Sunday, May 24

The highlight of the day was going to the 07h30 Mass. You’ll find some video of it here soon enough, I hope. Imagine a church built to hold 1,200 people with SRO for an early morning Mass. This week was the Catholic student choir from the University of Dodoma – really very wonderful. It was a moving experience for me.

What moved me most was the offering. First people came up in procession to different stations and inserted bills or coins into locked toolboxes with slits in them. When this was done, a procession of food items along with the bread and wine were brought up: bananas, bags of rice, a case of Fanta, and a clucking hen (which we had for lunch!). It was a real sense of folks giving of themselves.

I did some writing in the afternoon (I’m working on job descriptions, doing some budgeting, and also working on beginning to formulate foundational documents for the school). I walked around a bit in the afternoon as the children were preparing for the 16h00 children’s Mass and then attended the beginning of the first Mass. In an earlier blog I mentioned the measure of responsibility given to children. This was witnessed again at the Mass, where a ten-year-old girl was directing the music – and very fine music, too, as you’ll witness.

In the late afternoon Michel brought Steve, a Jesuit visiting from Mauritius, and me to a parishioner’s home. There we enjoyed some conversation and a few Kilimanjaro beers. During the visit, we began talking about various foods, including pork. Pork is popularly referred to either as “Catholic goat” or kitimoto (hotseat –not sure of the spelling). These are the popular names because there are, in fact, Muslims who enjoy the meat forbidden to them – thus Catholic goat. It is called “hot seat” because Muslims ordering the meat at pubs are constantly jumping out of their seats – as if they were hot – to check if anyone might catch them.

The evening meal was spent with the volunteers, Catherine, Chiara, and Martina, at a restaurant just down the street, Leone l’Africana – a pizza joint. It was a nice evening.