We seem to be having the ten plagues of Egypt here at the moment. A wave of water-bourne swimming locust-like things filled the city. It was followed by a wave of gold-coloured hard-shelled flying beetle-like things, and now we are in a wave of multi-coloured locusts. Combine those with the ants and the mozzies and someone will be presenting it as evidence that the old testament prophecies all point to the second coming for a tuesday afternoon in 2010.
Changing the subject entirely, Dave Burnett, anthropologist, lecturer at All Nations and generally good bloke, used to extol the virtues of missionaries making themselves vulnerable to the people they are working amongst. So, does arriving on someone’s doorstep with “I’m sorry I’m late but I had to walk the last two kilometres from where I got the car stuck in the mud” mean I am a good incarnational missionary, or merely incompetant?
Once they had finished laughing, kiddo’s mum and two of her brothers hiked back with me and eventually we managed to release jalopy from its muddy incarceration, which took quite a lot longer than we first thought. In fact I got as far as wondering if I ought to pay them for their services, but I kicked against the idea that I do everything for free and I can’t take a favour in return, it kind of smacks of the white guy / native guy power inbalance, except that the inbalance already exists because I could have afforded to pay them if I’d chosen to…. sometimes thinking too much makes life seem so complicated. I compromised… bought some bits from the supermarket, and picked a couple of butternut squashes. i could make myself at home in an economy based around marrow-like vegetables.