This evening Pres and Sis Lewis said goodbye to Abidjan for awhile. They are on their way home to Orem to stay for a a few weeks while receiving some medical care. We wish them well. We will do our best to hold down the fort while they are away.
Now it is up to us to carry on and move the work here forward!
We had a fun day today with missionaries from the Dokui Zone filling the office. They came for interviews. Yesterday Pres Bendixsen traveled to Grand Bassam and tomorrow he’ll interview our Cocody Zone members.
Here are some of the happy faces we saw today!
After the missionaries had gone, Pres Bendixsen met with his APs and Elder Koame.
This evening we loaded up Elder Joseph and his luggage and headed to the airport to see him off. He had a flight from Abidjan to Paris to JFK to Haiti.
After some time in the terminal, Elder Joseph came back out to where we were waiting to be sure he got on the flight. He didn’t. Something was wrong with his US visa. We will have to try again, another way. We are learning to expect the unexpected here.
This afternoon our mission leaders met for continued instruction with Elder Kacher and Pres Bendixsen.
Elder Joseph from Haiti shared his departing testimony.
These are very fine leaders. It’s a blessing to be here with them.
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.
We had a full day of interviews today in the Grand Bassam Zone. Our first stop was in Yao where Elder Muyuwa and Matubakana are serving.
Here’s a look at their apartment and living quarters.
I think kitchens are the most interesting places. This is where the action happens. The missionaries generally shop for food and eat together. Most take turns cooking the food. We have many cultures here and many variations on an African cooking theme.
Most meals include attieke, rice of foofoo with fish or chicken. Sauces are made with onion, tomato and peppers seasoned with maggi cubes and salt.
Elder Muyuwa started preparing a meal for us, hoping we’d have time to stay and eat with them. Unfortunately, we had to keep moving to our next appointments.
Here are the bedrooms and study areas:
Today we had a very fun wander through our neighborhood. All of the people, places and things you see here are within about a 5 minute walk of our apartment. I love this neighborhood and we are learning to know our neighbors.
The mother above was stringing beads while her children kept her company in their little shop.
This lady sells popcorn and peanuts.
The difference between these bags of fried plantain chips is that the darker ones were fried from riper (more sweet) fruit.
A lady stopped to buy some. The small bags are less than 20 cents. The largest bags are less than a dollar.
Hot drink vendor. The men pushing these carts sell instant coffee, tea, hot chocolate and other quick drinks in plastic cups. They have all sorts of things to add to the drinks like sugar or lemon or lime juice.
This man is boiling chicken and lamb in a pot before grilling it. He seasons it with ground hot pepper. It smelled delicious! Nice chopping block.
Here are some decorations for little girls’ hair braids and some spices for cooking.
Peanuts = arachide
Stop here to buy handbags.
Undies for sale.
Here’s a food vendor selling meals to kids after school. They can buy kabobs of meat or hard boiled eggs. They season the eggs with ground hot pepper powder.
A hair salon. Wig = la Perruque
Goats (le cabri or la chevre) are fed some cut grass.
John is transfering money (l’argent).
Some cast off items.
Pick your polish!
A man with a washing machine = a laundromat. (Machine a laver)
Another cute beauty parlor.
Collections of things to take apart.
Firewood and chickens for sale.
These ladies are here every day shelling peanuts and selling them in bottles.
These white plastic sandals are Very popular here. Wash and wear.
Friends hanging out at the corner produce stand.
Another beauty parlor. These parlors can be seen everywhere, multiples on every street.
Laundry drying on the grass.
I love visiting with this father and son shoe repair team. Today they taught me to say hammer and glue in French.
They always have plenty of work to do.
I hope the trash man comes tomorrow!
A carpenter shop. He builds beds and shelves and all sorts of other things.
And here we are at the church in the best neighborhood ever!
It was a long day of waiting patiently. John and I left this morning for the lab at the University of Abidjan, where we hoped to pick up certificates with negative test results for each of our Congolese missionaries hoping to travel tomorrow morning.
Each missionary was supposed to receive a text message a couple of days after taking the COVID test reporting their results. In order to receive the certificate today, that message had to be printed out on paper and combined with the ticket given at the testing site (with a bar code on it). We learned we also needed photo copies of each passport. We had everything in place. All that remained was the wait. We were there 5.5 hours. It was a warm day. We finally left with certificates in hand.
Here’s what I looked at for 5.5 hours. Beautiful.
We were the last to leave. Gratefully, they found the last of our certificates and allowed John to pick all of them up (an exception to the rule). Things here always take more time than you might expect. We have time.
This morning we attended our weekly District Meeting. We have some new faces here–our 2 office Elders have moved in. We’re so happy about that.
Here’s what’s happening behind the tin fence at the temple site these days:
This building will house the Distribution Center and other offices.
Our Cote d’Ivoire Abidjan East and Bamako, Mali Mission 