End of the Road

Hello to all who have been following along on our adventure!

We're writing from the US, in the twin cities to be exact, and this will be the final post on this website. Just to wrap things up, Kristen has a job working for the University of Minnesota for a one year contract position, and I'm going to be finishing up my graduate degree at Colorado State University from here. I'm in the process of looking into possible seminaries to start in the fall of 2009 or the spring of 2010, and am looking at schools from California to New Jersey. Our future looks like its going to be a wild ride, but it seems like it's just more of a continuation of the status quo. 

We both appreciate you all following us through our journeys and are looking forward to seeing you soon!

Signing off,

Jon and Kristen

Transition

Hey everyone! This will be the last blog that I will write before we return. We leave tomorrow after lunch for Abuja to catch our flight which will be leaving on Saturday morning. We will be staying in London with a friend that we have met here, then returning to Minneapolis via Chicago. We have some plans that have emerged. So far, this is what we know. I got a job in St. Paul at the University of Minnesota as a Registered Dietitian working with some students on a research project. It is a one year contract position. So we are currently looking for a place to live in that area. My job starts November 3rd, which is very soon after we return, so it will be quite the whirlwind. Nonetheless, we would love to catch up with family and friends as the transition progresses. Jon Paul will be looking for jobs in the area as well. We will live there for the year, than Jon hopes to attend seminary the following year. It will all be quite the adventure and we are trusting that God will continue to show us His plan for us. He has been so faithful to us in revealing His plans for us, but in His timing, not our own. We were so anxious about our future, and God has again supplied for us, it has been a testament in humility and trust. We are very excited and know that God will continue to provide for us.

We are leaving tomorrow, and we are experiencing many thoughts and feelings. There have been a few tears. We have been so surrounded and been greatly encouraged by everyone here. We have received many prayers, well wishes, Nigerian gifts, and blessings. We have left rejuvinated, refreshed, loved, encouraged, assured, and more excited about God than when we came. Our family has grown to include the Nigerian brothers and sisters that we have met here. They are forever a part of our lives, even if we are far apart. Everything has been great for us, including the trials and tribulations that have occurred, we have seen it all as part of a great experience. We are very sad to leave. But, we are also trying to look ahead and are very excited about our futures and being present in our present. We are excited to go home and talk and see many of you and share and perpetuate the story. We are excited to move on with this adventure, and letting this experience become part of who we are and part of our story. We will be taking back much of Nigeria to our lives back home and hope to live our lives differently because of our experience here. So, we have varying and many conflicting emotions that will probably take awhile to process. We can't wait to get to share our lives with you all again! We love you and thank you all so much for the prayers and encouragement you have given to us from abroad! We are grateful!

Love,
The Draskovic's (Team D) (or Simi and Neerat, as the Nigerians call us, it means Love and Handsome, Jon gave himself the name Handsome...)

Closing up

Hello to everyone who has been following us on our adventures!

We're getting ready to leave Jos this Thursday. It's bitter sweet for us because we have come to make so many good friends and relationships here that we are genuinely sad to be leaving. We are however excited to be coming back home to friends and family. We have also recently found out that Kristen as gotten a job in St. Paul working for the University of Minnesota for a 1 year contract, so now we have somewhere to go with a specific purpose in mind. The 1 year appointment is a good fit for our transitory stage of life right now, this way we can get our feet under us and figure out what our next move will be. We are very excited about the job, the move to St. Paul and living closer to at least some of our family. I will either be finishing up my graduate degree, which I started at Colorado State, in St. Paul, getting a job to pay back some student loans or a combination of the two.

We will be arriving in the US on Saturday the 25th at the Minneapolis/St. Paul airport, where Kristen's paretns will be picking us up. From there we will be spending a few days in Fargo with family and then going down to St. Paul so Kristen can have an orientation meeting with her new boss and for us to try to find an apartment. She starts on Novemeber 3rd, so we don't have much time to get adjusted from the trip to Nigeria. We are blessed to have some great friends in the area who have said we could stay with them for a few weeks until we find housing, so it looks like we can hit the ground running. With this new opportunity, we will most likely not be able to make it back to see our friends in Colorado in the near future, nor family in Connecticut. We are sad about this, but hopeful that we will be able to make a trip out soon to see our friends in both states.

I have also uploaded some pictures on a flickr webpage for everyone to look at. Sorry this has taken so long, but trying to put pictures on the net with our connection can be tedious. The web address is: http://www.flickr.com/photos/29780840@N04/sets/72157608114760515/, which puts you into the album I created entitled JP and Kristen in Nigeria. There is another album entitled Sewing, Knitting, Arts and Crafts, on the entry webpage to our flickr site: http://www.flickr.com/photos/29780840@N04/, which contains pictures taken of the items and people in the sewing, knitting and arts and crafts school. I have been trying to set the social service center's skill acquisition group up with an organization in the US which markets and sells products created by African workers in the US so that there is a larger maerket for their products. This album contains pictures of the (mostly) women and the products they make.

I hope all is well and please pray for our safe travels on our return.

Jon Paul and Kristen

Dance Party Church

Kristen and I just got back from church at our local congregation. It was "Praise Sunday", which as we found out means the normal three and a half hour service is all about singing and dancing. You know that feeling you get after a long night of dancing at a wedding... well we've got that after the service. Our legs are sore, we're all sweaty and we can't hear anything because the music was so loud. I will say that we were kept very engaged through the whole service. We were dancing and shouting to the Lord, we got to laugh into the pastor's microphone (he's quite the dancer himself) because he wanted to know what laughing in English sounds like (pretty much the same), then we left about 10 minutes early and the pastor chased us out of the church asking us why we were leaving (we are pretty easy to pick out of the crowd at church). Talk about getting called out. I had to give him a sweaty hug and tell him that we needed to leave to call our families.

We are starting to wind things up here at the clinic and get our loose ends taken care of as far as our projects we have been working on. We have about a week and a half until we drive back to Abuja for our flight. We met two Brits in Jos (George and Naomi) who were visiting the clinic a month ago from London. When we told them we were going to have an overnight layover, they offered to put us up at their place in England, so we'll have friends to stay with that night. Then it's back to Heathrow in the morning for our flight to Minneapolis. It's funny how you never know who you'll meet and how those people will go out of their way to help you out, we have really been blessed by those who have come into our lives. George is going to hike the Appalachian Trail next summer, so if anyone reading this lives near the AT and is comfortable with extending hospitality to George, I hope I can put him into contact with some people in the US to give him a break from the trail every now and then.

We are looking forward to getting our feet back on (cooler) American soil, the land of cold beer and pizza. We are excited to come back just in time for the election, although it has been nice to not have to listen to any of the attack adds. It is also interesting to see how the people in Africa are reacting to the run up to the American elections. The people here are just as invested in the elections as most in the US are. We are lucky to have satellite access at our apartment, so we have gotten to see all the candidate's debates as well as a lot of news on the financial crisis. This way we can jump right back into normal American culture.

As for now, our plans are still up in the air as to what we're going to be doing when we get back. Because our stay was cut short from what we originally expected, we do not have anything lined up for ourselves as far as housing and work. We will be going to Kristen's parent's home in Fargo when we return, and try to figure things out from there. I am still on the rolls with FEMA, and they seem to be in need for people after hurricane Ike, so I will hopefully be able to work for them in Texas when we get back. Kristen has also been applying for jobs in different places around the country, so if one of those works out we may take that up. Unfortunately, right now, we feel like we're in a position where we have to earn some money to help make up for the cost of the trip to Nigeria and to pay back some of our student loans before we can do anything else. This most likely means we will not be able to return to Colorado in the immediate future, but we are hoping to make it back to either Fort Collins or Denver soon, at least for a quick visit.

We have decided after a lot of prayer and deliberation that we are not going to be pursuing the Peace Corps and will be making the changes to our future plans. For those who don't know, the PC was part of my graduate degree at Colorado State University and Kristen and I were supposed to be going into the Peace Corps this past summer/fall. The reason we are in Nigeria at all is because we were postponed from the PC for a year due to medical reasons. Now that the economy is going into a slump, the government has been cutting funding for the PC which is making us think that we could be waiting a lot longer for the PC to come through for us. So, we have decided not to put our lives on hold anymore because we just can't depend on the PC working out. We also feel that God has been leading us in a different direction and has basically given us those 2-3 years back, and we want to follow what He is leading us to do. I will change my degree at CSU, which I can hopefully get away with without having to take any more courses, and start working on my thesis to complete the masters. As you can see, our future plans have been tossed out the window and we're having to make adjustments. God has been very good and faithful. He has been providing answers as well as more questions. Please pray for wisdom in our future decision making, we have some large changes to look forward to.

I hope you are all well,
Jon

The wedding, swimming and baba

It has been a while since we've written last, so I'll try to give you some of the highlights:

The Nigerian Christian culture has dictated that if people are going to get married, they have to get married in a church, while the traditional cultural heritage says they have to have a traditional village wedding. It is part of the unique blending of the traditional African values and the European influence from colonization and missionaries that makes Nigeria what it is. We went to church the other day and without realizing it, walked in on a "white wedding". It's a little different than what we are used to, for instance, it lasted about 3 hours during a regular Sunday worship service, and 2/3 of it was people dancing and singing. Kristen and I were both called up to the front of the church to give a demonstration of our dancing prowess. There was a lot of laughing from the crowd. Then, before they vows and I-do's, the pastor reprimanded the couple for having their traditional wedding before receiving the congregation's blessings. This is a nuance of marriage that we just don't see in the US. The Nigerian concept of marriage is much more communal than our own, for example, when a woman marries a man, she is not just marrying him, she is marrying his whole family and vice versa. This means that marriage really is a family affair here and everyone in the family gets a say. The congregation also needs to give their blessing before the couple can get married. This is the "if anyone has good reason for these two to be wed, speak now or forever hold your peace" part of the ceremony, except they take it pretty seriously here, and it's not unusual for more than one person to voice concerns. The concerns then need to be rectified before the marriage can move forward. It puts a whole new spin on how you treat those in your community when you know it can affect your ability to get married. Luckily, the chiding of the couple only lasted a few minutes and they tied the knot in the end.

Kristen and I went swimming at the only swimming pool in Jos yesterday. Swimming in Nigeria is an experience. We have a seamstress friend named Blessing who has made a few African dresses for Kristen, who just finished up her secondary school exams and wanted to celebrate. Neither she, nor her two sons, Charles who is 12 and Henry who is 8, knew how to swim and wanted to learn. As an ex-lifeguard and swimmer, I told them I would love to teach them. So when we get there, the first thing we notice is that there is probably 100 people in the pool, and about 3 of them actually know how to swim. I jumped in to the deep end, Charles had said he has swam before, so Blessing, assuming he had, threw him in. Charles sank like a rock, straight to the bottom, no bobbing, no splashing to keep his head above water, just sank. I, thinking he could swim, just thought he was swimming around down there. Luckily Kristen yelled to me that he was not coming up and to go get him. So I pulled him up and we immediately moved over to the shallow end of the pool for more remedial lessons. The lessons were not easy to do because 2/3 of the people in the pool were trying their own hand at learning how to swim or jumping in the shallow end. Now in the U.S., if you're swimming in a public pool or lake, you would expect people to try to avoid you or at least keep from swimming into you. Not in Nigeria. People would practice their swimming right next to you, kicking you, scratching you, running into you, and then there were people jumping into the pool inches from you. The lessons went well, neither Blessing nor her sons are going to be breaking any world records in the near future, but they were floating, putting their faces in the water and doing some rudimentary freestyle by the end.

Baba is our cook. Baba, which means "Daddy" in Hausa, is somewhere between 85 and 90. Honestly. He started working for the English as a cook in 1940, when he said he was already over 20 years old. He showed us his "resume" of recommendations from different British officials from the 50's and 60's and from foreign missionaries or Nigerian government officials since. He was so proud about his resume and kept it in an old report cover. Baba cooks lunch and dinner for us 6 days a week (Sundays off), and until about two weeks ago was cooking breakfast as well. He shows up at 7 am and usually leaves around 7 pm. We have this running joke that when we ask him what's for lunch or dinner he always say "I don't know", he likes to surprise us. He's the most humble and kind hearted man I think I've ever met. I was asking him if he enjoyed his job and he told me that a cook used to be respected like a doctor in Nigeria because they have so much power over the health of the person they were cooking for. He also said that he liked it because he can always find work (not an easy thing to do in Nigeria). He conceded that it doesn't pay well, like the missionaries that he used to cook for, but that was good because a Christian should not make too much money. Earning too much money means people stop trusting in God. He said that cooking for people gives him a chance to serve them and show them the love of God, just like the missionaries. He also showed us his marriage certificate dated July 19, 1954 when we were asking about his family. His wife lives in a village about an hour from our house in a neighboring village (it's actually pretty common for husbands and wives to live apart like that for work), and his 7 children with their grandchildren live in and around Jos. He goes to visit them on Sundays when he has off from work. I think we'll miss Baba the most, not just because he cooks great food for us, but because he has shown us more love from his humble position than anyone else.

We also wanted to let everyone know that due to changes in the Nigerian visa policy we will be coming home at the end of October. Our initial plans were to stay around 6 months, because the visas we obtained were good for 3 months with the option to renew it for another 3 months. Just before we arrived however, the government changed their policy so that visas are now only good for 1 month with the option to renew for 1 month. I think we snuck in under the old policy due to some strings that Dr. Chris pulled for us. All being said and done, I feel like we've had a very fruitful 3 months here, maybe not productivity wise (we didn't complete any major projects for them) but in the sense that we learned about our selves and grew a tremendous amount. We made some wonderful friendships, heard some amazing stories and got to know truly inspiring people, all of which adds to this being one of those "life changing" events for us. I am so grateful that Kristen and I had the opportunity to come here and share life with the Nigerians for the short time that we did.

Mr. and Mrs. Jon

So, as expected, there are some cultural differences that we have observed in Nigeria. Marriage for example is a bit different here than in the U.S. Marriage in Nigeria is for one purpose, to have children. You don't really have to "love" your spouse, there does not have to be much of an "emotional connection", I think that the common denominator is that you simply like your spouse. The families of those who are getting married are also heavily involved in the process, acting as two governmental delegations in an international relations negotiation. The marriage itself is more like a contract to bring two people together in order to have children which will satisfy each of the families’ desire for posterity. It's also funny how happy/proud they are of the institution of marriage here. When Kristen and I go to a church for the first time, often they will ask us to come up in front of the congregation and introduce ourselves (typical Nigerian protocol). I'll introduce myself and then when I say, "and this is my wife Kristen" the whole place erupts into applause. I've never seen people so happy to see a married couple. Not only that, but everyone asks us how many children we have, and you can see the disappointment in their faces when we say none. Some are very blunt and ask us why we don't have any kids yet, but we mostly deflect this question by telling them we want to have stable jobs that produce a steady paycheck before begetting offspring. This usually goes over well, I think it shows we're being responsible.

The Nigerian family structure is another area of difference, and is definitely a patriarchal one. It's pretty normal for people to address me (Jon) before Kristen and even direct most of their questions at me just because I am the husband. Women in Nigeria are expected for the most part to be quite and reserved. One of the funniest manifestations of this cultural phenomenon takes place when people call to us in or around the clinic. Even though both Kristen and I introduce ourselves to the same person at the same time, both telling this person our names, they many times side step acknowledging Kristen. A typical greeting would go like this:
Jon: Hello Greg (our driver at the clinic)
Greg: Hello Jon
Kristen: Good morning Greg
Greg: Hello Jon's wife
This is typical and happens all the time. We gave a presentation for some outreach workers at the clinic last week on "the house of nutrition". Kristen pretty much did the presentation, I was just the house, but they still had on the program that Mr. and Mrs. Jon were presenting. Just funny!

The people here are pretty hard working people for the most part. The whole town seems to be up and active by 6:00 AM and don't usually go to bed until around 12 every night (and we think we're a nation sleep deprived). I have a theory on why this is however, and I think it stems from the fact that Nigerians don't have the same understanding of what we would call "respect for other people's quiet". By 5:50 AM, almost like clockwork, our neighbor starts doing her laundry in the courtyard of our building, singing along to her three favorite songs that she plays on her tape cassette player. Then around 6:15 AM, the landlord on the third floor of our building will have a worship service that involves a lot of singing and clapping. So by 6:30, you don't have a choice, you're up whether you like it or not. Then, because the power is on and off all day long, people run generators at night to have electricity in their homes. There is no law about when these generators need to be turned off, or how close to your neighbor's bedroom window your generator is. Again, could you imagine that happening in a residential neighborhood in the U.S.?

Thanks for listening to our adventures,
Jon

New Things

We are always learning here. Things are always changing for us, our perspectives, our values, our dreams, our visions, our hopes, our understanding of God. It's quite exciting on many levels. We had a nice and relaxing weekend where we just spent some time together, reading, going for walks, going to church, talking, etc. It was great. We are learning to see the face of God in different ways while we experience different ways of life.

I think that sometimes being in a different culture, where we are clearly different, can be trying. It sometimes feels like we can only get to a certain place in the community. They do community so well here. It's something that we're really learning to value. To share the things we have with others who need is a distant concept from how we are realizing it is normally done, giving our money when we have a cause that WE feel good about and want to give to. Someone may need a bed, if I have an extra room, why can't they have it? Or, maybe they just need to go for a walk and "get away" for a bit. Maybe they need a meal, I can cook one (not here though, we have a wonderful, gracious, and dedicated cook who makes meals for us everyday). Sometimes we feel our impact in the U.S. could be more powerful if we lived more like the Nigerians than trying to live like an American here. As we attempt to acculturate to the Nigerian way of life, we're still Americans and there's no way of getting around it. There is a strange power differential that is alive, even if we try to fight it. We can't change the color of our skin, where we're from, what culture we have as context, what is normal to us and abnormal, or how we talk, but we can try to listen to what others are teaching us through their own lifestyles, and take that with us and we travel on the road of life. People actually take care of people here, they put people over work, productivity and efficiency. The emphasis for us cannot be to accomplish some job or task, because things operate much differently here, and if that were my goal, I would certainly become frustrated and fail. Getting things done here is much more difficult because of various boundaries. My goals here have to be different than my goals are in the U.S.-they cannot be focused on getting things done, producing and meeting goals, but on listening to God, and seeking what He wants me to do in this context here. It's a difficult lesson to learn because in the U.S. we are always working for the bottom line, time deadline, seeing as many people, getting as many things done in as little time possible. It's not the way things work here, it's not how the Nigerians want things to work here, and it's just not possible here. So, I try to focus on learning, which can sometimes seem selfish, but I think I'm here for a reason, and I don't think it's to accomplish any specific task (though I continue to act out my ingrained American mentality of working on accomplishing tasks).

So, things are going well, because we have decided to readjust our new goals, and they are much more exciting, seeking to love God and our neighbor in a new way to us. We don't have much to update you on things that we are doing. We are both working on different projects...grants for the clinic, putting together a magazine, an annual report, a overall manual for the entire clinic, but the most exciting thing we are doing is learning.