Church was hard work today. The reason? Our little Sammy Chops hadn’t had his morning nap so he was feeling crotchety. He had finally fallen asleep on my back on the 1 mile walk to church but the noise of the singing inside greeted him loudly and woke him up after just two minutes sleep. He went nuts for a while running between Gareth and myself (remember we sit on opposite sides of the church) and the other children egged him on from the sidelines and then although he sat and had a biscuit on my lap during the worship leader’s sermon (in KiSwahili and yes the worship leader at least felt like he delivered a sermon!) and enjoyed the singing by the children’s and youth choirs, he couldn’t bear it any longer and I took him outside. It doesn’t seem to matter too much whether I am coming or going because people – children and adults alike – seem to wander in and out of church as is their wont. I went out of the church as the sermon-proper started in a confusing mix of KiSwahili and odd bits of English thrown in for our benefit. We could just about get bits of meaning out of these precious bits of English, but the thread of the sermon was a bit lost on me, especially because of coming and going with Samuel! My hope was to go out with Sam and have him fall asleep in the sling but alas the children had other ideas. “Samwell! Samwell!” they cheered as they grabbed at him and hauled him around (4 year olds here know how to handle babies so I wasn’t too worried!) and tried to get him to laugh. There was no way I was going to get him to sleep here! I got out his toy truck (from Kampala so it fits in locally) and the children played with it for him to watch and grab. The children are so considerate of him but he can’t help but be different and therefore an attraction for them so they all want to interact with him. I went back into the service with Sam hoping that the singing that had just started would lull him to sleep. Alas the cocophony that was the choir singing Les Dawson style with the keyboard was not sleep-inducing! Gareth had a turn taking him out while I sat and tried to focus on why I was at church: concentrating on God and prayer has been a bit difficult ever since Samuel came into existence! A few moments later just as the 20 minutes of singing ended (it was a special extended time of singing as someone’s husband had died and she finds singing comforting so the church was helping her by singing a lot) I heard a little squeal coming from outside. Oh great, he has found a second – or even third – wind! The wind did not last for long so with a sigh of commitment to the cause, I took Samuel out again with the sling and walked up the road, biscuit in Sam’s hand. As I walked, I saw cows. I saw goats. I saw children. I saw dust. I heard the familiar cry of ‘mzungu baby!’ and the pitter patter of feet running to touch the baby. I thought about how lucky I was to be living here where people come and talk to us and thank me for having a baby (seriously)! Fortunately for my sanity, the children on the road left Samuel alone and he eventually drifted off with one last half-hearted point at a goat. I went back into the service just as the sermon was finishing and the worship leader was again going up the front. “Oh no,” I thought, “I’ve just got him to sleep and he’s going to wake up again and nugget around!” but the worship leader made a comment and then the pastor said something serious in KiSwahili. He then said in English “So, it is now 1pm and we are going to go up till 2 today.” Oh no! “But” (yes? Yes?!!) “you can go now because you have a little boy to sort out. We are going to stay together for this man’s wife to comfort her and stay with her.” It took a little while to realise that he meant for us to leave with Sam (still sleeping in my arms) so that they could stay together longer and they wouldn’t have to do the service in English too. They wanted to be together for the woman whose husband had died. I then had a mixture of emotions of ‘thank goodness we can go and get Samuel some food as he will be mad when he wakes up hungry’, and ‘but we are here to offer our comfort too’. However, the pastor was adamant that we should leave and it seemed actually as though the church wanted to mourn together and comfort each other without having to translate their emotions or have strangers in their midst. If it was this time in a few months I would have stayed, but since we are still strangers we felt it right to leave.
So we went to find lunch. It was late now so we stopped off at a restaurant and ordered a tomato and cheese sandwich for Samuel since he had woken up now. It came in record time, but not before he had got overexcited and grabbed a metal chair that had then collapsed on his face as he plummeted backwards. Luckily he seems to bounce and be quite well ‘ard so he resumed play before long. He is too curious and excitable to stay down for long. He ate his sandwich and we went to the market to buy bananas to the reoccurring theme tune of “Mzungu baby! Thank you for having a baby!” The sky was rumbling by now so we hurried back home on a boda – Sam’s first ride. As we rounded the corner to our house we heard the sound of excited ululating! What was happening?! I thought. I looked around and saw that the source of the women’s excitement was indeed a mzungu baby on a boda! Samuel waved at them regally and we arrived at our house. I put Samuel to bed and started to bake bread, as I do every two days. I also made a papaya cake since it works similarly to apple when baking. I popped them both in the oven and helped Gareth move beds around as we would be having eight guests the next day. In this humidity just moving breaks a sweat so it was tough work moving the beds from the house to the out buildings but it was done soon. Samuel woke up prematurely from his nap and came to play in the living room while I ironed my husband’s pants, my son’s nappies and my bras! Considering I never ironed a single thing at home this is certainly a turn-up for the books! (Ironing is necessary to get rid of mango fly eggs that may have been laid whilst drying). Samuel seems to want full attention so I then helped him do some colouring for pictures to send home. He has just learned to put crayon to paper and paint to finger so we are getting some ‘nice’ pictures and a lot of body art!
Then disaster struck! I went to check the bread and pawpaw cake after almost an hour (it is a very slow oven!) and the gas was off! The canister had run out! But the bread! The cake! It will be ruined! Gareth was sent off to get a new canister as I gave Samuel left-over sandwich from the restaurant for his tea (we were going to eat the bread and cake!) When Gareth got to the place where he thought he could get a new canister he was told that they don’t have it, he would have to go to a drugstore. Hmm. Thought Gareth. Interesting. He followed instructions and went to the mysterious drug store where there were, indeed, canisters inside a metal cage. “Can I have a new gas canister please?” he asked politely. “The man with the key has gone.” Ha ha ha ha ha! The age-old African phrase! The man with the key is always gone! Thinking of my half-baked cake and bread in the oven and with belly rumbling, Gareth ploughed on: “Please can I phone the man with the key and ask him to come here?” Yes was the reply and in a shockingly short space of time the man with the key arrived and the gas canister transaction took place. Gareth hot-footed it back to the house and plugged in the gas as I put Sammy Chops to bed. Alas, an hour later the bread was fine but the cake could not be saved. I slopped it out into a tub and we picked at it as it was still delicious, but rather sloppy! The guests arriving tomorrow would have no cake after all.
After tea of bread and banana, I got on with the house work. Sweeping up Sam’s crumbs is essential because of the ants, and the night before I had ‘doomed’ the house (bug spray called doom) so I went around sweeping up the dead bugs left in its wake. I had a cockroach, several beetles, gazillions of ants, two centipedes and a couple of moths in my dustpan by the end. Ugh. Oh well, at least Samuel wouldn’t eat them. So now, just the kitchen to clear up. Boil the kettle, fill the washing up bowl, wipe the surface eight times to prevent ants, put everything in air-tight containers, sweep and mop the kitchen floor, go around the house locking doors and shutting windows ready for the storm that was coming and put out the lights. Bed time at last. A moment’s peace, then …the familiar sound of a P.A. system being booted up. The Pentecostal church started its all night prayer. D’oh!
