This Is My Brain On Africa: Meet Yéo Martine, my sister!

This is my host sister, Martine. :)

A truly remarkable girl, and easily the best Ivorian friend I’ve made this year. Martine is 20, and interestingly shares the same birthday (May 4^th) as my childhood best friend Mike, though seven years apart. She, like most of the kids in my enormous family, is not one of my host parents blood children. She is my host-Mom’s neice, and Martine’s mom (Naomi’s older sister) also lives in Korhogo and on occasion comes to visit. The reason she came to live with my host parents at the age of four was simply because Naomi asked her sister if she could have one of their children, and she sister of course agreed. I don’t know why she asked to have Martine, but I’d imagine it probably has something to do with financial difficulty and my family being well off and able to send her to school. After that in 1995), Martine grew up in the village of Niofoin with the family until 2005 when a my host aunt and a handful of the kids, including Martine, moved into the Korhogo house. The parents and rest of the family followed suite in 2009.

Martine has been something of a cultural guide for me since coming to Korhogo. And I've had a lot of fun sharing about my culture with her. One good example would be when I told her that American wedding ceremonies generally don't last longer than an hour. She was awestruck and of course asked why. I told her it's probably because the American bride and grooms walk about 100 times faster than the Ivorian brides and grooms, who usually take 5 to 10 minutes to do so. She made me demonstrate, which resulted in an eruption of laughter and me repeating that about 10 times for everyone. Nowadays whenever we walk somewhere fast, we are walking "like the Americans." In reality the reason weddings are so much longer in Côte d'Ivoire is because they have a full length church service complete with sermon and worship setlist, take forever walking down the isle, and then dance and eat. It's the ceremony, reception, and a sunday service all combined. Interesting, n'est pas?

Martine is quite a unique individual, with many talents and interesting tastes. She speaks, reads, and writes three language, loves math, sings really well, leads worship at church every week, and is learning both piano and guitar. She also cooks the majority of the meals for our family of 16 and does a good majority of the cleaning as well. All of this on top of the fact that she is taking several college-level classes and doing well in them. She is so busy, even when sick, and manages to be one of the most joy-filled people I’ve ever met. Definitely a superstar.

Martine is really intelligent as well, and has some interestingly high life goals considering the place and role she was born into. Martine is a Senefou girl, and even though she comes from a farily modern family, she is likely expected to conform to the general mould, which means getting married and having kids within two years and be a very hard working, mostly stay at home Mom. I definitely see a big part of Martine that wants this life, but I also have observed that she would really love to get away and chase her dreams. Martine wants to be an architect/civil engineer. Even more than that dream, she wants to be devoted to helping orphans and the poor for the rest of her life. Martine is still in “premiere” meaning she has one more year of school before she can go to University (God willing), so she has plenty of time to think about her future. If she decides to pursue that dream she will have lots of mountains to climb to reach it. It’s sad to say, but women are traditionally viewed as second-class citizens in West Africa.

I’ve come to feel that something is off about my day if I haven’t spent time hanging out with Martine. It’s a pretty common thing for her and I to be sat on chairs doing a guitar lesson, or me getting a French lesson, or just relaxing and talking about life. The last few days she’s been really sick, so I’ve spent a lot of time just being in the same room to comfort her, or finding ways to encourage her and make her smile. Probably the best thing about Martine is that she really, REALLY loves Jesus. And second to that comes her love for singing TO Jesus, so the way I've been making her smile for the most part has been convincing her to come sing french worship songs with me.

Anyways, that’s my introduction for Martine. I’m sure you’ll be hearing more about her in the near future. I think when I leave this place, I'll miss her the most out of all my new family and friends!

Here are a couple photos of Martine, more to come soon!