I'm at the wedding of a fellow professor – M. Z (I think that's his
name – it was very embarrassing showing up here and being asked which couple I had come to see – I stumbled out a bit of "Z...Z...? he's a professor of science at the lycee in Mission Tove?" big smile please believe me. But who's going to turn away a yovo who wants to come to a wedding. No one. Especially not an exceptionally pretty yovo wearing a Togolese complet.)
The church the wedding was held at is Deeper Life (Vie Profonde). It originally started as a non-denominational Christian prayer group but has become a successful small church in its own right. There are branches in several cities around West Africa. The premise is that he man who founded it was frustrated with "Sunday Christians" and called them to live a deeper life – their faither calling them to lives of morality, social justice and evangelisation not just weekly celebrations.
Anyway, they keep things quite simple – no photos during the ceremony for one thing - . It's 9.30, the ceremony was supposed to start at 9.
Only one other professor is here so far – the German teacher. He and the groom had a long conversation about Deeper Life on Wednesday when I asked for direction how to get to the church. Apparently the German professor, who is a pastor for the Evangelical church, was part of the prayer group in university. Deeper Life is particularly interested in attracting intellectuals to their teachings. Pastors for the church must have at least their Bacc (Baccaleaureate- rather difficult test at the end of high school). All the church teachings are in English because they were developed in Nigeria and therefore pastors need a good level of English.
I had a small adventure getting here, but it was actually easier than I'd feared. Nobody thought I'd be able to make it without taking a moto
– but I did fine. I took a taxi from Tove to a toyota dealership in Lome, then walked up to a crossroads and spent a little while trying to hail a cab. I had to "louer" which means pay for the whole taxi rather than share the fare with others that the driver picks up along the way. This means it was almost as expensive as the hour-long trip from Tove
to Lome, but it was easy and I feel like I know a new part of Lome (a little bit) now!
As soon as I arrived, I made some friends. I walked up to a couple women who were in the street and asked it they were here for the wedding, they said they were and then we all giggled a bunch over my attempts to speak Ewe. I went with them to get some beans and rice yumyum. Really good red oil/piment mix.
After ridiculous deliberations, I've decided to go to a birthday party in Vogan after the wedding, then go straight from Vogan to Tsevie for I's birthday and a training on developing the SED program on Monday and Tuesday. This means that I've got a stupidly huge bag with me – mostly because I wanted to bring my laptop. Being without electricity in village means that anytime I leave village to spend the night somewhere with electricity, I have a hard time keeping myself from bringing my laptop along. The additional space and weight to take the laptop with me is a bit silly, but it will be good to be able to type up emails and sort out photos, get everything ready for the next time I have internet.
The whole wedding service was performed in French and translated into Ewe. This was great for me as I could actually follow the whole thing (as compared to Sunday services in village where I often sit for an hour or two just letting incomprehensible words flow over me). But the drawback to interpretation is the delary. The speakers really didn'tlike losing their flow in French so they kept interrupting the interpreter, who started shooting frustrated glances at the speaker. It made me giggle.
The chorale was quite good – they had two electric keyboards, two standing microphones and one handheld microphone!!! The handheld was for one woman who sings solos. She unfortunately didn't have any idea how to handle a mic and continuously moved it around, magnifying the sounds of the mic brushing against her complet and causing those awful screeching noises that come from a mic getting too close to a speaker.
The keyboardist frequently punctuated various moments in the presentation of the couples with synthetic drums and cymbals.
Brilliant.
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