Crazy Church

Just one week to go in the first half term, how time flies. All of the kids are into exams early next week. All of the students from prep aged 5 do exams every 7 weeks. Pretty full on but that is the way they teach over here. It is all about rote learning and your ability to regurgitate information. A few of the older teacher vollies have the job of getting the local teachers to move away from rote learning, is a tough job.

Am organizing an Athletics carnival for the last day before mid term break. Should be quite funny as most of them, despite doing Athletics in PE this term, have little idea of what is going on. A break from class where they are worked so hard all of the time will be good for them though. They have never had one before here so it remains to be seen weather it will be a success or not.

On Sunday a week ago a few of us went out to a Church service that several of the teachers invited us to. I was quite happy with the invitation as I had heard a visit to the crazy church was an experience. It is a Pentecostal Church which has a congregation of around 5000 that cram into a massive open air shack. As we were the only five white people there we were shown to the VIP seats and they sat us separately with people who could translate throughout the service. It was not too different to other church services I have been to here, which involve a lot of singing and dancing. That is until we got to the sermon. The ‘Prophet’ started to quote form exodus and various other passages describing how they must destroy witchcraft etc. The ‘prophet’ instructed everyone to write down anyone they thought were possessed by demons or had been involved in which craft, horoscopes etc. All 5000 people then walked up the front and put their list of names into a big bin. One person beside me had two A4 pages of names to put in the bin. A ceremonial burning of the names then took place on stage while the ‘Prophet’ addressed the demons who were possessed the names who were burning. A lady then dropped to the ground about 5m from me, started yelling, speaking in tongues and rolling around on the ground. She knocked a few chairs over including mine when others just picked her up and dropped her in the aisle and continued on singing and echoing the prophet. There was maybe 30 others (all Women) who did this. People carried them to the stage where the ‘Prophets’ cronies held them as he cast the demons from their body amidst great cheers, chants and singing competently supported by the resident reggae band. Despite the grim depiction the whole service was really a joyous event. Quite bizarre but so interesting. It reminded me of an episode from John Safran v God but classically African style.

Tomorrow being Monday has been a public holiday (only yesterday mind you) due to George W. Bush’s landing in Tanzania last night. I went over to watch the FA Cup at the bar and all of these Tanzanian’s who cannot usually be draw away from the football were all watching his landing in Dar live. He is coming to Arusha tomorrow and he will be staying literally across the road from the new campus at Usa River. Am still not sure if the Public Holiday is to honor him or is as a result of the extensive security measures which means that all tar roads in Arusha will be closed (the is only like 5).

Good to see the Waratahs are off to a flyer. I caught two bussess and walked 3km to go and watch the game, that’s commitment. There is a bar that shows every game there and it does really take that long to get there. Although most of the guys who play rugby all follow the Sharks (as there are a lot of South African expats) so they did not care to much for the early morning Aussie games so I was watching it by myself. Breakfast and two games of rugby on a Saturday morning, I could see it becoming a ritual.