The church service itself was conducted in the local Arabic language, with some translation into English. We sang mostly in the Arabic, but because this Arabic is written using the Latin script (like our alphabet) we could sing along :)After the service, everyone filed out, while still singing, and stood in a circle around the compound, so as you filed out, you shook everyone else's hand. Quite a nice little thing, to greet everyone, but can you imagine how long it would take in a big church?! Phew. Makes me tired just thinking about that. I was enjoying watching a little guy playing with his jeep on a stick.
After church, we went back to our camp for lunch. Man, what a luxery to just have food there, ready and waiting when you're hungry! The afternoon was wonderful, as we just sat around and read and relaxed and napped until it was time to go for a little wander around the town with our local friend.Leaving Andy at home, the rest of us lovely girls toddled off to town in the truck to meet James. We wandered around town a bit, stopping to see the gardens and the gazelles at the camp where we originally wanted to stay. We had a cup of water there, too, and my water even had a frozen chunk in it! Wow, luxery, I tell you, to have real ice! It's amazing to me how much I miss ice cubes sometimes. So yes, having a bit of ice in my water is definitely a blog-worthy moment to remember!
We wandered from the camp down to the dried-up river. It was a beautiful place to walk! I really felt like I was out in the wilderness, enjoying nature again. There wasn't a single plastic bag or empty plastic bottle in sight! After a little while, we came upon a place in the river bed where the people had dug down to where the water was. The men were all taking their Sunday afternoon baths, so we sort of, well, lingered on the opposite side of the river for a while until they were finished. James kept insisting that it was ok for us to go and watch them take their baths - in that culture, the men don't mind if the women sit around watching them bathe, but the men aren't allowed to watch the women bathe. But since the women aren't wearing too many clothes, anyways, I don't quite know why it matters so much... Anyways, I don't think any of us were particularly interested in standing around and watching a bunch of men bathe, so we pretended to be very interested in the figs on the tree that we were standing under!
Eventually, the guys finished their bath, and we wandered over the the water-hole, just out of curiosity. The women were down in the pit, collecting water with their gourds and pouring it into jerry cans to carry on top of their heads.
We had a bit of a stare down with the women that were gathered there. Through James, we found out that they were quite intrigued by our hair - they wanted to know if our hair was fake or real! So we took off our hats and shook out our hair a bit to prove that it really was real and attached to our heads :) It's so funny, because they're just as curious about us as we are about them! The men didn't seem to too curious, though. They knew exactly what they were thinking... they wanted ME as a wife! Why is it that they always want ME for a wife - why not little Grace?! Anyways, I got out of the muddle by telling them that I was already spoken for... a little fib, maybe, but if it gets you out of getting married off to some guy at the water-hole, well, then I'm all for the telling of a little fib! Once they figured out that I was already taken, they moved on to May. She simply told them that they would have to send a letter, written in Chinese, to her father to ask his permission to marry her. That seemed to work. Funny, but they didn't ask about little Gracie!
So off we went, following the women in their little swishy skirts. The rest of our walk took us through a few mine fields, past a few unexploded ordinances, under some huge mango trees, past the house of James' friends who had just killed a giant queen ant and demolished her mound, and back into the town. In town, we met a man who made a bee-line for May, pointing at her and saying that she belonged to him. It was beautiful to see yet another example of love at first sight...Unfortunately, May didn't reciprocate the feeling of love at first sight, and we were able to escape that guy by going into a little cafe and ordering some Cokes. Cokes down there are way bigger and way cheaper than the ones you get up here! It's even cheaper if you pay in Kenyan Shillings... no matter that we weren't even in Kenya!
Man, by the time we finished up our Cokes, it was starting to get dark, so we dropped off James, and returned to our camp in the forest for a nice cold shower, and another cooked meal! By 9pm, I was so tired, I could hardly keep my eyes open...
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