“Hippo in a bucket” – a missionary moment

We were in a small village in Mozambique for a few months to run some discipleship training. One morning we woke up and the guys went off to the river where they bought a hunk of hippo meat from a guy there for us to have for lunch.  At that time, the place where we were staying had been hit by the war and so there were many small round abandoned houses where the sugar plantation workers used to stay. There was a little round toilet building, and before we left to go for evangelism I saw the lady of the house cleaning up in the toilet, with a small bucket.  She was dipping the rag in the water in the bucket and wiping the floor, and dipping the rag again and wringing it out.  I didn’t think much of it at the time.

When we came back after evangelism we were really tired and looking forward to a lunch of hippo meat, and what did we find?  We found the hippo meat cooked and piled in the same bucket which had just been used for cleaning the toilet.  It was quite a shock.  However, we didn’t say anything and we ate the meat.  What could we do? We couldn’t lose the meat that was rare to get.  In places like that, where people are so needy, you can’t throw it away.  And so we prayed and trusted God to protect us from any germs or diseases from eating the meat.  We ate it and we had a good lunch and I’m here today to tell the story.

-Zambian missionary to Mozambique