A sister wearing a pink and grey
striped dress stood up in the front to read the scripture. The sun
has set, but still some last vestiges of light are left along with
the heat of the day. Truthfully though, the heat never leaves this
dark earth. It is not rare to wake up sweating at 5 am because the
power has gone out and the fan isn’t giving those few oscillating
seconds of coolness. Hot in the day and hot at night. Hot hot hot.
We told Lazarus it was -10 degrees Celsius in Canada where Dez lives.
He said he would freeze to death. He probably would too.
The crowd beside the road is winnowing
down. The policeman has left and most of them have come to sit in
front of the stage, or else sit on the fallen trunk of a large tree
about 50 feet from the stage, the darkening sky barely illuminating
their black faces.
The truck that struck the child drove
off immediately, perhaps didn’t even slow down. Denise, one of our
squad leaders, said the driver probably drove off to save his skin,
not from prosecution of the law but from the anger of the village.
In this part of Africa, if a thief is caught in the act, Denise told
us, the thief will be beaten and even killed by the mob. The driver
was probably fleeing the people’s “justice.”
“PREPARE, my time is coming!” the
preacher says. “And the BIBLE SAYS: PREPARE, my time is coming!
But they despised Noah and failed to prepare! But when the rain came
they were destroyed.”
THE BIBLE SAYS…
THE BIBLE SAYS…
THE BIBLE SAYS!
Two Koreans, one in camo and the other
shirtless and showing off his prodigious belly, walk on a path behind
the stage. The eyes of the children and mothers follow. I catch one
woman staring at me, as if to see if I know the two Koreans, as if
all people with light skin know one another, as if we’re all in a
club where we meet to talk about how to make money off the skin of
the people or something. Who knows what she’s thinking.
I turn at the sound of a loud car
behind. A white pickup truck is speeding by on the road behind.
“No one knows the time…” says
the preacher.
I think of the white pickup striking
the child.
“No one knows the time….” he
says.
The child bouncing off the grill,
thrown to the bushes on the side of the road.
“No one knows…”
The shouts of rage from the men. The
cries of panic from the women. The cacophony from the children
begging to know what happened.
It’s dark now. The sun is set. The
crowd by the road is gone.
“No one expected it,” continues
the preacher. “They shall find two together. One shall be taken,
the other remained.”
“There is a time of separation. You
can be separated from your wife. You can be separated from your
brother. You can be separated from your child. The time is coming
when the Lord will separate the people.”
It’s time for the altar call. All the
children come up. They put their hands up and sing,
I surrender all
I surrender all
All to Jesus blessed Savior
I surrender all
Someone has turned on the stage
lights, a single bulb at the four corners of the stage. There are
hundreds of insects flitting around each, hiding from the darkness.
A new singer gets up to the stage.
The hard work has been done. It is time to dance. He sings out a
lively song in Ateso and the band follows him. Three or four
hundred people are dancing around the stage, bouncing up and down,
throwing their arms in the air, swinging their hips back and forth,
and singing loud. Many of the women let out piercing ululations.
The boys stomp their feet to the packed dirt.
To Be Continued…
