Jesus

24 December 2008

I had to write a second entry today after the church service I went to tonight. It was supposed to start at 10:00pm but at 9:30, the house mothers were knocking on my door telling me it was time to go.

I walked in there and there were only about half a dozen people. Two of them were struggling to set up a drum kit. Fortunately again, my Leatherman came to the rescue and I was able to fix the crash symbol for them. Later on I would regret my resourcefulness.

It looked like they were trying to test the microphones when they gave them to the two house mothers that escorted me over there. They immediately burst into song. Normally I love African music but this was loud, monotonous and was conflicting horribly with the guy practising on the drum kit. Neither were in time with each other.

To get some peace, I wondered over to the door and Tobias was there. We went outside the church and sat on a bench. We didn't talk about religion this time but he quizzed me extensively about Australia. He asked who the Prime Minister was and I said that he didn't want to know. When pressed, I told him Mr Dudd. Meanwhile the girls were singing up a storm in the church. Many people came up, looked through the windows and went away.

It got to about 10:15pm and I could hear a different voice wailing. I assumed though that they were still testing the microphones. I asked Tobias when it started and he replied, "15 minutes ago". I suggested we go in. I entered into the church which would seat probably around 300 and there were 12 people there. There was a woman wailing at the front and I sat down embarrassed to have been late.I needn't have been though as people trickled in and out over the next 2 hours.

I probably think I got more from this church service than I've got from any around the world. Of course, it being half in Kikuyu and half in Swahili meant that I didn't have to pay attention to any of the words. I just enjoyed watching the people.

Everyone was dressed in assorted clothes. Actually, I think they were wearing all the clothes they owned as according to the house mothers it was freezing. People had beanies, jumpers, scarves and gloves on, and in some cases multiple layers of the same clothing. I checked the temperature on my iPhone to confirm it was 20 degrees. Finally, a country that hates cold as much as me!

The closest I could describe the whole affair to is an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting. (Not that I've attended one my self but hundreds of my friends have.) Someone gets up out of the audience and says in English, "My name is Mary and Jesus Christ is my lord and personal saviour". Everyone else says, "Welcome Mary". They then proceed to tell a story in Kikuyu about why they are BFF's with their imaginary friend. After that, they sit down and everyone looked at the floor in embarrassed silence until someone else decides to out themselves. When the silence got too long, some people went up a second or third time. I'm not sure if they knew that the audience would cotton on to this, and see that it was really just the same people talking about their imaginary friends.

After about a 5 minute silence where nobody was willing to go up for a fourth time, one of the house mothers grabbed me and said I should go up. I now had to exercise all the diplomacy within me. I was thinking of reading a few verses from the sacred book, The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins, or maybe sing a hymn from Christopher Hitchens' God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything; but seeing how vastly outnumbered I was and I was in their temple to their celestial dictator, I thought otherwise. Instead I told them why I was there and what I was doing. I gave the shorter cleaner version though. At the end I got applause and a heap of "God Bless You's" which was weird as I hadn't sneezed.

Then someone who had been up at least three times, thought she could fool more people by going up and speaking in English (plus borrowing a scarf and fake moustache from the person beside her). She told a story about a poor Kenyan man who bought a boat ticked to the US without realising that all the food was included. He sat by himself in the corner eating the nuts and snacks he had packed in his suitcase every day and night. On the last night, someone came over and said, why don't you have the food like the rest of us. He said he couldn't afford it as he was poor. They told him that the food was included in the ticket price and he felt bad. Apparently this story reminds her of her God. I couldn't work out whether it was because you sacrifice yourself your whole life under his dictatorship and in the end find out that you could have done what you wanted, or because he is just a cruel bastard that takes advantage of the poor. I think there was a message in there but it escaped me.

Over the two hours, people came and went and after about an hour I noticed that we had close to 100 people in the church.

Throughout all the anecdotes there was lots of singing. Again this was not like the singing I remembered from church as a child. The hymns were incredibly long. I mean 7- 10 minutes long. There was no organ or other melodical instrument, just the guy bashing away on the drum. The verses seemed to consist of the same line said in Kikuyu about 100 - 200 times. When ever it looked like it was about to finish, one lone singer would keep going (probably by mistake) but that would be enough to have the whole crowd continue on again. The one hymn that was done really well was Silent Night which was sung in Swahili. Without any practising and they had to get a hymn book to read the words, four women got up and sung a perfectly harmonised version of this song. It really was quite moving.

Twice during the evening, the singing and story telling stopped and then somebody turned on some rap music. Four guys came out of the audience and started rapping. They were trying really hard but they had clearly only decided to do this about two hours before the service. It was sort of like watching a school play. You are really proud when your kid is performing and think he has heaps of talent but all the others are just crap.

Towards the end a guy came out from the back of the room, grabbed a massive bible from the side and ready out a few versus in Swahili. This was the fire and brimstone bit. His speech was in Kikuyu but peppered frequently with the English phrase "Are you together?" but he never once waited for a response and kept going. Towards the end, he was trying to get people to out themselves in public. This I could tell because there were quite a few English words mixed in with the Kikuyu. It may have been directed at me but I chose to ignore it.

Finally, the fire and brimstone guy went back to his place, and another guy got up. He seamed to be a comedian as he had everyone laughing in the aisles. As soon as he was finished the house mothers quickly stood up and said, "We go home now". I guess there was no milling around after church to exchange pleasantries. We went straight back to the home and to bed.

As I lay in bed I was glad to have experienced something new but it has done nothing to change me from my anti-theist belief.

This was a good day.