ostriches and desert, the Kuvales are cool!

August 10th, 2004

We’re back from Virei! Wow, was that ever amazing! We trekked literally into the desert in our rugged Land Rover and reached Virei on Friday night. Pitched a tent and spent the night…then at 6am had a bible study on Worship with the church congregation and promptly left around 9am to make contact and find the Kuvale families that had recently moved about 70km away from Virei (where there’s grass for the animals).

It took us about 3 hours to go over river beds and more terrain (there were actually very diverse landscapes, shrubs, trees, sand) and we met up with 2 different settlements. Man, that was so cool! They are the most friendly Angolans I’ve met with to date! I love their clothes and their lifestyle. We spent most of our time with the 2nd group of mixed Kuvale and Muwhila people and their chief. Mostly, we sang and told them about Jesus and visited and then did some medical consults before leaving.

Then on Sunday, we had lots of singing in church (I love their harmonies) and visiting. On sat night, Becky and I spent our time just singing out into the African sky and entertaining the curious children. We figured out that they probably had never seen a Chinese person before, so they found me either strange or funny or both! I love the kids…they would laugh everytime I tried to speak Portugese or their tribal language and they even managed to learn some English (that I tried to teach!).

Then on Sunday, as we were driving back to Lubango, WOULD YOU BELIEVE IT? We were driving, and suddenly this flock (?) of ostriches (BIG AND FAST) started running next to us and then we saw 4 ‘springbachs’ (deer-like gazelles) and then some dykers (‘bambi’ in portugese) and a lot of birds and I even saw a giraffe (but they promptly told me it was a tree) ;0)

Today, I asked for a ‘day off’ since we did a whole day of surgery yesterday (Monday), and having just come back on Sun night, I’m exhausted! I leave on thurs morning!
I love you all! Oh yes, and thanks so much to Jason and Jess, Todd and Bree (bree, did you get my email?) and the others who offered a ride, I’m good for a ride, will see you guys soon!
s