African Games

Since being here in Kenya I have learned what I think of as African games. We went to the Maasai Market where we did a lot of bargaining. It was my first experience of bargaining in Africa, it was very different from my experiences of bargaining in China, definitely a lot more enjoyable. In China they would get very defensive and yell or grab you to make a sell, here they joke around, try to get to know you in order to sweet talk you and make you feel like you are buying from a friend. It definitely was an experience full of laughs.

My second and favorite African game was one I made up myself. Here in Africa the people will raise their eyebrows in order to say hi, something I am not used to in America. We were stuck in traffic the other day it was very entertaining to raise my eyebrows at the guys walking by and they were shocked that I, a white girl, knew to do it! They would laugh, smile, and were even more shocked when I was able to say hi in swahili slang. I think it was just as entertaining and funny for them as it was for me. It makes each trip through the heavy and crazy Nairobi traffic a lot more enjoyable and faster!

blessings.

It is interesting to see life from a different point of view than the one you have always known, to see how the rest of the world lives and what is valuable in other countries and cultures. You don't realize how truly blessed you are till you see hundreds of people who may have walked for over an hour to wait outside in a line for 7 hours in hopes of seeing a dentist. And they skip work for this because this opportunity at seeing a dentist only comes once a year. It is even harder to see these people turned away at the end of the day, you want to trace back and go through school again and learn to be a dentist just for that one moment, just so you can do whatever is necessary to help them. You see how truly blessed you are when your clothes are made of more fabric than worn out holes. You see how truly blessed you are when you have been given an opportunity to travel 9000 miles to serve the Lord's people, and it is even a bigger blessing to be given the opportunity to come face to face with God when you look into the eyes of his children.