Breakfast at the Beirut Restaurant, Suq al Waqif, Doha
“We want to take you for breakfast at the Beirut!” my friend said with enthusiasm, and I was shocked. She is totally covered. How could we eat at the Beirut? I remember her family loves the Beirut, and I remember lining up with all the other cars along Shar’aa al Karaba’a to buy felafel and foul and hummos, yes, oh yes, such good felafel. But it wasn’t really a place for ladies, especially covered ladies and their daughters.
As is usual with this friend, I never really have the complete picture. When my niece and I go to pick up my friend and her daughter, it is actually my friend and three daughters and we squeeze into my car and head – not to Karaba’a, but to the Suq al Waqif!
When I go to park in one of the new, tiny, narrow little parking spots, my friend laughs and says “You park like an American! I am going to show you how to park like us!” and she points to the one tree off in an unpaved area, and sure enough, there is one spot, not in the shade of the tree but in the shade of a large truck parked in the shade of the tree. “Now you are learning to park like we do!” she laughs, and I laugh too, I am always learning something from this friend.
We walk a short distance and she leads me into a restaurant which on the outside says Matam Beiroot, but it’s in Arabic. If you are walking from the upper parking lot, it is one of the very first buildings you come to, at the top of the street.
Inside, there are all kinds of tables and chairs, but my friend and her daughters lead us upstairs to the family section, where we sit off in the corner, so she and her daughters can sit with their backs to other customers while we eat. We are a strange group, two women covered head to toe, two younger girls in hijab, my blue-eyed-blonde niece and me, laughing and enjoying each other so much in the corner.
Since then, I have been back many times. The Beirut is a lot of fun for breakfast. They have wonderful felafel, and several different great hummos, and they have beans and the ubiquitous french fries, and tea. Grammy and I grabbed a quick bite there on our trip to the Suqs.
I really am so bad at remembering to take photos. This is where the felafel used to be, before we dipped them in the lemon juice and gobbled them all up:
here is what is left of the hummos:
And here is the traditional style ceiling with traditional style light fixtures:
Qatari Divorcees and Widows More Likely to Marry
This caught my eye for a couple reasons – one of which is that Qatar has the second largest divorce rate after Kuwait. Second, while it is mentioned in the article, it is not mentioned at the end that the women have other options in Kuwait and Qatar, are more able to care for themselves financially, and are not bound to stay in unhappy marriages for reasons of financial dependency.
It is delightful to think that one unhappy marriage while young will not doom a still-young woman to a life of celibacy. đ
More Qataris tying the knot with divorcees and widows
Web posted at: 8/11/2009 2:41:41
Source ::: The Peninsula / By MOHAMED SAEED
DOHA: Qatar has the second largest divorce rate in the Gulf region after Kuwait, but a welcome development has been that now an increasing number of citizens prefer to marry divorcees and young widows.
Qatar being a conservative society, marrying divorcees and widows has been a taboo of sorts.So, since the largest number of divorcees is in the age group of 20 to 29 years, their remarriage is a healthy sign.
In 1986, for example, divorcees under 20 years of age accounted for 15 percent of the total. Their proportion has been declining and was down to 6.4 percent in 2007.
Studies conducted by the Permanent Population Committee (PPC) show the number of marriages breaking up in the country has risen from just 308 in 1986 to nearly a 1,000 in 2007.
And although the population of locals has also gone up in this period, the rates of marriage and divorce have risen at a larger rate than the population increase.
It is also interesting to note that nearly 85 percent of weddings ending into divorce are first marriages. In other words, a husband taking a second, third or even fourth wife has never been the cause for a wedlock to end.
With women having increasing access to education and employment, the number of married Qatari females asking for divorce (âkhulaâ in Arabic) has been on the rise. The share of such divorces in the total is on an average between 16 and 23 percent.
The studies note that financial independence of educated women has much to do with the rise in the phenomenon.
And as for male citizens marrying young divorcees and widows, the number of such marital knots had increased to nearly 300 in 2007 as compared to barely 29 in 1986.
Among the Arab countries, Egypt and Syria have the lowest divorce rates, suggest the studies.
They point to erosion of social values, modern living, fading influence of families, as the major factors behind the rising incidence of divorce in Qatar.
Think Pink Walk October 30th
This is what I love – advance planning and advance notification so I can mark my calendar now and look forward to the walk on October 30th. Not only that, I can tell all my friends, so they will be there, too. This is a grand event, a great way to exercise and show support for a worthy cause at the same time.
Women all over the world die because they are afraid to talk about breast cancer, afraid they will be shunned, afraid they will be treated as damaged or inferior. Fear can kill us. Silence can kill us. Supporting one another and encouraging one another can be part of the coping process and the healing process.
Please – mark your calendars, too. I want to see you there.
Breast cancer support group gears up for annual event
Web posted at: 8/9/2009 2:57:6
Source ::: THE PENINSULA
DOHA: Think Pink Qatar, a Doha-based support group for breast cancer patients and survivors, has set the ball rolling for upcoming events it will be organising.
Drawing approximately 30 volunteers to an organisational meeting yesterday, the group initiated the process for one of its major annual events, the Think Pink Breast Cancer Walk of Life. Due to take place on the evening of October 30 at the Corniche, volunteers have been mobilised to make the event as much of a success as last yearâs event.
The recent meet will lead up to other events the support group will be undertaking in September and October include a Pink-Out Day at schools, the Think Pink Benefit Gala, a Pink Hijab Day, and Proctor and Gamble sponsorship. There will also be a Harley Davidson Womenâs Ride for Life, organised by Margarita Zuniga, courtesy of the Harley Davidsonâs Womenâs club.
Due to growing interest from community members, Think Pink Qatar is organising its 1,000 plus volunteers and members into a coherent line-up in time for event. âTodayâs meeting is to start organising for this event, as many have volunteered, and we have now found it necessary to devise teams, covering sponsorship, music, event planning,â said Karen Al Kharouf, Founder of Think Pink Qatar. âBecause the group has grown from 200 to 1,000 members, there is the need for consistency and a centralized system.â
More volunteers are hoped for, to take the currently part-time organisation fullâtime, and to add to numerous out-reach programmes the group currently runs. This includes adding more to the survivors groups, and the Pink Candies, a group of older teenagers who provide morale support for breast cancer sufferers. Al Kharouf underlined the need to create greater awareness in Qatar, as many women dislike talking about the disease, hence its high death rate.
PS: I see Peninsula says the walk is on the 30th, Gulf Times says it is on the 31st. Hmmm. . . .
China Trusts Prostitutes More than Chinese Politicians
LLLOOOLLLL, thank you, BBC News for livening up the deadly August news scene:
China ‘trusts prostitutes more’
China’s prostitutes are better-trusted than its politicians and scientists, according to an online survey published by Insight China magazine.
The survey found that 7.9% of respondents considered sex workers to be trustworthy, placing them third behind farmers and religious workers.
“A list like this is at the same time surprising and embarrassing,” said an editorial in the state-run China Daily.
Politicians were far down the list, closer to scientists and teachers.
Insight China polled 3,376 Chinese citizens in June and July this year.
“The sex workers’ unexpected prominence on this list of honour… is indeed unusual,” said the China Daily editorial.
“At least [the scientists and officials] have not slid into the least credible category which consists of real estate developers, secretaries, agents, entertainers and directors,” the editorial said.
Soldiers came in fourth place.
I can’t help but wonder how the same survey would result in other countries?
“Whip Me if You Dare” Sudan Woman Wears Pants
This woman doesn’t have to take the whipping – she was a UN employee, and could claim diplomatic immunity. She wears a headscarf, she wears modest clothing. She could have quietly escaped. But like Rosa Parks, the black woman in segregated America, who refused to give up her seat and move to the back of the bus, Lubna Hussein has chosen to take a stand, even take a whipping, rather than back down.
Do you think it is un-Islamic for women to wear pants?
‘Whip me if you dare’ says Lubna Hussein, Sudan’s defiant trouser woman
Lubna Hussein, the Sudanese woman who is daring Islamic judges to have her whipped for the “crime” of wearing trousers, has given a defiant interview to the Telegraph.
As the morality police crowded around her table in a Khartoum restaurant, leering at her to see what she was wearing, Lubna Hussein had no idea she was about to become the best-known woman in Sudan.
She had arrived at the Kawkab Elsharq Hall on a Friday night to book a cousin’s wedding party, and while she waited she watched an Egyptian singer and sipped a coke.
She left less than an hour later under arrest as a “trouser girl” – humiliated in front of hundreds of people, then beaten around the head in a police van before being hauled before a court to face a likely sentence of 40 lashes for the “sin” of not wearing traditional Islamic dress.
The officials who tried to humiliate her expected her to beg for mercy, as most of their victims do.
Instead she turned the tables on them â and in court on Tuesday Mrs Hussein will dare judges to have her flogged, as she makes a brave stand for women’s rights in one of Africa’s most conservative nations.
She has become an overnight heroine for thousands of women in Africa and the Middle East, who are flooding her inbox with supportive emails. To the men who feel threatened by her she is an enemy of public morals, to be denounced in the letters pages of newspapers and in mosques.
As she recounted her ordeal in Khartoum yesterday Mrs Hussein, a widow in her late thirties who works as a journalist and United Nations’ press officer, managed cheerfully to crack jokes – despite the real prospect that in a couple of days she will be flogged with a camel-hair whip in a public courtyard where anyone who chooses may watch the spectacle.
Her interview with The Sunday Telegraph was her first with a Western newspaper.
“Flogging is a terrible thing â very painful and a humiliation for the victim,” she said. “But I am not afraid of being flogged. I will not back down.
“I want to stand up for the rights of women, and now the eyes of the world are on this case I have a chance to draw attention to the plight of women in Sudan.”
She could easily have escaped punishment by simply claiming immunity as a UN worker, as she is entitled to under Sudanese law. Instead, she is resigning from the UN â to the confusion of judges who last Wednesday adjourned the case because they did not know what to do with her.
“When I was in court I felt like a revolutionary standing before the judges,” she said, her eyes blazing with pride. “I felt as if I was representing all the women of Sudan.”
Like many other women in the capital, Mrs Hussein fell foul of Sudan’s Public Order Police, hated groups of young puritans employed by the government to crack down on illegal drinkers of alcohol and women who, in their view, are insufficiently demure.
Despite their claims of moral superiority, they have a reputation for dishonesty and for demanding sexual favours from women they arrest.
Mrs Hussein was one of 14 women arrested at the Kawkab Elsharq Hall, a popular meeting place for the capital’s intellectuals and journalists, who bring their families. Most of them were detained for wearing trousers. The police had difficulty seeing what Mrs Hussein was wearing under her loose, flowing Sudanese clothes. She was wearing green trousers, not the jeans that she said she sometimes wears, and wore a headscarf, as usual.
“They were very rude,” she said. “A girl at a table near mine was told to stand up and told to take a few steps and then turn around, in a very humiliating way. She was let off when they ‘discovered’ she was not wearing trousers.”
After her arrest, on the way to a police station, she tried to calm the younger girls.
“All the girls were forced to crouch on the floor of the pick-up with all the policemen sitting on the sides,” she said. “They were all very terrified and crying hysterically, except me as I had been arrested before during university days by the security services.
“So I began to try to calm the girls, telling them this wasn’t very serious. The response of the policeman was to snatch my mobile phone, and he hit me hard on the head with his open hand.
“On the way I felt so humiliated and downtrodden. In my mind was the thought that we were only treated like this because we were females.”
Christian women visiting from the south of Sudan were among the 10 women who admitted their error and were summarily flogged with 10 lashes each. But Mrs Hussein declined to admit her guilt and insisted on her right to go before a judge.
While waiting for her first court appearance, she said she was surprised to find herself held in a single cramped detention cell with other prisoners of both sexes. “How Islamic is that?” she asked. “This should not happen under Sharia.”
Mrs Hussein is a long-standing critic of Sudan’s government, headed by President Omar al-Bashir, the first head of state to face an international arrest warrant for war crimes. Sudan has been accused of committing atrocities in the Darfur region.
Before her arrest she had written several articles criticising the regime, although she believes she was picked at random by the morality police.
The regime has often caused international revulsion for religious extremism. In 2007 British teacher Gillian Gibbons was briefly imprisoned for calling the classroom teddy bear Mohammed.
The government is dominated by Islamists, although only the northern part of the nation is Muslim. Young women are frequently harassed and arrested by the regime’s morality police.
Mrs Hussein said: “The acts of this regime have no connection with the real Islam, which would not allow the hitting of women for the clothes they are wearing and in fact would punish anyone who slanders a woman.
“These laws were made by this current regime which uses it to humiliate the people and especially women. These tyrants are here to distort the real image of Islam.”
She was released from custody after her first court appearance last week, since when she has appeared on Sudanese television and radio to argue her case – which has made headlines around the world.
She is not only in trouble with police and judges. A day after her court appearance she was threatened by a motorcyclist, who did not remove his helmet. He told her that she would end up like an Egyptian woman who was murdered in a notorious recent case.
Since then she has not slept at home, moving between the houses of relatives. She believes her mobile telephone has been listened to by the security services using scanners.
But she has pledged to keep up her fight. “I hope the situation of women improves in Sudan. Whatever happens I will continue to fight for women’s rights.”
Kuwait – American Woman Abducted and Raped
I received this notification this morning from the American Women’s League of Kuwait, guidance from the US Embassy:
We received a report that the spouse of an American citizen was kidnapped and sexually assaulted by three men in Mahboula. The victim was forced in a vehicle, taken to a secluded location, sexually assaulted, and left in the desert. The authorities are working to solve this heinous crime.Â
As a reminder to all, it is very important to keep an eye on who may be observing your activities while in Kuwait.  Surveillance is not something that is just done by terrorists â almost every criminal who commits a crime conducts some sort of surveillance on their target either seconds, minutes, or hours before trying to commit a crime or assault a person.Â
Keep the following in mind:
 Surveillance â think about who may be watching you. If it feels wrong, it probably is. Alert the local security personnel or store management of anything you feel is suspicious â DO NOT KEEP THIS INFORMATION TO YOURSELF AND TRUST YOUR INSTINCTS.
 If you think you are being followed, make every effort to stay in a very public place until you can either make contact with the local security personnel or have some sort of an escort.  Do not proceed to your vehicle or restroom, thus giving the person following you an opportunity to get you alone so they can rob or assault you.  Â
Exiting/returning to your vehicle â this is the time when all people are vulnerable because your mind is focused on getting out of the car, watching traffic, trying to control children, or placing packages in/out of the car.  Especially when returning to your vehicle, a good practice is to look around the exterior of your vehicle for people or suspicious items. Once in the vehicle, lock your doors and make sure your windows are up at all times.Â
Travel in groups whenever possible. Tell others where/when you are going and when you plan to return.
If being picked up wait inside a public place as opposed to alone and outside.
Carry a cell phone with pre-programmed emergency numbers, Post One, Police, Home, etc.
Last, think about fighting your attacker, especially if the attacker wants to take you to another location. Do not let that happen and draw attention to yourself and situation. Â
Today’s News from Doha
It’s a very brave thing to take an honest and open look at the serious problems confronting any society.
Report on domestic workers by year-end
Web posted at: 6/24/2009 2:49:44
Source ::: The Peninsula.
DOHA: The first national survey on domestic workers in Qatar will be completed soon and the findings will be announced by the end of this year, a senior official of the Qatar Foundation for Combating Human Trafficking, the organisers of the study, has said.
On Monday, the Foundation signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with the Doha International Institute for Family Studies and Development for collaboration between the two bodies in carrying out the survey. The MoU was signed by Mariam Al Malki, director of the Foundation and Richard Wilkins, managing director of the Institute.
Speaking on the occasion, Al Malki said the survey which is the first of its kind in the region, aimed at identifying the problems of domestic workers in the country and seek solutions. Another major objective of the study was to assess the impact of housemaids and other domestic workers on the Qatari family and the society.
The survey conducted through direct interviews with a randomly selected group of domestics workers and families has received a positive response from the society, added Al Malki.
She attributed the success to an awareness campaign waged with the support of the media prior to the launch of the survey. The survey covered 657 families and a total of 900 domestic workers from five regions across the country, said Al Malki.
The interviews were conducted through questionnaires prepared separately for the two targeted categories. The questionnaires for domestic workers were available in 10 languages including Arabic to cater to the different nationalities.
Wilkins said the study was extremely important since it can help in identifying the problems of domestic workers as well as their impact on the society.
â Almost every Qatari household has employed domestic workers, especially because most women are now working outside. This is also a sensitive issue, given the impact of these workers on the families,â he said.
Protecting women and children to focus on providing social and psychological support to victims of family violence:
Counselling service launched for victims of behavioural disorders
Web posted at: 6/24/2009 2:47:0
Source ::: The Peninsula
DOHA: The Qatar Foundation for Protection of Women and Children has launched a new service to provide social and psychological support to victims of violence as well as those who suffer from behavioural disorders.
The service named âchange your lifeâ is part of the Foundationâs three-year plan to prepare a comprehensive rehabilitation programme for such members of the society. Besides moral and psychological support, the Foundation will provide medical and legal assistance to victims to facilitate their rehabilitation.
Farida Al Obaidli, Director of the Foundation said, recently they had come across a case where a family wanted to abandon their four children.
âThis was very surprising. The fact that such incidents still occur underlines the need for social and psychological support and rehabilitation,â said Al Obaidli.
She said the Foundation had been providing legal assistance to victims of violence and abuse. It has 19 lawyers who help people who donât have the capability to hire the service of a lawyer to present their case in the court.
And one tiny very strange article:
Media Freedom Centre team leaves office
DOHA: Robert MĂŠnard, director- general of the Doha Centre for Media Freedom and his team have left the Centre.
âWe no longer have either the freedom or the resources to do our work,â said Menard, in a statement issued yesterday.
The heads of the assistance, research and communications departments have also left the Centre, said the statement.
The Center was set up on the initiative of H H Sheikha Mozah bint Nasser Al Missned and Reporters Without Borders in December 2007.
MĂŠnard, who became director-general on April 1, 2008, was the founder of Reporters Without Borders, which he headed for 23 years.
It’s a little cooler out today in Doha. High temperature this afternoon only reached 109°F / 43°C. đ
The Little Prisoner and Child Abuse
Of all the books our book club read this year, The Little Prisoner by Jane Elliott (not her real name) was the most troublesome. The first one to finish said it was boring and repetitive. The second refused to read it at all, that the content would have images that would polute her mind. Both were right, and at the same time, if we refuse to look at what troubles us, we collude with the abuser.
I hate bullying. A man who beats and plays sexual games with a child is a bully and worse – he is a betrayer of trust. Children come into the world pure, clean slates. They can create their own mischief, their own evil, but to be corrupted by an adult – that is the absolute worst sin.
Today’s Gospel reading in The Lectionary is about this very behavior – that betrayal and/or corruption of a child is a huge sin against God:
Matthew 18:1-14
18 At that time the disciples came to Jesus and asked, âWho is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?â 2 He called a child, whom he put among them, 3 and said, âTruly I tell you, unless you change and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. 4 Whoever becomes humble like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. 5 Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me.
6 âIf any of you put a stumbling-block before one of these little ones who believe in me, it would be better for you if a great millstone were fastened around your neck and you were drowned in the depth of the sea. 7 Woe to the world because of stumbling-blocks! Occasions for stumbling are bound to come, but woe to the one by whom the stumbling-block comes!
8 âIf your hand or your foot causes you to stumble, cut it off and throw it away; it is better for you to enter life maimed or lame than to have two hands or two feet and to be thrown into the eternal fire. 9 And if your eye causes you to stumble, tear it out and throw it away; it is better for you to enter life with one eye than to have two eyes and to be thrown into the hell* of fire.
10 âTake care that you do not despise one of these little ones; for, I tell you, in heaven their angels continually see the face of my Father in heaven.* 12 What do you think? If a shepherd has a hundred sheep, and one of them has gone astray, does he not leave the ninety-nine on the mountains and go in search of the one that went astray? 13 And if he finds it, truly I tell you, he rejoices over it more than over the ninety-nine that never went astray. 14 So it is not the will of your* Father in heaven that one of these little ones should be lost.
The book was, in one sense, an easy read. It only took about three hours to read it. It was, as the first reader said, repetitive, but then once a bully has found a victim, the behavior does tend to be repetitive, and, as in the book, it also escalates.
The victim’s father bullied her, and he abused her sexually from the time she was four until she was seventeen. He terrorized his wife and other children, and he terrorized the neighborhood with his violence and threats of violence. To this day, the author and her family live far away, and fears her step-father finding out where she is.
I found the writer unlikeable. I wanted to feel more compassion for her than I did. I think part of my problem was that she stayed in the situation even into her teens, even into early adulthood, without seeming to rebel, without taking any steps to get herself out of the situation. She tells us straight away that she has personality defects, troubles with trust and betrayal, and that she sometimes turns to drink. A part of me knows that people who have been systematically abused over a long time can lose that ability to resist, rebel, to ask for help, but another part of me can’t understand it at all. A part of me is impatient with her weakness, I want her to stand on her feet and make her life a testament to her survival, I want her success in overcoming her childhood to be the sweetest kind of revenge. Unfortunately, life is more complicated than that, and her murky ending is probably the more realistic. Abuse leaves lasting damage.
The Little Prisoner is not an easy read in terms of content. There were times I felt she exaggerated to sell the book; to make hers just a little more interesting than the other ones out there with which her book is competing. There is a part of me that would prefer not to see, not to have those images in my mind.
We know, from all the literature, that children who are abused can grow up to be abusers. I have had friends who were abused who refused to have children at all, afraid they would perpetuate the behavior, even though they had a horror of the violence, and were gentle and peaceful people. How do we intervene, how do we break the chain of abusers begetting abusers? How do we change the behaviors? Can abusers really change?
The Little Prisoner brings up a whole host of uncomfortable questions. We can read, we can discuss – but if we choose to look the other way, aren’t we in a small way colluding with the abusers, allowing them to continue while we look the other way?
Enmegahbowh
Yesterday, one of the songs we sang was an oldie but goodie, To Be a Pilgrim, written by John Bunyan, who wrote Pilgrim’s Progress while serving a jail term for preaching without a license. We sang the old fashioned version:
Who would true valour see,
Let him come hither;
One here will constant be,
Come wind, come weather
Thereâs no discouragement
Shall make him once relent
His first avowed intent
To be a pilgrim.
Whoso beset him round
With dismal stories
Do but themselves confound;
His strength the more is.
No lion can him fright,
Heâll with a giant fight,
He will have a right
To be a pilgrim.
Hobgoblin nor foul fiend
Can daunt his spirit,
He knows he at the end
Shall life inherit.
Then fancies fly away,
Heâll fear not what men say,
Heâll labor night and day
To be a pilgrim.
(Actually, I may have drifted off because I don’t remember singing the part about the hobgoblins or foul fiends . . . or maybe we sang a slightly more updated version . . .)
Yesterday’s reading in The Lectionary had a great prayer, which also included the word “pilgrim:
Almighty God, thou didst lead thy pilgrim people of old with fire and cloud; grant that the ministers of thy church, following the example of blessed Enmegahbowh, may stand before thy holy people, leading them with fiery zeal and gentle humility. This we ask through Jesus, the Christ, who liveth and reigneth with thee in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God now and forever. Amen.
And it had this wonderful story of an American Saint, Enmegahbowh – A saint from the original inhabitants of our country:
ENMEGAHBOWH
PRIEST AND MISSIONARY (12 JUNE 1902)
[James Kiefer has no bio for Enmegahbowh. Below is a biography from A Pioneer History of Becker County Minnesota by Alvin H. Wilcox (1907). Enmegabowh was the first Indian ordained in the Episcopal Church.]
In 1851, the Rev. Dr. Breck, a great missionary, whose name must be known to every reader of the “Soldier,” [“Christian Soldier”] began a mission at Leech Lake, among the Ojibwa Indians of Minnesota. This mission, from various circumstances, had only a partial success, and in the winter of 1855-56 troubles with the government agents roused the Indians to such madness that Dr. Breck was forced to leave, and the mission buildings were burned.
Two years later the Rev. Mr. Peake went to Crow Wing to establish another mission, and young Indian deacon, John Johnson, his Indian name Enmegahbowh, came to assist him. This man had beeen a catechumen under Dr. Breck, and had been baptized by him. He must have been born to some position in his tribe, as he had been set apart for a “Medicine Man” in youth, and his Indian name, Enmegahbowh, meant “The man who stands by his people,” a significant name, which in time proved to be a true one.
In 1861 Mr. Peake resigned the mission into the hands of Enmegahbowh. Crow Wing was then a settlement of very bad repute on the frontier. In 1862, the year of the Sioux outbreak, Hole-in-the-day, a leading Ojibwa chief, a bad man, full of craft and cunning, collected five hundred warriors, and prepared for a general massacre of the white people. Enmegahbowh, having prevented, by his influence, some other bands from joining these, was made a prisoner, but succeeded in escaping, and, through the midst of great perils, made his way to Fort Ripley, and by his timely information, such measures were taken that bloodshed and a more fearful massacre than that of the Sioux were prevented.
For a few years the mission work seemed at a stand still. From Canada Enmegahbowh received earnest invitations to go where comfort and hopeful work awaited him, but Bishop Whipple encouraged him, standing in the forefront for an unpopular cause and a hated people, and Enmegahbowh would prove the fitness of his name — he would not desert his people.
At last the government made new arrangements, and seven hundred Ojibwa were moved to what is called the White Earth Reservation, a tract thirty-six miles square in northern Minnesota. Of these seven hundred about one hundred and fifty were French half-breeds, or Roman Catholics. Amongst the remainder Enmegahbowh labored earnestly, the government now aiding in the work by encouraging the Indians in civilized ways. A steam sawmill was built at White Earth Lake, where Indians were taught to run the machinery, and from which lumber was furnished for building purposes. Eastern churchmen assisted the mission, and a church and parsonage were built.
At the time of the consecration of the church in August, 1872, quite a party of the clergy and laity, through the kindness of Bishop Whipple, were enabled to visit White Earth.
The consecration was on Thursday. Friday morning, the chiefs signified to the bishop their wish to meet with him in a council, which was therefore held, that afternoon, on the hillside in front of the church. It was a picturesque scene — the lovely landscape, the sunlight glancing through the tall oak trees on the bishop and Enmegahbowh, who sat in the centre, the chiefs and five or six clergymen grouped around. Behind the bishop three chairs were placed for the ladies of the party — the first time, I think, that ladies were ever admitted to an Indian council.
The chiefs spoke in turn, as they had themselves arranged, and were interpreted by Enmegahbowh. — Christian Soldier.
The Rev. John Johnson was born in Canada and died at White Earth on the 12th of June, 1902, at the age of 95 years.
God had someone in mind who was already set aside by his people to serve him, and he had the most wonderful name for a priest – The one who stands by his people. How cool is that? His heart was ready, when he heard the words, and he served mightily.
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