Since arriving in the western market town of Kachibora, we’ve been going door-to-door in the community. It took a few days before my American notions of privacy and invasiveness gave way to African hospitality. Everyone we met was so excited to have American visitors. Here are two stories from these encounters.
Lucy, Can You Hear Me?
Alice was one of these women who welcomed us into her single-room rented home. It smelled of sour milk and cool earth. The red mud walls bore the imprints of their builder’s fingers. A thin, colorful sheet hung down from the metal roof to separate the sleeping mat from the open area. The packed earth floor sunk a few inches below the foot path outside. This 10 x 10 space matched its neighbors except for the 4 faces inside.
Alice spoke through our friend Franco, her Swahili words tumbling out like a melodic percussion instrument. She told us how she had just arrived in Kachibora that week. A spat with her husband had driven her to move, and she could only bring three of her seven children with her. Isaac, Gloria, and Lucy stood just outside, grinning shyly at the mzungu visitors.
We thanked Alice for being so open, for sharing things that were clearly hard to talk about. We asked how we could pray for her.
She explained that Lucy, the oldest at 12 years old, was deaf in her left ear. Erin and I glanced at once another and asked her to bring Lucy inside. She sat next to me, and I told her, thru Franco,
You’re a daughter of God.
He loves you SO MUCH.
He created our bodies so perfectly, and wants them to work perfectly.
Can we pray for your ear to be healed?
Lucy grinned. She answered quietly, “Yes, I believe in God. Yes, I want Him to heal me.”
So Erin and I prayed. When we finished, Erin whispered in Lucy’s deaf ear, “Laugh if you can hear me!”
She looked at Erin with a coy little grin and shook her head. We laughed, then asked her, “no really… can you hear? “Franco repeated our question in Swahili.
And Lucy answered, “Nasikia.”
Franco asked again several times, and Lucy repeated, “Nasikia.”
She giggled, and ran back outside to play with the other kids. We decided it was time to go, Alice thanked us for coming, and invited us back. It was so normal, as if nothing had happened. Erin and I weren’t sure how to act…
“Nasikia” is Swahili for “I can hear.”
A beautiful reality of Africa is that people KNOW the supernatural is real. They are ready to see it. This is not the only miraculous healing we have seen this month. And each time, we freak out, and the locals simply smile nonchalantly.
A few days after we met Lucy, I was watching the sun rise over the mountains with my back to the Ugandan border. And in that moment where a childhood dream finally became reality, I thought,
“God created every bit of this, ‘from the crawling ant to the leaping antelope.’ Healing a little girl’s ear… whatever made me think he couldn’t or wouldn’t?”
Know who God is. And expect Him to be just that.
Winifred
A few days later, we met Winifred.
She was a neighbor of Evans and Evelyn. We’d gone back to visit them, and Evelyn quickly ushered us to her friend’s home.
Winifred had just lost her baby in childbirth.
It must have happened within the past couple of days; her stomach was still swollen under her floral cotton dress.
When Samara asked her how she was, Winifred sucked in her trembling bottom lip. Samara and I sat next to her on the small bed. As her tears fell, we cried too. We sat next to her for a long time. We prayed for comfort, for healing. Samara lifted Winifred’s face to look into her dark, sad eyes.
“This was not your fault.
You are not being punished.
Your body will heal.
God loves you SO MUCH, munguu akopenda sana.”
We repeated those things over and over again. Truth in the face of lies. Love in the face of despair. Hope in the darkness. That is what we came here to do.
-Katie
