But I Don't Speak French... (Part 2 of 4)
Speaking in tongues and an angelic encounter in the middle of a West-African desert
Welcome back, tribe!
We are so glad that you are joining us here on Between Two Worlds. If you have not yet read Part 1 of this post, you will probably want to do that before reading this one, which is Part 2 of 4.
Parts 3 and 4 will be released in the following days, so be sure to subscribe and download the app so that you never miss a post. God bless!
A Living Nightmare
As we drew closer to the people who were lying scattered across the ground, leaned up against a few sparse trees, or walking around in shock, I kept thinking that this was not real life. Surely we were in a nightmare.
There were multiple injuries ranging from minor scrapes and scratches for a lucky few to head wounds, broken bones, all the way to life-threatening injuries.
A little boy who couldn’t have been more than three years old was lying on the ground with his head in the lap of whom I assume must have been his mother.
There was a visible gash on his forehead and a massive knot had formed, but he was barely whimpering, just lying there in shock while his mother helplessly sat there crying.
I looked around for Issa, but he was nowhere to be found.
Someone on our team finally managed to say, “We need bandages!” And that is when the adrenaline kicked into gear.
Realizing that we had not brought anything with us other than the clothes on our back, we ran back up the hill to the rest of our team who had stayed back and told them that we needed as much cloth as possible.
Without a second thought, one of the guys quickly took his shirt off and someone found an ink pen in the car, using it to pierce a hole in the material. We frantically tried to rip the shirt into strips of cloth, but our hands were shaking so badly that it was taking forever.
Haphazardly Dancing with Machetes
By that point, some of the locals who had been working in the fields had wandered up out of curiosity, and I noticed that they had machetes. Playing charades once again, we asked them to use the machetes to start cutting off material from our skirts.
I can only imagine what we must have looked like from an aerial point-of-view. To the birds flying above, we probably just appeared to be a bunch of silly girls twirling around like poorly trained ballerinas, goaded on by the machetes slicing haphazardly around our legs.
We stood there in the middle of the desert, spinning in circles, as they unraveled our skirts as much as possible. Mind you, this was a Muslim community and nation, and I vividly remember how once the length of our skirts had reached our knees, one of the men began to yell and motioned for us to stop.
I still recall being taken aback by the fact that propriety could be at the forefront of anyone’s mind in that particular moment, but the last thing I wanted to do was come off as offensive when surrounded by that many machetes, so we obeyed and stopped the whirling.
Blood on Their Hands
Armed with only the material from the guys’ shirts, portions of our skirts, and a cloth purse that had been quickly disassembled, we began to fashion bandages out of what we had.
The nurse-in-training pointed out that we needed to do triage and assess which injuries were life threatening. Following her lead, we quickly went from one person to the next, wrapping head wounds and creating makeshift bandages for anyone who needed it.
Mind you, all of this was done sans gloves.
We did our best to be careful in the midst of the chaos, but at one point I remember looking down and noticing that two of my team members now had literal blood on their hands. My stomach dropped, and I began to pray in earnest for protection over everyone there.
As we worked our way from one small group to the next, I noticed a young man lying on the ground off to the side several feet away from the rest of the group. He was surrounded by men who were talking rapidly and visibly in a panic.
I pushed through the people that were now thronged around him, not realizing yet why he had drawn a crowd.
When I reached him, I could see that his left leg was lying in a pool of blood that was growing exponentially with each heartbeat. His injury was clearly one of the worst that we had encountered so far, hence the audience that now circled around him.
I yelled to my friends that I thought this man was bleeding out, and two of them came running over.
I was squatted down next to him on the ground, and I will never forget the look on his face. It was the first time that I had ever looked into someone’s eyes and saw staring back at me a raw and primal fear of death.
I immediately grabbed his hand and began to pray.
I knew we had to find out where the bleeding was, and I could not shake the feeling in my spirit that we did not have much time left.
One of the team members used a knife from someone standing around to begin cutting open the man’s jeans starting with the hem near his ankle.
As the knife struggled to cut through the denim, there was a loud gasp from the crowd as the material covering his shin was finally ripped open.
I was sitting up near his head still holding his hand, but I could see something white out of the corner of my eye.
Not Made for This
When I finally worked up the courage to look down at his leg, I quickly discovered that the white object I had caught a glimpse of was, in fact, his tibia. Protruding from his shin like a jagged spear reaching for the sun, the bone served as a stark and chilling revelation of the severity of his injury.
I had been a pre-med major for all of four months and a minute in college, and there was a reason why I had switched to education before I left for Christmas break.
I was simply not made for this kind of thing.
For a brief moment, the scene in front of my eyes began to grow a little fuzzy as I felt the blood drain from my face. It was one of those moments where you start to get tunnel vision and are keenly aware of your heartbeat pounding in your ears, drowning out everything else around you.
I have no doubt that Holy Spirit gave me strength in that moment to stay alert and by the man’s side, because I know that left to my own strength and devices I would have been passed out on the ground at the sight of the gruesome compound fracture.
Judging by the amount of blood that was pumping out and with such force, it was obvious that an artery had been severed. Using my very limited medical knowledge that had been gleaned from nothing more than fictional medical television series, I heard myself saying that we needed a tourniquet.
Thankfully, the nursing student on my team knew what to do. She began to bark out orders like a seasoned surgeon, and listening to her instructions, another team member began to fashion a tourniquet out of what cloth we had left and some sticks, our only options coming from a thorn bush lying near us.
I felt so useless just sitting there doing nothing, ashamedly terrified of touching blood, but I knew I could not leave the man’s side. I was too fearful to be of any medical assistance, but what I could offer in the moment was to simply hold his hand and pray.
I had never seen that much blood before in my entire life, and with each passing moment, I could see that he was becoming weaker. There were times when he would close his eyes, and he soon began to drift in and out of consciousness.
Each time he closed his eyes, I would begin to talk louder and administer a sternum rub, a technique that I vaguely remembered from my lifeguarding days. It seemed to do the trick in the moment, but I wasn’t sure how much longer that was going to work.
It all felt so surreal, but I was aware of reality enough to understand that this man was bleeding out and quite honestly was on the verge of dying.
We Need Help
Time seemed to stand still.
How long had we been here? 10 minutes? 30 minutes? An hour?
And where were the medics?
Did they have something similar to our 911? Had anyone called? Did anyone even have a phone?
And suddenly all at once it just felt like too much to handle.
There was too much suffering, too much pain, too many decisions to make, and the truth is that we were just not equipped to help them.
I felt panic rising up in my chest, and I was shocked to hear myself screaming out of sheer frustration, “Help! We need help! Where is an ambulance? Somebody help us, please!”
But we were in the middle of the desert and at least an hour’s drive from the closest clinic, so my screams were in vain.
All of a sudden, in the midst of my panic and to my horror, it occurred to me that this man’s time on earth was extremely limited.
We had come to Niger to minister to the people and spread the Gospel, but this was more than I had bargained for.
I had anticipated that this outreach would be challenging and a little more intense, simply because we were going to a Muslim village that had not been very receptive of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
I had read the reports and knew from my missionary friends who were planning on moving to Niger that more than 98% of the population is Muslim (2022 Report on International Religious Freedom: Niger).
I had even planned on facing opposition while we were there and had tried my best to prepare both myself and my team for that very real possibility.
But the circumstance in which we now found ourselves was completely different than anything that I had imagined. My expectations when I had woke up that morning was of a day spent preaching to a most likely uninterested crowd of people from another faith.
Instead, I was now in a position where my face might possibly and literally be the last one this man saw before leaving this earth. And with that thought, the gravity of the situation finally began to sink in.
Suddenly finding it difficult to breathe, I realized with mounting hysteria that this very moment could be the last opportunity for this man to accept Christ before crossing over into eternity, and unfortunately, time was not on our side.