I live near ‘De Bejamins’
by matthew.
12 Niger Avenue. That’s our address, for what its worth. I haven’t tried to Mapquest it, but I don’t think it’s listed. So, if you want directions, my best attempt is to say that I live near the Stadium, in the town center. Downtown Jos.
We were visiting with some new friends of ours, missionaries with Sudan Inland Mission (SIM) which is the oldest missions organization in Africa by the way. We were describing for them where we live. “We live around the corner from Gidan Bege (House of Hope) ministry”. “Oh! Wow. That’s a….um…uh…BUSY area”. “Yeah. But we sort of like it like that”.
On another occasion, we were visiting with a Nigerian friend, Maggie Ahmed, a women who helps women start business through a micro-loan scheme. While walking around our neighborhood with her, she was looking around at the scene that is our community and says, “wow, you guys REALLY live in Jos. This isn’t the outskirts of Jos, this IS Jos”. Yep.
There is a great amount of gratitude and pride that Lisa and I get from comments like this. The recognition that God has placed us in, what our friend Randy White would call the “Center of the City” (we recommend his two books, Journey to the Center of the City and Encountering God in the City you can find them at www.fiful.org). As many of you know, during our 4 years in downtown Fresno God grew our heart for the cities of the world; that geography that puts beauty as the next door neighbor to tragedy, puts the wealthy next to the poor, the houses of power next to the homeless, the weak near the strong and the celebrity and the forgotten on the same block. Such places, we feel, are the very locales that Jesus calls the church into, not away from. And as such, we feel grateful to be in those kinds of neighborhoods.
Although this downtown looks different from downtown Fresno, we’re nonetheless glad to have moved from one downtown urban area to another. There’s a kind of beautiful rightness to it. And it fits us.
A brief description…
If you were to take a 15 minute walk around our neighborhood a few of the sites you’d see include:
The central Mosque of Jos
The football (soccer) stadium
Countless locally owned shops
Several primary and day care schools
A dozen or so churches
United Baptist Church (the church we attend most often)
A brothel
The town drunkard
No fewer than 50 goats, 35 chickens, 12 turkeys and 4 ducks
2 barber shops
6 apartment complexes (but they look different then you might think)
The Faith Alive Clinic
Faith Alive Social Services
The Watsons’ apartment compound
Da’ Benjamins restaurant
So, we hope that you’ll come and visit us. If you need directions, well, hop on a British Airways flight, layover in London then on to Abuja, Nigeria. Once in Abuja, take the road that goes north, through Nasarawa State, pass through Kaduna State and into Plateau State. Follow the signs toward Jos. Once in Jos, ask which way is the town center. Follow those directions until you see the lights of the stadium. We live a stones throw from the stadium on the south side. Across the street from Da Benjamins. We live on the bottom floor. Just ask the guys at the barber shop on the corner where Nathan lives. They’ll know who you’re looking for.
Thursday, October 12, 2006