Holy Saturday

Easter Vigil in the US is the marathon of all church services. Easter Vigil in Africa is even longer. The mass seemed to go on for eternity as I sat in a hot, overcrowded church with a 3 year old on my lap. People were shoulder to shoulder sitting on the wooden benches. The mass was said in Luo which didn’t help matters. About 100 children received baptism. It was an assembly line of sacrament; the water, the chrism, the candle, done. The most miraculous part of the entire night was that nobody caught on fire. The majority of the congregation was children from the area boarding schools and the orphanage, Dala Kiye. No matter how young the child was everyone got to hold a candle, including little Mercy sitting on my lap. I prayed, “Please God, don’t let her light herself on fire.” Luckily, nobody went up in flames.
After 3 ½ hours, church concluded at 12:30am just as it started to rain. The heavens opened and it poured as people left church. It was a relief after roasting in church for all that time. I hitched a ride home with Fr. Julius. About 20 of the kids from Dala Kiye piled into the van too. Slowly we made our way home through the mud and rain. Driving on a muddy road is a lot like driving on ice and snow; you slide easily and have little control over where you’re going. We dropped the kids off at the orphanage and then Fr. Julius offered a ride home to Evans, who lives about 3km further down the road. He gladly accepted considering it was 1am and raining. We were almost to his house when the road turned into a river. A normally small creek had turned into a raging riving flowing across the road. There was no way we could drive or walk across it. We had to turn around and go home- easier said than done. When Fr. Julius tried to turn around, the car tires sunk into the mud. We were stuck. So Evans and I hopped out to push the van. Its one in the morning, raining, thundering, lightening, and I’m wearing a dress trying to push a car out of the mud.Is this really happening?! Thanks to my beastly muscles we pushed the car out of the rut. (Just kidding!) Thank goodness Evans was there to push or else we would have been there all night. So we were unstuck but still headed in the wrong direction. Turning around was impossible so we drove in reverse for about 2km until we reached a paved driveway where we could turn around in.
Finally, at 2am I arrived home, wet, muddy, and tired. It was an eventful Holy Saturday in Karungu. This place never fails to amaze me.