Monkey’s and a Mission Call
As always, life is always full of adventure for the Tanda Malaika crew. A couple of especially exciting things have happened in the last few days, the most exciting being that Kiffin received her mission call for our church. She has chosen to devote 18 months to being a full time missionary, which means going where ever she is sent and felt to be needed most. She opened her call and read it aloud to us and is going to Harare, Zimbabwe! I was born there! What are the chances of that…it’s just unbelievable. It used to be called Salisbury, Rhodesia. (it’s the little country shaped like a tea pot right above South Africa.) Kiffin will arrive in South Africa at the training center on July 27th, and after her training is complete, will travel to Zimbabwe. I am so excited for her to see Africa and to meet the beautiful people there!
There other exciting thing that’s been happening, is that the creatures decided to go camping. In the jungle they discovered an abandoned church, and being sailing kids, they rigged up a brilliant web of lines from which they hung their hammocks.
Eight campers in all took their hammocks to be hung. On the first night that they slept there, around 4:30am, a large monkey type creature entered the church, screaming loudly as monkeys do. They said it was about 5ft tall, hairy and jumped up and down – about 3 ft high off the ground, and after coming into the church making lots of noise, it left and didn’t return the rest of the night. None of the kids could get back to sleep the rest of the night, and instead all chatted about what on earth it could be. Jude and Aidan had wrapped themselves like cocoons in their hammocks to hide from it. Mycah had sat up and asked, ‘What was that???’ And the rest of the kids discussed whether Sasquatch could really be real and how big Howler monkey’s get around these parts. When they came to the boat the following morning they were pretty shook up and wondered if it could possibly be someone from the marina playing a joke on them. After asking around they found no one who would admit to it. The kids did comment that the monkey sounds were extremely loud and real sounding and they didn’t know anyone that could jump quite like this creatures did.
Last night they slept out there once again, and they said that around 3am, the same creature came back. It was just as loud and entered one of the back rooms of the church, and made a bunch of noise outside. It carried on for a while, went quiet and then around 4am got noisy once again. After last night they are completely convinced that it is in fact an animal and are referring to it as the Demon Monkey. All their hammocks are now neatly rolled up and back on Tanda Malaika.
We hauled our girl out of the water on Friday, and Danny, Emma and Greg the mechanic, worked on the sail drive all day.
Emma was Greg’s apprentice and learned a lot as she worked by his side. On Saturday, everything was done that had to be done out of the water, and they once again ‘splashed’ us.
Emma stayed close with the dinghy in case we needed a nudge and she did a marvelous job as always.
Mycah and Jude scrubbed the engines until they were squeaky clean.
They did such a good job, and all the creatures scrubbed decks to get some of the grime from the boat yard off the boat.
Tomorrow we will call the Canal Authorities and ask them to start the paperwork so we can cross through the canal. We are excited to get going and continue our adventures on the water.
Adventures of a Tribe 