Exodus 16:4
The Voice (VOICE)
Look!
I will cause bread to rain down from heaven for you, and the people will
go out and gather a helping of it each day. I will test them to see if they are
willing to live by My instructions.
We were very young, fresh out of graduate school, and
married for just a year and a half when we went to Africa. Everything was new
to us. The school put us in a neat little whitewashed mud-brick home on the
mission compound. An inch wide crack ran from ceiling to floor in the front
wall of one of the bedrooms. All the windows sported burglar bars.
Sylvia brightened up our bedroom with a bright crimson
curtain. We could lie in the sagging bed and listen to the termites chewing on
the roof rafters over our heads each night. We had to keep careful tabs on our
fridge that kept cold by burning kerosene because of its habit of gradually building
a higher and higher flame until soot formed on the ceiling.
More than once our black lab and Rhodesian ridgeback mix dog
would bark her snake bark at the back screen door. We would look carefully out
the screen and see a venomous cobra or other snake coiled up on the top step
just daring an incautious step out of the house.
At the beginning of our second year in the house we got an
accusing letter from headquarters. It demanded to know why we hadn’t alerted
payroll that they weren’t taking house rent out of our subsistence level
paycheck as specified in the mission policy book.
Surprised, I requested a copy of the policy book. I was told
rather curtly that there was a policy book but missionaries were not allowed to
see it because they might request benefits that were listed in it that they
didn’t know about. The treasurer went on to tell us that the previous year’s
rent would be deducted from our salary over the next six months: we would receive a total of 200 shillings a
month (less than $30) for living expenses until such a time as we had paid the
back rent.
For the next six
months we lived on beans and rice, and bananas that we could buy by the stalk.
We could also buy a few eggs or tomatoes from villagers trying to get a little
cash. When my parents came for visit a few months later, they urged us to see a
doctor because we were so gaunt. Even on
such a restricted diet, however, we never went hungry.
Thank You, Lord, that
You provide for us even when necessities get pretty scarce.
This is a surprise !
ReplyDeleteWhen I first landed at Ikizu Missionary school I got enthralled with many things, electricity, lawn mower, the white people but also your beautiful house at which I was allocated to do the outdoor compound care. I can only recall this day when you caught me nicking some berries from your mulberry tree. I was not supposed to, you reminded. Surely I was hungry! I still have the embarrassing feelings that grasped me.
By then, I was not only a typical native boy from the African Village' but had spent some time at the fringes of isuria escarpment grazing livestock. Isuria is one escarpment that taps marks an upland area separating a lowland area that spin around from Tanzania across the international frontier into Kenya. It is important in that it forms a natural eco-boundary of the Serengeti wildlife. The escarpment naturally change the direction of the north bound annual migration of wild-beasts eastwards into Masai-Mara game reserve of Kenya, preventing them from invading our villages in the upland plateau. The escarpment and the adjoining lowland is claimed by my tribe, the Kurya people who inhabit both republics (Till this day there is no native respect of the frontier). Isuria has always remained an area for contestation. The Serengeti conservation authorities aspires to have it become part to their controlled areas. Our ancestral enemies, the Masai, have over the years tried to scan the escarpment so as to conquer the sources of Mara river which waters Serengeti ecosystems, so far unsuccessful. Isuria area is like a permanent war zone. It therefore, requires brave 'trained morans' to fight the battles.
After completing my standard seven exam. at Nyansincha SDA primary school in October 1968, I joined the ranks of brothers at Isuria to take care of our livestolk and where we get trained to defend our mother land(try to remember the story of Joseph of the Bible and his brothers). Had it not been George Dunder, the headmaster of Ikizu, who had visited our school on a preaching mission, I was destined to become a tribal WARRIOR with all its ramifications.
From my perspective therefore, the house which I was taking care of, was a good one, only to be regarded on your part as inferior.
Our God holds our destiny. We should be thankful for all that he has done for us because he still has more in his stores of wealth for our needs
Your comment is evidence that everything is relative. When we visited there in 2003, they had a teacher living in the garage next to our house. That surprised me because the garage had no floor when we lived there and it was very small. It had no electricity or running water and since we didn't own a car while we were there it sat empty, except for a few steel drums and a wooden box or two. The teacher who lived there would probably have feelings that the school was treating other teachers better than himself.
ReplyDeleteYour observation that the Kurya had no respect for the Tanzania-Kenya country border is interesting. I've wondered why independent African countries today still vigorously defend the artificial borders established artificially by colonial powers. I had noticed that the Wakurya live in a great area that stretches from almost Musoma to Kisii. Yet the boundary cut their region pretty much in half.