Saturday morning Janice and I accompanied Nancy and a friend’s daughter to Bunia market for the weekly shop. Shops line the road and are barely 12’ x12’ stacked floor to ceiling with merchandise with just room to get inside. We followed Nancy from shop to shop getting things like a broom, salt, and toilet rolls oh, and palm oil. This was outside a shop in a cut down drum and was put into a plastic bottle which was bought at another stall. The oil, which looks a bit like thin, pale tomato sauce is supplied to the shop in big plastic sacks! Nancy bought rice; a 50 kilo sack which was carried to the car for us, for a fee of course. She bought 2 different types of dried beans which are displayed piled on plastic sheets on the ground. They are measured out in a 5 litre tin piled high and running over; true scriptural measure. The market proper consists of row upon row of permanent roofed wooden stalls selling everything from dress material, which Janice bought, to dried fish, which we didn’t. We did however buy fish which came from the nearby Lake Albert; Nile Perch which are huge! All manner of fruit and vegetables which are grown locally; most of which I recognized although “tree tomatoes” and “cassava” were new to me. The weather was overcast and a little humid; about 26 degrees and we coped quite well. We needed a snooze after lunch. In fact the afternoon routine usually includes a snooze!
Sunday morning dawned clear and bright. After breakfast, which every day consists of a portion of pawpaw with lemon juice, and a plate of warm porridge made with corn meal and soya with a sliced banana on it, Philip took us to the WEC founded church for the service which started at 9.30. The church was constructed with mud walls up to about 6 feet with another 2 feet of wooden lattice for ventilation; the roof was pitched corrugated iron with a bamboo ceiling. The service was in Lingala and Swahili so we relied on Philip to give us the gist of what was going on. During the first hour and a half various groups of people came forward to sing in wonderful African harmony, accompanied by two guitars and a drum made from an old oil drum with a skin stretched across the open top. Folk prayed and read scripture. The pastor preached on Hebrews 3:12-14 Sin’s deceitfulness. This was followed by a communion service during which visitors were welcomed. As visitors we were invited to stay for “tea and bread”, literally BREAD, after communion. In all the service lasted some 4 hours during which time people kept coming and going. I suppose there must have been about 100 people in all. The clear sky has meant that the temperature today rose to about 30 degrees and it is still 22 degrees and quite humid at 11.30 pm. So far we have only had two rain showers, one of which was thundery. It is coming to the end of the rainy season here.
God’s blessing on you all.
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