The Pastor, The Pagan and His Reminisce

I was a pastor at a small church of about 50 members, a church where everyone knows everyone. Because of most people being late for the Sunday morning service which resulted into most coming at 11 AM for the service that was meant to start at 9 AM, I had to change the time for Sunday meeting from 9AM – 12 AM to 2PM – 5 PM. To allow people to attend to household chores and responsibilities in the morning have ‘Time for The Lord’ in the afternoon.

One Sunday I 'discovered' a cute, strange face as I was trying to expound the Bible. After the service I tried to play the I-didn’t-see-you game. But the man in me and his instincts pushed me to the person I had seen earlier, I approached the stranger and started doing what pastor do when they see a new face in church.

As I was moving towards her, she turned, and our eyes met. Suddenly, I forgot where I was and what I wanted to do. Like someone who is sleeping during the day, I could hear the chatters. But unintelligible. Rapid short sounds suggestive of a language I fully understand but here it was inarticulate and indistinct. Then some mentioned the word ‘Pastor’. Boom, I climb down from the scaffold I was using when building my castles in the air.

‘How are you sister’ I was first to speak.

Then my eyes started racing through her morphology, head to toe and back again using the same route.

Then the thought of marriage came to my mind. I remembered the points which father had given me on one of the many wife-choosing-criteria lessons.

‘You see my son, if you want to enjoy your marriage, if you want your wife to be giving you the respect, if want you her to be happy….’

He proceeded to swallow an ocean of saliva that had gathered in his mouth.

You must………….

He swallowed again. My patience would be ebbing away whilst anxieties headed exactly the opposite direction. My heart started racing because father was a man of few words. He kept most of the stories, advices, and anger to himself. I remember him claiming that I may have been cursed by the gods for not marrying yet. He called me a bat. According to him, like a bat, I was in the category of the have-eyes-but-cannot-see type. These are people, as he claimed, who are indecisive. Those, in this case, who competent enough to have their marriage arranged. These arrange marriage ceremonies were usually held at night. I can’t really my finger on why this is the case. The following day one will wake up with the desire, of course not without trepidation, of wanting to see the face of the love of their life.

‘You must find a decent girl and she must have your beliefs. You must marry someone who will be motivating you, someone who will act as you counsel. Look at you mother, she has made me to be like this………

While saying this he was pointing at what we, at the house, all knew as a bookshelf but to others it was just two pieces of planks attached to the wall. This bookshelf only had one whole book, the Bible. Others were pieces of paper on various subjects. It was engraved in me that whenever father made such a venerate pointing, I needed to rush to the shelf and get him his bible. I think the bible was older than all his children. Including his marriage.

I stood up, made a step, stretched out my right hand, grabbed the Bible and pass it to my left hand. I then made a stance, and down I went on my knees while stretching out my hand and fingers diligently holding the Bible. I respected the man whose prowess and viability facilitated by being on earth.

He perused through the through to the book of Psalms trying to find a verse.

Iron sharpens iron……………….mmmmmmmm……………………

I could hear him say to himself as he perused through and through the ripped pages of his Bible. Of course, I knew that it was Proverbs 27:17 he was looking for but hey I couldn’t spoil his moment. Never rain on someone’s parade.

As he was busy flapping from the first Psalm to the last and back again, there was this loud silence as I was thinking how long his advice was going to last since it seemed a century had passed already.

Suddenly, there was this sound blast, which almost had my brain crushed. I tried to reconstruct what I had heard in an understandable way. Luckily my brain did a quick reboot.

Fine, thank you. How are you pastor?

A sweet girlish voice brought me back to reality.

Are you coming to join our church or maybe you’re just visiting our church? I asked.

I am assessing and if I am happy, I will be congregating with your church.

Fair enough this is one of the most honest answers I have ever heard, I thought to myself.

Forgive my manners, may I know your name and where you are staying? I finally remembered that I still don’t who she’s is.

I’m Mikayeli Mwinko. I stay…

So, you are the most acclaimed daughter of Mr. Mwinko or senior headman Mwinko?

I interjected her from finishing. I cut her short because I wanted the conversation to end as youths who came with her were waiting for us to finish while looking at us suspiciously and surreptitiously. I was conscious of everyone looking at us in my peripheral vision.

In addition, I had already heard a lot about her. Some said she was the most beautiful girl in the village. Some claimed she was best mannered. Yet some said she would the most spoiled daughter of Mwinko village because of the education which her father was determined to give her.

‘Girl child education is the destroyer of morals and the eventual killer of our culture. A woman is a custodian of culture as she easily transmits it to her children because the man is not usually home. What will she be teaching her children when all she does is bath every hour?” some people could be heard speaking exaggeratively.

However, some parents were eager to have their daughters educated. This garnered some debates in churches, drinking spots, water fetching points, even in household. One would hear such topics during the Chimutengo meetings where headman Mwinko was a regular. He would proudly talk about his daughter and his ambition to make her a teacher at the nearest school, some 10 kilometers away.

Now every weekend, the village men would gather underneath a huge Kachele (fig tree). The tree was believed to be the oldest and the source of wisdom for the village soothsayers. No wonder it was a source of pride for the village. Men would sit the whole day drinking kachasu, wine, 7 days and everything that would intoxicate them. This was done while they played nsolo and draughts and discussed on everything that matters to the village at that hour. These meetings were regular and systematic.

My ideas can be seen from the breed that I have produced. I believed no one is blind enough not to have seen the beauty of my daughter. Even this blind Joni knows how beautiful my daughter is. I have the most perfect mould which gave me the most beautiful, the most learned and the most upright daughter in this village.

Headman Mwinko would boast as his interlude his speech. He usually compared his ideas with his daughter.

However, every time this didn’t go well with Mr Joni who was indeed blind. Anyway, Mr Joni would start answering back. And if one didn’t know how these two related, they would make a mistake of joining or thinking that they will end up fighting. People who understood their relationship would just sit and enjoy listening to the two tears each other apart.

Mr Joni was the soothsayer of the village. Rumor had it that he exchanged his sight for wisdom. I didn’t even know his real name as the name Joni was short for Johannesburg, South Africa. He claimed he was the only in the village who had successfully gone to Joni, as he called it, to work in the mines. Other people claimed he was only faking the blindness and could see. How else does he manage to stagger back home regardless of how drunk he is? Something in me agreed with them.

I ate on the same tables with Muzungus, therefore I am the only one who knows what education can do to people not this Kapunjunju. He would say while he correctly pointed to where the headman was sitting.

He would start speaking a strange language that he called Chibunu, the language of the Muzungu, it was a mixture of English, Ndebele, Afrikaan and Nsenga.

After death of my parents, the only Christian in my house is Mikayeli. My wife. I have never been one. I was just fitting in with what my father demanded.

Children who grow up in religious home turn out to be of 2 kinds. The virtuous, religious kind may even end up to be ministers themselves. The other kind, generally want to get as far away from the church as possible. Growing up in the church mean that one has a front row seat to just another community institution with bad politics and an unusual amount of unfairness. Be gentle to children growing up in religious homes.