, turning yellow.  These were such beautiful shads of pink and purple.  What a beautiful fruit.   Hard to believe that chocolate will be their final fate.

Making Attieke in Affrey

A highlight of our day was meeting these hard-working women making attieke in Affrey.  This village has a community area where women are welcome to bring their cassava (manioc) and turn it into attieke, the most popular food eaten here.  There were several groups of women here today, hard at work in the heat and warm sun, laughing and talking and visiting with each other as they worked.  Women of all ages help, including some very young girls.  It was so fun to watch and to visit with these women, who never skipped a beat as we looked on.

I will do my best to describe the process of making attieke.  The cassava plants grow here, in every field and compound.  Cassava is a tuber root that grows quite large underground.  Several tubers grow on each plant.

There were several groups of women there sitting on their low stools, surrounded by large headpans of cassava. They were peeling the bark with their knives, like they were machines.  Their hands are fast and sure.

A very friendly lady approached us and saw our nametags. “Etes vous membres de L’eglise de Jesus Christ des Saints des Derniers Jours?” We told her “yes!” and asked if she was a member too. She said no, but pointed us to one of her friends who was in the next group of women cutting cassava. “She is a member of your church!” We went to visit with that group of women. Her friend is the wife of a counselor in the branch. We had so much fun watching and trying to visit with these women who were happy to show us what they were doing.

Here are a few short clips showing how they do this.

After the cassava is cut into chunks, the pieces are washed clean.  Then they are fed in to a grinding machine or grated by hand.  Here is the community grinding machine in Affrey.  Everyone is welcome to come use this machine.  This room has a pungent smell like sourdough starter.

After the cassava is ground and bagged, it’s time for the press.   The presses below are tightened down on the bags of ground cassava to squeeze any moisture out.  This takes awhile.

The next job is to break up and push the pressed ground cassava through a wire sieve and get all the lumps out.

After it’s sifted, (it’s quite dry by now), the women and even children shake pans full to make sure there aren’t any lumps or pieces that need to be broken up.

And then it’s ready to be steamed over the fire.   A cauldron of water is brought to a boil and a pan with a hole in the bottom is placed on the cauldron.  This pan has a rubber piece punched with holes that goes over the large hole where the steam to comes through.

The dry grated cassava is added to this pot and the hot steam starts coming through the holes to cook the attieke.

Here are many of the clay ovens under the thatch roof.

This cooked attieke is then packaged in little sacks for individual servings, or in larger ones for several people.  It’s also sold in large quantities to vendors who do their own packaging.

Attieke is eaten with sauces that are made from cooked greens, tomato, onion, peppers and some spices. You eat it with your hands, dipping into the sauce.  Often meat is added to the sauce.

This was a great visit.  We made some friends and we learned some things.  My best take-away was that these women and children work hard to provide for their families.  But they do it together and they enjoy each other.  It’s hard for me to imagine eating the same food every single day, morning and night, but most Ivorians love attieke and are grateful every time it’s served.