Thursday May 31st

Thursday May 31st

I woke up at 7:00am and went to breakfast with the guys and the Reeves family. It has become the regular routine. After breakfast, we went to SIL to meet up with the rest of the crew and to start our day. We had a prayer and headed off on our hike. It was a pretty good hike. A lot steeper than I'm used to (as well as a lot hotter and more humid) and there were less rocks than I like, but the tirp was worth it. When we got to the top, the view was amazing. It was a view of all of Kabiyeland. It had taken us about an hour to get to the top. We sat on a bunch of rocks overlooking the city as well as the surrounding landscapes. It was awesome. We had a prayer, spent some time in worship, had some time for ourselves, and then headed back down the mountain. Matt, Travis, and I took a different paht down than the rest of them, not using trails and creating our own. Once we got down the mountain a little ways, our path crossed with that of the other guys and we merged onto the path with them. We all met under a tree and the people who had been in the lead had found a chameleon so he was being passed around. David had him so I walked up to see it and he just kind of plopped him on my arm. It was awesome. I love chameleons. His eyes were creepy, both moving independently of each other, but he was still awesome. I put him on my shoulder for a bit and continued down the mountain. After a little bit, I let somebody else have a turn and I gave him over to Rachel and she carried it back to SIL. The Kabiye people think that the chameleon is a bad omen and is an evil creature so they are afraid of it. As we were heading back to SIL, we had to walk past a few villages so Rachel tried to hide it from them but it wasn't much use. They usually saw it and ran. But there were a few kids who were brave enough to come up and give us both high fives. So we went back to SIL and we all went our own ways for lunch. After lunch, there is a time called Siesta. Its my new favorite time and I am definetly bringing it back with me to America. Its the time during mid day, starting around noon and going until about 2:00pm that basically is a time of rest. It is wonderful. After siesta, we went back to SIL and had some get-to-know-ya games as well as some food to try from the market place. Its all good stuff. Very different food like beancakes and shredded coconut to sugar covered peanuts. We signed up for service projects ranging from teaching to school house repairs to latrine making. There are two sections to sign up for different projects. For the first time, I chose to do school house repairs and for the second time, I
chose to do latrines. We'll see how that goes. After we did that we had dinner at SIL. Spaghetti. It was pretty good but not as good as Grandma's homemade stuff. After that, we all went home and went to bed.