One morning in the Chinuque Village in the bush of Mozambique, I found a place to hide from the heat of the sun’s rays, wanting to read my Bible and spend some time journaling. As I was writing, however, I soon found myself encircled by eight or so young boys. They all wanted to see what I was up to. I gave them all a chance to see my chicken-scratch penmanship on the notebook paper and then proceeded to write. With each movement of the pen, they continued to watch with such fascination. I knew they couldn’t understand my writing, but it didn’t seem to matter to these boys. Realizing that alone time wasn’t going to happen, I tried to think of a way to communicate with them even though I didn’t know a single word of their tribal language.
Since they were so interested in what I was doing in my notebook and we didn’t speak each other’s language, I thought why not learn from each other? So I turned to a fresh sheet of paper and began sketching out simple objects. With each picture, the group would all tell me at once what the picture was in their native tongue. It was hard in the beginning to understand what they were saying because they all shouted it out at the same time. Eventually, one of the boys sitting next to me caught my attention by breaking the word down into distinct syllables. It would sometimes take me several attempts before I came close to saying it correctly, which would make the kids laugh. It made me laugh too. I, in turn, would give them the English translation and they would also try their best to repeat. They taught me how to say “sun”, “flower”, “cat”, “pray”, and many others. Interestingly, I learned that the word for “smile” and “laugh” are the same, or at least they sound the same. It’s pronounced “sa-kah”. Some young girls and even some women came over and joined in, sometimes debating on the right word for the image I had drawn. Thinking back now, though, I’m not sure if they were debating on the right word or on deciding what it was that I tried to sketch. Regardless, it was a great 45 minutes or so learning from each other and being silly all the while. I loved being surrounded by all the sa-kah’s and having a sa-kah of my own. Just one of those moments that I’ll never forget. Thank you, Lord.
