PTA, Duelin' Pastors, and a break

Just a communication note to our friends. We now can receive email most mornings, and we've loved the news from some friends about babies, weddings, children, trips, and, so sadly, the devastation in Colorado from the deluges. We can sometimes send emails. We can only rarely open attachments.

In our continuing effort to get out into the community, get to know it and introduce ourselves, we learned of a new term parent meeting at the nearby Primary School (not mine, which is the better funded Railway Primary School, but the one (inadequately) funded only by the government. We showed up and, as typically happens, they were delighted to see us, sat us up front with the School Committee, and were very gracious. The meeting took place under a tree in the school yard. The main topic of discussion was how to fund an expansion, because the 5^th grade has 70 students, all crowded into one classroom. The solution was to have the parents show up once a week to work for a morning to help build the new classrooms. A long and fairly animated discussion followed on what amount should be paid by those who do not work. The School Treasurer's proposal of US $5/week was defeated and the decision was US $2. This was all conducted in siSwati, but we got the general facts.

Men do not wear hats at official occasions, women must wear hats. An unfortunate consequence of sitting with the Committee is that we were in the full sun for the 3 hour duration of the meeting, and I got some dehydration and heat nausea, and I was glad to go home and crash. Better the next morning.

When we stopped by the School Monday morning about 30 parents were sitting under the tree, watching a power shovel dig out the foundation.

We learned that, in preparation for the elections in 2 weeks, all the churches in the county assembled at the Chief's house – effectively the county seat – for a common church service. The bus to the service was to leave at 9, we arrived at 9:30 and it had left, or never come, but a man in a private car offered to drive us there (it was probably 4 miles away) for US $1. KUF knew the bus rate was 40 cents, and beat him down to that – he never had a chance.

The service was to start at 10, and when we arrived there were around 8 pastors and a dozen other worshipers. We introduced ourselves. By 11:30 the hall was SRO, close to 300 congregants, more than 3 dozen pastors (around 8 of them women), a youth choir in robes, an organist on an electric keyboard. After some hymns featuring some female soloists, each of whom seemed to try to be more intense than the previous one, one pastor got up to preach, at length, then another, not to be outdone, at greater length, with more fervency. In between, hymns which brought some parts of the congregation to their feet shouting and waving, but left others motionless. The man in front of me sat with arms crossed and head bowed through the entire service, except for one hymn that brought him to his feet. Towards the end of each sermon each pastor would close his eyes, raised his hands, and, I am pretty sure, start to pray (I can recognize a lot of the words because they are also common first names – mine, for instance: “Sipho” = gift. Until I figured that out I wondered whether it was a good thing that I was mentioned so often in prayers.) As the pastor's prayer progressed, many in the congregation – no doubt particularly from his denomination – would start to pray as well, but unlike the singing which was astonishingly polished even as it seemed extemporaneous, the praying was all on an individual basis. I sensed some gentle teasing during some of the sermons, perhaps from rival pastors, but the interpreter whom the moderator had arranged to sit between Nomphumelelo (sometimes shortened to “Phumi”) and me assured me they were in agreement. Nothing metaphysical like, say, transubstantiation (you could look it up, because you have high speed internet), more a matter of how each church described how awful Satan is, I think. During the scripture reading the designated interpreter followed each line of text in siSwati with an English translation that sounded pretty close, read to the whole congregation, but useful only to Phumi and me. Deuteronomy, and Revelations – that's part of the Apocrypha, right? Not even in the King James Bible, I believe. Lots of devils and burning in hell, from what I could tell.

The service lasted 3 3/4s hours. I'd love to have had a picture inside, but all I felt free to snap was outside, afterwards, Phumi with one of the ladies who is introducing her to the community. More on these “Rural Health Motivators” in a later post, because they are extraordinary.

We were to submit a report on our initial settling in activities, and we got it done early, because of uncertainty about how well we could submit it by email. I wanted to then get away to a B&B on an old farm originally built by a mining and sugar magnate from Jo'Berg 80 years ago, on a hill 20 k away. Phumi wanted to stay and interview some more pastors and makes in destitute homesteads. So here we are at a beautiful cabin on a dairy farm kind of reminiscent of Vermont, and it has high speed internet so we got our reports off! And we've already seen a long-crested eagle, a white-eared barbit and a crowned hornbill (all new birds for us!), some magnificent black crowned herons, and some other interesting big and colorful birds we haven't been able to identify yet. Then a swim, a walk as the sun sets, some wine with dinner tonight, watching the full red African moon (yeah, its always red as it rises and sets, I think because of the wood smoke and dust in the atmosphere – never fails to stun me when I see it), catch some more birds Friday morning in a wooded ravine down from us (“Grandpa's Garden – this property has been in one family for generations), then to back our site, which is not quite as comfortable.