This morning and my first attempt at attending the Catholic Church here at Wakiso left a little to be desired. I’m going to rant for a while. If you are like me, and you think it’s funny when bad things happen to your friends… read along.
I woke up at about 6:15 because I wanted to get some laundry done before heading to church. My milk tea this morning had a thick layer of skin on it that was just too much for me to drink. After trying for several minutes to remove the particulate matter from the tea my host mother left the room and I seized the opportunity to sneak my tea back into my room and dump it in my bath water from the night before. I believe this was the final straw, today I stop being polite and explain that I would prefer black tea. By 7:00 I was out in the yard scrubbing socks, underwear, and t-shirts. This lasted until about 8:30 when I quickly went inside, fixed myself up, changed clothes, and was out the door by 8:45. I had never been to the Catholic Church or had it pointed out to me from the street, but I had seen it from the top of a hill about a mile away so knew the approximate location. The mass was scheduled for 9:30 and the walk was only 15 minutes so I felt pretty confident I would figure it out in time.
Sure enough I guessed the route right the first time. I arrived at the Church at 9:00 AM. It appeared the prior mass was about to finish up. A man asked me if I would like a chair, asking if I was there for the first mass, I declined and explained I was there for the second mass and he said it was at 9:30. Good, I thought to myself.
Around 9:15 the mass broke up and everyone came out of the church. Several other volunteers were there and they greeted me. By about 9:20 I was headed inside, thinking to myself how quick a turnaround they were about to make. I began reading my Bible. After losing myself in the book of James for about 10 minutes, I looked up and noticed there was almost nobody in the Church and it was now 9:30. I’m not sure whether to attribute it to Ugandan punctuality or miscommunication but after progressively filling up the mass finally started at 10:20.
The mass, entirely in, lasted took about 40 minutes to get through the Gosple reading. There wasn’t anything extra, it was a Catholic mass, just lots of slow music and slow talking. The homily lasted 40+ minutes. I noticed during the homily that there was an entire section of the mass that was just children, more on that later. After the homily, much to my surprise, we had baptisms. This was especially surprising because I had talked to a volunteer who attended last week and she had said they had Baptisms. Uganda is over 40% Catholic and has the fastest growing population in Africa, so it is actually perfectly conceivable that they have Baptisms every single week. After about half an hour of babies crying.
From there things sped up and I was beginning to believe we might actually get out of there in under two and half hours. With the exception of a short parade during the offeratory including produce, eggs, tribal dancing, and some live chickens, and a segment where new church officers were sworn in, things moved right along and we were through with communion after about 2 hours and 20 minutes of mass. Then the announcements started. I have no idea what the announcements were, but including the applause breaks, they lasted about 15 minutes. Then the priest asked for the guy in the 3 button suit and the woman in the blue dress to come up. I don’t know who they are, what they were responsible for, or why the priest wanted them up there, but the man in the three button suit talked for about a minute, then the woman in the blue dress talked for about 2-3 minutes, then they were joined by another person I don’t know but he wore a nice suit, a pink tie, and from what I could tell was a smooth talker. From here on I will refer to him as… the smooth talker. The smooth talker talked about something, possibly the man in the three button suit and the woman in the blue dress for over twenty minutes. The smooth talker stood between the man in the three button suit and the woman in the blue dress and completed his monologue without any major pauses, without any notes, and appeared to do so without any hesitation, um-ing, or struggle for words, hence his name. During the smooth talker’s monologue a downpour started outside. The rain came was coming down so hard that the smooth talker could not be heard even with the assistance of a decent sound system in the church, at that point the intensity of the rain about doubled, still the smooth talker went on.
Things finally wrapped up at about 2 hour 50 minute mark, with the closing hymn competing with the downpour and officially closing the mass at 2 hours and 57 minutes. Afterwards another louder hymn was sung. I speculate that this was mostly because of the downpour, with nobody really wanting to leave. I had almost a mile walk home and believed I would ruin my cell phone and my Bible were I to attempt it. There was a bar pretty close to the church but I didn’t even believe I could make it there without getting soaked. During the second hymn the altar boys cleaned up, the all children section left, and some folks headed out. After the second hymn the man in the three button suit returned to the altar this time calling up others with him. The rain had slowed to a mild shower and so I decided I’d had enough. I now speculate that this mass is directed towards the families whose children attend the school at the church and that there are additional administrative matters that are conducted along with the “9:30” mass.
I returned home to find lunch waiting for me, including a mystery cut of what I assume was chicken because the meat beside it was chicken. Based on the size, symmetry, appearance, and color, I believe I ate two chicken kidneys at lunch today.
Next week I’ll try the early mass with some of the other volunteers. If that doesn’t turn out to be more tolerable I think I’ll be resorting to independent Bible study for my spiritual needs.
Really looking forward to one of the birthday party of one of our volunteers today at 4:00.
