Off to church

Public gatherings are generally to be avoided in times of Ebola, but it’s Sunday so I thought I’d make my first stab at finding a church (which came at the expense of a beach and lobster invite from my expat friends). Many readers probably don’t share my beliefs, but let me tell you it can be a hard challenge finding a good church in West Africa, though finding any old church isn’t too tough. There’s even one quite close to my new house, and on Fridays they seem to have all night sessions with the PA system on 11.

In the west, you can hit Google and go through church websites, maybe even downloading a sermon or two. Here, you’re in the dark. So I went through some old student Christian networks and got a contact here who invited me to his church this morning. I remember meeting a Lebanese guy in Brazzaville (Congo) who told me that when you’re Lebanese you can turn up in any city in the world, and when you find your community they are more or less obligated to give you a job. Perhaps there are similarities – my contact picks me up from home, takes me to his church, takes me to visit his family in the city centre and then takes me to lunch back at his place – even though we’ve never met and don’t have any direct mutual friends. And of course, we get on very well.

A word on the church. It was on the Pentecostal side, but I still appreciated it. The choir were all in robes, that carried influences of the US south. The message dwelt on the death of a young member of the congregation who had died suddenly in his sleep during the week leaving a wife and two children. It was quite touching.

It was great to be out and about on a Sunday morning – the streets of Freetown were thronging with people heading to church in their best. So good to see life outside the restricted confines of the office. I even spotted two work colleagues in the congregation, including a member of my team. I think a lot of people are staying at home during the week because I saw a lot more life than I do Monday-Saturday. But church attendance numbers are down sharply as people do what they can to avoid Ebola. The hand washing water had run out when we arrived at the main entrance, but the key Ebola messages of avoiding human contact, washing hands, going to health services when sick and avoiding dead bodies were given from the pulpit. At one point in the service, a woman fainted. People weren’t sure what to do and the ushers didn’t have their latex gloves. Finally she was carried out – turned out she had had stomach problems and hadn’t been eating properly, but initially Ebola was in people’s minds.

Afterwards we stopped by a relative’s house in one of the old districts of Freetown. A baby girl had been born 7 days earlier, and it was now time for the naming ceremony. The house was full of relatives, and people placed cash on the baby’s belly. I was honoured to have doors opened so easily for me to see inside people’s families and homes.

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