A couple days ago I went over to the Pastor’s house to bring back a sample of a rug that his daughter Sarah made and to visit his wife, Joyce. Joyce’s sisters were over and they were eating lunch in the front yard on a straw mat. I was kindly invited to eat with them and I graciously accepted, partly because in their culture it’s rude, partly because I wanted to build relationships with them and partly because I was hungry. I was given a contraption to sit on that is a seat with a rod sticking out of it with a sharp grinder on the end used for scraping the coconut out of the shell. As gracefully as I could in my skirt, I sat down and prepared myself for some yummy food. Honestly the food looked delicious. There was Ugali which I actually enjoy with some good flavorful vegetables, which there were. A severed in half, fried fish stared at me with a battered eye, my only obstacle. The ugali and veggies were amazing! Joyce motioned for me to eat some fish seeing as she doesn’t really know any english. I stared at the fish. He stared back. Thankfully a week prior my teammates had been trying to convince me that fish isn’t gross but actually quite delicious. In a brave attempt I tried it and to my surprise it was actually pretty good, it kinda tasted like chicken. So I had some history with fish, I knew I could eat it. The only problem was this fish had scales and a head and eye balls that would be rude to pick off. Joyce, bless her heart, must have read my mind and picked the meat off for me to eat. I threw caution to the wind and the scaley meat to the back of my throat and ate up. Mmmm!
Unfortunately because Joyce and her sisters couldn’t really speak any English I couldn’t really talk to them other than a few broken words through pastor. Pastor relayed that they thought I was charming, how sweet 🙂 I had a wonderful conversation with Pastor Mgunga, what an amazing man of God he is. During our conversation he was eating his food and their little kitten and their chickens were trying to get any tidbits they could. With a full belly kitten sprawled out in my lap as Pastor told me a funny story of which I will now share with you:
Me: “Wow pastor you sure have a lot of chickens! How many do you have?”
Pastor: “Yes we do have a lot of chickens, about 20. We also have a lot of theives.”
Me: “Oh no! Do you have to lock the chickens up at night so the theives can’t get them?”
Pastor: “Yes.”
Pastor exits the the scene.
Pastor enters the scene. Pastor displays a huge handmade bow and arrow set with sharp spear heads on the end that look like they were made out of slate.
Pastor: “This is my bow and arrow that I use to chase the theives.”
Me: “You chase people with that bow and arrow?! It looks painful!”
What I wanted to say but decided against: “Yikes! I guess I shouldn’t try stealing your chickens anymore.” Probably not something you should say to a pastor haha.
Pastor continued on to say that he hadn’t shown it to Nathan yet and with a giggle I encouraged him to do so. Elle came over and had a look of shock on her face when Pastor explained the story to her and then let a laugh loose.
Later on that afternoon Joyce invited us to go the market, with the help of Pastor who kept saying “she wants you to go to the market with her but she doesn’t know how you will communicate. Maybe if you know some swahili.” So off to the market we went! On our way home after we got off the bus a guy leaned out the window and blew us a kiss. T.I.A.
