Redemption
in Timbuktu
by
Stephen Saint
For
years, I'd thought Timbuktu was just a made-up name for "the
ends of the earth." When I found out it was a real place
in Africa, I developed an inexplicable fascination for it. It
was in 1986 on a fact-finding trip to West Africa for Missionary
Aviation Fellowship that this fascination became an irresistible
urge.
Timbuktu
wasn't on my itinerary, but I knew I had to go there. Once I
arrived, I discovered I was in trouble. I'd hitched a ride from
Bamako, Mali, 500 miles away on the only seat left on a Navajo
six-seater airplanechartered by UNICEF.
Two
of their doctors were in Timbuktu and might fly back on the
return flight, which meant I'd be bumped, but I decided to take
the chance. Now here I was, standing by the plane on the windswept
outskirts of the famous Berber outpost.
There
was not a spot of true green anywhere in the desolate brown
Saharan landscape. Dust blew across the sky, blotting out the
sun as I squinted in the 110-degree heat, trying to make out
the mud-walled buildings of the village of 20,000. The pilot
approached me as I started for town. He reported that the doctors
were on their way and I'd have to find another ride to Bamako.
"Try
the marketplace. Someone there might have a truck. But be careful,"
he said. "Westerners don't last long in the desert if the
truck breaks down, which often happens."
I
didn't relish the thought of being stranded, but perhaps it
was fitting that I should wind up like this, surrounded by the
Sahara. Since I arrived in Africa the strain of the harsh environment
and severe suffering of the starving peoples had left me feeling
lost in a spiritual and emotional desert. The open-air marketplace
in the center of town was crowded. Men and
women wore flowing robes and turbans as protection against the
sun. Most of the Berbers' robes were dark blue, with 30 feet
of material in their turbans alone. The men were well armed
with scimitars and knives. I felt eyes were watching me suspiciously.
Suspicion was understandable in Timbuktu. Nothing could be trusted
here. These people had once been prosperous and self-sufficient.
Now even their land had turned against them. Drought had
turned rich grasslands to desert. Unrelenting sun and windstorms
had nearly annihilated all animal life. People were dying by
the thousands.I went from person to person trying to find someone
who spoke English, until I finally came across a local gendarme
who understood my broken French. "I need a truck,"
I said. "I need to go to Bamako."
Eyes
widened in his shaded face. "No truck," he shrugged.
Then he added, "No road. Only sand." By now, my presence
was causing a sensation in the marketplace. I was surrounded
by at least a dozen small children, jumping and dancing, begging
for coins and souvenirs. The situation was extreme, I knew.
I tried to think calmly. What am I to do?
Suddenly
I had a powerful desire to talk to my father. Certainly he had
known what it was like to be a foreigner in a strange land.
But
my father, Nate Saint, was dead. He was one of five missionary
men killed by Auca Indians in the jungles of Ecuador in 1956.
I was a month shy of my fifth birthday at the time, and my memories
of him were almost like movie clips: a lanky, intense man with
a serious goal and a quick wit. He was a dedicated jungle pilot,
flying missionaries and medical personnel in his Piper Family
Cruiser.
Even
after his death he was a presence in my life. I'd felt the need
to talk with my father before, especially since I'd married
and become a father myself. But in recent weeks this need had
become urgent. For one thing, I was new to relief work. But
it was more than that. I needed Dad to help answer my new questions
of faith. In Mali, for the first time in my life, I
was surrounded by people who didn't share my faith, who were,
in fact, hostile to the Christian faith, locals and Western
relief workers alike. In a way it was a parallel to the situation
Dad had faced in Ecuador. How often I'd said the same thing
Dad would have said among the Indians who killed him: "My
God is real. He's a personal God who lives inside me, with whom
I have a very special, one-on-one relationship."
And
yet the question lingered in my mind: Did my father have to
die? All my life, people had spoken of Dad with respect; he
was a man willing to die for his faith. But at the same time
I couldn't help but think the murders were capricious, an accident
of bad timing.
Dad
and his colleagues landed just as a small band of Auca men were
in a bad mood for reasons that had nothing to do with faith
or Americans. If Dad's plane had landed one day later, the massacre
may not have happened. Couldn't there have been another way?
It made little impact on the Aucas that I could see. To them
it was just one more killing n a history of killings.
Thirty
years later it still had an impact on me. And now, for the first
time, I felt threatened because of who I was and what I believed.
"God," I found myself praying as I looked around the
marketplace, "I'm in trouble here. Please keep me safe
and show me a way to get back. Please reveal Yourself and Your
love to me the way you did to my father." No bolt of lightning
came from the blue. But a new thought did come to mind. Surely
there was a telecommunications office here somewhere; I could
wire Bamako to send another plane. It would be costly, but I
could see no other way of getting out.
"Where's
the telecommunications office?" I asked another gendarme.
He gave me instructions, then said, "Telegraph transmits
only if station in Bamako has machine on, message goes through.
If not," he shrugged, "no answer ever comes. You only
hope message received."
Now
what? The sun was crossing toward the horizon. If I didn't have
arrangements made by nightfall, what would happen to me? This
was truly the last outpost of the world. More than a few Westerners
had disappeared in the desert without a trace.
Then
I remembered that just before I'd started for Timbuktu, a fellow
worker had said, "There's a famous mosque in Timbuktu.
It was built from mud in the 1500's. Many Islamic pilgrims visit
it every year. But there's also a tiny Christian church, which
virtually no one visits. Look it up if you get the chance."
I
asked the children, "Where is Eglise Evangelique Chretienne?"
The
youngsters were willing to help, though they were obviously
confused about what I was looking for. Several times elderly
men and women scolded them harshly as we passed, but they persisted.
Finally we arrived, not at the church, but at the open doorway
of a tiny mud-brick house.
No
one was home, but on the wall opposite the door was a poster
showing a cross covered by wounded hands. The French subscript
said, "and by His stripes we are healed."
Within
minutes, my army of waifs pointed out a young man approaching
us in the dirt alleyway. Then the children melted back into
the labyrinth of the walled alleys and compounds of Timbuktu.
The young man was handsome, with dark skin and flowing robes.
But there was something inexplicably different about him. His
name was Nouh Af Infa Yatara; that much I understood. Nouh signaled
he knew someone who could translate for us. He led me to a compound
on the edge of town where an American missionary lived. I was
glad to meet the missionary, but from the moment I'd seen Nouh,
I'd had the feeling that we shared something in common.
"How
did you come to have faith?" I asked him. The missionary
translated as Nouh answered: "This compound has always
had a beautiful garden. One day when I was a small boy, a friend
and I decided to steal some carrots. It was a dangerous task.
We'd been told that Toubabs [white men] eat nomadic children.
Despite our agility and considerable experience, I was caught
by the former missionary here. Mr. Marshall didn't eat me; instead,
he gave me the carrots and some cards that had God's promises
from the Bible written on
them. He told me if I learned them, he'd give me an ink pen!"
"You
learned them?" I asked.
"Oh,
yes!" he exclaimed. "Only government men and the headmaster
of the school had a Bic pen! But when I showed off my pen at
school, the teacher knew I must have spoken with a Toubab, which
is strictly forbidden. He severely beat me."
When
Nouh's parents found out he had portions of such a despised
book defiling their house, they threw him out and forbade anyone
to take him in; nor was he allowed in school.
But
something had happened: Noah had come to believe that what the
Bible said was true. Nouh's mother became desperate. Her own
standing, as well as her family's, was in jeopardy.
Finally
she decided to kill her son. She obtained poison from a sorcerer
and poisoned Nouh's food at a family feast. Noah ate the food
and wasn't affected.
His
brother, who unwittingly stole a morsel of meat from the deadly
dish, became violently ill and remains partially paralyzed.
Seeing God's intervention, the family and the town's people
were afraid to make further attempts on his life, but condemned
him as an outcast.
After
sitting a moment, I asked Nouh the question that only hours
earlier I'd wanted to ask my father: "Why is your faith
so important to you that you're willing to give up everything,
perhaps even your life?"
"I
know God loves me and I'll live with Him forever," he replied.
"I know it! Now I have peace where I used to be full of
fear and uncertainty. Who wouldn't want to give up everything
for this peace and security?"
"It
couldn't have been easy for you as a teenager to take a stand
that made you despised by the whole community," I said.
"Where did your courage come from?"
"Mr.
Marshall couldn't take me in without putting my life in jeopardy.
So he gave me some books about other Christians who'd suffered
for their faith. My favorite was about five young men who willingly
risked their lives to take God's good news to stone-age Indians
in the jungles of South America." His eyes widened as he
continued."I've lived all my life in the desert. How frightening
the jungle must be! The book said these men let themselves be
speared to death, even though they had guns and could have killed
their attackers!"
The
missionary translator said, "I remember the story. As a
matter of fact, one of those men had your last name."
"Yes,"
I said quietly, "the pilot was my father."
"Your
father?" Nouh cried. "The story is true?"
"Yes,"
I said, "it's true."
The
missionary and Nouh and I talked through the afternoon. When
they accompanied me back to the airfield that night, we found
that the doctors weren't able to leave Timbuktu after all, and
there was room for me on the UNICEF plane.
As
Nouh and I hugged each other, it seemed incredible that God
loved us so much that He'd arranged for us to meet "at
the ends of the earth."
Nouh
and I had gifts for each other that no one else could give.
I gave him the assurance that the story that had given him courage
was true. He, in turn, gave me the assurance that God had used
Dad's death for good. Dad,
by dying, had helped give Nouh a faith worth dying for. And
Nouh, in return, had helped give Dad's faith back to me.
Author's
Update on Nouh: Nouh, along with his lovely wife Fati, have
three sons. They finished more than two years of study in the
U.S. and faced many hurdles when they returned in January 1999
to the fourth-poorest area of the world. Please pray that they
will continue to be faithful and that God will bless their commitment
to spread His light in a dark and dangerous land.
True
according to truthorfiction.com
It
is a real story from the pen of Stephen Saint, the missionary
pilot son of pioneer missionary pilot Nate Saint. Nate was one
of five missionaries killed in Ecuador in the 1950's by stone
age Indians they were trying to reach. It became one of the
most famous missionary events of the century.
