I got hit….
So let me ask you…”have you ever met anyone that has been hit by a coconut?”
I could have honestly said “no” until last Saturday…when one fell on me!!!!
The story goes…Molly, Matthew and I took two days and stayed on the beach, to recoup after ministry time. We were going to a pool to escape the sandy beach and I was excited about catching some more late sunrays. So I grabbed a chair and moved it into the sun and settled down with my book and began sipping from my cold coke.
As I was deep in reading, WHAM I was struck by something on my leg! My first thought was “who threw a football at me”? (I automatically thought in U.S. terms) than reality hit that there would probably be no footballs in Mozambique AND that hurt way more than a football! Sure enough I looked down just in time to see a coconut bounce off my leg and into the pool several feet away.
All that escaped from my mouth was “oh my gosh, oh my gosh”, which alone brought Molly running to me. Without any more words escaping, she took the book out of my hand, and I immediately went into to shock. “It hurts, it really hurts” was all that was released out of my mouth for the next minute or so. Then my emotions immediately turned to laughter. The shock of the event was slowly being released and the reality of the ridiculousness and probability of being hit by a coconut was brought to the surface. Matthew ran and got ice, and for the next hour or so, I iced it, swam in the coolness of the pool water and marveled over the fact that it was only my leg that got hit.
As the day unfolded and more people heard my random story, local people shared the fact that coconuts falling from trees and hitting people has been the number one killer in a years time and the number three source of deaths overall in Mozambique.
Wowzer! Praise God that I wasn’t but a foot or so farther out or I too could have been another statistic. Who would have ever thought that I would have to include on my list of ways not to die …being hit by a coconut.
Well the big nasty bruise is quite an eye sore and was very painful for the first couple of days, but it has been quite an exciting story to share.
How many people can actually say “I have been hit by ….a coconut”. I can!!!!
