Hakuna Mungu kama Wewe

One of my friends at school is our gate keeper, Naomi. She’s probably about 35 or early 40s but she I thought she was a little older. She wears a purple pant suit matching the other guards. She lives in the village of Ihumwa where our school sits. Ihumwa is a village far from Dodoma– about a 30 minute ride. The farther you get from the city center, the more likely you have less and less. Ihumwa has a market of its own, but the village has very limited access to electricity and most of its houses have walls made of cement and mud, roofs made of grass or a sheet of aluminum or other metal and floors of either soil or cement.

I don’t get the chance to spend much time with Naomi because the gate to our school is pretty far from our classrooms. But when I go in late to school on Mondays and I greet her as I pass through. I stop, say the little I know in Kigogo (the language of the tribe Wagogo who reside in Ihumwa) and we laugh together. She’s a sweet woman. She often walks me partway through campus, chatting with me despite my little understanding. I ask about her family; she asks about my home and I tell her what I did that weekend. I always make a point to wave to her out the window of our bus on our way home.

Naomi has been asking me to visit her and for a while I was hesitant. It is a little stressful visiting someone for the first time, especially when you have to take a daladala (small bus) to a place you’ve never been and try to find her (and not understanding the language so much!) But it had been about a month since I said I’d come that I finally decided I’d take the journey out there on Sunday. My Kiswahili is better so I can at least navigate more easily. Sean came along – we always take advantage of each other’s invitations so we can see new places and meet new people.

We went to the first Mass (I sang with the choir) and then took our first daladala into town. We walked to a place called SabaSaba where we can find the dala that takes us to Ihumwa (the same one we use to go to school when we go in late or come home early). The people in SabaSaba are getting used to us moving through there – I don’t think there were any wazungu passing to Ihumwa before we came. The people we ride the bus with now know, “the wazungu are traveling to the Site.” The Site is what people call the place our school is being built. I don’t think any of them expected us to stay on and drive right past the school to their home village.

We finally arrived, got off the dala and looked around not sure what to do. We thought Naomi would be waiting but she wasn’t so I called her and she said she was on her way over. We must have looked lost to the people in the market there. Naomi finally came around and was dressed like a Mama! That’s the first time I saw her without her purple pant uniform. She was thrilled to see us. Sean gave her the cake we bought from the bakery before we came (it’s comparable to Grandma’s pound cake but obviously not as good). (Later she told me how much her kids enjoyed it – I don’t think they ever bake cake or even taste it).

She walked us first to her church where I thought we might meet some of her friends. They welcomed us inside and sat us in the plastic lawn chairs sitting up near the pastor. This was a TAG parish – Tanzania Assembly of God. The church was small; it fit maybe 50 people. The walls were mud/cement, the roof was a metal sheet, and the floor was dirt. There was a single podium and an electric keyboard sitting on top of a speaker up front. The back of the church was draped in yellow, white, and purple cloths. There were flowers growing right out of the ground and branches of bushes with flowers hung along the wall. The pews were simple wood benches. The men sat on the right, the women on the left (even Christian churches in TZ are influenced by the Muslim practice of separating the sexes). It was beautifully simple.

I soon came to realize that the service was just starting, for we ended up staying there about two and a half hours. There were a few men that would come in front, sing some songs while dancing around and the pastor would pound away at the keyboard in time to its artificial electric beats. After some singing, the children marched in single file while singing a song. They finished in front, sang another song and then processed back out. After, the “choir” (anyone who wanted to go up front) congregated and sang their own song. It was a lot of singing, but I didn’t mind.

The pastor eventually opened his Holy Book and read at least ten different scripture passages in a very loud almost yelling voice, squeezing his eyes shut, moving his arms very prophetically, and sometimes jumping around to pound in his point. He sometimes switched only one line to English which was interesting because I’m most sure that Sean and I were the only English speakers there. He would sometimes interrupt his preaching starting a chorus of “Alleluyas.” When he finished, he stood quiet and then started praying loudly and soon everyone in the church was also praying, their own words, their own voices. It became a drowning of prayers in Kiswahili, something sounding almost like what I would imagine talking in tongues sounds like. It startled me, scared me a little, but then I looked at Naomi quietly saying her own prayers and holding a small girl (who I later realized was her youngest daughter) and realized I was in the midst of a living, breathing prayer. It was incredible.

Later there was another prayer session such as this, except women came to have the pastor pray over them. One woman presented her young baby, another her toddler, and the last was a Bibi (a very old grandma). The pastor placed his hand on each of their heads and yelled things into their ears, pressing their heads down and down. I was shocked, but the baby, the child, and the Bibi didn’t budge or blink an eye. This was something holy for them, so I tried to keep my true feelings off my face. It ended as if this was something that happened every week and they walked back to their benches.

I so much enjoyed being here, despite the length of the service (I was a bit confused why we were there and how long it would last, and I hadn’t eaten anything since 6:30am so I was on empty). But there was a moment when we were all singing “Hakuna Mungu kama Wewe” (No God like You) and I was staring at the metal sheet that shields these Christians from the hot sun that I felt more connected to the people here than I have since I’ve arrived. It’s an image and feeling that still sticks with me – no matter which Church I enter, I can find Home.

The Mass finally ended, but not without an introduction from the wageni (visitors). I said a few brief words about where I came from, why I’m here, where I work, etc etc, and then Sean did the same. They were so kind for greeting us when we all left the church.

Finally we started walking home with Naomi. She held my hand as we walked and talked excitedly about how happy she was to have me at her home. (Women hold the hands of their female friends and men hold the hands of their male friends, but you hardly ever see men and women holding hands even if they are married.) Sean chatted with Naomi’s first child, a girl of 16. Naomi has five children: this girl, two boys who are currently studying in Kenya (her father was Kenyan – but studying there is very expensive because the education is much better than in TZ, so Sean and I are unsure how this works for her), another daughter of about eight and her youngest who is a charming two year old girl.

As we walked, I hollered a few “mihanyenyi”s (Kigogo for good afternoon) to the neighbors in their shambas (farm/garden) and they surely stared as the wazungu walk where none (or very few) have passed before.