My
name is Kelly Rwamapera and this is my experience on my first time at church
after over 1.5 years since Coronavirus was declared in my country Rwanda in Central
Africa. It’s
21st August 2021, three weeks since the lifting of lockdown in
Kigali and the reopening of churches on Coronavirus directives.
I
have not been going to church even when the government eased restrictions
several times or attending illegal gatherings in homes in which hundreds have
been arrested for violating the Coronavirus directives.
I
have resorted to my tablet for virtual worshipping and prayers or watching famous
preachers, especially Pr Mark Finley and the Baptist Paul Washer.
Today,
I would go to the Adventist University of Central Africa (AUCA) where many
English speakers go but their preachers are mostly people who found English at
universities or just had some language training and they struggle to find the
right words when preaching moreover in a central African French accent.
This
Central African country was Francophone since the 1900s but
suddenly changed to English in 2008 after years of deteriorating relations with
the French who were accused of a role in the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi.
The
Kigali government that emerged from refugee rebels from neighbouring Uganda
drove the nation of French-speaking elites into the East African Community bloc and
the Commonwealth, making English important for the first time in this country.
Very
few people, mostly a handful who went to British-tuned protestant
schools got a chance to learn some English in a country whose monarchy
dedicated it to the queen of heaven and her son in the 1940s under the guidance
of French-speaking Belgians.
So
I go to a Kinyarwanda church that is near the University, in the shadows of the
magnificent structures of the Adventist medical school inaugurated by President
Paul Kagame and Elder Ted Wilson, the President of the Seventh-day Adventist
General Conference, in 2019.
At
the church
The
church is surrounded by a fence of pencil cactus also called Indian tree
spurge or milk bush which is very common in this semi-arid country that
boasts about being a land of thousand hills.
At
the entrance is a handwashing point of white tiles made in India which was
recently constructed as required by government directives to prevent the spread
of Coronavirus.
I
notice a deacon unsmilingly making sure we wash our hands and another with a
thermometer gun and two with books at the stairs of the church entrance, all in
reflective jackets.
The
four of them wearing pathfinder scarves are standing like the porters at the
Jerusalem gates or probably like Shallum, Akkub, Talmon and Ahiman
described in 1Chronicles 9:17 as porters at the king’s gate.
About
a dozen of us stand in a queue, keeping the three-foot distance in the middle until I reach the man with a thermometer gun who reaches up to my head above him to
take my body temperature.
A
deacon and deaconess are sitting on a bench on one side of the door ajar with pale books, recording
the details of those who have come to worship who ascend the stairs with their
silhouettes staggering tall on the dewy grass.
On
another side of the wide door ajar is a banner, not like the one in the “Royal
Banner” hymn but one bearing the government's health directive on Coronavirus that
the congregation has to obey.
On
the left column, the directives say: wash your hands, mask up, no hugs and on
the right column, there's: maintain 1-meter distance, no children (banner calls them
kids) and using e-payment services for the offerings, all with descriptions and
pictures.
The
deacons record my name, temperature and my phone number before I’m welcomed by
another deaconess in her fifties with mild looks and wearing a head wrap to
lead me to the extreme left of a bench in the middle column just a few rows of
benches to the hind wall.
I'm
inside the church
Each
bench used to have a dozen people sitting on it but now, only three can sit on
it, not talking to each other and covering their mouths in masks.
It
is at this observation that I decided to write the story of my experience even
though I had not come with any gadgets to take pictures; I don’t carry phones
to church to avoid being obstructed by them.
After
the church services, I approached one deacon and he told me there were 305
people in this church, where up to 1200 worshippers would be every Sabbath.
“Even
with such spacing, the church has never been full since the event of
Coronavirus,” he told me, which means total deterioration of church-going
culture.
Time
for singing hymn comes and the chorister announces that we need to sing from
the 200 old hymns, not from the 150 new ones that the Rwanda Union Mission had
recorded and spread with much emphasis.
We
sing the first five advent hymns: “Watchman Blow the Trumpet, The Coming King
at the Door, Face to Face, How Sweet are the Tidings and How Far From Home.
My
mask is filled with warmth and moisture from the mouth; I feel like
pulling the mask down for some fresh air that comes from the seven open windows
on both sides of the church but the serious deaconess is watching.
It
is a tense situation for me and I’m tempted to pull it down whenever she faces
the other side.
The
hymns draw the congregation into the awareness of the end times and one can
read from many faces the realisation that Home is not far and the readiness for
the ‘Coming King at the Door’.
The
mood of reflecting on the end times is frequently interrupted by the chorister
and announcements including one on public blood donation and Coronavirus
directives.
The
chorister abruptly removes his multicoloured mask to dangle from his left ear
over the upper chest but I don’t see anyone in the congregation attempting to
lower the mask so I continue stealthily lowering it whenever the deaconess is
not watching me.
A
lady next to me on the other column has no hymnbook and she seems to be
unfamiliar with the Adventists’ worship. I feel like talking to her or lending her
my hymnbook but I fear violating the directives in the watch of the serious deaconess.
A
choir in the uniform of gitenge style for gentlemen and multicoloured dresses
for ladies emerges from the congregation.
It’s
my first time to see such attire for a Seventh-day Adventist choir in the
stead of ties and single-coloured shirts tucked in trousers for gentlemen and
single-coloured dresses for ladies.
We
delve into the Sabbath School lesson and you can easily realise it was
influenced by the present days of Coronavirus health news as it is filled with stories about hospitalised and dipressed people.
Here
in Rwanda, reports say there have been over 500 suicide cases in the last two years
including three raw ones of two men who have jumped off the same storied build
in Kigali in the last two months.
A
choir’s special item song with advent message is inconsistent in the number of
syllables per line but the congregation is again drawn back to the mood of the coming
of the Lord as the song alludes to Luke 21:28 “And when these things begin to
come to pass, ... know your redemption is nigh”
The
Sermon
The
preacher today is Faustin Nsengiyumva, a student of theology at the Adventist
University of Central Africa, with whom this church shares the demarcations.
I
am about 30 meters away from the pulpit so I can vaguely see his countenance
but at least I can see that he has an extended forehead that writes an M when
he bends to read from the Bible.
He
speaks a Kigogwe accent from north-western Rwanda where the first missionaries
built the second Adventist church at Rwankeri following the one at Gitwe in the
south.
For
the last few years, I've been in this beautiful country of ours, I have
realised that there is a diabolical power struggle for church leadership in
Rwanda between people from the South (Gitwe) and those from North (Rwankeri)
and I’m happy I don’t belong to any of them.
I’ve
heard complaints that the current church leadership is taking many from the
north to study theology allegedly as a way of consolidating leadership in their
hands.
The
preacher’s sermon: “Behold I’ve come to stop you”, rotates around believers’
convictions toward God's work and the barriers such as the temptations the old
prophet of Bethel used to trick the man of God to disobey Him in 1Kings 13.
The
sermon deeply sinks as the special item song is repeated at the end and we move
out but we’re too many to be controlled to respect the social distancing order.
................................
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