a little piece of Idaho & the African market

It was another sunny day in Africa and I was enjoying a walk through the market. The streets were crowded and strewn with rubbish of every shape and form imaginable. I skirted between trucks stacked a few stories high with old plastic bottles, taxis stuffed to overflowing with passengers, mammas carrying babies on their backs and entire vegetable markets on their heads, and around rotting sewage in the streets. I smiled as I past little ones playing in the dirt with marbles. Around the corner I spotted a few kids chasing slightly flattened bike tires down the street with sticks to propel the tires along. I travelled along farther in town and saw a chubby little chocolate baby being placed ever so gently by his older siblings into an empty 24 pack of Coke, cardboard box with the plastic still attached around the bottom. His brothers had carefully tied a string to the little box and they were having a riot dragging their sibling around in the little box like it was a sled on snow. The little one giggled as his little sled slide across the dirt.

I continued on my way, wandering down street after street looking at all the colorful fabrics and listening to the cacophony of the buzzing activity around me. Many a street vendor tried to lure me into buying their merchandise, but nothing was grabbing my eye, besides, I didn’t really need anything, so I found it hard to justify any purchases. After a few hours of wandering around, my friend and I were headed back to the ship when I grabbed her arm and yelled, “Stop!” My friend spun around quickly wondering what in the world was wrong with me. Nothing was wrong, but I had just stumbled on the biggest pile of scarves I’d ever seen in my life! Literally, stumbled over the pile, I tripped on it in the street as I was trying to avoid getting run over by a huge truck driving down the road.

I wasn’t interested in much else that the market had to offer except the occasional baby I could hold in my arms for a quick cuddle, but head scarves, those I could get into! I couldn’t believe it, there were scarves of every color of the rainbow in a pile that came up to my waist. The designs were so beautiful and colorful. The scarf vender handed me scarf after scarf to see if he could persuade me to purchase more. As I was on my hands and knees on a busy street in Africa, digging through the scarf pile, the word “Sun Valley” caught my eye. I thought I had imagined it, but that would be a weird thing to just randomly imagine on the side of the road in Africa. So, I flipped through the scarf pile again and low and behold, I saw the word Sun Valley printed on the edge of a scarf. I pulled the rest of the scarf out of the pile and couldn’t believe my eyes. In front of me was a lovely-ugly green and orange shaded, colored scarf, with a full map of Idaho on it! I looked closer at the map and beyond all believe, Rupert was listed on the map! My little home-town of Rupert, which is rarely listed on USA maps, made it on the Idaho-African Market scarf! I laughed so hard and decided I had to have the Idaho scarf and a few other scarves! Budget or no budget, I purchased 19 scarves from the little scarf man for a total of about $5 USD and one even still had the original tag on it from Wal-mart.

The Lord knows there are those random ocassions when I miss crazy. little Rupert, the Rupert square, Doc's pizza, Idaho potatoes, and fresh corn on the cob, and since Idaho is there....and I am here...God brought a little piece of Idaho my way in a crazy, ugly-green- orange shaded scarf! Thanks God for making my day!