Friday in Real Africa

The weather continues boiling hot. I have been sleeping under the stars, with no cover, because the tent is so hot. It is usually around midnight before the temperature drops enough that I stop sweating on the areas not touched by the breeze – if there is a breeze.


One advantage to sleeping outside is that the view of the night sky is absolutely spectacular. Because we are so much closer to the equator, we see here much more of the “southern sky.” The stars here are the same ones we used to see from the front patio of our home in Ogbomosho.

Yesterday, we went some 20 miles into “the bush” to the village of Paloc (pronounced, as it is on some maps, Paloich.) There were 5of us foreigners: Jermaine, Andrew, and myself, plus two young women from the Fusion program, Jessie and Kaley. We also had Peter (“2nd Peter”) as our interpreter.

On the way, we saw baboons, bush fowl, guinea fowl and a large squirrel. Later, we saw a variety of large birds, including marabou storks, phalarope, large black hawks and herons.

We first met with the church in Paloc. As you can see in the picture, the meeting place is not very fancy, and there are no cushions on the pews, but God knows where Paloc is, and He showed up for church, too. Andrew, Peter and I took turns “preaching” short messages in a story-telling format.

We visited around the village some more – then, we found out that a goat was being killed in our honor, and we would have to wait for it to be prepared! So we spent a couple of hours driving on further into the bush to the Paloc “cattle camp.” [The Dinka are a cattle-herding society, and virtually everything in the society is related ideationally to cattle.]

Andrew wanted to buy some milk, but because of the dry weather, the cows are producing barely enough milk for their own calves.

When we got back in Paloc, the goat was still not ready, so we sat around for another couple of hours. 2nd Peter and Jermaine used the time to do some training with several local church leaders. I just dozed and sweated.

Finally, about 5:45pm, “lunch” was ready. We were served goat stew, fried bits of goat, and very nice, large biscuits. As hot as I was, I didn’t eat much. Besides, we were in a hurry to get back into town (a 45 minute drive at least) before sunset (7:08pm). We left as quickly as we politely could, and roared back toward Akot. Jermaine is the designated driver, and he pushed it as hard as he could, sometimes getting up to 25 mph, but the sun had been down for a couple of minutes when we pulled into the small hospital compound where Jessie and Kaley stay.

It had been a good, productive and long day. We were exhausted by the time we got back “home,” but I still had to do laundry before collapsing onto my cot under the stars.