Treasure Hunt in Machakos

We’re coming to the end of orientation now and will soon be heading down to Namibia. The orientation time has been good, but certainly a bit overwhelming at times. Our heads are full of knowledge now about everything from Traditional African Beliefs, to language acquisition, to how to ride a Boda-Boda (a bicycle with a passenger seat on the back, operated like a cab). I sort of feel like I did when I was coming to the end of my undergraduate courses – where I felt full of knowledge and empty of everything else.

We have gained a good bit of relational experience during this time as well. This week we were invited to have dinner with an African family who lives and works on campus. We gained good insight into some local customs as we also gleaned wisdom from the family about what it means to be a Mzungu (see entry below) working in Africa.

We also had a relational “treasure hunt” in downtown Machakos where, instead of finding items, we had to find out information about things such as the history of Machakos, the local customs, and how to greet one another in the local language (which is Kikamba). We all did this as a family, and so we all gained from this adventure.

Pray for Jessa. The poor girl lost a bit of innocence on the issue of preparation of animals for eating when we went to a restaurant to eat where you could hear the chickens being slaughtered in a back room area. She sat stone-faced for about a half hour after that. She’s okay now, but there will be more lessons for her to learn soon enough.

Josiah was thoroughly confused during this trip through town as we walked through a market area where almost ALL of the older women there kept trying to speak to him in Swahili (aka Kiswahili) since they saw he was Kenyan and just assumed… Of course, even more fun was trying to communicate to the ladies (who spoke broken English at best) why this Kenyan boy doesn’t know but about 2 words in Swahili. That was actually pretty funny.

Anyhow, I’m sorry we don’t have any pictures from this time in town. I have hesitated to bring our camera to the town – partially because of not wanting to be waving expensive electronic items around in a crowded area, but more so because I didn’t want to look too much like a tourist.