STONE COLD HAVEN

You’d think that by this point in my life, I’d have mastered the art of shall we say, getting out of tight situations unscathed. I’m not talking about some closer shaves of a misspent youth that brought out the Hollywood stuntman you never thought was you.

You know them tight situations when a father comes home from work for lunch unexpectedly, and the biggest problem isn’t that his daughter hasn’t prepared lunch yet, or doesn’t look like she’s anywhere near preparing anything edible. The biggest problem is that you happen to be naked and firmly anchored in between his teenage daughter’s legs – and as he calls out for her, you’re traumatizing about whether to complete an exercise in coitus that is a justified reward for the time and effort that you’ve clearly invested your whole school holiday in, or jump out through the second floor bedroom window and take your chances with the unsuspecting neighbours who you’re about to grace, truth be told, with what you can find of your clothes in one hand, and if you’re not injured – trying to cover a rock hard penis with the other hand.

No, no – this recent close shave wasn’t as dramatic, but nevertheless, a gentle reminder about why it’s important to keep alert and avoid “sitting duck” situations. So while with a friend of the family, we bumped into some folks from the church that the friends go to, and the chit chat and nosy enquiries started.

“So are you all from the same country?” “Did you know each other before you moved here?” “Do you speak the same language?” “Do you live locally?” – you know the usual check list.

“Hey P, why don’t you invite your lovely friends to church this Sunday, it’ll be really lovely, we’ve got a really worthy theme this Sunday”

And before I could process where all this chit chat was going, P turned around with that “Sure, you guys can come right? You’re not doing anything this weekend…”, and turning back to the friends, assuringly concluding “don’t worry, I’ll make sure they’re there”.

I should have said something. You know when you get those moments, those split second situations where a “no” may sound really cold, but it’s so much better for everyone. Well, my no moment passed and come Sunday, we found ourselves looking for a free parking zone (parking attendants out here get paid on commission for the number of cars they clamp, so even on Sunday, I was taking no chances)

Side bar here. I’m not averse to attending church – really. It’s just that since I left my mother’s house many years ago to go to boarding school, my perception of things have changed and the rest is complicated (at least for the scope of this post). Before then, it was a cardinal crime in my mother’s house to miss church every weekend, and I do respect and appreciate why she took this stance. But she also gave us the freedom to decide what to do about attending church once we were older and could make that decision ourselves.

I even had the privilege of being one of the chapel wardens during high school helping the Chaplain run the school chapel day to day – and got involved in everything from organizing the cleaning (first form rabbles did it of course), to helping coordinate regular services and managing finances, and on a couple of occasions, being very proud to be one of the wardens on duty when the chapel hosted the funeral services for two fellow students who passed away while we were still in school.

The long and short of it is that it’s a very long time since I went to church, the only two exceptions being my brother’s funeral service several years ago, and the wedding of our close friends (to each other), both of which meant a lot to me in different ways.

So when my opportunity to step in and say “no, we actually have plans” faded past amidst the “great, we’ll see you Sunday” byes and hugs, I was left with that “what did I just get myself into” feeling.

‘Er indoors is fine with it and attends church very regularly, but there’s just something about these local churches that even she finds unnerving. We have a small church less than 400 metres from where we live, but that’s just gossip central. My neighbours and folks in the surrounding area don’t go to church to know the town gossip, they just go to find out and confirm whether the local paper printed out the version of the story they had heard. Drama central describes the culture of it much better.

So when we entered this new (for us) church as they were singing a hymn, the deacons and ushers sat at the back scrambled to make space for us to sit together, and we just calmly slotted in and assumed the necessary by joining into the chorus. I must have heard this hymn somewhere but I didn’t know the words so I just sang what they were singing only a second or two late – it works.

As we sat down, I thought I’d readjust my chair only to be put in my place by my son. I’m sure he totally didn’t mean to embarrass me (kids his age will say the darnest things), but shouting “don’t be silly daddy, sit down” in a church with pin drop silence doesn’t normally achieve that desired “I didn’t mean to” effect. After the laughter, I knew I was fodder.

My wife’s attention was caught by something else on a projector screen and it was only when she turned around and whispered to me in Swahili did I register her disappointment at the semi-naked starving boy from Liberia that they had on the screen in your now classic International NGO “give us your frigging money for poor African’s” mode.

If you read my post Cynicism in its true colours – Well!, they’ll say they’re saving the world , then you’ll clearly understand my lack of enthusiasm for all matters innately patronizing.

I thought we were coming for a church service not a frigging fundraising event. For the sake of expediency and acceptance that I can’t afford a law suit, I’ll refrain from naming the organization involved, but this was a new low.

I’ll come back to the “give us your frigging money” story in a second, but I digressed when talking about my project of sitting down without any more embarrassment. The next speaker at the pulpit then pronounced the dreaded phrase – “I understand we have visitors today – We’d like them to introduce themselves!”.

I don’t know if I can aptly explain how that call for visitors in a church evokes certain feelings in my being that freak me out. Maybe it’s the conditioning I got as a child every time we visited the grandparents in the bundux and when attending the local church with them – they couldn’t pass the opportunity to show off their neatly dressed grand children from “the city”. We had to stand up, wave and smile back at everyone, and I guess anyone in a church who says “we have visitors”, triggers those raw emotions.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not afraid of crowds or speeches for that matter, far from it. I’m actually quite good at it when I’m in my element. It’s just that being paraded for everyone like a dairy cow from Athi River about to be sold at an auction is not my style. A couple with three kids quickly came to our rescue as they made their way up front. What a relief, but then again, I was busy trying to figure out where P and her family were. I just thought it would be useful, while we have the breathing space to just remind P that I was not averse to breaking legs if I had to – and I’ll do it if it’ll stop me from being cajoled into standing up and walking up front like the couple and their 3 kids.

Apparently though, these folks had been debriefed and they were only being introduced as they were new folks who wanted to become members. For some reason, I thought that churches let any Thomas, Dickson and Harrison walk through the door, but maybe I’m mistaken. What I wasn’t mistaken about is that I wasn’t about to fill any membership form.

Fast forward to the service and we come back to the travels of the speaker (who I understood was a guest speaker) talking about his travels on behalf of a charity working in West Africa. I kid you not, if I had a brick, I would have thrown it at the dude with the precision of Andrew Flintoff trying to dismiss the batsman of the Australian cricket team. He wasn’t preaching for crying out loud, he was running a full length live infomercial with video props to boot.

At one point, I wanted to storm out when they started showing a video of how they’ve helped poor Africans plant tomatoes or breed chickens. Clearly, this is something a population of over 850 million people from 52 countries wouldn’t know how to do, and only westerners running charities know how to “teach” the natives. My wife had clearly picked on my mood and as I got shifty in my chair, she stepped on my foot with enough to transmit her clear message “you ain’t going anywhere – sit down”.

I had to endure another soppy story of dilemmas in life where the dude talking had to struggle to make a moral decision to give a pen to a child in the village. His dilemma apparently was that if he gave the child a pen, then every child would then want a pen, and considering that they can’t read and write, this was a big issue. This dude even ask the congregation to tell by a show of hands how many would have given the pen. It was so surreal I just had to lean back and look at the roof.

And the moral of the story – as if it was unpredictable – “Give us your frigging money – we’re saving poor Africans”. If he would have just started with that 1 minute advert, it would have been less painful.

I didn’t realise it was possible to go lower than the very patronizing daytime “please give us £2 a month, we need it to save poor people in Africa” advertisement screened every 5 minutes on cable and satellite TV. Adverts like this one or this one. This dude was actually pulling it off in church – and the congregation were all teary eyed and possibly contemplating their wicked shame of living without caring for the poor of the world – or more succinctly, what William Easterly calls “The white man’s burden”.

If you thought that was dramatic enough, then you must have been as confused as I was. You see, churches out here have a small gathering after the service where the congregation mill around, share a lousy cup of tea and a few biscuits and cakes. It’s during this time that I got reminded how it’s very important to take things in context as the alternative is to get arrested for expressing your contempt about what is being said and the undertones it’s being delivered in.

So while sitting at a table with P catching up, sipping the tea and biting into a biscuit, regular folks pass by, say hello and pull a chair, and the hits just keep on rolling.

(Note to reader: The questions and awkward conversations are aggregated from different “well meaning” smiling people – And the answers up in here were the one’s in my head, but not what I responded)

Q: “So how did you come to the UK?”
My thoughts: A fishing boat
Q: “I didn’t realise you had it that bad in Africa – do you know that village?”
My thoughts: “Yeah, it’s just down the road from where my family is from
Q: If you’ve lived for that long in this area, why haven’t you come to church like your fellow Africans?”
My thoughts: What? It’s now a crime?
Q: “Do you work? The economy is really bad – it must affect you?”
My thoughts: Actually, I run a brothel from my basement during the day – pretty low key, only referral punters, and a different girl every day.
Q: “Are you on benefits (welfare)?
My thoughts: Do I have a frigging sign on my head saying – post office regular every Thursday to cash welfare cheque?
Q:”You know the church is always here – if you’re ever in difficulty, you and your family must ask us for help”
My thoughts: What the fuck!

You get the gist anyway….

This was as bad as the funky outfit in Kenya that got a group of my mum’s maendeleo ya wanake group hooked on their fascinating take of why the world was so troubling – got to admit though, they got my friends and I (see – the mum’s dragged all their teenage kids to such redemptions from evil) singing “Riswah” at every available opportunity – it was a ball….

….Or the shenanigans of a one Mary Akatsa, the prophetess of comedy – did I tell you that I had the privilege of visiting her and being prayed for to rid me of the demons of my misspent youth(this is clearly a story for another blog post)…

…Or Kenya’s very own Mr. Miracle Baby, a one Pastor Deya, but that also ladies and gentlemen, is a story in itself.

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Posted on Monday, August 3rd, 2009 at 5:32 am
Filed underStone Cold Madness, Stone Cold Thoughts.
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