Church, Etc.

I’m not an avid lover of church services, but I feel like going to church in a new country gives you a different perspective of the culture. And in Africa, the musical aspect is hard [for me] to pass up. So on Sunday, in another torrential downpour, I hopped in a soggy taxi and went with my co-worker Jestina to one of the biggest churches in Freetown – Winners (yes, the name pretty much says it all). We arrived at a huge building exploding with noise and a giant stage in the middle covered with artificial flowers, surrounded by rows and rows of red velvet chairs. We found seats and started singing along with the choir. Next thing I know, a female usher is shaking my shoulder and yelling something at me. Thanks to the giant speaker nearly vibrating off the wall with noise 3 feet away, I couldn’t hear a thing and shouted “excuse me???” as loud as I could. She said something like “Your dress is dirty!!! You must cover it with your jacket!!!” and proceeded to grab my raincoat and tie it around my waist. (Totally fashionable for church.) When she finished, I looked up and realized there were 4 large TV screens on the walls above the stage, and that MY FACE was on all 4 of them. Turns out Winners church has jumbo-tron type cameras (like at a sports game) in all 4 corners of the church that zoom in on various congregation members whenever the pastor gets boring. So that was fun.

The sermon was about listening to God and not others, not having sex with young girls because you’ll get HIV, and a story about the pastor miraculously escaping a rebel attack in Kono during the war (and consequently deserting his church plant there). The offering was taken in small garbage pails, which were then emptied into literal full-size garbage bins in the front of the church. We took communion, and as I went back to my seat, the left side of my face was suddenly doused with cold water. I looked up to see a middle-aged man with a bucket, smirking at me. He continued to the person behind me, took a handful of water from the bucket, and threw it at their face. I asked Jestina about this and she said it is ‘blessed water’ that you can’t leave without being immersed in. Blessed water my foot. All I know is that I’d just finished drying off from the downpour outside, and was soaked again even before I could leave the church. When we left it was still down pouring and there was a car with its entire back half hanging in a small ravine in the parking lot, and 4 men trying to physically lift it out. That was entertaining/odd.

And that sums up my Sierra Leonan church experience. 

Oh, and when I got home, I checked out the back of my dress and did indeed have a very large orangey-brown stain thanks to the wet, dirty taxi seat on the way over. I'm going to assume everyone at church realized it was mud, but it looked very convincingly like the a particularly horrific explosive diarrhea incident.