Tenerife today

Like the Guanches before them, the Spanish carve an existence out of the rugged volcanic rock. The rural ones chase their goats up steep mountainsides, and grow astonishing terraced crops in the crevices of almost vertical ravines. Two teachers visited a farmer in his lonely habitat, where he grew lemons, cactus fruit and other foods. He had to hike the harsh paths to cultivate, weed, fertilize and harvest, hauling his produce out on his back, up the incredibly steep slopes.

One day while I was hiking with friends, we spent a half hour getting partway up one slope. We heard bells, and saw a flock of goats across on another mountainside. They tripped merrily around two slopes, down a steep ravine to the bottom (where we had been) and raced up behind us to cross our paths, all in about 5 minutes. I was amazed. Yet more amazing still was the shepherd hollering his way behind them, polevaulting his path over impossible places with a wooden walking stick. As he passed us and greeted us, I saw that he was at least my age (60!) and had his full wind, despite having raced over down, around and up two mountain slopes in about 7 minutes. Now there's a hardy group of people! They certainly have my respect!

A trip to the past

School started up again last Monday. Since we'll be leaving Tenerife soon, several of us teachers took the fourth through twelfth graders to the local Museum of Natural Sciences and Anthropology.

It amazed me to see the world of "stone age" people who lived here in the 1400's and later. Though they did not make any metal tools, they had a full life carving out an agricultural and goat herding existence in the rugged mountains of the islands, with a complex society of noblemen, farmers, priests (animists), fishermen, servants...

Though they formed their own simple pottery, made their clothing from skins and lived in homes built of rocks, we tend to be patronizing toward them, and the Spanish simply wiped them out. They harvested sea salt, cactus fruits, seeds and nuts much as the rural islanders do today. Since they also made bone, shell and wood jewelry, carved bone fish hooks and wove natural fibers into useful objects, I imagine that they had much the same jobs people can have today, without the technology. Like many rural peoples, they created mortar and pestles from naturally rounded volcanic rocks with holes in them.

Here we see the life the Spanish and others have carved out of the same rugged hills, with the rich and poor, the farmers, goat herders and tradesmen. I wonder when we get to heaven and look upon our civilization from God's eyes if we will seem more wonderful for making cement dwellings with metal embellishments instead of stone ones... I love modern technology. I wonder how it touches the heart of God... It was, for me, a thought-provoking field trip.
Of course, the highlight of the field trip for the students was--you guessed it! MacDonald's cheeseburgers!

Preparing for a new outreach

This is a new adventure! Blogging! Today I am simply learning how to set up the site... Hopefully lots more interesting things will come forth!
Meanwhile, here aboard the good ship Africa Mercy, we are battening down for our upcoming sail from Tenerife to Togo, where our hospital will reopen to serve the poor with much needed surgeries.