Shea Butter

I haven't used a toilet or a shower in six weeks now. Don't worry, I've washed, I just use a bucket and water that I've drawn from the well, just like everyone else in my African family. My diet has consisted mainly of tô (congealed substance made of millet flour) and leaf sauces with an occasional delicacy of rice, beans, fish, or peanut sauce. I've slept on a mattress on the ground under a mosquito net, waking daily with the sun to start daily life with Africa. 

It's funny how little I miss and how much I've gained from this experience of living with an African family. I'm finally learning about real Africa life. Seeing how hard they work. Hearing parts of their stories that I've never heard. Watching how they live and interact. It's true what you hear about Africa - people love to live in community. You are never alone, and people never want to be. Everything is shared between neighbors, family, and friends...from possessions to food to money. When you cook, you just make a big pot and share it with whoever shows up, that way if people come unexpected at meal time, they have something to eat. If you live in a courtyard with several families, not everybody needs a broom or a bucket because every family just shares what they have with those who don't have it. You  borrow and give without expecting anything in return; it's just totally normal, and I love it. I'm seeing a side of Africa that I've never truly seen before, at least not is deeply, and it makes me fall harder in love with this culture that God created. 

Last night, Rebeca's daughters taught me dagara songs and dances, and we danced and laughed at ourselves to the light of a single fluorescent bulb on the front terrace as the night fell and the stars came out and the air grew colder. Rebeca showed me how to make shea butter, and it's a long process that starts with crushing, grilling, and grinding the nuts into a paste. Then you do a series of mixing, stirring, adding cold water, adding hot water, draining, and rinsing over and over again until you get an oily paste that is ready to boil. When you boil it, that's when the true oil comes out. Its kind of like a potter at his wheel, and it's kind of like a process of purification. You have to do all the steps to get the pure product, and it takes significant time and work. 

While we stirred the oily butter with our bare hands, we talked about ministry and life and the future and God. We stayed up until 1:30 am stirring and adding water and talking. 

Each time that we added water to the shea butter, I thought it would never fully mix in. At first, the water and oil don't mix, but when you work the paste with your hands, when you get elbow deep in the bucket, when you push your energy into the paste, you get the desired and satisfying result of a smooth, watery shea butter. Then, with time, the valuable part of the liquid mixture floats to the surface, and you scrape it off with your hands, squeeze the water out of it, and form it in the palm of your hands like a lump of precious clay. In conclusion, all the mixing and separating is actually a process of cleansing and purifying to get a substance of superior quality.

I squeezed the shea butter in the palm of my hand and thought about my own heart. How right now at this very moment part of me feels so at home, and yet sometimes I still feel like such a foreigner. Some days I feel like I have a place here and a valuable role to play, and sometimes I don't feel needed at all. Sometimes I want to leave and sometimes I want to stay forever. I have a constant mixture of hurts and happiness in living here. 

And at first none of this mixes. It's like oil and water, and it doesn't seem to make sense. When I first started feeling these things, I kept them all separate, but now, I'm seeing that they can complement instead of conflict. Like the shea butter, with time and hard work, something new is created. And God is teaching me something through the process. So I'm letting all my experiences, thoughts, questions, and emotions mix, and I'm asking God, "What are you making new with all these things?" 

What is God mixing in your life? The things that don't make sense, the questions or circumstances that don't seem to add up or go together, the things that you just don't know what to do with - these are the ingredients that God is using to make shea butter in your life. 

Come, sit on a three legged stool next to a huge bucket of oily shea butter. Put your hands in the paste, feel how the lumps become smooth as you work the butter with your hands. Watch as the things that you never thought would mix create something new. And then watch as the purifying process makes the valuable part of the paste rise to the surface. Let everything mix together in your heart, let it settle and cleanse and purify you, and then scrape the value off the top. God is working in you like a potter at the wheel, like the strong hands of Rebeca elbow-deep in a bucket of shea butter. He is making something new.