Today was a dense and delicious day. My roommate Laurel and I woke up to Carol, our alarm clock, pounding on our door. We yelled that we were awake and then went directly back to bed. Thirty minutes later Zellie knocked and this time I had to answer the door because Zellie obviously can’t hear us yelling. I opened the door in my long johns with feet attached to them that my mom bought me for Christmas. I like them, they are warm. As I peeled open my eyes and winced as it felt like ripping a sticker off glass I saw as Zellie took one look at me and did a “good morning, lets go, why are you wearing those ugly pajamas” jig. Needless to say, we were late.
While we were eating breakfast Libby came to pick us up. We had heard many stories about Libby and her husband who had decided to move from the UK to Zimbabwe in 1980 right after independence. Libby opened a pre-school for the Deaf called Nzeve and Geoff worked as a doctor in downtown Mutare. We finished breakfast and pilled into her two seater truck that she called a “van” Libby and Carol sat in the front leaving Zellie, Kirk, Laurel, and I in the back with the fire wood, bread, butter, and meat. As I was jamming myself into the back Libby the sweetheart said “Don’t mash the bread.” And I thought “Yeah right lady!”
At the school, Libby and her fellow Deaf teachers put on a “parents of the Deaf” workshop. They spoke in Shona the first language of the Zimbabwe people; the language used in most of the rural areas. The interpreter singed in Zimbabwe Sign Language or “Zim Sign” and I tried to follow along using a mixture of both languages, but God blessed me with a coherent brain today so I think I held my own. Zellie and Kirk picked up the language much faster because they are Deaf.
After the workshop was over Laurel and I were introduced to the young interpreters. I say young, not because we weren’t introduced to the old ones, but because there weren’t any old interpreters to be introduced to. We had great conversations about their training and ours. Our training in the states is a 2-4 year college degree and then a stressful national test. The interpreters in Zim are lucky if they have three months of training. One thing I noticed was that practically all the interpreters were boys, in the states mostly all the interpreters are middle aged women.
After lunch, where I had my first taste of Sadza, we met with Sanganai, the Deaf club set up in 2000 by one of Carol’s teams and Amos; sanganai means “let’s meet.” We sang songs, Kirk preached, and Zellie taught a song although she got most of the Zim signs wrong because she was trying to translate them into Zim signs on the spot and was given some bad advice. Amos then asked Laurel and I to lead a song and the poetic me would say that I instantly felt like I swallowed a softball but the slightly vulgar still immature side of me would proclaim “and then I crapped my pants.” It turned out to be ok though because Zellie got up with us to have her second hand at the frist song and all was well. I love God’s sense of humor.
We traveled to Amos’s house in the “burbs” of Mutare for dinner. We ate and drank while watching WWE Monday Night Raw (on a Saturday) in Zimbabwe. That was odd. The experience also gave me the opportunity to take a look at Americans through the eyes of an outsider. SO Embarrassing. But, Da da da da God saved the day by cutting the electricity. Zimbabwe residents have to deal with what is called Load-Shedding because there isn’t enough money to keep the electricity running for the whole country, so randomly the government turns off the power in areas. This would normally seem problematic because we were all using a foreign sing language to communicate and darkness doesn’t help when communication is visible. Although with candles and a flashlight the communication continued and God was present in our hands. Those hands holding the flashlights, those making dinner, those communicating, and those cleaning up the broken glass from a cup knocked over.
Right before bed Laurel screamed and I saw the biggest spider I had ever seen in my entire life. It, by far, out beat the previous spider that held this title. This was a wonderful moment for my arachnophobic self, it gave me a chance to thank God for many things: I thanked God for the fact that it was not on my side of the room, that Laurel decided to kill it while I ran out of the room screaming and spitting my toothpaste out of my mouth, and that she was not such a wuss like me and could play the “what would be worse than a giant spider, which was now reduced to spider guts halfway up the wall, walking on your face.” That was a fun game, you have to try it sometime.
Ok it is time for bed. I made a promise to myself that I would decide in Africa whether I was going to be an Elder or a Deacon and I still have not had much clarification on the matter, but I trust that God is in the process and is helping me with this decision. Peace.
