Friday, July 17, 2009

The Next Sunday

This past Sunday I was supposed to move to the hospital. My 3 hours of transit each day were causing me to miss morning rounds and afternoon operations. After talking with our director here he said I had to get permission (and more money) from the organization. I sent a patented mean email and the next day they were wiring money for me to move....speaking of mean emails Delta has changed my itinerary yet again so they better watch out. But I didn't move because my ride went to Nairobi and was delayed in getting back.

So I decided to take a walk and see if I could find a patient named Moses. A 12 year old Tanzanian who I had become friends with at the hospital as he was recovering from surgery. I was giving him english lessons and he gave me even better Swahili lessons. He said that he lived near where I said the international house was. So finding him consisted of me wandering aimlessly saying "namtafuta Macha " (I am looking for Macha-that is his family's name). After about 30 minutes and a couple of false leads, someone led me straight to the house and everyone was excited to see me. They gave me chicken (kuku) and rice (wali) and bananas (ndizi) and fanta (fanta).

We watched a live broadcast of a tent revival from Dodoma. The tent was easily larger than a football field and I was very impressed because I like tents a lot. There was a giant banner over the speakers podium that read "LISHA KONDOO ZANGU" (FEED MY SHEEP). I sat there with the family and watched this guy preach in swahili for over 2 hours. At one point one of the girls jumped up and everyone laughed and got excited. Apperently the preacher said "you watching this on the red couch with the hurt arm get up and pray"....well, we were all on red couches but the girl that jumped up possibly had a hurt arm that got better. I am not ready to call it a miracle yet because I wasn't really listening to the sermon. I was zoned out trying to think of jokes about chickens (kuku) and wondering where my Fanta was that they had promised to bring me. But this is my own fault and I have no doubt the Holy Spirit is equally powerful with or without my attention.

After this Moses showed me his music collection on the computer (this may have been the most well off family I have ever seen in Africa, still the tv was a 12 inch). He chose to open Red Red Wine and No Woman No Cry simultaneously. The preacher was also still going strong. I thought that the 2 songs with the swahili sermon in the background complimented each other well.

I stayed at the house for 3 hours then walked back to the hostel after dark with a couple of the family members escorting me. It was probably my favorite afternoon of the trip so far. Then I slept on the front porch of the Fortress of Solitude - I had already given it up to some dude from Eugene, Oregon.

2 comments:

  1. I have one very important question....was it Fanta Passion?

    ReplyDelete
  2. The default Fanta in Tanzania is orange. You have to "passionately" ask for the other, which I have done on more than one occasion. However, this time it was orange. My bread and butter soda is still bitter lemon though.

    ReplyDelete