Jack Fruit Tree

I recently spent time with a friend of mine who traveled with me on a music missions trip to Uganda, Africa.  It was my first trip to this unique country with amazing landscape and people.  This friend of mine is a very smart man. He is the CFO of a very large nationally recognized company.  I have lots of smart friends.  I am not sure if that really has any significance to anything I write, but it is worth noting since most of my stories deal with my friends.  Anyhow, this guy who we will call John loves learning the details of everyday things, as do I.  When traveling with Christians of other countries, it is good will to show an interest in their culture, but we can't always understand the language barrier.  I now know that in many countries they have words that don't translate.  I always found this odd as an American.  I thought as most arrogant English-speaking people, that of course we know all the words that exist and everyone else translates our intelligent language into their own.  Imagine my surprise when I found this not to be true.  I could pause briefly for you to imagine it but I know you will just read on so lets press ahead.  As an example of this barrier, I asked our host who owned the large home on the hill that we were looking at. He told me it was a minister. Wow, I thought. I had already been to many churches and all the ministers were poor people who many times had to teach or hold another job to make ends meet.  What kind of church was this man a minister of?  Well of course he was a minster of the government.  Ok, so this is where my education helps a bit because at this point I knew he meant minister as in government official, not as a Pastor.  All that is cleared up so we asked, what ministry is he in charge of? Wax he replied.  Ok. Now I had to pause to imagine what this would be like. So far with our time in Uganda electrical power had been rare. Most people use candle light at night so of course a minister of wax is very important. The government must supply candles to people as a courtesy for those who cannot afford candles or solar power.  By the size of his home, the wax business must be pretty good.  So, who manufactures the wax was my next question, met with a puzzled look.  What?  The wax. Where do they make it?  Our host was so kind. He looked at me to say, "he is in charge of roads and highways".  Now I am really confused.  What do candles have to do with roads?  Wax... in their Ugandan accent translates to the department of Works in mine.  Great. Lets move on to an easier question.My friend John takes the opportunity to switch to a more relevant cultural question.  We had been introduced to a wonderful fruit that is very difficult to describe.  It is about the size of a watermelon, but is very sweet inside and looks like a bunch of triangular pieces of translucent green candy connected in rows. You pull the pieces apart to eat them and they are sweet and chewy.  It is called a jackfruit and it grows on trees.  John asked our host, "what do you call the tree that the jackfruit grows on?  We all waited anxiously for the reply, perhaps some great African name. He stares at us like we are not quite as smart as he had thought and said, "the jackfruit tree".  What do you call the tree the orange grows on? What do you call the tree the apple grows on?  Right.  Language barrier.