Happy New Year

If anything is a festival of ‘hoping the sun comes up tomorrow’ it is New Year. The date is merely the passage of time as we mark it. And it can be wonderful but it is also without a doubt the holiday that people complaint the most about. It’s expensive and ultimately a bit pointless for many people I know, freezing ankles and thighs in a wet or slushy city in the middle of the night with a full bus meaning an expensive taxi is the only option. I have never really been in that school, for starters I long ago realised that the pound payment for the cloakroom was a cheap price for a warm coat at the end of a night out in Manchester. And that there are much better ways to spend New Year.

My family, like many I know in the North of England, join Scotland in the tradition of first footing. At the end of the old year someone (or everyone) will leave the house, preferably by the back door. And the first foot in the front door after midnight will be by a person carrying a tray of symbols of things you wish for the home that year; coal for warmth, a candle for light, bread for food, money for, well, money, and whisky for good cheer. However, over the past years I have introduced this idea to a number of very blank looking friends. And this year was no exception.

For six months I have had the urge to cook Coq au Vin, so took the opportunity to invite fellow VSOs for dinner. As midnight approached we set up first footing and left the tray outside the house. We headed to the roof and watched the fireworks around the bay. We shared fizzy wine and grape juice with each other and my neighbours then headed inside and brought with us warmth (not hugely necessary), food (definitely necessary), light (even for a night or two would be nice), money (well, there is a volunteer allowance), and good cheer (fine, we have that sorted).  We sat up chatting and drinking red wine from cartons until after the call to morning prayer. I fell into bed, and, as I’d used the board from the base as a table extension, I promptly fell straight through and spent the next few hours in denial that I was at a seventy degree angle.

   

The next day is a big day for the Christian community here. Many of my church friends were amazed that I see it as a purely secular holiday and hadn’t spent the night in church. But Mathias wanted to take me to see the masquerades in Banjul the following day. In our new his-n-hers outfits we headed into the capital. The masquerades are run by hunting societies. There are a number of these and some do still go hunting. It’s a largely Christian tradition, so the hunting season closes for Lent. They also have displays in which they build costumes to represent their mastery over wild beasts, usually stuffed heads shipped from Europe and America as taxidermy goes out of fashion. The excitement seems to be in seeing new animals and there is a great honour in being the first person to wear a head. The competition element is who can get the most unusual head.

     

The streets of Banjul are crowded, have open gutters and are grey and dirty, with very few maintained road surfaces. The crowds on New Year’s Day were extreme, pushing the unwary into a sewer or over a kerb without fear, especially if a masquerade, kids setting off fire crackers or man waving a flare was in the way. We found friends who invited us for lunch, oysters which I normally skip on avoiding illness grounds.  We ten re-braved the crowds, watching a few strange apparitions wearing armour made of shells, an armadillo and horns topped with a headdress of a dead animal or horns wandering past dancing in white socks. There are three speeds of dance and the rest of the society beats drums and clappers or weaves around the masquerade, one with a pipe.  It is in a way interesting, like being a t a rush bearing and in a similar way to visiting a zoo in terms of people seeing exotic animals. I was the only person in the crowd near me to identify the polar bear.

But I was tired and seeing another stuffed animal head with a man dancing underneath it starts to wane after a few hours, as well as my legs starting to complain that they had already spent the night trying to climb a mattress so sitting would be good. Plus, trying to leave Banjul at night is, like on any new year, the fight for an overpriced taxi whilst wishing a night bus will pass. I watched the fireworks as we fought the crowd and waited for a taxi who thought D200 (about £4 but also about a day’s income for me) was a reasonable price for a seven mile journey. The fireworks were lovely. And then we went home, and found that I had put my bed back together. This time when I fell into it I didn’t fall through.

Do they know it’s Christmas?

In mid-November I updated my iPod to start playing Christmas tunes, at first occasionally popping up on shuffle but then with a dedicated playlist. I have often heard “oh, it doesn’t feel like Christmas when it’s warm” from those who’ve spent it abroad and wondered if that was true. Does it really take a robin bob-bob-bobbin through the snow to feel like Christmas? Certain charity pop songs have it that, what with poverty, “the burning sun” and the “bitter sting of tears” it is particularly difficult to appreciate the season of goodwill in a very poor African country. As my birthday falls on Christmas Eve experimenting with the presence of the Christmas spirit was a bit of a high risk gamble but we can but try.

When people say “it doesn’t feel like Christmas” they mean the atmosphere. So what makes Christmas?

Religion

Though for not all, Christmas is first and foremost a religious feast. Even some of those who wouldn’t dream of making church a feature of a normal Sunday morning think getting to a church at Christmas is part of the season. Of course, my church prepared in the way prescribed under canon law, and the practice of Advent with purple and pink candles lit around a wreath each week, sermons about preparation and meetings about the liturgical accuracy of various elements.  For years I have celebrated my birthday on 23rd (Birthday Eve) so that friends and family can attend the vigil Mass. This year I had to shut down my birthday party early so that Mags and I could get to church in time for carols.  We were at church from 9 until 1am. Decorations had been added, the crib was out and weirdly contained a stuffed donkey, a camel with a missing leg and models of various shapes so that “baby” Jesus was over twice as big as his mother. Religious Christmas was fully ticked.

Music

For me, like many of my friends, as a life-long chorister music is essential. My sister Katharine will generally sleep an extra five hours on Christmas day after a month in which her five choirs are all performing to the best of their abilities, often with three concerts in a day. New music is learnt and descants are polished until they sparkle. And so, was there music? Well yes. In September as ever I was learning a few new Christmas tunes, singing “waaw, tey la Noel” (“yes, today is Christmas”) into the humid rainy season air. I myself was teaching “Gaudete” and “The Angel Gabriel” and allocating solos and pointing out the music in the book for “O Come, O Come Emmanuel” which had, until then, been passed on by ear.  I had a visitor to the choir and had to wear the dreaded asobi again, managing to give Mags a shorter version which made her feel like Sister Mary Roberts, the novice in Sister Act.  There was the predictable last minute switching of a solo and the under-prepared soprano ‘star’ messing it up to be out sung by me with the correct pitches in the choral sections.  The addition of a competing soloist row definitely made it Christmassy music wise.

Family

Christmas is a time of friends and family and it is this that is obviously the hardest to make up for when away from home. I luckily had a sister to stay, bringing traditions and presents from afar, like the original gifts symbols of something intangible about who I am to them and they are to me.  We opened gifts on Christmas morning, sang along to the Muppet Christmas Carol and ate bacon butties. It was ever thus. Yet even without Mags, I had the family spirit around me. I had been invited for Christmas lunch in October, I had small stocking like gifts for those who have cared for me this year, sweets and balloons, reading books and colouring pencils for the children and cake, photos and wine for the adults. We visited the Assine family, ate there, then rushed to the original invitation with Auntie Cor, ate again (oh yes, we ate too much in seasonal style) then on to the Mendys for a quick greeting. We missed the VSO party because it was in the afternoon and we had too many families to visit, and instead we went to a traditional Christmas day masquerade. Eventually we got home and, with our first glass of wine of the day, skyped Dad and Katharine and had a stilted chat. There was so much family that too many were missed (Gran and Grandad, Mum, Irene, this especially means you). So far, so Christmassy.

Parties

I love parties at Christmas. Everyone is looking forward to them and in the mood for some good cheer. Christmas parties almost organise themselves. And my birthday is amongst the best.  For years I have had a dinner with select friends but my 30^th topped that off in spectacular style. I wanted a change so had a house party. Mum sent a Birthday present of cash to pay for food and drink, and a new dress. Mags toiled in the kitchen, Natalie circulated and pitched in, I meandered around feeling glamorous.  So many people came and I was thrilled. By Boxing Day another party was in full flow, this time a beach BBQ. We played touch rugby and swam in the sea before breaking off some cake, pouring a good whisky and watching the sunset as green phosphorescence lit up the ocean waves.

Decorations

Do they know it’s Christmas? I think the power bill of my local supermarket must have doubled. It’s covered in lights, there’s tinsel on every surface and every window I covered with plastic friezes of Father Christmas and snowmen and stars and trees. Every Christian house you visit has balloons on the ceiling, foil garlands hanging overhead and shining baubles around the place. Decorations are not a problem. Mine seem very tame in comparison, despite one VSO who was amazed at seeing tinsel on my dining table. Even the VSO Christmas party had a tree and various shiny things, collected by VSOs gone by to add festive cheer.

Weather

Ok, so it is hot and sandy and you can go out without a coat. But if the cold, rainy or snowy weather that makes you want to be inside in the warm was the only thing that made Christmas it’d be Christmas in Manchester on at least 178 days every year. And this year we got to swim in the sea, is there a better Christmas present?

Christmas is what you make it. If you see it as a festival of hope and light in a dark world, why would your poverty stop you celebrating? Poverty doesn’t stop people being human, though it severely and cripplingly limits how you can express that humanity. For one day, your faith says “there is something different” and, for Catholics at least, people should be working to make that difference every day.  But to wish well for others, to save what you have and do something to mark a time that is special to you through your faith or family, everyone knows what that is. And it’s not the weather that stops it feeling like Christmas, it’s forgetting how to hope and work for the best, not being happy that you are alive, and failing to celebrate being human together.  None of that was missing in my Christmas. But knowing that another Christmas is here, with the promise of change for a more equal society but that it’s a promise still unfulfilled from last year, well, that is what makes us try to make a difference every day.

* Thanks to Natalie Smith for a few of the photos

“Thanne longen folk to goon on pilgrimages”*

Over a quarter of a century ago, the Catholics of The Gambia decided they needed their own pilgrimage site.  There is an annual pilgrimage to Popenguine in Senegal, a site established by a priest in 1887, but it was felt that a site in The Gambia should be dedicated as a shrine to Mary. There was no sighting or vision, simply a good location identified and a shrine built. And now there is an annual pilgrimage to Kulkujan Mariama as part of the Christmas preparations. Though rumours about a vision have started to circulate as the origin of the shrine gets more distant.

As a student I was an assistant on many pilgrimages to Lourdes, the shrine in France, but this time I didn’t feel any calling to travel. I was tired and could do with some time to prepare for Christmas at home. But, after being asked by almost everyone in the church, and establishing that I didn’t have to join the choir this time (as I wanted my evening back after months of heavy concert practices), I decided to attend. After all, when else would I travel there and see what this African shrine looked like. I eventually agreed to go with my choir friend Mathias and his family. Somehow, suddenly, I was also in charge of taking a picnic for the all-day event for anywhere between two and five people so spent a day at the market and an evening cooking and sourcing big plates and a basket for carrying said picnic.

I woke early in the morning, for once using the call to prayer as a reminder to get out of bed. After dressing in the dim dawn light I stumbled up to the taxi rank laden with bags of food and frozen water. Joining the women queuing with their baskets for a morning market trip, we convinced a van to divert his route. I was sleepy and had warnings in my mind of “the bus will definitely leave at 6.30 sharp so you must be there by then.” Of course we eventually left an hour after that. I repacked our picnic into the borrowed basket. No one else seemed to be carrying food or even water. Mathias joined the van with a loaf of bread and we made butties from boiled eggs and salad. No one else was eating. Instead everyone was dutifully praying the rosary with added prayers and songs after each decade. The sun was rising over the countryside and I let the prayers wash over me as I watched the scenery, joining in if bits were in English or allowing myself time for my own reflections.

When we arrived I first saw a church with a very steep spire and thought “yes, this is a shrine” as I was instantly reminded of French basilicas. The congregation were seated outside, with only the seats catching the now intense sun left free.  We took up our positions and I borrowed scarves in attempt to save my legs from the scorching rays. We started with the rosary again, this time with each mystery acted out. It struck me that Jesus meets a prophetess, Anna, when he is taken to the temple as a baby. After a conversation with a Muslim house guest I’ve been on the look-out for female prophets so it was good to see Anna turn up. Still, without a breeze, very poor microphones and the second recitation of the extended prayers that day, I was struggling to stay awake. I dozed under a thick woollen scarf that was supposedly keeping the sun off my head, nudged by Mathias every time the actors reappeared.

                                                             

By the time the next section, following the Stations of the Cross (the story of Jesus’ death) at the shrine, came around I was too hot and too outside the community spirit of a congregation. I went to the church, which was virtually empty and blessedly cool. Above the altar were paintings of the Madonna and child surrounded by Gambian people. That too was a blessed relief from the almost snow white images around my own church which disturb me more than they would in Europe because they are so incongruous to both history and the local people.  The only disturbance were a gaggle of arrogant priests at the back of the church, too wrapped up in their big day out to minister or even notice that a few people were trying to use an otherwise silent space for prayer.

I sat there until I felt recovered and the midday sun had passed. I wandered down the stalls of pious items that always turn up at such sites, bought some fabric, and went back to join in the Mass. The sermon, delivered from a shady, fan-cooled altar was long but radical. The congregation were asked to change from trying to become a self-sustaining diocese to prioritise the new Caritas campaign to end hunger. Asking people in a country with a real hungry season that isn’t hidden behind such think doors of shame and ignorance as hunger is in the UK what to do about the hungry people they know suddenly showed one of the strengths in the kaleidoscope of humanity that is Catholicism. There are rich and poor people in this church, generally seen as equal and with a community link and spiritual ethos that suggests they should be sharing with each other more. And, they are treated as a people with their own ability to make the change, not as recipients of a foreign intervention. But then there was the long fundraising collection for the shrine which is made public and part of the service and which grates heavily on my nerves, given the Biblical exhortation to give without being seen and the fact that money is so tight for so many people here.

After the Mass we ate, and I saw that everyone else’s picnics had been squirrelled away in coach holds and the backs of vans.  I visited the shrine and stepped carefully over the candles placed on the floor, watching more than one person helped up after falling over the molten wax covered tiles. On the bus home, the rosary started up again. Two of the women were arguing about being late back to the van for an hour and a half, until another matriarch with higher social standing pushed the row underground through the forceful way of saying the prayers. For me  tiredness won out and I dozed with my forehead jolting against the metal of the seat in front of me. 

*Chaucer, Prologue to the Canterbury Tales

Sing like you’re a champion

I would know my fellow VSOs a lot better, and fewer local Gambians, if I hadn’t joined the church choir. Unbeknown to me when I joined the choir also has the reputation for being one of the best in The Gambia, being the senior choir in the largest parish. However, in the UK I am used to significantly less rehearsal for significantly more performances. In ordinary time we practice three times a week and sing every Sunday.  But October was not ordinary time. We had a concert at the beginning of November to prepare for, as well as our parish feast and several other major events.  Practices increased to five days a week, seven pm until late, occasionally after eleven. There was a costume (asobi) to organise, dance steps to learn and new songs introduced right up to the last minute. Even I was contributing, bringing the joyful Christmas song “Gaudete” to the show, teaching it then stealing the solos.

Preparation was hard. We needed to know every song off by heart, or at least thought we did. We were all tired, I stretched an infected leg wound while practicing the start to a South African piece (“Ho No Lo Fasa”) which involved each section turning and kneeling on the ground like a nineties boy band, friends struggled through late night rehearsals drinking paracetemol to combat malaria symptoms. When the asobi came back from the tailor it was terribly made, tight across my bust and far too baggy so it looked like an unfashionable Grandma’s nightdress. The lads had enormous collars and weirdly placed buttons. Luckily I had a tailor friend to fix it so I could actually breathe and the fabric suited me well enough.  I made a flower for my hair out of the balance cut off the bottom.  Then I found out we didn’t a different dress for the first half; a local style grand booba, which of course everyone had but me.  Luckily my adopted mother Marie Louise offered to lend me one. Two days before the concert those without attendance marks in the register were given non-singing jobs, which was nerve wrecking as it was being decided who could take part. Eventually I looked passable, knew the steps and the words, was included in the singers and had managed to invite a few guests.

The concert day arrived. We travelled to the hotel at the bottom of Senegambia. All the Gambians were made to show their ID at the top of the street and, when we arrived at the hotel, the management weren’t advertising the fact that there was a genuine bit of local culture here to their own guests. Some braved it anyway but the audience was mainly other Gambian Catholics come to see the choir. We applied make up, ate a sardine butty and drank water and said a thanks giving prayer. I still couldn’t see my guests so went to leave my camera with one of the ushers on the cheap seats gate asking them to find someone who knew me and ask them to take photos. Bit risky perhaps. As we queued at the back we watched the queues for VIP (“patron”) tickets and normal seats. I kicked my shoes under the ticket desk and we started to dance from the back to the stage singing a love song in Olof.  As I arrived on the stage I spotted few familiar faces, lots of VSOs had turned out and I was very touched to see them. Natalie commented it made her feel like a proud mum.

                    

                    

We danced and sung. I had the third song as a solo with the choir singing the choruses. I could have smiled more but any staging that underlines me with the word “champion” is good enough for me.  We changed into our grannie’s nighty asobi after the interval, by which time my fellow VSOs had given up and gone for a drink at below tourist hotel prices, hence the lack of photographic evidence. By 1 am we were on the last song. The crowd had cheered and thrown money and sweets onto the stage. We had sung in over ten languages and the audience assumed I could speak in all of them. No one commented on my solo but very frequently a drum beat would get carried away and we’d break into stamping Jola dancing. Auntie Marie dragged me to the front to join in. Afterwards all I heard was “Wow, you can really dance!”

At two am we reached the church hall for an after party. I took a few beers and by, well, half past six I was in bed. Totally shattered but having had a lot of fun I then immediately slept for 36 hours, getting up for half hour intervals of water and food.  

 

Parish Feast

1^st October is the feast of St. Therese of Lieseux, the 19^th Century French nun after whom our church is named. Therefore on the 6^th we celebrated our parish feast.  Ours is the biggest parish in the diocese and we have four choirs which came together to provide the music. We have been practising for weeks. The whole parish was similarly preparing, there was an asobe for sale, a particular fabric so that all parishioners could have clothes made out of the same material. There were requests for auction goods and volunteer to sell food at the party which would follow after the service. The service itself was held in the school playground rather than the church to accommodate the numbers attending.

I woke in the morning and donned my asobe. Having put heels on for the occasion I took a taxi. Getting a car can be tricky but as one rounded the corner the passengers, dressed in the same fabric as me, called the driver to stop and I was given a seat. I followed my co-worshippers in to the school yard and found the choir. Many were excited that I had worn the fabric and I received compliments of “I like your style”.  As the list of intentions were read I listened carefully, waiting to see if my intention had been added. Unfortunately not, as a prayer to celebrate my grandparent’s diamond (60^th) wedding anniversary. It was added to Thursday’s intentions instead, the actual day of their anniversary but not a mass I could attend. I said a little prayer anyway and thought about the family party taking place 3000 miles away.

On the front row of the choir I had the TV camera in my face. I already know people watch to see if I can say the words when I’m singing (I should hope so, we were practising every day for a month!) The mass wound on, a sermon was said, the children presented a play about the life of St Therese, offertory gifts were brought, banners and dancers added to the processions. It lasted four and a half hours.  The only sour note was a very long collection in which various people were brought to the front to be awarded “someone [e.g. couple, grandfather, mother] of the day” certificates. This is a fundraising ruse to ask the congregation to “support” them by adding a donation to the pot on the altar. I am not a big fan of the church collections anyway, especially from such a poor community and the after mass party was clearly going to raise significant funds in a way that is familiar to any community group in the world. Yet this “people of the day” element lasted for over an hour, with the congregation being chastised to give more and more, in the middle of Mass.

After the service I sat with the Mendy family, who remind me of my own in many ways. They had brought a picnic of fish and rice, some wine and were creating a big family table. As their adopted daughter I shared the meal and the wine, played with the children and joked with the extended family. Later I sat with the choristers and ate pork soup which was a very tasty stew with a hint of without the beans. As the bar ran dry I decided to head home, picking up another taxi. When I first came to Africa there was an idea of what a mass might be like. The feast certainly outdid expectations.