What is Africa Time you ask? Well, it's this way of measuring time here that is really just a complete lack of measuring time. As a lovely book on race in South Africa puts it, white people have this conception that time is running out. We feel that time has an end point and we can never get enough. However, in the black communities time is just there. If today doesn't have enough time, then there is more time tomorrow. No stress and no rush.
So back to the story - we woke up around 9:30 and got ready. The bus for people to take from Mzee's house left at 9:30 to go to the church, but funerals last a while so being late wasn't supposed to be an issue. We ended up leaving around 10:15. From our house we went to Danny's to help bring some people home that had slept at her house. This turned into driving all over New Brighton to drop people home, pick others up, stop to get different clothes, etc. About an hour later we met Danny again in the parking lot of KFC to caravan it to Motherwell.
We have Bej, Nowie, Shuffle, and Chika with us to direct so we find the church pretty easily. All of us are dressed for the occasion and look quite nice as we walk up to the church. People are outside to greet us and thank us for coming. The funeral had already started and people were singing as we entered so we quietly took a pew in the back and slid in. There were a lot of people inside, including a man in a silver suit. Chika asked the woman sitting in front of us to see the (I guess I'll call it a…) pamphlet with the schedule and obituary in it. Opening to the first page there was a large picture of the deceased. I was sitting next to Chika and got a good look at it and could obviously tell it was a woman in the photo. Chika closes the pamphlet and starts look at all of us waving her hand across her throat. We were at the WRONG funeral! Danny just turned to me and said, "Don't you just hate when that happens?" We all had to muffle our giggles and sit at this funeral of someone we did not know until everyone started singing again so we could silently slink out the back.
Turns out the funeral we were looking for was down the road at The African Gospel Church of Motherwell. Some of the other coaches were there as well and we took our seats. Now this church is pretty much what you may imagine when you read the words "African Gospel Church". It was fitted with a pastor who screamed a lot, a strong-voiced woman leading the singing who held the mic too close, and congregation that repeated what the pastor was saying, and a dude who got really excited by the pastor and yelled out things and jumped up often. Chika even commented to me how crazy the pastor was with all his screaming. I had no idea what was being said, due to the isixhosa, but I stayed awake.
At the end of it all a man in a silver suit packed up the instruments and everyone left. Mzee's mom thanked us all for coming - she was a very nice woman - and we left and opted to skip out on the cemetery. I was later told that this was like us not even going to the funeral, but the coaches we came with didn't want to go so we didn't go...oops.
For the reader with the fine eye: you may have noticed that I TWICE mentioned a silver suit. I would like to note that there were indeed TWO men in silver suits - and not just gray suits with a sheen to them, but platinum suits that shined like they were indeed made of platinum. It was quite a look and one I was privileged to see multiple times.
And so was my Saturday morning and early afternoon - I went to two funerals, crashed my first funeral, tested my patience with Africa Time (later learning that it passes through all levels of activities and no matter our lateness, we were still on time), and took in some serious fashion.
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