Matebete Village, Part 3----Hospitality

The man driving the motorcycle is the village leader. Even though he is not a member at the Village church, he came to the worship service to greet us. At the end of the worship, he got up and welcomed us and invited us to come to a pavilion, which was a short walk from the church, to have sodas. We really did not want to accept the sodas, because these are very poor people with little to give, but we were told that it would be an insult to not accept his gift.

The pavilion is in the center of the next picture.

On the left is one of the Harding nursing students, and next to her is Debbie D.

One of the men opened the sodas and others passed them out .

Ron and Bill

The children stayed outside, but they really wanted to watch us!



One of the Harding students and the village leader

It was really hard for some of us to drink the whole bottle of soda so quickly. We could not take the drinks with us because there is a deposit given back for the returned bottles, so the only polite thing to do was to drink all of it.

The people were so kind and generous and really wanted to treat us like honored guests! They invited us back the next week on a Thursday to see their big harvest celebration with games and dancing. We would have really loved to have gone back for that, but Thursday was a work day for us.

I really like the following photo because it symbolizes how much the Masai people wanted to welcome us and to be our friends. The people, though very different from us in culture, are our brothers and sisters in Christ.