Good News for Nomads

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Baapa


Mallam and his family


Phil Short shares GRN 'Good News' with Nigerien nomads

by Phil Short, SIM NIGER, 2007

Living in eastern Niger often seems remote. Our village does have water and electricity now (most of the time) and a big market every Wednesday. There are schools, a hospital and many mosques.

However there are thousands of Fulani and Wodaabe further north right across Niger. They live far from the main centres. Many are several days camel ride from a market. They are Muslims, proud that their ancestors brought Islam to West Africa 200 years ago. But many are also largely ignorant about their religion and follow religious rituals blindly.

We had hoped, on our return from leave in Australia, to visit one of these areas with Saley who had wanted us to go with him to share the Gospel with his relatives. When Saley died of malaria in January last year, we wondered how or if we would go to his people. How would God answer this prayer of Saley's?

Through our growing friendship with Mallam, who lives in our village, we discovered that he was related to Saley and wanted to go to the same places Saley had wanted to take us to. Mallam had a partial amputation of a leg at Christmas time because of cancer. He hoped that some of his relatives might give him money to help provide the finances he needed for a prosthesis. We said we'd be happy to take him. "That would be wonderful," he said. "You could tell them about Jesus too. They are in the darkness. They know nothing about that." Mallam is a Muslim teacher. He had been deeply impacted by Saley's witness and by the preaching of the Gospel at his funeral.

So, with Mallam, we journeyed northwest through deep sand 150 kms to Saley's older brother's camp. They were very welcoming, and wherever we stopped over the next few days we found people warm and willing to listen to the teaching. In fact, they seemed hungry to hear the teaching in their own language. At each place we stayed, people wanted us to leave cassettes so that they could hear more and share it with others.

Mallam planned to stay on for a month after we left. Much to our surprise, as we were preparing to return south, he asked, "Would you lend me a cassette player and cassettes so that I can give this message to my people wherever I go? I want them to hear this too."

Mallam returned two days before we left to come home. When we visited him, he said, "Wherever I went people listened to the message and they want to know more. They asked me to tell you to please come back and teach us more, and don't just stay a few days, but come back for a whole month."

"Do you remember us?"

One afternoon, two men arrived at our door.

After greeting, they asked "do you remember us?"

"Well, you look familiar, but to be honest, I can't remember where I met you," I said. Then they said, "12 years ago, you spent the night at our camp with your friend Dodi."

I remembered how on one of my short return visits to Niger (in 1993) we had stopped at a well late in the afternoon, greeted the men who were watering their animals, and asked them if any of them would like us to go to their camp that night to share God's message of forgiveness.

These two men standing before me, Baapa and Adam, had taken us to their camp. The whole family group had listened with great attention as we shared with them that night and the next morning.

We left them a hand wind cassette player and a set of teaching cassettes so that the teaching could continue after we left. Unknown to us, every year in the rainy season, as they had returned to our area with their herds, they came to our village, and asked if we had returned. "No", they were told, "they don't live here anymore." However, when they returned this time and discovered that we were back they said, "For 12 years we have been waiting to hear more about Jesus. Please won't you come out now and teach us."

We went with them to their camp that afternoon, and we met their families and found them hungry to know more of God's Word. As we reviewed God's salvation plan together, we were amazed how much they had learned and understood from the cassettes through those years.

The next morning some of the women wanted Carol to join them for breakfast. We ate millet porridge with milk from a communal calabash and drank sweet green tea. It was so encouraging to see women wanting to believe too. They have grown up thinking that they are of no real value, and now they see that God loves them too. Before we left our village to return home in September, Baapa and Adam came to say goodbye. They told us that now many of their clan's people want to hear the Gospel too. Their children are singing Christian songs as they herd their animals and as they work at the well, and the message is spreading like a grassfire!

Phil and Carol Short are missionaries who have been working with SIM in Niger, and in their Australian administration, since 1974.