Africa and Wii-ing: a Night of Opposites

Friday night, we had a homemade curry meal that was so good just thinking about it makes my mouth drool, with fabulous friends. Lindsey’s parents were there, we love seeing them, since they currently work with Young Life in Malawi, Africa, as was a new acquaintance Megan, who is from Tahoe, but has spent the past 3 years in Tanzania with the Peace Corps. We shared lots of stories around the table during the meal, it was a holy time, with Swahili rap and tribal music playing on the iPod in the background. Classic.

After dinner, we played Settlers and had great conversations about differences of life in the States and Africa, and discussed what contributes to a high quality of life.

Lindsey’s mom said something that stuck with me: “Americans have all kinds of clocks and time-telling devices, but have no time, always rushing from here to there. Africans have no clocks, yet have an abundance of time.” Something in my spirit tells me this isn’t right. I want to feel ‘leisurely’ in my life. Whether a day is full of appointments or not, I want to have a sense of holy leisure. I’m not there, but that is my hope.

When we were done playing Settlers, most people migrated to the living room and began playing sports on the Wii. Now call me a Neandrothal, but I have never seen the Wii before. The second classic comment of the night came before I entered the living room. I overheard Linds saying that her arm was sore from playing tennis. Playing tennis?! It’s 40 degrees outside, I thought, there’s snow on the mountains all around us, who plays tennis in this weather? And I couldn’t think of any local indoor courts, either; so I rounded the corner to ask her where she’d been playing, when I see people swinging these remote-controls in the air, apparently ‘playing tennis’ on the tv. I chuckled to myself and thought, oh, technolo-wii… You never cease to amaze.