Sunday, September 17, 2006
An Uneventful Day
I went to church in Ouakam alone. Jonathan spent last night with Carlin at the middle school boys’ dorm. Jane was “xawa febaar”, a little sick. Headache and queasiness and general fatigue. So I grabbed the bag of 50 new songbooks and headed over.
Part way into the service, my niece Gretchen came in. She lives right around the corner from the new church building. After the service she came with me and we headed over to the other side of town to get Jonathan. Then we headed back to the house. She ended up staying for lunch that Jane made in a better period. Jonathan and I dropped her off at her apartment around 3:30 on our way back to DA. I played basketball. Jonathan (after finishing the last bit of homework) slipped over to Corrie’s house again to play.
Gretchen’s visit was wonderful, as always. She had really enjoyed the copy of Invention and Technology that I loaned her, so she took several more copies. We also swapped cell phones. Both are really hers, but the one we had ended up with has a cool spelling feature that she wanted. Gretchen told us about her work teaching English to rich African kids. They are college students, but only half of them seem to really be serious about learning, she thinks. Jane and she swapped stories of teaching. Mostly we just talked a bunch. And laughed. And generally enjoyed each other.
It was a day filled with the little things of life. I had the privilege of delivering Ouakam’s share of the new song books, the fruition of over ten years of effort by a number of folks. But it wasn’t a big ceremony. It’s too low key of a group for that. When the big Evangelical Church of Dakar gets its 300 copies next week, I’m sure there will be a bigger to-do. Basketball was fine. I didn’t hurt myself. Well, my ego took a bruising, as usual. My passing was atrocious today! The gas bottle ran out and when I tried to buy another in the neighborhood, I was told that there is a shortage at the moment. We watched an Andy Griffith episode, Jonathan, Jane and I. You know, a normal, uneventful day. Very nice.
