26.08.2012 - Sunday

Manyoni - 26.08.2012

We are invited to participate in the church service at 9 o'clock. We are going make music and dance together with our African hosts.

There are some local choirs and our own choir performing during the service

As you can see the church ist full to capacity. We seem to meet with great interest.

Even during the service we notice several things, like for instance that there are a lot of children and young people in the church. On the one hand this might be down to the fact that about 44 % of the Tanzanian population are under the age of 15.

On the other hand it seems that in this country religious faith itself is much more important in everyday life than for instance in Germany. Also religion is a substantial basis of life in Tanzania, whereas in the Western world it is being increasingly replaced by material values which hardly exist here.

As you can see quite easily, the church-service is much more easy-going in Tanzania than it is back home in Germany. All church doors are open all the time and people are coming and going. it ist therefore no problem for the kids to play with the presents they got from us during the service.

Although the church service is held in Swahili, we understand quite a lot. Elisabeth translates what is being spoken to those sitting in the first row and we are passing it on by whispering to the others behind us.

Despite their - from our point of view - quite poor living conditions, our hosts are very generous and give us presents: T-Shirts with the coat of arms of the Rift Valley church diocese (Manyoni and the surrounding area) and the words of psalm 133,1 printed on it...

...and wooden figures hand-made by local artists. Some of them are even going to introduce themselves to us later on, because they are very proud of their products:-)

After lunch we practice the song "MFANYENI" which we heard yesterday with one of the local choires. Thanks to some diligent ladies every one of us even has a copy of the hand-written lyrics of the song:-)

After several attempts and instructed by our friends we learn the song quite quickly. Despite some problems with the pronunciation we all have a lot of fun:-D