Saturday won't take long to describe: Sam and I stayed in the rondavel all day in our pyjamas, watched House and made banana bread. I did feel the need to go outside at least once so headed over to Lisa's and took her some of our banana bread [Sam and I are all about sharing ;)]
On Sunday I had agreed to go to the local Xhosa church with Asanda so headed up there for the 11am start. Or more like, the 11am standing around session – when I arrived there was about eight or nine women standing chatting who all stopped to greet me and shake my hand. I joined them in their standing around and tried to make some kind of sense of their chattering [I figure I should be getting the hang of isiXhosa by now!]. After a while enough people turned up for us to start and I was shown to my place, right next to the pastor's wife who had agreed to translate the sermon for me. Asanda had forgotten to show up to I found myself alone in the church. It was a little odd being the only white person there and sitting at the front with the respected older women of the community.
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| The older women of the congregation and Mama Mfundisi |
We started with some hymns and surprise, surprise, there was a rousing rendition of everyone's favourite hymn number 74. I've now heard it so many times that I know the words:
Mnqamlezo! Mnqamlezo!
Ndoqhayisa ngawo;
Ndide ndizuz' umphumlo
Ekhay' ezulwini
Or something spelt remotely similar...
After that there was time for everyone to pray and as is customary, everyone prays out loud at the same time. If you imagine sitting in a room where you know very few people, with your eyes shut and all of them shouting at the top of their voices in a language that you don't understand, that's what the experience was like – mildly frightening! The sermon was delivered by a very charismatic young guy who liked to shout and wave his arms around [also mildly frightening at times] and as far as I could tell it was on the subject of 'good people go to heaven, bad people don't', which I suppose is fair enough! Following that there were church announcements which included a notice of a football tournament that the Jabulani Foundation [the one I work for] was running. Since the person meant to be giving the notice was away I had to explain about the tournament, meaning I had to go and stand at the front of the church, introduce myself and explain about the tournament, fun times.
At the end of the service I got up to leave but the pastor's wife told me I must wait there a bit longer because the women of the congregation wanted to speak to me. Next thing I know, I'm back up in front of everyone, introducing myself [again] and explaining why I'm here in Zithulele. The women were all so supportive and thanked me endlessly for 'coming to make the healthcare here better' [because clearly I am singlehandedly doing that! [Not]]. They also thanked me for joining them at church because they want the local community to integrate with each other more. Then they offered to start finding me a husband and I knew it was time to head back home....
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