Sesotho Hymns and Eating with my Hands

Last night a friend of mine from Zimbabwe invited me over to have dinner with him and a couple of his friends. Together we cooked (and by "we cooked" I mean they cooked and I did dishes) a typical meal from Zimbabwe. The meal consisted of a base of "sudza" (I'm not sure of the spelling) or "mealy meal" with minced beef and swiss chard. Sudza starts out as a sort of powdery grain, but is cooked with water so that it has a consistency of something between stiff grits and very dense mashed potatoes. The meal is eaten without utensils, instead scooped up with the fingers of one hand. I had a wonderful time learning to scoop up my meal and enjoying the wonderful new tastes.

After dinner, we visited a ballroom dancing club party very briefly. I know almost nothing about dancing, but I got to watch some excellent dancers and even try one dance. It was quite an evening.

This morning I went to the multilingual worship service at the Methodist church around the corner from my house. The spoken parts of the service were in English, but the hymns were in African languages like Sesotho and Xhosa and were all sung a capella. I was the only white person in the room other than the minister. It was invigorating. The sermon was also quite interesting, blending Scripture from Ecclesiastes, Philippians, and John together with ideas from St. Anselm, Thomas Aquinas, and Rick Warren (writer of the Purpose Driven Life). The worship was invigorating.

"I'm going to open doors for you, doors you never even dreamed existed. Oh, what times we're going to have..." -Auntie Mame (the movie