Day 3 - Our First Church Service

A number of us piled into a couple of vehicles and headed off to Makutano for church. The jeep that I was in ran very hesitatingly and I wondered if we would make it to church and home without it breaking down. Soon, we pulled over to the side of the highway and went into a small corrugated tin church with dirt floors that a number of the members of our base attended. Our base leader was actually one of the Pastors there. The people were very friendly and some were dressed to the nines in wool suites that were from North America - the kind that used to be office attire for us. Most everyone is very clean and well pressed which is rather surprising around here. Apparently everyone irons everything they can get their hands on. They do not have many possessions though so most of them do their ironing on their beds. It is amazing to watch how little they get by on and how well they do.

The church service was 4 hours long. It seemed more like 2 services since we had praise and worship twice and two sermons. I love hearing the Africans sing and they often dance a little too which is fun to watch but we could not enter in to the praise and worship as it was all in Swahili.  We were all pretty tired by the end of the service due to the length of it and the sweltering heat inside our tin church.

After church, we went to a grocery store that was about the size of our old corner grocery stores and bought a few  items. After that we went to the small produce stands in the ditches to purchase some healthy food as we were missing it already. On the weekends there is no prepared lunch. They put out white bread and peanut butter for us for breakfast and for packing ourselves a lunch. Then for dinner there is some starchy food to eat with shavings of vegetable in them. Pretty much everything we eat is 99% starch so it fills your stomach but does not  provide much nourishment for your body. My roommates are used to extremely healthy eating so their bodies were screaming for something better.  We purchased a bunch of bananas and mangoes to eat in our room.

Our final roommate arrived around 11:00 P.M. after we were all in bed. She had been due to arrive the day earlier but missed her flight out of Paris because she was very sick and threw up a number of times on her way to the airport. We all grunted a greeting at her when she came in and then fell back asleep.