Marriage Proposals

We regularly walk our neighbourhood in the early evening to visit with our neighbours and scary as it may sound I am almost getting used to the fact that on a regular basis there is someone who wants to marry my husband off to someone else. Not that I would ever let it happen, but when you live in a polygamist society you don't generally change it all that fast.
But the other day I had a new experience... We went around the corner and started talking to a lady we hadn't met before. This lady looked like she was in her eighties (so she had to be at least in her late fifties--Niger has a way of aging people!). Anyway, she saw that we had Cole with us and said something that we couldn't quite follow, but it looked like she was suggesting a marriage. She called over her daughter (whose zarma was a little clearer) and said that she wanted our son to marry her granddaughter. We just needed to come by with a dowry. We just laughed.
Luckily Cole doesn't understand any zarma yet because like most eight year old boys he thinks girls are YUCKY! It made an interesting conversation on the way home, as we explained to him why we were laughing. He told us that he wasn't ready to get married and didn't think he would be for a long time! We told him that he was lucky to be Canadian and to have parents that thought that he should choose his own wife and that we would be happy if it didn't happen for a long time. --Don't tell him I put this in the blog he would be upset but it was too good to pass up.

By the way, we sent out our quarterly newsletter this week. If you didn't get it but would like to e-mail us and we'll be happy to send it to you. You'll find our e-mail address on our prayer card of on the FMC website: www.fmc-canada.org