Dry Tears

Sunday, June 8

Went to church this morning, which was super cool! They would all sing these really cool songs in Swahili, so we had no idea what they were saying. But it was so cool to just close your eyes and just soak in the melody and the beautiful voices singing praises to God. It was moving. Then they invited us to go in front of the church where they introduced our team. Then Zablon (who besides being a tight guy with a sweet name, is actually a local) started talking about Dry Tears and introduced me to everybody and brought me in front of everyone. I was scared. He went on about it and everyone was nodding their heads and occasionally someone would say “Amen!” Zablon then asked if I had anything to say to everyone. I uh, didn’t really know what to say and felt really awkward, so I just smiled and said “Bwana Asifiwe!” which means ‘praise God’. Everyone seemed to like that, and yelled “Amen”, and a few people laughed. I think someone had said a joke.

Then after that, we went out to lunch at this nice place. Zablon saw someone he knew so he took me over to the guy and introduced me to him. I found out this guy was the president of the Chamber of Commerce, which apparently is like this thing where all the businesses in that area work together and help each other build other businesses up. Jeff then came over towards us and introduced himself to the man, whose name was Boniface Muhia, and he explained to him his vision for the school. Boniface absolutely loved the idea and said that he would do everything he could to persuade the businesses to consider buying their water from the school. This apparently is a better promise than the MP dude cause this guy has a lot more influence within the group. So that was super sweet!