Rita's Church

Funny story.

This past weekend, Rita, one of our day workers, invited me and some of the galley staff to come and see her church. She’s been very adamant about us visiting— when she first invited me, she made this stern face and waggled her finger and said, “You don’t go away, you don’t switch shifts with anyone else this weekend, you come to church with Rita, OK?”.

So on Sunday morning, I find myself sitting through the LONGEST church service OF MY LIFE. I mean, I've been to 4-hour African church services before, and technically, time-wise, this wasn't any longer (by which I also mean it wasn't any shorter), but for some reason this service just felt very very very (did I mention, very?) long. At the end of the very long service, the pastor finally gets up to acknowledge the presence of us Mercy Shippers. He makes a very grand, very LONG speech about how thankful they are to have us in Lomé, about the difference we are making, about how we're all different but we're all brothers and sisters in Christ since we're working towards the same goal.

He looks towards the congregation and says, "You see black people," looks towards the Mercy Shippers and says, "You see white people,"

And then he looks directly at me and says, "You see yellow people..."

...

It was literally one of those complete, smack your forehead, what just happened, LOL moments. I hate that I'm starting to actually think in initialisms, but seriously, I can't describe it any other way. I just sat there going... Wait, did he just say that?? For the record, ONE. You see ONE yellow person. As we walked out of the church, Jeff turns to me, laughing, and says, "Well, at least they acknowledged you."

Oh Africa. How I'm going to miss your completely un-PC ways.