The last two weeks have been an exciting whirlwind of culture, languages, and religion. I would describe the culture here as a mix of Africa, Europe and what I perceive the Middle East to be, all mixed into one. Most people here speak French and Arabic. Prayer five times a day is a very important part of the Muslim culture. Anywhere you are in the cities you can here a loud speaker calling people in Arabic to pray. Unfortunately for me I am woken up many mornings by the call to pray at sunrise!
We just came off a wonderful week of team time that was filled with prayer, worship, and learning culture. Earlier this week we moved in with a Muslim family whose son is a mutual friend of our team. It has been an incredible experience so far. We have been overly blessed by their hospitality. At the moment I am eating like a King! We arrived yesterday around 4pm to some wonderful pastries and mint tea. Shortly after we were eating again at 6. Take into account, none of us have ever met any of these family members and they don’t speak ANY English! Fortunately a member of our team speaks Arabic, but we soon found out it is a different dialect so we can hardly communicate! All I could do was smile and laugh because that is universal! One thing we were informed of during our team week was that Muslims love to keep putting food on the table for you, and that is just what we experienced. The mother took notice of who was eating and who wasn’t. To those who were’ eating, t the mom would point and say kooli kooli, meaning eat eat! So I decided took grab a large portion of the bread and say kooli kooli back to her. The mother and aunt burst into laughter because I was saying eat eat to a girl. Eat eat to a guy I soon learned was kool kool. For the rest of the meal she would point at me and say kool kool. So I kept eating each time until I was far past being full and we all kept laughing. Later that night when the husband came home we ate dinner around 11. When the wife introduced us, I was introduced as kool kool. Since then I have adopted this new nickname and it is brought up every time we eat! Today I was asked to help make a dish everyone eats on Fridays called couscous. (which is delicious!) This was significant because we have asked to help in the kitchen all week but she has refused to let us help out and for some reason she asked me to help. Pray this Muslim family see’s HIS love through us!
I had the opportunity to get a shave but it came with a price as after I felt like Kevin Mcallister from Home Alone!
*For the sake of our security and those we are involved I need to censor details of locations and names. I apologize for vague descriptions! If you would like to know more information email me directly and I can send you a private link with location details.
