Africa Journal Day 10

Monday, May 2, 2005
Day 10
Jos, Orkar’s home

Today Nigerians are celebrating "May Day" as a public holiday, to commemorate the labour force. Yesterday was Sunday, and we enjoyed worshipping with the Orkar’s; he had pre-warned us about typical long African services. This one was two hours, not at all intolerable for me. In fact, it bugs me at home when people complain of a service that goes over one hour, when most movies, concerts, and sports events, go at least two hours.

We arrived in church early and were given a tour of the facility. It is quite large, probably could seat 600. There were extra classrooms that weren’t being used yet, but there is vision for the future, such as conferences. Pre-service worship started about twenty minutes before service time-led by a contemporary worship team and band, 4 singers, keyboard, drums and electric guitar. I thought back to my time in Sri Lanka where the same emotions overwhelmed me-the songs that we sing at home, I’m singing here, having become a global worship repertoire, connecting us as brothers and sisters all around the world. I think it’s a foretaste of heaven.

The crowd was truly multi-ethnic, part of the vision of this English speaking church, to reach out to students and faculty of the University of Jos. Along with Nigerians, there were people from Congo and Uganda, and of course those of us with Caucasian roots. I truly enjoy such an interracial experience.
John and Esther had invited a whole crowd over for "Sunday Dinner"-ruam of course. This gave us a chance to meet some of the mission staff still in Jos, and some of their friends.

After lunch, Andrew and I decided to work off some of the ruam, so we hiked up a small mountain behind the Orkar’s house. They live on the edge of town, on a street that I would classify as "upper middle class." Here all the homes are within highly secured and walled yards. The tops of the walls typically have something sharp at the top, such as barbed wire or spikes, and there are steel gates guarded by round the clock security. Two or three beeps of the horn is the sign for the sentry to open the gate.

From our vantage point at the top of the mountain, we could see Jos nestled between several mountains. Jos overall seems more "progressive" than Gboko-we saw our first women in slacks here. Traffic and the unreliability of NEPA are no different than Mkar. John is a cautious driver, but I must simply close my eyes at times.

We ended our day at the Internet Café, where we had a wrap and a Coke, before we checked emails and posted Saturday’s blog.