This morning, Fr. Donnie invited me to a nearby village where he was celebrating Mass. The trip wasn’t bad, and we arrived on time. The people had a lot of energy, as they sang songs and danced throughout the service. After Mass had ended, the pastor invited us back to his hut to for lunch. While the pastor was extremely kind to me, I could see the writing on the wall…I was about to experience the dreaded “community bowl.” Immediately, I realized my two options: either eat the fly-invested dish with my hands (after others had done the same), or respectfully decline. I chose the ladder. As lunch was ending, the pastor recommended that we take a short-cut instead of making the 30 minute commute back to Ndolelejji.
Unfortunately, we took the pastor up on his advice. As we turned onto what we thought was a finished road, we noticed that the entire surface had been plowed. Rather than turning around and taking the the “long way”, Fr. Donnie kept driving, electing to periodically pull up next to some random person’s shack and ask them for directions. Before we knew it, we were in the middle of nowhere, aimlessly We driving through the desert landscape for nearly two hours. Finally, we stopped this guy who was herding cows and asked him if he knew how to get back to Ndolelejii. He claimed that he did, and we put him in the back seat of the truck (I wonder what happened to all of his cows). Although his directions were far from perfect, we got where we needed to be. On a side note, Fr. Donnie didn’t appreciate that the guy asked for money as we were parting ways, so he ended up dumping the guy off on the side of the rode.
No comments:
Post a Comment