Questions and Answers – 4

What is the most unusual experience you’ve had? First off, there have been many, many things happening that I’ve simply not had the time to blog about. Here’s a sampling:

- Attending a Muslim wedding reception
- Visiting a house in mourning for its 25-year-old son who had just died
- Attending (part of) a Christian wedding ceremony
- Going to a pizza party
- Being sick for a day (but NOT, thankfully, with malaria)
- Taking motorbike rides behind some of my fellow staff members
- Being serenaded by an African man under a starry sky

…and so much more! But probably the most uncomfortable new experience occurred in connection with that first item – the Muslim wedding reception. We visited the groom (where he was hanging out with the male guests), then rode with him to see his bride: a heavily-adorned woman sequestered with other women in a stuffy little fly-ridden room. I felt so sorry for her, and wasn’t sure what to tell her other than “God bless you” on the way out. A bevy of drumming men waited outside the door, and immediately surrounded me as soon as I exited. The din ringing in my ears, I shouted to Pastor Tirumbu for an explanation, and found that the men wanted me to dance, and it would be best if I did so.

Well, if you have seen Africans dancing, you know that I can’t! But the noise was so loud and alarming that I was ready to do just about anything to stop it. So I wiggled a little, and was greeted with shouts, and someone thrust a headdress on my head. Figuring I’d done my duty, I returned the headdress and was allowed to pass. Even if I wasn’t biased to begin with, I can tell you from personal experience that I prefer Ghanaian Christian weddings to Muslim ones!

And a really quick explanation on that last “Wait, what?” point: the night watchman, who doesn’t speak much English, whistled “What a friend we have in Jesus” one evening. The next night, as I was coming in, I told him I really liked the song he’d whistled, and hummed a few bars to remind him. “Ah!” he exclaimed, excited, and sang the whole hymn to me in his local dialect, as I stood under the mango tree thinking “This is kind of a strange experience, but isn’t it sweet how we can worship the Lord together even though we can’t understand each other very well, and I do hope the mosquitoes aren’t biting!”

Note: this post was written about two weeks ago, and I’ve simply not had the opportunity to publish it before now…meaning that even more no-time-to-blog-about-them random incidents have occurred! =D

Smiling on the outside

Thinking “Get me out of this situation!” on the inside