What’s up with the Mzungu (white person)

Typically, when we do a training the average age is about 30, some younger, some older, men and women.  If there are children present, they’re usually babies nursing or a toddler hanging onto his mom’s dress, sitting under her chair or climbing on any woman close by.

Last week we met under a tent in a rented compound.  I noticed throughout the morning a young child about 3 or 4 with a small machete – yes, machete, which is VERY typical of men, women and children to have and use for various projects.  This little guy was whacking away at weeds or sticks and anything else that caught his eye.  I was mesmerized that he never once cut his hand, sliced his leg open, or drew blood at all in the wild slashing of unseemly items in his path. 

In a group of 80 adults, he was the only child wandering around, a neighbor’s kid who seemed unattached to anyone in particular, but obviously he knew where he was and as is also common, his mom was probably somewhere close by very aware of where he was and what he was doing.  Once he very courageously came up close to me, stood and stared and then grinned from ear to ear as I held out my hand in the customary greeting and said, “Habari yako.”  Switching the machete into his left hand, he quickly took my lily-white hand in his tiny black one and said, “Mzuri,” checked to see if any of the white stuff had come off in his hand and then gleefully ran off.

After lunch time, stomach full, he noticed the mzungu (Roger) had gotten up to speak, so in this large group of adults who he didn’t even know, he found a vacant chair and climbed up into it.  Peering around the people in front of him, he listened attentively, moving from this side to that to not miss a word of what Roger was saying…or so it seemed.  The reality is at this age he speaks Swahili only with English yet to come once he starts primary school. 

After a while, either Roger was much less entertaining or the morning’s hard work, plus a huge lunch of ugali had worn him out.  Either way, he’d put in a full day and now it was time to rest.