We’ve learned a new phrase in the Maa language.  Parmang’at is an adjective that describes that state of in-between-ness experienced by those in transition.  It means being neither here nor there, but being somewhere in between, or perhaps being mostly here but still a little bit there.  When you have shifted your cows because of drought (maybe walking 10 – 100 miles on foot), but have not yet built a new village, you are parmang’at, unsettled.

So we find that “Eton kira parmang’at” — we are still not settled.  (For those of you who don’t know, we arrived back in Kenya just less than six weeks ago.)  But since we are sojourners, “strangers and aliens” as Peter puts it, that’s not a bad place to be (even though uncomfortable).  After all, our forefather Abraham was but a “wandering Aramean” (Deuteronomy 26.5).  And the Lord whom we serve had “no place to lay his head” (Matthew 8.19-20; Luke 9.57-58).