.... I saw a bus driver pull over to the side
of the road, open the cargo hold and forcibly remove a very startled looking
goat.
.... Our car overheated at the top of the
mountain and I volunteered to go with the local men to find water to put in the
radiator, even though I wasn’t entirely sure that I wasn’t about to be married
off to a Maasai warrior.
.... We found a mouse in the toaster.
.... We found a mouse in the toaster.
.... A motorcycle drove past us on the
highway, the passenger on the back sitting sidesaddle, calmly reading a
newspaper.
.... A lizard fell on my head when I was
closing the curtains.
.... As I sat in the District Commissioner's
office I saw two men side by side – one wearing a traditional Maasai shuka, the
other wearing a silk Armani suit.
.... They named me Mama Mchungaji, “the
pastor’s wife”.
.... A goat chased me in circles around a bush
while the local children screamed with laughter.
.... Tizo asked if we could stop the car so he
could tie a donkey that had been half eaten by wild dogs onto the roof.
.... And then I ate too much and made a lot of
new friends and had a thousand hugs from dozens of children and I played a game
made up by six year old Dorry which involved a handful of pebbles and nothing
else. And I held my sweet friend’s newborn baby and watched as he opened his
eyes and looked at the new world around him for the first time.
.... And then I laughed until I cried and my
stomach ached and my cheeks hurt and then little Millen called me “mama mdogo” (my
young aunt) and I felt my heart constrict and then open even further.
.... And then I realised that my life is crazy
and busy and I love it and that God is so good and I am so blessed and I
wouldn’t change any of this. Not for anything. Not for the world.
xoxo,
-Hannah
