Piano Time

So school's out for December, which means hordes of children, mostly boys (since the girls are put to work) are wandering about with nothing to do. The big issue, however, is the piano---actually keyboard.

Most Maasai children think they can play piano. That's not really true. There are 3 chords that are banged sporadically underneath any song to varying degrees of accuracy, but you would think that those same three chords would get old after, you know 12 consecutive hours, but no.

At the same time, Steph and I are preparing some worship sets for our MCC retreat later this month, and have agreed with the owner of the one community keyboard (Compassion), that we could use it when we need. One Tuesday we got the piano and played for a while, but it wasn't long before little boy after little boy came to the house saying, "Give us the piano" (very polite huh?). We usually obliged when we weren't using it ourselves, but it soon became a battle of wills. We'd ask for it back, they'd say they'd return it, and just keep playing long into the night and early in the morning. They knocked on our door while we were sleeping and played long after we went to bed.

On Thursday we talked with the local head of Compassion and asked if we could again use it. He actually was really excited and said, "You should take it, and don't ever give it back to the kids again (this is a Maasai guy)!" It seems like even he can't stand the endless hours of pounding. So we now have the piano at our house and when the kids come demanding the keyboard, we can truthfully say, "the project director told us not to give it to you." Sweet Victory.