Nine Hours on the Sabbath

First, if you have been wondering what happened to my last post, about the request for assistance, send me an email at africanrob@gmail.com. The computer teacher and I created a separate site at which to host the request (I can't link to it here, hence the need for the email). Thanks for all of those who have shown interest in helping! Now for my nine hours on the Sabbath-

It started at his armpits. Two incongruous dark blotches in a field of pink, blotches we felt compelled to focus on as the preacher flailed his arms wildly while in the throes of his sermon. The church was crowded, standing-room only, amplifying the heat of the day. This heat was being slowly manifested as sweat blotches on the preacher’s pink shirt, blotch after blotch creeping into being as he continued to praise Jesus. By the end of his two-hour, arm-flailing sermon, his entire shirt had morphed into a different shade of pink- more of a slighly translucent purple- except for the collar and cuffs. It was a long day.

One of my favorite students invited me to go to his church last Saturday (he’s a Seventh Day Adventist) for a “day of guests.” He said he was the chairman of the event, and would be honored to bring me as his guest. Knowing the propensity of such religious days to literally take an entire day, I told him I’d go but had prior obligations in the afternoon hence would leave early. He seemed to accept that.

Saturday morning, I was showering with a cold bucket of water (I used cold to wake myself up; out of coffee that day) when he arrived to escort me into town, to the Adventist church. As soon as we’d reached the church, we were showered in warm welcomes and holy exultations: “praise the Lord, a white man has come!” We entered the already crowded church and searched for seats. Do you know that awkward feeling you get when you enter a theater, church, or classroom and the all the seating in the rear of the room is taken? You slowly proceed down the aisle, hoping to find an empty spot, gradually being drawn closer and closer to the front. Eyes begin to follow you, you feel them on you (especially if you are the only white person in the room), and yet you have to continue onward, forward, hoping in vain for that elusive open seat. I finally found an opportunity to sit at the very front of the room, next to the leaders of the congregation and the preachers; I felt out of place. During my ambling trek to the front, every single member and guest in that church had noticed me, evidenced by the constant whispering “mzungu...!”

Within five minutes of my arrival, the man at the pulpit made this announcement, in English: “…and if there is anyone, anyone at all in the crowd who does not understand Kiswahili, let him raise his hand now so that we can find a way to help him understand.” Like a wave, face after face turned to look at me, until once again the weight of those stares made me wish I had stayed home to watch “Pitch Black” again. I wanted to laugh, but felt too uncomfortable. The silence rang while the church waited for me to raise my hand and admit that, as a white person, I don’t know Kiswahili. Well, after fifteen seconds of my sitting like an inert lump, they decided I must not know English either, and just continued on in Kiswahili. This same language question was repeated at least three times by different people, each time causing a pause during which I was closely scrutinized. Finally, my student stood up and introduced me: “This is Mwalimu Masanja from Ihungo Sec., and he knows Kiswahili.” From that point on, I was no longer an issue.

The preacher in pink climbed the pulpit at around 11am, after I’d been sitting in the church for two hours, feeling it become hotter as the day progressed. During the course of his sermon, he flat out insulted Americans no less that three times (comparing us to Babylon, usually) and got so frenzied and sweaty due to the message he was delivering that I thought he would pass out from either divine rapture or dehydration, take your pick. If you remember a post from a long time ago, this isn’t the first time I’ve been in a church here in Tanzania. It’s the second time. When I went to church with Mama Mipawa a year and a half ago, I was in agony, just sitting and waiting for the service to conclude. I didn’t understand anything that was being said, and my little sister was having bladder issues. The contrast between that time and now was fodder for my reflections throughout the day. This time, I could understand the preacher when he said that “all Americans are evil sinners” in Kiswahili. Trust me, being able to comprehend his words made my day far more entertaining that it would have been otherwise.

After Mr. Pink (“Why do I have to be Mr. Pink? Why can’t I choose my color?” “Because if we chose colors there would be five Mr. Blacks.”) finished his diatribe against sinners and America, we broke for lunch. For some reason, after I’d sat with the big potatoes of the church for four hours, they decided that I was also a big potato. That meant that, while all the other guests had to go stand in line for half an hour to get their food, I just sat and gossiped with these old fellas while the church youth served us. Again, I felt awkward. Plus, everyone was eating with their hands. Have you ever tried eating beans, rice, and avocado with your hands? Try it, I challenge you. It wouldn’t have been so ridiculous if all my students hadn’t been there, watching me try to eat. In any case, eventually my food made it where it was supposed to go and the day’s festivities continued.

At this point, I went up to the student who invited me and politely told him that I’d had enough for one day. The look on his face was so devastating that I decided to stay for the second half, just to prevent having that sad face haunt me later. Having appeased him that I wouldn’t be leaving, he went and took his place on a stage which had been constructed outside the church. It seems that when he said “chairman” he meant “MC”, because for the next five hours he was on the mic, making jokes and introducing speakers. I think he was really proud to have that responsibility, and he wanted me to see him at his finest.

The highlights of those five hours were few, and I gradually retreated from the world until I was a thoughtless mass of Rob, just taking up space. I got a phone call from my mom at some point, and I was so removed from activity that I probably said a total on ten words while we talked. However, there were a number of choirs whose music was a delight, and my students performed some “educational skits” which I didn’t really understand but everyone around me was laughing pretty hard. A hapless HIV/AIDS lecturer came and gave us a lesson in which she referred to HIV as a “virus that is a bacteria” and referred to one of my twenty year-old students as “that old man over there.”

Eventually, Mr. Pink got back on stage and delivered another America-bashing sermon. This time, the literal translation of one of his quips goes: “…and Americans, they’re cowards. If I say the words ‘Al-Qaeda,’ ‘Muslim,’ ‘Bin Ladin,’ or ‘Afghanistan,’ all they can do is shiver in fear.” A point worth noting is that this had nothing to do with anything else in his sermon, he just wanted to sound tough and draw in the crowd. I was so overcome with ennui at this point, to entertain myself I decided to go confront this guy. (If you are wondering why he kept making these remarks while an American was in his audience, you should know that it’s because he assumed that I’m German). Of course, he tried to say that I was taking the meaning wrong, taking his words out of context. He had a large number of poor arguments, and I didn’t take to any of them. Finally, he admitted that he could’ve said things differently. I took that to be as much of a victory as I would get, and left him alone.

All in all, when the day ended, I’d spent over nine hours at this church. That is a long time. But it was worth it- I could see in my student’s eyes the joy he had not only in the fact that I’d come, but that I’d stayed.