Weekend Life

Every weekend, I go to my famille d’accueil (host family), which means that I get to stay ‘on’ for another set of people.  I love my family to small, tiny pieces, but they involve long discussions, a very active toddler, and sometimes cooking on a little outdoor stove (which is a pot of flaming charcoal-shaped death).

I am quickly approaching a glut of ‘people time,’ but I really thought that being with a local family would help me with my French and Swahili skills.

They all speak English better than I speak either of those languages. 

Yes, even the toddler.

(Not really – he’s limited to announcing the arrival and departure of the power in tones of deepest awe: “La couraaant…!”  But I have absolute faith that he will acquire French faster than I).

I have had the great privilege of being close to a few pastors’ families wherever I have been, and it’s really formed the way I see family and prayer life and has shaped my beliefs.

This time, I’ve found myself in the home of a somewhat Anglican pastor (his specification, not mine) and his beautiful wife and child who are part of a fairly new church plant in this city.  I really appreciate his dedication to Christ and sharing the gospel here (even though I don’t entirely agree with him on the role of women in the church).  He seems to have boundless energy to respect his wife, take care of their child, encourage leadership groups, and discuss religious issues with a rando from Canada.  His wife likewise has more than enough energy to teach entrepreneurship, train Sunday School teachers, take care of her small ball of energy on wheels, and cook delicious meals on an outdoor charcoal pot.

I’ve learned how to tell Tutsis from Hutus (not really), Congolese from Rwandans from Burundians (nope), and that the five-second rule is a myth (the antibodies in the toddler could probably provide the world with the next major breakthrough in healthcare).  I have tried desperately to understand why a man would have to give a diary to his wife’s family (it was a dowry).  I also went to visit a mom who’d recently had her third child – we walked off the edge of the world and into a warren of little two-room homes, eight women passed around a tiny, sweltering baby in a woollen sweater and at least three woollen blankets, and we shared some foufou and sombe that I wanted to refuse on grounds of mental health (but didn't).

I usually go to the Pastor’s two services (though I have been to another church which involved much Pentecostal excitement in Swahili) and have grown accustomed to being surrounded by young men who likely understand about as much of the English service as I do the French, but on the plus side, I’ve now reached the grandmotherly age where they ask me for phones instead of my hand in marriage.  So that’s definitely a sign of maturity.  One man told me, when I asked why no women came, that they just don't understand (in all fairness, it was a trick question for which we need to revisit some principles of physics – A woman can be either cooking in her kitchen and guarding her virtue or in church listening to a sermon; it’s impossible to tell which until you go to church and see a load of chauvinists talking about how she wouldn’t understand it anyway).

I have not had communion here yet, but we share Parle-G biscuits and a small glass of juice after the service, and I am enjoying the simple life.

I think my favourite part of it all is that my ‘Mom’ hasn’t made foufou once and I have my own room - without a bunk bed and the constant fear of being too gigantically fat and crashing into teammate beneath me and without the clinging love of a mosquito net resting delicately on the bridge of my giant nose…