An African Thank-You

A few months ago we befriended a young man, J, who had recently moved to our city with his young son, looking for work and a better life. Two years ago J's wife died during childbirth with their 2nd child so he was doing what he could to provide for his son. We were able to help him some with food while he was job-hunting. Unfortunately, he became very sick with malaria and decided that 2 months of job hunting with no success was enough and it was time to return to his hometown in central Mozambique.

The day before he left he sent his son to our house with a note. J is an English teacher and preferred to converse with us in English rather than Portuguese, so he also wrote this letter in English. After explaining his decision to move home and thanking us, he signed the letter and added a P.S. at the bottom :

My mum have got a lot of goats in (hometown) so I would like to send you one. Please give to my son your phone number so that we may study how to do so that you may receive it here.

I wrote J back thanking him profusely for the offer to send us a goat and explained that it was not necessary to show his appreciation in this way. But who knows, we may hear a knock on our gate one day and find that J figured out a way to send us a goat.