Hey,I thought I might send a short report about my weekendtravels. It was a good trip. It was good to see somemissionary friends and visit with them. I went toMilangewhich is on the Malawi border.The weekend trip was fairly uneventful. No pigs in thebathroom. This bathroom was a little brick building,very little and not very tall. It was definitelydesigned by a short Mozambican. It was still a hole inthe ground but it had the fancy brick building aroundand roof on top of it. Actually the ones w/out a roofare better b/c the sun can help dry out the remainswhich don't make it into the hole...Anyway...We arrived at our friends house on Thursday eveningafter a 600 kilometer ride on bumpy roads. Then the nextmorning we left for the bush trip, the church was about40 k's away but it took about an hour and half to getthere b/c of the bumps/holes in the road. When we arrived the other missionary made the comment that thereweren't many ladies there, not like last year. They fed us lunch and then we waited.....We waited b/c there wasa mixup on the dates. According to what we knew it was to start Friday at lunchtime which is when we arrived.Then end on Saturday at lunch. According to what theysaid it was to start Saturday lunch and continue toafter Sunday service. Friday night we ended up singing for about an hour and that was all. The next morning the women's conference started. 7 of the ladies took 30 minute slots of teaching the material. We told them that we needed to leave after lunch onSaturday. At 12 we went to the little gazebo where theyhad been giving us our meals. Again we waited...Theybrought us Cokes, we drank those and waited....Usuallythey brought our food first and then the other ladies ate. This day they were really slow. Finally thepastor who was sitting with us went and asked about ourfood. They had forgotten about us. So we just left.We had been waiting about an hour and it would have been another hour for the food after they realized we didn'thave any.It is hard to get used to it when they want to feed us separate and have us sit in separate places b/c we arethe white person/missionary. They see it as honoring us. It's hard to remember that it is an honor. For instance at the Friday night music time they had the 3 of us, missionary ladies sit at the front of the church at a table facing the others. I felt like I was a governing body over them. We didn't like that. The next day we said we want to sit with the ladies in the congregation and just be a part of the conference. It was much more enjoyable like that.
Today turned out to be a longer trip than I expected.We left at 8 and I got home at 3 pm. It was a good trip, though. We went about 76 k's on good roads andthen about 30 k's on small, "cornfield" roads. Each place I went they gave me some food to eat whether I wanted it or not. One interesting thing that we ate was beans. The beans were cooked in the shell and then you just open the shell and eat the beans out of the inside.They were actually good...Take care, Carol
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