"praise"

(the pictures have nothing to do with the blog that I wrote, but this is a town called Chefchaouen in Morocco where I was this past weekend. It’s all painted blue and white... a color scheme that wouldn’t really go over too well in Cameron Woods or any south Charlotte neighborhood... haha)

Today we had a girl named Effie over to our house for lunch. She is a 16 year old girl who arrived in Spain from Nigeria back in May. She is unlike any 16 year old (or person in general) I have ever met. She shared her story with us, it is heart-breaking yet amazing.

Effie got married to a Muslim man from Gana when she was 14. It is the tradition of her village to circumcise the woman before she gets married. They have a ceremony and put white powder all over the womans body and she is in deep pain and can’t move for one week. They say this is a sacrifice that pleases the gods. Effie had become a Christian when she was 11 and a missionary came to her and preached the word and invited her to church. She loved going to the church because, “the people there made me feel happy, they didn’t make me feel sad.” Her family told her she had a choice to either be circumcised or killed and she had one week to think about it. During this week her and her husband decided to run away. They ended up on a cargo ship where they were only fed stale bread and water for 4 months. She had also discovered she was pregnant during this time.

Her and her husband got seperated when they were getting on another (smaller) boat after the 4 months on the cargo ship. When Effie arrived in Spain she had no idea where she was. She found someone that spoke English and asked where she was, they told her that she is in Spain but she didn’t believe them until she saw Euros because “Spain is so far away, it is supposed to take a year to get to Europe.” That is what they are told in her village. She was too weak and thin so they had to take her baby out by c section at 6 months. They told her she had to sign these papers to do the c section. She said, she didn’t want to sign because she watched her mother die while giving birth and she was sure that if they were going to do this she would die. “But I said, ok I can do all things through Christ who gives me strength and I signed even though I was so scared.” So for the past few months her baby has been in the incubator and her husband trying to get to Spain. Jane, a woman on our team has been helping Effie get in contact with her husband, trying to work legal things out for her and spent a lot of time in the hospital with her. She calls Jane “mommy”. Image in this 16 year old girl saying mommy to someone yet she has just become a mother herself.

I said, “What is your baby’s name?” She said, “Her name is Praise.” I said, “aww why did you name her Praise?” and she said, “because God has done great things for me.”

new year's eve in august

In 1994 there was a blackout in a little town called Berchules in the mountains during their New Year’s Eve celebration. So this town decided that they would start a tradition to celebrate New Year’s Eve every first weekend of August. Apparently (from what I have been told) this town has a population of about 4,000 people, but every year their August New Year’s celebration has drawn more than 20,000 people. Yes, spaniards, as I’ve said before, can find any reason and any thing to celebrate. My friends called me up Friday night and said “Molly we’re in Granada, we want to see you.” So I met up with them and they told me that we are all going to celebrate New Year’s Eve tomorrow night in Berchules (4 hours away from Granada). They had already traveled 5 hours to get to Granada first. So I went because, well, I’ve never done anything like this before, I wanted to spend time with my friends, and I thought it must be worth it if they are willing to travel a total of 9 hours there and 9 back for one party.

Everyone fills the streets and waits for midnight to come. There is no ball that drops or TV that everyone is watching. But when the town clock strikes 12, they eat one grape for every chime. Maybe its kind of like our tradition, how they say it is good luck to eat one blackeyed pea for every day of the year. They also had fake snow blowing in the air, fireworks and everyone sang “I wanna wish you a merry christmas (with the cute spanish accent)… feliz navidad, prospero ano y felizidad” about a million times. It was quite an interesting and fun night, a very cultural experience. My friend Noe called me today and said, "molly guess who I saw on the news??" haha yes this makes the third time I have been on the Spanish news.

I did what I do every New Year’s Eve when I am with a group of my friends. I made everyone come up with new years resolutions. I realized on our bus ride to Berchules that exactly five months ago from that day I was getting on the plane to come to Spain. I remember how scary and hard that was. Now it’s cool to see what has come about in these past months here. I could have never predicted or expected all that has happened but in so many ways it is better than anything I would’ve designed for my self. So as we were making new years resolutions I realized that in exactly one year I will be returning to America. And I wonder what all will come of this year ahead. Feliz ano nuevo! (in august)!