Party crashing in Africa

Editor's note: Cape Girardeau resident Stratton Tingle is writing letters on a periodic basis to the Southeast Missourian while spending a year as a missionary in Africa.

It's taken me a little longer to write than I'd expected. I've been distributing plenty of maize lately, camping out in the bush, keeping myself busy, etc. Anyway, I said that I'd write a few more stories from our trip that we took to Kenya and Sudan. So, here's a pretty cool one:

We were in Kenya for New Year's Eve, camping out in the middle of the Rift Valley in Masaai land.

These people live in houses called "bomas," which are simply a bunch of sticks put together with mud. When making a boma, after the mud between the sticks dries, the women get a bunch of cow dung and smear it all over the entire house. Needless to say, the houses smell fantastic. Anyway, one family usually has a camp of about three bomas, depending on the number of cattle and kids they have. So we were all sitting around the campfire, having a pretty lame New Year's Eve party (a couple of people were playing "Go Fish," two were sleeping, and one was reading a book). That's when Jon-Michael, the other male student missionary, and I noticed the singing. A group of about 20 people sounded like they were having a big New Year's bash at some nearby boma. Since neither one of us had partied with the Masaai before, we resolved that New Year's was about the best time to start.

Walk in the dark

Armed with a couple of low-powered flashlights (mine came free with some batteries, I think, and produces light about 20 percent of the time) and a pack of gum, we headed toward the sound. The moon wasn't out, so we stumbled quite loudly through the numerous thorn trees and basically fell down a river bank, trying to get to the party. We were nearing the boma (the smell gave it away) when we realized that the singing had stopped, and that we could see a fire nowhere. Not thinking much of it (the fire could be hidden by a house), we walked in the direction that we thought was correct. Now, we could hear some cowbells nearby, so we decided to stop and listen, hoping that the party would soon resume.

We sat in a wide open field for about five minutes, when we began hearing some voices start speaking again. They were whispering, however. Not much of a party. So, we sat a little while longer.

Hearing whispers

The whispers began to come closer to us, from our right hand side. They were probably about 25 yards away, when I guessed that there were about five to seven voices walking slowly toward us. At about 20 yards away, I recognized all of the voices as being male.

Then, at about 15 yards, two of the men sprinted from our right-hand side to directly in front of us, but still 15 yards away.

By now my heart was thumping at a good pace, especially since I'd been accustomed to seeing these Masaai people walk around with spears in their hands and daggers hanging from their belts. My eyes had adjusted to the darkness (our flashlights had been off for a while), and I whispered ever so slightly to Jon-Michael that maybe it wasn't in our best interest to stick around for the party. He seemed to think that my idea was a good one, because he immediately started walking back to camp as fast as he could, without making noise. I did the same.

After we were about 30 yards from where we'd been sitting, we began running with no flashlights.

Needless to say, the thorns in my legs were much more plentiful on the return trip, and the river bank had somehow grown much steeper, sending me sprawling on hands and knees into the river bed. About a mile later, we could see the light of camp so we began walking again, trying to listen carefully over our huffing and puffing for any suspicious noise.

We made it back safely, and the next day, we found ourselves in the back of a large truck on our way to shovel sand for cement. Still wary of the strange events of the past night, I decided to tell the story to one of the local builders who was helping us shovel sand. His eyes lit up when I told him about the guys coming toward us, and then two of them positioning themselves in front of us.

He quickly cut me off, and told me that those guys thought we were trying to steal their cattle. They had probably seen our flashlights from afar, and had probably heard us coming closer and closer without flashlights.

Saved from spears

He explained to me that, when the Masaai find someone trying to steal any of their cattle, they surround those people and simply spear them. If we had turned our flashlights on while they were coming toward us, we would have been run through (if we had turned our flashlights onto our own faces, they would've seen that we were white, and the party probably would've resumed). He said that we were fortunate that we got out of that situation unscathed. Someone must've been looking out for us.

This story makes me wonder how many times we've been in danger and we don't even realize it. How many times has our guardian angel controlled a drunken driver until we were past danger? How many times has our guardian angel scared off some hungry beast, like the leopard I happened upon earlier this year? How many times has God saved us from our own stupid mistakes? I bet we'd be surprised if we knew just how much God has done to protect us.