A day at the beach and a night at the movies

The bus lurched perilously over a deep ruddy gorge at the side of the road and the driver dropped to first, as the engine chugged the last few yards to the top of the hill. The bus had fallen strangely quiet as we all concentrated.  I’ve no idea what we would have done had the engine stalled. It was an old Chinese coaster and was held together in parts with bits of twisted wire. A young man, who looked about fourteen, was introduced to me as the electrician. I commented that I could think of many things we might need that day, but a young lad without a spanner was not one of them. He proved to be an excellent fisherman though, so that was OK.

We were forty-eight people squashed into a twenty-eight seater bus, out for a day at the seaside. Our optimism knew no bounds. We sang, we laughed and we shouted at young children as we passed. No matter if the bus couldn’t make it; our energy, enthusiasm and happiness would give it the last heave it needed.  Earlier that morning, we had collected two hundred samosas, doughnuts and bhargia; one lovely lady from the kitchen had come in early to cook fourteen kilos of rice and three cabbages over her fire. It was all packed into deep plastic buckets.

At the beach, we found shady trees, we found weathered old tables for serving food and perhaps the most perfect sea and sand for swimming I have ever seen. I even found a young woman to serve me cold beer, which she retrieved from a rusty container. In planning the day, I had been asked if students were required to wear uniform. I had baulked at that, but had tried to sound supportive. In the event, ignoring my fashion tips for the modestly inclined, women and men took the plunge regardless. Most could not swim, no-one had used a snorkel before, but with much splashing and teasing, I gave lessons in breast stroke and how not to swallow too much water.

The young tool-less electrician was dispatched with a piece of string to the shore as soon as we got there and almost instantly returned with a large squid. For the return journey, the fish was tied to the wing mirror, and jiggled its way home on a length of string. Everyone else slept, squashed up against a shoulder, a seat or a bucket. We had sand in our hair and between our toes; our fingers were sticky with sea salt and oranges; but as we turned into the college drive, the bus came alive with singing and chanting – a celebratory call, marking a great day out.

We were up before the church bells on Sunday, which should have given us a clue, but in the event we were an hour early. Seven o’clock Mass was at eight o’clock and, being Palm Sunday, started with a winding procession, a congregation of over a thousand and a packed church with standing room only for a three hour service. I had half a kneeler and Caroline was offered a seat by a young man, who knelt by her side on the floor for the entire Mass.

The whole parish was there. Huge palms were blessed then waved aloft and five choirs sang luscious harmonies without organ or leader, as we snaked our way under the fierce sun. Even the Regional Commissioner was offered little deference, taking a pew at the back of church, as children squatted at the altar rails. The reading of the Passion was unrehearsed. The readers struggled with their words and twelve pages of Kiswahili in a hot church on half a seat, seems a very long time indeed. The ritual of kneeling, of singing, of blessing and chanting has a narcotic effect as the hours drip by. I thought about many things. I thought about Africa and why this Catholic magic is so potent and I thought about Europe and cynicism and money and materialism. I thought about miracles and my bad back.

When Pascal reminded me that we were to screen Mel Gibson’s, ‘The Passion’ that night, I asked him, seriously, did he not think that we’d had our fill. He feigned not to understand, but deep down was a little wounded at my irreverence. Caroline had bought him a DVD of the blockbuster movie, which, on the cover, claimed to be dubbed into Kiswahili. This was Palm Sunday, but it felt like Christmas. Students trooped into the hot classroom.  I was a little resentful of Caroline’s and Paschal’s success in attracting such crowds. Sixty or seventy was the most I’d attracted with James Bond or Ocean’s Twelve. We had to find extra chairs to squeeze over a hundred and twenty into the room.

“You see, Mr Adrian,” said Paschal, rather smugly, “We said it would be popular.”

As we started the film I had to explain that, whilst the cover had said Kiswahili, in fact, the cheap Chinese copy was dubbed into Hebrew with English subtitles. Their fervour was not to be dampened. One wide-eyed religious movie fan at the front said,

“Let’s see it anyway, Mr Adrian. We know the story.”