Tanzania: Each church a community, every community a family
By Francesca Merlo – Sukamahela, Tanzania
Tanzania’s Church is young and colourful. Not only does it sing, it harmonises, and everybody knows the words.
Sukamahela is a perfect example of this. It has a particular architecture to it; if you were asked to draw a Church, it wouldn’t look like the one in Sukamahelo, designed and built with the help of the people from the village by Fr. Peter.
The Slovacchian-born diocesan priest has dedicated his life to the people in and around Sukamahela, and whilst the people gathering for Sunday mass look at us with curiosity, it is clear that Fr Peter is no stranger to them.
In Sukamahela, Mass does not start on time. Even when they’re busy, people in Tanzania are relaxed. Even when two strangers and a camera come and take part in their Sunday Mass.
What at first seems to be quite a small congregation, waiting patiently outside the church, suddenly becomes over one hundred people.
The pews in the back of the church quickly fill up with women and their babies, and the children who are old enough take their seats at the front of the congregation. They’re all friends, or become so very quickly. To the left the choir starts to sing and very soon the notes are resounding off the circular walls of the structure.
There are more women than men, all sitting on the left-hand side. When the first verse is over their presence becomes clear and unequivocable as they take their positions as tenors and baritones singing “Roho wa bwana imanjaza”: The Spirit of the Lord has filled me.
And it was obvious that the Spirit of the Lord is omnipresent across the dusty roads. Even “under the trees” where Fr. Peter gave his third Sunday Mass because that particular village has not yet built what is described here as a “sub-station”: a small church with an aluminium roof.
In another village, the substation, or mission, is as full as the big round church in Sukamahelo. They sing, too, just as at every other church we enter in Tanzania.
It’s true that the church in Tanzania needs more priests and that the villages around the country deserve one each. It’s plain to see that each church is a community and that each community is a family.
Outside the church in Sukamahelo, Maria and Ethel take my hand. They ask Franco, our videographer, to take our photo and then point at me and laugh, affectionately, when he shows it to them on the screen.
We spend the next few hours together along with other children from the village. Their mothers have all gone home. They have nothing to worry about; they know that their church is a community and that each community is a family.
Not even two strangers and their camera could tarnish their faith or mar their harmony.
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