Guinea-Bissau September Newsletter

Women hoeing with wooden hoes.

Rainy Season in Full Swing



A downpour in Catel

On July 26th, about four weeks ago I arrived back in Catel from my travels to North America. The place was transformed from when I left some six weeks earlier. By the end of July we were well into the rainy season and everything was coming back to life after the eight months long dry season. It is great to see how green it is and how much our plants and trees are growing with the abundant rainfall. Since the rains began in early June we have accumulated 30” which means we are about half way to our rainy season average total.

Andrew and Jonathan, together with our local guys had planted moringa tree seeds and cassava in the orchard. They also put a living fence of lemon seedlings around the orchard. All these are growing rapidly with the high humidity and breaks of sunshine between showers.
The past two months have been an intense time of planting for the villagers. Everyday entire families can be seen going to the fields preparing the soil and planting the crops that will sustain them through the next dry season. They have primarily planted rice, sweet potatoes, beans and millet.

Work Plan for Mennonite Mission Catel

August 2011-July 2012

Ministry Area:   Medical & Community Health

Objective: To make basic health care and a holistic Christian lifestyle available to the villages where we have ministry.

1.     The clinic at Catel will be open daily for medicine and consultations. Our staffing will vary, depending on who is available. By December 2011 we hope to have a full time medical professional. At times throughout the period there will be visiting medical professionals who will be assisting short-term. We are recruiting a second full time professional (RN).

Meet Ramatoula

The little girl in this picture is three year old Ramatoula. This is what she looked like when she moved noiselessly into my door frame, after dark, on the evening of April 30, 2011.

That day had not started off well for Ramatoula. As daylight was stealing across the Guinea Bissau landscape and the roosters were about done with their morning announcements another song was heard in the house of Ramatoula’s care giver. It was the voice of her aunt who took custody of this child from Ramatoula’s mother three weeks earlier. The aunt was singing a ditty about a little girl who again wet the bed and needed to be punished. The song and the accompanying ruckus awakened one of our missionary co-workers.

When he heard Ramatoula’s screams he was quickly leaped from his bed and dashed out to the veranda where the goings-on sickened and angered him. There was this little half-pint being held inside an empty rice sack. Around her was the rest of the household doing a mock lynching on her.

Mennonite Church Guinea Bissau Teams up with Arizonans

By Ron Pust, MD, College of Medicine, Univ. of Arizona

The catalyst for bringing together HeartBeat for Africa [HBA] based in Arizona and the Mennonite Church of Guinea-Bissau [MCGB] was a “Providential=God-directed” meeting of Community Health Evangelism/Lifewind [CHE], attended by both in search of a wider and more holistic Christian outreach in West Africa. There Ed Harrow of HBA and Beryl Forrester, Eastern Mennonite Missions country rep for Guinea Bissau were inspired by CHE/Lifewind’s West Africa director, Dayo Obaweya, to partner in Catel, Guinea-Bissau. The first step was to provide CHE training to indigenous MCGB members by Mr. Obaweya in early March, 2011

Later in March, the two Guinea-Bissau HBA Teams learned valuable lessons when we met our Catel neighbor, Dolores M and her 5 year old daughter, Katy [not actual names]. Dolores is a 33 year old Balanta mother of three and a new believer, part of the Catel Mennonite community. 

Medical Professional Needed at Guinea Bissau Mission

Eastern Mennonite Missions, an evangelical Anabaptist mission agency committed to going where the church is...not yet and initiating movements to Jesus, seeks applicants for a health professional in Guinea-Bissau, West Africa.


35 miles south of Ziguinchor, Senegal, village fellowships emerged after EMM missionaries began work in 2005. Workers say, “Hunger for the gospel is amazing!” Work also includes development in agriculture, education, job creation, and most recently health services.

Brief description: assignment would include inaugurating the village well-being program of Christian Health Education, operating the village clinic, and training village health workers

Do Missionaries Have Fun?

Missionaries are just like everyone else- they need to get their noses off the grindstone occasionally. The four of us, Andrew, Jonathan, Annette & Beryl did just that in early May, 2011.






Andrew, Jonathan and Annette on the dock in Bissau ready to board the tub to Bubaque





PEARL GOES TO AFRICA

The following story is an account of a 13 member team that visited Catel, Guinea-Bissau  in mid-February 2011. Pearl is a fictional character, but her experiences, observations, and insights are a factual compilation of the experiences of all 13 team members. The names of other characters are their true names. It was simply easier to tell the story by combining the team members into one instead of introducing 13 different characters.

Team members