Hola dear friends, it has been a while since I last posted. We found out that we must top up the internet account every month on monday, and just now found refills to do it. I have had a very interesting week with a good amount of traveling. I will try my best to tell you everything.
Last friday, my housemates and I went with a church that we go to for bible study on friday nights called AIC. It's a satellite church of Africa Inland church, which has been around since 1895. the trip was to a Mountain area called Kwambiti, which is the burial site of the first missionary to East Africa. We did not know much about it before we left but as soon as we got there, we started learning a lot. We learned that it takes 6 hours to get there, and you can fit 22 people into a van made for 14(not comfortably though).Another fun fact is vans cant negotiate incredibly rocky roads, which then calls for the following; grab your things and start walking. So we made the hike up to the church, walking aimlessly until someone said which way to go. After a while, we finally made it. We left at about 6 and arrived there at 1:30 am. We were fed a very nice dinner of Kasava root and modacoi. We then went to sleep at 2:30 am. The area just received power last December, and it has still yet to reach the church we were staying, which is also an AIC church. Everything is lit by kerosene lamps which you don't care about when your dead tired. In a large classroom, all 22 men slept on mattress pads, me included. The girls had a very similar set up, just up a little higher then us. When we woke up at 5 am, to the sound of the pastor declaring it was time for morning glory, I almost understood the feeling of Muslims that wake up for morning prayer before the sun arises. We all headed in to the church and had our very early morning service. As soon as that was over, I debated if I could work in an extra hour of sleep while everyone else was getting ready. It did not work out so well. As soon as the sun came up though, we were able to see the area surrounding us. The church was in the middle of a valley that seemed to keep rolling forever. Everything was green and the trees were massive. Mango trees plagued the hills like weeds, and the flowers were massive. We then got to see breakfast, which was Aero root, bananas and sweet potato and of course tea. Since the nearest super market is a few hours drive, everything we ate was as fresh as fresh could be. After breakfast we broke into teams and started the door to door ministry. At home, door to door means going in a neighborhood and knocking on doors, but in the mountains, it means trekking up steep hills and making searching fields to find people. Since the area is beautiful, and the hiking part is always fun, it was a nice trip. The elevation though killed me for the first 45 min, but after getting used to the high elevation, I was able to climb like a billy goat. Each house we stopped at was a very simple dwelling, stone walls and thatch roof. Most families have gardens and keep a good supply of crops growing year round. The people though are some of the nicest people I have encountered ever, after we talked with them and prayed with them, we would leave with a bag of mangos, avacados or anything from their own garden. After 3 hours of busting up hills, we headed back for lunch. I shared an avacado with a teacher who teaches here with me named Zadak, who also worked as my translator, tour guide and sherpa for the walk. Avacados here are bigger and cheaper then what we get in America, the inside is sweeter too. As we cool down from the intense heat, we get the word that the crusade, which was the whole point of this trip, is already starting. The crusade point is actually about a mile away from where we are staying. So again, the walking commences. A crowd of maybe 50-60 people show up as soon as the sounds of the African style keyboard start blaring through the speakers. The crusade was all in Kikumba and translated into Kiswahili, so I was pretty much out of the loop. After that was done for the day, we headed back and I was asked to give the message for the evening devotion, which I assumed would be just our group, but turned out to be the whole church and everyone who was at the crusade. I spoke for about 15 min on hope with the help of a translator. It's fine to speak slowly and in blocks so the translator has time to think, but I almost laughed every time I said something, and he would give me a blank stare and say “Amen?”. We when received dinner, which I still cannot believe. Staple foods are big here, Ugali, beans, maize etc. is a lot of what you can expect where ever you go. But there are a few staple foods that I cannot get enough of, rice served with stew and chapatti. And that is what they gave us. I was about to explode, it's 10 pm, we are all tired, I am trying to sleep on a church pew, and all I can smell is chapatti. But it's not only rice and stew, there is also a good amount of Goat meat being served with it. I ate all I could till the power went out and we all went to bed, perfect ending to a long day. Sunday had the same start as Saturday, 5 am wake up, but this one included mangos, so already a better day. That is until we partook in the 6 hour service the church does. I understand it's Africa, where services go for hours and hours, I can dig it, and on most Sundays, I welcome it. But when your working off of a few hours of sleep, it never ends. At about 2 pm, when the service is about to wrap up, they start a string of events which will always sit with me.
Round 1: the visiting church dance. The point of this is to show the appreciation the visiting church has for the hosting church. 2 lines go down the isle and everyone just dances to the front and then crosses. Usually no big deal, but it is when the only 3 white people the kids have ever seen and the first ones in a long time the adults have seen and trying their hardest to dance like the dance leader. It's then just better then a circus, the people laugh and cheer as we put as much effort into is as we can. We of course are also trying not to laugh, but not as easy.
Round 2: Church auction. I heard stories of church auctions before, people donate crops and things to the church and the church auctions them off to raise money. Simple enough. This one though runs a bit different then what we do in America, instead of having just the winner pay, every bidder, including the losers, have to pay. So if your going in on it, make sure you throw down big. The church though asked if anyone would want to buy something for the whites, which they did. We walked away with a bag of mangos, 1 egg and a bag of green leaves. Hospitality here is like no other.
Round 3: Shake the white mans hand. This was by far the most interesting thing I have done here. They invited the 3 of us to the front to basically greet the whole church, but it's cause white people there are just as rare as white bison being found anywhere. So might as well take advantage of it. We shook the hands of everyone willing to shake our hands, everyone was of course excited. More fun for us.
We then made our way to the crusade, but not without eating some githeri mixed with goat stock. Awesome stuff. The crusade had maybe 100 people that came from a lot of places. At the end of the crusade, everyone walked away with FMP materials like gospel bracelets and tracts. We did not leave there until 11 pm, and made it home at about 5 am Monday morning. Totally worth it though.
Hurray for adventures.
Hello hello, time for tales of fun facts from Africa. The first one is that when your internet minutes must be renewed every month. We did not learn this till Monday and did not get our internet back till Friday. So yeah, it's fine now. We have had a pretty fun week other then that. I taught the kids about Ash Wednesday and Lent, but I don't think they will give anything up for Lent. We made our own stew on thursday night. It contained pumpkin, onions, garlic, beef stock, kasava root, potatoes. Two of the girls from grade 6 helped us make it cause they said we were doing it wrong. They did 90% of the work that would of taken us a lot longer to do. After it was done, we poured it over rice and had a pretty nice meal. Friday we had a Kesha, which is an all night prayer meeting. It goes from 10 pm to 5 am, and includes everything from singers, dancers, prayer (duh), and preachers and of course tea and mandazies . I brought in a thing of strong coffee to keep me going, so that helped a lot. By 5 am though, I was beat. Saturday was a very laid back day. I went to the butcher down the road and bought beef and onions and we made a pretty nice dinner. We added some boiled potatoes to it and it made it very nice. Even though I asked for 10, the lady gave me a very large bag with at least 50 instead. I gave the rest to the kitchen to use for dinner tonight. No real updates other then that, I am now the bible teacher for class 8. I am really moving up in the world. I bought shampoo that is Nivea brand but all in Arabic other then the words, "Menergy" and "Rebellious" i like it. smells like death though. Also bought African peanut butter, which is kinda expensive. not as good.
So till something interesting happens.
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