Seydou

Unlike most village men, Seydou was a strong young man.  He lived in the village of Silmitenga very near our home in a remote area of southeastern Burkina Faso. During the seven years we lived in that area, I had a lot of village men working with me, but Seydou was the strongest ever.

Before we received a well drilling rig, villagers in our area had hand-dug their water wells. Twenty-five inches of rain fell each year in our area of the Sahel, but most of it came within a 14-week period. It only took a downpour of a 4 “rain to cause many of the hand-dug wells to cave in. During the next dry season, the villagers would have to hand dig another well.  

When we arrived in the area, we started selling villagers cement at a reduced price so that they could cooperatively afford to line the walls of their hand-dug wells with concrete. We supplied the concrete molds for the wells.

The challenge with a hand-dug well was keeping the walls of the well straight so that we would not waste cement filling in the crooks of the wall of the well. While the well was being dug, I would visit the well sites almost every day to make sure that the walls of the well were straight. To do this I had to be lowered into the well while sitting on a five-gallon metal bucket. Recognizing that many of the village men wanted to hold the rope to lower me into the well and knowing that most of these men weighed about 130 pounds, I decided to hire Seydou to ride behind me on my motorcycle to visit the well sites. I instructed Seydou to always tie the end of the rope around his waist and serve as the anchor of the rope.

Since most people have never descended into a hole in the ground 2 meters wide (about six feet), they don’t realize how the opening appears to be the size of a softball when you are 75 feet underground. It is not a safe place for someone who is claustrophobic. But I felt safe as long as Seydou was holding the rope for me.

William Carey is known as the father of the modern missionary movement because of his advocacy for foreign missions and his willingness to be among the first to go to another country to live and serve as a missionary. His best friend was Andrew Fuller who had the same theological training that Carey had and the same passion for foreign missions.

Before leaving for India, Carey famously told Fuller, “I will go down into the pit, if you will hold the ropes.” Fuller stayed in England and held the ropes by serving as president of the Baptist Mission Society from its founding until his death in 1814. 

Not everyone is called to serve in another country, but all believers are called by the Lord to hold the ropes while others go down.