Pasaka

What did you do this Easter Weekend?

Sunday morning I woke up to sound of dumping rain and my host dad asking me if I was ready to go to church. I jumped out of bed, quickly ironed my clothes before putting them on, and dashed from the house to the car, trying not to get too wet. We weren’t going to our usual church this morning in Tegeta. Instead, everyone from our church was going to the sister congregation on the other side of Tegeta, which I had not been to before. We turned off the main road and started off down a bumpy, muddy, pothole-filled road (typical for TZ). When we arrived, I hardly realized it because this was no church at all—it was a half-constructed cement structure with tarps strung up to make a shelter in the front. Was this the Goba church, I wondered? I knew it had to be because there were plastic chairs already lined up, the speakers were being wired to the electric keyboard (a must for churches here) and a pulpit was placed in the front. It was still raining, but not as hard. I took a seat and waited for everything to start… I’ve started to learn that nothing and no one runs on time here, and waiting is always expected. Eventually, more people arrived and took their seats, and the choir arrived all wearing matching t-shirts. The service started, and lasted for 4 hours. The choir sang and danced, we read numerous passages from the gospel, a sermon was given, and we even sang some familiar Easter hymns (all in Swahili, of course). It was unlike any Mennonite Easter service I have attended, yet I couldn’t help but compare it my church at home—here we were, singing traditional Mennonite hymns outside while it was raining! Back in Seattle, we always start Easter Sunday with a ‘sunrise’ service at Matthews beach, and it’s often raining. Except here in Tanzania there were chickens running through the service, not Canadian geese…and after church we ate ugali, not mashed potatoes.

The Tegeta chior singing and dancing in unison

I had no work on Friday or Monday, so I had some free time this weekend. I watched the whole Lord of the Rings series back-to-back and did origami while I watched.

I made all these paper cranes with less than a sheet of origami paper J.