Keep On Keeping On
Posted: 19 Feb 2010 10:34 AM PST by Mary Beth Oyebade, ELCA missionary serving in Nigeria.

My apologies for being AWOL on this site for the past few weeks.

The dynamics of daily life have changed in the last month, dealing with riots and various security threats.

It always takes me awhile to get back to normal–or I should say: “the new normal.”  After the riots in 2008, I was driving downtown a few weeks later and almost stopped the car in the middle of the road when I caught sight of construction workers on a three-story building.  I was so shocked that construction was continuing while I was wondering when the next wave of violence would occur.  They were building for the future, and I was just trying to get through the day.

I bought a whole bunch of tomatoes, peppers and onions last weekend just because this is the season to buy those things. I planned to can pizza sauce, spaghetti sauce, and red stew (typical Nigerian fare).  But as I looked at the 200+ empty jars on my shelves, I felt the same way I did when I saw those construction workers: filling those jars meant planning for the future–and my mind has been stuck in a daily survival mode for the past month.

We did get the canning done with lots of extra help in the kitchen. Here’s the tally:

30 pints of pizza sauce (this will last more than one year based on current pizza eating patterns in our home)
26 pints of Grandma’s spaghetti sauce
18 quarts of Nigerian red stew

Anyway, this past week was the most normal I’ve had for awhile so I feel like things are starting to pick up once again. And I’ll try to post a little more often on this site.