The Makhua saying here in Northern Mozambique that seems to express the culture to a tee is “Vakhani Vakhani”. It is the main answer one gets when asking the question “How are you?”. It means little by little. In other words though one is not doing great, little by little we are moving along or getting there. The saying fits just about any situation. For instance…we have been thinking about getting some bedroom furniture made which involves finding a carpenter, showing him what we want and then buying some wood. Sounds relatively simple but it is not like running down to the local Home Depot or Lowe’s and picking out treated lumber.
I made an appointment with our carpenter to meet him first thing one morning so we could go lumber “shopping”. We went to the first saw mill and it turned out that all the lumber was already on order for someone else so we headed off to the next one. Once we arrived we had to wait for a while before the boss arrived and after talking with him we found out that although all the lumber was pretty much spoken for he would be willing to sell us 10 boards. We negotiated the price and in the end the carpenter said he would stay until the boards were sawn and then give me a call to pick him up. I expected to be back before noon to pick the boards up. When he did not call by 3:00 pm I decided to call and found out that we had only three boards up to that point. I could only imagine how late it would be until the other seven were done. Fortunately it only took another hour and a half to saw up the next log so we got our seven boards done rather quickly. I drove back and found the boards stacked and ready to be loaded. I found out the price was almost double but also realized the boards were quite a bit wider than we had expected. The next step was to negotiate a price for the helpers to load up the lumber (nothing done for free) and off we went.
Once we got home we had to pull ten very green and very heavy boards off the top of the Land Cruiser and stack them on our front porch so they could dry. Now we will have to wait for a couple of months for them to dry at which time the carpenter will return to begin building furniture. As I look at the stack of lumber on my porch each day it is hard to imagine the finished product. I would love to have my furniture much sooner but I realize that the wood needs to go through a time of drying and then get sized and shaped so that it can be used by Abdala to be made into useful and beautiful pieces of furniture. Using it like it is right now would only cause the furniture to warp and split.
As I thought about this it reminded me how impatient I can get with God as He continues to work in me to conform me to the image of Jesus. I am reminded that it is a process and that little by little (vakhani vakhani) as I trust Him he will continue to mold me into a usable vessel for His honor and glory!