What is it like living among the Fulani?: Christine's story

The Fulani celebrate births with a feast on the eighth day, known as the baptism ceremony, because that’s the day the child receives its first name. This took place at Sébo’s parents’ home in the bush, 8 kilometres from my home. That was when I discovered this very welcoming family. As I didn’t have a car, I cycled there every week. I was always warmly welcomed. I’d sit on their mat and we’d have a chat. Her parents were just as gentle and kind to me as Sébo, and just as keen to teach me Fulani. In this context of almost total immersion, I continued to learn the language while immersing myself in their culture.

They really welcomed me into their family. An example of that came one day when I was with the last two daughters of the family. We were walking in the bush when a Fulani man on a motorbike stopped. He looked at me with astonishment and insistence, frowning. Then he said, “Who’s that?” Sébo and Dèmo replied: “She’s our sister! He retorted: “Is she Fulani?” The immediate response was: “Yes, she’s Fulani!” So, he spoke to me and asked what I was doing there. I told him, “I’ve come to visit their father’s yard”. The sisters immediately took me back, saying “Our father” while staring at me. When the man left, Dèmo said to me: “Hey! He’s your dad too! Isn’t he? He’s not just ours!”

They really welcomed me into their family.

Many months later, during a rather stressful period, to help me with a fairly heavy workload, Sébo and her little one came to stay with me for a month. One particularly difficult morning I was struggling to motivate myself to take on the task in front of me. Sébo looked at me gently and said: “Shall we get down to work?” Under her gaze and her presence, I set to work with gusto. She gave me a lot of encouragement. And it turned out that this was the most beneficial period for me in terms of learning the language, because she spoke to me all the time in Fulani, which was of course our only common language. Repeating the same sentences over and over again helped me to learn a lot of vocabulary and to recognise and reproduce good syntax.

She took time away from me, she was there for me. The time she gave me when she was a wife and mother enabled me to make enormous progress in the language. Thanks to her, thanks to the time she gave me, I was able to have other exchanges in Fulani with other people. What a joy to finally be able to understand and be understood!

To thank her for her help, I gave her a mobile phone with an application for singing Christian songs in Fulani. I didn’t know if she’d be interested, so I just asked her. I played her the first song, which says: “Jesus loved me, he loved me so much that he died for me. He died for me at Golgotha. Jesus loved me so much that he died for me”. As she listened, a gentle smile came to her lips and her face lit up. Putting her hands over her heart, she said to me: “Fatime, this song is so sweet to me.” I played her others and her joy seemed to increase with each new song. I pray that the Lord will use these songs in her own language to speak to her heart. May the Lord transform Sébo’s life and call him to Himself.

*Names changed for security reasons. This article was first published by SIM France-Belgium in French.