Dancing through mass in Zimbabwe

African diary

April 4, 1999: Entering Africa

So this is Africa! A continent of more than 30 million sq. kms and a total population of about 600 million, now divided into 51 separate independent countries. 

I had from my boyhood wanted to visit Africa. I remember when I was studying at St. Benedict's College, Colombo, once having told my mother that I wanted to be a missionary in Africa. Later, as a Jesuit student for the priesthood, I remember telling my colleague, Vernon Buyser, that both of us should ask to be sent to Africa. 

I am happy that many, many years later my wishes have been fulfilled. On April 3. I left Bombay for Johannesburg Airport, arriving on April 4, Easter Sunday. From there I boarded another plane for the hour's flight to Harare, capital of Zimbabwe, former Southern Rhodesia. 

My Jesuit friend, Brian MacGarry, was at the airport to welcome me together with his friend, the Zimbabwean Doctor Margaret Terewinga. With Brian and Margaret we went some 15 kms away to Silveira House, the Jesuit Centre for Training and Development in Harare. 

Silveira was to be my home for the next eleven weeks. 

April 5: Blue skies and cool climate

This morning I was entranced by the African skies, vast unbroken expanses of them, splendid blue and bright, a vast canopy over the whole earth. I gazed and gazed. We never have skies like these in our country, but I was told this is because we are an island, and Zimbabwe is landlocked, far away from the sea, and is encircled by Zambia on the north and northwest, Mozambique on the east, Botswana and Namibia on the west and South Africa in the south, each many times larger than Sri Lanka. 

April 11: The African Mass

The singing, the drumming and the rattles before and during the mass in the Silveira Chapel filled me not only with joy but with undefinable expectancy and hope. I noticed that even the old blind middle-aged sister danced. Maybe I was filled with hope because I remembered Cardinal Danielou, the French Jesuit, saying that he thought the next liturgical renewal in the church would come from Africa. We speak of mass as a celebration. For the African the mass is from beginning to end a big joyous celebration. 

The next Sunday for mass I went with Brian to a suburb of Harare, called Mbare. It was called a township in Smith's time and before. There the black Africans who came to work in Harare were herded together in the pre-1980 colonial years, several together in small rooms, only the men, for they were not allowed to bring their wives and children. 

To the whites, the black men were only their low- paid, obedient workforce, they were not husbands and fathers, uncles or brothers, not even human beings. 

I had, of course, heard and read about the Soweto township off Johannesburg in apartheid South Africa. There, apartheid was both real and legal. In Zimbabwe it was not quite legal, but was still very real. 

Before independence which Zimbabwe won in 1980, the blacks were not even allowed to drink 'clear' beer (by which they mean beer like our lager) but only 'opaque' beer (like our toddy, but cream in colour) called cibuku. I had cibuku on a few occasions in the beer garden of the cement works close to Silveira, and found it very good. You buy it in one-or two-or four litre plastic jugs and all in the group sit around the jug which passes from one to the other, even to the casual outsider who drops in on the group, until someone calls for a refill. Hardly believable today, even by Zimbabwean youth, the blacks were not allowed to walk on the pavements of the streets of Harare, where only the whites could walk, but had to use the road. 

But let me go back to the mass. It was a large church, capable of holding more than a thousand people. The church was crowded. 

I was obviously a visitor, so the men edged closer to each other and beckoned me to a seat in one of the pews at the back of the church. From there I was able to survey the whole scene. 

Mass was about to begin and so the music started: the large drums, the small drums, the rattles, the marimba or the African xylophone, the mbira or the African guitar or piano, and the African horn. 

The whole congregation joined in the singing.

What delighted me most was the way they swayed to the music, even the African priest at the altar, the deacons and the altar-servers. David must have danced like this before the Ark of the Covenant, I thought. 

They were all poor people but were dressed in their Sunday best. One man with a full suit which I felt had been to hundreds of Sundays told me he always wore his wedding suit of many years ago for the mass. 

The older women were gaily dressed in their ankle-length skirts, the younger in colourful frocks and even more colourful shawls and headgear. Even the very little ones danced to the music of the songs. 

Rows of pearly white teeth gleamed on their jet black faces. They were celebrating the death, the resurrection and the glory of the Lord. 

More next week

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