Celebrations: mass, graduations, goats.

Waking up bright and early, I put on my Sunday best on to attend St. Augustine's Catholic Church in Umuoba-Amam Otuocha. Well, actually I borrowed a skirt, but same same. The nine o'clock mass, which lasted for three long hours and was in Igbo was quite a cultural experience. With drumming to our right, the voices of the church rose up to fill the large hall. There were mostly women in their Sunday finest filling the pews. I don't know if this is a reflection of the general dearth of men between the ages of 16 and 60 in these communities or if men are just generally less church-going. Regardless, there were lots of women and children. The children had their own wing of the church off to one side of the altar. It seemed like a genius design to accommodate the antsy nature of children being asked to sit still for hours on end. What is even harder to describe is that the children were unattended by adults. The older one tend the younger ones, as is generally common, but I had no idea how many children there were until I turned to face them when I was walking back to my seat after the offering. At first guess, I would say a thousand kids. Easily.

The church is focused on some development projects. They have a primary school. They are working on raising money to build a new church. The drawing of the new design hangs over the altar and I am not sure how much people want the actual design that is drawn, or just the newness and the expensive cars included in the drawing. They did manage to raise almost 50 000N in the service.

After the service, we went to Dr. Chife's brother's house for a graduation celebration for two of the fellows who we are working with: Simon and Fidelis. They both just completed their undergraduate studies in economics and biology at a school in Kumasi, Ghana. The celebration consisted of us drinking beer at 11am, talking, and then eating a flavorful goat stew. After chatting for a while, I decided to step out when the conversation turned to: do you want a Nigerian husband? (I decided that I am open to the possibility if I can also potentially have a American husband, but no one was open to the idea of a wife having two husbands despite the prevalence of men having two wives here.)

When I stepped outside, some of the boys and recent graduates were playing draught, which is like a complicated checkers where pieces can go back and forth, jumps are required, and kings can move along diagonals. I lost pretty badly. But through my mistakes, I did manage to learn the rules. After getting my butt kicked, Fidelis offered to defeat my competitor to avenge my loss. He played a much better game.

It was a fun day and I really enjoyed the moments when we weren't quite sure what the appropriate social grace was so we just floundered until someone took the lead.