“Unisaidie,” I asked in Swahili, meaning “Can you help me?”
I held my bright-vermillion, torn African dress up against the dark of the tin house at dawn.
“Ndiyo (yes),” the African tailor smiled back, his feet peddling furiously on his vintage sewing machine. His friend emerged from the dark, intrigued by my Asian face, the only one for miles.
“Shingape?” I asked, meaning “how much?”
Red dust covered us as a boda (motorbike) rode past. The two men smiled at each other, white teeth breaking out like coconuts on their dark skins, assessing me, taking me in.
I waited, feet shifting, pregnant with anticipation.
“Ah-ah!” They laughed, “2000 shillings.”
2000 shillings. A dollar!
In a melodramatic rush of warmth to my face, I held back tears and said, “Asante sana (thank you so much). Pole na kazi (I appreciate your work.)”
In the eyes of the world, this encounter would be of no value. Fixing a torn garment by the street is no achievement by the world’s standards.
But I stood to savour what it meant- that I now lived in a village town I felt safe enough to walk at dawn, that I’d earned enough trust with enough Swahili not to be charged a “mzungu (foreigner) rate,” and start a new friendship.
As I walked back, mended orange African dress in hand, I felt God smile. My orange dress had become a sun, glowing in my arms, a symbol of His celebration of fruit borne in my life — of faithfulness, humility and patience.
It reminds me of how so many of us struggle with the day-to-day ordinariness of our mundane lives, wondering how changing nappies, cooking meals, filing in admin sheets, could possibly be considered fruitful—
Yet, these quiet, slow, unseen acts of questionable productivity are exactly what fruit-bearing is made of.
While the world spins away as you plod on, know that your quiet, unseen acts of faithfulness are what makes His world stop to celebrate you. What the world doesn’t see nor celebrate, He does. ✨
May you hold your version of your orange dress in your arms and experience Him celebrating all the unseen fruit in your life, even if no one else does. ☀️