Snake Dance

7/4/10

Church. We decided to check out the Pentecostal church for this Sunday. Brittany and Jade went a few Sundays ago and commented on it being three hours long. So we decide to go later to catch the sermon and some worship. We walked through the health center grounds, cross the main road south of the grounds and walked along the road. We get sidetracked but then Brittany remembers the side road. We get to the church only to find that they have relocated for the week’s revival. With disappointment, we walked back to the Lutheran Church across from the Nyakato health clinic. We were lucky that we got there right on time. As soon as we walked in, a man was kind to welcome us and offer to translate the message. Since July 25 is the day of harvest, the message was related to harvest. There was a special guest pastor speaking about how we are the letters from God and as representatives we should do the following: 1. Fear God, 2. Love the Word and must love to learn about God, 3. Be with the spirit to see the good and the bad, 4. Commitment to offering. I found that it was interesting that he mentioned that God hates offerings given from bribery and mentioned about the corruption among leaders in Tanzania. At the end of the service, they asked us to go to the front to introduce ourselves. We lined along the front and introduced ourselves in broken Swahili: “Jina langu ni Sarah. Ninatoka merekani. Ahsante sana.” Thanks to the man named Joel who translated every word for us. It was great to meet his family as well. Mungu Asifiwe (Praise God)!

Today is priyanka's (amit's girlfriend, who is also a medical student here) birthday today! After lunch, we went to the Sukuma museum. The Sukuma is a local tribe here. The museum was created with the help of a catholic church. The purpose of the museum was to show the integration of the traditional ways of living of the Sukuma tribe with the immersion with the catholic religion. The tour was interesting, but the tribal dancing was the memorable part. They probably danced different tribal dances for about 2 hours. The last dance was the snake dance, when the crazy leader pulled out this enormously long snake out of a flour bag. Tempted to join in on the dancing, we finally made it out to the dancing area to dance along. You know it!

The best way to end the day, we had dinner on the eastern shoreside of Lake Victoria at the Tunsa Hotel. The sunset was marvelous! We had a late dinner on the beach. I had coconut curry fish. YUM!!!

Paula made chocolate cake (without milk) for Priyanka’s birthday. Yay!