Pastor Lufeyo once said “We travel not only to see new and interesting sites, but also to discover the mystery in people around us. This is because every person has a mystery in a new place.” I thought about this saying quite often on the day of our church trip to Lake Malawi.
It was a glorious Saturday morning when we assembled outside our usual prayer house waiting for the bus. When the bus arrived we all got swallowed by it and took off for the lake. Sitting next to me was Angela, a girl who we all knew as wiser than even most of the church elders. She could both preach and advise as if she had seen the heaven descend.
“Patel, what are you gonna do in the afternoon?”
“I will peep around in the shores.”
“Don’t you think of taking me with you?”
“Why not?”
Glad with my response, she looked at my face and displayed an alluring smile. For the first time in my life, I looked into a girl’s eyes and kissed her. The kiss felt like paradise. Not because she was a good preacher but because she had the cutest lips.
Upon arrival, we left the rest of the gathering and went for a walk by the shore.
“The good thing is that I’m gonna preach in the afternoon but I have no duties in the evening service. If you yourself have no duties in the evenings, then we can go as far as we want.”
“Who are we becoming, Angela?”
“Do not question the obvious,” she ordered.
There was a moment of silence. We were both sizing each other up, trying to figure out if we were making the right decision or not.
“I love you, Patel,” she confessed first.
“Love you too, Angela,” I replied. I was ready for another kiss when we got rudely interrupted.
“Hey! Angela. We have a service currently,” Mr Chilapondwa, one of the church elders said.
I never knew whether it was God’s plan or the Devil’s interference that Mr Chilapondwa interrupted us but I hated him more than I did the devil in that moment.
When we returned, we realised that the program setup had changed. In the new setup, Angela was assigned more duties so we were not able to meet again.
She was preaching in every service and with the way she was preaching, it seemed as if we had never kissed. The service itself was too different. Everybody was paying attention to what the preacher was saying. Back home, with no disciplinary action, people would frequently walk in and out of the church. By the last hour, only the church elders and some other leaders would be left in church.
At home, Angela and I became noticeable lovers. I could not afford forgetting about our trip to the lake. Not because I received my first kiss there but because I learned about the mystery of travelling; how the people you already know become interesting in a way they never were before. Angela and I dreamed of becoming the world’s best travellers because the greatest magical happenings of the world could only be discovered through travelling.
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