Despite the fun we have in the classroom, the highlight of the day is lunchtime. We spend a little time with the kids outside. Some of the students swarm around us, trying to touch, hug, or just hang on. Others come outside, confidently carrying their lunch pails to sit in the shade and eat. The food is shared freely (mostly). At any given moment, you might see one child approach another and be given a generous spoonful of rice and potato greens. After they eat, many of them will just lounge but of course, the boys get into an aggressive match of football (soccer) in the sand patch around the school. And when I say aggressive, I mean aggressive – a little hard to watch sometimes. Some of them will play in their socks (that one I think is really strange to be honest) or barefoot. By the time the bell rings, they are covered in sweat and sand and I am surprised they are not beaten and bloodied.
But the most fun is the grown – up conversation around the table (it’s the teachers, pastor, Kelsie and me and usually one or two other people). The food is always Liberian – rice, some kind of meat (always on the bone and if it is fish there is a head and eyeballs, and once in a while a surprise chicken foot delicacy) and spicy sauce and loads of palm oil. They learned on my last trip here that palm oil is not for us (aka white people) and so it does not automatically get mixed in. To give you an idea, palm oil (yes from the palm tree) is like vegetable oil but red and somehow thicker and greasier. It makes my stomach turn a little looking at it. One day this past week, they brought two kinds of oil to the table, Liberian oil (palm) and White Person oil (maybe olive?). The huge platter or bowl of food that is put before us has one side reserved for Kelsie and me. No palm oil or spicy sauce are to be mixed in – we mix it in to our liking (and bravery). Let’s just say that we eat a lot of rice! Anyway, the best part is the conversation. There is so much laughter around the lunch table. Pastor Wesley is funny. Prophet too. They all love to joke and give us a hard time. But we give it right back. It’s just thirty minutes of laughing with good friends every day. I am not describing it very well but there are genuine belly laughs and jokes that even if repeated are funny. These are the times I treasure most.
Please pray:
*Safety and health as we start our journey home
*Next steps in the building project
*Return to our home culture - as challenging as this is, there will be even more to process as we come home
*Thanksgiving for recent healing and that we have each other on this wild journey!