France Revisited:

A Month’s Sojourn in the Land of My Roots

                                                                   May, 2012

How all this madness got started~

 I still remember the day in the late 1980’s when I was in the barn on my Oregon farm and took note of an ancient 10-speed Motobecane bicycle that Lois had used during her student days at OSU. I was storing it for her in the barn after her graduation and she had gone on to better things.

I looked at the bike and wondered- ‘Could I possibly ride this thing without getting totally out of breath?’  There was only one way to find out: Get on it and give it a spin. Which I promptly did and much to my surprise the peddling went just fine.  I had all the wind needed to ride anywhere I was inclined to go; over hill and vale. No problem.

That tentative venture was the beginning of a career as a touring cyclist that lasted fifteen years and took me thousands of miles around the U.S. and Europe. I made seven bike tours in Western Europe during those years visiting countries from Sweden to Switzerland and Austria to the UK and all the places between. But my favorite place to tour was France, where I spent the majority of my time in the saddle and mixing with the natives.

And so I got hooked~

During those years I was a fruit grower in the Willamette Valley of Oregon. Each year when the cherry season was over, by the end of June, I had a few weeks free to take vacation. It was great to park the tractor and my rickety pickup and heave a great sigh of relief that the cherries had finally made it from the trees over to the processing plant and I had a small stash of cash. Enough to get a ticket for me and my bike somewhere far from the stress of growing soft fruits: cherries, peaches, plums and the like.

Pour quoi la France?

There are a couple things that have drawn me towards France of all the other European countries I have visited. One is that as a high school sophomore I started studying French as a second language and I got on very well in those studies. Language arts were my forte as a student; language learning came easy.  My A’s in language classes helped offset the D’s and F’s in math. And we tend to capitalize in the areas where we excel- right?

After high school I did my two years of compulsory service (the draft) with MCC in Morocco. There the official language is French and with my high school studies in French, I was soon on my way to proficiency in French.

Visiting in another country and culture is hundreds of times better when you can talk with the locals in their language. So, number one- being able to talk to the people in France makes that country an obvious first choice for me.

Secondly, most of my cultural and genetic roots have a significant history in France. Spiritually and culturally I am more inclined to identify with my maternal heritage. Not that I am disinterested in my Dad’s family, just that who I am as a person is more akin to my Mom’s people. They were Anabaptist refugees from Switzerland who found a welcome in the Strasbourg Duchy of Northeast France in the 17 ^th century. As I travel the back roads of Alsace & Lorraine I catch images of what life must have been like for my peasant ancestors in the landscape. And in that process grow in my understanding of what makes me tick.

For my travels I have had two sources for connecting with the locals: Mennonite Your Way and SERVAS. MYW is the offspring of the Mennonite penchant for both ‘freundschaft’ and frugality. It provides connection with Mennonite families willing to receive guests.

SERVAS is a European organization formed in the agony of post-WWII Europe as an effort to restore fraternity and friendship amongst former enemies. It also is a listing of households open to receiving short-visit strangers who share interest in peace and intercultural understanding.

To Paris via Lome, Togo~

After my 2011 visit to the U.S., I decided it was time to skip the annual trip to the U.S. in 2012 and instead go north to Europe, specifically: France. It’s been seven years since my last visit there and I just had the feeling in my bones that it was time to refresh ties with France.

On April 19^th I left Catel in the little blue Peugeot and headed for Ziguinchor. There I turned to car over to Peter to bring back to Catel. I boarded the ferry for Dakar and arrived there the next morning at 6. From the ferry dock I went straight to the Dakar airport and right away got a flight to Lome, Togo some thousands of miles deeper into West Africa.

In Lome I met with about 60 pastors and missionaries interested in CHE (Christian Health Evangelism).  CHE is an educational network that equips missionaries to do holistic community development together with evangelism.  The participants represented a wide swath of  a dozen West African countries including Guinea Bissau down through Ghana and as far east as Nigeria.