June 24: Church with the Pallangyo's

&My weekend in ;span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_0">Shishitoni wouldn't have been complete without a visit to the village's weekend hot spot...the local church. Within the four cinder block walls of this little church, they managed to cram what seemed like the entirety of the village population. A line of plain wooden benches, no longer than ten feet by two feet served as pews, yet they were able to squeeze 8 grown men on to one.
Men were on the right side of the church, women on the left.(with the exception of the SATB choir on the right). As we all stood to sing the opening song, I was surprised to find myself singing along. It was "Kwake Yesu Nasimama," one of the songs the Pallangyo's sing every night after dinner. All of a sudden, during one of the choruses, I began to think of that scene from Forrest Gump. You know, the one where Forrest joins the Southern Baptist choir and the camera pans across the church, revealing one very white man , humbly singing amidst a church-full of African soul-singers.

It was kinda like that.

Which brings me to music: Despite being celebrated in a mixture of Swahili and Kimeru languages, the service's beautiful music really helped to transcend the language barrier and kept me attentive and intrigued for the duration of the 2.5 hours I was there.
Well, I shouldn't say I was attentive for the entire service, but between appreciating the incredible music, following along in my English bible (which I was thankfully advised to bring along), watching an entire row of women nurse their babies at the same time, and perking my ears up when the preacher would say a familiar Swahili word, the 2+ hours flew by.

One of the reasons the service ran so long was not because of the communion line (one of my friends had told me that the Lutheran religion was nick-named Catholic-Lite, so I was actually surprised to find the complete absence of the liturgy of the Eucharist, be it symbolic or otherwise). The service was a pleasant bible study of sorts for the first hour and a half...

then they began the offertory collection.

There were two rounds of formal alms giving. Men and women stood and walked to the baskets placed in the front of the church to offer their first fruits to the Lord (some of the tithes literally were fruits and vegetables from the family farm, in lieu of money). 3 songs and twenty minutes later, the reverend smiled in approval of the village's generosity...that's when he called for a third collection.

I've been reading To Kill a Mockingbird the past few weeks and coincidentally, I just passed the part where Scout and Jem go to church with their black maid, Calpurnia. During the offertory at Calpurnia's church, the Reverend, unsatisfied with the first round of tithes,

"says to someone in the back of the church, 'Alec, shut the doors. Nobody leaves here till we have 10 dollars'...the Church was becoming stuffy and it occurred to me the Reverend intended to sweat the amount due out of his flock." *(pg 125)

Back in Shishitoni, the pastor told us that the third collection was to help fund the parish youth program. He said they need 80,000 Shillings (approx $80), only instead of sweating it out of us, he simply intended to bore us out of it.

45 minutes later, he had painstakingly accomplished his goal.
Joyously, we stood to sing the closing hymn to conclude the service and I walked home refreshed for another week of teaching in the village.