Arm Hair and Africa

One of my favorite things when I was in Africa was attending the nightly devotional time at the orphanage. It was an incredible time of African culture and a wonderful time with the kids and teens. It was exactly like you would think an AIDS orphanage African devotional time would be: all of us crammed into a small room lit by only one light, loud African worship songs filled with movement and singing and clapping, close community feeling, and everything else. Those nightly devotional times were some of my most memorable moments – and they were the highlight of my time in Africa.

Inside of those times, the children did something that I will never forget. As I noted before, we did not have a ton of room for our devotionals. We would basically be sitting on top of each other. Since I was the only white person there (obviously), the little children especially loved sitting next to me. And when they sat next to me, they all did the funniest thing.
None of these kids had ever seen arm hair before, and they all went crazy for it. The whole time during these devotional meetings the kids would sit next to me and play with my arm hair. They would pick at it and stroke it and pull it and feel it – they just couldn’t believe it! The first few times I was really surprised and didn’t quite know what to do. But after that, I just went with it. It actually became pretty endearing. I just got used to having the kids play with my arm hair. I actually kind of miss it, to tell the truth.

Anyways, I was just thinking about that the other day. Just thought I would share a story about Africa.

There are a lot of them.