Monday, July 4, 2011

cheers

my guess is that today (happy 4th of July, btw) many people will be raising a glass and declaring "Cheers" to a friend or 2.

have you ever wondered WHY we do that? where did that custom come from?
if so, then read on... or if you've never wondered, but now i've got you curious... just keep reading.

i heard the explanation from my friend Andrew. Andrew is pictured below on the far right of the pic below and his sweet wife Catherine is on my right in the pic. (Andrew Guuru is the Kenya Director for 410 Bridge and i'm privileged to call him my friend.)

Crystal and i got to know Andrew in Kenya working with Karima which is a community he works directly with. This pic was actually in his home near Karima.

Then a couple weeks later Crystal and i were living in the Havilla Children's Home a couple hours away and Andrew came to visit us twice! it was definitely awesome to see a familiar face. even though we had just met Andrew a few weeks earlier, it felt like we had known him a lot longer.

Andrew came over and we played soccer with a lot of the boys at the children's home... but of course we had tea together 1st... as Kenyans always do during a visit.

i think i must have said "cheers" or something like that or we maybe bumped glasses? Andrew asked if i knew where that custom came from... so here's the story.

when someone came over for a visit and their friend served them something to drink there was always a suspicion that their drink could be poisoned in order to kill their "friend". \
not cool.

Apparently this happened a lot, so to keep the host honest the guest would always clang his glass to the glass of his host so that some of his beverage sloshed out into the glass of his host. if the host drank then the guest figured his drink was not poisoned and he could trust his friend.

but then the custom began among GOOD friends who wanted to display trust. if i came to your house and TRUSTED you 100% then i would gently bump my glass to yours NOT letting any slosh into your glass and simply say "CHEERS" showing my absolute trust for you, my friend. trusting that you didn't poison my drink and i'll drink up without any worries.

so, Andrew and i bumped our glasses that day--careful not to let any slosh out into each other's glass--and said "Cheers".

i hope we get to do that again one day. i'm sure we probably will.

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