God and Football

Well, life seems to be catching up with me here.  It’s now Wednesday night, and I’m finally getting around to writing about Sunday.  The good news is that I can generally combine my hospital experiences in single blogs, so we’ll hope I remember enough when I get around to writing that tomorrow or Friday. 

On Sunday morning, a few of us rode with Gloriuse (daughter of Rose, who started AMU) to her church in Kigali.  We weren’t sure what to expect at all, but it ended up coming across as a higher class establishment (read more money), with English as the primary language (seemed to attract muzungus).  In general, it was probably similar to a Baptist church with a large African American community.  The first half was made up of worship music, and a sermon followed, with the offering plates passed in between.  They took a sort of “wall of sound” approach to worship, with two keyboards, a guitar, drums, and at least 10 singers (not really a choir, just worship singers).  Even still, if you’ve been to protestant worship services in the last 5-10, you’d probably know all of the songs.  They even had a muzungu running the sound board... and he started an accompaniment track in the wrong key during the offering... and a mic fell over at one point.  It was a “normal” church.

As for the sermon, it was very directed and specific to Rwandans.  The preacher spoke on work ethic, the necessity of work, and the Biblical basis of work. He still called out TV, still called out prosperity preachers… but he also referenced how nice Rwanda was compared to the Congo, how Rwanda was building their own paradise through their work, and was passionate about students working to pay their way through school.  He also prayed that God help Rwandan leaders and more common requests heard in some US churches (if you replace America with Rwanda).  It drew correlations to American preachers claiming that the US is the best country in the world, but I suppose that’s best left to another discussion. 

In the evening, we went to a place called the “Executive Car Wash” to have supper and watch the Women’s World Cup Final.  I’ve grown used to long waits for food at this point (at least an hour is the norm), but this meal was a mess.  We arrived before 6:00, and we didn’t receive our food until after 8:00… and the meals came out in spurts, spread across 20-30 minutes.  Even then, we had people who didn’t receive all of their food (one person received sides but not a burger, another received a burger without the patty… it was bad).  After all of that, we had to fight about the bill.  They still charged us for food that was never received, and there were a number of drinks tacked onto the bill that may or may not have been ordered but never received (in one case, I ordered a flavor of Fanta that they had run out of, so the waiter brought out other options for me to choose from... and charged us for every option he brought out).  I suppose we should have expected as much from a restaurant named for the attached car wash, but we had heard good things about it.  Anyway, combine that with a US loss and an almost hilariously flat singer in the cab on the way home, and you have a probably the lousiest night of the trip.

TL;DR – Don’t eat at car washes. 

-Scott

After church, there was a large group of kids playing football in the parking lot.  I played with them for a bit and snuck a picture with my camera at my waist.   The ball they used (circled in orange) was made out of twine and the waxy paper that bread comes in.  I heard that they actually sell them in markets, but I thought it was a really good idea nonetheless.  At one point early on we had looked into buying a normal basketball (we have a court outside our house), and they were charging in the range of $40-80 USD.  Since that's outrageous even by our standards, this is a nice alternative.