An African Church Service

This morning Karen picked me up to go to church with her. Honestly, I really wasn’t sure what to expect. I think everyone has this idea of boisterous African church services and I thought it may be similar but nothing ever seems to be how I think it will be here so I didn’t know. Her church was tucked back away from the road in a maze of muddy, unpaved streets. The sanctuary seemed like the focus of the community surrounding it. We arrived a few minutes after the service had started and squeezed into a few empty spots in the back. Every notion of a boisterous African church service held true. The pews were more like wooden benches. People squeezed in, literally, shoulder to shoulder. At the beginning of the service there was a lot of singing, call and response style with Swahili mixed in. When people weren’t singing or even while they were, they were dancing and clapping to the beat. The joy and praise of the building pounded throughout the community surrounding.

Near the beginning of the service they had all the visitors raise their hand. Not wanting to draw attention to myself, I hesitantly raised my arm. The pastor was quick to spot me though, the only Caucasian in the building. He even made a comment in front of the entire congregation, probably over 200 people, how, I must be visiting because I’m not Kenyan. The church had a nice gesture of giving all of the visitors a rose. The sermon was just like the African sermons we see in movies. The man speaking screamed his praise and guidance into the microphone. I’m not sure if he wasn’t aware that the microphone projected his voice or what, but it was loud. The passion in his voice was prominent. I’m guessing the community surrounding could hear his voice for miles. My ears were practically ringing. Before we were dismissed, they had all the visitors file out and go to a meeting room. I didn’t really want to leave Karen, but she pushed me out anyways. I had no idea where I was going or what exactly I was doing. They brought us to a small room and preached to us some more. I felt as if I was getting recruited to join their church. The women served us all tea and a sweet. I took both, to not appear rude and did my best at finishing the sweet. With the tea, however, I had no luck. In Kenya, tea is made with a milk base instead of a water base. Not being a tea fan to begin with doesn’t seem to help my cause. After introducing ourselves and making a fool out of myself with having just about no idea what was going on, Karen rescued me. Next week is Youth Sunday. I may return and experience that service as well, as long as I’m not labeled as a visitor again.

Beyond the traditional African service the worship had, there was one other main difference—their service lasted for three hours. In a crowded little space with extremely loud speakers, that is a long time to be sitting, especially when I am used to hour long services back home. Regardless, it was a good experience. The rest of my day was spent at icipe figuring out college classes for next year. As expected, registering for classes is substantially harder from overseas. Spaghetti was served for lunch, though. Having something other than rice made my day.