Learning from each other

On Saturday, I taught Claudia how to use an electric kettle. She’d never seen one before, and wanted to know how you put the water in, how you knew when it was on, and if it had finished. She thought that the instant you pressed the on switch and it lit up, that you could then pick it up and pour, and it took some practice for her to understand the sequence of obtaining boiling water. “Why not just put a pan of water on the stove? That seems so much easier,” she said.

Today, Albertine our Malagasy housekeeper showed me how to bake bread. For her it is a routine, simple, daily task. Yet she was so patient in explaining when I didn’t understand the sequence of events, when I was impatient to mix in the water too quickly or not wait for the yeast to rise fast enough.

Tomorrow, Bako will start to teach me her mother tongue, the Malagasy language. Other folk tell me that she is so patient when we struggle with the words which are so long and unlike anything we’ve tried to pronounce before.

Ever since I’ve been here, they have taught me to be joyful in the small things of life, to be cheerful in hardship, to recognise blessings, and to trust God for all things.

I have a lot more to learn from my fellow Malagasy than they will ever learn from me. But it’s wonderful to be able to work and learn alongside one another as equals.