I could see the fire coming toward us!

I’m not sure that Martin Luther had the same thing in mind as I did when he said, “Faith is taking the first step even when you can’t see the whole staircase.”  But I have been working on some new staircases this week.  From here, it looks like it’s going to take a while to get to the other end, but the journey has been “a real trip” as people of my generation might have said a while ago.

When I moved out of my office at BBC, I just transferred most of those “valuables” to a guest room at home.  Now I have realized that I am finally ready to move down to the family room where I have had a home office for many years….which means that I have to, once more, go through everything and find a home for books and office paraphernalia that once was close to my heart.

So, I am taking a step at a time. Oh, the treasures I have unearthed as I sifted through the files, those files where you put things because you can’t think of another one more suitable.  I found recipes from Chad, Africa and letters I sent to my sister…all of that provoking more work on my memoir of that time in our lives.  I thought you might enjoy a glimpse of our life back then.

From  Memoir : Peace and War – the fire  
                                                                           
Somehow the brilliance of the noonday sun watered down the sky’s cloudless blue, turning it from aqua to a washed out blue, and I could see it hanging our house at the end of the lane.  That was the first thing that caught my eye as we dribbled our way down the dirt road and on to home after church, the little ones running ahead, while I savored the few free moments before I had to get lunch started.  Then I noticed white puffs of smoke lifting into the sky from beyond our house, and at first thought someone was burning charcoal.  Then I realized the smoke was coloring the sky like an upside down snowfall all along the horizon behind the house and a sense of apprehension hurried me along.  I called out to the kids to wait for me; if there was a fire down the lane, behind our house, I did not want them mixed up in it.

Sure enough, as we crossed the dusty ground that served as a yard at the end of the lane, not only could we see the smoke more clearly in the distance, we could see red flames eating up the dried grass and occasional trees that marked the garden ground between our house and the river.  The crackles of the fiery countryside and the screams of monkeys, parrots, ravens, owls and mourning doves filled the air, and finally I noticed the dark smudges of life between the fire and our house.  People from the village were raking at the grass in front of the fire, scraping the ground, pulling combustibles from the hungry flames, in an effort to keep it flying embers from alighting on the dried grass roofs of the round huts, the people in Balimba called home.

I didn’t know what to do.  Jim was away again, preaching, visiting some distant bush church.  There was no fire department to call, and there certainly was no hose to turn on to wet down the house or the out buildings or the trees that hung over the house.  I herded the children into the house praying all the while, but nothing could keep them from the windows on that side of the house as they watched the flames lick ever closer, wildlife fleeing the flames coming ever closer.

Then I noticed our guards running by with rakes at the ready, and other men I did not know following and moving as the guards directed them.  They started at the line where grass gave way to the sandy dust around the house and worked their way toward the fire, and it came to me, from a TV show I had seen as a child.  They were scraping a firebreak behind the house, running into the mouth of the fire as they uprooted  the grasses and smaller trees piling them like a wall, a meal to satiate the flames, to keep it from us and our house.

We had wooden window frames and shutters and doors, but our house also had mud brick walls with a tin roof.  I felt better as I reasoned that through, but then I knew that the flames would not stop at the wooden shutters; they would leap inside the house licking up the furniture and curtains and, well everything. 

I pulled out the dishes and pointed the girls to setting the table as I organized sandwich makings: homemade peanut butter and cheese spread, cookies and mango sauce and water bottles for lunch feeling guilty as we ate while the people we knew fought the encroaching flames. We would be in the way; we would cause the Chadians great worry as they felt the weight of caring for us while Jim was away. 

Rainy season was not far off, but it was off…weeks away, and the ground had to be prepared for gardens.  Fires worked, they were planned.  Certainly no tractors existed in this part of the country, but someone’s fire got out of hand, and now the flames not only burned up the dead leavings of last year’s harvest , but drove the living in our direction.  Still, I firmly believed, the guards would protect us, even as I begged God to keep them safe and their efforts productive.

Smoke and grit filtered through the screened windows into the house, but we praised God when we recognized we could no longer see any flames.  Just like on TV, the fire break had worked. And so had the prayers.