Kanisa (church)

Church is supposed to begin at 11am. So after making pancakes, cleaning the whole house, listening to an entire CCF service (our home church sends us cds of the service), writing emails, herding cows & goats out of our yard & garden, making eggs and toast, and relaxing a bit, we headed over to church at around 11:20. We were early. So we began the sequence of greetings, which includes greeting an entire group, but then also greeting each person individually, calling them by their title, waiting for their affirmative “oo” (for men) or “eeo” (for women), then using the normal “supa” “ipa” greetings, followed by questions about their lives, the last few days, even if you don’t really have a clue who they are… During this process, the church elder in charge of our local church, Joseph, handed me a piece of paper with a scripture passage written on it and proceeded to tell me I’m reading in church. Ok, that will be fun, but it also made me nervous. So I proceeded to open the passage in our Maasai and English Bibles, the former to practice my pronunciation, the latter, to actually know what I’m reading.
Eventually we meandered into the church and the service began. This week Matt and I sat together on the left side of the church, where most of the women sit. It’s not required to be gender segregated, but in general, the Maasai choose to segregate themselves. We enjoy challenging those norms and always sit together, switching sides from week-to-week. (Not to mention it’s nice to have someone next to me who is as lost as I am most of the time) The time came when Joseph invited me up to read the passage, Luke 12:49-53: Christ dividing men. Tough passage. So, I did my best to read it expressively showing the intensity of the passage. But as I was reading, laughter started to ripple through the congregation. I’m able to finish well and keep my composure, but I could feel my face turning red. Why are they laughing at me? As I leave the podium applause erupts through the audience. Joseph then proceeds (in Maa) to challenge the congregation to learn to read their own language, how here I am, a mazungu, who’s known the language for 4 months, reading well, while most of them can’t even read the language they’ve spoken all their lives. Applause erupts again. I now realize they weren’t laughing at me at all. They were impressed, excited, surprised, that I could read their language so well. Their laughter was a good thing. They weren’t laughing at me. They were laughing in support of me.
The rest of the service in a nutshell: 3 hour service (relatively short for Maasai). An adorable 6-month old girl in front of us who loved watching us and playing with my beaded bracelet. Dancing and singing in the front of the sanctuary, moving across the room as one unified group praising God. Reading the Bible with a young girl, about 7 years old, who sidled up next to me on the bench. Matt demonstrating his skill at killing flies. 3 sermons and 2 long responsive prayer times. Exit greetings: as you leave, you make a greeting line, like at weddings, except when you get to the end, you join the line, so that everyone greets everyone. I got stuck at one point because a man was telling me to give my head (a sign of respect), but I thought he was in my age group, so I should just give me hand… so then I was so flustered I didn’t know what to do through the rest of the line. We were then told we could leave. Everyone else was staying to talk about some things. We were happy to go home and talk in English.