I've been to a couple of our workers' houses over the past few weeks, and it's such an eye-opening experience I decided to write about it. First, it's considered a blessing to have someone visit in your home, so they love having visitors and ask us all often, "When can you come to our house?" or even say, "You are welcome to our home." The latter is usually the one we hear, so we had to start telling them, "Name a day." Otherwise it never happens.
Several weeks ago, Joelle, Corinne, and I went to our gardener's house, only he wasn't home. He was working on their farm (after putting in a full day working at En Gedi), so we visited with his wife and daughter. His wife spoke a good bit of English, Corinne speaks almost fluent Swahili, and both of them had been to Abraham's house before. We took a gift of oil and sugar and were warmly welcomed (after our walk of about 30 minutes). While we were there, we were taken to see the cows, a couple of neighbors, and mostly got told several dozen times how welcome we were! We played with the little daughter, chatted with Abraham's wife, and finally had to leave. She walked with us for most of the way home, because that's polite, and then turned around and walked back to her home, welcoming us for another time!
Yesterday, Sarah, Shelley, and I went to visit our night guard and housekeeper's house. Godfrey came to collect us, and walked with us for the hour's journey to his house, greeting everyone we met along the way, several of whom also welcomed us to their houses! All the way there Godfrey kept telling us how hapy Mama Agape was "this day" because we were coming. Their daughter, Agape, goes to our school at En Gedi, and got out at 12:30. She walks home with friends who live nearby, and when we were closer to Godfrey's house, we saw her and her friend Angel, up ahead on the path. It was about 3:00 by then! I couldn't help thinking that at home if your 5 year old was 2 hours late getting home from preschool, what a panic everyone would be in!
She and Angel walked the rest of the way with us, and even their 2 year old son Christian (he's the one I took to the hospital at midnight several weeks ago)came out and down the road looking for us!
Mama Agape was cooking for us when we fnally got there, so Godfrey entertained us by showing pictures that they had from their wedding, baptisms, friends' weddings, etc. We also met his brother-in-law, Angel's younger sister, another neighbor child - having Wazungu (white people) visit is such a rare thing that people come just to sit and watch and listen to us. We took lots of pictures, entertained the children with a couple of puppets Sarah brought with her, then it was time to eat the rice and beans mama had been cooking. They eat huge portions and gave us twice as much as we could finish, so we shared ours with them. I had made banana cake, and we shared that for dessert. I had Home Bible Study last night, so we got to get moving for our hour's walk back. Mama Agape, Godfrey, and the brother-in-law walked us back. Along the way, we met a friend of Mama Agape's, so she walked wth us, too! Godfrey had to work last night, so he stayed once we got to En Gedi, but the brother-in-law turned around and walked another hour back! The whole time, everyone thanked US for coming! They are such gracious people, and shared their sweet mud home and beans and rice with us so freely. We invited all of them to our house for a meal soon (even though Mama Agape cleans for us, she doesn't cook, so we can at least cook for her!), and they are looking forward to it!
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