FIRST PERSON: From boisterous boy to graceful young man

Photo by Eva Wolever

Gary and Carolyn Nichols share their home with John Megoliki when he visits the United States. Megoliki first met the Nichols when he came from Tanzania to get medical treatment after a crocodile bit off his arm.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Tanzanian John Megoliki lived with the Nichols Family—Gary, Carolyn, Molly and Beth—during his six-month stay in Jacksonville in 1993. He returned for a prosthetic arm in 2000 and stayed with them a month, and returned this April for an adult-sized arm.

Before John Megoliki was a Maasai warrior he was a little boy receiving prolonged medical treatment in a foreign country. Dozens of health care workers cared for him at Baptist Medical Center and he won their hearts— and ours—with his playfulness and broad smile.

For six months, he was a popular playmate in our south Jacksonville neighborhood– always ready for soccer, Nintendo or a bike ride. He was just beginning to learn some English by watching Sesame Street and John Wayne movies and listening to conversations around him.

Now, after 15 years, most of his neighborhood playmates have moved away and our daughters live in their own homes in Jacksonville and Tallahassee. John’s boisterous ways have eased into graceful manhood.

He is now proficient in English and he can answer questions we have wondered about for years. For instance, why is he always so protective of his shoes? Shoe stores, he said, do not exist in Tanzania and only used shoes are sold in markets. On this visit to Florida, he continued to wear his old shoes, saving his newly-purchased shoes to wear in Africa.

Apart from our questions, he could tell us about his everyday life. He told us, if we were ever chased by an elephant, to take off our shirts and throw them on the ground. It seems that elephants, although surprisingly fast, have poor eyesight but excellent smell. They smell you on your shirt, and will destroy the shirt and be satisfied.

John enjoyed “grossing out” everyone at the dinner table with his descriptions of tribal habits. He was surprised to hear that neither Gary nor I knew how to slaughter a cow, and only shook his head and rolled his eyes when I told him our beef came from the back aisle of Publix.

“I eat crocodile,” he said. We answered, “We’ve eaten gator tail.”

“I eat deer,” he said. “We have venison in the freezer,” I answered.

“I eat giraffe,” he countered.

“You win.”

I quickly called a halt to that dinnertime contest when he included his accounts of the joys of drinking warm cows’ blood.

Toward the end of his visit, John started taking extended runs in the afternoons. He was getting “soft,” he said. I reminded him that I have had one month every eight years to “spoil” him, and I intended to make the most of it.

He will return to Tanzania in a few weeks to go to college, but also to face some very adult challenges, one of which surfaced his first day in Jacksonville. He received an e-mail saying his sister and her husband could no longer care for his four younger siblings; they are John’s responsibility since his parents’ deaths. His friend, Yolanda, took them to her home temporarily. “Where would they live,” he worried, “and who would care for them long-term? And how would their situation affect my school plans?”

John can identify with his siblings’ plight. The little boy who returned to Tanzania from Jacksonville in 1993 has not had a permanent home since then. His parents’ home provided little encouragement for one who had been offered the chance of schooling beyond the elementary grades, so he lived with Tanzanian pastors—some kinder than others—or with American missionaries who lived near schools. His high school years were spent at an English boarding school where he excelled in his studies and made loyal friends. He also has friends in America who fund his education, but, for most of his 24 years, he has had no constant, loving presence in his life other than the Lord he chose over witchcraft.

That choice has made John Megoliki absolutely passionate about his faith. He will tell anyone who asks that God saved him from the crocodile that took his arm. He overflows with his heart’s desire to build a school for the children of his beloved Maasai, so they can read and learn God’s Word. John also would like to become a pilot, to open his own business, and to study engineering. He has big plans, seemingly impossible except that he has unwavering confidence in our big God.

When John goes back to Tanzania June 3, he will have a suitcase full of new clothes and shoes, and gifts for his friends. He has a new arm that increases his reach and range of motion. His speaking engagements have bolstered his college fund, although we need 24 people to contribute $100 a year for three years toward his living expenses. His tuition at Mt. Meru is $2,400 a year and his living expenses, about the same amount.

As in 1993 and 2000, Gary and I have no assurance that we will see John again this side of heaven, but we remain thankful for e-mail that allows us to read his school reports, and prayer requests. We pray, with him, that all his big dreams come true.